_CAMBRIDGE_
In the year 1830 I went to Trinity College, Cambridge, one of the finest
places for education. My dear brother Gurney was there at the time.
Goulburn followed a year afterwards. Canon Carus was in his years a
Fellow of Trinity, and my beloved friend Bishop Perry was there as a
tutor. I had many friends, and we were a happy party. I have outlived
almost all of them. I owe more than I can express to my College life. I
read hard, and I have often observed that hard-reading men look back upon
their College days with the greatest pleasure. I was surrounded by a set
of steady men, and, above all, I had the advantage of Mr. Simeon’s
ministry. There was something very wonderful about his preaching; it was
not eloquence, and he had none of the brilliance of Mr. Elliott. But it
was as clear as a noonday; his statements of truth were unmistakable. He
was raised up to preach at Cambridge the great Evangelical doctrines of
Scripture. And he taught them with a clearness, a distinctness, and a
courage such as could not well be surpassed. Many and many a time did I
return to my rooms after church, “sport” my door, and kneel down in
earnest prayer under the solemn conviction produced by his most spiritual
and awakening ministry. Thus the three years of my University life
passed rapidly by. I was very eager in boat-racing, and very keen at the
game of cricket, although I could not play much of it, as it took too
long a time. But I am thankful to say I had the ministry always in view;
and I remember well that on the morning I went into the Senate House for
my degree, I knelt down to pray for success, and I thought at the time
how much higher gifted I would be if the Lord would make me wise to win
souls.
University Letters.
Although the autobiography contains but a brief reference to his career
at Cambridge, it seems a pity to pass too hastily over this most
important time of a young man’s life. A great many of his letters to his
mother were written at this period, and, like his boyish letters, they
are all carefully stitched up into a series of sets, as if his parent
foresaw that one day they would be valued by others. They form
delightful reading, and it is unfortunate that want of space forbids more
than a summarising of their contents and a few extracts.
The first of these, written to his mother, October 22nd, 1830, two days
after he had taken up his residence at Trinity College, describes the
purchase of cap and gown, the first dinner in Hall, the rooms in which he
was settled, the prospects of College life, which he greatly relished,
and the determination to keep clear of “harum-scarum fellows.” A
characteristic sentence is worth quoting: “There is only one point I
really dislike, which is the profane manner in which the Lessons are
gabbled over at chapel, so that you can only hear a hurried mumble, and
not one word of the sense.”
Various incidents enliven the letters at this time: descriptions of his
friends, a very nice set; allusions to some “glorious sermons” of Mr.
Simeon, who was then the great power at Cambridge; his resolution to join
a boat; and the excitement caused “by an attack on the Anatomy Schools,
when the Vice-Chancellor sent round to the Colleges to call the men out
to fight, which summons we obeyed with great alacrity, though little
necessity.” Surely the last item must make Cambridge men of this
generation envy their predecessors of sixty years ago! On his nineteenth
birthday young Hoare thus writes to his mother:—
“I don’t know whether you recollect that I shall never again see
nineteen years. So I am now entering a new year—oh how earnestly I
do hope that, through His grace who alone can keep me, it may be a
year of profit and advancement in holiness! I have thought a good
deal about it, though not so much as I could wish. How many
blessings I have to be thankful for that I have received during the
past year, when sorrow and affliction have been scattered all around
me! How wonderfully all of us have been preserved in perfect health
and enjoyment!”
A few months after this, in a letter from Hampstead, he mentions walking
across the fields one Sunday morning to St. John’s and hearing a sermon
from Mr. Noel that greatly impressed him; the subject was “The necessity
and efficacy of diligence in religion.”
“He really seemed as if he had meant it for me, for I had been
thinking a great deal how far more diligently I pursued my
mathematics than my religion.”
Yet at this time he was teaching in a Sunday School every Sunday—rather a
rare thing for an undergraduate in those days.
Here occurs an allusion to one who was destined to occupy a warm share in
his affection during years to come:—
“I met the other day Perry, who was Senior Wrangler and fifth on the
Classical Tripos, and finding that he was going to take pupils I have
engaged him for next term, provided my father intends to be so
liberal as to let me have a tutor.”
