as the year wore on without any prospect of a vacancy at new college, it became necessary to decide what should be done as regards sending me to the university. my father was very ill able to support the expense of this. but i had received from winchester two exhibitions—all that the college had in its power to bestow—and he was very unwilling that i should be unable to avail myself of them.
concomitantly with continued increase in the frequency and intensity of his headaches, my father’s irritability of temper had increased to a degree which made him a very difficult man to live with. for simple assent to his utterances of an argumentative nature did not satisfy him, he would be argued with. yet argument produced irritability leading to scenes of painful violence, which i had reason to fear hastened the return of his suffering. but the greatest good, in his opinion, that could then be achieved for me, was, that i should have an university education; and this he was steadfastly{191} minded to procure for me at any cost of pressure and privation.
and then the question arose, at what college should i matriculate?
my father eventually selected alban hall—a singular and hardly a judicious choice in any case, but which under the circumstances, as they subsequently arose, proved a disastrous one. my father’s financial position was at the time such, that it would have seemed reasonable that he should have been in a great measure guided in his choice by the consideration of expense. but such was not the case. for alban hall was at that time by no means a specially inexpensive place of academical residence. no! the ruling motive was to place me under whately, who had about four years previously been appointed by lord granville principal of alban hall. my father, as i have mentioned, was a “liberal,” and whately’s liberalism was the point in his character by which he was most known to the world in general. i do not think that any personal acquaintance, or even contact, had ever existed between my father and whately. the connecting link i take to have been whately’s friend senior. whately’s liberalism certainly, and, i think i may say, my father’s also, would have made excellent conservatism at the present day. but in those days the new principal of alban hall stood out in strong contrast with the intellectual attitude and habits of thought of oxford, and this was the leading motive of my father’s choice.{192}
i know not how the case may be now, but in those days it was a decided disadvantage socially and academically to belong to any one of the “halls,” instead of to a college. but of all this side of oxford life, my father, who had been a new college man in the days when new college exercised its ancient privilege of presenting its members for their degree without submitting them to any examination in the schools, knew nothing. in his day the new college man before the vice-chancellor for his degree, instead of using the formula prescribed for every other member of the university to the effect that having satisfied the examiners he begged his degree (peto gradum), said, “having satisfied my college, i demand my degree” (postulo gradum). this has long been voluntarily abandoned by new college, which on the enactment of the new statute for examinations of course saw that the retention of it necessarily excluded them from “honours.” but in the old day it had inevitably the effect of causing new college men to live very much in a world of their own.
alban hall had been, previously to whately’s time, a sort of “refuge for the destitute” intellectually, or academically: as were for the most part the other halls at that period. this reproach whately at once set himself to remove from alban hall, and had altogether removed by the time i joined the society. it would be difficult to say what generally operating influence had brought together the score or so of members who then constituted that society. they{193} were certainly not intellectually superior to the average undergraduate of the time. neither were they in any wise inferior in general respectability. but there was no cohesion, no general prevailing character. we seemed like a collection of waifs thrown together by as many different sets of circumstances as there were individuals. i suppose all had been brought there by some personal connection with, or respect for, either dr. whately, or for mr. hinds, the excellent vice-principal, who subsequently became bishop of norwich. there was, i remember, a knot of some three or four west indians, who formed some little exception to what i have said of a general absence of cohesion.
the time which i spent under dr. whately’s authority and tuition led me to form a very exalted opinion of his intellectual capacity, high principle, and lofty determination to do what he deemed to be his duty. but i do not think that he was the right man in the right place.
his daughter, miss jane whately, in her excellent and most interesting life of the archbishop, published some twenty years ago, writes:—-
“teaching was indeed the occupation most peculiarly suited to his powers and tastes. he had a remarkable faculty of drawing out the mind of the learner, by leading him step by step, and obliging him to think for himself. he used to say that he believed himself to be one of the few teachers who could train a young person of retentive memory for words, without spoiling him. the temptation to the{194} student in such cases is to rehearse by rote the rules or facts he has learned, without exercising his powers of thought; while one whose powers of recollection were less perfect, would be forced to reflect and consider what was likely to be written or said on such or such a point by the writer, and thus to learn more intelligently and less mechanically. the cure for this tendency in young persons who learned quickly by rote he effected by asking them questions, substantially the same as those in the textbook, but which they must answer in their own words, making them draw conclusions from axioms already laid down. in this manner he was able successfully to teach mathematics to many who had been apparently unable to master the first principles, and often to ground them in the elements of euclid, better than some mathematicians whose actual attainments were far beyond his own. both in this branch and in logic, as in all other studies, he always commenced analytically and ended synthetically; first drawing out the mind of the learner, by making him give the substance of the right answer, and then requiring the exact technical form of it in words.”
