curious story. He was canvassing the Borough of Woodstock on behalf of
George Brodrick, then an academic Liberal of the deepest dye. Woodstock
was what was called an "Agricultural Borough"--practically a division of
the County--and in an outlying district, in a solitary cottage, the
canvassers found an old man whom his neighbours reported to be a
Radical. He did not disclaim the title, but no inducements could induce
him to go to the poll. Gradually, under persistent cross-examination, he
revealed his mind. He was old enough to remember the days before the
Reform Bill of 1832. His father had been an ardent reformer. Everyone
believed that, if only the Bill were passed, hunger and poverty and
misery would be abolished, and the poor would come by their own. He
said--and this was the curious point--that firearms were stored in his
father's cottage, to be used in a popular rising if the Bill were
rejected by the Lords. Well, the Lords had submitted, and the Bill had
been passed; and we had got our reform--and no one was any better off.
The poor were still poor, and there was misery and oppression, and the
great people had it all their own way. He had got his roof over his
head, and "a bit of meat in his pot," and it was no good hoping for
anything more, and he was never going to take any part in politics
again. It was a notable echo from the voices which, in 1832, had
proclaimed the arrival of the Millennium.
Oxford in those days was full of Celebrities. Whenever one's friends
came "up" to pay one a visit, one was pretty certain to be able, in a
casual stroll up the High or round Magdalen Walks or Christ Church
Meadows, to point out someone of whom they had heard before. I have
already spoken of Liddell and Pusey and Liddon and Acland and Burgon
and Henry Smith. Chief perhaps among our celebrities was Ruskin, who had
lately been made Slade Professor of Fine Art, and whose Inaugural
Lecture was incessantly on the lips of such undergraduates as cared for
glorious declamation.
"There is a destiny now possible to us--the highest ever set before a
nation to be accepted or refused. We are still undegenerate in race; a
race mingled of the best northern blood. We are not yet dissolute in
temper, but still have the firmness to govern, and the grace to obey. We
have been taught a religion of pure mercy, which we must either now
finally betray, or learn to defend by fulfilling. And we are rich in an
inheritance of honour, bequeathed to us through a thousand years of
noble history, which it should be our daily thirst to increase with
splendid avarice, so that Englishmen, if it be a sin to covet honour,
should be the most offending souls alive.... Will you, youths of
England, make your country again a royal throne of kings; a sceptred
isle, for all the world a source of light, a centre of peace; mistress
of Learning and of the Arts; faithful guardian of time-tried principles,
under temptation from fond experiments and licentious desires; and,
amidst the cruel and clamorous jealousies of the nations, worshipped in
her strange valour, of goodwill towards men? _Vexilla regis prodeunt._
Yes, but of which King? There are two oriflammes; which shall we plant
on the farthest islands--the one that floats in heavenly fire, or that
hangs heavy with foul tissue of terrestrial gold?"
Ruskin's lectures, ostensibly devoted to the Fine Arts, ranged over
every topic in earth and heaven, and were attended by the largest, most
representative, and most responsive audiences which had ever been
gathered in Oxford since Matthew Arnold delivered his Farewell Lecture
on "Culture and its Enemies."
Another of our Professors--J. E. Thorold Rogers--though perhaps scarcely
a celebrity, was well known outside Oxford, partly because he was the
first person to relinquish the clerical character under the Act of 1870,
partly because of his really learned labours in history and economics,
and partly because of his Rabelaisian humour. He was fond of writing
sarcastic epigrams, and of reciting them to his friends, and this habit
produced a characteristic retort from Jowett. Rogers had only an
imperfect sympathy with the historians of the new school, and thus
derided the mutual admiration of Green and Freeman--
"Where, ladling butter from a large tureen,
See blustering Freeman butter blundering Green."
To which Jowett replied, in his quavering treble, "That's a false
antithesis, Rogers. It's quite possible to bluster and blunder, too!"
The mention of Oxford historians reminds me of my friend Professor
Dingo, to whom reference has been made in an earlier chapter. He had a
strong admiration for the virile and masterful character of Henry VIII.,
and was wont to conceal the blots on his hero's career by this pathetic
paraphrase--"The later years of this excellent monarch's reign were
clouded by _much domestic unhappiness_."
