THE NEW OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE
Changes in the social life of Oxford and Cambridge visible on the
surface since 1860. Social differences between Oxford and Cambridge as
places of residence. General results of the unattached student system
established in 1868. The idea of the University as distinct from the
colleges, socially prominent in earlier days, has acquired new
prominence since. The admission of non-collegiate students.
Vicissitudes in the popularity of the Union as a social club and as a
debating society. Its earlier distinction repeated in later years. The
unattached students' scheme in its practical details and working.
Academic successes of students, especially in Theology. The Extension
Lectures scheme, personal details and general results.
Under the new and quickening influences imported into the second half of
the present century, the changes in the conditions of social life are more
visible at the two great Universities than at the public schools. The
public school boy has been seen hastening to the railway station that he
may catch the train which is to convey him from the place of industry, not
to the old holiday fields, but to a fresh seat of studious exertion. In
like manner, a fair proportion of Oxford and Cambridge graduates now pass
the greater portion of their lives in hurrying to catch trains from their
academic termini to scenes of provincial activity. The commercial
traveller of the old order as Dickens described him was not more
incessantly on the road than the Oxford or Cambridge Extension lecturer.
He, like the movement he represents, is the product of the age that has
given us Bradshaw. Oxford and Cambridge have in fact been brought to the
doors of those who cannot themselves go to Cambridge or Oxford. Nor is the
new element, among those who have taken their degree, the only change that
has been witnessed in the _personnel_ of the place. Enough has been
written about the domestic revolution which has transformed what till the
later sixties, had continued a cloister into a flourishing provincial
centre of family life; about the nursemaids with perambulators in the
parks, the children trundling their hoops along Addison's Walk, or playing
ball under the statelier avenue which fringes the Christ Church meadows.
In reality this feature in the social polity of Oxford, however
interesting or striking, has never marked so visible a contrast to the
preceding epoch as it may have done at Cambridge. The capital on the Isis
has always been a considerable county town. From a time to the contrary of
which memory does not run, Oxford has had extra-academical attractions of
its own for persons without any interest in its studies. It has always
been a hunting, steeplechasing, and generally a sporting centre. Its
neighbourhood is probably more picturesque than that of its sister on the
Cam. Like other midland counties, its environments have never been without
more manor houses and country gentlemen's residences than is the case with
the academic section of East Anglia. As far back, therefore, as the later
fifties certainly, and it may be much further, social Oxford possessed an
existence not less distinct from, or independent of, academic Oxford, than
Windsor, Harrow on the Hill, Rugby, Cheltenham, or Marlborough possess a
social machinery of their own apart from the schools which are a feature
in their respective neighbourhoods.
What will really strike the eye of one revisiting Oxford after a long
interval is less the signs of the latest developments of domestic life
than the appearance of greater youthfulness in the undergraduates. Where
this juvenility is real, and not the illusion of the spectator's own
advancing years, it is largely to be explained by the order of students
new since 1868. Not without much opposition or till after long resistance,
the Oxford statutes in that year relaxed the most exclusive condition
written on their page by the disciplinarian severity of Archbishop Laud. A
return to the mediaeval usage was sanctioned. Once more it became possible,
after a lapse of three centuries, for young men to go to the University
without going to college. The Vice-Chancellor matriculated students
furnished with credentials of respectability, and with enough of learning
to satisfy the masters of the schools. Provided, in other words, they had
a fair prospect of passing Responsions, which do not constitute one of the
public examinations, but mark the survival of the old entrance ordeal
prescribed in the days when the University was everything and the Colleges
comparatively nothing. If he were not legally of age, the formal consent
to his life in lodgings of his parents or guardians was further required
from the non-ascript undergraduate, as well as a general testimonial to
the probability of his deriving educational benefit from his new
opportunities. Littlego might be excused by the delegates in the case of
students not intending to proceed to their degree, but only to study
systematically some special subject. In the place, however, of the
'Smalls' testamur, or its equivalent, the special student was tested
closely as to his aptitudes for the subject of study he professed.
The total yearly cost, all entrance fees included, of the non-collegiate
youth would average between L50 and L60, instead of thrice that sum, not
perhaps an exaggerated estimate, for his collegiate brother. L10 covers
handsomely all the initial outlay. The period of residence required for
the degree is twelve terms. These must be kept in what is called 'full
term' which is rather later than the almanac term, and also in a duly
licensed lodging house. In exceptional cases these conditions may be
dispensed with. In no case will the undergraduate who has no porter's
lodge to pass before he 'knocks in' at night find more liberty than the
intramural student. His landlord or landlady in the town may perhaps
promise not to communicate some irregularity to the authorities. But so
surely as the unattached commits the smallest breach of academic
discipline, sooner or later it will reach the official ear; he will find
himself a marked man.
