The Charm of Oxford Part 7

The second point is a more important one. In the reign of Elizabeth, cla.s.sical architecture was being rapidly introduced; Gothic was giving way before the style of Palladio, even as the New Learning was banis.h.i.+ng the schoolmen from the schools. This change is markedly seen in the Elizabethan buildings at Cambridge, especially in Dr.

Caius' work, so far as it has been allowed to survive in the college that bears his name. But in Oxford the old style went on for half the following century; in the great building period of the first two Stuarts the old models were still faithfully copied. It was the genius of Wren, which, by its magnificent success in the Sheldonian, ultimately caused the new style to prevail over the late Gothic, of which his own college, Wadham, is so striking an example.

In Wadham the conservative Oxford workmen were inspired by the presence of Somerset masons, whom the Foundress brought up from her own county, so rich in the splendid Gothic of the fifteenth century.

Hence the chapel of Wadham (shown in Plate XXII) is to all intents and purposes the choir of a great Somerset church. So marked is the old style in its windows that some of the best authorities on architecture have maintained that the stonework of these could not have been made in the seventeenth century, but must have survived from some older building; Ferguson, the historian of architecture, when confronted with the fact that the college has still the detailed accounts showing how, week by week, the Jacobean masons worked, swept this evidence aside with the dictum--"No amount of doc.u.ments could prove what was impossible." But here the "impossible" really happened.

The permanence of Gothic in Oxford is a point for professional students; the studied simplicity, which is the great secret of Wadham's beauty, concerns everyone. The effect of the garden front is produced simply by the long lines of the string-courses and by the procession of the beautifully proportioned gables. Neither here nor in any part of the college is there a piece of carved work, except in the cla.s.sical screen, which marks the entry to the hall. It may be noted that at Wadham and at Clare, Cambridge, the same effect is produced by the same means; different as the two colleges are, the one Gothic, the other cla.s.sical, they have a restful and complete beauty which makes them specially attractive. And this is due more than anything else to the unbroken lines of the stonework, to which everything is kept in due subordination. Clare was building during half a century; Wadham was finished in three years; but both have been fortunate in being left alone; they have not been "improved" by later additions.

The chapel at Wadham has another feature of great interest for those who visit it; the gla.s.s in it (not that in the ante-chapel) is all contemporary with the college, and is a first-rate example of the taste of early Stuart times. The apostles and the prophets of the side windows have few merits, except their age, and the fact that they ill.u.s.trate what local craftsmen could do in the reign of James I; but the big east window is of a very different rank. The college authorities quarrelled with the local workmen, and introduced a foreign craftsman, Bernard van Ling from London. In our day he would have been called a "blackleg," and mobbed: perhaps, even in the seventeenth century, he needed protection, for the college built him a furnace in their garden, and he there produced the finest specimen of seventeenth century gla.s.s that Oxford can show. Even for those who are not students of gla.s.s, the Wadham windows are attractive with their two Jonahs and two whales, "The big one that swallowed Jonah, and the little one that Jonah swallowed" (to quote an old college jest).

The gardens at Wadham are famous; they have not the magnificence of St. John's or the antiquarian charm of the old walls at New College or Merton; but, for the variety and fine growth of their trees, they are unsurpa.s.sed, though the glory of these is pa.s.sing. Warden Wills planted them in the days of the French Revolution, and trees have their time to fall at last, even though they long survive their planters.

WADHAM COLLEGE (2) HISTORY

"But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten. . . . Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore."

/Ecclesiasticus/, xliv. 10, 14.

The collection of pictures In Wadham Hall is probably the best of any college in Oxford--always, of course, excepting Christ Church. It has no single picture to be compared with the "Thomas Warton" at Trinity, or the "Dr. Johnson" at Pembroke (both excellent works of Reynolds), nor does it give so many fine examples of the work of recent artists as do Trinity or Balliol; but it makes up for these deficiencies by the number and the variety of its pictures.

