Chapter VII: Early Days at Oxford (2)

But whatever may be said about the old Heads of Houses, most of them were certainly gentlemen both by birth and by nature. They are forgotten now, but they did good in their time, and much of their good work remains. If I consider who were the Dean and Canons and Students I met at Christ Church when I first became a member of the House, I should have to give a very different account from that given by the Highland lady in her _Memoirs_. The Dean of Christ Church, who received me, who proposed me for the degree of M.A., and afterwards allowed me to become a member of the House, was Dr. Gaisford, a real scholar, though it may be of the old school. He was considered very rough and rude, but I can only say he showed me more of real courtesy in those days than anybody else at Oxford. He was, I believe, a little shy, and easily put out when he suspected anybody, particularly the young men, of want of consideration. I can quite believe that when an undergraduate, in addressing him, stepped on the hearthrug on which he was standing, he may have said: “Get down from my hearthrug,” meaning, “keep at your proper distance.” I can only say that I never found him anything but kind and courteous. It so happened that he had been made a Member of the Bavarian Academy, and I, though very young, had received the same distinction as a reward for my Sanskrit work, and the Dean was rather pleased when he heard it. When I asked him whether he would put my name on the books of the House, he certainly hesitated a little, and asked me at last to come again next day and dine with him. I went, but I confess I was rather afraid that the Dean would raise difficulties. However, he spoke to me very nicely, “I have looked through the books,” he said, “and I find two precedents of Germans being members of the House, one of the name of Wernerus, and another of the name of Nitzschius,” or some such name. “But,” he continued, smiling, “even if I had not found these names, I should not have minded making a precedent of your case.” People were amazed at Oxford when they heard of the Dean’s courtesy, but I can only repeat that I never found him anything but courteous.

Most of the Heads of Houses asked me to dine with them by sending me an invitation. The Dean alone first came and called on me. I was then living in a small room in Walton Street in which I worked, and dined, and smoked. My bedroom was close by, and I generally got up early, and shaved and finished my toilet at about 11 o’clock. I had just gone into my bedroom to shave, my face was half covered with lather, when my landlady rushed in and told me the Dean had called, and my dogs were pulling him about. The fact was I had a Scotch terrier with a litter of puppies in a basket, and when the Dean entered in full academical dress, the dogs flew at him, pulling the sleeves of his gown and barking furiously. Covered with lather as I was, I had to rush in to quiet the dogs, and in this state I had to receive the Very Rev. the Dean, and explain to him the nature of the work that brought me to Oxford. It was certainly awkward, but in spite of the disorder of my room, in spite also of the tobacco smoke of which the Dean did not approve, all went off well, though, I confess, I felt somewhat ashamed. In the same interview the Dean asked me about an Icelandic Dictionary which had been offered to the press by Cleasby and Dasent. “Surely it is a small barbarous island,” he said, “and how can they have any literature?” I tried, as well as I could, to explain to the Dean the extent and the value of Icelandic literature, and soon after the press, which was then the Dean, accepted the Dictionary which was brought out later by Dr. Vigfusson, in a most careful and scholarlike manner. It might indeed safely be called his Dictionary, considering how many dictionaries are called, not after the name of the compiler or compilers, but after that of their editor.

This Dr. Vigfusson was quite a character. He was perfectly pale and bloodless, and had but one wish, that of being left alone. He came to Oxford first to assist Dr. Dasent, to whom Cleasby, when he died, had handed over his collections; but afterwards he stayed, taking it for granted that the University would give him the little he wanted. But even that little was difficult to provide, as there were no funds that could be used for that purpose, however uselessly other funds might seem to be squandered. That led to constant grumbling on his part. Ever so many expedients were tried to satisfy him, but none quite succeeded. At last he fell ill and died, and when he was a patient at the Acland Home, where the nurses did all they could for him, he several times said to me when I sat with him, that he had never been so happy in his life as in that Home. I sometimes blame myself for not having seen more of him at Oxford. But he always seemed to me full of suspicions and very easily offended, and that made any free intercourse with him difficult and far from pleasant. Perhaps it was my fault also. He may have felt that he might have claimed a professorship of Icelandic quite as well as I, and he may have grudged my settled position in Oxford, my independence and my freedom. Whenever we did work together, I always found him pleasant at first, but very soon he would become wayward and sensitive, do what I would, and I had to let him go his own way, as I went mine.

