Part 1

# The romance of the Oxford colleges ### By Gribble, Francis Henry

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THE ROMANCE OF THE OXFORD COLLEGES

[Illustration: _Merton College._

_Photo. Hills & Saunders_

_Allen & Co. (London) Ltd. Sc._]

THE ROMANCE OF THE OXFORD COLLEGES

BY FRANCIS GRIBBLE SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF EXETER, AUTHOR OF “GEORGE SAND AND HER LOVERS,” ETC.

WITH SEVENTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

MILLS & BOON, LIMITED 49 WHITCOMB STREET LONDON W.C.

_Published 1910_

PREFACE

This work does not purport to be either a history or a guide book. Of Oxford Guide Books, and of Histories of Oxford, there is already an adequate provision, and there is no dearth of Oxford Reminiscences, or of Studies of Oxford Life and Manners. But there may still be room for a modest volume which, while unscrupulously omitting whatever seems tedious, or of purely local interest, recalls the stories concerning which experience shows the average stranger to be most curious, and answers the questions which the average stranger, when visiting the various colleges, is most apt to ask.

The book, indeed, is the outcome of an experience which revealed the nature, and the limits, of that curiosity. It was lately the privilege of the writer to act as guide to some ladies who were visiting Oxford for the first time, and he made a mental note of the points on which they showed themselves most avid of information. They did not, he found, desire to burden their memories with dates, or to be entertained with lists of the names of the Heads of Colleges and Halls, and they were content to admire the architecture without entering into technical details. On the other hand, stories of human interest—stories introducing well-known names—stories of events in which the history of Oxford came into close touch with the history of England—were constantly and eagerly demanded.

Why was Shelley expelled from University? Why did Dr. Johnson throw the boots out of his window at Pembroke? What is the truth about the Brasenose Hellfire Club, and the ghost? What was the origin of town and gown rows? Is it true that Froude’s book was publicly burnt at Exeter? What was Oxford like at the time of the Civil War? What sort of people were the Tractarians, the Wesleyans, the Æsthetes and the Positivists? Why was Jowett so famous? Why are so many Jesus men called Jones? Which was Gladstone’s college, and which was Lord Randolph Churchill’s? Why do they have boar’s head for dinner on Christmas Day at Queen’s? Is it true that Beau Nash was an Oxford man? Can you tell me any stories about Charles Reade—or Sir Richard Burton—or Southey—or de Quincey—or Pater?

Such were a few of the questions asked. The book answers them, and answers a good many other questions of the same sort. It proceeds on the assumption that every college, at some period of its history, through some notable name on its books, has been profoundly interesting, not only to the University, but to the world, and it dwells on those interesting moments and those interesting incidents as fully as space permits.

FRANCIS GRIBBLE.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 17

Founders and benefactors—Alfred the Great—William of Durham—The Statutes—The conversion of Obadiah Walker—Lord Herbert of Cherbury—Lord Eldon’s examination in Hebrew—The screwing up of the Senior Proctor—Shelley—A “Stinks Man”—His unpopularity with the dons—His “printing freaks”—His friendship with Hogg—His conversation with the Baby—His Religious Opinions—His publication of “The Necessity of Atheism”—His expulsion.

BALLIOL COLLEGE 36

The birching of Robert of Balliol by the Bishop of Durham—He founds a College to make atonement for his fault—Insignificance of the College in early times—Snell Exhibitioners—Adam Smith—His scornful criticism of Oxford—Southey—His introduction to Coleridge of Jesus, Cambridge—Their dream of Pantisocracy—College “Rags” in the dark days—The dawn of civilisation—Mastership of Parsons—Of Jenkyns—Of Jowett—Jowett as tutor—His reforms—His conversation—His sermons—The inscrutable secret which he guarded.

MERTON COLLEGE 55

Antiquity of Merton—The model of subsequent foundations—Friction between the University and the town—The great “town and gown row” of 1354—The scholars of Merton save the University—The wardenship of Sir Henry Savile—The visit of Queen Elizabeth—Oxford during the Civil War—Queen Henrietta Maria at Merton—How Merton ceased to be a reading college—Scandalous proceedings in the gardens—Mandell Creighton and Lord Randolph Churchill.

EXETER COLLEGE 70

The West Country College—A Whig College—“Debauched by a drunken Governor”—Eminent Alumni—“Parson Jack”—His bout at fisticuffs—Garibaldi’s Englishman—His prowess on the river—James Anthony Froude—His innate Protestantism—The burning of his “Nemesis of Faith”—Burne Jones and William Morris.

