Part 17

It had had, indeed, a distinguished past. Among the great men who took their degrees, at a much earlier age than fifty-three, from Magdalen Hall were included Jonathan Swift, William Waller, the poet, Sir Matthew Hale, the distinguished judge, and Thomas Hobbes, the illustrious philosopher. But that is ancient—or at all events it is not modern—history. Towards the end of the eighteenth century Halls went out of fashion. They ceased to attract in virtue either of the luxury of the life or of the laxity of the discipline. Men of rank came to prefer Christ Church. Men of brains were attracted to the Colleges by the scholarships and exhibitions. The Halls tended more and more to become the refuges of the intellectually destitute—establishments whose chief claim on the loyalty and gratitude of their members was that they allowed them to remain in residence as long as they liked, whether they succeeded in passing their examinations or not. Their position, therefore, became precarious; and the question of either merging them in colleges or transforming them into colleges gradually arose. Thanks to the munificence of Mr. T. C. Baring, M.P., who provided an ample endowment, Magdalen Hall was transformed into Hertford College, and so entered upon a new lease of life in 1874.

Such is the story; and it only remains to glance at a select few of the distinguished names which illustrate it. Two of them have been already mentioned—George Selwyn and Charles James Fox. A third—the Principal’s private pupil—was Henry Pelham, the future Prime Minister.

* * * * *

These three young men were young men of pretty much the same sort. If they had been contemporaries they would doubtless have been found in the same set. For a picture of the kind of life they lived—a typical picture of the life of fellow-commoners of the period—we may turn to the record of the first Lord Malmesbury, who was up at the same time as Fox, though not at the same college, being, in fact, a Merton man.

“The men,” Lord Malmesbury says, “with whom I lived were very pleasant, but very idle, fellows. Our life was an imitation of high life in London. Luckily drinking was not the fashion; but what we did drink was claret, and we had our regular round of evening card-parties, to the great annoyance of our finances. It has often been a matter of surprise to me how so many of us made our way so well in the world and so creditably.”

No doubt the description is faithful enough in a general way—no statement which connects Fox with cards or with claret is incredible; but, as a matter of fact, nearly all our detailed information points to him as having been considerably less idle than his associates. In later life, as we know, when a friend remarked to him that it would be agreeable to lie on the grass with a book, he replied that it would be still more agreeable to lie on the grass without a book; but, in his Oxford days, his indolence was so coloured by curiosity as to be hardly recognisable as such.

There is a story to the effect that he once took a “memorable leap” from an upper window into the street in order to play his part in a town and gown row; but that story rests upon doubtful evidence. His letters, and those of his correspondents, show him to have read hard enough—especially in mathematics, which, strange as it may seem, he found “entertaining”—to make both his father and his tutor anxious. The former removed him, and took him abroad; the latter urged him not to trouble about mathematics until his return.

“As to trigonometry,” he wrote, “it is a matter of entire indifference to the other geometricians of the college whether they proceed to the other branches of mathematics immediately, or wait a term or two longer. You need not, therefore, interrupt your amusements by severe studies, for it is wholly unnecessary to take a step onwards without you, and there we shall stop until we have the pleasure of your company.”

And Fox’s own letters from Oxford indicate that he did indeed regard the University, not as a haunt of dissipation, but as a seat of learning.

“I did not,” he says, “expect my life here could be so pleasant as I find it; but I really think, to a man who reads a great deal, there cannot be a more agreeable place.”

If Fox was a credit to the college, however, the same could by no means be said of George Selwyn, who got into trouble with the Proctors.

George Selwyn, indeed, took Oxford seriously enough to read at the Bodleian, and to seek the degree of B.C.L.; but the claret which he drank went to his head, and he behaved unbecomingly in his cups.

He was a leading spirit in a Wine Club—such a society, no doubt, as that which one remembers at Exeter, roaring out the jovial refrain, with “the eternal note of sadness” at the end of it:

“Edite, bibite, Conviviales: Post multa sæcula, Pocula nulla.”