I remember dining with the famous Dr. Bull, Canon of Christ Church, who certainly managed to produce a dinner that would have done credit to any French chef. He was one of the last pluralists, and many stories were told about him. One story, which however was perfectly true, showed at all events his great sagacity. A well-known banker had been for years the banker of Christ Church. Dr. Bull who was the College Bursar had to transact all the financial business with him. No one suspected the banking house which he represented. Dr. Bull, however, the last time he invited him to dinner, was struck by his very pious and orthodox remarks, and by the change of tone in his conversation, such as might suit a Canon of Christ Church, but not a luxurious banker from London. Without saying a word, Dr. Bull went to London next day, drew out all the money of the college, took all his papers from the bank, and the day after, to the dismay of London, the bank failed, the depositors lost their money, but Christ Church was unhurt.

Another of the Canons of Christ Church at that time had spent half a century in the place, and read the lessons there twice every day. Of course he knew the prayer-book by heart, and as long as he could see to read there was no harm in his reading. But when his eyesight failed him and he had to trust entirely to his memory, he would often go from some word in the evening prayer to the same word in the marriage service, and from there to the burial service, with an occasional slip into baptism. The result of it was that he was no longer allowed to read the service in Chapel except during Long Vacation when the young men were away. I frequently stayed at Oxford during vacation, and thought of course that the evening service would never end, till at last I was asked to name the child, and then I went home.

One Sunday I remember going to chapel, and after prayers had begun the following conversation took place, loud enough to be heard all through the chapel. Enter old Canon preceded by a beadle. He goes straight to his stall, and finding it occupied by a well-known D.D. from London, who is deeply engaged in prayer, he stands and looks at the interloper, and when that produces no effect, he says to the beadle: “Tell that man this is my stall; tell him to get out.”

Beadle: “Dr. A.’s compliments, and whether you would kindly occupy another stall.”

D.D.: “Very sorry; I shall change immediately.”

Old Canon settles in his stall, prayers continue, and after about ten minutes the Canon shouts: “Beadle, tell that man to dine with me at five.”

Beadle: “Dr. A.’s compliments, and whether you would give him the pleasure of your company at dinner at five.”

D.D.: “Very sorry, I am engaged.”

Beadle: “D.D. regrets he is engaged.”

Old Canon: “Oh, he won’t dine!”

The cathedral was very empty, and fortunately this conversation was listened to by a small congregation only. I can, however, vouch for it, as I was sitting close by and heard it myself.

Bodley’s Library, too, was full of good stories, though many of them do not bear repeating. When I first began to work there, Dr. Bandinell was Bodleian Librarian. Working in the Bodleian was then like working in one’s private library. One could have as many books and MSS. as one desired, and the six hours during which the Library was open were a very fair allowance for such tiring work as copying and collating Sanskrit MSS. I well remember my delight when I first sat down at my table near one of the windows looking into the garden of Exeter. It seemed a perfect paradise for a student. I must confess that I slightly altered my opinion when I had to sit there every day during a severe winter without any fire, shivering and shaking, and almost unable to hold my pen, till kind Mr. Coxe, the sub-librarian, took compassion on me and brought me a splendid fur that had been sent him as a present by a Russian scholar, who had witnessed the misery of the Librarian in this Siberian Library. Now all this is changed. The Library is so full of students, both male and female, that one has difficulty in finding a place, certainly in finding a quiet place; and all sorts of regulations have been introduced which have no doubt become necessary on account of the large number of readers, but which have completely changed, or as some would say, improved the character of the place. As to one improvement, however, there can be no two opinions. The Library and the reading-room, the so-called Camera, are now comfortably warmed, and students may in the latter place read for twelve hours uninterruptedly, and not be turned out as we were by a warning bell at four o’clock. And woe to you if you failed to obey the warning. One day an unfortunate reader was so absorbed in his book that he did not hear the bell, and was locked in. He tried in vain to attract attention from the windows, for it was no pleasant prospect to pass a night among so many ghosts. At last he saw a solitary woman, and shouted to her that he was locked in. “No,” she said, “you are not. The Library is closed at four.” Whether he spent the night among the books is not known. Let us hope that he met with a less logical person to release him from his cold prison.