Jowett has been mentioned more than once, and there is no need for me to
describe him. Lord Beaconsfield, in _Endymion_, gave a snapshot of "a
certain Dr. Comeley, an Oxford Don of the new school, who were
initiating Lord Montfort in all the mysteries of Neology. This
celebrated divine, who, in a sweet silky voice, quoted Socrates instead
of St. Paul, was opposed to all symbols and formulas as essentially
unphilosophical." Mr. Mallock, in the _New Republic_, supplied us with
a more finished portrait of "Dr. Jenkinson," and parodied his style of
preaching with a perfection which irritated the Master of Balliol out of
his habitual calm. My own intercourse with Jowett was not intimate, but
I once dined with him on an occasion which made an equally deep
impression on two of the guests--Lord Milner and myself. When the ladies
had left the dining-room, an eminent diplomatist began an extremely
full-flavoured conversation, which would have been unpleasant anywhere,
and, in the presence of the diplomatist's son, a lad of sixteen, was
disgusting. For a few minutes the Master endured it, though with visible
annoyance; and then, suddenly addressing the offender at the other end
of the table, said, in a birdlike chirp, "Sir ----." "Yes, Master."
"Shall we continue this conversation in the drawing-room?" No rebuke was
ever more neatly administered.
Jowett's name reminds me, rather obliquely, of the Rev. H. O. Coxe, who
in my time was Bodleian Librarian. He was clergyman, sportsman, scholar,
all in one, with an infectious enthusiasm for the treasures in his
charge, and the most unfailing kindness and patience in exhibiting them.
"Those who have enjoyed the real privilege of hearing Mr. Coxe discuss
points of historical detail, or have been introduced by him to some of
the rarer treasures of the Bodleian, will bear witness to the living
interest which such subjects acquired in his hands. How he would kindle
while he recited Lord Clarendon's written resignation of the
Chancellorship of the University! With what dramatic zest he read out
the scraps of paper (carefully preserved by Clarendon) which used to
pass between himself and his Royal Master across the Council-table!"
I quote this life-like description from Burgon's _Twelve Good Men_, and
Burgon it is who supplies the link with Jowett. "It was shortly after
the publication of _Essays and Reviews_ that Jowett, meeting Coxe,
enquired:--"Have you read my essay?" "No, my dear Jowett. We are good
friends now; but I know that, if I were to read that essay, I should
have to cut you. So I haven't read it, and I don't mean to.""--A
commendable way of escape from theological controversy.
It is scarcely fair to reckon Cardinal Manning among Oxford celebrities;
but during my undergraduateship he made two incursions into the
University, which were attended by some quaint consequences. In 1873 he
was a guest at the banquet held in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of
the foundation of the Union; and it was noted with amusement that,
though he was not then a Cardinal, but merely a schismatic Archbishop,
he contrived to take precedence of the Bishop of Oxford in his own
cathedral city. Bishop Wilberforce had died three months before, and I
remember that all the old stagers said:--"If Sam had still been Bishop
of Oxford, this would not have happened." The Roman Catholics of Oxford
were of course delighted; and when, soon afterwards, Manning returned as
Cardinal to open the Roman Catholic Church in St. Giles's, great efforts
were made to bring all undergraduates who showed any Rome-ward
proclivities within the sphere of his influence. To one rather bumptious
youth he said:--"And what are you going to do with your life?" "I'm
thinking of taking Orders." "Take care you get them, my friend."
Another, quite unmoved by the pectoral cross and crimson soutane, asked
artlessly, "What was your college?" The Cardinal replied, with some
dignity, "I was at Balliol, and subsequently at Merton." "Oh! that was
like me. I was at Exeter, and I was sent down to a Hall for not getting
through Smalls." "_I was a Fellow of Merton._" No powers of type can do
justice to the intonation.
At the time of which I speak Oxford was particularly rich in delightful
and accomplished ladies. I have already paid my tribute to Mrs. Cradock,
Mrs. Liddell, Mrs. Acland, Mrs. Talbot, and Miss Eleanor Smith. Miss
Felicia Skene was at once a devoted servant of the poor and the outcast,
and also one of the most powerful writers of her time, although she
contrived almost entirely to escape observation. Let anyone who thinks
that I rate her powers too highly read "The Divine Master," "La
Roquette--1871," and "Hidden Depths."
