Tutors—Their slackness—The real and the ideal tutor—Dr Newton on tutor’s fees—Dr Johnson’s recommendation of Bateman—Public lecturers—Terrae Filius and a Wadham man’s letter.
Tutors—Their slackness—The real and the ideal tutor—Dr Newton on tutor’s fees—Dr Johnson’s recommendation of Bateman—Public lecturers—Terrae Filius and a Wadham man’s letter.
Just as the schoolmaster is considered the natural enemy of boys, so is the Don popularly credited with being the natural enemy of the Undergraduates. The originator of this wonderful theory is presumably the lady novelist who, with no deeper knowledge of Oxford than that obtained from a minute study of the coloured photographs in railway trains, has pictured the Don in her vivid imagination to be a crusty, inhuman, and gouty septuagenarian who, in the intervals of delivering abstruse lectures, passes his days in sending men down and otherwise suppressing all vitality and humanity.
Anything more completely ridiculous it would be impossible to imagine. Conceive a body of charming and delightful men, very kindly and sympathetic, always ready to go out of their way to help a man in financial or moral difficulties, cultured, intellectual, hard working, thorough sportsmen in the best sense of that much abused word, full of loyalty to their college and to the university, delighted by the athletic or scholastic triumphs of the men with whom they are in close contact—and then you do not obtain anything more than a true description of those men who do so much to uphold the honour of the university, and who are remembered with respect and even affection by the generations of Undergraduates who pass through their hands.
The eighteenth-century Don, on the contrary, was a person altogether different. In the desire to bring out the light and shade of his personality I am frustrated by the superabundance of the latter and the minute quantity of the former. In dealing with the Georgian Don I have taken each species separately: the Tutor, the Lecturer, the Examiner, the Head of a college, and so forth.
It appears that the old-time fresher, having been admitted to a college, was at once recommended to a tutor whom he interviewed in his rooms. The Hoxton man, who came up with his mother and his dad, found himself called upon by his prospective tutor to sit down and make small work of several quarts of liquid refreshment to the healths of various “traitors.” Being somewhat flurried at this boisterous reception, the lad was assured that he did not come to the university to pray, and that in any case, he, the tutor, would look after him like a father. Of being called upon to do any work with him there was no whisper. Gibbon, on the other hand, on being placed under the tutorship of Dr Waldegrave, was desired to attend that gentleman’s rooms each morning from ten to eleven and read theComedies of Terence. This he accordingly did, but with so little advantage to himself that, after a few weeks, he quietly dropped away and saw his tutor no more. To counterbalance the accusation of slackness against Dr Waldegrave, Gibbon described him as having been a “learned and pious man of a mild disposition, strict morals and abstemious life, who seldom mingled in the politics or jollity of the college.” This worthy man departed from the precincts of Magdalen, and Gibbon had nothing good to say for his successor. “The second tutor,” wrote Gibbon, “whose literary character did not command the respect of the college, well remembered that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to perform.... Excepting one voluntary visit to hisrooms during the titular months of his office, the tutor and pupil lived in the same college as strangers to each other.”
The vindicator of Magdalen leaped into the breach on behalf of the tutors against Gibbon, and gave a hundred reasons why Gibbon was in the wrong. But there are numberless other instances of utter laziness among that section of the Don world. Malmesbury, for instance, related in his usual cheery and optimistic manner, that his tutor, “an excellent and worthy man, according to the practice of all tutors at that moment, gave himself no concern about his pupils. I never saw him but during a fortnight, when I took it into my head to do trigonometry.” This witness matriculated at Merton thirteen years after Gibbon’s time.
Another example of bad tutorship may be quoted from William Fitzmaurice, second Earl of Shelburne, who went up in 1753. “At sixteen, I went to Christ Church, where I had again the misfortune to fall under a narrow-minded tutor.... He was not without learning, and certainly laid himself out to be serviceable to me in point of reading.... I came full of prejudices. My tutor added to those prejudices by connecting me with the anti-Westminsters, who were far from the most fashionable part of the college, and a small minority.”[24]
In the light of these adverse criticisms it is interesting to note the statutorial view as to the ideal tutor. According to Amhurst, who quoted statute (d), it was ordained that “no person shall be a tutor who has not taken a degree in some faculty, and is not (in the judgment in the head of the college or hall to which he belongs) a man of approv’d learning, probity and sincere religion.” But can these requirements be called sufficient if the hundreds of tutors against whom their pupils flung accusations of slackness, drunkenness, and other hobbies, all satisfied them?