this must strike all, who remember whately’s teaching, as evidently true. but it in no wise leads me to modify the opinion above expressed as to his adaptation for the position in which i knew him. the style of teaching described by his biographer, if ever suitable at all for a college lecture-room, could only be so in the case of a collection of pupils{195} far superior intellectually to those, with whom (with one or two exceptions, notably that of mr. wall, whose subsequent career at oxford did credit to his alban hall training) dr. whately had to deal. miss whately describes a teacher whose influence in tête-à-tête teaching over a clever pupil would be quite invaluable. but he was always firing far over the heads of his hearers; and i do not think that his method was adapted to driving, pushing, hustling an idle and very backward and unprepared collection of youths through their “little-go” and “pass,” quod erat in votis. most of this necessary driving fell to the share of hinds, who was fitted for far higher work, but was patient, kind, laborious, and conscientious to the utmost decree.
miss whately’s book, mainly by virtue of the great number of the archbishop’s letters contained in it, succeeds in giving a very just and vivid notion of her father’s character and tone of mind. she is hardly justified, i think, by facts, in speaking of the “delicacy of his consideration for the feelings of others.” a little circumstance that i well remember scarcely seems to indicate the possession of any such quality. it was about the time when the then burning question of parliamentary reform was exercising the minds of all men. a large party of undergraduates were dining at whately’s table—such invitations were usually given by him in every term—and mrs. whately at the head of the long table was asking the young man who sat next her what was the general opinion in the hall on the{196} reform question, when whately, who at the bottom of the table had overheard her, called out, “why don’t you ask what the bedmakers think?” i have little doubt that the opinion of the bedmakers might have been ascertained with an equal, or perhaps greater, degree of profit. but i cannot think that the principal showed much “delicacy of consideration” for the feelings of his guests.
perhaps a degree of roughness akin to this, though hardly altogether of the same sort, contributed to increase that strong feeling of dislike for whately which, outside his own oriel, was pretty generally felt in oxford, and which was mainly caused by more serious objections to his political, and in some degree religious, liberalism.
i fear that i profited very little by his tuition at alban hall, doubtless chiefly from my own fault and idleness. but other causes contributed also to the result. the classical lectures were such as i had left a long way behind me. no study on my part was necessary to hold my own in the lecture-room by the side of my fellows in the team. yet, of course, it was easy for such a teacher as whately to perceive that i was trusting to winchester work rather than to his instruction. and naturally this did not please him. i think too that he had a prejudice against public schools in general, and that for some reason or other he disliked winchester in particular. i remember his saying to me once—though i totally forget on what occasion—“we don’t want any new college ways here, sir!” i{197} told him that i feared i did not deserve the compliment of being supposed capable of bringing any such there. and the reply failed to mollify him.
those who are old enough to remember anything of the social aspects of oxford at that day, and indeed any who have read the excellent biography of archbishop whately by his daughter, know that he was exceedingly unpopular among “the dons,” his contemporaries. this was due partly to the opinions he held on matters social, political, and religious, partly to those which prejudiced minds far inferior to his own supposed him to hold, but partly also to his own personal ways and manners. i think i know, and indeed i think i knew when i was his pupil, enough of the fibre and calibre of his mind to feel sure that he was greatly the intellectual superior to most of those of similar position around him. and i suppose that the world in general has by this time come to the conclusion that in respect of most of those opinions, which were then most obnoxious to the world in which he lived, whately was right and his adversaries wrong. but he was not the man to win acceptance for new ideas in any society. the temper of his mind was in a high degree autocratical. he was born to be a benevolent and beneficent despot. his daughter, speaking of the painful experiences that awaited him when he became archbishop of dublin, says that “opposition was painful to his disposition.”
