COLLEGE DAYS.
In 1829 I was entered as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, and went
through the usual course of lectures with fair success. As a family we
have all favoured Oxford rather than Cambridge: my father and two
cousins, Elisha and Carré, were at Exeter College, to take the benefit
of its Sarnian Exhibitions; my brother Daniel was at Brasenose, and my
brother William gained a scholarship of Trinity. When at Christ Church I
wore the same academical gown which my father had,--and have it still; a
curious antiquity in the dress line, now some fourscore years old, and
perfect for wear and appearance,--such as would have rejoiced the Sartor
Resartus of Carlyle. At college I did not do much in the literary line,
unless it is worth mention that translations from the Greek or Latin
poets were always rendered by me in verse not prose, and that I
published anonymously "A Voice from the Cloister," being an earnest
appeal to my fellow-collegians against the youthful excesses so common
in those days.
From this pamphlet I give an extract, as it is scarce; it began with
blank verse and ended with rhyme, all being for the period courageously
moral and religious. The end is as thus:--
"Enough, sad Muse, enough thy downward flight
Has cleft with wearied wing the shades of night:
Be drest in smiles, forget the gloomy past,
And, cygnet-like, sing sweeter at the last,
Strike on the chords of joy a happier strain
And be thyself, thy cheerful self, again.
Hail, goodly company of generous youth,
Hail, nobler sons of Temperance and Truth!
I see attendant Ariels circling there,
Light-hearted Innocence, and Prudence fair,
Sweet Chastity, young Hope, and Reason bright,
And modest Love, in heaven's own hues bedight,
Staid Diligence, and Health, and holy Grace,
And gentle Happiness with smiling face,--
All, all are there; and Sorrow speeds away,
And Melancholy flees the sons of day;
Dull Care is gladden'd with reflected light,
And wounded Sin flies sickening at the sight.
"My friends, whose innate worth the wise man's praise
And the fool's censure equally betrays,
Accept the humble blessing of my Muse,
Nor your assistance to her aim refuse,
She asks not flattery, but let her claim
A kind perusal, and a secret name."
I scarcely like to mention it, as a literary accident, but being a
curious and unique anecdote it shall be stated. I had the honour at
Christ Church of being prizetaker of Dr. Burton's theological essay,
"The Reconciliation of Matthew and John," when Gladstone who had also
contested it, stood second; and when Dr. Burton had me before him to
give me the £25 worth of books, he requested me to allow Mr. Gladstone
to have £5 worth of them, as he was so good a second. Certainly such an
easy concession was one of my earliest literary triumphs.
My first acquaintance with Gladstone, whom I have known from those
college days now for more than five and fifty years, was a memorable
event, and may thus be worthy of mention. It was at that time not a
common thing for undergraduates to go to the communion at Christchurch
Cathedral--that holy celebration being supposed to be for the particular
benefit of Dean and Canons, and Masters of Arts. So when two
undergraduates went out of the chancel together after communion, which
they had both attended, it is small wonder that they addressed each
other genially, in defiance of Oxford etiquette, nor that a friendship
so well begun has continued to this hour. Not that I have always
approved of my friend's politics; multitudes of letters through many
years have passed between us, wherein if I have sometimes ventured to
praise or to blame, I have always been answered both gratefully and
modestly: but I have ever tried to hold the balance equally too,
according to my lights, and if at one time (on occasion of the great
Oxford election, 1864) I published a somewhat famous copy of verses,
ending with
"Orator, statesman, scholar, wit, and sage,
The Crichton,--more, the Gladstone of the age,"
my faithfulness must in after years confess to a well-known palinode
(one of my "Three Hundred Sonnets") commencing
"Beware of mere delusive eloquence,"
and a still more caustic lyric, beginning with
"Glozing tongue whom none can trust,"
and so forth, as a caution against a great man's special gift, so
proverbially dangerous. Some of our most honest Ministers, _e.g._,
Althorpe and Wellington, have been very bad speakers: some of our most
eloquent orators have proved very bad Ministers.
And in this place I may introduce some account, long ago in print, of
the famous Aristotle class under the tutorship of Mr. Biscoe at Christ
Church, wherein (among far nobler and better scholars) your present
confessor took the lowest seat.
Fifty years ago Biscoe's Aristotle class at Christ Church was comprised
almost wholly of men who have since become celebrated, some in a
remarkable degree; and, as we believe that so many names, afterwards
attaining to great distinction, have rarely been associated at one
lecture-board, either at Oxford or elsewhere, it may be allowed to one
who counts himself the least and lowest of the company to pen this brief
note of those old Aristotelians.
