As the year wore on without any prospect of a vacancy at New College, it
became necessary to decide what should be done as regards sending me to
the university. My father was very ill able to support the expense of
this. But I had received from Winchester two exhibitions--all that the
college had in its power to bestow--and he was very unwilling that I
should be unable to avail myself of them.
Concomitantly with continued increase in the frequency and intensity of
his headaches, my father’s irritability of temper had increased to a
degree which made him a very difficult man to live with. For simple
assent to his utterances of an argumentative nature did not satisfy him,
he _would_ be argued with. Yet argument produced irritability leading to
scenes of painful violence, which I had reason to fear hastened the
return of his suffering. But the greatest good, in his opinion, that
could then be achieved for me, was, that I should have an university
education; and this he was steadfastly minded to procure for me at any
cost of pressure and privation.
And then the question arose, at what college should I matriculate?
My father eventually selected Alban Hall--a singular and hardly a
judicious choice in any case, but which under the circumstances, as they
subsequently arose, proved a disastrous one. My father’s financial
position was at the time such, that it would have seemed reasonable that
he should have been in a great measure guided in his choice by the
consideration of expense. But such was not the case. For Alban Hall was
at that time by no means a specially inexpensive place of academical
residence. No! the ruling motive was to place me under Whately, who had
about four years previously been appointed by Lord Granville Principal
of Alban Hall. My father, as I have mentioned, was a “Liberal,” and
Whately’s Liberalism was the point in his character by which he was most
known to the world in general. I do not think that any personal
acquaintance, or even contact, had ever existed between my father and
Whately. The connecting link I take to have been Whately’s friend
Senior. Whately’s Liberalism certainly, and, I think I may say, my
father’s also, would have made excellent Conservatism at the present
day. But in those days the new Principal of Alban Hall stood out in
strong contrast with the intellectual attitude and habits of thought of
Oxford, And this was the leading motive of my father’s choice.
I know not how the case may be now, but in those days it was a decided
disadvantage socially and academically to belong to any one of the
“halls,” instead of to a college. But of all this side of Oxford life,
my father, who had been a New College man in the days when New College
exercised its ancient privilege of presenting its members for their
degree without submitting them to any examination in the schools, knew
nothing. In his day the New College man before the Vice-Chancellor for
his degree, instead of using the formula prescribed for every other
member of the university to the effect that having satisfied the
examiners he begged his degree (_peto gradum_), said, “Having satisfied
my college, I demand my degree” (_postulo gradum_). This has long been
voluntarily abandoned by New College, which on the enactment of the new
statute for examinations of course saw that the retention of it
necessarily excluded them from “honours.” But in the old day it had
inevitably the effect of causing New College men to live very much in a
world of their own.
Alban Hall had been, previously to Whately’s time, a sort of “refuge for
the destitute” intellectually, or academically: as were for the most
part the other halls at that period. This reproach Whately at once set
himself to remove from Alban Hall, and had altogether removed by the
time I joined the society. It would be difficult to say what generally
operating influence had brought together the score or so of members who
then constituted that society. They were certainly not intellectually
superior to the average undergraduate of the time. Neither were they in
any wise inferior in general respectability. But there was no cohesion,
no general prevailing character. We seemed like a collection of waifs
thrown together by as many different sets of circumstances as there were
individuals. I suppose all had been brought there by some personal
connection with, or respect for, either Dr. Whately, or for Mr. Hinds,
the excellent Vice-Principal, who subsequently became Bishop of Norwich.
There was, I remember, a knot of some three or four West Indians, who
formed some little exception to what I have said of a general absence of
cohesion.
The time which I spent under Dr. Whately’s authority and tuition led me
to form a very exalted opinion of his intellectual capacity, high
principle, and lofty determination to do what he deemed to be his duty.
But I do not think that he was the right man in the right place.
His daughter, Miss Jane Whately, in her excellent and most interesting
life of the Archbishop, published some twenty years ago, writes:---
“Teaching was indeed the occupation most peculiarly suited to his powers
and tastes. He had a remarkable faculty of drawing out the mind of the
learner, by leading him step by step, and obliging him to think for
himself. He used to say that he believed himself to be one of the few
teachers who could train a young person of retentive memory for words,
without spoiling him. The temptation to the student in such cases is to
rehearse by rote the rules or facts he has learned, without exercising
his powers of thought; while one whose powers of recollection were less
perfect, would be forced to reflect and consider what was _likely_ to be
written or said on such or such a point by the writer, and thus to learn
more intelligently and less mechanically. The cure for this tendency in
young persons who learned quickly by rote he effected by asking them
questions, substantially the same as those in the textbook, but which
they must answer in their own words, making them draw conclusions from
axioms already laid down. In this manner he was able successfully to
teach mathematics to many who had been apparently unable to master the
first principles, and often to ground them in the elements of Euclid,
better than some mathematicians whose actual attainments were far beyond
his own. Both in this branch and in logic, as in all other studies, he
always commenced analytically and ended synthetically; first drawing out
the mind of the learner, by making him give the _substance_ of the right
answer, and then requiring the exact technical form of it in words.”