ORIEL COLLEGE 86

Foundation by Adam de Brome—Butler and his “Analogy”—Causes of the efficiency of Oriel—The “Noetics”—Eveleigh—Coplestone—Whately—The Tractarians—Who started the Tractarian Movement?—What did the Tractarians want?—The logical weakness of their position—The attitude of the bishops—The stampede to Rome—The honest doubters—Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough—Cecil Rhodes at Oriel.

QUEEN’S COLLEGE 106

What little Mr. Bouncer said of Queen’s—The inwardness of his criticism—The boar’s head and the Canticle—Another song on the same subject—The Provost and the alarm of fire—The Black Prince at Queen’s—Wiclif at Queen’s—The first of the Oxford Movements inaugurated by his poor preachers—Later times—Jeremy Bentham—Walter Pater.

NEW COLLEGE 118

William of Wykeham—A self-educated man—His liberality and his elaborate Statutes—The College depressed by too much founder’s kin—“Golden scholars, silver bachelors, and leaden Masters”—Notable New College men—Sydney Smith—Sir Henry Wotton—Canon Spooner and “Spoonerisms”—Stories of Warden Shuttleworth and others.

LINCOLN COLLEGE 129

A small college with many outstanding names—Mr. D. S. Maccoll and his Newdigate—“Shifter” of the _Sporting Times_—A reminiscence of “Shifter”—John Wesley and the Methodists—Wesley’s meeting with Beau Nash of Bath—Mark Pattison—His early connection with the Tractarians—His abandonment of superstition—His great learning—His treatment of undergraduates.

ALL SOULS COLLEGE 145

Peculiarities of the Constitution—A College without undergraduates—Court favourites jobbed into fellowships—Fellowships bought and sold—All Souls Fellows, a link between Oxford and the outside world—Sir William Blackstone—Edward Young—The song of the All Souls Mallard and the scandal connected therewith.

MAGDALEN COLLEGE 153

The College which withstood James II.—President Routh—His great age and eccentricities—Slackness of the College—The careers of Addison—Of Gibbon—Of Charles Reade—Oscar Wilde and the æsthetic movement at Magdalen—Persecution of Wilde and suppression of the movement.

BRASENOSE COLLEGE 171

The eponymous nose—The Hell Fire Club and its ghost—The Phœnix—Dean Hole as the typical Brasenose man—Bishop Heber and his prize poem—His _jeux d’esprit_—The note of satire in his missionary hymns—Richard Heber the greatest bibliophile that the world has ever seen—The author of “Ingoldsby Legends”—Robertson of Brighton—Oxford objections to private initiative in religion—Walter Pater and his philosophy of life.

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE 192

The foundation by Bishop Foxe—Compulsory Greek—Strict discipline in early times—The visitation by the Parliamentary Commissioners—The ejection of the Fellows—Eminent _alumni_—The judicious Hooker and his injudicious marriage—The Duke of Monmouth—General Oglethorpe—Keble, and Arnold of Rugby—An estimate of their work—Celebrities of modern times.

CHRIST CHURCH 209

Cardinal College—The fall of Wolsey—The foundation of Christ Church—Notable scenes—The degradation of Cranmer—The Parliamentary visitation—The eviction of Dean Fell, Mrs. Fell, and all the little Fellses—Famous Deans of Christ Church—John Fell—“I do not like you, Dr. Fell”—Aldrich—Atterbury—Cyril Jackson—Gaisford—Eminent undergraduates—Sir Robert Peel’s practical joke—Gladstone and Martin Farquhar Tupper.

TRINITY COLLEGE 226

Founded with the spoils of monasteries—The sympathy of Queen Elizabeth—President Kettell—His objection to long hair—His trouble with the Court ladies during the Civil War—Dr. Johnson’s love of the College—The expulsion of Walter Savage Landor—Newman in his evangelical days—The gentleman adventurers—Richard Burton’s revolt against discipline.

SAINT JOHN’S COLLEGE 241

Founded by Sir Thomas White—Raised to fame by Archbishop Laud—Calvinistic opposition to Laud—He triumphs over it and makes Oxford a High Church University—His disciplinarian regulations—His magnificent entertainment of royalty—The entertainment of Admiral Tromp—He gets drunk and is taken home in a wheelbarrow—Dean Mansel—His pugnacious Bampton Lectures and his excruciating puns.

JESUS COLLEGE 255

Statistics concerning the Joneses of Jesus—A Welsh enclave—Rarity of great names at Jesus—Henry Vaughan the “Silurist”—Sir Lewis Morris—Beau Nash—John Richard Green.

