THE TRAINING OF YOUNG ENGLAND
All the world and his wife seem to be agreed that there is something in the
English system of education which can work miracles. Boys from all over the
world come to England, to school and university, to be trained. And
further, the English tutor and the English governess are to be found
sprinkled over the globe, teaching some of the young of all nations. There
is a recent fashion for German training, "because it is so thorough," and
the English system of training (which can certainly fail in a very large
proportion of cases to show creditable results when tested by examination
paper) comes in for some merciless criticism in its own home country.
Nevertheless, it still holds its reputation as the best of systems to make
"character."
What exactly character signifies in this connection it would be hard to
define in a phrase. But it is that something which makes the young pink
English boy fresh from home step, as if by nature born to the job, into the
work of administering things, governing inferiors amiably, obeying
superiors cheerfully, and keeping up a high tradition of fair play and
tolerance. It is that something which made a cute American, after planning
out, in theory, the administrative staff of a gigantic enterprise, with
experts of all nations in this and that department, to add, "Then I would
have an Englishman to run the whole lot of them."
It is an education which trains the character and exercises the mind rather
than one which informs--the typical English education. It can turn out, and
does turn out, shoals of careless youngsters who know little or nothing of
science, mathematics, philosophy, of "the humanities" even, but who give
always the impression of having been "well brought up," who have a wise way
of doing practical things, and who somehow or other manage to play no mean
part in the governance of the world. Observing them, many a foreign parent
resolves that his children shall be trained in the same way. But often he
is disappointed. The system is English, and it suits the English mind. Not
always is it successful with the foreigner.
All over England are spread the institutions--preparatory schools, public
schools, and universities--which are given over to the making of character,
and incidentally to the teaching of a few facts. In the ordinary course a
boy goes to a preparatory school with a career already mapped out for him,
the Navy, the Army, or the Church, or one of the learned professions. If he
is destined for the Navy he has to specialise at a very early age; if for
the Army, he betakes himself to a military college at a later time; if for
the Church or the Bar, or the public service, he passes through the full
course of preparatory school, public school, and university.
A great educational institution in England will be found, almost
invariably, built in a valley or on a marsh. Perhaps this sort of low
living is thought to be conducive to high thinking. A more likely
explanation is that most of the great educational institutions are ancient,
and in the time of their building any great concourse of people had to
settle close to the banks of a stream. The situation of the schools and
universities has had its influence on the course of English education.
Oxford and Cambridge, brooding in their low basins, alternately chill and
steamy, are ideal places to dream in, and much more suitable for the
encouragement of ethical arguments than of the inclination to "hustle."
What will happen to the English character when a university comes to be
founded on top of a Yorkshire hill I refuse to speculate; the prospect is
too remote. But there are indications of the possible course of events in
the results of the Scottish universities.
The various schools and universities of England contribute largely to its
list of historic and beautiful buildings. The first great educational
centre was York. In Roman times York was a fine city. With the coming of
the Saxons it reasserted its importance, and became the chief collegiate
town of the kingdom. In the seventh and eighth centuries the chief of
England's learned men hailed from Northumbria. It was in 657 A.D. that the
School of York was founded by Caedmon, first of English poets, and with the
York of the early days are linked the names of the venerable Bede, "father
of English learning," John of Beverley, and Wilfrid of York; also of
Alcuin, a great doctor of theology, who was one of the first to hold that
"chair" at Cambridge. But York suffered many vicissitudes. Wars interfered
with the pursuits of the scholars. At the dawn of the twelfth century Henry
I. endeavoured to restore the prosperity of the city and its colleges, with
some success.
Meanwhile to the south-east, among the marshes and fens of East Anglia,
scholarship had found a fitting place to dream and study. Great monastic
houses at Ely and Peterborough--some of the most important in England--were
the forerunners of Cambridge University. The earliest community at
Cambridge was founded by Dame Hugolina in 1092, in gratitude for her
recovery from a serious sickness. Cambridge has never forgotten that
feminine foundation, and whilst Oxford was cold to the higher education of
women movement, the other university gave the girl graduate a welcome, and
pupils of two great Cambridge colleges, the "Girton Girl" and the "Newnham
Girl," carried Cambridge culture wherever the English tongue was spoken.
