Fell; and a balustrade was substituted on the roof for the original
battlements, possibly for the purpose of lecturing from the housetop, a
course which, however, has not been pursued in recent times. Tom Tower
was finished by Wren in 1682; Tom himself (the bell) having been recast
by Christopher Hodson in 1680. He, or his original metal, was once the
old clock bell of Oseney Abbey.[259]
The original grant of Peckwater Inn to St. Frideswide’s is as early
as Henry III.’s time. Dean Aldrich and Dr. Anthony Radcliffe are
answerable for the present structure, which contains seventy-two sets
of rooms and a canon’s lodgings. Dr. Radcliffe also gave a statue
“Mercury” to adorn the central fountain in the great quadrangle, which
had originally issued from a sphere, as seen in old prints. Long ago,
before the Reformation, there is said to have been a cross in the place
now occupied by the fountain, with a pulpit, from which Wycliffe may
have frequently preached. The base of this cross is preserved in the
gallery at the end of the S. Transept.
The common-room under the hall, was fitted up by Dr. Busby, whose bust
in marble long adorned it, but is now transferred to the library. This
bust is a work of merit, with a countenance unlikely to spare for
anybody’s crying. The room is panelled with oak, and contains a Nineveh
tablet presented by Hormuzd Rassam, Esq.
What is called the Old Library was once the Refectory of St.
Frideswide’s convent. A few books remain in charge of the Margaret
Professor. The large Library in Peckwater was begun in 1716, but not
finally completed till 1761. The original intention was to leave an
open piazza beneath it, but the space was required for its books and
collections, and its massive columns were accordingly connected by
a wall. Its gallery of pictures (or the bulk of the collection) was
the gift of Brigadier-General Guise in 1765, and of the Hon. W. F.
Fox-Strangeways in 1828.
Canterbury Gate was built by Wyatt in 1778; and we presume that the
laws of gravity and attraction will continue to apply to it as to
other objects, so that it may reasonably be expected to remain there
till it is taken away. QVOD BENE VORTAT, as the Bodleian motto, with
pantheistic piety, observes.
It only remains to say, that the present Meadow buildings occupy
the position of the Chaplains’ quadrangle and Fell’s buildings, or
“the garden staircase” of other days, up to 1863. Their gate-tower
is not admired; otherwise they are a solid and beautiful building in
quasi-Italian Gothic. Their quadrangle is bounded on the north by the
old library, on the south by the meadow, on the east by the Margaret
Professor’s garden, and on the west by the vast and venerable kitchen,
with its time-honoured gridiron, happily employed in culinary labours
only, and never (so far as we know) for purposes of persecution. The
kitchen was said to be the first-completed of all Wolsey’s buildings,
greatly to the amusement of the outer world of Oxford. This recognition
of the dependence of the spirit on the body was ingeniously defended by
the Rev. M. Creighton[260] in a well-remembered University sermon.
Christ Church has naturally had from the first its share of pageant and
festivity. Henry VIII. took his pastime therein in 1533 with grandeur
and jollity. There were public declamations of the whole University
here under Edward VI.; and plays were acted in the hall before Queen
Elizabeth in 1566 and 1592, and before James I. in 1605 and 1621; and
again before Charles I. in 1636. It is a question whether scenery and
stage-mechanism were used for the first time in England, says Anthony
à Wood, on this occasion, or as early as the festivity of 1605. All
are gone by this time who could remember the visit of the allied
sovereigns in 1814, and their entertainment in the Hall by the Prince
Regent, on whom the title of “the first gentleman in Europe” then sat
very gracefully. Old General Blücher, as best regarded of all foreign
soldiers present, had to acknowledge his honours in German, and the
Prince translated him with freedom and elegance, only omitting his own
praises.
Four years after Charles I.’s entertainment, were to develop the full
bitterness of evil days already begun. On August 18th, 1642, came the
first Cavalier muster; three hundred and fifty and more of “privileged”
University men and their servants, and also many scholars. They met at
the Schools and marched by High Street to Christ Church, “where in the
great quadrangle they were reasonably instructed in the word of command
and their postures;” and this mustering and drilling continued more or
less till the end of all things by surrender on St. John’s Day, 1646.