Dr. Bandinell ruled supreme in his library, and even the Curators trembled before him when he told them what had been the invariable custom of the Library for years, and could not be altered. And, curiously enough, he had always funds at his disposal, which is not the case now, and whenever there was a collection of valuable MSS. in the market he often prided himself on having secured it long before any other library had the money ready. Now and then, it is true, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a plausible seller of rare books or MSS., but generally he was very wary. He was not always very courteous to visitors, and still less so to his under-librarians. The Oriental under-librarian Professor Reay, in particular, who was old and somewhat infirm, had much to suffer from him, and the language in which he was ordered about was such as would not now be addressed to any menial. And yet Professor Reay belonged to a very good family, though Dr. Bandinell would insist on calling him Ray, and declared that he had no right to the e in his name. In revenge some people would give him an additional i and call him Dr. Bandinelli, which made him very angry, because, as he would say to me, “he had never been one of those dirty foreigners.” Silence was enjoined in the library, but the librarian’s voice broke through all rules of silence. I remember once, when Professor Reay had been looking for ever so long to find his spectacles without which he could not read the Arabic MSS., and had asked everybody whether they had seen them, a voice came at last thundering through the library: “You left your spectacles on my chair, you old ----, and I sat on them!” There was an end of spectacles and Arabic MSS. after that. There were two men only of whom Dr. Bandinell and H. O. Coxe also were afraid, Dr. Pusey, who was one of the Curators, and later on, Jowett, the Master of Balliol.

There was a vacancy in the Oriental sub-librarianship, and a very distinguished young Hebrew scholar, William Wright, afterwards Professor at Cambridge, was certainly by far the best candidate. But as ill-luck—I mean ill-luck for the Library—would have it, he had given offence by a lecture at Dublin, in which he declared that the people of Canaan were Semitic, and not, as stated in Genesis, the children of Ham. No one doubts this now, and every new inscription has confirmed it. Still a strong effort was made to represent Dr. Wright as a most dangerous young man, and thus to prevent his appointment at Oxford. The appointment was really in the hands of Dr. Bandinell; and after I had frankly explained to him the motives of this mischievous agitation against Dr. Wright, and assured him that he was a scholar and by no means given to what was then called “free-handling of the Old Testament,” he promised me that he would appoint him and no one else. However, poor man, he was urged and threatened and frightened, and to my great surprise the appointment was given to some one else, who at that time had given hardly any proofs of independent work as a Semitic scholar, though he afterwards rendered very good and honest service. I did not disguise my opinion of what had happened; and for more than a year Dr. Bandinell never spoke to me nor I to him, though we met almost daily at the library. At last the old man, evidently feeling that he had been wrong, came to tell me that he was sorry for what had happened, but that it was not his fault: after this, of course, all was forgotten. Dr. Wright had a much more brilliant career opened to him, first at the British Museum, and then as professor at Cambridge, than he could possibly have had as sub-librarian at Oxford. He always remained a scholar, and never dabbled in theology.

Some very heated correspondence passed at the time, and I remember keeping the letters for a long while. They were curious as showing the then state of theological opinion at Oxford; but I have evidently put the correspondence away so carefully that nowhere can I find it now. Let it be forgotten and forgiven.

Many, if not all, of the stories that I have written down in this chapter may be legendary, and they naturally lose or gain as told by different people. Who has not heard different versions of the story of a well-known Canon of Christ Church in my early days, who, when rowing on the river, saw a drowning man laying hold of his boat and nearly upsetting it. “Providentially,” he explained, “I had brought my umbrella, and I had presence of mind enough to hit him over the knuckles. He let go, sank, and never rose again.” Nobody, I imagine, would have vouched for the truth of this story, but it was so often repeated that it provided the old gentleman with a nickname, that stuck to him always.