No account of the famous women at Oxford would be complete without a
reference to Miss Marion Hughes--the first Sister of Mercy in the Church
of England--professed on Trinity Sunday, 1841, and still the
Foundress-Mother of the Convent of the Holy and Undivided Trinity at
Oxford.
* * * * *
I said at the beginning of this chapter that my Oxford life was divided
sharply into two halves. Neither the climate nor the way of living ever
suited my health. In my first term I fell into the doctor's hands, and
never escaped from them so long as I was an undergraduate. I well
remember the decisive counsel of the first doctor whom I consulted (not
Dr. Acland). "What wine do you drink?" "None--only beer." "Oh! that's
all nonsense. You never will be able to live in this climate unless you
drink port, and plenty of it."
To this generous prescription I dutifully submitted, but even port was
powerless to keep me well at Oxford. I always felt "seedy"; and the
nervous worry inseparable from a time of spiritual storm and stress (for
four of my most intimate friends seceded to Rome) told upon me more than
I knew. An accidental chill brought things to a climax, and during the
Christmas vacation of 1874 I was laid low by a sharp attack of
_myelitis_, mistaken at the time for rheumatic fever. I heard the last
stroke of midnight, December 31, in a paroxysm of pain which, for years
after, I never could recall without feeling sick. I lost two terms
through illness, and the doctors were against my returning to the damps
of Oxford. However, I managed to hobble back on two sticks, maimed for
life, and with all dreams of academical distinction at an end. But what
was more important was that my whole scheme of life was dissipated.
Henceforward it was with me, as with Robert Elsmere after his malaria
at Cannes--"It was clear to himself and everybody else that he must do
what he could, and not what he would, in the Christian vineyard." The
words have always made me smile; but the reality was no smiling matter.
The remainder of my life at Oxford was of necessity lived at half-speed;
and in this place I must commemorate, with a gratitude which the lapse
of years has never chilled, the extraordinary kindness and tenderness
with which my undergraduate friends tended and nursed me in that time of
crippledom.[18] Prince Leopold, then an undergraduate of Christ Church,
and living at Wykeham House in The Parks, used to lend me his
pony-carriage, which, as it strictly belonged to the Queen, and bore her
crown and cypher, did not pay toll; and, with an undergraduate friend at
my side, I used to snatch a fearful joy from driving at full tilt
through turnpike gates, and mystifying the toll-keeper by saying that
the Queen's carriages paid no toll. For the short remainder of my time
at Oxford I was cut off from riding and all active exercise, and was not
able even to go out in bad weather. It was with me as with Captain
Harville in _Persuasion_--"His lameness prevented him from taking much
exercise; but a mind of usefulness and ingenuity seemed to furnish him
with constant employment within."
* * * * *
Here I must close my recollections of Oxford, and, as I look back upon
those four years--1872-1876--I find my thoughts best expressed by Sir
Arthur Quiller-Couch, who has done for Oxford in his _Alma Mater_ just
what Matthew Arnold did in the preface to _Essays in Criticism_....
"Know you her secret none can utter?
Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?
Still on the spire the pigeons flutter;
Still by the gateway flits the gown;
Still on the street, from corbel and gutter,
Faces of stone look down.
* * * * *
Still on her spire the pigeons hover;
Still by her gateway haunts the gown;
Ah, but her secret? You, young lover,
Drumming her old ones forth from town,
Know you the secret none discover?
Tell it--when _you_ go down."
_Know you the secret none discover_--none, that is, while they still are
undergraduates?
Well, I think I do; and, to begin with a negative, it is not the secret
of Nirvana. There are misguided critics abroad in the land who seem to
assume that life lived easily in a beautiful place, amid a society which
includes all knowledge in its comprehensive survey, and far remote from
the human tragedy of poverty and toil and pain, must necessarily be
calm. And so, as regards the actual work and warfare of mankind, it may
be. The bitter cry of starving Poplar does not very readily penetrate to
the well-spread tables of Halls and Common-rooms. In a laburnum-clad
villa in The Parks we can afford to reason very temperately about life
in cities where five families camp in one room. But, when we leave
actualities, and come to the region of thought and opinion, all the pent
energy of Oxford seethes and stirs. The Hebrew word for "Prophet" comes,
I believe, from a root which signifies to bubble like water on the
flame; and it is just in this fervency of thought and feeling that
Oxford is Prophetic. It is the tradition that in one year of the
storm-tossed 'forties the subject for the Newdigate Prize Poem was
Cromwell, whereas the subject for the corresponding poem at Cambridge
was Plato. In that selection Oxford was true to herself. For a century
at least (even if we leave out of sight her earlier convulsions) she
has been the battle-field of contending sects. Her air has resounded
with party-cries, and the dead bodies of the controversially slain lie
thick in her streets. All the opposing forces of Church and State, of
theology and politics, of philosophy and science, of literary and social
and economic theory, have contended for mastery in the place which
Matthew Arnold, with fine irony, described as "so unruffled by the
fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!" Every succeeding
generation of Oxford men has borne its part in these ever recurring
strifes. To hold aloof from them would have been poltroonery.
