dinner-party. After dinner, I drew my chair towards him, and said, "Mr.
Dean, I have always wished to have an opportunity of thanking you for a
sermon which you preached at St. Barnabas', Oxford, at the Dedication
Festival, 1872." The Dean smiled, with the graceful pleasure of an old
man honoured by a younger one, and said, "Yes? What was the text?" "The
text I have long forgotten, but I remember the subject." "And what was
that?" "It was the insecurity of even the best-founded hopes." "Rather a
well-worn theme," said the Dean, with a half-smile. "But not, sir," I
said, "as you handled it. You told us, at the end of the sermon, that
you remembered a summer afternoon when you were an undergraduate at
Christ Church, and were sitting over your Thucydides close to your
window, grappling with a long and complicated passage which was to be
the subject of next morning's lecture; and that, glancing for a moment
from your book, you saw the two most brilliant young Christ Church men
of the day going down to bathe in the Isis. You described the gifts and
graces of the pair, who, between them, seemed to combine all that was
best and most beautiful in body and mind and soul. And then you told us
how, as your friends disappeared towards Christ Church Meadows, you
returned to your work; and only were roused from it two hours later,
when a confused noise of grief and terror in the quadrangle below
attracted your attention, and you saw the dead bodies of Gaisford and
Phillimore borne past your window from their 'watery bier' at Sandford
Lasher."
On Advent Sunday, December 1, I saw and heard Dr. Pusey for the first
time. He was then in broken health; but he gathered all his physical and
mental energies for a great sermon on "The Responsibility of Intellect
in Matters of Faith." The theme of this sermon was that Intellect is a
great trust confided to us by God; that we are responsible to Him for
the use of it; and that we must exercise it in submission to His
revealed Will. What He has declared, that it is our duty to believe. Our
Lord Himself had uttered the most solemn warning against wilful
unbelief; the Athanasian Creed only re-echoed His awful words; and the
storm which assailed the Creed was really directed against the revealed
Truth of God. "This tornado will, I trust, by God's mercy, soon pass; it
is a matter of life and death. To remove those words of warning, or the
Creed because it contains them, would be emphatically to teach our
people that it is _not_ necessary to salvation to believe faithfully the
Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, or in One God as He has made
Himself known to us."
Immediately after delivering himself of this great apology for the
Faith, Pusey went abroad for the benefit of his health, and did not
return to Oxford till the Summer Term. I well remember the crowd of
ancient disciples, who had missed their accustomed interview at
Christmas, thronging his door in Christ Church, like the impotent folk
at the Pool of Bethesda.
Another reminiscence, and of a very different kind, belongs to my first
Term. Dean Stanley had been nominated as Select Preacher, and the
old-fashioned High Churchmen made common cause with the Low Churchmen to
oppose his appointment. There was a prodigious clamour, but Dr. Pusey
held aloof from the agitation, believing--and in this he was
conspicuously right--that "opposition would only aggravate the evil by
enlisting the enthusiasm of the young." The vote was taken, in an
unusually crowded Convocation, on the 11th of December. It was a
noteworthy and rather an amusing scene, and was well described by an
eyewitness.[14] "Oxford was fairly startled from the serenity which
usually marks the fag-end of the Michaelmas Term by a sudden irruption
of the outer world. Recognitions took place at every street-corner. The
hotels were put upon their mettle. The porters' lodges of the Colleges
were besieged, and Boffin's Refreshment Rooms ran over with hungry
parsons from the country. As an evidence of the interest which the
question of Dean Stanley's appointment excited beyond the walls of the
University, I may mention that even the guards and porters at the
railway hallooed to each other to know "the state of the betting"; but
even they did not seem quite to have calculated on the matter being so
warmly taken up in London and by the country at large." At half-past one
o'clock the bell of St. Mary's gave notice to the combatants to prepare
for the fray, and immediately the floor of the Theatre was sprinkled
with representative men of all the schools. The non-residents appeared
in gowns of various degrees of rustiness, some with chimney-pot hats and
some with wide-awakes. The early comers conversed in small groups,
hugging instinctively those sides of the building on which were written
respectively _Placet_ or _Non-Placet_, giving thereby an inkling of how
they meant to vote. The gathering increased every moment, and soon the
Doctors in their scarlet began to dot the seats around the
Vice-Chancellor's chair. Prince Leopold, by right of his royalty,
entered the sacred enclosure with Dr. Acland, and afterwards took his
seat among the Doctors. Before two o'clock every inch of the floor was
full, the occupants standing in anticipation of the coming encounter.