Let the central figure be _Gladstone_--ever from youth up the beloved
and admired of many personal intimates (although some may be politically
his opponents). Always the foremost man, warm-hearted, earnest,
hard-working, and religious, he had a following even in his teens; and
it is noticeable that a choice lot of young and keen intelligences of
Eton and Christ Church formed themselves into a small social sort of
club, styled, in compliment to their founder's initials, the "W.E.G."
Next to Gladstone Lord _Lincoln_ used to sit, his first parliamentary
patron at Newark, and through life to death his friend. We all know how
admirably in many offices of State the late Duke of Newcastle served his
country, and what a good and wise Mentor he was to a grateful Telemachus
in America.
_Canning_ may be mentioned thirdly; then a good-looking youth with
classic features and a florid cheek, since gone to "the land of the
departed" after having healed up the wounds of India as her
Governor-General. Next to the writer, one on each side, sat two more
Governors-General _in futuro_, though then both younger sons and
commoners, and now both also gone to their reward elsewhere; these were
_Bruce_, afterwards Lord Elgin, and _Ramsay_, Lord Dalhousie; the one
famous from Canada to China, the other noted for his triumphs in the
Punjaub. When at Toronto in 1851, the writer was welcomed to the
splendid hospitality of Lord Elgin, and the very lecture-room here
depicted was mentioned as "a rare gathering of notables." Lord
_Abercorn_ was of the class, a future viceroy; Lord _Douglas_, lately
Duke of Hamilton, handsome as an Apollo, and who married a Princess of
Baden; and if Lord _Waterford_ was infrequent in his attendance, at
least he was eligible, and should not be omitted as a various sort of
eccentric celebrity. Then _Phillimore_ was there, now our Dean of the
Arches; _Scott_ and _Liddell_, both heads of houses, and even then
conspiring together for their great Dictionary. _Curzon_ too (lately
Lord De la Zouch) was at the table, meditating Armenian and Levantine
travels, and longing in spirit for those Byzantine MSS. preserved at
Parham, where the writer has delighted to inspect them; how nearly
Tischendorf was anticipated in his fortunate find of that earliest
Scripture, no one knows better than Lord Zouch, who must have been close
upon that great and important discovery! _Doyle_, now Professor of
Poetry, _Hill_, of Mathematics, _Vaughan_, of History--all were of this
wonderful class; as also the Earl of _Selkirk_, celebrated as a
mathematician; Bishops _Hamilton_, _Denison_, and _Wordsworth_; and
_Cornewall Lewis_, late Chancellor of the Exchequer; and _Kynaston_,
Head Master of St. Paul's; and a member of Parliament or two, as, for
example, _Leader_, once popular for Westminster.
Now, other names of almost equal eminence may have been here
accidentally omitted, but the writer will not guess at more than he
actually recollects. Sometimes--for the lecture was a famous
one--members of other colleges came in; _Sidney Herbert_, of Oriel, in
particular, is remembered; and if _Robert Lowe_, of University, was only
occasionally seen, it must have been because he seldom went abroad till
twilight.
Altogether "there were giants in those days;" and, without controversy,
a casual class, containing more than a score of such; illustrious names
as are here registered, must be memorable. The lecture-room was next to
Christ Church Hall, where that delicate shaft supports its exquisite
traceried roof; the book was "Aristotle's Rhetoric," illustrated by each
reader with quotations, a record whereof is still _penes me_, and the
lecturer, now no longer living, was that able and accomplished classic,
the Reverend _Robert Biscoe_.
My college days are full of recollections of men, since become famous in
literature, art, science, or position: of these the principal are
already recorded as having been members of the Aristotle class. Let me
add here, that I lived for three weeks of my first term in the gaily
adorned rooms in Peckwater of the wild Lord Waterford; and afterwards in
Lord Ossulston's, both being then absent from college; that Frank
Buckland and his bear occupied (long after I had left) my own chambers
in Fells' Buildings; that I was a class-mate and friend of the luckless
Lord Conyers Osborne, then a comely and ruddy youth with curly hair and
gentle manners, and that I remember how all Oxford was horrified at his
shocking death--he having been back-broken over an arm-chair by the
good-natured but only too athletic Earl of Hillsborough in a wine-party
frolic; that Knighton, early an enthusiast for art, used to draw his own
left hand in divers attitudes with his right every day for weeks; and
that some not quite unknown cotemporary used to personate me at times
for his own benefit. As he has been long dead, I may now state that he
was believed to be Lord Douglas of Hamilton. Here is the true story. One
day the Dean requested my presence, and thus addressed me: "I have long
overlooked it, Mr. Tupper, but this must never occur again: indeed I
have only waited till now, because I knew of your general good conduct."
"What have I done, Mr. Dean: be pleased to tell me."
"Why, sir, the porter states that this is the fifth time you have not
come into college until past twelve o'clock."