This must strike all, who remember Whately’s teaching, as evidently
true. But it in no wise leads me to modify the opinion above expressed
as to his adaptation for the position in which I knew him. The style of
teaching described by his biographer, if ever suitable at all for a
college lecture-room, could only be so in the case of a collection of
pupils far superior intellectually to those, with whom (with one or two
exceptions, notably that of Mr. Wall, whose subsequent career at Oxford
did credit to his Alban Hall training) Dr. Whately had to deal. Miss
Whately describes a teacher whose influence in _tête-à-tête_ teaching
over a clever pupil would be quite invaluable. But he was always firing
far over the heads of his hearers; and I do not think that his method
was adapted to driving, pushing, hustling an idle and very backward and
unprepared collection of youths through their “little-go” and “pass,”
_quod erat in votis_. Most of this necessary driving fell to the share
of Hinds, who was fitted for far higher work, but was patient, kind,
laborious, and conscientious to the utmost decree.
Miss Whately’s book, mainly by virtue of the great number of the
Archbishop’s letters contained in it, succeeds in giving a very just and
vivid notion of her father’s character and tone of mind. She is hardly
justified, I think, by facts, in speaking of the “delicacy of his
consideration for the feelings of others.” A little circumstance that I
well remember scarcely seems to indicate the possession of any such
quality. It was about the time when the then burning question of
Parliamentary Reform was exercising the minds of all men. A large party
of undergraduates were dining at Whately’s table--such invitations were
usually given by him in every term--and Mrs. Whately at the head of the
long table was asking the young man who sat next her what was the
general opinion in the hall on the Reform question, when Whately, who
at the bottom of the table had overheard her, called out, “Why don’t you
ask what the bedmakers think?” I have little doubt that the opinion of
the bedmakers might have been ascertained with an equal, or perhaps
greater, degree of profit. But I cannot think that the Principal showed
much “delicacy of consideration” for the feelings of his guests.
Perhaps a degree of roughness akin to this, though hardly altogether of
the same sort, contributed to increase that strong feeling of dislike
for Whately which, outside his own Oriel, was pretty generally felt in
Oxford, and which was mainly caused by more serious objections to his
political, and in some degree religious, Liberalism.
I fear that I profited very little by his tuition at Alban Hall,
doubtless chiefly from my own fault and idleness. But other causes
contributed also to the result. The classical lectures were such as I
had left a long way behind me. No study on my part was necessary to hold
my own in the lecture-room by the side of my fellows in the team. Yet,
of course, it was easy for such a teacher as Whately to perceive that I
was trusting to Winchester work rather than to his instruction. And
naturally this did not please him. I think too that he had a prejudice
against public schools in general, and that for some reason or other he
disliked Winchester in particular. I remember his saying to me
once--though I totally forget on what occasion--“We don’t want any New
College ways here, sir!” I told him that I feared I did not deserve the
compliment of being supposed capable of bringing any such there. And the
reply failed to mollify him.
Those who are old enough to remember anything of the social aspects of
Oxford at that day, and indeed any who have read the excellent biography
of Archbishop Whately by his daughter, know that he was exceedingly
unpopular among “the dons,” his contemporaries. This was due partly to
the opinions he held on matters social, political, and religious, partly
to those which prejudiced minds far inferior to his own supposed him to
hold, but partly also to his own personal ways and manners. I think I
know, and indeed I think I knew when I was his pupil, enough of the
fibre and calibre of his mind to feel sure that he was greatly the
intellectual superior to most of those of similar position around him.
And I suppose that the world in general has by this time come to the
conclusion that in respect of most of those opinions, which were then
most obnoxious to the world in which he lived, Whately was right and his
adversaries wrong. But he was not the man to win acceptance for new
ideas in any society. The temper of his mind was in a high degree
autocratical. He was born to be a benevolent and beneficent despot. His
daughter, speaking of the painful experiences that awaited him when he
became Archbishop of Dublin, says that “opposition was painful to his
disposition.”