Men who are now middle aged, or even elderly, looking back to their
college days will recollect that there prevailed an invisible system of
surveillance, and even espionage, much more close and real than it was at
all pleasant in the days of one's youth to admit. That supervision has
now become more subtle, ubiquitous and unavoidable, till at last the
unattached freshman realizes that wherever he may be, he lives and moves
in a whispering gallery, as much as if he were a famous figure, in the
heart of London society and of the London season.
The practical success of this innovation was immediate. It has been
tolerably complete. Within thirty years of its introduction, that is on
the 1st of January 1896, the University books showed the existence of 480
graduate or undergraduate non-collegiates. Of these 245 were at the date
mentioned _in statu pupillari_. The authorities to which these students
are immediately subject are the Vice-Chancellor, the two Proctors, a
Censor who stands in the relation of College tutor to the whole body; two
other tutors associated with him who give advice on all subjects, and
seven delegates, being members of Convocation. The Censor is the head of
the whole unattached system; to him intending students should apply for
all practical information. The teaching available for the University
alumni now mentioned is at least as effective and wide as any of the
colleges can offer.
At the instance of Mr Jowett, a great friend of the scheme, other colleges
than Balliol soon opened their lecture rooms to non-collegiate guests. The
Honour tutors especially allocated to the unattached, include
distinguished Fellows of Balliol, Christ Church, Lincoln, Magdalen,
University College, Wadham and Worcester, as well as famous theologians
from Keble, or a non-collegiate M.A. not less accomplished than the
present Professor of Modern History, Mr York Powell of Christ Church. The
extent to which the young men thus provided for have profited by their
opportunities, may be judged from the following epitome of examinational
statistics. Two first classes in Classical Moderations, 2 also in
Mathematical; 13 seconds in Classical Moderations; 39 third classes in the
same examination; 7 Mathematical thirds in Moderations; these represent
the distinctions gained in the older Honour Schools by the students who as
an institution have not yet completed their third decade. Although thus
far they do not seem to have done very brilliantly in the Philosophy and
History Schools, they have won a first class in Jurisprudence, 2 in Modern
History, 12 in Theology, 3 in Natural Science, one in Oriental Studies, as
well as some dozen places in these studies below the coveted level of
_classis prima_. The Bachelor of Civil Law examination is known to be one
of the hardest on the Isis. In this the unattached may be credited with
one first class, one second, as well as one third and one fourth. During
the period now spoken of, several University prizes have been carried off
by the new comers. Thus a non-collegiate candidate has won the Denyer and
Johnson scholarship in Theology four times, the Pusey and Ellerton
scholarship (Hebrew) the same number, as also the Senior and Junior
Kennicott (also Hebrew). The Davis scholarship in Chinese was for the
fifth time won a few years ago by an unattached, and for the second time
the Taylorian scholarship in Modern Languages. Among older and better
known distinctions open to all comers, the Arnold Historical essay has
been won by an unattached; the Chancellor's English essay, and the
Ellerton essay have been won twice. While it will thus be seen that the
new students have acquitted themselves specially well in Theology, they
have in twenty-four cases gained open scholarships, and in three cases
open Fellowships. The Bowden Sanskrit, the Burdett-Coutts scholarships
also figure among their list of honours. In the Pass schools 310, a
proportion of 72 per cent., have satisfied the examiners. As an instance
of their being on their entrance up to the scholastic level of the average
public school boy, 30 or 40 unattached have elected to pass Responsions
before matriculation and have done so without any difficulty.
The general conduct of the new undergraduates, who, some prophets had
predicted, would demoralize the University by their rowdy example, has
been with scarcely an exception, exemplary. Only one disciplinary case, to
employ the euphemism of the last official report, seems to have occurred.
With the enterprising alacrity which to their own credit, to the good of
their colleges, to the benefit of the whole University, the
representatives of the different societies on the Isis display in
attracting special talent to the foundations in which they are
respectively interested, some absorption of the unattached into the
colleges was inevitable. It has, however, been less than one might have
expected. The average of these migrations does not vary much, and seems to
proceed at the rate of between 20 and 25 per year. Nor, apparently, does
there exist any dissatisfaction among the non-collegiates with their own
position in the City of Colleges. Thus when they migrate to a college, the
attraction is generally found to be the exceptional facilities for
instruction in a special study, _e.g._ Natural Science or History,
afforded by the foundation in question. As, by implication, has been
already stated, Mr J. A. Froude's successor in the Chair of Modern History
was, throughout the greater portion of his career, a non-collegiate.