"I beg your pardon, Mr. Dean; there is some mistake: for I have never
once been later than ten."
"Then, Mr. Tupper, somebody must have given your name in the dark: and I
request that you will do your best to discover who did this, and report
it to me."
As I failed to do it, after some days, again the Dean sent for me; and
finding after question made that I pretty well guessed the delinquent
but declined to expose him, the Dean kindly added--"This does you
credit, sir," and I left. A few days passed, and I was brought up again
with "I think you are intended for the Church, Mr. Tupper." As well as I
could manage it, I stammered out that it was impossible, as I could not
speak. Then he said he was sorry for that, as he meant to nominate me
for a studentship. This, however, never came to pass, and so the matter
dropped; until Dean Gaisford succeeded Dean Smith, and Joseph lost his
Pharaoh.
At college I lived the quiet life of a reading-man; though I varied
continually the desk and the book with the "constitutional" up
Headington Hill, or the gallop with Mr. Murrell's harriers, or the quick
scull to Iffley, or the more perilous sailing in a boat (no wonder that
Isis claims her annual victims), or the gig to Blenheim or
Newton-Courtnay,--or that only once alarming experience of a tandem when
the leader turned round and looked at me in its nostalgic longing to
return home,--or the geological ramble with Dr. Buckland's class,--or
the botanic searchings for wild rarities with some naturalist pundit
whose name I have forgotten; and so forth. In matters theological, I was
strongly opposed to the Tractarians, especially denouncing Newman and
Pusey for their dishonest "non-naturalness" and Number Ninety: and I
favoured with my approval (_valeat quantum_) Dr. Hampden. I attended Dr.
Kidd's anatomical lectures, and dabbled with some chemical
experiments--which when Knighton and I repeated at his father's house, 9
Hanover Square, the baronet in future blew us up to the astonishment of
the baronet _in præsenti_, his famous father. Also, I was a diligent
student in the Algebraic class of Dr. Short, afterwards the good Bishop
of St. Asaph; and I have before me now a _memoria technica_ of mine in
rhyme giving the nine chief rules of trigonometry, but not easily
producible here as full of "sines and cosines, arcs, chords, tangents,
and radii," though helpful to memory, and humorous at the time, ending
with
"At least I have proved that nothing is worse
Than Trigonometrical Problems in verse:"
there are also similarly to be recorded my mathematical _séances_ with
that worthy and clever Professor, A.P. Saunders, afterwards headmaster
of Charterhouse; and my Hebrew lectures with the mild-spoken Dr. Pusey,
afterwards so notorious; and I know not whatever else is memorable,
unless one condescended to what goes without saying about Hall and
Chapel, and Examinations: however, some frivolous larks in the Waterford
days, wherewith I need not say the present scribe had nothing to do, may
amuse. Here are three I remember; 1. An edict had gone out from the
authorities against hunting in pink,--and next morning the Dean's and
the Canons' doors in quad were found to have been miraculously painted
red in the night. 2. There was a grand party of Dons at the Deanery, and
as they hung their togas in the hall (for they couldn't conveniently
dine in them) there was filched from each proctorial sleeve that
marvellous little triangular survival of a stole which nobody can
explain, and all these collectively were nailed on the Dean's outer door
in a star. 3. A certain garden of small yews and box trees was found one
morning to have been transplanted bodily into Peckwater Quadrangle, as a
matter of mystery and defiance. And there were other like exploits; as
the immersion of that leaden Mercury into its own pond; and town and
gown rows, wherein I remember to have seen the herculean Lord
Hillsborough on one side of High Street, and Peard (afterwards
Garibaldi's Englishman) on the other, clear away the crowd of roughs
with their fists, scattering them like duplicates of the hero of
Corioli.
Of course I duly took my degrees of B.A. and M.A.,--and long after of
D.C.L., when the Cathedral chimes rang for me, as they always do for a
grand compounding Doctor.
A mentionable _curio_ of authorship on that occasion is this: whatever
may be the rule now, in those days the degree of D.C.L. involved a
three-hours' imprisonment in the pulpit of the Bodleian Chapel, for the
candidate to answer therefrom in Latin any theological objectors who
might show themselves for that purpose; as, however, the chapel was
always locked by Dr. Bliss, the registrar, there was never a possibility
to make objection. So my three hours of enforced idleness obliged me to
use pencil and paper, which I happened to have in my pocket,--and I then
and there produced my poem on "The Dead"--to be found at p. 26 of my
Miscellaneous Poems, still extant at Gall & Inglis's--a long one of
eighteen stanzas, much liked by Gladstone amongst others. I didn't
intend it certainly, but, as the poem ends with the word "bliss," it was
ridiculously thought that I had specially alluded to the registrar!