Doubtless the Principal of Alban Hall, thoroughly congenial to him as
was at that time the social atmosphere of the common room of his own
Oriel, would have felt himself much out of his element in most of the
common rooms of Oxford. I remember a dear old man, Dr. Johnson, of
Magdalen, who was greatly beloved by his own society, and an universal
favourite with all who knew him. He was a high, though not altogether
dry, right divine man (_divino_ rightly spelled, be it understood, and
not with an “e,” as in _jure de vino_), and used to maintain that the
lineal descendants of the last Stuarts were still the rightful
sovereigns of England. Sometimes a knot of youngsters would cluster
around him, with, “But now, Dr. Johnson, do you really and truly believe
that the present Duke of Modena is your lawful sovereign?” “Well, boy,”
the doctor would say when thus pressed, “_after dinner I do_.”
This was not the sort of man whom Whately would have tolerated, for
though full of wit, as I have said, he was utterly devoid of any
tincture of humour.
Those were the days when it used to be said that the rule at Magdalen
respecting preferment tenable together with a fellowship, was, “Hold
your tongue, and you may hold any thing else.”
It was supposed, I remember, at that day that there was to a certain
special degree an antagonism and dislike between him and Dr.
Shuttleworth, the Warden of New College. There was a story current to
the effect that the brusquerie of the Principal of Alban Hall was upon
one occasion exhibited in an offensive manner in the drawing-room of
the Warden of New College, when not only men but ladies were present.
Whately had a habit of sitting in all sorts of uncouth postures on his
chair. He would balance himself, while nursing one leg over the knee of
the other, on the two hind legs of his chair, or even on one of them,
and was indulging in gymnastics of this sort when the leg of the chair
suddenly snapped, and he, a large and heavy man, rolled on the floor. He
was a man of far too much real pith and _aplomb_ to be unnecessarily
disconcerted at such an accident. But the story ran that he manifested
his disregard for it by simply tossing the offending and crippled chair
into a corner, and taking another as he proceeded with what he was
saying without one word of apology to his hostess.
If it was true that there was any such special feeling of antagonism
between Whately and Shuttleworth it was a pity; for assuredly there were
very few, if any, men among the heads of colleges of that day, better
calculated by power and originality of mind, and in many respects by
liberality of thinking, to understand and foregather with Whately than
the Warden of New College.
Shuttleworth was, and had the reputation of being an especially witty
man. And I consider Whately to have been the wittiest man I ever knew.
But it is true that their wit was of a very different character. Whately
was not a man fitted to shine in society, unless it were the society of
those prepared by knowledge of and regard for him to recognise his
undisputed right to be the acknowledged leader of it. Shuttleworth was,
on the contrary, eminently calculated to contribute more than his share
to the most brilliant social intercourse. He had, with abundance of
solid sweetmeat at the bottom of the trifle, a sparkling store of that
froth of wit which is most accepted as the readiest and pleasantest
social small change. Whately’s wit was not of the kind which ever set
any “table on a roar.” It was of that higher and deeper kind, which
consists in prompt perception, not of the superficial resemblances in
dissimilar things, but in the underlying resemblances disclosed only to
the eye capable of appreciating at a glance the essential qualities and
characteristics of the matter in hand. I have heard Whately deliciously
witty at a logic or Euclid lecture.
An admirable specimen of this highest description of wit is given--among
dozens of others indeed--by his daughter in her biography of him, which
delighted me much when I read it, and which may be cited because it is
very brilliant and may be given shortly. It will be found at the 38th
page of the first volume of Miss Whately’s work. The Archbishop, writing
of the controversy respecting the observance of the Sabbath, says, “This
is a case in which men impose on themselves by the fallacy of the
thaumatrope. On one side are painted (to obviate the absurdity of a
probable law) the plain, earnest, and repeated injunctions to the Jews
relative to their Sabbath; on the other side (to obviate the consequence
of our having to keep the Jewish Sabbath) we have the New Testament
allusions to the Christian assemblies on the first day of the week. By a
repeated and rapid twirl these two images are blended into one picture
in the mind. But a steady view will show that they are on opposite sides
of the card.”
I remember a favourite saying of Whately’s to the effect that the
difficulty of giving a good definition of anything increased in
proportion to the commonness of the thing to be defined. And he would
illustrate his dictum by saying “Define me a teacup!” A trial of the
experiment will probably convince the experimenter of the correctness of
Whately’s proposition.
Whether it may have been that any antagonism between Whately and
Shuttleworth caused the former to be prejudiced against Wiccamical
things and men, or whether the relationship of the two feelings were
_vice versâ_, I cannot say. But I certainly thought and think still,
that I suffered in his estimation from the fact that I was a Wykehamist.