One day it came to the ears of the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors that, at a meeting of this club in the house of a certain Deverelle, an “unlicensed seller of wines,” the rite of the administration of the Holy Communion had been parodied. An actual eucharistic chalice, it was said, had been procured; Rhine wine had been handed round in it; and George “did ludicrously and profanely apply the words used by our Saviour at the said Institution to the intemperate purposes of the said club.”

Deverelle and the waiter were summoned to give evidence; and so were several of George Selwyn’s boon companions—Lord Harley, and the sons of Earl Gower and the Earl of Mansfield among them. Drunkenness was the only possible defence; but the plea was not presented in the shape in which it might have carried conviction. Instead of deposing that they had themselves been too drunk to remember what had happened, the revellers deposed that George Selwyn had been too drunk to know what he was doing; and one of them even went so far as to try to secure his acquittal by deposing that he was normally to be found in that condition after dinner.

Whether inebriety is an extenuation or an aggravation of the offence of blasphemy is a question which might be argued; so also is the question whether private blasphemy is an offence of which public cognisance should be taken. Neither of the questions need be argued here, however, for neither of them was argued at the time. The fact having been established, the punishment followed as a matter of course; and George Selwyn was sentenced, in the noble language of the official decree, “to be utterly expelled and banished from our said University, and never henceforward to be permitted to enter and reside within the precincts of our said University.”

* * * * *

So much, then, for the Hertford men of the first foundation. Of the Hertford men of the second foundation, since it only dates from 1874, it would be premature to speak, though one of them, Mr. G. H. Thring, is the Secretary of the Incorporated Society of Authors. But there is just one of the Magdalen Hall men of the intervening half century of whom one cannot choose but speak. If Magdalen Hall had done nothing but afford a shelter to Robert Stephen Hawker, the parson poet of Morwenstow, on the northern coast of Cornwall, its existence would be amply justified.

His case was curious. In the midst of his career at Oxford, his father one day informed him that he could not afford to keep him at the University any longer; but the quick instinct of genius showed the young man a way out of the difficulty,—he would marry his godmother, a lady twenty-one years his senior, who had an income of £200 a year. Jumping on his horse, he rode in hot haste from Stratton to Bude, where the lady lived, proposed to her, and was accepted. Then he returned to Oxford, and, as they did not want married undergraduates at Pembroke, which was his original college, he migrated to Magdalen Hall, where he won the Newdigate with a poem on “Pompeii.”

That is all that there is to be said of his Oxford days; and of his marriage there is nothing to be related except that it turned out happily, and that it was not out of disrespect for his excellent wife’s memory that he wore a pink hat without a brim at her funeral. He was always eccentric in his dress; and a pink hat without a brim was, at that period of his life, his usual headgear. There was precedent for it, he said, in the Eastern Church, of the ceremonies of which he was always an earnest student.

For the rest, he became Vicar of Morwenstow, on the rock-bound shore of the Atlantic, and lived there in complete isolation, five miles from the nearest butcher’s shop, and more than twenty miles from the nearest railway station—the hero of many good stories which this is not the place to relate—the author of much true poetry, composed, it is said, under the influence of opium, which may be praised here, because praise of it is nowhere out of place. And, if any reader demands that the praise should be supported by quotation, then let him read this:

“Forth gleamed the East, and yet it was not day: A white and glowing steed outrode the dawn; A youthful rider ruled the bounding rein And he, in semblance of Sir Galahad shone: A vase he held on high; one molten gem, Like massive ruby or the chrysolite: Thence gushed the light in flakes; and flowing, fell As though the pavement of the sky brake up, And stars were shed to sojourn on the hills, From grey Morwenna’s stone to Michael’s tor, Until the rocky land was like a heaven.

“Then saw they that the mighty quest was won: The Sangraal swooned along the golden air: The sea breathed balsam like Gennesaret: The streams were touched with supernatural light: And fonts of Saxon rock stood, full of God.”

That settles it, and we have no need of further evidence. It was a great poet, and no mere versifier, who wrote those lines; and, in “The Quest of the Sangraal,” the Newdigate prize-man from Magdalen Hall, who drank opium and dreamt in the hut of driftwood which he had built himself on the face of the black cliff looking out across the Atlantic to Labrador, competed with Tennyson on his own ground and beat him.

KEBLE COLLEGE

“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.