doubtless the principal of alban hall, thoroughly congenial to him as was at that time the social{198} atmosphere of the common room of his own oriel, would have felt himself much out of his element in most of the common rooms of oxford. i remember a dear old man, dr. johnson, of magdalen, who was greatly beloved by his own society, and an universal favourite with all who knew him. he was a high, though not altogether dry, right divine man (divino rightly spelled, be it understood, and not with an “e,” as in jure de vino), and used to maintain that the lineal descendants of the last stuarts were still the rightful sovereigns of england. sometimes a knot of youngsters would cluster around him, with, “but now, dr. johnson, do you really and truly believe that the present duke of modena is your lawful sovereign?” “well, boy,” the doctor would say when thus pressed, “after dinner i do.”
this was not the sort of man whom whately would have tolerated, for though full of wit, as i have said, he was utterly devoid of any tincture of humour.
those were the days when it used to be said that the rule at magdalen respecting preferment tenable together with a fellowship, was, “hold your tongue, and you may hold any thing else.”
it was supposed, i remember, at that day that there was to a certain special degree an antagonism and dislike between him and dr. shuttleworth, the warden of new college. there was a story current to the effect that the brusquerie of the principal of alban hall was upon one occasion exhibited in an offensive manner in the drawing-{199}room of the warden of new college, when not only men but ladies were present. whately had a habit of sitting in all sorts of uncouth postures on his chair. he would balance himself, while nursing one leg over the knee of the other, on the two hind legs of his chair, or even on one of them, and was indulging in gymnastics of this sort when the leg of the chair suddenly snapped, and he, a large and heavy man, rolled on the floor. he was a man of far too much real pith and aplomb to be unnecessarily disconcerted at such an accident. but the story ran that he manifested his disregard for it by simply tossing the offending and crippled chair into a corner, and taking another as he proceeded with what he was saying without one word of apology to his hostess.
if it was true that there was any such special feeling of antagonism between whately and shuttleworth it was a pity; for assuredly there were very few, if any, men among the heads of colleges of that day, better calculated by power and originality of mind, and in many respects by liberality of thinking, to understand and foregather with whately than the warden of new college.
shuttleworth was, and had the reputation of being an especially witty man. and i consider whately to have been the wittiest man i ever knew. but it is true that their wit was of a very different character. whately was not a man fitted to shine in society, unless it were the society of those prepared by knowledge of and regard for him to recognise his undisputed{200} right to be the acknowledged leader of it. shuttleworth was, on the contrary, eminently calculated to contribute more than his share to the most brilliant social intercourse. he had, with abundance of solid sweetmeat at the bottom of the trifle, a sparkling store of that froth of wit which is most accepted as the readiest and pleasantest social small change. whately’s wit was not of the kind which ever set any “table on a roar.” it was of that higher and deeper kind, which consists in prompt perception, not of the superficial resemblances in dissimilar things, but in the underlying resemblances disclosed only to the eye capable of appreciating at a glance the essential qualities and characteristics of the matter in hand. i have heard whately deliciously witty at a logic or euclid lecture.
an admirable specimen of this highest description of wit is given—among dozens of others indeed—by his daughter in her biography of him, which delighted me much when i read it, and which may be cited because it is very brilliant and may be given shortly. it will be found at the 38th page of the first volume of miss whately’s work. the archbishop, writing of the controversy respecting the observance of the sabbath, says, “this is a case in which men impose on themselves by the fallacy of the thaumatrope. on one side are painted (to obviate the absurdity of a probable law) the plain, earnest, and repeated injunctions to the jews relative to their sabbath; on the other side (to obviate the consequence of our having to keep{201} the jewish sabbath) we have the new testament allusions to the christian assemblies on the first day of the week. by a repeated and rapid twirl these two images are blended into one picture in the mind. but a steady view will show that they are on opposite sides of the card.”
i remember a favourite saying of whately’s to the effect that the difficulty of giving a good definition of anything increased in proportion to the commonness of the thing to be defined. and he would illustrate his dictum by saying “define me a teacup!” a trial of the experiment will probably convince the experimenter of the correctness of whately’s proposition.