WADHAM COLLEGE 267

Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham—A miscellaneous list of Wadham men—The story of the great Wadham “Rag”—Wadham Evangelicalism—Stories of Warden Symons—The Wadham Positivists—“Three persons and no God”—Richard Congreve—Comte, Clotilde de Vaux, and the Positivist schism—The last Oxford Movement—Canon Barnett and Toynbee Hall.

PEMBROKE COLLEGE 278

Broadgates Hall—Its illustrious and fashionable _alumni_—The Hall becomes Pembroke College—Dr. Johnson at Pembroke—He rags the servitors and argues with the dons—His “spirited refusal of an eleemosynary supply of shoes”—He shows Hannah More over the College—George Whitefield at Pembroke—His relations with the Methodists and his religious excitability.

WORCESTER COLLEGE 289

Early history of the buildings—Gloucester College—A College for Benedictines—Its dissolution—Becomes the Bishop’s palace—Gloucester Hall—Endowment of Worcester College—Remote situation of Worcester—Stories bearing thereupon—Notable Worcester men—Samuel Foote—Thomas de Quincey—Henry Kingsley—F. W. Newman—Dean Burgon—Burgon’s famous Newdigate.

HERTFORD COLLEGE 303

Hart Hall—The principalship of Dr. Richard Newton—Hart Hall becomes Hertford College—Decline, fall, and dissolution of the College—The buildings purchased for Magdalen Hall—Magdalen Hall once more transformed into Hertford College—Famous men at Hertford and Magdalen Hall—Charles James Fox—George Selwyn—Robert Stephen Hawker.

KEBLE COLLEGE 316

“Keble College, near Rome”—A memorial of the author of the “Christian Year”—The ideals of the College—How far they have been realised—Diversified results of the experiment—The Bishop of London and Mr. Herbert Trench.

EPILOGUE 321

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MERTON COLLEGE _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE 17

BALLIOL COLLEGE 36

EXETER COLLEGE: FELLOWS’ GARDEN 70

ORIEL COLLEGE 86

QUEEN’S COLLEGE CHAPEL 106

NEW COLLEGE CLOISTERS AND TOWER 118

REREDOS, ALL SOULS CHAPEL 145

MAGDALEN COLLEGE 153

BRASENOSE KNOCKER 171

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE 192

TOM QUAD AND TOWER, CHRIST CHURCH 209

TRINITY COLLEGE 226

ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE 241

WADHAM COLLEGE 267

WORCESTER COLLEGE 289

KEBLE COLLEGE 316

_All the above are from photographs by Messrs. Hills & Saunders, Oxford._

The Romance of the Oxford Colleges

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

Founders and benefactors—Alfred the Great—William of Durham—The Statutes—The conversion of Obadiah Walker—Lord Herbert of Cherbury—Lord Eldon’s examination in Hebrew—The screwing up of the Senior Proctor—Shelley—A “Stinks Man”—His unpopularity with the dons—His “printing freaks”—His friendship with Hogg—His conversation with the baby—His religious opinions—His publication of “The Necessity of Atheism”—His expulsion.

It has often been asserted, but it has never been proved, that University College was founded by Alfred the Great.

The principal evidence for the statement consists of a deed which is known to have been forged and a quotation in Camden’s “Britannia” from an alleged manuscript which cannot be found and probably never existed. On the strength of that testimony the Court of King’s Bench ruled, in 1726, that Alfred was the founder; but the judgment seems to have been based upon sentiment rather than evidence. “Religion,” it was argued by the Fellows, “would receive a great scandal” if the Court decided that “a succession of clergymen” had, for many generations, made the mistake of thanking the wrong benefactor for their endowments. The Court was moved by the plea and gave official sanction to the legend; but history, as distinguished from legend, recognises the founder in William of Durham, who, dying in 1249, bequeathed 310 marks to the University for the benefit of Masters of Arts studying theology. A house was built for the students to live in in 1253, and statutes for the governance of the community were first drawn up in 1280.

[Illustration: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE.

[To face p. 17.]

Fifty shillings a year was the stipend of a student in those days, and the bursar received a further five shillings a year for keeping the College accounts. As rooms could then be rented for 6s. 8d. a year, however, their condition was less penurious than the figures might seem to indicate. It was provided that they should converse in Latin and comport themselves “as becomes holy persons,” not interrupting one another’s studies by “noise or clamour,” and resisting the temptations of such light literature as “Ballads or Fables about Lovers”—with a good deal more, on the same severe disciplinary lines, which one need not trouble to recite.

