"Those twins of learning, which he raised in you,
Ipswich and Oxford, one of which fell with him;
The other, though unfinished, yet so famous,
So excellent in art, and still so rising,
That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue."
SHAKESPEARE, /Henry VIII/.
Oxford is described by Matthew Amold as,
"Beautiful city, with her dreaming spires,"
yet it is for her towers, especially, that she is famous. Glorious as
St. Mary's is, it certainly does not surpass Magdalen Tower; and it
may well be doubted whether the genius of Wren has not excelled both
Magdalen and St. Mary's in "Tom" Tower. Gothic purists, of course, do
not like it. There is a well-authenticated story of a really great
architect who, in the early days of the twentieth century, was asked
to submit a scheme for its repair; after long delay he sent in a plan
for an entirely new tower on correct Gothic lines, because (as he
wrote) no one would wish to preserve "so anomalous a structure" as
Tom Tower. The world, however, does not agree with the minute
critics; it is easy to find fault with the details of "Tom," but in
proportion, in dignity, in suitability to his position, the greatest
qualities that can be required in any building, "Tom" is pre-eminent.
This is the more to be wondered at, as the tower was erected a
century and a half after the great gateway which it crowns.
The genius of Wolsey had planned a magnificent front, but only a
little more than half of it was completed when Henry VIII ended the
career of his greatest servant, and altered the plans of the most
glorious college in Europe. It was not till the period just before
the Civil War that the northern part of the front of Christ Church
was built by the elder Dean Fell, and the work was only completed
when his son, the famous Dr. Fell, doomed to eternal notoriety by the
well-known rhymes about his mysterious unpopularity, employed Wren to
build the gate tower. Yet the whole presents one harmonious design,
worthy of the most famous of Oxford founders and of the greatest of
British architects. It is fitting that it should be Wolsey's statue
which adorns the gate--a statue given by stout old Jonathan Trelawny,
one of the Seven Bishops, whose name is perpetuated by the refrain of
Hawker's spirited ballad, which deceived even Macaulay as to its
authenticity:
"And must Trelawny die?
Then thirty thousand Cornish men
Will know the reason why."
Tom Tower appeals to Oxford men through more than one of their
senses; it is a most conspicuous object in every view; and in it is
hung the famous bell, "Great Tom," the fourth largest bell in
England, weighing over seven tons. This once belonged to Osney Abbey,
when it was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and bore the
legend:
"In Thomae laude resono Bim Bom sine fraude."
It was transplanted to Christ Church in the reign of Queen Mary, and
at the time it was proposed to rechristen it "Pulcra Maria," in
honour at once of the Queen and of the Blessed Virgin; but the old
name prevailed. Every night but one, from May 29, 1684, until the
Great War silenced him, Tom has sounded out, after 9 p.m., his 101
strokes, as a signal that all should be within their college walls;
the number is the number of the members of the foundation of Christ
Church in 1684, when the tower was finished. During the war Tom was
forbidden to sound, along with all other Oxford bells and clocks, for
might not his mighty voice have guided some zeppelin or German
aeroplane to pour down destruction on Oxford? Few things brought home
more to Oxford the meaning of the Armistice than hearing Tom once
more on the night of November 11, 1918.
[Plate XX. Christ Church: "Tom" Tower]
A patriotic tradition claims for Tom the honour of having inspired
Milton's lines in "Il Penseroso":
"Hear the far-off curfew sound
Over some wide-watered, shore,
Swinging slow with sullen roar."
But it is difficult to believe this; Milton's connection with Oxford
does not get nearer than Forest Hill, and blow the west wind as hard
as it would, it could scarcely make Tom's voice reach so far. And the
"wide-watered shore" is only appropriate to Oxford in flood time, the
very last season when a poet would wish to remember it.
The view in Plate XX of the tower is taken from the front of
Pembroke, and must have been often admired by Oxford's devoted son,
Samuel Johnson, when, as a poor scholar of Pembroke, "he was
generally to be seen (says his friend. Bishop Percy) lounging at the
college gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was
entertaining with his wit and keeping from their studies."