The last stage of our pilgrimage leads us away from Oxford to the flaming bricks of Keble, adjacent to the Parks. It was a Keble man who once presumed to address a letter to “Worcester College, near Oxford.” The reply, so the story continues, was addressed to “Keble College, near Rome,”—and did not go astray. And these things, of course, are an allegory.

How far the allegory is faithful—to what extent Rome and Keble are in spiritual proximity—is a debatable question which it shall be left to others to debate. The College may be regarded, at any rate, as a protest and a reaction: a sectarian excrescence upon an age which seemed to be beginning to be liberal. One may regard it, according to one’s point of view, either as a gaudy monument to a lost cause or as a gaudy temple erected to celebrate the renascence of a discredited idea.

[Illustration: KEBLE COLLEGE.

[To face p. 316.]

Tractarianism seemed to have had its hour at Oxford. The secession of the Newmanites had induced many Anglican Catholics to ask themselves whether they were not living in a fool’s paradise. The Essayists and Reviewers—the Seven against Christ as the wit of the orthodox party styled them—had set men reconsidering their theological position. The tendency of the hour was to look forward instead of backward, to break down barriers instead of building them, and to get rid of formulæ instead of offering money prizes to those who would subscribe to them. And then came Keble, a “throwback,” as it were, announced by a flourish of Puseyite trumpets.

The College was founded by public subscription as a memorial of the author of the “Christian Year,” and was designed to combine plain living with High Church thinking. Self-denying ordinances were to be imposed in the cause of economy, and the advantages of the institution were to be confined to members of the Church of England. The central idea of the College, in short, was to be the government of members of the Church of England by members of the Church of England for the benefit of the Church of England. “It is hoped,” ran the appeal for help, “that it will prove, by God’s blessing, the loyal handmaid of our mother Church, to train up men who, not in the ministry only, but in the manifold callings of the Christian life, shall be steadfast in the faith.”

Such was the ideal; and it does not need to be proved that it was an ideal as narrow as it was lofty, reposing, not only upon piety, but also upon confusion of thought. Religion being a spiritual experience, and the Anglican Church being a branch of the Civil Service, it is only by loose thinkers that the two things can be treated as one and indivisible; and the implied proposition that Dissenters are poisonous is not a logical corollary of any exhortation to a devout and holy life. Loose thinking has, however, in this instance, proved a mainspring of generous giving, and has resulted in an endowment of learning which is not without value because it has concurrently endowed the speculative opinions and ritual practices of a particular school of thought. The endowment of learning for the exclusive benefit of Churchmen may not have much more _raison d’être_ than the endowment of learning for the special benefit of albinoes, or vegetarians, or anti-tobacconists; but it is a vast deal better than no endowment of learning at all.

* * * * *

Whether the wisdom of the founders and benefactors of Keble has been justified of its children is a delicate question of which it would at present be premature to do more than lightly touch the fringe; but certain generalisations may be hazarded.

In the first place the economical advantages have not been so marked as to attract a class of men previously excluded from the University. In the second place the College has never been of the nature of a seminary, and its particular influences have been largely overshadowed by the general influences of the University itself. Keble men, that is to say, have been very much like other Oxford men; and the test of Churchmanship has not winnowed them to any really noticeable extent. Thought has, in effect, been as free there as elsewhere, in spite of the nominal restrictions of orthodox authority. Some of the men have thought as they were told to think, and others have thought for themselves—encouraged, in some instances, by unexpectedly latitudinarian dons. The wind has blown where it listed, with the usual diversified results.

There are those who would say that Keble at its best and most characteristic is represented by the present Bishop of London: a high-minded and popular prelate whose portraits—especially the portrait in which he is to be seen beaming benignantly beside his favourite crozier—are treasured by almost as many ladies as the portraits of Mr. George Alexander himself; a prelate also in such a continual hurry to do good that he too often gives the sober the impression of a man who speaks before he thinks. But Keble is also the College of Mr. Herbert Trench: a poet whose visions of the ultimate stand in no perceptible relation to the metaphysics of the Establishment, and who resembles the author of “The Christian Year” only in the accidental circumstance that some of his compositions have been set to music; and it might puzzle the trustees of Keble, as it would puzzle the writer of these pages, to find the intellectual common denominator of Dr. Winnington-Ingram and the manager of the Haymarket Theatre.

