Midlent Sunday it was customary for the Vice-Chancellor to drive in
state and preach in the church at Burwell and be accompanied by one
or more of the Esquire Bedels. After the sermon they all dined at a
farmer’s house and so enjoyed the ale and port wine that they did not
go and hear the vicar at afternoon service. “What sort of preacher is
Mr. Turner?” asked the Vice-Chancellor. “For my own part,” replied the
tenant, “I would not go over the threshold to hear him preach.” “If
that be your opinion, who have had frequent opportunities of hearing
him, I am of that opinion too; and we will remain and have a few more
glasses of your fine old port.” Needless to remark, the clergyman was
furious at the having been thus neglected. On the way back to Cambridge
a Mr. Hole, who was acting as a deputy Bedel, attacked Mr. Beverley,
who had a good deal of wit, and gave him more than he got. Then the
Vice-Chancellor tried to defend Mr. Hole, and he too got more than he
bargained for. So he stopped the carriage and told Beverley to go and
sit on the box. The Bedel refused, and told the other two that they had
better get out and walk home. “They declined to follow this advice,”
and “it was not long before perfect quiet reigned among them, and the
university Marshal who acted as Vice-Chancellor’s servant imagined (and
it was not a _very improbable_ conclusion) that they had been overtaken
by the drowsy god.”
A more reputable but still very striking character was Dr. Milner, the
President of Queen’s College. His portrait is one I often study when
I dine there. A portly man in his red gown and doctor’s wig, he sits
grasping the arms of his chair, looking very strong and masterful.
In politics a strong Tory, attached by religious sympathy to the
evangelical party, editor of the “Church History” of his brother, from
his force of character and his mathematical ability Milner was long
the ruler of the University. Caring nothing for public opinion, he
would have his own way; and he is reported to have once exclaimed, when
settling a man’s place in an examination and the man’s tutor exclaimed,
“Surely you do not say that A is better than B?” “I never said he was
the better man; I said he should stand above him.” It was the custom
for the moderators who conducted the Tripos and made out the lists
to submit any doubtful cases to some great mathematician, who held a
_viva voce_ examination; and, as Milner’s undoubted ability made his
judgment of great value, he was often called to do this. Except where
men of his own college or Magdalene, a great centre of evangelicalism,
were concerned, his judgment was excellent; but Gunning considers that
he was quite unscrupulous when his partiality or interest led him to
decide a point. Milner, though an ardent pietist and a valetudinarian,
was somewhat notorious for the joviality of his supper parties, at
which the bowl circulated freely and the fun was fast and furious. His
powerful personality dominated the University, as may be seen from the
fact that he did his best to stop the reform of Trinity College. In his
account of this Mr. Gunning draws a striking picture of the Seniority
of the college in the closing years of the eighteenth century. By its
statutes Trinity was practically governed by the Master and the ten
Senior Fellows, the latter men who had lived for years in the college
without generally doing any work, being content with holding their
fellowship and living in celibate idleness. Their power was great;
and, as it may well be supposed, they were not as a rule qualified to
exercise it, especially when they claimed a right to select the fellows
themselves without regard to the reports of the examiners. The tutors
fought a hard battle to remove this abuse and were taunted by Milner
and the Tory party with being Jacobites and supporters of the French
Revolution. The matter was decided in the courts, and the tutors won,
with the result that a fellowship at Trinity became, in Macaulay’s
words, a veritable “patent of nobility.”
I abbreviate Gunning’s description of the Seniority partly from a sense
of propriety.
The Rev. Stephen Whiston, B.D., was, says our author, “I believe a very
respectable man.”
The Rev. Samuel Backhouse, B.D., kept a girls’ school at a village
called Balsham.
“Was it profit that he sought?
No; he paid them to be taught.
Had he honour for his aim?
No; he _blushed to find it fame_.”
The Rev. Samuel Peck, B.D., must have been rather a nice old man. He
was a great authority on village law and helped the country people
gratis, saying, “Sam Peck never takes a fee, but he loves gratitude,”
and the farmers paid him in presents of the produce of their land. He
played a very clever trick upon Gunning’s old tutor Seale by persuading
him to share the expenses of treating two ladies on a journey from
London to Cambridge, who turned out to be his own cook and waitress![23]
The Rev. Thomas Wilson, B.D., had to have his garden key taken away
because he was rude to the Master’s wife one dark evening when she was
returning from a party.