In writing on educational matters in or about 1830 (p. 79 of Miss
Whately’s first volume), Whately says: “To compare schools generally
with colleges generally may seem a vague inquiry, but take the most in
repute of each--Eton, Westminster, Harrow, etc., v. Oriel, Brasenose,
Balliol, Christchurch, etc., etc.” Now, I cannot but feel that so
singular an omission of Winchester from so short a list of the schools
“most in repute,” glaringly in contradiction as it was with all that the
whole English world--even the non-academical world--knew to be the
fact, could have been caused only by preconceived and unreasoning
prejudice. Of course to me the utterance above quoted comes only as a
confirmation of what the personal observation of my undergraduate days
led me to feel, for I knew nothing of it till I read Miss Whately’s
volumes published in 1866.
Yet I do not doubt that I may have occasionally “rubbed Whately the
wrong way,” as the phrase goes. He was, as I have said, a most
autocratically minded man. And we Wykehamists, as the reader may have
perceived from my Winchester reminiscences, were not accustomed to be
ruled autocratically. We lived under the empire, and I might almost say,
in an atmosphere of law, as distinguished from individual will. It was
constantly in our minds and on our tongues, that the “informator” or the
“hostiarius” _could_ or _could not_ do this or that. We lived with the
ever-present consciousness that the _suprema lex_ was not what this
master or the other master, or even the Warden might say, save in so far
as it coincided with the college statutes. And I doubt not that Whately
perceived and understood the influence of this habit of mind in
something or other that I might have said or done. It was probably
something of the sort which led to his telling me that he wanted no New
College manners at Alban Hall.
My “Winchester manners” however, enabled me I remember to understand him
when some of his own flock could not. He would at a Euclid lecture say,
“Take any straight line,” scrawling, as he said the words, a line as far
from straight as he could draw it, to the utter bewilderment of some
among his audience, who, I believe, really thought that the Principal
was a shocking bad draughtsman, while the despised Wykehamist perfectly
understood that his object was to show that the process of reasoning to
be illustrated in no wise depended on accuracy of lines or angles.
There is another passage in one of the letters published by his
biographer, which illustrates Whately’s aversion from all Wiccamical men
and things, and at the same time his utter ignorance of them. “It is
commonly said at Oxford,” he writes, “at least it used to be, that it
was next to impossible to make a Wykehamist believe that any examination
could be harder than that which the candidates for New College undergo.”
My reader has already been told in some degree what that examination
was, and the nature of it. It was a real and serious examination,
whereas that of candidates for admission to Winchester College was a
mere form; and it was certainly a searching examination into the
thoroughness with which schoolboys had done their schoolboy work. But
the supposition that any New College man ever imagined his examination
in election chamber to be of equal difficulty with the subsequent work
at the university, or with that in the schools for honours, is an
absolute proof that the person so supposing never knew anything about
them, or had come much into contact with them.
I have said that Whately’s reputation for a very pronounced Liberalism,
certainly at that time unparalleled among his brother heads of houses at
Oxford, had been my father’s reason for placing me at Alban Hall. And
all that reached the undergraduate world in connection with him was of a
nature to lead the academic mind to regard him as a phenomenon of
Radicalism. And it is curious to recall such impressions, while reading
at the present day such a passage as the following (_Life of Whately_,
vol. i., p. 302). The Archbishop is writing about the schemes then in
agitation for the application of a portion of the revenues of the Irish
Church to the purposes of national education. The italics in the
following transcription are mine.
“It is concluded, first, that in parishes where there is a very small or
no Protestant population, the revenues of the Church will be either
wholly or in part, as the case may be, transferred to the education
board, as the incumbents drop, their life interests being reserved;
secondly, that in the event of an increase of the Protestant population,
such portion of the funds thus alienated, as may be thought requisite,
shall be drawn from the education board, and restored to the original
purpose; thirdly, that in the event of a further diminution of the
Protestants, a further portion shall be withdrawn from the Church, and
applied to the purpose of general education. This last supposition is
merely conjectural, but is so strictly the converse of the preceding,
that every one at once concludes, and must conclude by parity of
reasoning, that it must be contemplated. Now it will not be supposed by
any one, who knows much of the state of Ireland, that we contemplate as
probable any such increase of the Protestant population as to call for
the restoration of a considerable portion of the alienated funds. In a
few places, perhaps, attempts may be made, I fear with disastrous
results, by some zealous Protestant landlords to increase with this view
the proportion of Protestants on their estates; but on the whole we
neither hope nor fear any such result. What alarms us is, the holding
out the principle of such a system as the apportioning the revenues of
the Church and of the education board to the varying proportions of the
Roman Catholic population to the Protestant; and again the principle of
making the funds for national education contingent upon the death of
incumbents. The _natural_ effect of the latter of these provisions must
be to place the clergy so circumstanced in a most invidious, and _in
this country a most dangerous situation. No one who knows anything of
Ireland would like to reside here surrounded by his heirs, on whom his
income was to devolve at his death. And such would be very much the case
with an incumbent, who was regarded as standing between the nation and
the national benefit_, viz., of provision for the education of their
children. _Then in respect of the other point, every Protestant who
might come to settle, or remain settled in any parish, would be regarded
as tending towards the withdrawing or withholding, as the case might be,
of the funds of the national education, and diverting them to the use of
an heretical establishment._
“_The most harassing persecutions, the most ferocious outrages, the most
systematic murders, would in consequence be increased fourfold. Bitter
as religious animosities have hitherto been in this wretched country, it
would be to most persons astonishing that they could be so much
augmented, as I have no doubt they would be, by this fatal experiment.