EPILOGUE

The pilgrimage is over, and the “dreaming spires” disappear into the plain as we depart. It is time to say, as Queen Elizabeth said, pausing, as has been told, on Shotover: “Farewell, farewell, dear Oxford! God bless thee, and increase thy sons in number, holiness, and virtue!”

In numbers, truly, they have been increased, and are still increasing. New buildings, seldom as beautiful as the old ones, spring up continually as witnesses and consequence of the increase. As for holiness and virtue—well, these are not things which can be weighed or measured; and as the words mean different things to different preachers, positive asseveration would be out of place.

Those who associate virtue and holiness with the domination of the Church of England as by law established have some reason to view the prospect gloomily. The religious tests have gone—except from Keble; and Oxford Methodists are no longer liable to be pelted with mud in the High. Nonconformists of all grades, from Romanists to Unitarians, come to Oxford in battalions.

A few of them secede. There is a story of a Wesleyan undergraduate, the son of a Wesleyan minister, whose heart was so touched by the doctrine of the apostolical succession that whenever, from that time forward, he corresponded with his father, he refused him on principle the complimentary title of “Reverend.” But that is an exceptional case. The majority of the Oxford Dissenters maintain their own point of view, even when they come into contact with the point of view of the University; and the profit from the clash of opinions is mutual. Oxford learns something from the new-comers, even while it keeps up, with proper dignity, the pretence of having nothing to learn from any one; but Oxford also influences them, and so indirectly extends its own influence into corners of the world which previously it could not reach. Even the City Temple has lately become, by this means, a remarkable centre of illumination.

For, after all, in spite of all that we hear, and say, about Oxford Schools and Oxford Movements, the secret of Oxford is not wrapped up in any particular body of opinions; and the attitude of Oxford towards its Movements may fairly remind one of the French Revolution devouring its own children. The various Oxford Movements, though they have succeeded, have not resembled one another. On the contrary, they have clashed with, and have extinguished, one another. Oxford sent out Wiclif’s “poor preachers”; but Oxford also burnt more than its fair share of the Reformers. Oxford bred the Tractarians; but Oxford also confounded the Tractarians in “Essays and Reviews.” Oxford nurtured the Æsthetes; but Oxford also put the Æsthetes under the pump.

And so on to the end of the chapter. Action, in Oxford, has always been followed by reaction, and reformation by counter-reformation. The bane and the antidote have always grown side by side in the Oxford meadows; and the survey of Oxford history—the rapid evocation of typically illustrious Oxford names—gives an impression of a University as miscellaneously diversified as the Universe itself. And yet, in the face of all these divergencies, there is a something in the atmosphere of Oxford which never fails to affect the mentality of all the men who breathe it.

A part of the secret lies, no doubt, in the beauty of Oxford; a greater part, perhaps, in the leisure, and the comparative isolation and disinterestedness of the life. One is in touch with the world there, without being of it. One is not hustled or hurried. One can acquire knowledge for its own sake, without considering its immediate practical application. One can pursue and possess one’s own soul, and face, with help and sympathy, but undisturbed, all those perplexing problems of the painful earth which most of those busier men who are bundled from a school to an office can, as a rule, hardly so much as state. And all that in the most impressionable years of one’s life.

It is a great privilege—a privilege which it would be impossible to overvalue. Among those who have enjoyed it—even if they are conscious of not having made so much of it as they might—a kind of freemasonry exists, even when they are engaged in confuting each other’s doctrines. They are, or think they are, the initiated. Hence the reserve, the aloofness, the air of calm composure, and the refusal to be startled into emotion or surprise which go to the making of what is commonly called the “Oxford manner”; and if those characteristics are sometimes too prominently displayed to give unmixed pleasure in a mixed society, no one is more ready than the Oxford man to admit in the abstract the truth of Aristotle’s saying that an excess of virtue is a vice.

And so once more: “Farewell, farewell, dear Oxford! God bless thee, and increase thy sons in number, holiness, and virtue!”

UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON.

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THE EDUCATION OF JACQUELINE

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