whether it may have been that any antagonism between whately and shuttleworth caused the former to be prejudiced against wiccamical things and men, or whether the relationship of the two feelings were vice versa, i cannot say. but i certainly thought and think still, that i suffered in his estimation from the fact that i was a wykehamist. in writing on educational matters in or about 1830 (p. 79 of miss whately’s first volume), whately says: “to compare schools generally with colleges generally may seem a vague inquiry, but take the most in repute of each—eton, westminster, harrow, etc., v. oriel, brasenose, balliol, christchurch, etc., etc.” now, i cannot but feel that so singular an omission of winchester from so short a list of the schools “most in repute,” glaringly in contradiction as it was with all that the whole english world{202}—even the non-academical world—knew to be the fact, could have been caused only by preconceived and unreasoning prejudice. of course to me the utterance above quoted comes only as a confirmation of what the personal observation of my undergraduate days led me to feel, for i knew nothing of it till i read miss whately’s volumes published in 1866.
yet i do not doubt that i may have occasionally “rubbed whately the wrong way,” as the phrase goes. he was, as i have said, a most autocratically minded man. and we wykehamists, as the reader may have perceived from my winchester reminiscences, were not accustomed to be ruled autocratically. we lived under the empire, and i might almost say, in an atmosphere of law, as distinguished from individual will. it was constantly in our minds and on our tongues, that the “informator” or the “hostiarius” could or could not do this or that. we lived with the ever-present consciousness that the suprema lex was not what this master or the other master, or even the warden might say, save in so far as it coincided with the college statutes. and i doubt not that whately perceived and understood the influence of this habit of mind in something or other that i might have said or done. it was probably something of the sort which led to his telling me that he wanted no new college manners at alban hall.
my “winchester manners” however, enabled me i remember to understand him when some of his own{203} flock could not. he would at a euclid lecture say, “take any straight line,” scrawling, as he said the words, a line as far from straight as he could draw it, to the utter bewilderment of some among his audience, who, i believe, really thought that the principal was a shocking bad draughtsman, while the despised wykehamist perfectly understood that his object was to show that the process of reasoning to be illustrated in no wise depended on accuracy of lines or angles.
there is another passage in one of the letters published by his biographer, which illustrates whately’s aversion from all wiccamical men and things, and at the same time his utter ignorance of them. “it is commonly said at oxford,” he writes, “at least it used to be, that it was next to impossible to make a wykehamist believe that any examination could be harder than that which the candidates for new college undergo.” my reader has already been told in some degree what that examination was, and the nature of it. it was a real and serious examination, whereas that of candidates for admission to winchester college was a mere form; and it was certainly a searching examination into the thoroughness with which schoolboys had done their schoolboy work. but the supposition that any new college man ever imagined his examination in election chamber to be of equal difficulty with the subsequent work at the university, or with that in the schools for honours, is an absolute proof that the person so{204} supposing never knew anything about them, or had come much into contact with them.
i have said that whately’s reputation for a very pronounced liberalism, certainly at that time unparalleled among his brother heads of houses at oxford, had been my father’s reason for placing me at alban hall. and all that reached the undergraduate world in connection with him was of a nature to lead the academic mind to regard him as a phenomenon of radicalism. and it is curious to recall such impressions, while reading at the present day such a passage as the following (life of whately, vol. i., p. 302). the archbishop is writing about the schemes then in agitation for the application of a portion of the revenues of the irish church to the purposes of national education. the italics in the following transcription are mine.
“it is concluded, first, that in parishes where there is a very small or no protestant population, the revenues of the church will be either wholly or in part, as the case may be, transferred to the education board, as the incumbents drop, their life interests being reserved; secondly, that in the event of an increase of the protestant population, such portion of the funds thus alienated, as may be thought requisite, shall be drawn from the education board, and restored to the original purpose; thirdly, that in the event of a further diminution of the protestants, a further portion shall be withdrawn from the church, and applied to the purpose of general education. this last supposition is{205} merely conjectural, but is so strictly the converse of the preceding, that every one at once concludes, and must conclude by parity of reasoning, that it must be contemplated. now it will not be supposed by any one, who knows much of the state of ireland, that we contemplate as probable any such increase of the protestant population as to call for the restoration of a considerable portion of the alienated funds. in a few places, perhaps, attempts may be made, i fear with disastrous results, by some zealous protestant landlords to increase with this view the proportion of protestants on their estates; but on the whole we neither hope nor fear any such result. what alarms us is, the holding out the principle of such a system as the apportioning the revenues of the church and of the education board to the varying proportions of the roman catholic population to the protestant; and again the principle of making the funds for national education contingent upon the death of incumbents. the natural effect of the latter of these provisions must be to place the clergy so circumstanced in a most invidious, and in this country a most dangerous situation. no one who knows anything of ireland would like to reside here surrounded by his heirs, on whom his income was to devolve at his death. and such would be very much the case with an incumbent, who was regarded as standing between the nation and the national benefit, viz., of provision for the education of their children. then in respect of the other point, every protestant{206} who might come to settle, or remain settled in any parish, would be regarded as tending towards the withdrawing or withholding, as the case might be, of the funds of the national education, and diverting them to the use of an heretical establishment.