The Loiterer, evidently with this insufficent statute in mind, made some very intelligent remarksà proposof this question. “Scarce any office,” he wrote, “demands so many different requisites in those who would fill it properly, as that of a college Tutor, and in none perhaps is propriety of Choice so little attended to. The Tutor of a College goes off to a Living, dies of an Apoplexy, or is otherwise provided for; a Successor must be found; and as few who have better prospects chuse to undertake so disagreeable an office, the Society is sometimes under the necessity of appointing a person, who is no further qualified for it than by the possession of a little classical, or mathematical information. With this slender stock of knowledge, and without any acquaintance with the World or any insight into Characters, He enters on his office with more Zeal than Discretion, asserts his own opinions with arrogance and maintains them with obstinacy, calls Contradiction, Contumacy, and Reply, Pertness, and deals out his Jobations, Impositions, and Confinements, to every ill-fated Junior who is daring enough to oppose his sentiments, or doubt his opinions. The consequence of this is perfectly natural. He treats his pupils as Boys and they think him a Brute. From that moment all his power of doing good ceases; for we learn nothing from him, who has forfeited our confidence. Such is the Portrait of what Tutors too often are, might I be indulged in pointing out what theyshouldbe, very different would be the Character I should sketch. I would draw him modest in his disposition, mild in his temper, gentle and insinuating in his address; scarce less a man of the world than a man of letters. His Classic Knowledge (though far above mediocrity) should be the least of his acquirements; General Knowledge should be his forte, and the application of it to general purposes his aim. He should not only improve those under his care in his publick lectures, but should endeavour at least to direct themin their private studies; he should encourage them to read, and should teach them to read with taste.”
At this pointThe Loiterer’sfriend interrupted and insisted that no man was ever born to be a tutor if tutors must possess all the attributes contained in that description. Upon thisThe Loiterersaid that he knew only one man in the entire university who came up to the standard, and that man was his own tutor.
Gibbon made a scornful allusion to the salary of tutors. On this subject Dr Newton penned a multitude of indignant sheets because a certain Undergraduate, named Joseph Somaster, demanded permission to leave Hart Hall and transfer himself to Balliol for the reason that he had an offer of obtaining a tutor there who required no fees. With regard therefore to tutors’ fees, “it may be observed,” wrote the reverend Doctor, “that the University doth allow Tutors to Receive a consideration for their care of the Youth entrusted to them; that, as this is very Reasonable in itself, so hath it ever been the Practice of Tutors to Receive a Consideration for such their care; that the consideration they have received, not being limited by any Statute, hath varied, and is, at this day, different in different Houses of Education within the University; that the tutor’s demand being known, and not objected to before a Scholar is enter’d under his care, the same, upon entrance, becomes the consideration that is agreed to be paid for his care. That the Labourer is worthy of his Hire; that some Hire is both a better Encouragement to a Tutor, and a greater obligation upon him to take a due care, than no Hire; that the greatest Hire, of which any tutor in the University is, at this day thought worthy, compar’d with the Expence he hath been at, and the Pains he hath taken, and the Years he hath spent in order to Qualifie himself for this trust, and also, with the further Labour and Time he must employ in discharging it faithfully,is very small. That unless Learning be the very lowest of all attainments, and the Education of Youth the very lowest of all Professions, Thirty Shillings a Quarter, for near three times as many Lectures, is not so extravagant a demand, as that he who pays it, should do it with an unwilling hand. Much less that any one, who hath Himself been a Tutor, and who hath experienc’d a faithful Tutor’s trouble and anxiety, should think it too much for any of his Fellow-Labourers in the same Vocation, although their circumstances should be so affluent that they need not any reward, or their Friendship so particular that they do not desire it.”[25]
In the time of Dr Johnson the college tutors lectured in Hall as well as in their own rooms, and, in addition, they set weekly themes for composition—for the non-performance of which the fine was half a crown. The day for giving in these themes was Saturday. George Whitefield, though only a poor starveling servitor with scarce a penny to bless himself with, was twice fined by his tutor because he failed to compose his theme.
Christopher Wordsworth in his book on the universities in the eighteenth centuries made it clear that when Dr Johnson was at Pembroke in 1728, “Undergraduates generally depended entirely upon the Tutor to guide all their reading. His first tutor Jordon was like a father to his pupils, but he was intellectually incompetent for his important position. For this reason Johnson recommended his old schoolfellow Taylor to go to Christ Church on account of the excellent lectures of Bateman then tutor there.” In Johnson’s own words in reference to Mr Jordon, “He was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instructions. Indeed, I did not attend him much. The first day after I came to college, I waitedupon him, and then staid away four. On the sixth, Mr Jordon asked me why I had not attended. I answered, I had been sliding in Christchurch meadow. And this I said with as much non-chalance as I am now talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor.” To this self accusation Boswell replied, “That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind!” “No, Sir,” snapped Johnson, “stark insensibility.”[26]
It is unnecessary to arraign further damning evidence against the Georgian tutor. He stands convicted on the cases which I have related. Were I called upon indeed to summon other witnesses for the prosecution, I have but to turn to any eighteenth-century authority. No one has a word to say in his favour. By every one he is pronounced to be an idle, self-indulgent, dishonest, utterly unintellectual creature, conspicuously lacking in “learning, probity, and sincere religion.”
