The Charm of Oxford Part 4

A university should certainly exist to promote learning, and Mark Pattison, with all his unfairness, certainly helped its cause in Oxford. But a university exists also for the promotion of friends.h.i.+ps among young men, and for the development of their social life. Of this duty, Oxford has never been unmindful, and perhaps it is in small colleges like Lincoln that the flowers of friends.h.i.+p best flourish. It is needless to make comparisons, for they flourish everywhere; but it is appropriate to quote, when writing of one of the smaller Oxford colleges, the verses on this subject of a recent Lincoln poet (now dead); they will come home to every Oxford man:

"City of my loves and dreams, Lady throned by limpid streams; 'Neath the shadow of thy towers, Numbered I my happiest hours.

Here the youth became a man; Thought and reason here began.

Ah! my friends, I thought you then Perfect types of perfect men: Glamour fades, I know not how, Ye have all your failings now,"

But Oxford friends.h.i.+ps outlast the discovery that friends have "failings"; as Lord Morley, who went to Lincoln in 1856, writes: "Companions.h.i.+p (at Oxford) was more than lectures"; a friend's failure later (he refers to his contemporary, Cotter Morison's /Service of Man/) "could not impair the captivating comrades.h.i.+p of his prime."

MAGDALEN COLLEGE (1) SITE AND BUILDINGS

"Where yearly in that vernal hour The sacred city is in shades reclining, With gilded turrets in the sunrise s.h.i.+ning: From sainted Magdalene's aerial tower Sounds far aloof that ancient chant are singing, And round the heart again those solemn memories bringing."

ISAAC WILLIAMS.

Macaulay was too good a Cambridge man to appreciate an Oxford college at its full worth; but he devotes one of his finest purple patches to the praise of Magdalen, ending, as is fitting, "with the s.p.a.cious gardens along the river side," which, by the way, are not "gardens."

Antony Wood praises Magdalen as "the most n.o.ble and rich structure in the learned world," with its water walks as "delectable as the banks of Eurotas, where Apollo himself was wont to walk." To go a century further back, the Elizabethan, Sir John Davies, wrote:

"O honeyed Magdalen, sweete, past compare Of all the blissful heavens on earth that are."

Such praises could be multiplied indefinitely, and they are all deserved.

The good genius of Magdalen has been faithful to it throughout. The old picturesque buildings on the High Street, taken over (1457) by the Founder, William of Waynflete, from the already existing hospital of St. John, were completed by his munificence in the most attractive style of English fifteenth century domestic architecture; Chapel and Hall, Cloisters and Founder's Tower, all alike are among the most beautiful in Oxford. When cla.s.sical taste prevailed, the architectural purists of the eighteenth century were for sweeping almost all this away, and had a plan prepared for making a great cla.s.sic quad; but wiser counsels, or lack of funds, thwarted this vandalistic design, and only the north side of the new quad was built, to give Magdalen a splendid specimen of eighteenth century work, without prejudice to the old. And in our own day, the genius of Bodley has raised in St. Swithun's Quad a building worthy of the best days of Oxford, while the hideous plaster roof, with which the mischievous Wyatt had marred the beauty of the hall, was removed, and a seemly oak roof put in its place. It is a great thing to be thankful for, that one set of college buildings in Oxford, though belonging to so many periods, has nothing that is not of the best.

But the great glory of Magdalen has not yet been mentioned. This is, without doubt, its bell tower, which, standing just above the River Cherwell, is worthily seen, whether from near or far. A most curious and interesting custom is preserved in connection with it. Every May morning, at five o'clock (in Antony Wood's time the ceremony was an hour earlier), the choir mounts the tower and sings a hymn, which is part of the college grace; in the eighteenth century, however, the music was of a secular nature and lasted two hours. The ceremony has been made the subject of a great picture by Holman Hunt, and has been celebrated in many poems; the sonnet of Sir Herbert Warren, the present President, may be quoted as worthily expressing something of what has been felt by many generations of Magdalen men:

"Morn of the year, of day and May the prime, How fitly do we scale the steep dark stair, Into the brightness of the matin air, To praise with chanted hymn and echoing chime, Dear Lord of Light, thy sublime, That stooped erewhile our life's frail weeds to wear!