Together with the present Recorder of Londonderry, Professor York Powell
was one of the first batch of unattached students in 1868. Superior
conveniences for the studies respectively to their taste, rather than
economy, were the motives which sent the future Professor and the future
Irish lawyer, Mr T. G. Overend, to the University and not to college. Mr
Powell took his degree as a member of Christ Church; Judge Overend was
unattached to the last. Both obtained high Honours in the Schools. The
after success of each began directly they left the University. Having been
called to the Irish Bar in 1874, Mr Overend was in 1885 the leader of his
circuit as well as a Queen's Counsel. His health alone caused him to give
up his practice and take a County Court judgeship.
Thus far the unattached graduates in residence never at any given time
seem to have exceeded 50. Their rivalry with the colleges is, therefore,
in point of numbers not very formidable. Nor do they seem appreciably to
have affected the social or intellectual life of the place. Like the great
public schools the two Universities are to the present generation what
they were to its predecessors. Athletic accomplishments have declined as
little as general scholarship. The pastimes, however, are conducted far
more economically than was once the case. Instances of young men being
hampered during their professional struggles by the evil legacy of
University debts have decreased so steadily as to justify the hope of
their ultimate and entire disappearance. Thus the Oxford undergraduate as
Leech used to depict him, or as Thackeray in _Pendennis_ drew the typical
pupil of both Universities; throwing away his father's money at the end of
the term in London in exaggerated tips to hotel waiters and cabmen, is
to-day as much of an anachronism as the Etonian in his teens who has not
learnt that if care is taken of the shillings, the pounds will take care
of themselves. In one particular, though perhaps accidentally, the
non-collegiate undergraduate as an institution has coincided an
interesting modification of the social conditions of Oxford life. Early in
the present century, the conception of an academic as distinct from and
independent of a collegiate polity was more present to the undergraduate
of that epoch than it was to his successors half a century or so later.
This fact is one among the explanations of the popularity of the
University Union Debating Club during the student days of Mr Gladstone as
well as of the comparative disfavour into which it had fallen during the
student days of, for example, Lord Randolph Churchill. There appear,
however, periodically to take place reactions in favour of the nursery
ground of future orators. Mr Asquith, already of Cabinet rank, to whom
probabilities, as well as Lord Rosebery's words, point as a coming leader
of the House of Commons, belonged to a slightly older generation than
Churchill. Before he took his degree in 1863, he had established the same
sort of reputation for himself in the Union as had been won two or three
generations earlier by Mr Gladstone, and as seventeen years afterwards
was to be won in the same arena by Mr G. N. Curzon, in 1897 Foreign Under
Secretary.
During the later sixties, there came into existence, as further
developments of what was practically a collegiate example, social clubs
for undergraduates. These, in effect, though not in theory, were generally
recruited from a few colleges. Such societies have doubtless not lost
their earlier popularity. They have witnessed a fresh access of favour to
the University Union Club. They have perhaps helped themselves to
contribute to it by causing the Union, in the supply of creature comforts,
to compete with the collegiate lounges. A room for the reading of novels
had been regarded as a dangerous innovation at the Union before 1865. It
was not till after that year that a smoking room was sanctioned, or the
refreshments of tea or coffee supplied. That in the future as in the past
the chief work of the Universities will be done through the agency of the
colleges is no doubt not less true than that at Eton, like Harrow, the
tutorial system will co-exist with the most liberal and sweeping
innovations which may be introduced. The colleges depend for their success
on the same conditions as the non-collegiate delegacies. In prosperous
seasons when trade is good and money plenty, there will be few vacant
rooms either inside the college walls or outside in the licensed lodging
houses. When times are bad, the list diminishes. Thus in the October term
of 1896, 621 freshmen entered the colleges as compared with 734 in the
preceding twelvemonths; Christ Church had only increased by 11; Worcester
doubled its numbers; at the same time Magdalen, always a popular college
with the public, had fallen from 53 to 40, Balliol from 49 to 36, Lincoln
from 24 to 17. As for the non-collegiates, there was not only no increase
but an actual diminution; the figures here were less by 11 than in the
preceding twelvemonth.