The next division of the genus Don is the public lecturer, in regard to whom there are, so Amhurst informed us, a number of statutes concerning the public lecturers in all faculties: appointing, with the utmost exactness, where they shall read, when they shall read, what they shall read, how they shall read, and to whom they shall read. “All these (as I have frequently observed) are almost totally neglected; out of twenty public lectures, not above three or four being observed at all, and they not statutably observed: for the auditors, who belong to the same college with the lecturer in any faculty, do not wait upon him to the school, where he reads, and back again, as they ought to do; so far from it, that not one in ten goes to hear these lectures, nor do they (who do attend) take down what they hear in writing; neither do they (I believe) diligently readover the same author at home, which the public professor undertook to explain; nor are persons punished (as the statutes require) for any of these omissions.” Even if it be admitted that three or four is an exaggeratedly low estimate of the number of these lectures, and that the “auditors” are just as lazy as the men who deliver them, yet it is not to be wondered at that the Undergraduates did not read over the authors, or write down what they heard. All the lectures were delivered by Dons who knew next to nothing about their subject, and they were in consequence very tedious and worthless affairs.
The lectureships were bestowed “upon such as are utterly and notoriously ignorant of them, and never made them their study in their lives. They are given away, as pensions and sinecures, to any body that can make a good interest for them, without any respect to his abilities or character in general, or to what faculty in particular he has apply’d his mind. I have known a profligatedebaucheechosen professor of moral philosophy; and a fellow, who never look’d upon the stars soberly in his life, professor of astronomy; we have had history professors, who never read anything to qualify them for it, but Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Don Belicanis of Greece, and such like valuable records; we have had likewise numberless professors of Greek, Hebrew and Arabick, who scarce understood their mother tongue; and, not long ago, a famous gamester and stock-jobber was elected to M—g—t, professor of divinity; so great it seems is the analogy between dusting of cushions, and shaking of elbows, or between squand’ring away of estates, and saving of souls!”
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A South View of the Observatory at Oxford.
Terrae Filius was moved to the above denunciations and reminiscences of lecturers, who, he said, were elected perhaps on the principle that “he can do no mischief; ergo, he shall be our man,” by thereceipt of a letter from a Wadham man who recounted his own personal experiences of lecturers and their ways. It runs thus:—
“Wadham College,Jan. 22, 1720.“To the Author of Terrae Filius.“Sir,—I hope you intend to acquaint the world, amongst other abuses in what manner the pious designs of those good men, who left us all our publick lectures, are answered. Yesterday morning at nine a clock the bell went as usually for a lecture; whether a rhetorical or logical one, I cannot tell; but I went to the schools, big with hopes of being instructed in one or the other, and having saunter’d a pretty while along the quadrangle, impatient of the lecturer’s delay, I ask’d the major (who is an officer belonging to the schools) whether it was usual now and then to slip a lecture or so: his answer was that he had not seen the face of any lecturer in any faculty, except in poetry and musick, for three years past; that all lectures besides were entirely neglected.... Every morning in term time there ought to be a divinity lecture in the divinity school; two gentlemen of our house went one day to hear what the learned professor had to say upon that subject: these two were join’d by another master of arts, who without arrogance might think that they understood divinity enough to be his auditors; and that consequently his lecture would not have been lost upon them: but the doctor thought otherwise, who came at last, and was very much surprized to find that there was an audience. He took two or three turns about the school, and then said, ‘Magistri vos non estis idonei auditores; praeterea, juxta legis doctorem Boucher, tres non faciunt collegium—valete;’ and so went away. Now it is monstrous, that notwithstanding these publick lectures are so much neglected, we are, all of us, when we take our degrees, charg’d withand punish’d for non-appearance at the reading of many of them; a formal dispensation is read by our respective deans, at the time our grace is proposed, for our non-appearance at these lectures, and it is with difficulty that some grave ones of the congregation are induced to grant it. Strange order! that each lecturer should have his fifty, his hundred, or two hundred pounds a year for doing nothing, and that we (the young fry) should be obliged to pay money for not hearing such lectures as were never read, nor ever composed....”
“Wadham College,Jan. 22, 1720.
“To the Author of Terrae Filius.
“Sir,—I hope you intend to acquaint the world, amongst other abuses in what manner the pious designs of those good men, who left us all our publick lectures, are answered. Yesterday morning at nine a clock the bell went as usually for a lecture; whether a rhetorical or logical one, I cannot tell; but I went to the schools, big with hopes of being instructed in one or the other, and having saunter’d a pretty while along the quadrangle, impatient of the lecturer’s delay, I ask’d the major (who is an officer belonging to the schools) whether it was usual now and then to slip a lecture or so: his answer was that he had not seen the face of any lecturer in any faculty, except in poetry and musick, for three years past; that all lectures besides were entirely neglected.... Every morning in term time there ought to be a divinity lecture in the divinity school; two gentlemen of our house went one day to hear what the learned professor had to say upon that subject: these two were join’d by another master of arts, who without arrogance might think that they understood divinity enough to be his auditors; and that consequently his lecture would not have been lost upon them: but the doctor thought otherwise, who came at last, and was very much surprized to find that there was an audience. He took two or three turns about the school, and then said, ‘Magistri vos non estis idonei auditores; praeterea, juxta legis doctorem Boucher, tres non faciunt collegium—valete;’ and so went away. Now it is monstrous, that notwithstanding these publick lectures are so much neglected, we are, all of us, when we take our degrees, charg’d withand punish’d for non-appearance at the reading of many of them; a formal dispensation is read by our respective deans, at the time our grace is proposed, for our non-appearance at these lectures, and it is with difficulty that some grave ones of the congregation are induced to grant it. Strange order! that each lecturer should have his fifty, his hundred, or two hundred pounds a year for doing nothing, and that we (the young fry) should be obliged to pay money for not hearing such lectures as were never read, nor ever composed....”