The College, as Mr. Wells[1] states, “has been famous in the history of Oxford rather for the careers of its sons than for any movements of which it has been the centre”; and he might have added that the most notable movement of which it has been the centre was a movement for the expulsion of the most illustrious of its sons.

[1] “Oxford and its Colleges.” By J. Wells (Methuen).

Other interesting things, no doubt, have happened there. It was at University that the junior members of the college resented the conversion of their Master to Roman Catholicism by chanting, outside his door, the impertinent refrain:

“Old Obadiah Sang Ave Maria, But so would not I—a. If you ask me for why—a, I’d as soon be a fool as a knave—a”—

a course of conduct which must have been very annoying to Obadiah Walker, and very compromising to his dignity, if persisted in for long.

It was to University, again, that Lord Herbert of Cherbury brought a bride in his second year of residence; “and now,” he writes in his Autobiography, “I followed my book more close than ever.” But this

## particular stimulus to diligence in study is one with which modern

undergraduates must, as a rule, dispense.

University, furthermore, was the scene of Lord Eldon’s memorable examination in Hebrew. “What is the Hebrew for ‘the place of a skull’”? the examiner asked him. “Golgotha,” he answered, and they let him through, without even troubling him to translate “_Eloi, eloi, lama sabacthani_” into English.

At University, to continue, the Senior Proctor—the “_Big_ Shaver” as men called him to distinguish him from his brother, the Bishop of Liverpool, who is of smaller stature—awoke one morning, some thirty years ago, to find himself “screwed up.” He cut a noble figure as he descended by a ladder into the High, amid the encouraging cheers of the populace; and the authors of the outrage were not discovered until after the Master—the late Dean Bradley, of Westminster—had sent the whole College down.

Every one of these stories has its merits, and some of them would be worth relating at greater length if space allowed; but they all seem trivial and local when set side by side with the story of the expulsion of Shelley.

Shelley is not the only poet of whom the College boasts. Father Faber, who believed too much to please his College, was, curiously enough, of the same household as Shelley, who believed too little. So was Sir Edwin Arnold, who is said to have found spiritual balm in Buddhism, and so is Mr. Saint John Lucas, whose conformity to the golden mean in matters of faith may perhaps be inferred from the fact that he was lately awarded a prize for a poem on a sacred subject. But Shelley was, of course, by far the greatest of the four, as well as the only one of them who set the dons deliberately at defiance.

His defiance of the dons, indeed, assumed more forms than one, and the publication of his notorious pamphlet, “The Necessity of Atheism,” was, as it were, a last straw breaking the back of a patience which had long been too severely tried. So, at all events, says Mr. Ridley, who was a junior Fellow at the time, and so also says a Miss Grant, who happened to be then on a visit to the Master.

“There were few, if any,” says Mr. Ridley, “who were not afraid of Shelley’s strange and fantastic pranks.”

“The ringleader,” says Miss Grant, “in every species of mischief within our grave walls was Mr. Shelley. He was very insubordinate, always breaking some rule, the breaking of which, he knew, could not be overlooked.... He was slovenly in his dress. When spoken to about these and other irregularities, he was in the habit of making such extraordinary gestures, expressive of humility under reproof, as to overset, first the gravity, and then the temper, of the lecturing tutor.”

The dons would have been more than human if they had liked an undergraduate who received their admonitions in that style, and they would have been in advance of their times if they had been conciliated by Shelley’s predilections for scientific study. His science was of the crude, experimental sort which has caused its devotees to be stigmatised as “Stinks Men.” He charged the knob of his door with electricity for the confusion of those who tried to open it, and he demonstrated his knowledge of chemistry by spilling a corrosive acid on the carpet of a tutor who reprimanded him. Naturally, therefore, authority was disposed to seize the first handle that he might give, and the first handle given was the perverse pamphlet above referred to.

* * * * *

The pamphlet was not, of course, Shelley’s maiden literary effort. While still at Eton, he had written a “penny dreadful,” and found a publisher willing to give him £40 for it; and he had cherished the naïve hope of achieving fame at a bound by the simple device of bribing the reviewers. Of the staff of the _British Review_ in particular he had written that they were “venal villains” who might be relied upon, if well “pouched,” to lavish the praise which he desired; and he seems to have thought that £10, judiciously distributed, would suffice to corrupt the whole of Fleet Street.

Moreover, his literary ambitions were smiled upon by a blameless and unsuspecting father. Mr. Timothy Shelley, M.P., when he brought his son to Oxford, took him to the shop of Messrs. Munday and Slatter, booksellers, in the High Street, and introduced him to one of the partners.

“My boy here,” he said, pointing proudly to the long-haired, wild-eyed youth—“my boy here has a literary turn. He is already an author, and do pray indulge him in his printing freaks.”