"Still they gravitated towards their respective voting-doors, and on the
_Placet_ side one descried the scholarly face of Professor Jowett, the
sharply-cut features of the Rev. Mark Pattison, and the well-known
physiognomy of Professor Max Müller. On the opposite side Mr. Burgon was
marshalling his forces, and Dean Goulburn, from the Doctors' benches,
looked out over the seething mass of M.A.'s below him." At two o'clock
the Vice-Chancellor arrived, and forthwith commenced proceedings in
Latin, which must have been extremely edifying to the ladies who, in
large numbers, occupied the Strangers' Gallery, backed by a narrow
fringe of Undergraduates. The object of the Convocation was stated as
being the appointment of Select Preachers, and the names were then
submitted to the Doctors and Masters for approval. "_Placetne igitur
vobis huic nomini assentire?_" being the form in which the question was
proposed.
The name first on the list was that of the Rev. Harvey Goodwin; and a
faint buzz in the assembly was interpreted by the Vice-Chancellor,
skilled in such sounds, as an expression of approval. Thereupon he
passed on to name number two, which, with some agitation, but with
clear, resonant voice, he read out as "Arthurus Penrhyn Stanley."
Immediately there ensued a scene of the wildest confusion. On the
_Placet_ side, cheers and waving of trencher-caps; on the _Non-Placet_
side feeble hisses; and from all sides, undergraduate as well as
graduate, mingled shouts of _Placet_ and _Non_, with an accompaniment of
cheers and hisses; until the ringing voice of Dean Liddell pronounced
the magic words _Fiat scrutinium_. Thereupon the two Proctors proceeded
first of all to take the votes of the Doctors on their benches; and,
when this was done, they took their station at the doors labelled
_Placet_ and _Non-placet_. During the process of polling we had an
opportunity of criticizing the constituents of that truly exceptional
gathering. It was certainly not true to say, as some said, that only the
younger Masters voted for Dean Stanley. There was quite a fair
proportion of white and bald heads on the _Placet_ side. "The country
contingent was not so numerous as one had expected, and I do not believe
that all of these went out at the _Non-placet_ door. Evidently, parties
were pretty evenly balanced; and, when the _Non-placets_ had all
recorded their votes there were about twenty-five left on Dean Stanley's
side, which probably would have nearly represented the actual majority,
but, at the last moment, some stragglers, who had only arrived in Oxford
by 2.25 train hurried in, and so swelled the numbers. One late-comer
arrived without his academicals, and some zealous supporter of the Dean
had to denude himself, and pass his cap and gown outside to enable this
gentleman to vote." Soon it was over. The Proctors presented their lists
to the Vice-Chancellor, who, amid breathless silence, pronounced the
fateful words--"_Majori parti placet._" Then there was indeed a cheer,
which rang through the building from basement to upper gallery, and was
taken up outside in a way that reminded one of the trial of the Seven
Bishops. The hisses, if there were any, were fairly drowned. Oxford had
given its approval to Dean Stanley, the numbers being--_Placet_, 349;
_Non-placet_, 287.
When the fuss was over, Liddon wrote thus to a friend:--"It was a
discreditable nomination; but, having been made, ought, in the interests
of the Faith, to have been allowed to pass _sub silentio_; for, if
opposed, it must either be defeated or affirmed by Convocation--a
choice, _me judice_, of nearly balanced evils. To have defeated it would
have been to invest Stanley with the cheap honours of a petty martyrdom.
To have affirmed it is, I fear, to have given a new impetus to the
barren, unspiritual negations which he represents."