In the face of personal experience of this kind how is it possible to believe that to obtain a degree was anything but a question of independent work or the judicious administration of “pourboires”? To attend at the right hour for a lecture which was never read, to be fined for non-attendance, and finally to have great difficulty in persuading the authorities to sign the necessary dispensation is a Gilbertian absurdity. No other instance more striking than this letter can be found in all the eighteenth-century chronicles of the attitude of Dons towards the Undergraduates in their charge. Once certain of their annual stipend their duties went by the board; and the Dons, whether lecturers or Heads of colleges, whether they knew each other personally or not, banded together to ensure their own safety, and signed to a lie in regard to the delivering of lectures with the utmost unconcern.
THE DON—(continued)
The examiners—Perjury and bribery—Method of examining—College Fellows—Election to Fellowships—Gibbon and the Magdalen Dons—Heads of colleges—Their domestic and public character—Golgotha and Ben Numps—St John’s Head pays homage to Christ Church—Drs Marlowe and Randolph.
The examiners—Perjury and bribery—Method of examining—College Fellows—Election to Fellowships—Gibbon and the Magdalen Dons—Heads of colleges—Their domestic and public character—Golgotha and Ben Numps—St John’s Head pays homage to Christ Church—Drs Marlowe and Randolph.
After the lecture comes the examination, so the examiner shall be the next in line. Now the examiners were appointed by the senior Proctor, who administered to them the following oath: “That they will either examine, or hear examined, all candidates that fall to their lot, in those arts and sciences, and in such manner as the statute requires. Likewise that they will not be prevailed upon by entreaties, or bribes, or hatred or friendship, or hope or fear, to grant any one atestimonium, who does not deserve it, or to deny it to any one that does.” The examiners were, however, in the same parlous condition as the lecturers and tutors.
The most mild of all the adverse criticisms was that of Henry Fynes Cliton, who was at the House in 1799. He said that the examiners discouraged Undergraduates from making a wide choice of authors for their schools, and that if any one anxious for first-class honours took an author not included in the abbreviated list as given out by them, they would find a way to stop him from obtaining the coveted class.
This entirely bears out the statement of Amhurst, who said that the examiners were entirely ignorant of the subjects in which they examined, and that the whole system was a farce and a scandal.
“How well the examiners perform their duty,” he wrote with almost apathetic resignation, “I leave to God and their own consciences; tho’ my shallow apprehension cannot reconcile their taking a solemn oath, that they will not be prevail’d upon by entreaties or bribes, or friendship, etc., with their actually receiving bribes, and frequently grantingtestimoniumsto unworthy candidates, out of personal friendship and bottle acquaintance. It is a notorious truth, that most candidates get leave of the proctor, by paying his man a crown (which is called his perquisite) to choose their own examiners, who never fail to be their old cronies and toping companions. The question therefore is, whether it may not be strongly presumed from hence, that the candidates expect more favour from these men, than from strangers; because otherwise it would be throwing away a crown to no purpose; and if they do meet with a favour from them,quaerewhether the examiner is not prevail’d upon by intreaties or friendship.”
Another method of procedure then very popular was for the examiner to receive “a piece of gold” or an “handsome entertainment” from each of the candidates, or else to be made drunk by him the night before the examination. The candidate took care to provide sufficient drink to keep his man occupied busily till morning, and then they adjourned, “cheek by joul,” from their drinking room to the school. “Quaere” demanded Terrae Filius again, “whether it would not be very ungrateful of the examiner to refuse any candidate atestimonium, who has treated him so splendidly over night? and whether he is not, in this case, prevail’d upon by bribes?”
Vicesimus Knox of St John’s made very much the same statements about the examiners, and added that during the time when they were closeted with the candidates in the schools they did nothing but discuss the latest drinking bout (which took place the night before), or talkhorses, or read newspapers and novels till the clock struck eleven—when they all descended, and thetestimoniumwas signed without a twinge of conscience.