The Rev. John Higgs, B.D., and the Rev. Thomas Spencer, B.D., were
unknown to Gunning. Mr. Spencer was mad, and only came to Cambridge
when his vote was wanted. The Rev. William Collier, B.D., was a
well-known gourmand. He is recorded to have eaten three-quarters of a
sucking pig and to have left the rest because he was engaged to dine
immediately after. He was a Hebrew scholar, a good classic, and a
modern linguist. The Rev. James Lambert was an excellent sportsman and
was supposed to be unorthodox. “Lambert was never addicted to those
vices for which at that time the Seniors of Trinity were so notorious,
but when in college attended closely to literary pursuits.” He was
Professor of Greek.
Observe, except Lambert all were B.D.’s. Here is an epitaph:
“Here lies a Fellow of Trinity.
He was a Doctor of Divinity.
He knew as much about Divinity
As other Fellows do of Trinity.”
My last character shall be Dr. Farmer, Master of Emmanuel, a most
amiable and delightful man. We make his acquaintance as curate of the
parish of Swavesey, a village with a most beautiful church, then a
place much larger and more prosperous than it is at present. Almost all
the parishes around Cambridge were served by fellows of the colleges,
who went over on Sunday to take the prayers, and they were rarely
visited on any other day by a clergyman. Sunday was a great day in
the colleges, as these clergymen met after its labours, and ate most
jovial suppers. Farmer was regarded as a model of punctiliousness in
the performance of his duties, as he made a point of never missing a
Sunday at Swavesey and of dining after service at the inn, to which
meal he usually invited one or more of the farmers. He then rode
back to Cambridge, slept an hour or so, and appeared in the Emmanuel
“parlour,” where he was the delight of the whole party. People used
to come for the week end from London for the pleasure of hearing
Farmer’s conversation; and Mr. Pitt was much attached to him. He was
fond of rushing up to London to dine; and one Ash Wednesday morning
he announced to his Vice-Chancellor that he had to make haste to get
to the University church in time, for at “three o’clock this morning
I was blowing my pipe with the worshipful company of pewterers.” Dr.
Farmer became Master of Emmanuel; and Gunning suggests that he might
have become Head of Trinity for the asking; but when Mr. Pitt sought
his advice as to whom he should choose, he simply replied, “If you want
to oblige the society, appoint Postelthwaite.” He was a great admirer
of Shakespeare, and never missed a performance when a play of his was
acted.
But we must leave these quaint personages for a more general view of
the life of the University. It had its splendid as well as its sordid
side. Dress, as I have already hinted, played a great part in the
pageant of the old place. Here is Gunning’s description of the fêtes
at Commencement at the end of the summer term:
“On Commencement Sunday, the college walks were crowded. Every doctor
of the University wore his scarlet robes during the whole day. Every
nobleman wore his splendid robes, not only in St. Mary’s and in the
college halls, but also in the public walks. Their robes (which are now
uniformly purple) were at that time of various colours according to the
taste of the wearers; purple, white, green, and rose colour were to be
seen at the same time.”
There was also a good deal of ceremonial at other times; and the
barbaric was occasionally mingled with the magnificent, as, for
example, at the opening of Stourbridge Fair. This Fair, now a poor
and insignificant gathering, was once the most famous in England and
had ranked among the great fairs of Europe. In Gunning’s early days
much of its splendour remained. At its opening the Vice-Chancellor
with his Bedels and Commissary, the Registrary, the Proctors, and
the Taxors, met in the Senate House at eleven, where everybody drank
sherry and ate cakes. After this all drove to the Common, and the
Vice-Chancellor proclaimed the Fair to be open, the Yeomen Bedels on
horseback repeating his words at different parts of the assembly. Then
followed a devouring of oysters in what was known as the Tiled Booth,
after which the University magnates strolled about the Fair till dinner
was ready. It was no easy task to get into the dining-room, because
the people outside would not budge to allow the procession to pass,
the University being very unpopular because they supplied the mugs in
which the beer was sold and these held notoriously short measure. This
was the only effort in the direction of temperance we meet with at this
period, and that was dishonest. The dinner consisted of boiled pork,
herrings, goose, apple-pie, and beef. The wine was bad, but everyone
enjoyed himself, despite the heat and discomfort of the Tiled Booth. At
half-past six they all went to the theatre. How they got home is not
recorded!