Dame Hugolina's little foundation of six canons soon extended, until the
house held thirty. In 1135 another canons' house was established, which
served not only as a retreat for scholars, but as a hospital and
travellers' hospice. The third foundation came in the next century, and now
Cambridge University began to take definite shape. A church of the
Franciscan Friars was used first for university purposes. The older and
more learned friars were the professors, the novices and younger friars the
undergraduates. Later, the Franciscans were succeeded by the Dominicans,
and still later by the Austin Friars in the control of the nascent
University. Then there began a movement to make the University independent
of any monastic order, and during the fourteenth century the contest was as
bitter as one could wish for. Early in the fifteenth century the University
had won ground to the extent that it could act in defiance of the Bishop of
Ely, and could, moreover, secure a Papal Bull in its favour.
[Illustration: THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS, ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE]
Simultaneously with this movement of the University towards independence of
the monks, there had been the inevitable contests of all university towns
between "gown's-men" and "town's-men." Cambridge had never been a city of
any great commercial importance. But it had its "unlearned population"
engaged in connection with the fisheries, farming, and the pastoral
industry. Near by, the great Stourbridge Fair--one of the most important in
England--brought every year a great concourse of people with little
sympathy to spare for the University students, who, in turn, despised them
(or affected to) right heartily, though probably among the younger students
there was a lurking sympathy for the jollity of the fairs, a good
impression of which one may get from a quaint old ballad of 1762:--
While gentlefolks strut in their silver and sattins,
We poor folks are tramping in straw hats and pattens;
Yet as merrily old English ballads can sing-o,
As they at their opperores outlandish ling-o;
Calling out, bravo, ankcoro, and caro,
Tho'f I will sing nothing but Bartlemew fair-o.
Here was, first of all, crowds against other crowds driving,
Like wind and tide meeting, each contrary striving;
Shrill fiddling, sharp fighting, and shouting and shrieking,
Fifes, trumpets, drums, bagpipes, and barrow girls squeaking,
Come my rare round and sound, here's choice of fine ware-o,
Though all was not sound sold at Bartlemew fair-o.
There was drolls, hornpipe dancing, and showing of postures,
With frying black-puddings; and op'ning of oysters;
With salt-boxes solos, and gallery folks squalling;
The tap-house guests roaring, and mouth-pieces bawling,
Pimps, pawn-brokers, strollers, fat landladies, sailors,
Bawds, bailiffs, jilts, jockies, thieves, tumblers, and taylors.
Here's Punch's whole play of the gun-powder plot, Sir,
With beasts all alive, and pease-porridge all hot, Sir;
Fine sausages fry'd, and the black on the wire,
The whole court of France, and nice pig at the fire.
Here's the up-and-downs; who'll take a seat in the chair-o?
Tho' there's more ups-and-downs than at Bartlemew fair-o.
Here's Whittington's cat, and the tall dromedary,
The chaise without horses, and queen of Hungary;
Here's the merry-go-rounds, come, who rides, come, who rides, Sir?
Wine, beer, ale, and cakes, fine eating besides, Sir;
The fam'd learned dog that can tell all his letters,
And some men, as scholars, are not much his betters.
This world's a wide fair, where we ramble 'mong gay things;
Our passions, like children, are tempted by play-things;
By sound and by show, by trash and by trumpery,
The fal-lals of fashion and Frenchify'd frumpery.
What is life but a droll, rather wretched than rare-o?
And thus ends the ballad of Bartlemew fair-o.
It is on record that Edward I. in 1254 (whilst still Prince of Wales)
visited the town of Cambridge, and acted as arbitrator in quarrels between
the townsmen and the students. He decided that thirteen scholars and
thirteen burgesses of the town should be chosen to represent both interests
on a Board of Control. His son, Edward II., continued his father's
interest in Cambridge, and maintained, at his own expense, a group of
scholars there. In 1257 Hugh de Balsham, the tenth bishop of the diocese,
placed and endowed at St. John's Hospital a group of secular students known
as "Ely students." At this time also Walter de Merton, Chancellor of
England, assigned his manor of Malden, Surrey, as endowment for "poor
scholars in the schools of Cambridge, who were to live according to his
directions." In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in this as at other
universities, scholars lived each at his own charge. Sometimes three or
four clubbed together, but each had his own "founder and benefactor." Some
scholars elected their own principal, and paid a fixed rate for board and
lodging, and this hostel system developed into the collegiate system which
distinguishes English universities from all others. Now Cambridge has
seventeen of these colleges.