But college Fellowship was, perhaps, one of the most abused offices in existence. Once nominated to a Fellowship, however unfit to occupy the position, a Don was settled for life. He had a fixed income, did no work, and worried about nothing but to retain his own particular corner chair at the King’s Head tavern or elsewhere. He stagnated for the rest of his natural life, and became gross by dint of perpetual drinking. On the sad subject of college Fellows T. J. Hogg, writing of Shelley at Oxford, told us that at the end of the eighteenth century,
“If a few gentlemen were admitted to Fellowships, they were always absent; they were not persons of literary pretensions, or distinguished by scholarship; and they had no more share in the government of the college than the overgrown guardsman....
“A total neglect of all learning, an unseemly turbulence, the most monstrous irregularities, open and habitual drunkenness, vice, and violence, were tolerated or encouraged, with the basest sycophancy, that the prospect of perpetual licentiousness might fill the colleges with young men of fortune; whenever the rarely exercised power of coercion was exerted, it demonstrated the utter incapacity of our unworthy rulers by coarseness, ignorance, and injustice.”
Terrae Filius devoted one chapter, peculiarly conspicuous for its lack of satirical venom, to the dissection of Fellows. His article was occasioned by a report in all the papers of the death of Dr Pudsey, one of the senior Fellows of “Maudlin College (who) died there last week aged near an hundred years.” “This,” said Amhurst, “gives me an opportunity of discoursing upon what I have always thought onegreat error in the constitution of most colleges; which I will do with only this preface, that I hope no body will think I design, in what I shall say, to reflect on the deceas’d old gentleman before mention’d. The original design of endowing colleges was undoubtedly this, to support such persons as could not bear the charges of a learned education themselves, till they were able to shift in the world, and become serviceable to their country; for this reason all scholars and fellows (of most colleges at least) are obliged to take an oath, that they are not worth so much per annumde proprio, in some colleges more, and in some less; but in all colleges the meaning of the oath is the same, that no person shall benefit of the foundation who can live without it; but this oath, like other oaths, is commented away, and interpreted so loosely, that, at present it does not exclude persons of four or five hundred pounds a year.... When any person is chosen fellow of a college, he immediately becomes a freeholder, and is settled for life in ease and plenty; provided only that he conforms himself to the ceremonies and caprices of the place, which very few will stick at, who delight in such an indolent and recluse state; at first, indeed, he is obliged to perform some insignificant, superficial exercises, and to get a few questions and answers in the sciences by rote, to qualify him for his degrees; but when these are obtain’d, he wastes the rest of his days in luxury and idleness; he enjoys himself, and is dead to the world; for a senior fellow of a college lives and moulders away in a supine and regular course of eating, drinking, sleeping, and cheating the juniors.... In many colleges the fellowships are so considerable, that no preferment can tempt some persons to leave them; they prefer this monastic, and (as they call it) retired life to any employment, in which they would be obliged to take some pains, and do some good.”
Such remarks from the mouth of Terrae Filius are indeed quiet,but however lacking in sparkle, they are filled with the truth. Turn where we may, on every hand, the Fellows of colleges are written down and left without one saving quality.
The state of Magdalen, as related by Gibbon, was no better and no worse than that of any other college. “The fellows or monks of my time,” according to him, “were decent, easy men, who supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder; their days were filled by a series of uniform employments; the chapel and the hall, the coffee-house and the common room, till they retired, weary and well satisfied, to a long slumber. From the toil of reading, or thinking, or writing, they had absolved their conscience; and the first shoots of learning and ingenuity withered on the ground, without yielding any fruits to the owners or the public. As a gentleman commoner, I was admitted to the society of the fellows, and fondly expected that some questions of literature would be the amusing and instructive topics of their discourse. Their conversation stagnated in a round of college business, Tory politics, personal anecdotes, and private scandal; their dull and deep potations excused the brisk intemperance of youth; and their constitutional toasts were not expressive of the most lively loyalty for the house of Hanover.... The example of the senior fellows could not inspire the undergraduates with a liberal spirit or studious emulation.”[27]
The common room, with its accompaniments of tobacco and liquor, formed the scene in which the greater portion of their parts was acted by the Fellows; for the rest, the taverns and coffee-houses, where the meetings of jovial societies, of which they were members, were held. By way of exercise, an occasional horse ride; nothing more. Their other chief hobby was, in the language of the time,“wenching.” Amazingly enough, they still had sufficient energy, after living such a life, to array themselves in all their glory, and sally forth to pay homage at the feet of the toast of the day. In their attempts to cut out the Smarts in the affections of the reigning queen, Merton Wall and Paradise Gardens saw them daily.Liaisonswith their neighbour’s wives, bedmakers, and bedmaker’s daughters were everyday occurrences; so openly, indeed, were these things done, that songs were composed in various clubs of the doings of certain Fellows mentioned by name, and satirical poems were written about them; but there the matter ended.