I went up to Oxford well supplied with introductions. Dr. Cradock, the
well-beloved Principal of Brasenose, scholar, gentleman, man of the
world, devout Wordsworthian, enthusiastic lover of cricket and boating,
had married a connexion of my own, who had been a Maid of Honour in
Queen Victoria's first household. Theirs was the most hospitable house
in Oxford, and a portrait of Mrs. Cradock, not quite kind, but very
lifelike, enlivens the serious pages of _Robert Elsmere_. Dr.,
afterwards Sir Henry, Acland, with his majestic presence, blandly
paternal address, and ample rhetoric, was not only the Regius Professor
of Medicine, but also the true and patient friend of many undergraduate
generations. Mrs. Acland is commemorated in what I have always thought
one of the grandest sermons in the English language--Liddon's "Worth of
Faith in a Life to Come."[15] The Warden of Keble and Mrs. Talbot (then
the young wife of the young Head of a very young College) were, as they
have been for 40 years, the kindest and most constant of friends. Dr.
Bright, Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History,
was a lavish entertainer, "with an intense dramatic skill in telling a
story, an almost biblical knowledge of all the pages of Dickens (and of
Scott), with shouts of glee, and outpourings of play and fancy and
allusion." But I need not elaborate the portrait, for everyone ought to
know Dr. Holland's "Personal Studies" by heart. Edwin Palmer, Professor
of Latin, was reputed to be the best scholar in Oxford, and Mrs. Palmer
was a most genial hostess. Henry Smith, Professor of Geometry, was, I
suppose, the most accomplished man of his time;[16] yet he lives, not by
his performances in the unthinkable sphere of metaphysical mathematics,
but by his intervention at Gladstone's last contest for the University.
Those were the days of open voting, and Smith was watching the votes in
Gladstone's interest. Professor ----, who never could manage his h's,
wished to vote for the Tory candidates, Sir William Heathcote and Mr.
Gathorne Hardy, but lost his head, and said:--"I vote for Glad----."
Then, suddenly correcting himself, exclaimed, "I mean for 'Eathcote and
'Ardy." Thereupon Smith said, "I claim that vote for Gladstone." "But,"
said the Vice-Chancellor, "the voter did not finish your candidate's
name." "That is true," said Smith, "but then he did not even begin the
other two." Henry Smith kept house with an admirable and accomplished
sister--the first woman, I believe, to be elected to a School Board,
and certainly the only one to whom J. W. Burgon (afterwards Dean of
Chichester) devoted a whole sermon. "Miss Smith's Sermon," with its
whimsical protest against feminine activities, was a standing joke in
those distant days. The Rev. H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Magdalen, used to
entertain us sumptuously in his most beautiful College. He was a
connecting link between Dr. Routh (1755-1854) and modern Oxford, and in
his rooms I was introduced to the ablest man of my generation--a
newly-elected Scholar of Balliol called Alfred Milner.
It is anticipating, but only by a Term or two (for Dr. King came to
Christ Church in 1873), to speak of Sunday luncheons at the house of the
Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology, and of Dr. Liddon's
characteristic allusion to a remarkably bloated-looking Bishop of Oxford
in balloon sleeves and a wig, whose portrait adorned the Professor's
house. "How singular, dear friend, to reflect that _that person_ should
have been chosen, in the providential order, to connect Mr. Keble with
the Apostles!"
But though the lines seem to have fallen unto me in ritualistic places,
I was not without Evangelical advantages. Canon Linton, Rector of St.
Peter-le-Bailey, was a dear old gentleman, who used to entertain
undergraduates at breakfasts and luncheons, and after the meal, when
more secularly-minded hosts might have suggested pipes, would lead us to
a side-table, where a selection of theological works was displayed, and
bid us take our choice. "Kay on the Psalms" was a possession thus
acquired, and has been used by me from that time to this. Nor must this
retrospective page omit some further reference to J. W. Burgon, Fellow
of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin. Dean Church called him "the
dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate," and certainly his method of
conducting controversy savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop Monk)
of the apostolic occupation of trafficking in fish. But to those whom he
liked, and who looked up to him (for this was an essential condition),
he was kind, hospitable, courteous, and even playful. His humour, which
was of a crabbed kind quite peculiar to himself, found its best vent in
his sermons. I often wondered whether he realized that the extreme
grotesqueness of his preaching was the spell which drew undergraduates
to the Sunday evening service at St. Mary's.