I could add more Oxford stories, but it seems almost ill-natured to do so, and I could only say in most cases _relata refero_. When I first came here Oxford and Oxford society were to me so strange that I probably accepted many similar stories as gospel truth. My young friends hardly treated me quite fairly in this respect. I had many questions to ask, and my friends evidently thought it great fun to chaff me and to tell me stories which I naturally believed, for there were many things which seemed to me very strange, and yet they were true and I had to believe them. The existence of Fellows who received from £300 to £800 a year, as a mere sinecure for life, provided they did not marry, seemed to me at first perfectly incredible. In Germany education at Public Schools and Universities was so cheap that even the poorest could manage to get what was wanted for the highest employments, particularly if they could gain an exhibition or scholarship. But after a man had passed his examinations, the country or the government had nothing more to do with him. “Swim or drown” was the maxim followed everywhere; and it was but natural that the first years of professional life, whether as lawyers, medical men, or clergymen, were years of great self-denial. But they were also years of intense struggle, and the years of hunger are said to have accounted for a great deal of excellent work in order to force the doors to better employment. To imagine that after the country had done its duty by providing schools and universities, it would provide crutches for men who ought to learn to walk by themselves, was beyond my comprehension, particularly when I was told how large a sum was yearly spent by the colleges in paying these fellowships without requiring any _quid pro quo_.

Having once come to believe that, and several other to me unintelligible things at Oxford, I was ready to believe almost anything my friends told me. There are some famous stone images, for instance, round the Theatre and the Ashmolean Museum. They are hideous, for the sandstone of which they are made has crumbled away again and again, but even when they were restored, the same brittle stone was used. They are in the form of Hermae, and were planned by no less an architect than Sir Christopher Wren. When I asked what they were meant for, I was assured quite seriously that they were images of former Heads of Houses. I believed it, though I expressed my surprise that the stone-mason who made new heads, when the old showed hardly more than two eyes and a nose, and a very wide mouth, should carefully copy the crumbling faces, because, as I was informed, he had been told to copy the former gentlemen.

It was certainly a very common amusement of my young undergraduate friends to make fun of the Heads of Houses. They did not seem to feel that shiver of unspeakable awe for them of which Bishop Thorold speaks; nay, they were anything but respectful in speaking of the Doctors of Divinity in their red gowns with black velvet sleeves. If it is difficult for old men always to understand young men, it is certainly even more difficult for young men to understand old men. There is a very old saying, “Young men think that old men are fools, but old men know that young men are.” Though very young myself, I came to know several of the old Heads of Houses, and though they certainly had their peculiarities, they did by no means all belong to the age of the Dodo. They were enjoying their _otium cum dignitate_, as befits gentlemen, scholars, and divines, and they certainly deserved greater respect from the undergraduates than they received.

At the annual _Encaenia_, a great deal of licence was allowed to the young men; and I know of several strangers, especially foreigners, who have been scandalized at the riotous behaviour of the undergraduates in the Theatre, the Oxford _Aula_, when the Vice-Chancellor stood up to address the assembled audience. My first experience of this was with Dr. Plumptre, who, as I have said, was very tall and stately; when his first words were not quite distinct, the undergraduates shouted, “Speak up, old stick.” When the Warden of Wadham, the Rev. Dr. Symons, was showing some pretty young ladies to their seats in the Theatre, he was threatened by the young men, who yelled at the top of their voices, “I’ll tell Lydia, you wicked old man.” Now Lydia was his most excellent spouse. At first the remarks of the undergraduates at the _Encaenia_, or rather _Saturnalia_, were mostly good-natured and at least witty; but they at last became so rude that distinguished men, whom the University wished to honour by conferring on them honorary degrees, felt deeply offended. Sir Arthur Helps declared that he came to receive an honour, and received an insult. Well do I remember the Rev. Dr. Salmon, who was asked where he had left his lobster sauce; Dr. Wendell Holmes was shouted at, whether he had come across the Atlantic in his “One Hoss Shay”; the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, First Lord of the Admiralty, was presented with a Pinafore, and Lord Wolseley with a Black Watch. There was a certain amount of wit in these allusions, and the best way to take the academic row and riot was Tennyson’s, who told me on coming out that “he felt all the time as if standing on the shingle of the sea shore, the storm howling, and the spray covering him right and left.” After a time, however, these _Saturnalia_ had to be stopped, and they were stopped in a curious way, by giving ladies seats among the undergraduates. It speaks well for them that their regard for the ladies restrained them, and made them behave like gentlemen.

The reign of the Heads of Houses, which was in full force when I first settled in Oxford, began to wane when it was least expected. There had, however, been grumblings among the Fellows and Tutors at Oxford, who felt themselves aggrieved by the self-willed interference of the Heads of Colleges in their tutorial work, and, it may be, resented the airs assumed by men who, after all, were their equals, and in no sense their betters, in the University.

Society distinctly profited when Fellows and Tutors were allowed to marry, and when several of the newly-elected of the Heads of Houses, having wives and daughters, opened their houses, and had interesting people to dine with them from the neighbourhood and from London.