“the most harassing persecutions, the most ferocious outrages, the most systematic murders, would in consequence be increased fourfold. bitter as religious animosities have hitherto been in this wretched country, it would be to most persons astonishing that they could be so much augmented, as i have no doubt they would be, by this fatal experiment. when instead of mere vague jealousy, revenge and party spirit, to prompt to crime and violence, there was also held out a distinct pecuniary national benefit in the extermination of protestants, it would be in fact a price set on their heads, and they would be hunted down like wolves.... better, far better, would it be to confiscate at once and for ever all the endowments held by the clergy, and leave them to be supported by voluntary contribution, or by manual labour. however impoverished, they and their congregations would at least have security for their lives.”
“to seek to pacify ireland,” he writes a little further on, “by compliance and favour shown to its disturbers would be even worse than the superstitious procedure of our forefathers, with their weapon salve, who left the wound to itself, and applied their unguents to the sword which had inflicted it.{207}”
writing to his friend senior on parliamentary reform he says that a system of ￡10 qualification “could not last, but must go on to universal suffrage.” his own plan would be universal suffrage with a plurality of votes to owners of property in proportion to the amount of it, and a system of election by degrees—parishes e.g. to elect an elector. “some may,” he concludes, “perhaps think at the first glance that my reform is very democratical. i think that a more attentive mind will show that it is calculated to prevent in the most effectual way the inroads of excessive democracy. i can at least say that no one can dread more than myself a democratical government, chiefly because i am convinced it is the most warlike.”
such were the utterances of an advanced liberal in the first half of this century. was i far wrong in saying that whately’s liberalism would have made very good modern conservatism?
there was a story current, i remember, not long after whately’s acceptance of the see of dublin, which, as i do not think it has been told in print, and as it is very significant, i may tell here—observing that all i know is, that the story was current.
it was at the time when one of the great transatlantic passenger ships had been destroyed by fire with the loss of many lives. one of those saved was a dublin clergyman of the low church school of divinity, who, returning to dublin, and{208} finding himself the hero of many tea-tables, was wont to moralise down the great event of his life after the fashion of those who will have it, quand même, that the tower of siloam did fall because of the wickedness of those whom it crushed. and one day, at one of those levées of which miss whately speaks, he was improving his usual theme, the centre of a knot gathered around him, when the archbishop strolled up to the group, according to his fashion, and having heard, said: “yes, truly mr. ——, a most remarkable experience! but i think i can cap it” (a favourite phrase of whately’s, who was fond of the amusement of capping verses). “it is little more than a month ago that i crossed from holyhead to kingston, and by god’s mercy the vessel never caught fire at all!”
i cannot bring to an end my reminiscences relating to so remarkable a man as whately without relating a story, which he told me, as having been told him by his old and highly valued friend and protégé, blanco white, once so well known a figure among all the oriel set of that period. the story was introduced, i remember, as an illustration of a favourite (and doubtless correct) theory of whately’s to the effect that the popular english “hocus pocus,” as applied to any sleight of hand deception, is simply a derisory corruption of the “hoc est corpus” used in the romish liturgical formula for the consecration of the eucharistic elements. it may be that the story in question{209} has been told in print before now, but i have never met with it.
“a priest,” said blanco white, “was for some heinous crime condemned to capital punishment at seville. but of course before he could be delivered over to the secular arm for the execution of the sentence, a ceremonial degradation from his sacerdotal character had to be performed. and this was to be done at the place appointed for his execution immediately before that was proceeded to; and for the greater efficacy of the terrible example to be inculcated on the people, the market day at seville had been chosen for the purpose.