The character of a Head of a college, taken “in a more private view, amongst their fellows in their respective colleges,” was thus delineated by Amhurst. “A director or scull of a college is a lordly strutting creature, who thinks all beneath him created to gratify his ambition and exalt his glory; he commands their homage by using them very ill; and thinks the best way to gain their admiration is to pinch their bellies and call them names, as the most tyrannical princes have always the most loyal subjects; he is very vicious and immoral himself, and therefore will not pardon the least trip or miscarriage in another; he is a great profligate, and consequently a great disciplinarian; he petrifies in fraud and shamelessness, and is never properly in his element but when he is either committing wickedness himself, or punishing the commission of it in others.” So much for his domestic character. In the exercise of his public functions he was one of a gang who “have as persidiously broken as great a trust reposed in them by the Government, the nobility, gentry, and commonality of England; that, under pretence of advancing national religion and learning, they have introduced national irreligion and ignorance; and instead of promoting loyalty and peace have encouraged treason anddisturbance; that they have debauched the principles of youth instead of reforming them; that they have been guilty of wicked and infamous practices of all sorts; ought they not, likewise, to be punish’d in the most rigorous manner?”
Amhurst found this a very sore subject, for, later on, he bore out the theory of the promotion of ignorance, and said that they did their utmost to prevent learning. “Whatever portion of commonsense they possess themselves, they take especial care to keep it from those under their tuition, having innumerable large volumes by them, written on purpose to obscure the understanding of their pupils, and to obliterate or confound all those impressions of right or wrong which they bring with them to the universities; their several systems of logic, metaphysics, ethics, and divinity are calculated for this design, being fill’d up with inconsistent notions, dark cloudy terms, and unintelligible definitions, which tend not to instruct, but to perplex, to put out the light of reason, not to assist or strengthen it; and to palliate falsehood, not to discover truth.”
As further evidence of the amazing egoism and brutality of “Sculls,” it is worth while to quote the story of a Head of Balliol who held office in these times. “A young fellow of Balliol College having, upon some discontent, cut his throat very dangerously, the master of the college sent his servitor to the buttery book to sconce (that is, fine) him five shillings, and, says the doctor, tell him that the next time he cuts his throat I’ll sconce him ten!”
Whenever there was important academical business afoot the Vice-Chancellor and Sculls met in solemn conclave in Golgotha, the state room in the Clarendon building. The room was handsomely decorated and wainscotted. The wainscot was said to have been put up by order of a man of humour who went up to Oxford for adegree without “any claim or recommendation.” He promised, however, in exchange for the degree to become a benefactor of the university. The Sculls thereupon hurriedly engaged workmen who began running up the wainscot, and they “clapp’d a degree upon his back.” But as soon as the degree had been granted, the benefactor disappeared, and the Sculls were left to pay the workmen with money out of their own pockets—which, of course, had been previously plundered from the university.
It was in this room that all the weighty business of the university was conducted. In the amusing words of Amhurst, “if any sermon is preach’d, if any public speech or oration is deliver’d in derogation of the church, or the university, or in vindication of the Protestant succession, or the Bishop of Bangor, hither the delinquent is summon’d to answer for his offence, and receive condign punishment. In short, all matters of importance are cognisable before this tribunal: I will instance only one, but that very remarkable. A day or two before the late Queen died, a letter was brought to the post-office at Oxford, with these words upon the outside of it,we hear the queen is dead; which, being suspected to contain something equally mischievous within, was stopt, and carried to the Vice-Chancellor, who immediately summon’d his brethren to meet him at Golgotha about a matter of the utmost consequence: when they were assembled together he produced the letter before them; and having open’d it, read the contents of it in an audible voice; which were as follow:—
“‘St John’s College,July 30, 1714.“‘Honoured Mother,—I receaved the Cheshear chease you sent ma by Roben Joulthead, our waggoner, and itt is a vary gud one, and I thanck you for itt, mother, with all my hart and soale, and I promis to be a gud boy, and mind my boock, as yow dezired ma. I am a risinglad, mother, and have gott prefarment in college allready; for our sextoun beeing gonn intoo Heryfoordshear to see his frends, he has left mee his depoty, which is a vary good pleace. I have nothing to complayne off, onely that John Fulkes the tailor scores me upp a penny strong a moost everyday; but I’ll put a stopp to it shortly, I worrant ye: I beleave I shall do vary well, if you wull but send me t’other crowne; for I have spent all my mony at my fresh treat (as they caul itt) which is an abominable ecstortion, but I coud not help itt; when I cum intoo the country, I’le tell you all how it is. So no more att this present: but my sairvice to our parson, and my love to brother Nick and sister Kate; and so I rest.—Your ever dutiful and obedient son,“‘Benjamin Numps.’
“‘St John’s College,July 30, 1714.