When instead of mere vague jealousy, revenge and party spirit, to prompt
to crime and violence, there was also held out a distinct pecuniary
national benefit in the extermination of Protestants, it would be in
fact a price set on their heads, and they would be hunted down like
wolves...._ Better, far better, would it be to confiscate at once and
for ever all the endowments held by the clergy, and leave them to be
supported by voluntary contribution, or by manual labour. However
impoverished, _they and their congregations would at least have security
for their lives._”
“_To seek to pacify Ireland_,” he writes a little further on, “_by
compliance and favour shown to its disturbers would be even worse than
the superstitious procedure of our forefathers, with their weapon salve,
who left the wound to itself, and applied their unguents to the sword
which had inflicted it._”
Writing to his friend Senior on Parliamentary Reform he says that a
system of £10 qualification “could not last, but must go on to universal
suffrage.” His own plan would be universal suffrage with a plurality of
votes to owners of property in proportion to the amount of it, and a
system of election by degrees--parishes _e.g._ to elect an elector.
“Some may,” he concludes, “perhaps think at the first glance that my
reform is very democratical. I think that a more attentive mind will
show that it is calculated to prevent in the most effectual way the
inroads of excessive democracy. I can at least say that no one can dread
more than myself a democratical government, chiefly because I am
convinced it is the most warlike.”
Such were the utterances of an advanced Liberal in the first half of
this century. Was I far wrong in saying that Whately’s Liberalism would
have made very good modern Conservatism?
There was a story current, I remember, not long after Whately’s
acceptance of the see of Dublin, which, as I do not think it has been
told in print, and as it is very significant, I may tell here--observing
that all I know is, that the story _was_ current.
It was at the time when one of the great transatlantic passenger ships
had been destroyed by fire with the loss of many lives. One of those
saved was a Dublin clergyman of the Low Church school of divinity, who,
returning to Dublin, and finding himself the hero of many tea-tables,
was wont to moralise down the great event of his life after the fashion
of those who will have it, _quand même_, that the tower of Siloam _did_
fall because of the wickedness of those whom it crushed. And one day, at
one of those _levées_ of which Miss Whately speaks, he was improving his
usual theme, the centre of a knot gathered around him, when the
Archbishop strolled up to the group, according to his fashion, and
having heard, said: “Yes, truly Mr. ----, a most remarkable experience!
But I think I can cap it” (a favourite phrase of Whately’s, who was fond
of the amusement of capping verses). “It is little more than a month ago
that I crossed from Holyhead to Kingston, and by God’s mercy _the vessel
never caught fire at all_!”
I cannot bring to an end my reminiscences relating to so remarkable a
man as Whately without relating a story, which he told me, as having
been told him by his old and highly valued friend and _protégé_, Blanco
White, once so well known a figure among all the Oriel set of that
period. The story was introduced, I remember, as an illustration of a
favourite (and doubtless correct) theory of Whately’s to the effect that
the popular English “hocus pocus,” as applied to any sleight of hand
deception, is simply a derisory corruption of the “_hoc est corpus_”
used in the Romish liturgical formula for the consecration of the
eucharistic elements. It may be that the story in question has been
told in print before now, but I have never met with it.
“A priest,” said Blanco White, “was for some heinous crime condemned to
capital punishment at Seville. But of course before he could be
delivered over to the secular arm for the execution of the sentence, a
ceremonial degradation from his sacerdotal character had to be
performed. And this was to be done at the place appointed for his
execution immediately before that was proceeded to; and for the greater
efficacy of the terrible example to be inculcated on the people, the
market day at Seville had been chosen for the purpose.
