In what does the charm of Oxford consist? Why does she stand out
among the cities of the world as one of those most deserving a visit?
It can hardly be said to be for the beauty of her natural
surroundings. In spite of the charm of her
"Rivers twain of gentle foot that pass
Through the rich meadow-land of long green grass,"
in spite of her trees and gardens, which attract a visitor,
especially one from the more barren north, Oxford must yield the palm
of natural beauty to many English towns, not to mention those more
remote.
But she has every other claim, and first, perhaps, may be mentioned
that of historic interest.
An Englishman who knows anything of history is not likely to forget
of how many striking events in the development of his country Oxford
has been the scene. The element of romance is furnished early in her
story by the daring escape of the Empress-Queen, Matilda, from Oxford
Castle. The Provisions of Oxford (1258) were the work of one of the
most famous Parliaments of the thirteenth century, the century which
saw the building of the English constitution, and the students of the
University fought for the cause which those Provisions represented.
The burning of the martyr bishops in the sixteenth century is one of
the greatest tragedies in the story of our Church. The seventeenth
century saw Oxford the capital of Royalist England in the Civil War,
and though there was no actual fighting there, Charles' night march
in 1644 from Oxford to the West, between the two enclosing armies of
Essex and Waller, is one of the most famous military movements ever
carried out in our comparatively peaceful island. The Parliamentary
history, too, of Oxford in the seventeenth century is full of
interest, for it was there that in 1625 Charles' first Parliament met
in the Divinity School. And fifty years later, his son, Charles II,
triumphed over the Whig Parliament at Oxford, which was trying by
factious violence to force the Exclusion Bill on a reluctant king and
nation. Few towns beside London have been the scene of so many great
historical events; yet any one who looks below the surface will
attach less importance to these than to the great changes in thought
which have found in Oxford their inspiration, and which make it a
city of pilgrimage for those interested in the development of
England's real life. Matthew Arnold's famous description, hackneyed
though it is by quotation, gives one aspect of Oxford, an aspect
which will appeal to many beside the scholar poet:
"Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce
intellectual life of our century, so serene!
'There are our young barbarians, all at play.'
And yet, steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to
the moonlight, and whispering' from her towers the last enchantments
of the Middle Ages, who will deny that Oxford, by her ineffable
charm, keeps ever calling us nearer to the true goal of all of us, to
the ideal, to perfection--to beauty, in a word, which is only truth
seen from another side?"
But this is not the real intellectual charm of Oxford, which has been
ever the centre of strenuous life, rather than of dilettante
dreamings. From the very beginning, she has been a city of
"Movements." Some visitors, then, will come to Oxford as the home and
the burial-place of Roger Bacon, representing as he does the
Franciscan Order, with its Christ-like sympathy for the poor and its
early attempts to develop the knowledge of Natural Science; Oxford
was in the thirteenth century the great centre of the Friars'
movement in England. Others will remember that in the next century it
produced, in John Wycliffe, the great opponent of the Friars, the man
who, as the first of the Reformers, is to many the most interesting
figure in mediaeval English religious history. In the sixteenth
century, Oxford plays no great part in the actual revolution in the
English Church; yet it will be a place attractive to many who cherish
the memory of the "Oxford Reformers," the members of Erasmus' circle
--John Colet, Thomas More, William Grocyn, and other scholars--who
hoped by sound learning to amend the Church without violent change.
Some, on the other hand, will see in the sixteenth-century Oxford,
the school which trained men for the Counter-Reformation, such as the
heroic Jesuit, Campion, or Cardinal Alien, the founder of the English
College at Douai. The Anglican "Via Media" found its special
representatives in Oxford in Jewel and Hooker, and in Laud, the
practical genius who carried out its principles in the Church
administration of his day. It was fitting that the movement for the
revival of Church teaching in England in the nineteenth century
should be an Oxford movement, and Newman's pulpit at St. Mary's and
the chapel of Oriel College are sacred in the eyes of Anglicans all
over the world. In the interval between Laud and Newman, Church
principles had found a different development in another Oxford man;
John Wesley's character and spiritual life were built up in Oxford,
till he went forth to do the work of an Evangelist during more than
half of the eighteenth century. Wycliffe, More, Hooker, Laud, Wesley,
Newman, these are not the names of men who have affected the
religious history of the world as did Luther, Calvin or Ignatius
Loyola; but they have affected profoundly the religious life of the
English-speaking race, and Oxford must ever be a sacred place for
their sakes.