For my next reminiscence of hospitality to Freshmen I must rely on the
assistance of a pseudonym. At the time of which I am writing, Oxford
numbered among her Professors one who had graduated, at a rather
advanced age, from Magdalen Hall. Borrowing a name from Dickens, we will
call him "Professor Dingo, of European reputation." To the kindness of
Professor and Mrs. Dingo I was commended by a friend who lived near my
home in Bedfordshire, and soon after my arrival in Oxford they asked me
to Sunday luncheon at their villa in The Parks. The conversation turned
on a new book of Limericks (or "Nonsense Rhymes," as we called them
then) about the various Colleges. The Professor had not seen it, and
wanted to know if it was amusing. In my virginal innocence I replied
that one rhyme had amused me. "Let's have it," quoth the Professor, so
off I went at score--
"There once was at Magdalen Hall
A Man who knew nothing at all;
When he took his degree
He was past fifty-three--
Which is youngish for Magdalen Hall."
The Professor snarled like an angry dog, and said, witheringly, that, if
_that_ was a specimen, the book must be sorry stuff indeed. After
luncheon I walked away with another undergraduate, rather senior to
myself, who said rejoicingly, "You've made a good start. That rhyme is
meant to describe old Dingo."
FOOTNOTES:
[13] "The Life of Faith and the Athanasian Creed." University Sermons.
Series II.
[14] The Rev. C. M. Davies, D.D.
[15] University Sermons. Series II.
[16] "He had gained University honours, such as have been gained by no
one now living, and will probably never be won again.... He was one of
the greatest mathematical geniuses of the century. His chief and highest
intellectual interests lay in an unknown world into which not more than
two or three persons could follow. In that world he travelled
alone."--_From a Memorial Sermon by B. Jowett._
V
OXONIANA
"Mind'st thou the bells? What a place it was for bells, lad!
Spires as sharp as thrushes' bills to pierce the sky with song.
How it shook the heart of one, the swaying and the swinging,
How it set the blood a-tramp and all the brains a-singing,
Aye, and what a world of thought the calmer chimes came bringing,
Telling praises every hour
To His majesty and power,
Telling prayers with punctual service, summers, centuries, how long?
The beads upon our rosary of immemorial song."
_The Minstrelsy of Isis_.
Oxford is a subject from which one cannot easily tear oneself: so I make
no apology for returning to it. In that delightful book, "The Minstrelsy
of Isis," I have found an anonymous poem beginning
"Royal heart, loyal heart, comrade that I loved,"
and, in the spirit of that line, I dedicate this chapter to the friend
whom I always regarded as the Ideal Undergraduate.[17] Other names and
other faces of contemporaries and companions come crowding upon the
memory, but it is better, on all accounts, to leave them unspecified. I
lived quite as much in other colleges as in my own, and in a fellowship
which was gathered from all sorts and sections of undergraduate life.
Let the reader imagine all the best and brightest men in the University
between 1872 and 1876, and he will not go far wrong in assuming that my
friends were among them.
My Oxford life was cut sharply into two halves by a very definite
dividing-line; the first half was cheerful and irresponsible enough. A
large part of the cheerfulness was connected with the Church, and my
earliest friendships (after those which I brought with me from Harrow)
were formed in the circle which frequented St. Barnabas. I am thankful
to remember that my eyes were even then open to see the moral beauty and
goodness all around me, and I had a splendid dream of blending it all
into one. In my second term I founded an "Oxford University Church
Society," designed to unite religious undergraduates of all shades of
Churchmanship for common worship and interchange of views. We formed
ourselves on what we heard of a similar Society at Cambridge; and, early
in the Summer Term of 1873, a youth of ruddy countenance and graceful
address--now Canon Mason and Master of Pembroke--came over from
Cambridge, and told us how to set to work. The effort was indeed
well-meant. It was blessed by Churchmen as dissimilar as Bishop
Mackarness, Edwin Palmer, Burgon, Scott Holland, Illingworth, Ottley,
Lacey, Gore, and Jayne, now Bishop of Chester; but it was not
long-lived. Very soon the "Victorian Persecution," as we used to call
it, engineered by Archbishop Tait through the P.W.R. Act, made it
difficult for ritualists to feel that they had part or lot with those
who were imprisoning conscientious clergymen; so the O.U.C.S. fell to
pieces and disappeared, to be revived after long years and under more
peaceable conditions, by the present Archbishop of York, when Vicar of
St. Mary's.