Among the architectural features of special interest at Cambridge is a
chapel built by Matthew Wren, the uncle of Sir Christopher Wren. It is a
fine specimen of seventeenth-century work. The various college buildings
date from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. The dates are:
Michaelhouse 1324, Clare 1338, Peterhouse 1284, King's Hall 1337, Pembroke
1347, Gonville Hall 1348, Trinity Hall 1356, Corpus Christi 1382, King's
College 1441, Queens' 1448, St. Catharine's 1473, Jesus 1495, Christ's
1505, St. John's 1509, Magdalene 1542, Trinity 1546, Caius 1557, Emmanuel
1584, Sidney Sussex 1595. Modern colleges are Downing College, Girton
College, and Newnham College. Girton College occupies Girton Manor on the
Huntingdon Road, an eleventh-century house built by Picot the Norman
Sheriff of Cambridge. Earlier it had been the site of a Roman and
Anglo-Saxon burial-ground. The college was founded by Madame Bodichon and
Miss Emily Davies. Newnham College began in a hired house with five
students in 1871. Miss Anne J. Clough was the founder. The present Newnham
Hall is composed of several buildings acquired since.
For the historical student a brief roll of some of Cambridge's great men
would include: Green, Lyly, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Nash, Fletcher, Sterne,
Thackeray, Bacon, Milton, Dryden, Cranmer, the two great Cecils,
Walsingham, Cromwell, Walpole, Chesterfield, Pitt, Wilberforce,
Castlereagh, Palmerston, Herrick, Hutchinson, Marvell, Jeremy Taylor,
Ascham, Erasmus, Spenser, Wren, Hook, Evelyn, More, Newton, and Darwin.
Meanwhile Oxford waits us, with no impatience, secure in her calm sense of
dignity. There is a story of an Irishman with a great idea of his own
dignity. But he was careless, he professed, as to the place at table
assigned to him. "Wherever I am seated," he said, "that is the head of the
table." Oxford is sometimes credited with having a feeling of rivalry for
Cambridge. A mimic war of wits has been waged over the fancied rivalry, of
which one epigram that sticks in my memory is, that "Cambridge breeds
philosophers and Oxford burns them" (I have not the exact words, perhaps,
but that is the sentiment). In truth, though, Oxford has no sense of
rivalry. She knows herself to be peerless, incomparable, the centre of the
educational aspiration, not only of England but of the world. In her
atmosphere of drowsy ritual she broods serene as Buddha. And she does not
burn philosophers nowadays, however heretical may seem to be their ideas.
Indeed the Oxford of to-day shelters beneath its imperturbable calm,
behind its moss-grown walls, all the "latest fashions" in beliefs.
As to the first beginnings of Oxford--the town not the University has just
been celebrating its millenary--Anthony a Wood records this tale of its
first origin: "When Fredeswyde had bin soe long absent from hence, she came
to Binsey (triumphing with her virginity) into the city mounted on a
milk-white ox betokening Innocency, and as she rode along the streets she
would forsooth be still speaking to her ox, 'Ox, forth'--or (as it is
related) 'bos perge,' that is 'Ox, goe on,' or 'Ox, go forth'--and hence
they indiscreetly say that our city was from thence called Oxforth or
Oxford." It is fairly certain that Didau and the daughter Fredeswide
established a nunnery and built a church there in the eighth century. The
town was rebuilt by Ethelred in the eleventh century.
Before the Norman Conquest Oxford was a notable city, often visited by the
reigning kings, sometimes the meeting-place of Parliaments. This prominence
brought with it many troubles. It was often sacked and in part burned.
These incidents despite, it grew to be a prosperous medieval walled city. A
Benedictine scholastic house on the site of Worcester College was the
beginning of the University.
Early in the thirteenth century William of Durham, with a company of
others, shook from off their English shoes the dust of Paris University
after a "town and gown row" there, and settled at Oxford, and then the
University began to take shape. He gave money to the University to found a
"Hall" for students. Many other halls were founded (half of the Oxford Inns
are, or were, perversion of old "Halls"). William of Wykeham gave a code of
rubrics which became a legacy to the whole University. He built a college
for the exclusive use of scholars of the foundation. He built also
bell-tower, cloisters, kitchen, brewery, and bakehouse for "New" College.
New College was the first home for scholars at Oxford. Lincoln College was
next founded, after that All Souls, then Magdalen. Duke Humphrey of
Gloucester gave the nucleus of the famous Bodleian library to the
Benedictine monks. Christ Church was built with the revenues of a
suppressed monastery.