“the criminal priest accordingly, as he was led to the place of execution, was still to all effects and purposes a priest, with all the tremendous powers inherent in that character, of which nothing save formal ecclesiastical degradation could deprive him. now it so happened, or perhaps was purposely arranged, that the way from the prison to the place of execution lay through the market place, where all the provisions of all sorts for the sevillians for that day were exposed. and as the yet undegraded, and it must be feared unrepentant, priest passed among all the various displays of food thus spread out before him, the devil, seizing an opportunity rarely to be matched, entered into the unhappy priest’s mind, and prompted him to deal one last malicious, and sacrilegious, blow at the population about to witness his miserable end.{210} suddenly, in the mid-market, he stretched out his arms, and pronounced with a loud voice the uncancellable sacramental words, ‘hoc est corpus!’ and all the contents of that vast market were instantaneously transubstantiated! all the food in seville was forthwith unavailable for any baser than eucharistic purposes, and seville had to observe the vindictive priest’s last day on earth as a very rigorous fast day!”
whether blanco white told this as absolutely having occurred within his own knowledge, or only as a seville legend, i do not know, but in any case the story is a good one.
i have said that when i entered alban hall i was not in a position to obtain much profit from the classical lectures, the main object of which was to drive those who attended them through the examination for the “little go.” i was better able to pass that examination when i first went to oxford, than when the time came for my doing so. but the examination in question required that the candidate for passing should take up either logic or euclid (four books only, as i remember), and of neither of these did i know anything. and there the alban hall lectures profited me. the admirably lucid logic lectures of both the principal and vice-principal to my surprise soon rendered the rationale of the science perfectly comprehensible to me, and even aldrich became interesting. i selected logic for my “little go,” and whately made me abundantly able to satisfy the examiners.{211}
but, as i said a few pages back, my membership of alban hall was, for more reasons than those which have been already given, disastrous to me, and the disaster came about in this wise.
whately was rightly and judiciously enough very particular in requiring that his men should return after vacation punctually on the day appointed for meeting. now, unfortunately, my father on one occasion detained me until the following day. what the cause may have been i entirely forget, but remember perfectly well that it was in no way connected with any plans or wishes of mine. i returned a day late, and the penalty which whately had enacted for this laches was the payment of a certain sum to his servant, the porter, buttery man, and factotum at the hall. what the amount of this penalty was, and whether it were large or small, i have entirely forgotten, if i ever knew, for the whole matter in dispute passed between my father and whately. the former maintained, whether rightly or wrongly i have not the means of knowing, that the latter acted ultra vires in making any such motu proprio edict. there was no likelihood that whately would yield in the matter—indeed it would have been out of the question that he should have done so. my father had quite as little of yielding in his nature, and kicked against the pricks determinedly. the result was, that i was one morning summoned to the presence of the principal and told to take my name off the books! my father was at first disposed to forbid me to do so,{212} but the result of refusal would have been expulsion, which would have entailed ruinous consequences much worse than the already sufficiently injurious results of being compelled to quit the hall. i should immediately have lost the two valuable exhibitions which i held from winchester, besides incurring the very damning stigma that through life attaches to a man who has been expelled. eventually i took my name off the books under menace of expulsion if i did not.
the case attracted a good deal of attention in the university at the time, and i think the general feeling among the heads of colleges was that whately was wrong. at all events, without going into the question as between my father and him, it was emphatically a case of delirant reges, plectuntur achivi. from beginning to end the whole matter passed over my head. i had neither fault nor option in the matter. and whately knew perfectly well how very great was the injury he was inflicting on me. it was nearly impossible to get admission under the circumstances to any college. the great majority of them could not possibly, even if any one of them had wished to do so, receive a man at a minute’s notice, from absolute want of room, and the wrong that would have been done to others who were waiting for admission. but it would have been entirely contrary to the rules and practice of almost, if not quite, every one of them to receive a man compelled to leave another college, even with a formal bene decessit. and the{213} interval of a term (or even of a day, i take it in strictness) would have necessarily involved the forfeiture of my exhibitions. all which whately also knew; but all which, as he might have fairly answered, my father knew also!
eventually i was received at magdalen hall, which has since that day become hertford college, of which dr. macbride was then principal. dr. macbride was one of the kindliest and best men in the world, and he was one of those who most strongly felt that i was being very hardly used. it was with difficulty that it could be managed that i should be received into his society at a day’s notice; but looking to the urgency, as well as to the other circumstances of the case, it was managed somehow, and i became a member of magdalen hall.