The great contrast which in comparing it with its normal condition two or
three decades ago would be noticed by the Oxonian who revisits Oxford
to-day is the change from an habitually stationary to a visibly locomotive
population on the part of those who formerly seldom left their college
rooms. Down the chief streets of the towns on the Isis and the Cam
respectively, even at the very height of term time, there is a constant
succession of cabs conveying young men in the prime of life to the railway
termini. These are the fellows and tutors of the different colleges whose
predecessors seldom or never used to leave their University during term,
save when college business took them for a few hours to their lawyers in
Lincoln's Inn, or to the college estate bailiffs and stewards in the
country. Such are not the missions that explain this increase of railway
bound traffic when as yet no vacation is in sight. Those now spoken of as
hurrying off to some provincial spot are well known in their University
and a few hours hence will be warmly welcomed at their provincial
destinations as Extension Lecturers on subjects of popular interest. What
has happened is this. Certain enlightened inhabitants of both sexes in
some district of manufacturing Lancashire or in agricultural Devon have
been struck with the state of ignorance in which their school course has
left many young men and women. At the same time they have noticed
indications of a wish with those of maturer years to make up for early
neglect by later application to branches of study of all kinds. Books
alone have failed to supply the want. Intelligent and profitable reading
is a scientific habit properly to be acquired only by those who have been
drilled into it and who have already some general acquaintance with the
topics treated in the written page.
The County Council, as we have repeatedly seen, discharges already some of
the functions and dispenses some of the funds of an Educational
Department. Very possibly private munificence accompanies if it does not
prompt this corporate enterprise. The next step is to communicate with the
University Extension Lecture agency at whichever University, Oxford,
Cambridge, London, or Victoria, according to the preference displayed.
After the expenses have been guaranteed, the lecturer appears. To enable
his hearers intelligently to grasp his plan of discourse, the discourse
itself is prefaced by the distributions of a synopsis, which is in its way
a work of literary art, whose readers, without any other help than its
perusal may gather something more than a mere foretaste of the ground to
be covered, or of the instruction to be conveyed. Such a syllabus as that
of the Oxford lectures by Mr Shaw or Mr Marriott on different periods of
English or French history, like the Reformation of 1529, the Revolution of
1689, or the age of Louis XIV. at once assists the working men for whom
they were planned, and serves as a model for the taking of notes. Each
lecture of every course of twelve is followed by a class during which the
lecturer is in the Scotch term heckled by his audience. Essays are set,
looked over, and returned to the writers with marginal corrections. At the
end of each course an examination of both sexes is held, and certificates
of merit are granted. The sons and daughters of the local gentry, day
labourers in factory, field, office, or shop figure in nearly equal
numbers among the students, the women being slightly the more numerous,
and acquit themselves equally well in the examinations.
The system has only attained to its present completeness within the last
few years. The idea of it had occurred to Oxford reformers so far back as
1850 when residents and non-residents alike were asking how the
educational machinery on the Isis or the Cam could be made more available
for all classes of their fellow subjects. The Oxford Hebdomadal Board was
addressed on the subject, the names of Lord Ashley, Mr Gladstone, Lord
Sandon being among the signatories.
The great Dr Pusey, whose mind was as truly liberal as his Churchmanship
was high, had been struck recently by the number of great Anglican divines
who were the sons of small tradesmen. It was for Oxford to revive the
example of the ancient monks of Durham, and to devise means for bringing
the University within the reach of the poorest in the land. Another member
of Christ Church whose pointed features, dark complexion, saturnine habit
and rare scholarship will be recalled by many readers of these lines, Mr
Osborne Gordon, joined with Professor Hussey in impressing by almost daily
protests this popular duty on his too exclusive Alma Mater. At this time
religious tests existed in all their historic severity. There was no
matriculation without signing the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Common
Prayer Book, and no degree till after a like process with reference to the
Three Articles of the Thirty-Sixth Canon.
These facts account for the then dominant Liberalism of educated opinion
inside and outside the University. Had tests ceased to exist when they
were abolished in Ireland, as both Canning and Sir Robert Peel at one time
or another had suggested, it is scarcely speculation to say that the
demand which in 1868 brought about the unattached system and, after
another decade or so, the Extension Lecture system, might not have
organized itself with such drastic results. The non-collegiates might have
come into existence while as yet the Great Western Railway approached the
Cherwell no nearer than Didcot. The Extension Lecture machinery was not
less dependent upon the propulsive power of steam than the iron engine of
Stephenson itself. To-day Bradshaw's Guide is as indispensable a part of
the lecturer's equipment as his manuscript notes. Here, as at other points
in our secondary education, more organization and more endowments are
required. There should be more inducements to young and competent
graduates who have the knack of imparting their own knowledge to large or
small classes to take up this work as a career, not as an occasional
auxiliary to other occupations. The Extension centres also need to be
supplemented more largely with local colleges such as that for which
Reading is indebted to Oxford and Exeter to Cambridge.