Sun, cloud and hill, all things thou fam'st so fair, With us are glad and gay, greeting the time.

The College of the Lily leaves her sleep, The grey tower rocks and trembles into sound, Dawn-smitten Memnon of a happier hour; Through faint-hued fields the silver waters creep: Day grows, birds pipe, and robed anew and crowned, Green Spring trips forth to set the world aflower."

The tower was put to a far different use when, in the Civil War, it was the fortress against an attack from the east, and stones were piled on its top to overwhelm any invader who might force the bridge.

Tradition connects this tower with the name of Magdalen's greatest son, Thomas Wolsey, who took his B.A. about 1486, at the age of fifteen, as he himself in his old age proudly told his servant and biographer, Cavendish. Certainty he was first Junior and then Senior Bursar for a time, while the tower was building, 1492-1504. But the scandal that he had to resign his bursars.h.i.+p for misappropriation of funds in connection with the tower may certainly be rejected.

On the right of Magdalen Bridge, looking at the tower, as we see it in the picture, stretches Magdalen Meadow, round which run the famous water walks. The part of these on the north-west side is especially connected with Joseph Addison, who was a fellow at Magdalen from 1697 to 1711. He was elected "demy" (at Magdalen, scholars bear this name) the first year (1689) after the Revolution, when the fellows of Magdalen had been restored to their rights, so outrageously invaded by King James. This "golden" election was famous in Magdalen annals, at once for the number elected--seventeen--and for the fame of some of those elected. Besides the greatest of English essayists, there were among the new "demies," a future archbishop, a future bishop, and the high Tory, Henry Sacheverell, whose fiery but unbalanced eloquence overthrew the great Whig Ministry, which had been the patron of his college contemporary.

Magdalen Meadow preserves still the well-beloved Oxford fritillaries, which are in danger of being extirpated in the fields below Iffley by the crowds who gather them to sell in the Oxford market.

Of the part of the College on the High Street, the most interesting portion is the old stone pulpit (shown in Plate XIV). The connection of this with the old Hospital of St. John is still marked by the custom of having the University sermon here on St. John the Baptist's Day; this was the invariable rule till the eighteenth century, and the pulpit (Hearne says) was "all beset with boughs, by way of allusion to St. John Baptist's preaching in the wilderness." Even as early as Heame's time, however, a wet morning drove preacher and audience into the chapel, and open-air sermons were soon given up altogether, only to be revived (weather permitting) in our own day.

The chapel lies to the left of the pulpit, and is known all the world over for its music; there are three famous choirs in Oxford-- those of the Cathedral, of New College, and of Magdalen, and to the last, as a rule, the palm is a.s.signed. It is to Oxford what the choir of King's is to Cambridge; but the chapel of Magdalen has not

"The high embowed roof With antique pillars ma.s.sy proof, And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light"

of the "Royal Saint's" great chapel at Cambridge.

MAGDALEN COLLEGE (2) HISTORY

"Sing sweetly, blessed babes that suck the breast Of this sweet nectar-dropping Magdalen, Their praise in holy hymns, by whom ye feast, The G.o.d of G.o.ds and Waynflete, best of men, Sing in an union with the Angel's quires, Sith Heaven's your house."

SIR J. DAVIES.

Magdalen College was founded by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, who had been a faithful minister of Henry VI. He had served as both Master and Provost of the King's own college at Eton (and also as Master of Winchester College before), and from Eton he brought the lilies which still figure in the Magdalen s.h.i.+eld. As a member of the Lancastrian party, he fell into disgrace when the Yorkists triumphed, but he made his peace with Edward IV, whose statue stands over the west door of the chapel, with those of St.

Mary Magdalene, St. John the Baptist, St. Swithun (Bishop of Winchester), and the Founder. And the Tudors were equally friendly to the new foundation; Prince Arthur, Henry VIII's unfortunate elder brother, was a resident in Magdalen on two occasions, and the College has still a splendid memorial of him in the great contemporary tapestry, representing his marriage with Catharine of Aragon.