Some considerable part of the corps were bowmen volunteers (about 1200,
it is said further on), duly armed with “barbed arrows.” By that time,
out of the one hundred and one students of Christ Church twenty were
officers in the King’s army; the rest, almost to a man, were either
there, or formed part of the Oxford garrison. And so of commoners in
full proportion. All plate and available money were gone, and the House
as much damaged, not to say demoralized, as the rest of the University.
Lord Say had at first occupied Oxford with a Parliamentary force for a
few days, and carried away much plate from Christ Church, particularly
all Dr. Samuel Fell’s (the Dean’s). Iconoclasm began with his zealous
followers, not quite to his satisfaction, as it included a precious
statue of the King at New College. This was September 19th. On October
29th, just after Edgehill, the King occupied Oxford, keeping his Court
in Christ Church with Prince Charles as long as he remained.
Another ominous vespers in Christ Church Cathedral, besides Anthony
Dalaber’s, is on record. On Friday, February 3rd, 1643-4, his Majesty
appointed a thanksgiving to be made at Evening Prayer at Christ Church
for the taking of Cirencester by Prince Rupert the day before. The
doctors were in their red robes; and polished breast-plates and laced
buff-coats must have had a brilliant effect under the massive white
arches. “But there was no new Form of Thanksgiving said, save only that
Form for the victory of Edgehill, and a very solemn anthem, with this
several times repeated therein--‘Thou shalt set a Crown of pure gold
upon his Head, and upon his Head shall his Crown flourish.’”
The scarlet gowns appeared again to welcome the Queen at Tom Gate on
July 13th, 1644. There was a fair show of state in the way of trumpets,
heralds, and the like; and “Garter, coming last, was accompanied
by the Mayor of Oxon in his scarlet and mace on his shoulder.” But
Naseby field ended all pageant and hope alike in July 1645, just after
Fairfax’s siege of fifteen days on the Headington Hill side without
result. The next two years must have been a miserable time.
In April 1648, at the “visitation” by the Parliamentary Visitors, the
Dean of Christ Church (Dr. Samuel Fell) being in custody in London,
Mrs. Fell and her children, with certain ladies, elected to be carried
out of the Deanery rather than walk out, and were deposited in the
quadrangle in feminine protest against extrusion. Her husband’s name
was scored out of the Buttery-Book, with those of seven Canons, the
eighth (Dr. Robert Sanderson) being respited during absence; and Dr.
Edward Reynolds was substituted, with a new set of Canons. A clean
sweep was at the same time made of all “malignant” members, hardly any
taking the Parliamentary Oath or the Solemn League and Covenant. In
January 1647-8 the Latin version of the Common Prayer, and the Common
Prayer itself, ceased in Christ Church. It was maintained by three
Christ Church men--John Fell, Richard Allestree, and John Dolben--till
the Restoration, in a house in Merton Street, and seems to have escaped
interference.
A less dire debate than the Parliamentary War was the celebrated
controversy with Bentley on _The Epistles of Phalaris_ in 1695. It
deserves notice in a chapter on Christ Church.
The Hon. Charles Boyle, afterwards second Earl of Orrery, is wickedly
described by Bentley as “the young gentleman of great hopes, whose
name is set to the new edition” of _Phalaris_; and, as Boyle was but
nineteen years of age at the time of publication, it may be considered
certain that he received very material assistance from Dr. Atterbury,
Dr. Friend, and from the admired Dean Aldrich. Perhaps all four had a
very different idea of accurate criticism from that style of it which
Bentley initiated in England, and which now seems somewhat overpowered
by the burden of its research. The celebrated answer to Bentley’s
_Dissertation_, published under Boyle’s name in 1689, was really a
joint production of the leading Christ Church men, and Atterbury
claimed a principal share. Between them they made a good fight for it;
but it is difficult for any set of men, however learned, ingenious,
and petulantly witty, to maintain a long controversy at the stress of
being wholly wrong. Unquestionably it was premature in Aldrich to set
young noblemen in their teens to publish editions of writers believed
to have been contemporary with Pythagoras or thereabouts. Nevertheless
such critical work as they could do would probably teach them something
more than a dilettante knowledge of language: and this the Dean
evidently understood to be a chief want of his time. Boyle was no match
for Bentley; but he came to be an accomplished and gallant gentleman
who never through a stirring life forsook the love of learning, or of
his old abode of learning--perhaps rather, of literature. He could see
the vast shapes of the natural sciences advancing with new wonders;
and was the benefactor of George Graham, who named his great planetary
instrument after his title. His gifts to the Christ Church Library
should be commemorated; and he is one instance out of a great number of
men who have made Christ Church to themselves a home of friends, and so
from their Alma Mater forward have faced the world together.