The accession of Dr. King to the Pastoral Professorship brought a new
element of social delight into the ecclesiastical world of Oxford, and
that was just what was wanted. We revered our leaders, but saw little of
them. Dr. Pusey was buried in Christ Church; and though there were some
who fraudulently professed to be students of Hebrew, in order that they
might see him (and sketch him) at his lectures, most of us only heard
him in the pulpit of St. Mary's. It was rather fun to take ritualistic
ladies, who had fashioned mental pictures of the great Tractarian, to
Evensong in Christ Church, and to watch their dismay as that very
unascetic figure, with tumbled surplice and hood awry, toddled to his
stall. "Dear me! Is that Dr. Pusey? Somehow I had fancied quite a
different-looking man." Liddon was now a Canon of St. Paul's, and his
home was at Amen Court; so, when residing at Oxford, he lived a sort of
hermit-life in his rooms in Christ Church, and did not hold much
communication with undergraduates. I have lively recollections of eating
a kind of plum duff on Fridays at the Mission-House of Cowley, while one
of the Fathers read passages from Tertullian on the remarriage of
widows; but this, though edifying, was scarcely social.
But the arrival of "Canon King," with the admirable mother who kept
house for him, was like a sunrise. All those notions of austerity and
stiffness and gloom which had somehow clung about Tractarianism were
dispelled at once by his fun and sympathy and social tact. Under his
roof, undergraduates always felt happy and at home; and in his "Bethel,"
as he called it, a kind of disused greenhouse in his garden, he
gathered week by week a band of undergraduate hearers, to whom religion
spoke, through his lips, with her most searching yet most persuasive
accent.
Lovers of _Friendship's Garland_ will remember that, during their three
years at Oxford, Lord Lumpington and Esau Hittall were "so much occupied
with Bullingdon and hunting that there was no great opportunity for
those mental gymnastics which train and brace the mind for future
acquisition." My ways of wasting time were less strenuous than theirs;
and my desultory reading, and desultory Church-work, were supplemented
by a good deal of desultory riding. I have some delicious memories of
autumnal canters over Shotover and Boar's Hill, and racing gallops
across Port Meadow, and long ambles on summer afternoons, through the
meadows by the river-side, towards Radley and Nuneham. Having been
brought up in the country, and having ridden ever since I was promoted
from panniers, I looked upon riding as a commonplace accomplishment,
much on a par with swimming and skating. Great, therefore, was my
surprise to find that many undergraduates, I suppose town-bred, regarded
horsemanship not merely as a rare and difficult art, but also as
implying a kind of moral distinction. When riding men met me riding, I
saw that they "looked at each other with a wild surmise;" and soon,
perhaps as a consequence, I was elected to "Vincent's." When, after a
term or two, my father suggested that I had better have my own horse
sent from home, I was distinctly conscious of a social elevation.
Henceforward I might, if I would, associate with "Bloods"; but those
whom they would have contemned as "Ritualistic Smugs" were more
interesting companions.
The mention of "Vincent's" reminds me of the Union, to which also I
belonged, though I was a sparing and infrequent participator in its
debates. I disliked debating for debating's sake; and, though I have
always loved speaking on Religion or Politics or any other subject in
which the spoken word might influence practice, it has always seemed to
me a waste of effort to argue for abstract propositions. If by speaking
I can lead a man to give a vote on the right side, or a boy to be more
dutiful to his mother, or a sin-burdened youth to "open his grief," I am
ready to speak all night; but the debates of the Oxford Union on the
Falck Laws and the Imperial Titles Bill always left me cold.
The General Election of 1874 occurred during my second year at Oxford.
The City of Oxford was contested by Harcourt, Cardwell, and the local
brewer. Harcourt and Cardwell were returned; but immediately afterwards
Cardwell was raised to the peerage, and a bye-election ensued. I can
vividly recall the gratification which I felt when the Liberal
candidate--J. D. Lewis--warmly pressed my hand, and, looking at my
rosette, hoped that he might count on my vote and interest. Not for the
world would I have revealed the damning fact that I was a voteless
undergraduate.