Of intellectual pursuits Gunning has little to record. The disputations
for degrees continued from the Middle Ages, in which he took part
frequently as disputant and, knowing the rules of logic, he was often
able to overthrow men of admittedly more learning than himself. There
were good scholars and learned men at Cambridge; but we hear more
of their schemes, their quarrels, and their amours than of their
achievements in the schools.
Porson, the most famous Grecian since Bentley, is hardly if ever
mentioned!
It is a strange record of the days of old, and the Cambridge therein
described seems to have been in another world than this. Yet some of
us were alive when Henry Gunning died, and I can myself remember
characters almost as strange as he depicts. But in all the book there
is no one so strange as the writer himself. In it we have the record,
not of a diarist, but of an old, old man in his last illness, a man by
his own account not devoid of piety or good feeling, yet recollecting
every slight, every injury, he had sustained nearly sixty years before,
the dislikes of his youth for men long gone to their account being as
green and vigorous as they were when he first formed them. One cannot
even like him, but nevertheless it is impossible to deny that he can
not only amuse but instruct, and that much would have been forgotten
but for his dictated notes about the Cambridge of his youth.
It was a nobler University before that age, and it has risen perhaps
even to greater heights since. Gunning saw the University of Beverley
and the Seniors of Trinity shine once more as the University of Whewell
and Macaulay, of Darwin, Tennyson, and scores of great and good
men.[24]
That the improvement in days to come may equal if not surpass that
which Gunning witnessed is the prayer of him who has made the
“Reminiscences” the subject of this lecture.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] He means that Cambridge was, and always had been, Liberal and
Protestant.
[19] A series of letters by Gunning’s devoted nurse, Miss Mary Beart,
was published in the _Cambridge Review_ by Mr. A. T. Bartholomew, of
the University Library, and has been reprinted. His “Reminiscences”
were not received with favor by the authorities: only one Head of
a house, Dr. Benedict Chapman, Master of Caius, appears among the
subscribers.
[20] The practice of sizars waiting in Hall on the fellows seems to
have been discontinued at an early date. Dr. Bass Mullinger alludes to
complaints made in the seventeenth century that servants were taking
the place of poor scholars. To Dr. T. G. Bonney of St. John’s I owe
many valuable hints on this and other subjects of a kindred nature.
His “A Septuagenarian’s Recollections of St. John’s,” printed in the
_Eagle_, the College Magazine, June, 1909, was most useful to me.
[21] The colleges were everything, the University a mere degree-giving
Corporation, says the late Mr. J. W. Clark in his “Memories and
Customs” (1820-1860), reprinted from the _Cambridge Review_, 1909.
[22] Gordon is introduced by Lord Lytton in one of his novels--I think
“Pelham.”
[23] A caricature of Mr. Peck is preserved in the combination room,
Trinity College. He is riding a pony laden with farm produce.
[24] In justice to Gunning it ought to be said that men like Adam
Sedgewick, the great geologist, regarded him with affection, and during
his long illness the lady who attended him as nurse was devoted to
him; and her record of the patience with which the old man bore his
sufferings referred to above, deserves to be read by those who would
form a fair estimate of his character. But whilst not denying my author
all good qualities, I maintain that he not only depicts but represents
an age singular for its coarseness of feeling and absence of ideals;
though, to do him justice, he shewed himself a consistent opponent of
the evils of his time in Cambridge.
LECTURE V
CREEVEY PAPERS--THE REGENCY
It is time we entered better society than we have been in for the
last few lectures. Of course much depends on the meaning of the word
“better.” I do not think we need attach any moral significance to it.