And Oxford has been the starting-point of other than religious
movements. No place in England has such a claim on the Englishmen of
the New World as has Oxford. It was there that Richard Hakluyt taught
geography, and collected in part his wonderful store of the tales of
enterprise beyond the sea. Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half-brother,
Sir Walter Raleigh, both Oxford men, were the founders of English
colonization. By their failures they showed the way to success later,
and Calvert in Maryland, Penn in Pennsylvania, John Locke in the
Carolinas, and Oglethorpe in Georgia are all Oxford men who rank as
founders of States in the great Union of the West. And in our own
day, Cecil Rhodes has once more proved that the academic dreamer can
go out and advance the development of a great continent. By his
magnificent foundation of scholarships at Oxford, he showed that he
considered his old university a formative influence of the greatest
importance in world history. Oxford with reason puts up one tablet to
mark his lodgings in the city, and another to commemorate him in her
stately Examination Schools.
[Plate II, St. Mary's Spire]
But there are many to whom the past, whether in the realm of action
or in the realm of ideas, does not appeal, whether it be from lack of
knowledge or from lack of sympathy. To some of these Oxford makes a
different appeal as perhaps the best place in England for studying
the development of English architecture. The early Norman work of the
Castle and St. Michael's, the Transition work of the cathedral, the
very early lancet windows of St. Giles' Church (consecrated by the
great St. Hugh of Lincoln himself), the Decorated Style as seen in
St. Mary's spire and in Merton chapel, the glories of the specially
English style, the Perpendicular, in Wykeham's work at New College
and in Magdalen Tower, the Tudor magnificence of Wolsey's work at
Christ Church, the last flower of Gothic at Wadham and at St. John's,
the triumph of Wren's genius, alike in the classical style at the
Sheldonian and in "Gothic" as in Tom Tower, the Classical work of
Hawkesmore at Queen's and of Gibbs in the Radcliffe, the wonderful
beauty of Mr. Bodley's modern Gothic in St. Swithun's Quad at
Magdalen, and the skilful adaptation of old English tradition to
modern needs by Sir Thomas Jackson at Trinity and at Hertford--what
other city can show such a series of architectural beauties? And it
must not be forgotten that Oxford disputes with York the honour of
having the most representative sequence of painted glass windows in
England. Oxford, indeed, is a paradise for the student of Art.
Nowhere, except at Cambridge, can the series of architectural works
be paralleled, and at both universities the charm of their ancient
buildings is enhanced by their beautiful setting in college gardens.
It is not an accident that in the old universities more than anywhere
else, so much of beauty has survived, nor is it to be put down as a
happy piece of academic conservatism. It is rather the natural result
of their constitution and endowment. What has been so fatal to the
beauty of old England elsewhere has been material prosperity. The
buildings inherited from the past had to go, at least so it was
thought, because they were not suited to modern methods, or because
the site they occupied was worth so much more for other purposes. But
the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge could not carry on their work on
different sites; "residence" was an essential of academic
arrangements; and there was no temptation to the fellows of a college
to make money by parting with their old buildings, for their incomes
were determined by Statute, and any great increase of wealth would
not advantage individual fellows. Hence, while great nobles and great
merchants sold their splendid houses and grounds, and grew rich on
the unearned increment, and while non-residential universities moved
bodily from their old positions to new and more fashionable quarters,
Oxford and Cambridge colleges went on working and living in the same
places. Much the same reasons have preserved, in many old towns,
picturesque alms-houses, to show the modern world how beautiful
buildings once could be, while all around them reigns opulent
ugliness. Certain it is that only in one instance, in recent times,
has an Oxford college contemplated selling its old site and buildings
and migrating to North Oxford, and then the sacrilegious attempt was
outvoted. Hence, as has been said, the two old English Universities
possess in an unique degree the
"Strange enchantments of the past
And memories of the days of old."
The charms of Oxford for the historical student and for the lover of
Art have been spoken of. But a large part of the world comes under
neither head; to it the charm of Oxford consists in the young lives
that are continually passing through it. Oxford and Cambridge present
ever attractive contrasts between their young students and their old
buildings, between the first enthusiasm of ever new generations, and
customs and rules which date back to mediaeval times.