Aldrich could not work miracles of discipline or reform the manners of
the Restoration. He has been blamed for allowing too much license to
pupils of high degree, and because he failed to correct the habits of
intemperance in which many of them had been educated. It may have been
so; and he must suffer with all tutors. The very name connotes a false
position, and a most difficult duty; to find means to persuade without
any power to control, and to reduce untamed lads to order who have
never seen it before. Military service was the only alternative method
in that day, where they regulated each other’s folly by the duello, or
at all events might be referred to the provost-marshal. But Aldrich
had to do what he could by the way of letters and culture; to try to
awaken the higher instincts, the better ambitions, and natural virtues;
since every religious restraint was scouted as Puritanism and every
devout aspiration as Popery. He had to contend with a most dissipated
and drunken age, whose coarse and direct temptations had already a hold
on his charge; nor is it easy to see how he could cure what St. John,
Pulteney, Carteret, and the rest had learned in evil homes and schools.
The morale of the aristocracy was still that of a beaten army; nor was
the public’s much better.
Aldrich’s many accomplishments have left varied traces behind them.
“The merry Christ Church Bells,” the celebrated catch, is a living
remembrance of him, happier than most men leave; Peckwater Quadrangle
would be stately and handsome enough, but for the leprous Headington
stone; he must have had the Themistoclean power of doing just what was
wanted at the time. But his achievement was after all the Oxford Logic.
Till twenty years ago, most tutors found that all its shortcomings led
straight to explanations. It was like the noble and kindly conservatism
of Mansel, to spend his great learning on the notes and prolegomena
which have developed the good old manual into a valuable treatise on
Logic and Psychology.
The name of Cyril Jackson marks a period of twenty-six years from
1783-1809, which may be compared to Aldrich’s best days with better
discipline. His life marks a restoration of order and efficiency in
Christ Church which has never been lost, and he chose to have no
other monument. He was wedded to his House, and it was enough for
one lifetime to make her love and obey him as he did. His statue and
picture give the idea of clearness, courage, and benevolence. The
straightforward face is unconsciously commanding, and seems made to
judge of a man. There is a dignity of presence; but Christ Church never
was yet governed by deportment only, and there must have been much
more than that about the great Dean who would be nothing more than
Dean. _Spartam nactus est, hanc exornabat_: and Jackson’s discipline,
if not Spartan, was perfectly real. He did not invent new rules; but
worked the old ones with a just and determined spirit, using “all the
advantages which a capacious mind, an enlarged knowledge of the world,
a spirit of command or guidance, and an unconquerable perseverance,
could confer.” I have heard old country gentlemen speak of Jackson,
still seeming to delight in him as a beloved person whom it was natural
to obey, and as a leader of men sure to lead right.
Jackson’s daily system of work has only of late been changed to suit
the needs of continual examinations. The terminal “Collections” or
Examinations from his time to the end of Dean Gaisford’s, were intended
to supply the want of general University Examinations before their
regular institution; and many have thought that the pass-work for a
Degree had better be done in College, since the College presents the
candidate. The weekly themes and Latin verses in the Hall are gone;
but the Bachelors’ prizes for Latin prose; the Undergraduates’ for
hexameters; the public lectures in logic, grammar, and mathematics; the
Censor’s annual address to the whole House, were in full force thirty
years ago.
One more curious tradition remains of his subtle influence--that
all the handwriting of the leading Christ Church Dons of the last
generation is imitated from their chief’s; with great difference of
character, but strong relation to his thoroughly-formed letters, to
the graceful unhurried hand that everybody can read easily. This has
been said of Dean Gaisford and many Censors of earlier days; Osborne
Gordon’s writing, though, has a freedom of its own.