but the mischief done to my university career was fatal! magdalen hall was at that time a general refuge for the destitute! dr. macbride, well known for his active benevolence and beneficence in various spheres of well-doing on the outside of his academical character, was hardly well adapted for the position he held in the university. anything of the nature of punishment seemed impossible to the gentleness of his character; and i fancy he held theoretically that it was desirable that a place such as his hall should exist in the university to serve as a refuge for those who, without being black sheep, were for a variety of reasons pushed aside from the beaten tracks of the academical career.{214}
i made very little acquaintance with the men there; but i do not think there were many, though no doubt some, black sheep among them. there was another hall in the university at that time famous for the “fastness” of its inmates. but the “shadiness” of magdalen hall was of a different kind. there were many middle-aged men there—ci-devant officers in the army, who had quitted their profession with the intention of entering the church; schoolmasters, who, having begun their career in some capacity which did not require a degree, were at a later day anxious to obtain one in order to better themselves. in general, the object of all there was not education or any other object save simply a degree needed for some social or economical purpose. “honours” were of course about as much aspired to as bishoprics! and it was the business of mr. jacobson, the gentle, kindly, patient, and long-suffering vice-principal to secure “a pass” for as many of his heterogeneous flock as possible.
of discipline there could hardly be said to have been any! when other men of the kick-over-the-traces sort told their stories of various surreptitious means of entering college at all sorts of hours, magdalen hall men used to say that their plan was to ring at the gate and have it opened for them! i remember upon one occasion, when i had shown myself in chapel only on the sunday morning during an entire week, the vice-principal mildly remarked, “you have reduced it to a minimum, mr. trollope!” i suppose that in classical attain{215}ments i was much superior to any man in the place. there were many, it is true, who were never seen at lecture at all—not probably from idleness, but because they were obtaining from a private tutor a course of cramming more desperately energetic than even kindly, patient jacobson’s elementary lectures could supply. for me the res angusta domi forbade all idea of employing a private tutor. but as for a “pass” degree, i was just as capable of taking it when i left winchester (with the exception of logic, and what was called “divinity”) as when i did take it; and as regards logic, i was sufficiently capable when i left whately’s hands. if my “divinity” examination had consisted of as searching an inquiry into my knowledge of the contents of the old testament as was required from many men, i should infallibly have been “plucked.” but, as it chanced, it consisted solely of construing two verses of the new testament. i remember that the examiner had been hammering away at the man next before me for an inordinate time, and as i construed my greek testament glibly enough, he was glad to make up for lost time.
as for jacobson’s lectures they were absolutely useless to me, and he never in the slightest degree pressed me to attend them. i remember, however, that he desired an interview with me on the morning i was to go into the schools, for the purpose of testing in some degree the probability of my passing. and it is a singular circumstance that—horace having been one of the books i was taking up{216}—he put me on, as a trial, at the very passage selected for the same purpose by the examiner in the schools an hour or two later! jacobson found me able enough to deal with the passage he selected. but had it been otherwise he would have secured my passing—as far as horace was concerned—despite any amount of ignorance of the author, if only i had the wit to remember his cramming for an hour or two.
eventually, though i had in no wise aimed at anything of the sort, a third class was awarded to me—wholly, as i was given to understand, on account of my latin writing. the examiners had given—hardly judiciously—so stiff a passage from one of the homilies to be translated into latin that the majority of the men could not understand the english; which to a certain extent interfered with their translation of it into another language. they were “pass men!” with the candidates for honours it would doubtless have been otherwise. but i did understand it, and i took it into my head to translate it twice—once into ciceronian and once into sallustian latin. and this was rewarded by a third class. valeat quantum!
and thus ended my academical career in a comparative failure, the conclusion of which seemed to have been rather a foregone one. i had no private tutor, and, with the exception of whately’s logic lectures, no college tuition of any value to me at all. and in addition to all this i was pulled up by the roots and transplanted in the middle of my career. no doubt i was idle, and might have{217} done better. i read a good deal, but it was what i chose to read and not what i ought to have read with a view to the schools. i had no very unacademical pursuits save one. i used occasionally to hire with a friend a gig with a fast horse, drive out to witney, dine there, wait till the up mail came through, and then run back to oxford, tormenting the coachman and his team by continually running by him, letting him pass me, and then da capo. but these escapades were rare.