So every step in English history for ten centuries can be remembered by the
stones of Oxford. That fine library building of All Souls, which holds as
one of its treasures Wren's original plans for St. Paul's Cathedral, was
built out of sugar money from the West Indies, being the gift of a great
sugar planter in the early days of the making of the Empire.
During the wars of Cavaliers and Roundheads Oxford suffered some shrewd
blows. It was for the King always, and after the Restoration the Court
recognised its loyalty. Charles II. with his Queen--and eke another lady or
so as a rule--was often a visitor, and spent a great part of the Plague
Year there, though "the Merry Monarch" showed no want of pluck or loyalty
to his sore-stricken people during that time, and did not abandon London
altogether. But all who could got out of London for a while to escape the
horrors of which Pepys has given so clear a record in his diary and
letters, as in the following to Lady Carteret:--
[Illustration: ST. MAGDALEN, TOWER AND COLLEGE, OXFORD]
The absence of the Court and emptiness of the city
takes away all occasion of news, save only such
melancholy stories as would rather sadden than find
your Ladyship any divertisement in the hearing; I have
stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week,
and of them above 6000 of the plague, and little noise
heard day or night but tolling of bells; till I could
walk Lumber-street, and not meet twenty persons from
one end to the other, and not 50 upon the Exchange;
till whole families, 10 and 12 together, have been
swept away; till my very physician, Dr. Burnet, who
undertook to secure me against any infection, having
survived the month of his own house being shut up, died
himself of the plague; till the nights, though much
lengthened, are grown too short to conceal the burials
of those that died the day before, people being thereby
constrained to borrow daylight for that service:
lastly, till I could find neither meat nor drink safe,
the butcheries being everywhere visited, my brewer's
house shut up, and my baker, with his whole family,
dead of the plague.
Greenwich begins apace to be sickly; but we are, by the
command of the King, taking all the care we can to
prevent its growth; and meeting to that purpose
yesterday, after sermon, with the town officers, many
doleful informations were brought us, and, among
others, this, which I shall trouble your Ladyship with
the telling:--Complaint was brought us against one in
the town for receiving into his house a child newly
brought from an infected house in London. Upon inquiry,
we found that it was the child of a very able citizen
in Gracious Street, who, having lost already all the
rest of his children, and himself and wife being shut
up and in despair of escaping, implored only the
liberty of using the means for the saving of this only
babe, which with difficulty was allowed, and they
suffered to deliver it, stripped naked out at a window
into the arms of a friend, who, shifting into fresh
clothes, conveyed it thus to Greenwich, where, upon
this information from Alderman Hooker, we suffer it to
remain. This I tell your Ladyship as one instance of
the miserable straits our poor neighbours are reduced
to.
Pepys himself had taken refuge then at Greenwich. All had left who could,
even to dour old John Milton, whose plague retreat at Chalfont St. Giles
(Bucks) is now preserved as an historical relic, and usually holds the
attention of the rushing tourist, who is "doing" England within a month,
for quite seven minutes. That is really space for a matured consideration
to the tourist mind.
"The motor has slowed down from seventy miles an hour to fifty miles an
hour. We are passing a point of great historic interest." That is
sight-seeing in Europe for the American tourist according to one of their
own humorists. I have had many opportunities to observe the truth on which
that sarcasm is based. Take Milton's Cottage for an instance. I had walked
there from Chorley Wood one spring afternoon, and was enjoying idly the
blooms in the little garden, when a motor rushed up, disgorged a party of
hurried tourists, of which the man member had a guide-book. "Is this
Milton's Cottage?" It was: so they entered. "Is this really Milton's chair?
Sure?" It was. So they all sat on it solemnly in turn. Within five minutes
their chariot of petrol had wrapped them up again, and they were rushing
over the face of England to see some shrine of the Pilgrim Fathers.
[Illustration: BROAD STREET, OXFORD, LOOKING WEST]
But we have rambled from Oxford, which is, by the way, much cursed of the
rushing tourist, who has a plan for "doing" it in an hour, and gallops from
the Bodleian to Shelley's Tomb, and Addison's Walk, the Old Wall, the Tower
of St. Michael's, and is away in a cloud of dust, without having gained the
barest hint of the subtle persuasive charm of Oxford; without a thought of
seeing St. Mary's Tower afloat in the moonlight; of hearing the choir of
Magdalen; of drowsing an afternoon under the elms; or of seeking, with all
due reverence and modesty, to gain an entrance to some of those august
companies of Oxford--of undergraduates dreaming their exalted young dreams,
of dons musing their deep thoughts.