Perhaps the chief secret of Cyril Jackson’s success was that he did his
work so much himself; and yet was always Dean. He would have order in
College; and he had a regular police to enforce it, and attended to it
himself. He entertained his undergraduates daily, seven or eight at a
time, all round. He lectured and taught personally in Greek, logic, and
composition, sometimes in mathematics. He tried to understand and make
the acquaintance of every youth in the House; and like St. Paul, he
was all desire to impart any excellent gift. When he felt his strength
failing in his work, he gave it up. He had refused bishoprics and an
archbishopric; he bade farewell to Christ Church and the world in love
unfeigned, and turned his spirit wholly to God whom he desired, and
so died full of years and honours; nor can we anywhere find a word
about him that is not in his praise. Dr. Parr, who professed a not
ill-natured hostility to “the Æde-Christians,” forgets it heartily and
with handsome language when he speaks of the Dean (see _Notes to Spital
Sermon_, published 1800)--“Long have I thought and often have I said
that the highest station in an ecclesiastical establishment would not
be more than an adequate recompense for the person who presides over
this College.” It is worthily said; but if the notes are as sonorous as
this, what must be the rumble of the text?
Dean Gaisford, as we have said, continued Jackson’s educational
method ably and faithfully; and his view that pass-work should be
done entirely in College, and Colleges be made responsible for it,
may well find advocates now. All men respected the stout old scholar,
and had in most things to own the shrewdness, and particularly the
justice, of his judgment. The piquancy of many anecdotes and sketches
of him has departed with the generation who honoured him as the first
Greek scholar of England in his time. He too felt his high position
sufficient, and had real happiness in efficient discharge of its
duties, which were thoroughly well suited to him; and he had perhaps a
better understanding of the nature and ways of his undergraduates than
many younger and less outwardly formidable seniors.
Two more great names, as of a father and son, so faithfully did the
younger reflect the mind and second the purposes of the elder, must
of right find mention here;--not due honour, since that would involve
the whole history of the Oxford Movement, both earlier and later.
It is hoped that the late Dr. Liddon’s Life of Dr. Pusey is so far
advanced, or its material is so well ordered and prepared, that it may
soon appear--as a monument to two great English Doctors. The elder
entered at Christ Church in 1819, and returned as Canon in 1828, after
having been Fellow of Oriel College; the younger matriculated at the
House in 1846. Dr. Barnes, then Sub-Dean, made Henry Parry Liddon
Student in 1846. From thenceforth Pusey had one near him like-minded:
not in the obsequious mimicry of imitation which has produced so many
pseudo-Newmans, but in true following of one Master, in intelligent
apprehension of and devotion to the principles of the Catholic Church
of England, and in self-denying holiness of life. Many friendships for
life date from Christ Church, but this has excelled them all: and these
two rest from their labours.
Some brief account of the latest buildings and restorations, on which
the fine taste of Dean Liddell has left its mark, seems desirable here.
The new buildings, before-mentioned (p. 309), are by Mr. Thomas Deane,
son of Sir T. N. Deane. They consist of six staircases, containing
forty-three sets of students’ chambers of three rooms each, and ten
chaplains’ or tutors’ rooms of four apartments and upwards. The front
towards the Meadow is partly masked by the trees of the old Broad
Walk (planted by Dean Fell in Feb. 1670) and the other avenue to the
river. The roof is continuous on the meadow front, but there are
gables towards the quadrangle. The roof-supports rest on corbels, and
the beam-ends are free. The whole is 331 feet long and 37 deep. The
stone walls are carried through to the roof between the staircases
and lined with brickwork. The style is a variety of Italian Gothic,
massively built, story upon story, with good pointed arches, but not
in any Northern or regularly “arcuated” style. But the ornament is all
beautiful flower-work, and by the artist-workmen whom Messrs. Woodward
and Dean gathered round them, whom Prof. Ruskin himself educated in the
then Working-Man’s College. In as far as that teaching has succeeded,
a share of the honour is due to Christ Church, through that son of
hers who has done her highest and most honour in the literature of the
century, and whose name will for ever be a call to all artists who love
honour and their work.[261]
A recent Oxford Almanac represents the Interior of the Cathedral as
it appeared in 1876, before the new woodwork of the Choir and the
Reredos. Both were needed, and both are beautiful in their way; but
the reredos has the fault or misfortune of the new one in St. Paul’s,
London--nothing can make it look like part of the structure. The rich
depth of tint and carven gloom are fine. Still the general effect of
the Cathedral, with its bright windows and warm stone-tints, is rather
one of lightness and pleasant colour, like pages of a Missal, as Ruskin
says of St. Mark’s. The new glass by Morris and Faulkner, after Burne
Jones, is decidedly beyond any praise we have room to give it here: the
great North Transept window glows with all the fires which a fervid
fancy can bestow on the inwards of the Dragon. Clayton and Bell’s
windows are beautiful in crimson and white; and all we can say of
Jonah’s dear old gourd is that we hope its shadow may now never be less.