a great deal more wine, or what was supposed to be such, was drunk at oxford in those days than was desirable, or than, as i take it, is the case now. but i never was much of a wine drinker. i think i have been drunk twice in my life, but not oftener. very little credit, however, is due to me for my moderation, from the fact, which i do not think i ever met with in the case of any other individual, that the headache which to most others comes the next morning as the penalty of excess, always used to come to me, if i at all exceeded, séance tenante, and almost immediately. nor did wine ever pleasurably raise my spirits, nor did my palate care for it. to the present day as a simple question of gourmandise i would rather drink a glass of lemonade than any champagne that was ever grown—lemonade, by the bye, not such liquid as goes by that name in this country, but lemonade made with lemons fresh and fragrant from the tree. under these circumstances i can make small claim to any moral virtue for my sobriety.{218}
i used to be a good deal upon the water either alone or accompanied by a single friend with a pair of sculls. but i was a great walker, and cultivated in those days, and, indeed, during most of the many years that have passed since, a considerable turn of speed. in those days captain barclay was called the champion pedestrian of england, and had walked six miles within the hour. i hear people talk of eight and even nine miles having been done within the hour. but i absolutely refuse to believe the statement. i dare say that the ground may have been covered, but not at a fair walk—at what used to be called, and perhaps is called still, a toe-and-heel walk, i.e. a walk in performing which one foot must touch the ground before the other leaves it. i tried very hard to match captain barclay’s feat, but my utmost endeavours never achieved more than five miles and three-quarters—i could never do more; and of course that last quarter of a mile just made all the difference between a first-rate and a second-rate walker. the five and three-quarters i have often done on the abingdon road, milestone to milestone. and at the present day i should be happy to walk a match with any gentleman born in 1810.
the longest day’s walk i ever did was forty-seven miles, but i carried a very heavy knapsack, making, i take it, that distance fully equal to sixty miles without one. how well i remember walking one fair frosty morning from winchester to alresford, seven miles, before breakfast. i asked at the inn{219} at which i breakfasted for cold meat. they brought me an uncut loin of small southdown mutton, of which i ate the whole. and i can see now the glance of that waiter’s eye, accusing me, as plainly as if he had spoken the words, of pocketing his master’s provisions! eheu! fugaces, posthume, posthume, labuntur anni, and i never shall again eat a loin of mutton at one sitting!—partly though because scientific breeding has exterminated the good old southdown mutton.
one other reminiscence occurs to me in connection with the subject of walking. while i was living with my parents at harrow, my mother’s brother, mr. henry milton, was living with his family at fulham. and one sunday morning i walked from harrow to fulham before breakfast on a visit to him. as may be supposed, i was abundantly ready to do ample justice to the very solid and varied breakfast placed before me, but, after having done so, was hardly equally ready to accompany my uncle’s family to fulham church to hear the bishop of london preach. this, however, it behoved me to do, not without great misgiving as to the effect that the bishop’s sermon might have on me after my twelve miles walk and very copious breakfast—especially as my uncle’s pew was exactly in front and in the vicinity of the pulpit! so, minded to do my best under the difficult circumstances, i stood up during the sermon. all in vain! nature too peremptorily bade me sleep. i slept, with the result of executing an uninterrupted series of{220} profound bows to the preacher, the suddenness and jerky nature of which evidently betokened the entirety of my agreement with his arguments. i feared the reproaches, which i doubted not awaited me on my way home. but my uncle contented himself with saying, “when you go to sleep during a sermon, tom, never stand up to do it!”
to sum up the story of my certainly unsuccessful, but not entirely profitless life at oxford, i may say that i was not altogether an idle man, nor ever in any degree a sharer in any of the “faster” phases of academical life. i was always a reader. but what academical good could come to a man who was reading the diversions of purley, or plot’s oxfordshire, or burton’s anatomy of melancholy, or brown’s vulgar errors, when he ought to have been reading aristotle’s ethics? among other reminiscences of the sort, my diary accuses me, for instance, for having taken from the library of magdalen hall (and read!) a volume called gaffarel’s curiosities. i suppose no other living man has read it! the work contains among other “curiosities,” a chapter “of incredible nonsense,” as my diary calls it, on the construction and proper use of talismans!
alas, no “honours” were granted for proficiency in such studies!