“The criminal priest accordingly, as he was led to the place of
execution, was still to all effects and purposes a priest, with all the
tremendous powers inherent in that character, of which nothing save
formal ecclesiastical degradation could deprive him. Now it so happened,
or perhaps was purposely arranged, that the way from the prison to the
place of execution lay through the market place, where all the
provisions of all sorts for the Sevillians for that day were exposed.
And as the yet undegraded, and it must be feared unrepentant, priest
passed among all the various displays of food thus spread out before
him, the devil, seizing an opportunity rarely to be matched, entered
into the unhappy priest’s mind, and prompted him to deal one last
malicious, and sacrilegious, blow at the population about to witness his
miserable end. Suddenly, in the mid-market, he stretched out his arms,
and pronounced with a loud voice the uncancellable sacramental words,
‘HOC EST CORPUS!’ And all the contents of that vast market were
instantaneously transubstantiated! All the food in Seville was forthwith
unavailable for any baser than eucharistic purposes, and Seville had to
observe the vindictive priest’s last day on earth as a very rigorous
fast day!”
Whether Blanco White told this as absolutely having occurred within his
own knowledge, or only as a Seville legend, I do not know, but in any
case the story is a good one.
I have said that when I entered Alban Hall I was not in a position to
obtain much profit from the classical lectures, the main object of which
was to drive those who attended them through the examination for the
“little go.” I was better able to pass that examination when I first
went to Oxford, than when the time came for my doing so. But the
examination in question required that the candidate for passing should
take up either logic or Euclid (four books only, as I remember), and of
neither of these did I know anything. And there the Alban Hall lectures
profited me. The admirably lucid logic lectures of both the Principal
and Vice-Principal to my surprise soon rendered the rationale of the
science perfectly comprehensible to me, and even Aldrich became
interesting. I selected logic for my “little go,” and Whately made me
abundantly able to satisfy the examiners.
But, as I said a few pages back, my membership of Alban Hall was, for
more reasons than those which have been already given, disastrous to me,
and the disaster came about in this wise.
Whately was rightly and judiciously enough very particular in requiring
that his men should return after vacation punctually on the day
appointed for meeting. Now, unfortunately, my father on one occasion
detained me until the following day. What the cause may have been I
entirely forget, but remember perfectly well that it was in no way
connected with any plans or wishes of mine. I returned a day late, and
the penalty which Whately had enacted for this laches was the payment of
a certain sum to his servant, the porter, buttery man, and factotum at
the hall. What the amount of this penalty was, and whether it were large
or small, I have entirely forgotten, if I ever knew, for the whole
matter in dispute passed between my father and Whately. The former
maintained, whether rightly or wrongly I have not the means of knowing,
that the latter acted _ultra vires_ in making any such _motu proprio_
edict. There was no likelihood that Whately would yield in the
matter--indeed it would have been out of the question that he should
have done so. My father had quite as little of yielding in his nature,
and kicked against the pricks determinedly. The result was, that I was
one morning summoned to the presence of the Principal and told to take
my name off the books! My father was at first disposed to forbid me to
do so, but the result of refusal would have been expulsion, which would
have entailed ruinous consequences much worse than the already
sufficiently injurious results of being compelled to quit the hall. I
should immediately have lost the two valuable exhibitions which I held
from Winchester, besides incurring the very damning stigma that through
life attaches to a man who has been expelled. Eventually I took my name
off the books under menace of expulsion if I did not.
The case attracted a good deal of attention in the university at the
time, and I think the general feeling among the heads of colleges was
that Whately was wrong. At all events, without going into the question
as between my father and him, it was emphatically a case of _Delirant
reges, plectuntur Achivi_. From beginning to end the whole matter passed
over my head. I had neither fault nor option in the matter. And Whately
knew perfectly well how very great was the injury he was inflicting on
me. It was nearly impossible to get admission under the circumstances to
any college. The great majority of them could not possibly, even if any
one of them had wished to do so, receive a man at a minute’s notice,
from absolute want of room, and the wrong that would have been done to
others who were waiting for admission. But it would have been entirely
contrary to the rules and practice of almost, if not quite, every one of
them to receive a man compelled to leave another college, even with a
formal _bene decessit_. And the interval of a term (or even of a day, I
take it in strictness) would have necessarily involved the forfeiture of
my exhibitions. All which Whately also knew; but all which, as he might
have fairly answered, my father knew also!
Eventually I was received at Magdalen Hall, which has since that day
become Hertford College, of which Dr. Macbride was then Principal. Dr.
Macbride was one of the kindliest and best men in the world, and he was
one of those who most strongly felt that I was being very hardly used.
It was with difficulty that it could be managed that I should be
received into his society at a day’s notice; but looking to the urgency,
as well as to the other circumstances of the case, it _was_ managed
somehow, and I became a member of Magdalen Hall.