There are some works of art of considerable interest in the Library,
amidst a number of no particular value. On the right of the door, the
Nativity of Titian was certainly a part of Charles I.’s collection,
and is probably an original, though it reminds one of Bonifazio. There
is a portrait of A. Vezale by Tintoret; and a small head attributed
to Holbein, of the greatest beauty. We cannot feel sure about the
John Bellini Madonna; but the Piero della Francesca Madonna with
Angels is beautiful and interesting. There are four very authentic
Mantegnas, one of which (No. 59, Christ bearing the Cross) certainly
belonged to Charles I. The possible Giorgione of Diana and her Nymphs
is worth attention; and there is a genuine-looking Veronese, with his
beautiful striped silk drapery, of the Marriage of St. Catherine. Two
good portraits and the unfinished man-at-arms by Vandyke, with the
admirable brush-work in white on the horse, are in the east room on the
other side of the great door, and complete our list of the more modern
pictures.
The more ancient Italian schools, from the semi-Byzantine Margheritone
to Taddeo Gaddi and the Giotteschi, are well represented at the western
end of the lower floor of the Library. Margheritone is said, in the
notes to Mrs. Browning’s _Casa Guidi Windows_, to have died of disgust
(“infastidito”) at the successes of the new, Italian or Cimabue,
school; and she remarks that
“Strong Cimabue bore up well
Against Giotto.”
It is most satisfactory to have original works by all these three.
The Margheritone is a thoroughly Byzantine saint, with a gold
background and an expression certainly best characterized by the word
“infastidito.” Next comes the Cimabue triptych: its central Madonna has
some resemblance to the Borgo Allegri picture on a small scale. The
Giottos show some such advance of art in his hands as Dante described.
There is an apparently genuine Filippo Lippi, which must be of no small
value.
The drawings are most beautiful. The small Lionardo head and the large
Madonna are unmistakable and beyond praise, and may be contrasted
with a singularly beautiful head which displays his taste for
“monsters,” and the portrait of Ludovico Sforza is excellent. There
are two drawings by Masaccio, and the Titian Landscapes are capital.
The visitor should not miss the red chalk head attributed to Gentile
Bellini, we suppose rightly: it is hard to say who else, except his
son, could have done it.
To give an account of the portraits in the Hall would set us adrift on
general history. Locke and the Marquis of Wellesley, the two Sir Joshua
bishops, Cyril Jackson looking forth at a world he knew the worth
of, Wolsey and Henry VIII.--founders, crowned heads, members of the
foundation--survey the College dinner like guests departed. They are
forgotten, or their remembrance is like his that tarrieth but a day.
_Note on the Date of the Cathedral._
Mr. J. Park Harrison has most kindly enabled me to give his conclusions
on the dates of the cathedral in his own words. Having inspected the
building with him, I entirely adhere to them. I think they are fully
borne out by the remains of the old building, and scarcely to be got
over when one has seen the joints and ornamentation inside, and the
foundations without.
1. “The commonly-assigned date of the cathedral, 1160-1180, is
absolutely incorrect.
2. “The late Norman work, attributed with much probability to Prior
Robert of Cricklade, is an addition to the old church restored by
Guimond in the earlier part of the twelfth century.
3. “There is no document, or anything tending to show that the original
fabric, as restored by Ethelred, was ever rebuilt on a new plan.
4. “Several of the choir capitals differ essentially in their
ornamentation from any others in the cathedral; but resemble very
closely the ornamental work in illuminated MSS. of Ethelred’s time.
They[262] should consequently belong to the church as enlarged by him
in 1004.