“‘Honoured Mother,—I receaved the Cheshear chease you sent ma by Roben Joulthead, our waggoner, and itt is a vary gud one, and I thanck you for itt, mother, with all my hart and soale, and I promis to be a gud boy, and mind my boock, as yow dezired ma. I am a risinglad, mother, and have gott prefarment in college allready; for our sextoun beeing gonn intoo Heryfoordshear to see his frends, he has left mee his depoty, which is a vary good pleace. I have nothing to complayne off, onely that John Fulkes the tailor scores me upp a penny strong a moost everyday; but I’ll put a stopp to it shortly, I worrant ye: I beleave I shall do vary well, if you wull but send me t’other crowne; for I have spent all my mony at my fresh treat (as they caul itt) which is an abominable ecstortion, but I coud not help itt; when I cum intoo the country, I’le tell you all how it is. So no more att this present: but my sairvice to our parson, and my love to brother Nick and sister Kate; and so I rest.—Your ever dutiful and obedient son,
“‘Benjamin Numps.’
“When he had done reading, the Sculls look’d very gravely upon one another for some time, till at length Dr Faustus, late of New college, got up and spoke to them in the following manner:—
“‘Gentlemen,—The words of this letter are so very plain and intelligible in themselves, that I wish there is no latent and mysterious meaning in them. How do we know what he means by the cheese, which he thanks his mother for? or how do we know that he means nothing else by it, but a cheese? Then, he desires his mother to send him t’other crown; now what, I conjure you all tell me, can he mean by that other crown but the elector of Hanover; especially as he tells us on the outside of his letter that thequeen is dead? These rebels and roundheads are very fly in everything they do; they know we have a strict eye over them; and therefore if this Benjamin Numps should be one of them, and have any such ill designs in his head, to be sure, if he expected to succeed, he would not express himself to be understood. So that, with all submission to my reverend brethren, I thinkthat we ought to sift this matter thoroughly, for fear of the worst;’ and sat down.”
“‘Gentlemen,—The words of this letter are so very plain and intelligible in themselves, that I wish there is no latent and mysterious meaning in them. How do we know what he means by the cheese, which he thanks his mother for? or how do we know that he means nothing else by it, but a cheese? Then, he desires his mother to send him t’other crown; now what, I conjure you all tell me, can he mean by that other crown but the elector of Hanover; especially as he tells us on the outside of his letter that thequeen is dead? These rebels and roundheads are very fly in everything they do; they know we have a strict eye over them; and therefore if this Benjamin Numps should be one of them, and have any such ill designs in his head, to be sure, if he expected to succeed, he would not express himself to be understood. So that, with all submission to my reverend brethren, I thinkthat we ought to sift this matter thoroughly, for fear of the worst;’ and sat down.”
A gentleman referred to as Father William then rose to reply. The grave Dr Faustus did not overawe him as he overawed the rest. Father William, in scathingly sarcastic language, told him that he was a fool, a John o’ dreams, always suspecting mischief where none was meant. “Who but you,” he said, “would ever have suspected treason in a Cheshire cheese?” The man Numps, he explained to the reverend Sculls, was simply a poor servitor but lately entered into his own college, who had not the brains necessary to think out any plot. Therefore the fellow was sent for. He entered, trembling in every limb at the sight of all these learned authorities sitting in solemn conclave, and acknowledged his fault “full of sorrow and contrition,” and humbly asked their pardon.
Such was the characteristic manner in which the Heads ruled the university, and the above incident is a typical instance of the weighty business which arose from day to day. They were the counterpart of the Pharisees, who strained at gnats and swallowed camels. In connection with the headship of St John’s College there existed a rather curious custom. The Don elected to the Presidentship led the whole college, arrayed in fullest academical garb, down to Christ Church, where they did homage. Dibdin related that when Dr Marlowe succeeded to the President’s Chair of St John’s College they were received at the “House” by Dr Cyril Jackson, then Dean of Christ Church. After the performance of what Dibdin calls a “humbling piece of vassalage” which was conducted with great pomp and formality, the members of St John’s returned, and were duly regaled with a sumptuous repast by the newly-elected President who went to the various common rooms—themasters by themselves, the bachelors by themselves, and the scholars and commoners each in their particular banqueting room. There he drank wine with them, and was loudly toasted. “I remember one forward freshman,” said Dibdin, “shouting aloud on this memorable occasion as the new President retreated—
“‘Nunc est bibendum; nunc pede liberoPulsanda tellus!’