But the mischief done to my university career was fatal! Magdalen Hall
was at that time a general refuge for the destitute! Dr. Macbride, well
known for his active benevolence and beneficence in various spheres of
well-doing on the outside of his academical character, was hardly well
adapted for the position he held in the university. Anything of the
nature of punishment seemed impossible to the gentleness of his
character; and I fancy he held theoretically that it was desirable that
a place such as his hall should exist in the university to serve as a
refuge for those who, without being black sheep, were for a variety of
reasons pushed aside from the beaten tracks of the academical career.
I made very little acquaintance with the men there; but I do not think
there were many, though no doubt some, black sheep among them. There was
another hall in the university at that time famous for the “fastness” of
its inmates. But the “shadiness” of Magdalen Hall was of a different
kind. There were many middle-aged men there--_ci-devant_ officers in the
army, who had quitted their profession with the intention of entering
the Church; schoolmasters, who, having begun their career in some
capacity which did not require a degree, were at a later day anxious to
obtain one in order to better themselves. In general, the object of all
there was not education or any other object save simply a degree needed
for some social or economical purpose. “Honours” were of course about as
much aspired to as bishoprics! And it was the business of Mr. Jacobson,
the gentle, kindly, patient, and long-suffering Vice-Principal to secure
“a pass” for as many of his heterogeneous flock as possible.
Of discipline there could hardly be said to have been any! When other
men of the kick-over-the-traces sort told their stories of various
surreptitious means of entering college at all sorts of hours, Magdalen
Hall men used to say that their plan was to ring at the gate and have it
opened for them! I remember upon one occasion, when I had shown myself
in chapel only on the Sunday morning during an entire week, the
Vice-Principal mildly remarked, “You have reduced it to a minimum, Mr.
Trollope!” I suppose that in classical attainments I was much superior
to any man in the place. There were many, it is true, who were never
seen at lecture at all--not probably from idleness, but because they
were obtaining from a private tutor a course of cramming more
desperately energetic than even kindly, patient Jacobson’s elementary
lectures could supply. For me the _res angusta domi_ forbade all idea of
employing a private tutor. But as for a “pass” degree, I was just as
capable of taking it when I left Winchester (with the exception of
logic, and what was called “divinity”) as when I did take it; and as
regards logic, I was sufficiently capable when I left Whately’s hands.
If my “divinity” examination had consisted of as searching an inquiry
into my knowledge of the contents of the Old Testament as was required
from many men, I should infallibly have been “plucked.” But, as it
chanced, it consisted solely of construing two verses of the New
Testament. I remember that the examiner had been hammering away at the
man next before me for an inordinate time, and as I construed my Greek
Testament glibly enough, he was glad to make up for lost time.
As for Jacobson’s lectures they were absolutely useless to me, and he
never in the slightest degree pressed me to attend them. I remember,
however, that he desired an interview with me on the morning I was to go
into the schools, for the purpose of testing in some degree the
probability of my passing. And it is a singular circumstance
that--Horace having been one of the books I was taking up--he put me
on, as a trial, at the very passage selected for the same purpose by the
examiner in the schools an hour or two later! Jacobson found me able
enough to deal with the passage he selected. But had it been otherwise
he would have secured my passing--as far as Horace was
concerned--despite any amount of ignorance of the author, if only I had
the wit to remember his cramming for an hour or two.
Eventually, though I had in no wise aimed at anything of the sort, a
third class was awarded to me--wholly, as I was given to understand, on
account of my Latin writing. The examiners had given--hardly
judiciously--so stiff a passage from one of the homilies to be
translated into Latin that the majority of the men could not understand
the English; which to a certain extent interfered with their translation
of it into another language. They were “pass men!” With the candidates
for honours it would doubtless have been otherwise. But I _did_
understand it, and I took it into my head to translate it twice--once
into Ciceronian and once into Sallustian Latin. And this was rewarded by
a third class. _Valeat quantum!_
And thus ended my academical career in a comparative failure, the
conclusion of which seemed to have been rather a foregone one. I had no
private tutor, and, with the exception of Whately’s logic lectures, no
college tuition of any value to me at all. And in addition to all this I
was pulled up by the roots and transplanted in the middle of my career.
No doubt I was idle, and might have done better. I read a good deal,
but it was what I chose to read and not what I ought to have read with a
view to the schools. I had no very unacademical pursuits save one. I
used occasionally to hire with a friend a gig with a fast horse, drive
out to Witney, dine there, wait till the up mail came through, and then
run back to Oxford, tormenting the coachman and his team by continually
running by him, letting him pass me, and then _da capo_. But these
escapades were rare.