For over sixty years the friendship was strong and deep, and after Bishop
Perry’s resignation of the See of Melbourne their intercourse was
frequent and loving up to the end. In the Lent Term of 1832 he writes:—
“I have been getting on this week tolerably in my reading, and
intolerably in my rowing, having been bumped by the Johnians on
Thursday for the first time in my life, and that too when we might
have got away with the greatest ease if all our crew had exerted
themselves.”
Half a century afterwards his curates were often exhorted to work
together with a will, and the exhortation was enforced by allusions to
the disasters experienced by a crew whose members were not absolutely one
in “go” and sympathy.
The following letter from his father has reference to College events at
this time:—
“LONDON, _March_ 19_th_, 1832.
“DEAR EDWARD,—A hasty opinion is not always worth having, but you may
safely take my advice and try the new boat, bump the first Trinity,
and wait for further orders. Let your mother’s letter compel you to
watch yourself, and if you find the effects of rowing at all
prejudicial give it up, but if you find your health and strength on
the wax go on, tempering your zeal with moderation, and I will do my
best to make peace at home—a work which I shall accomplish with more
ease and in less time than you will be at the head of the river. It
came across me that, after having vanquished all Cambridge, you might
wish to carry your victorious oars to Oxford!”
A fortnight after the last quoted letter from the young collegian, there
was another which recounted that, although his boat, of which he was
stroke, had gone down as low as fifth, yet on the last race-day it had
recovered its old place of second. Then follows a groan concerning the
difficulties that attended his post as captain over a discordant body of
twenty men: “The crew, when successful, get all the credit, and in the
time of misfortune make me their scapegoat.”
Fortunately he did not adhere to his original intention of resigning the
captaincy, and ultimately his boat attained the proud position of head of
the river. Edward Hoare’s success in rowing did not make him idle,
however: nothing could do that; into whatever he undertook he threw his
whole heart and soul, and the very next letter, a few weeks later, May
4th, 1832, begins thus:—
“Here I am a scholar of Trinity safe and sound, as the master calls
it ‘discipulus juratus et admissus,’ and not a little pleased am I at
the thought. But what pleases me most of all is that, so far from
being last of all, as our list declares, I have come in very high on
the list. I do not know exactly where I am, but, as you wish for all
the reports, I tell you one which I don’t quite believe, which is
that I was the second in both years. I beat all the third year, and
all my own except the great lion Stevenson, and I got within a
respectable distance of him, and Peacock says I have gained upon him
since the last examination, whereas I never expected to get within
miles of him. In fact I am altogether happier than I can express,
and really think that I never spent so joyful a night and day in all
my life.”
Referring to this success his father writes again:—
“HAMPSTEAD, _May_ 8_th_, 1832.
“MY DEAR EDWARD,—Of advice and congratulations you will partake
abundantly without an addition from me, but your mother wishes me to
write, what I have no doubt Sam has already written. What may be the
best course for you to pursue I have not made up my mind, but as you
are at Cambridge it is as well to remind you that a man may be happy
without mathematics, and that the glory of being Senior Wrangler
(supposing the possibility of such an event) may be purchased at too
high a price. I attribute the greatest proportion of your late
honours to solid understanding and reading, some part to good luck or
accident. Had you not then better see the result of the class
examination before you take the plunge? With the blessing of God you
will be rooted more deeply than ever now in all our hearts, and, what
is far beyond extending growth here, you attain that eminence which
is quite out of the sound of wrangling.
“I am most affectionately yours,
“S. HOARE.”
A few days later he receives the news of the sudden death of a relative,
Mr. Powell, {24} and various letters describe the effect that this event
had upon him. His sympathy was warmly expressed for all the mourners;
and then, as was natural to a thoughtful mind, the remembrance of the
shortness of life made itself felt. Strong and athletic as he was, he
too might be cut off suddenly: was he ready for the call?
But his recent success at the scholarship examination, and his future
hopes, seem to have had a strange light thrown upon them by this
bereavement, and he began to ask himself the question which some of us
have had to face in hours of success or failure—“What _are_ College
honours? Are they an end, or only a means?” He writes thus:—
“I never felt so strongly as I do now the utter worthlessness of the
objects at which I have been aiming with so much zeal. What does it
signify whether I am fourth, fifth, sixth, or anything else in this
examination, when at one stroke all one’s honour and all one’s
learning may be dashed from you? It has impressed me very strongly
with the feeling that to read because it is my duty and because it is
an admirable preparation for after-life is a glorious object, but to
read (as I must confess I have done) for a place and a place only,
and slur over higher things for it, is indeed vanity of vanities.”
