Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography
when this was done, they took their station at the doors labelled
_Placet_ and _Non-placet_. During the process of polling we had an
opportunity of criticizing the constituents of that truly exceptional
gathering. It was certainly not true to say, as some said, that only the
younger Masters voted for Dean Stanley. There was quite a fair
proportion of white and bald heads on the _Placet_ side. "The country
contingent was not so numerous as one had expected, and I do not believe
that all of these went out at the _Non-placet_ door. Evidently, parties
were pretty evenly balanced; and, when the _Non-placets_ had all
recorded their votes there were about twenty-five left on Dean Stanley's
side, which probably would have nearly represented the actual majority,
but, at the last moment, some stragglers, who had only arrived in Oxford
by 2.25 train hurried in, and so swelled the numbers. One late-comer
arrived without his academicals, and some zealous supporter of the Dean
had to denude himself, and pass his cap and gown outside to enable this
gentleman to vote." Soon it was over. The Proctors presented their lists
to the Vice-Chancellor, who, amid breathless silence, pronounced the
fateful words--"_Majori parti placet._" Then there was indeed a cheer,
which rang through the building from basement to upper gallery, and was
taken up outside in a way that reminded one of the trial of the Seven
Bishops. The hisses, if there were any, were fairly drowned. Oxford had
given its approval to Dean Stanley, the numbers being--_Placet_, 349;
_Non-placet_, 287.
When the fuss was over, Liddon wrote thus to a friend:--"It was a
discreditable nomination; but, having been made, ought, in the interests
of the Faith, to have been allowed to pass _sub silentio_; for, if
opposed, it must either be defeated or affirmed by Convocation--a
choice, _me judice_, of nearly balanced evils. To have defeated it would
have been to invest Stanley with the cheap honours of a petty martyrdom.
To have affirmed it is, I fear, to have given a new impetus to the
barren, unspiritual negations which he represents."
I went up to Oxford well supplied with introductions. Dr. Cradock, the
well-beloved Principal of Brasenose, scholar, gentleman, man of the
world, devout Wordsworthian, enthusiastic lover of cricket and boating,
had married a connexion of my own, who had been a Maid of Honour in
Queen Victoria's first household. Theirs was the most hospitable house
in Oxford, and a portrait of Mrs. Cradock, not quite kind, but very
lifelike, enlivens the serious pages of _Robert Elsmere_. Dr.,
afterwards Sir Henry, Acland, with his majestic presence, blandly
paternal address, and ample rhetoric, was not only the Regius Professor
of Medicine, but also the true and patient friend of many undergraduate
generations. Mrs. Acland is commemorated in what I have always thought
one of the grandest sermons in the English language--Liddon's "Worth of
Faith in a Life to Come."[15] The Warden of Keble and Mrs. Talbot (then
the young wife of the young Head of a very young College) were, as they
have been for 40 years, the kindest and most constant of friends. Dr.
Bright, Canon of Christ Church and Professor of Ecclesiastical History,
was a lavish entertainer, "with an intense dramatic skill in telling a
story, an almost biblical knowledge of all the pages of Dickens (and of
Scott), with shouts of glee, and outpourings of play and fancy and
allusion." But I need not elaborate the portrait, for everyone ought to
know Dr. Holland's "Personal Studies" by heart. Edwin Palmer, Professor
of Latin, was reputed to be the best scholar in Oxford, and Mrs. Palmer
was a most genial hostess. Henry Smith, Professor of Geometry, was, I
suppose, the most accomplished man of his time;[16] yet he lives, not by
his performances in the unthinkable sphere of metaphysical mathematics,
but by his intervention at Gladstone's last contest for the University.
Those were the days of open voting, and Smith was watching the votes in
Gladstone's interest. Professor ----, who never could manage his h's,
wished to vote for the Tory candidates, Sir William Heathcote and Mr.
Gathorne Hardy, but lost his head, and said:--"I vote for Glad----."
Then, suddenly correcting himself, exclaimed, "I mean for 'Eathcote and
'Ardy." Thereupon Smith said, "I claim that vote for Gladstone." "But,"
said the Vice-Chancellor, "the voter did not finish your candidate's
name." "That is true," said Smith, "but then he did not even begin the
other two." Henry Smith kept house with an admirable and accomplished
sister--the first woman, I believe, to be elected to a School Board,
and certainly the only one to whom J. W. Burgon (afterwards Dean of
Chichester) devoted a whole sermon. "Miss Smith's Sermon," with its
whimsical protest against feminine activities, was a standing joke in
those distant days. The Rev. H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Magdalen, used to
entertain us sumptuously in his most beautiful College. He was a
connecting link between Dr. Routh (1755-1854) and modern Oxford, and in
his rooms I was introduced to the ablest man of my generation--a
newly-elected Scholar of Balliol called Alfred Milner.
It is anticipating, but only by a Term or two (for Dr. King came to
Christ Church in 1873), to speak of Sunday luncheons at the house of the
Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology, and of Dr. Liddon's
characteristic allusion to a remarkably bloated-looking Bishop of Oxford
in balloon sleeves and a wig, whose portrait adorned the Professor's
house. "How singular, dear friend, to reflect that _that person_ should
have been chosen, in the providential order, to connect Mr. Keble with
the Apostles!"