Only a few months later, in that very shop—— But we must not anticipate, but must first present Mr. Thomas Jefferson Hogg, also an undergraduate of University.

* * * * *

Hogg was Shelley’s most intimate friend—and, indeed, practically his only friend—at Oxford, and his “Life of Shelley” is our principal authority for the incidents of Shelley’s Oxford career. Trelawny speaks of him as a hard-headed man of the world who looked upon literature with contempt, and he may have given that impression in later life, when he was a Revising Barrister and a Municipal Corporation Commissioner, whatever that may have been. Even then, however, he said that he regarded the Greek language as “a prime necessary of life,” and in 1810 he would have been remarked, not only as an ebullient but also as a romantic and chivalrous young man.

He and Shelley made each other’s acquaintance by sitting next to each other in hall, though Hogg assures us that “such familiarity was unusual”—an interesting precedent for the alleged rule that one Oxford man must not presume even to rescue another from drowning unless he has been introduced to him. They fell into conversation on the comparative value of German and Italian literature, and, after hall, they continued the discussion in Hogg’s rooms, and sat up nearly all night over it. On the following afternoon they met, by appointment, in Shelley’s rooms—the typical rooms of a prehistoric “Stinks Man,” furnished with “an electrical machine, an air-pump, a galvanic trough, a solar microscope, and large glass jars and receivers,” and pervaded with “an unpleasant and penetrating effluvium”; and after that they were inseparable.

Their Oxford, it must be remembered, was the early Oxford in which no games were played. There was no “tubbing” in those days, and no practising at the nets. Unless men haunted the prize ring and the rat pit, their one way of amusing themselves was to walk and talk, and no sporting “shop” could cast its monotonous shadow over their conversation. The question whether the college was more likely to bump or to be bumped did not arise, and no man burdened his brain with tables of “records” or “averages.” The talk was about literature, about philosophy, and, sometimes, about religion; and daring young thinkers hammered out for themselves a good many subjects in which they were not called upon to be examined.

Shelley, as we have seen, began with literature, but he soon got on to philosophy. In particular he was fascinated by the Platonic doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul—the doctrine popularised in Wordsworth’s famous “Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”; and he proceeded, as one would expect a chemist to do, to try, as it were, to test the doctrine by experiment.

He snatched a baby, so Hogg tells us, out of its mother’s arms, on Magdalen Bridge, and while the mother clung desperately to its swaddling clothes, in an agony of terror lest it should be dropped into the Cherwell, he gravely questioned her.

“Can your baby tell us anything about pre-existence, madam?” he asked, in a piercing voice and with a wistful look.

“He cannot speak, sir,” answered the mother stolidly.

“Surely he can speak if he will,” Shelley insisted, “for he is only a few weeks old. He cannot have entirely forgotten the use of speech in so short a time.”

But the mother was as firm as the poet.

“It is not for me to argue with college gentlemen,” she rejoined, “but babies of that age never do speak as far as _I_ know”; and with that she begged that her infant might be returned to her before harm befell it, and so the incident terminated.

* * * * *

The bearing of the baby story on the subject before us is only indirect, but there is a reason for telling it. It shows in what spirit Shelley, as an undergraduate, approached the profoundest problems of philosophy, and there is no reason to suppose that the spirit in which he approached the profoundest problems of religion was widely different. Just as he had got a “rise” out of the Oxford matron, so he proposed to get a “rise” out of the Oxford dons; and the dons being clergymen, atheism was the obvious card to play. A profession of atheism might fairly be expected to affect clergymen as a red rag affects a bull.

That he was not actually an atheist at this time is as nearly demonstrable as anything can ever be. The evidence is in his own letters—not in one letter only, but in several.

“It is impossible,” he wrote, “not to believe in the Soul of the Universe, the intelligent, and necessarily beneficent, actuating principle.”

“Can we suppose,” he asked in another letter, “that our nature itself could be without cause—‘First Cause’—a God?”

In these expressions, as they were not written for publication, we may presume that we see the real Shelley. But, on the other hand—

1. Shelley, though not an atheist, fell short of the contemporary standards of orthodoxy. He had been reading Hume, and felt that the current answers to Hume were insufficient.

2. Shelley had been conducting a philosophical correspondence with his cousin, Harriet Grove. The correspondence had been broken off because his philosophical opinions were unsatisfactory; and he was embittered, being in love with his cousin, and regarded himself as a persecuted martyr.

3. The temptation to exaggerate, and so “pull the legs” of grave and reverend seniors, was irresistible.