The Deanery of Christ Church was not only made architecturally into a new house, but under Dr. Liddell, with his charming wife and daughters, became a social centre not easily rivalled anywhere else. There one met not only royalty, the young Prince of Wales, but many eminent writers, artists, and political men from London, Gladstone, Disraeli, Richmond, Ruskin, and many others. Another bright house of the new era was that of the Principal of Brasenose, Dr. Cradock, and his cheerful and most amusing wife. There one often met such men as Lord Russell, Sir George C. Lewis, young Harcourt, and many more. She was the true Dresden china marquise, with her amusing sallies, which no doubt often gave offence to grave Heads of Houses and sedate Professors. No one knew her age, she was so young; and yet she had been maid of honour to some Queen, as I told her once, to Queen Anne. Having been maid of honour, she never concealed her own peculiar feelings about people who had not been presented. When she wanted to be left alone, she would look out of window, and tell visitors who came to call, “Very sorry, but I am not at home to-day.” Queen’s College also, under Dr. Thomson, the future Archbishop of York, was a most hospitable house. Mrs. Thomson presided over it with her peculiar grace and genuine kindness, and many a pleasant evening I spent there with musical performances. But here, too, the old leaven of Oxford burst forth sometimes. Of course, we generally performed the music of Handel and other classical authors; Mendelssohn’s compositions were still considered as mere twaddle by some of the old school. At one of these evenings, the old organist of New College, with his wooden leg, after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendelssohn’s _Hymn of Praise_, which I was conducting at the pianoforte, walked up to me, as I thought, to thank me; but no, he burst out in a torrent of real and somewhat coarse abuse of me, for venturing to introduce such flimsy music at Oxford. I did not feel very guilty, and fortunately I remained silent, whether from actual bewilderment or from a better cause, I can hardly tell.

Long before Commissions came down on Oxford a new life seemed to be springing up there, and what was formerly the exception became more and more the rule among the young Fellows and Tutors. They saw what a splendid opportunity was theirs, having the very flower of England to educate, having the future of English society to form. They certainly made the best of it, helped, I believe, by the so-called Oxford Movement, which, whatever came of it afterwards, was certainly in the beginning thoroughly genuine and conscientious. The Tutors saw a good deal of the young men confided to their care, and the result was that even what was called the “fast set” thought it a fine thing to take a good class. I could mention a number of young noblemen and wealthy undergraduates who, in my early years, read for a first class and took it; and my experience has certainly been that those who took a first class came out in later life as eminent and useful members of society. Not that eminence in political, clerical, literary, and scientific life was restricted to first classes, far from it. But first-class men rarely failed to appear again on the surface in later life. It may be true that a first class did not always mean a first-class man, but it always seemed to mean a man who had learned how to work honestly, whether he became Prime Minister or Archbishop, or spent his days in one of the public offices, or even in a counting-house or newspaper office.

I felt it was an excellent mixture if a young man, after taking a good degree at Oxford, spent a year or two at a German University. He generally came back with fresh ideas, knew what kind of work still had to be done in the different branches of study, and did it with a perseverance that soon produced most excellent results. Of course there was always the difficulty that young men wished to make their way in life, that is to make a living. The Church, the bar, and the hospital, absorbed many of those who in Germany would have looked forward to a University career. In my own subject more particularly, my very best pupils did not see their way to gaining even an independence, unless they gave their time to first securing a curacy, or a mastership at school; and they usually found that, in order to do their work conscientiously, they had to give up their favourite studies in which they would certainly have done excellent work, if there had been no _dira necessitas_. I often tried to persuade my friends at Oxford to make the fellowships really useful by concentrating them and giving studious men a chance of devoting themselves at the University to non-lucrative studies. But the feeling of the majority was always against what was called derisively Original Research, and the fellowship-funds continued to be frittered away, payment by results being considered a totally mistaken principle, so that often, as in the case of the new septennial fellowships, there remained the payment only, but no results.

Still all this became clear to me at a much later time only. My first years at Oxford were spent in a perfect bewilderment of joy and admiration. No one can see that University for the first time, particularly in spring or autumn, without being enchanted with it. To me it seemed a perfect paradise, and I could have wished for myself no better lot than that which the kindness of my friends later secured for me there.