Let me at once admit that by better, I mean more select, or, perhaps,
“exclusive” is the right term. For most people in the time of which
I am about to treat it was necessary to be born to good society in
order to obtain an entrance to it. Yet there were exceptions. Whilst
there were men like Brougham whose genius compelled recognition,
though they were made to feel that they neither were nor could be
members of the inner circle; there were others, without even his social
qualifications, who took their place therein and made themselves felt
and even feared by the highest in the land. Such a man was the author
of the papers from which I shall borrow so much to-day; nor can we
forget that the rival in _ton_ to the Prince Regent himself, the first
gentleman in Europe, was Brummell, the tradesman’s son.
The subject of my remarks to-day will be at first mainly political, not
that I have any desire to raise controversial questions; but one is
bound to do so, when speaking of English life during the great war with
Napoleon, which bears so striking an analogy to the present. There is a
marked tendency to-day to say that the conduct of our statesmen and of
society in general contrasts unfavourably with that of men of a century
ago; and I think I shall be able to prove conclusively that, under very
different conditions the passions of men are much the same as formerly,
and that, if the advantage is on either side, it is with the present
rather than with the past.
I feel I have set myself a very difficult task in attempting to define
a Whig in the later years of George III.
The strength of the party was the new aristocracy created by Henry VIII
with the spoils of the monasteries, of which the Cavendishs, Russells,
and other houses were the leaders.[25] They were naturally strongly
Protestant: and their immense power dates from the Revolution in
1688. Their rivals, the Tories, were in opposition till the accession
of George III; and, as their sympathies were all on the side of the
exiled Roman Catholic Stuarts, they had little or no influence. When,
however, George III, a prince born in England, ascended the throne,
the Tories, who bore him no grudge for his treatment of the exiled
royal family, rallied to the young monarch, who was resolved not
to submit, as his grandfather had done, to the tyranny of the Whig
oligarchy. Henceforward the Tories were on the side of the Crown,
whilst their opponents resisted its encroachments. The revolt of the
American colonies, provoked by Mr. Grenville’s Stamp Act, made the
Whigs oppose the King, who was determined to coerce his disaffected
subjects. When the French Revolution broke out, this party sympathised
with the republicans; and were opposed to the war which began in 1792.
Their following consisted of the dissenters and intellectuals: the
former drawing their strength from the commercial classes, and the
latter consisting of young men, enamoured with the cult of reason and
extremely susceptible to new ideas. The bulk of the nation, however,
the Church, the country gentry, the farmers, profiting by war prices,
and even the lower orders, was Tory. The non-aristocratic members of
the Whig party were often great sufferers. They were exposed to mob
violence, as in the case of Dr. Priestley, to social ostracism, and
to vindictive prosecutions by the government. But the great houses
maintained their position and were too strongly entrenched in it to be
seriously disturbed.
Thus we have the spectacle of liberal ideas being championed by a
coterie of great families, haughty, withdrawn from common folk, and
so exclusive that it was almost impossible to gain admission to their
circle. Hereditary exercise of power extending over fully a century
made them skilled politicians; and when they recruited talent from
the middle classes, the Whigs made their allies feel their dependence
upon the ruling caste. Neither the philosophy of Edmund Burke in one
generation, nor the versatility of Henry Brougham in another, prevented
either from the sense of being in a state of dependence on their
patrons.
One man, however, without the advantages of birth or wealth, enjoyed
the privilege of moving freely in this charmed circle, in the person
of Mr. Creevey, whose memoirs only appeared in 1903. His editor, Sir
Herbert Maxwell, describes his abilities as hardly of the second
order, but I must confess that, considering the position he occupied
in the party, I cannot share his opinion. Married to a Mrs. Orde and
apparently living on his wife’s moderate fortune, sitting for Thetford,
a close borough of the Duke of Norfolk’s, and after his wife’s death
subsisting on an income of £200 ($1000) a year, he never stooped to
flatter, gave his advice without fear or favour, and, when the Duke
put him out of his seat in the House of Commons, wrote the head of the
English peerage a letter which shewed that he looked on his patron as
an equal who had treated him very shabbily. From the Duke’s reply to
“My dear Creevey” it is easy to see that his Grace recognised that he
had offended, not a humble dependant, but a man of great political and
social influence.
