"Ye mossy piles of old munificence,
At once the pride of learning and defence."
J. WARTON, /Triumph of Isis/
The east side of the University buildings proper was shown in the
last picture (Plate III); in the following (Plate IV), the north side
of the same block is seen. The old University "schools" lay just
inside the city wall, and Broad Street, which is there represented,
occupies the site of the ditch, which ran on the north of the wall.
This picture is a fitting supplement to the last, for the Sheldonian
Theatre on the right of it and the Clarendon Building in the
background may claim rank even with the Bodleian and the Radcliffe as
the University's special buildings.
The Sheldonian celebrated its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary
only last year (1919), when the music which had been performed at its
opening was performed once more. It is a building interesting from
many points of view. Architecturally it marks the first complete
flowering of the genius of Sir Christopher Wren. He was only thirty-
seven when it was completed, and had been previously known rather as
a man of science than as an architect; he was Oxford's Professor of
Astronomy; but Archbishop Sheldon chose him to build a worthy meeting
place for his University, even as at the same time he was being
called by the king to prepare plans for rebuilding London after the
Great Fire.
The very existence of the Sheldonian marks the development of
University ideas. The simple piety--or was it the worldliness?--of
Pre-Reformation Oxford had seen nothing unsuitable in the ceremonies
of graduate Oxford and the ribaldries of undergraduate Oxford taking
place in the consecrated building of St. Mary's; but the more sober
genius of Anglicanism was shocked at these secular intrusions, and
Sheldon provided his University with a worthy home, where its great
functions have been performed ever since.
The building is a triumph of construction; it is doubtful if so large
an unsupported roof can be found elsewhere; but Wren is not to be
held responsible for the outside ugly flat roof, which was put on 100
years ago, because it was said, quite falsely, that Wren's roof was
unsafe. That architect had set himself the problem of getting the
greatest number of people into the space at his disposal, and he
managed to fit in a building that will hold 1,500. It was also
intended for the Printing Press of the University, but was only used
in that way for a short time, as in 1713 Sir John Vanbrugh put up the
Clarendon Building, to house this department of University activity.
The "heaviness" of Vanbrugh's buildings was a jest even in his own
time; someone wrote as an epitaph for him
"Lie heavy on him. Earth, for he
Laid many a heavy load on thee."
Blenheim Palace, his greatest work, is indeed a "heavy load." But the
same criticism can hardly be brought against the columned portico,
which forms a fine ending for the Broad Street. Vanbrugh's building
was superseded in its turn, when the increasing business of the
Oxford Printing Press was moved to the present building in 1830.
[Plate IV. Sheldonian Theatre, etc., Broad Street]
Since then, all kinds of University business have been carried on in
the old Printing Press. The University Registrar and the University
Treasurer (his style is "Secretary of the University Chest") have
their offices there; the Proctors exercise discipline from there; the
various University delegacies and committees meet there. And another
side of Oxford life, not yet (in January 1920) fully recognized as
belonging to the University, has found a home there; the top floor
has been for twenty years past the centre of women's education in
Oxford, a position elevated indeed, for it is up more than fifty
stairs, but commodious and dignified when reached at last.
Perhaps the Clarendon Building has gained in lightness of effect by
being contrasted with the clumsy mass of the Indian Institute, which
forms the background of our picture. The nineteenth century proudly
criticized the taste of the eighteenth; but it may well be doubted if
any building in Oxford of the earlier and much-abused century is more
inartistic and inappropriate than "Jumbo's Joss House," which used to
rouse the scorn and anger of the late Professor of History, Edward A.
Freeman.
No Oxford colleges are in this picture, though a small part of
Exeter, one of Sir Gilbert Scott's least happy erections in Oxford,
appears on the right, and a little piece of Trinity on the left; the
last-named is the college of Professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch,
better known as "Q," one of the most delightful of Oxford's minor
poets. The opening lines of his poem, "Alma Mater,"
"Know ye her secret none can utter,
Hers of the book, the tripled crown?
Still on the spire the pigeons flutter,
Still by the gateway flits the gown,
Still in the street from corbel and gutter
Faces of stone look down,"
may well have been inspired by this very scene in the Broad, for the
grim faces of stone that surround the Sheldonian are one of the
features and the puzzles of Oxford. Are they the Roman Emperors, or
the Greek Philosophers, or neither? It does not matter, for they are
unlike anything in heaven or in earth, and yet they are loved by all
true Oxford men for their uncompromising ugliness, which has been
familiar to so many generations.