Passionately convinced (at twenty) that we had sworn ourselves for life
to each cause which we espoused, we have pleaded and planned and
denounced and persuaded; have struck the shrewdest blows which our
strength could compass, and devised the most dangerous pitfalls for our
opponents' feet which wit could suggest. Nothing came of it all, and
nothing could come, except the ruin of our appointed studies and the
resulting dislocation of all subsequent life. But we were obeying the
irresistible impulse of the time and the place in which our lot was
cast, and we were ready to risk our all upon the venture.
But now all that passion, genuine enough while it lasted, lies far back
in the past, and we learn the secret which we never discovered while as
yet Oxford held us in the thick of the fight. We thought then that we
were the most desperate partisans; we asked no quarter, and gave none;
pushed our argumentative victories to their uttermost consequences, and
made short work of a fallen foe. But, when all the old battle-cries have
died out of our ears, gentler voices begin to make themselves heard. All
at once we realize that a great part of our old contentions was only
sound and fury and self-deception, and that, though the causes for which
we strove may have been absolutely right, our opponents were not
necessarily villains. In a word, we have learnt the Secret of Oxford.
All the time that we were fighting and fuming, the higher and subtler
influences of the place were moulding us, unconscious though we were, to
a more gracious ideal. We had really learnt to distinguish between
intellectual error and moral obliquity. We could differ from another on
every point of the political and theological compass, and yet in our
hearts acknowledge him to be the best of all good fellows. Without
surrendering a single conviction, we came to see the virtue of so
stating our beliefs as to persuade and propitiate, instead of offending
and alienating. We had attained to that temper which, in the sphere of
thought and opinion, is analogous to the crowning virtue of Christian
charity.
"Tell it--when _you_ go down."
Not long ago I was addressing a company of Oxford undergraduates, all
keenly alive to the interests and controversies of the present hour, all
devotedly loyal to the tradition of Oxford as each understood it, and
all with their eyes eagerly fixed on "the wistful limit of the world."
With such an audience it was inevitable to insist on the graces and
benedictions which Oxford can confer, and to dwell on Mr. Gladstone's
dogma that to call a man a "typically Oxford man" is to bestow the
highest possible praise.
But this was not all. Something more remained to be said. It was for a
speaker whose undergraduateship lay thirty years behind to state as
plainly as he could his own deepest obligation to the place which had
decided the course and complexion of his life. Wherever philosophical
insight is combined with literary genius and personal charm, one says
instinctively, "That man is, or ought to be, an Oxford man." Chiefest
among the great names which Oxford ought to claim but cannot is the name
of Edmund Burke; and the "Secret" on which we have been discoursing
seems to be conveyed with luminous precision in his description of the
ideal character:--"It is our business ... to bring the dispositions that
are lovely in private life into the service and conduct of the
commonwealth; so to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen; to
cultivate friendships and to incur enmities; to have both strong, but
both selected--in the one to be placable, in the other immovable."
Whoso has attained to that ideal has learnt the "Secret" of Oxford.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] The Rev. J. M. Lester.
[18] Here I must depart from my rule, and mention a name--FitzRoy
Stewart.
VI
HOME
"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."
WORDSWORTH, "_To a Sky-lark_."
I said good-bye to Oxford on the 17th of June, 1876. What was the next
step to be? As so often in my life, the decision came through a doctor's
lips. He spoke in a figure, and this is what he said. "When a man has
had a severe illness, he has taken a large sum out of his capital.