“The stars of midnight twinkled upon our orgies; but this was a day never to come again. Dr Marlowe sat for thirty-three years in the Presidental Chair.”[28]
Having read accounts of all the pompous, evil-living and unpopular Heads for whom nobody had a good word, it is refreshing to come across records of thoroughly-liked men like Dr Marlowe of St John’s and Dr Randolph of Corpus, of whom R. L. Edgeworth sang the praises. “Dr Randolph,” he said, “was at that time (1761) president of Corpus Christi College. With great learning, and many excellent qualities, he had some singularities, which produced nothing more injurious from his friends than a smile. He had the habit of muttering upon the most trivial occasions,mors omnibus communis!One day his horse stumbled upon Maudlin bridge, and the resigned president let his bridle go, and drawing up the waistband of his breeches as he sat bolt upright, he exclaimed before a crowded audience,mors omnibus communis!The same simplicity of character appeared in various instances, and it was mixed with a mildness of temper, that made him generally beloved by the young students. The worthy doctor was indulgent to us all, but to me in particular upon one occasion, where I fear that I tried his temper more than I ought to have done. The gentlemen commoners were not obliged to attend chapel on any days but Sunday and Thursday;I had been too frequently absent, and the president was determined to rebuke me before my companions. ‘Sir,’ said he to me as we came out of chapel one Sunday, ‘youneverattend Thursday prayers!’ ‘I dosometimes, sir,’ I replied. ‘I did not see you last Thursday. And, sir,’ cried the president, rising into anger, ‘I will have nobody in my college’ (ejaculating a certain customary noise, something between a cough and the sound of a postman’s horn), ‘sir, I will have nobody in my college that does not attend chapel. I did not see you at chapel last Thursday.’ ‘Mr President,’ said I, with a most profound reverence, ‘it was impossible that you should see me, for you were not there yourself.’ Instead of being more exasperated by my answer, the anger of the good old man fell immediately. He recollected and instantly acknowledged, that he had not been in chapel on that day. It was the only Thursday on which he had been absent for three years. Turning to me with great suavity, he invited me to drink tea that evening with him and his daughter. This indulgent president’s good humour made more salutary impression on the young men he governed than has ever been effected by the morose manners of any unrelenting disciplinarian.”[29]
Dr Randolph, Dr Marlowe, and the tutor ofThe Loitererare the only three men whom I have been able to discover whose integrity was beyond question. Three out of a whole century of Dons explains many things! It proves the truth of the grave charges of vice, irreligion and perpetual sloth brought against the Dons of the century, by every writer of the time. It explains the bad government of colleges, general licentiousness, and scholastic negligence which were the main characteristics of Georgian Oxford.
THE DON—(continued)
Proctors—The Black Book—Personal spite and the taking of a degree—The case of Meadowcourt of Merton—Extract from Black Book—The taverner and the Proctor—Izaak Walton and the senior Proctor—Amhurst’s character sketch of a certain Proctor.
Proctors—The Black Book—Personal spite and the taking of a degree—The case of Meadowcourt of Merton—Extract from Black Book—The taverner and the Proctor—Izaak Walton and the senior Proctor—Amhurst’s character sketch of a certain Proctor.
The Proctor and his bull-dogs (entailing sudden scuttlings down side streets, which, if abortive, lead to the nine o’clock string outside that gentleman’s door, and the unwilling disbursement of goodly sums—the fine for being out of college at an unstatutable hour was 40s.!—because forsooth, a man had the misfortune to cross his path without being arrayed in statutable garb), loomed darkly on the eighteenth-century skyline. Wrapped in the safe embrace of trencher and gown it was possible to watch the great Proctors
“... march in stateWith velvet sleeves and scarlet gown,Some with white wigs so hugely grownThey seem to ape in some degreeThe dome of Radcliffe’s Library.”
It was the redoubtable senior Proctor who was the guardian of the Black Book, the register of the university, in which he recorded the name of any person who affronted him or the university. The mere inscription of a name in the Proctor’s book may not seem a very fearful punishment, but it takes on a darker aspect when it is discovered that no person so recorded might proceed to his degree till he had given satisfaction to the Proctor who had put him in. Amhurst explained that the Black Book into which the Proctorsput anybody “at whom, whether justly or not, they shall take offence ... was at first design’d to punish refractory persons and immoral offenders; but at present it is made use of to vent party spleen and is fill’d up with whigs, constitutioners, and bangorians. So long as the university has this rod in her hand, it is no wonder that high-church triumphs over her most powerful adversaries; nor can we be at all surpriz’d that Whiggism declines with the constitution club in Oxford, when we behold people stigmatiz’d in the Black Book, and excluded from their degrees for soberly rejoicing upon King George’s birthnight, and drinking his majesty’s health.”
The question of making satisfaction to the Proctor who had inscribed a name in that “dreadful and gloomy volume” was, in many cases at least, a difficult and lengthy proceeding. The Merton Undergraduate, Meadowcourt, who, as Steward of the Constitution Club, prevailed upon the Proctor to join in drinking King George’s health, was prevented for two years from taking his degree. The “binge” was a quite considerable affair. Party feeling ran high, and the Charles II. partisans gathered in their hundreds outside the tavern in which the Constitutioners had foregathered. Amid booing and hissing, they threw lighted squibs in at the windows. In a subsequent interview with Mr Holt, the Proctor, Meadowcourt, having apologised, learned that as far as Holt was concerned he had nothing further to fear, but that Holt’s brother Proctor, Mr White of Christ Church, was vastly incensed, and had desired that “the power of taking cognisance of, and proceeding against all that was done that night, might be placed in his hands.” To this Holt had agreed. Consequently Meadowcourt found himself compelled to seek out Mr White. The interview was short and stormy, the Proctor being in “an ungovernable passion, insomuch that he often brandished his arm at him.”