To the very early days of Magdalen belongs its connection with the Oxford Reform Movement and the Revival of Learning. Both Fox and Wolsey, successively Bishops of Winchester, and the munificent founders of Corpus and of Cardinal (i.e. Christ Church) Colleges, were members of Waynflete's foundation, and so probably was John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, whose learning and piety so impressed Erasmus. "When I listen to my beloved Colet," he writes in 1499, "I seem to be listening to Plato himself"; and he asks--why go to Italy when Oxford can supply a climate "as charming as it is healthful" and "such culture and learning, deep, exact and worthy of the good old times ?" Erasmus' praise of Oxford climate is unusual from a foreigner; the more usual view is that of his friend Vives, who came to Oxford soon after as a lecturer at the new college of Corpus Christi; he writes from Oxford: "The weather here is windy, foggy and damp, and gave me a rough reception."

Colet's lectures on the Epistle to the Romans, perhaps delivered in Magdalen College, marked an epoch in the way of the interpretation of Holy Scripture, by their freedom from traditional methods and by their endeavour to employ the best of the New Learning in determining the real meaning of the Apostle. To the same school as Colet in the Church belonged Reginald Pole, Archbishop in the gloomy days of Queen Mary, the only Magdalen man who has held the See of Canterbury.

Elizabeth visited the College, and gently rebuked the Puritan tendencies of the then President, Dr. Humphrey, who carried his scruples so far as to object to the academical scarlet he had to wear as a Doctor of Divinity, because it savoured of the "Scarlet Woman."

"Dr. Humphrey," said the queen, with the tact alike of a Tudor sovereign and of a true woman, "methinks this gown and habit become you very well, and I marvel that you are so strait-laced on this point--but I come not now to chide." This President complained that his heads.h.i.+p was "more payneful than gayneful," a charge not usually brought against heads.h.i.+ps at Oxford.

In the seventeenth century, Magdalen was, for a short time, the very centre of England's interest. James II, in his desire to force Roman Catholicism on Oxford, tried to fill the vacant Presidency with one of his co-religionists. His first nominee was not only disqualified under the statutes, but was also a man of so notoriously bad a character that even the king had to drop him. Meanwhile, the fellows, having waited, in order to oblige James, till the last possible moment allowed by the statutes, filled up the vacancy by electing one of their own number, John Hough. When the king p.r.o.nounced this election irregular and demanded the removal of the President and the acceptance of his second nominee, the fellows declared themselves unable thus to violate their statutes, even at royal command, and were accordingly driven out. The "demies," who were offered nominations to the fellows.h.i.+ps thus rendered vacant, supported their seniors, and, in their turn, too, were driven out; they had showed their contempt for James' intruded fellows by "c.o.c.king their hats" at them, and by drinking confusion to the Pope. When the landing of William of Orange was threatening, James revoked all these arbitrary proceedings, but it was too late; he had brought home, by a striking example, to Oxford and to England, that no amount of past services, no worthiness of character, no statutes, however clear and binding, were to weigh for a moment with a royal bigot, who claimed the power to "dispense" with any statutes. The "Restoration" of the Fellows on October 25, 1688, is still celebrated by a College Gaudy, when the toast for the evening is /jus suum cuique/.

Hough remained President for thirteen years, during most of which time he was bishop--first of Oxford and then of Lichfield. He finally was translated to Worcester, where he died at the age of ninety- three, after declining the Archbishopric of Canterbury. His monument, in his cathedral, records his famous resistance to arbitrary authority.