I own to it that I feel it difficult to write of Oxford, though, alas! I am
able to write with facility of many places visited and things experienced.
There is something of rebuke towards quick generalisations and easy
judgments in the atmosphere of the place. I have been to Oxford many times.
My very first dinner in England was with the Fellows of All Souls, a feast
of solemn yet cheerful splendour in four rooms, one for the dinner itself,
yet another for dessert, another for coffee, and finally, another for
tobacco. Another time I was at Oxford to lecture to a gathering of dons and
undergraduates on social problems in Australia; yet another time to prove
that the young athletes of the University were conquerable at _epee_
fencing. But never have I got over a first awe of the place. To attempt to
probe to its soul seems an impertinence. Oxford has an atmosphere of the
Round Table.
Rather than attempt to give my own impressions, I prefer to quote others,
and to state facts. That Herodotus of social life, Pepys, found Oxford "a
very sweet place," spent two shillings and sixpence on a barber in its
honour, and gave ten shillings "to him that showed us All Souls College and
Chickley's picture." He concludes, "Oxford a mighty fine place.... Cheap
entertainment." Pepys was not troubled evidently by any awe of the place.
There is, by the way, astonishingly little in the poetic literature of
England about Oxford, seeing that so many poets have lived and studied
there.
The University of Oxford, for all its devotion to the King, would not
follow James II. on the path towards Rome. When on his accession he was
welcomed to Oxford, "the fountains ran claret for the vulgar." But when he
tried to force his Roman Catholic nominee into the presidentship of
Magdalen, he could not even get a blacksmith to force a door for him.
Oxford was for the Church and the Throne, but for the Church first.
Nowadays Oxford is very much interested in social problems. It is
Conservative still, but many of its young men have a flavour of socialism,
generally of a "non-revolutionary" and Christian type.
Material life at Oxford is exceedingly pleasant, not to say luxurious. The
undergraduates "do themselves" very well. Kitchen and buttery maintain
agreeably historic reputations, and the old college buildings have been
modernised to the extent of admitting electric light and sanitary plumbing.
But bath-rooms are rare: the good old English "tub" which a servant makes
ready in the morning with a ewer of water is still a feature of the college
bedroom.
It is the social life and the college system, with its fine mixture of
independence and wardship, which make Oxford sought for as a school for
"character." But one may also gain much learning there if one wishes. Still
it is hardly essential. You may emerge from Oxford with a degree, but with
astonishingly little knowledge. To the "Babu" type of mind in
particular--that easily memorising, non-comprehending type of mind--a
degree at Oxford is particularly easy of attainment. (The University, by
the way, attracts very many coloured students, from India, from Africa, and
from other parts of the world.) The man, too, of real intelligence who is
willing to seek a degree in the manner of the Babu can easily fritter away
the most of his student hours at Oxford, and win through his examinations
by cramming at the last moment.
Since Oxford is so typical of the best of English life, it is fitting that
it should be a place of very sweet and dignified gardens. There is the
grandeur of elegant simplicity about Oxford gardens; and the Oxford
trees--beeches, elms, limes, oaks--are surely the finest in all the world.
Oxford history is curiously linked with trees. William of Waynflete
commanded that Magdalen be built against an oak that fell a hundred years
before, aged six hundred years. Sir Thomas Whiteway "learned in a dream" to
build a college where there was a "triple elm tree," and that fixed the
site of St. Thomas. To-day the green of the Spring in the precincts of
Trinity and Magdalen is a green which speaks of all peace and wise
comprehension.
[Illustration: ETON UPPER SCHOOL AND LONG WALK, FROM COMMON LANE HOUSE]
So much space has been given to Oxford and Cambridge, where young England
receives the crowning garlands of the academies, that I can do no more than
briefly mention the great public schools: Eton, under the shadow of the
King's castle at Windsor; Harrow, on a hill a little apart from London;
Winchester, nestling in the valley where, if tradition can be trusted, King
Arthur once held a court; Rugby, in the Midlands, enjoying a sturdier
climate and giving to the world that very manly exercise, Rugby football.
These and others might each have a book to themselves with justice. But in
this volume we must move on to see something of adult England.