A great deal more wine, or what was supposed to be such, was drunk at
Oxford in those days than was desirable, or than, as I take it, is the
case now. But I never was much of a wine drinker. I think I have been
drunk twice in my life, but not oftener. Very little credit, however, is
due to me for my moderation, from the fact, which I do not think I ever
met with in the case of any other individual, that the headache which to
most others comes the next morning as the penalty of excess, always used
to come to me, if I at all exceeded, _séance tenante_, and almost
immediately. Nor did wine ever pleasurably raise my spirits, nor did my
palate care for it. To the present day as a simple question of
_gourmandise_ I would rather drink a glass of lemonade than any
champagne that was ever grown--lemonade, by the bye, not such liquid as
goes by that name in this country, but lemonade made with lemons fresh
and fragrant from the tree. Under these circumstances I can make small
claim to any moral virtue for my sobriety.
I used to be a good deal upon the water either alone or accompanied by a
single friend with a pair of sculls. But I was a great walker, and
cultivated in those days, and, indeed, during most of the many years
that have passed since, a considerable turn of speed. In those days
Captain Barclay was called the champion pedestrian of England, and had
walked six miles within the hour. I hear people talk of eight and even
nine miles having been done within the hour. But I absolutely refuse to
believe the statement. I dare say that the ground may have been covered,
but not at a fair _walk_--at what used to be called, and perhaps is
called still, a toe-and-heel walk, _i.e._ a walk in performing which one
foot must touch the ground before the other leaves it. I tried very hard
to match Captain Barclay’s feat, but my utmost endeavours never achieved
more than five miles and three-quarters--I could never do more; and of
course that last quarter of a mile just made all the difference between
a first-rate and a second-rate walker. The five and three-quarters I
have often done on the Abingdon Road, milestone to milestone. And at the
present day I should be happy to walk a match with any gentleman born in
1810.
The longest day’s walk I ever did was forty-seven miles, but I carried a
very heavy knapsack, making, I take it, that distance fully equal to
sixty miles without one. How well I remember walking one fair frosty
morning from Winchester to Alresford, seven miles, before breakfast. I
asked at the inn at which I breakfasted for cold meat. They brought me
an uncut loin of small Southdown mutton, of which I ate the whole. And I
can see now the glance of that waiter’s eye, accusing me, as plainly as
if he had spoken the words, of pocketing his master’s provisions! _Eheu!
fugaces, Posthume, Posthume, labuntur anni_, and I never shall again eat
a loin of mutton at one sitting!--partly though because scientific
breeding has exterminated the good old Southdown mutton.
One other reminiscence occurs to me in connection with the subject of
walking. While I was living with my parents at Harrow, my mother’s
brother, Mr. Henry Milton, was living with his family at Fulham. And one
Sunday morning I walked from Harrow to Fulham before breakfast on a
visit to him. As may be supposed, I was abundantly ready to do ample
justice to the very solid and varied breakfast placed before me, but,
after having done so, was hardly equally ready to accompany my uncle’s
family to Fulham Church to hear the Bishop of London preach. This,
however, it behoved me to do, not without great misgiving as to the
effect that the Bishop’s sermon might have on me after my twelve miles
walk and very copious breakfast--especially as my uncle’s pew was
exactly in front and in the vicinity of the pulpit! So, minded to do my
best under the difficult circumstances, I stood up during the sermon.
All in vain! Nature too peremptorily bade me sleep. I slept, with the
result of executing an uninterrupted series of profound bows to the
preacher, the suddenness and jerky nature of which evidently betokened
the entirety of my agreement with his arguments. I feared the
reproaches, which I doubted not awaited me on my way home. But my uncle
contented himself with saying, “When you go to sleep during a sermon,
Tom, never stand up to do it!”
To sum up the story of my certainly unsuccessful, but not entirely
profitless life at Oxford, I may say that I was not altogether an idle
man, nor ever in any degree a sharer in any of the “faster” phases of
academical life. I was always a reader. But what academical good could
come to a man who was reading _The Diversions of Purley_, or Plot’s
_Oxfordshire_, or Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_, or Brown’s _Vulgar
Errors_, when he ought to have been reading Aristotle’s _Ethics_? Among
other reminiscences of the sort, my diary accuses me, for instance, for
having taken from the library of Magdalen Hall (and read!) a volume
called _Gaffarel’s Curiosities_. I suppose no other living man has read
it! The work contains among other “curiosities,” a chapter “of
incredible nonsense,” as my diary calls it, on the construction and
proper use of Talismans!
Alas, no “honours” were granted for proficiency in such studies!