The summer of 1832 was spent with a reading party in Wales. The start
was made from Highgate, where the coach “Wonder” took in its passengers
and conveyed them to Shrewsbury “with _wonder_ful rapidity,” the journey
commencing at 6.40 a.m. and the destination being reached at 10.30 p.m.,
or one hundred and fifty-six miles in nearly sixteen hours!
Thence sometimes on coach, sometimes on foot, they made their way to
Llangollen, Llanrwst, Conway, and Bangor. The beautiful suspension
bridge was an object of immense interest. The travellers went over to
the Anglesea side, and down into the chambers and passages of the rock
where the chains are fixed that uphold the structure; the letter
recounting this visit contains diagrams descriptive of it all, showing
the fascination that it exerted on the mind of the writer. Various
accounts of the magnificent scenery fill pages in these interesting
letters, and also allusions to the kindly way in which Welsh tracts were
taken by the people, and the excited gratitude which the gift sometimes
caused. At last Barmouth, the “ultima Thule” of their wanderings, was
reached, lodgings were taken, and the party set steadily to work.
They were fortunate in the parish clergyman, whose name was Pugh, and
young Hoare’s letters often speak with gratitude of the guidance from
above which led them into the parish of this excellent man. Michaelmas
Term found them back at Cambridge, and now his younger brother Joseph
{26} joined the party, and Edward’s feelings with regard to his duties
towards him are expressed in a letter to his mother, of which nearly the
whole is taken up with a loving interest in his brother’s plans and
prospects. He writes:—
“I most earnestly hope that I may be able to assist him, and, what is
far more, that he may have that far better assistance which can alone
be all-sufficient. . . . I have had a most happy vacation, and
cannot say how I have valued it. I only trust that I may be able to
repay a hundredth part of your and my father’s kindness to me by
fraternal affection towards Joe. My motto with regard to him is—
“‘Men must be taught as if you taught them not,
And things unknown proposed as things forgot.’”
During the month of September, in the year before this, his elder brother
Samuel was married to Miss Catherine Hankinson. {27} There was a warm
attachment between the brothers. Edward often writes in terms of great
admiration of “Sam,” and now the new sister was received with equal
affection into his heart. It was a feeling which grew and strengthened
to the last day of his life, and was returned by her, being specially
manifested in the tender care which she bestowed upon his motherless
children more than thirty years afterwards. This, however, is
anticipating, and it is suggested only by a letter from Cambridge dated
November 9th, 1832, full of delight—
“at the joyful news of the week. I am highly proud of my new
avuncular honours. I begin to feel quite a strong affection to my
new niece, which I never expected to do, at all events till I had
seen her!”
The same letter writes thankfully about the interest which he had been
able to arouse in the University in connection with the British and
Foreign Bible Society.
There had been one collector in Cambridge previously, but young Hoare set
to work and had the gratification of sending in more than a hundred
guineas, fifty of which came from Trinity. He says, “I only hope that
this success will encourage us to work hard during the next year.” His
interest in the Society never waned, and it did well many years
afterwards in making him one of its Vice-Presidents.
We have an insight into a College Sunday in one of his letters at this
time:—
“We have had a delightful Sunday, and a most edifying sermon on the
Conversion of St. Paul. After Hall I had a large party in my rooms,
and we read one of Blunt’s Lectures on St. Paul. Our party after
Hall has become rather a burden to me, it has grown so very large, as
I have invited any persons who I thought would come and employ their
time better than elsewhere; and now I feel that it is an opportunity
which ought to be employed to good purpose, and I don’t know exactly
how to go to work to do so.”
In a letter written early in 1833 he refers to all the dignities of the
third year upon his head, and his desire to use them aright; it will
probably be the opinion of any who read the extracts above quoted that
the young collegian rose nobly to the ideal which he had set before him.
There are those now living who can testify to the rich harvest of good
which sprang up in his generation from the seed of manly Christian
influence so freely scattered round him in those undergraduate days. Yet
a crisis in his life was approaching, which we must leave to the next
chapter to describe.