I am now going to select a few passages dating from the rupture of
the Peace of Amiens in 1803 and onwards, shewing how England was rent
by faction, even in the most perilous days of the war with Napoleon.
Remember that often the country was fighting alone against perhaps the
greatest genius the world has ever seen, and that her position at times
appeared to be almost hopeless.
In 1804, when Buonaparte’s camp was established at Boulogne ready for
the invasion of England, party feeling ran extraordinarily high. Pitt
was becoming impatient of the incompetence of his friend Addington;
and, as a party manœuvre, he moved for an inquiry into the conduct
of Admiral Lord St. Vincent and was supported by Fox. Creevey writes
that he is convinced that the accused is innocent; but still he felt
bound to vote with Fox. “I am,” he says, “more passionately attached
every day to party. I am certain that without it nothing can be done.”
A month later the King’s madness was coming on, and Creevey hopes
that this attack will make an end of him as a ruler. “I hope that
the Monarch is done and can no longer make ministers.” Later on, the
prospect of disaffection in Ireland fills Creevey with hopes that
Pitt’s position may become impossible; he says, “The country engaged
in a new war unnecessarily undertaken and ungraciously entered upon,
the Catholics discontented, and the Opposition unbroken. If such a
combination of circumstances does not shake the Treasury bench, what
can?” The next year, 1805 (Trafalgar), brings to Mr. Creevey and his
friends the hope that Mr. Pitt may be exposed for lending Government
money to a firm which had recently gone bankrupt. In 1808, when Sir
Arthur Wellesley began his work in the Peninsula, the convention
of Cintra made him most unpopular; and the nation was, says Sir
Herbert Maxwell, “almost unanimous in demanding his degradation if
not his death.” Mr. Whitbred writes to Mr. Creevey, “I grieve for the
opportunity which has been lost of acquiring national glory, but I
am not sorry to see the Wellesley pride a little lowered.” The next
year witnessed the lamentable failure of the Walcheren Expedition,
and Wellesley’s victory of Talavera. Captain Graham Moore, brother
to Sir John Moore, writes to Creevey: “The Cannings are in a damned
dilemma with this expedition and the victory of Talavera. They mean,
I understand, to saddle poor Lord Chatham with the first, but who can
they saddle the victory with? They cannot attack the Wellesleys as they
did my poor brother. What a cursed set you (politicians) are.” The
passage of the Douro by Wellesley led to Mr. Whitbred addressing the
General in most complimentary terms; but the war occupied people’s
thoughts but little, the main interest being centred in the exposure
of the scandalous sale of commissions in the army by Mrs. Clarke, a
friend of the Duke of York’s. Two years later, in 1811, Creevey takes
encouragement from the number of sick in the army of Portugal and hopes
it may bring about peace, and when the war in Spain was nearing its
victorious conclusion a friend writes to him, abusing Wellington.
These remarks are indeed the mild utterances of leaders of a party
more interested in disparaging their political opponents than in the
progress of the war. When we turn to the extreme wing of the party we
find Napoleon a hero and his defeat a calamity:
“But even with such mighty odds against him the towering and gigantic
genius of Napoleon would have defied them all, if English money
had not bribed some of his generals. It was this, and this only,
that completed his downfall. To talk of the Duke of Wellington as
the conqueror of Napoleon is an insult to the understanding of any
intelligent man; and for Lord Castlereagh to have boasted of having
subdued him as his lordship was wont to do, was pitiful, was wondrous
pitiful.” So wrote Lady Ann Hamilton; in the same strain also at an
earlier period spoke Mr. Fox of the virtues of his country’s greatest
and most determined enemy. It is thus that history repeats itself in
the wars my country has waged in her long history.
I now pass to a character very different from Creevey’s, to the man who
ruled the fashionable world with an authority even more undisputed than
that of the Prince of Wales, Beau Brummell, the prince of the dandies.
The Beau had no advantages of birth and only a moderate fortune. It
is often the custom to regard him as a mere coxcomb, the outcome of a
frivolous society fitted only to point a moral and adorn a tale. I
venture to take a more charitable view of him and to give my opinion
that he owed his ascendancy to something more than extravagance of
dress and unbounded impudence.