But though the lines seem to have fallen unto me in ritualistic places,
I was not without Evangelical advantages. Canon Linton, Rector of St.
Peter-le-Bailey, was a dear old gentleman, who used to entertain
undergraduates at breakfasts and luncheons, and after the meal, when
more secularly-minded hosts might have suggested pipes, would lead us to
a side-table, where a selection of theological works was displayed, and
bid us take our choice. "Kay on the Psalms" was a possession thus
acquired, and has been used by me from that time to this. Nor must this
retrospective page omit some further reference to J. W. Burgon, Fellow
of Oriel and Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin. Dean Church called him "the
dear old learned Professor of Billingsgate," and certainly his method of
conducting controversy savoured (as Sydney Smith said about Bishop Monk)
of the apostolic occupation of trafficking in fish. But to those whom he
liked, and who looked up to him (for this was an essential condition),
he was kind, hospitable, courteous, and even playful. His humour, which
was of a crabbed kind quite peculiar to himself, found its best vent in
his sermons. I often wondered whether he realized that the extreme
grotesqueness of his preaching was the spell which drew undergraduates
to the Sunday evening service at St. Mary's.
For my next reminiscence of hospitality to Freshmen I must rely on the
assistance of a pseudonym. At the time of which I am writing, Oxford
numbered among her Professors one who had graduated, at a rather
advanced age, from Magdalen Hall. Borrowing a name from Dickens, we will
call him "Professor Dingo, of European reputation." To the kindness of
Professor and Mrs. Dingo I was commended by a friend who lived near my
home in Bedfordshire, and soon after my arrival in Oxford they asked me
to Sunday luncheon at their villa in The Parks. The conversation turned
on a new book of Limericks (or "Nonsense Rhymes," as we called them
then) about the various Colleges. The Professor had not seen it, and
wanted to know if it was amusing. In my virginal innocence I replied
that one rhyme had amused me. "Let's have it," quoth the Professor, so
off I went at score--
"There once was at Magdalen Hall
A Man who knew nothing at all;
When he took his degree
He was past fifty-three--
Which is youngish for Magdalen Hall."
The Professor snarled like an angry dog, and said, witheringly, that, if
_that_ was a specimen, the book must be sorry stuff indeed. After
luncheon I walked away with another undergraduate, rather senior to
myself, who said rejoicingly, "You've made a good start. That rhyme is
meant to describe old Dingo."
FOOTNOTES:
[13] "The Life of Faith and the Athanasian Creed." University Sermons.
Series II.
[14] The Rev. C. M. Davies, D.D.
[15] University Sermons. Series II.
[16] "He had gained University honours, such as have been gained by no
one now living, and will probably never be won again.... He was one of
the greatest mathematical geniuses of the century. His chief and highest
intellectual interests lay in an unknown world into which not more than
two or three persons could follow. In that world he travelled
alone."--_From a Memorial Sermon by B. Jowett._
V
OXONIANA
"Mind'st thou the bells? What a place it was for bells, lad!
Spires as sharp as thrushes' bills to pierce the sky with song.
How it shook the heart of one, the swaying and the swinging,
How it set the blood a-tramp and all the brains a-singing,
Aye, and what a world of thought the calmer chimes came bringing,
Telling praises every hour
To His majesty and power,
Telling prayers with punctual service, summers, centuries, how long?
The beads upon our rosary of immemorial song."
_The Minstrelsy of Isis_.
Oxford is a subject from which one cannot easily tear oneself: so I make
no apology for returning to it. In that delightful book, "The Minstrelsy
of Isis," I have found an anonymous poem beginning
"Royal heart, loyal heart, comrade that I loved,"
and, in the spirit of that line, I dedicate this chapter to the friend
whom I always regarded as the Ideal Undergraduate.[17] Other names and
other faces of contemporaries and companions come crowding upon the
memory, but it is better, on all accounts, to leave them unspecified. I
lived quite as much in other colleges as in my own, and in a fellowship
which was gathered from all sorts and sections of undergraduate life.
Let the reader imagine all the best and brightest men in the University
between 1872 and 1876, and he will not go far wrong in assuming that my
friends were among them.
My Oxford life was cut sharply into two halves by a very definite
dividing-line; the first half was cheerful and irresponsible enough. A
large part of the cheerfulness was connected with the Church, and my
earliest friendships (after those which I brought with me from Harrow)
were formed in the circle which frequented St. Barnabas. I am thankful
to remember that my eyes were even then open to see the moral beauty and
goodness all around me, and I had a splendid dream of blending it all
into one. In my second term I founded an "Oxford University Church
Society," designed to unite religious undergraduates of all shades of
Churchmanship for common worship and interchange of views. We formed
ourselves on what we heard of a similar Society at Cambridge; and, early
in the Summer Term of 1873, a youth of ruddy countenance and graceful
address--now Canon Mason and Master of Pembroke--came over from
Cambridge, and told us how to set to work. The effort was indeed
well-meant. It was blessed by Churchmen as dissimilar as Bishop
Mackarness, Edwin Palmer, Burgon, Scott Holland, Illingworth, Ottley,
Lacey, Gore, and Jayne, now Bishop of Chester; but it was not
long-lived. Very soon the "Victorian Persecution," as we used to call
it, engineered by Archbishop Tait through the P.W.R. Act, made it
difficult for ritualists to feel that they had part or lot with those