But apart from the charm of contrast, Oxford has everything to make
life attractive for young men. It is true that the old buildings
combine with a dignity a millionaire could not surpass a standard of
material comfort which in some respects is below that of an up-to-
date workhouse. An amusing instance has occurred of this during the
war. The students of one of the women's colleges, expelled from their
own modern buildings, which had been turned into a hospital, became
tenants of half of one of the oldest colleges. It was very romantic
thus to gain admission to the real Oxford, but the students soon
found that it was very uncomfortable to have their baths in an out-
of-the-way corner of the college. And baths themselves are but a
modern institution at Oxford; at one or two colleges still the old
"tub in one's room" is the only system of washing. Perhaps this
instance may be thought frivolous, but it is typical of Oxford, which
has been described, with some exaggeration in both words, as a home
of "barbaric luxury."
But after all, comfort in the material sense is the least important
element in completeness of life. Oxford has everything else, except,
it is true, a bracing climate. She has society of every kind, in
which a man ranks on his merits, not on his possessions; he is valued
for what he is, not for what he has; she gives freedom to her sons to
live their own life, with just sufficient restraint to add piquancy
to freedom, and to restrain those excesses which are fatal to it; she
has intellectual interests and traditions, which often really affect
men who seem indifferent to them; life in her, as a rule, is not
troubled by financial cares--for her young men, most of them, either
through old endowments or from family circumstances, have for the
moment enough of this world's goods. In view of all this, and much
more, is it not natural that Oxford has a charm for her sons? And
this is enhanced with many by all the force of hereditary tradition;
the young man is at his college because his father was there before
him; the pleasure of each generation is increased by the reflection
of the other's pleasure. What traditional feeling in Oxford means
may, perhaps, be illustrated by the story of an old English worthy,
though one only of the second rank. Jonathan Trelawney, one of the
Seven Bishops who defied James II, was a stout Whig, but when it was
proposed to punish Oxford for her devotion to the Pretender, the
Government found they could not reckon on his vote, though he was
usually a safe party man. "I must be excused from giving my vote for
altering the methods of election into Christ Church, where I had my
bread for twenty years. I would rather see my son a link boy than a
student of Christ Church in such a manner as tears up by the roots
that constitution."
But the days of hereditary tradition are over, and Trelawney belongs
to an age long past; Oxford now is exposed to an influence compared
to which the arbitrary proceedings of a king are feeble. A democratic
Parliament with a growing Labour party has far more power to change
Oxford than the Stuarts ever had, and even at this moment (1919) a
third Royal Commission is beginning to sit. Will it modify, will it--
transform Oxford?
The first answer seems to be that the very stones of Oxford are
charged with her traditions. During the War the colleges have been
full of officer-cadets; they were men of all ranks of life and of
every kind of education; they came from all parts of the world; they
were of all ages, from eighteen to forty, at least. Their training
was a strenuous one by strict rule, a complete contrast to the free
and easy life of academic Oxford. Yet in their few months of
residence, most of them became imbued with the college spirit; they
considered themselves members of the place they lived in; they tried
to do most of the things undergraduates do. If Oxford thus, to some
extent, moulded to her pattern men who, welcome as they were, were
only accidental, surely the college spirit may be trusted to
assimilate whatever material the changed conditions of social or of
political life furnish to it. The hope of many at Oxford is that
there will be a great development and a great change. On one side it
will be good if Oxford becomes to a much greater extent not only an
all-British, but also a world university; on another side it is to be
hoped that far more than ever before men of all classes in England
will come to Oxford. It would surprise many of the University's
critics to find how much had already been done in these directions.
It is certainly not true now that, as one of Oxford's critics wrote,
"Too long, too long men saw thee sit apart
From all the living pulses of the hour."
On the contrary, the Oxford of the last generation has already become
markedly more cosmopolitan, and she has been drawing to her an ever-
increasing number of able men of every class.
But these developments, thus begun, will certainly be carried much
further in the near future. Oxford will be altered. Some of her
customs will be changed. This may well issue in great and lasting
good, though there will be loss as well as gain. But an Oxford man
may be pardoned if he believes and hopes that his university will
remain the university he has loved. There is a saying current in
Oxford about Oxford men, which may not be out of place here--"If you
meet a stranger, and if after a time you say to him, 'I think you
were at Oxford,' he accepts it, as a matter of course, and is
pleased. If you do the same to a Cambridge man, he indignantly
replies, 'How do you know that?'" No doubt the saying is turned the
other way round at Cambridge, and no doubt it is equally true and
equally false of both universities, i.e. it is positively true and
negatively false, like so many other statements. But it is positively
true; the Oxford man is proud of having been at Oxford; the past and
the present alike, his political and his religious beliefs, his
traditions and his social surroundings, all endear Oxford to him. May
it ever be so.