Unless he has the wisdom to replace it, he must be permanently poorer;
and, when the original stock was not large, the necessity of economizing
becomes more urgent. You are in that case. My advice, therefore, is--Do
nothing for the next two or three years. Concentrate all your efforts on
getting better. Live as healthy a life as you can, and give mind and
body a complete rest. If you will obey this counsel, you will find that
you have replaced the capital, or, at any rate, some of it; and you may,
in spite of all disabilities, be able to take your part in the life and
work of the world." The prescription of total abstinence from effort
exactly suited my disposition of the moment. Oxford, one way and
another, had taken more out of me than till then I had realized, and I
was only too thankful to have an opportunity of making good the loss.
It being, for the time, my prime object to recover some portion of
health and strength, I was beyond measure fortunate in the possession of
an absolutely ideal home. "'Home! Sweet Home!' Yes. That is the song
that goes straight to the heart of every English man and woman. For
forty years we never asked Madame Adelina Patti to sing anything else.
The unhappy, decadent, Latin races have not even a word in their
language by which to express it, poor things! Home is the secret of our
honest, British, Protestant virtues. It is the only nursery of our
Anglo-Saxon citizenship. Back to it our far-flung children turn, with
all their memories aflame. They may lapse into rough ways, but they keep
something sound at the core so long as they are faithful to the old
home. There is still a tenderness in the voice, and tears are in their
eyes, as they speak together of the days that can never die out of
their lives, when they were at home in the old familiar places, with
father and mother, in the healthy gladness of their childhood."[19] To
me home was all this and even more; for not only had it been my earthly
Paradise when I was a child, but now, in opening manhood, it was a
sanctuary and a resting-place, in which I could prepare myself to face
whatever lot the future might have in store for me.
That London as well as country may be, under certain conditions, Home, I
am well aware. For many natures London has an attractiveness which is
all its own. And yet to indulge one's taste for it may be a grave
dereliction of duty. The State is built upon the Home, and as a
training-place for social virtue, there can surely be no comparison
between a home in the country and a home in London. All those educating
influences which count for so much in the true home are infinitely
weaker in the town than in the country. In a London home there is
nothing to fascinate the eye. The contemplation of the mews and the
chimney-pots through the back-windows of the nursery will not elevate
even the most impressible child. There is no mystery, no dreamland, no
Enchanted Palace, no Bluebeard's Chamber, in a stucco mansion built by
Cubitt, or a palace of terra-cotta on the Cadogan estate. There can be
no traditions of the past, no inspiring memories of virtuous ancestry,
in a house which your father bought five years ago and of which the
previous owners are not known to you even by name. "The Square" or "The
Gardens" are sorry substitutes for the Park and the Pleasure-grounds,
the Common and the Downs. Crossing-sweepers are a deserving folk, but
you cannot cultivate those intimate relations with them which bind you
to the lodge-keeper at home, or to the old women in the almshouses, or
to the septuagenarian waggoner who has driven your father's team ever
since he was ten years old. Holy Trinity, Sloane Street, or All Saints,
Margaret Street, may be beautifully ornate, and the congregation what
Lord Beaconsfield called "sparkling and modish"; but they can never have
the romantic charm of the Village Church where you were confirmed side
by side with the keeper's son, or proposed to the Vicar's daughter when
you were wreathing holly round the lectern. There is a magic in the
memory of a country home with which no urban associations can compete.
Nowadays the world is perpetually on the move, but in the old days
people who possessed a country house passed nine months out of the
twelve under its sacred roof--sacred because it was inseparably
connected with memories of ancestry and parentage and early association;
with marriage and children, and pure enjoyment and active benevolence
and neighbourly goodwill. In a word, the country house was Home, and for
those who dwelt in it the interests of life were very much bound up in
the Park and the covers, the croquet-ground and the cricket-ground, the
kennel, the stable, and the garden. I remember, when I was an
undergraduate, lionizing some Yorkshire damsels on their first visit to
Oxford, then in the "high midsummer pomps" of its beauty. But all they
said was, in the pensive tone of unwilling exiles, "How beautifully the
sun must be shining on the South Walk at home!"
The Village Church was a great centre of domestic affection. All the
family had been christened in it. The eldest sister had been married in
it. Generations of ancestry mouldered under the chancel-floor. Christmas
decorations were an occasion of much innocent merriment, and a little
ditty high in favour in Tractarian homes warned the decorators to be--
"Unselfish--looking not to see
Proofs of their own dexterity;
But quite contented that 'I' should
Forgotten be in brotherhood."