Magdalen in the eighteenth century has an unenviable reputation, owing to the memoirs of its most famous historian, Edward Gibbon, who matriculated, in 1752, and who describes the fourteen months which elapsed before he was expelled for becoming a Roman Catholic, "as the most idle and unprofitable of my whole life." The "Monks of Magdalen," as he calls the fellows, "decent, easy men," "supinely enjoyed the gifts of the founder." It should be added that Gibbon was not quite fifteen when he entered the College, and that his picture of it is no doubt coloured by personal bitterness. But its substantial justice is admitted. Certainly, nothing could be feebler than the /Vindication of Magdalen College/, published by a fellow James Hurdis, the Professor of Poetry; his intellectual calibre may perhaps be gauged from the exquisite silliness of his poem, "The Village Curate," of which the following lines, addressed to the Oxford heads of houses, are a fair specimen:

"Ye profound And serious heads, who guard the twin retreats Of British learning, give the studious boy His due indulgence. Let him range the field, Frequent the public walk, and freely pull The yielding oar. But mark the truant well, And if he turn aside to vice or folly, Show him the rod, and let him feel you prize The parent's happiness, the public good."

Magdalen might fairly claim that a place so beautiful as it is, justifies itself by simply existing, and the perfection of its buildings and the beauty of its music must appeal, even to our own utilitarian age. But it has many other justifications besides its beauty; its great wealth is being continually applied to a.s.sist the University by the endowment of new professors.h.i.+ps, especially for the Natural Sciences, and to aid real students, whether those who have made, or those who are likely to make, a reputation as researchers.

It is needless to mention names: every Oxford man and every lover of British learning knows them.

[Plate XIV. Magdalen College : The Open-Air Pulpit]

For the world in general, which cares not for research, the success of the College under its present President, Sir Herbert Warren, himself at once a poet and an Oxford Professor of Poetry, will be evidenced by its increase in numbers and by its athletic successes.

They will judge as our King judged when he chose Magdalen for the academic home of the Prince of Wales. The Prince, unlike other royal persons at Magdalen and elsewhere, lived (1912-14) not in the lodgings of the President, or among dons and professors, but in his own set of rooms, like any ordinary undergraduate. He showed, in Oxford, that power of self-adaptation which has since won him golden opinions in the great Dominion and the greater Republic of the West.

BRASENOSE COLLEGE

"Of the colleges of Oxford, Exeter is the most proper for western, Queen's for northern, and Brasenose for north-western men."

FULLER, /Worthies/.

[Plate XV. Bresenose College, Quadrangle and Radcliffe Library]

Brasenose college is in the very centre of the University, fronting as it does on Radcliffe Square, where Gibbs' beautiful dome supplies the Bodleian with a splendid reading-room. And this site has always been consecrated to students; where the front of Brasenose now stands ran School Street, leading from the old /Scholae Publicae/, in which the disputations of the Mediaeval University were held, to St. Mary's Church.

It was from this neighbourhood that some Oxford scholars migrated to Stamford in 1334, in order to escape one of the many Town and Gown rows, which rendered Mediaeval Oxford anything but a place of quiet academic study. They seem to have carried with them the emblem of their hall, a fine sanctuary knocker of bra.s.s, representing a lion's head, with a ring through its nose; this knocker was installed at a house in Stamford, which still retains the name it gave, "Brasenose Hall." The knocker itself was there till 1890, when the College recovered the relic (it now hangs in the hall). The students were compelled by threats of excommunication to return to their old university, and down to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Oxford men, when admitted to the degree of M.A., were compelled to swear "not to lecture at Stamford."

The old "King's Hall," which bore the name of "Brasenose," was transformed into a college in 1511 by the munificence of our first lay founder, Sir Richard Sutton; he shared his benevolence, however, with Bishop Smith, of Lincoln. The College celebrated, in 1911, its quatercentenary in an appropriate way, by publis.h.i.+ng its register in full, with a group of most interesting monographs on various aspects of the College history.

The buildings are a good example of the typical Oxford college; the Front Quad, shown in our picture, belongs to the time of the Founders, but the picturesque third story of dormer windows, which give it a special charm, dates from the reign of James I, when all colleges were rapidly increasing their numbers and their accommodation. Of the rest of the buildings of Brasenose, the chapel deserves special notice, for it was the last effort of the Gothic style in Oxford, and it was actually finished in the days of Cromwell, not a period likely to be favourable to the erection of new college chapels.