Two only of the men they represent can be said to attain to the first rank among England's worthies--Robert Blake, second as an admiral only to Nelson and Oxford's greatest fighting man until the present war, and Christopher Wren, "that prodigious young scholar" (as John Evelyn calls him), who, as has been well said, would have been second only to Newton among English mathematicians had he not chosen rather to be indisputably the first of British architects. It is interesting to note that Wadham shares with All Souls' two of the greatest names in the Scientific Revival of the seventeenth century: both Wren and Thomas Sydenham, the physician, migrated from Wadham to fellows.h.i.+ps at All Souls'.

Their connection with Wadham is part of what is probably the most interesting single episode in the college history. When the Parliament triumphed, and the King's partisans were turned out of Oxford, the Lodgings at Wadham were given to the most distinguished of her Wardens, John Wilkins, who, no doubt, owed his promotion to the fact that he was the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell. In his own day everyone knew him; he was a moderate man, who interceded for Royalist scholars under the Commonwealth, and tempered the penal laws to Non-Conformists, when later he was Bishop of Chester. He was even better known to the "philosophers" as the inventor of a universal language and as curious for every advance in Natural Science. But, in our day, he is only remembered for his connection with the Royal Society; that most ill.u.s.trious body grew out of the meetings held weekly at his Lodgings and the similar meetings held in London; when later these two movements were united, Wilkins was secretary of the committee which drew up the rules for their future organization, and thus prepared the way for the Royal Charter, given to the Society in 1662. When the Royal Society celebrated its 250th anniversary in 1912, many of its members made a pilgrimage to "its cradle" (or what was, at any rate, "/one/ of its cradles").

Wadham also produced, among other early members of the Royal Society, its historian, Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, who somehow, as "Pindaric Sprat" (he was the friend and also the editor of /Abraham Cowley/), found his way into Johnson's /Lives of the Poets/; he is, however, more likely to be remembered because his subserviency, when he was Dean of Westminster to James II, has earned him an unenviable place in Macaulay's gallery of Revolution worthies and unworthies.

Sprat, it should be added, was an exception to the prevailing Whig tradition of Wadham, which found a worthy exponent in Arthur Onslow, the greatest Speaker of the House of Commons, who ruled over that august body for a record period, thirty-four years (1727-1761), and formed its rules and traditions in the period when it was first a.s.serting its claim to govern.

[Plate XXIII. Wadham College : The Hall Interior]

Two centuries later than the Royal Society days at Wadham, another group of philosophers was trained there, who thought that the views of their master, Auguste Comte, were going to make as great a revolution in human thought as the views of a Bacon or a Newton. All the leading English Positivists were at Wadham--Congreve, Beesley, Bridges, Frederic Harrison, of whom the last alone survives, to fight with undiminished vigour for the causes which he championed in Mid- Victorian days. Positivism had less influence than its adherents expected, but it powerfully affected for a time the political and the religious thought of England.

Forty years later another famous group of young men were at Wadham together. As they are all alive, it is impossible, and would be unbecoming, to estimate what their influence on English life and thought will be; but it was a curious coincidence that sent to Wadham together, in the 'nineties, Lord Birkenhead, who reached the Woolsack at the earliest age on record; Sir John Simon, who, if he had wished, could have lowered that record still further, and C. B. Fry, once a household name as the greatest of British athletes.

Three groups of Wadham men have been spoken of; one other name must be mentioned of one who stood alone at college, and for a long time in the world outside, in his att.i.tude to the social problems of our day. Whatever may be the future of the Settlement movement, its leader, Samuel Barnett, "Barnett of Whitechapel," is not to be forgotten, for his name is a.s.sociated as a pioneer and an inspiring force with every movement of educational and social advance in the latter half of the nineteenth century. M. Clemenceau, no friendly judge of the ministers of any religious body, p.r.o.nounced him one of the three greatest men he had met in England. Certainly he was great, if greatness means to antic.i.p.ate the problems of the future before the rest of the world sees their urgency, and to make real contributions to their solution.

It has been a feature of the history of Oxford that every college has, from time to time, come to the front as the special home and source of some movement. There has never been the overshadowing concentration of men and of wealth, which has given a more one-sided direction to the history of Cambridge. Hence the strength of the college system; every college has its traditions to live up to, its great names to cherish, and Wadham is, certainly, by no means last or least in these respects.

HERTFORD COLLEGE

"Outspake the (Warden) roundly: 'The bridge must straight go down; For if they once should get the bridge ...'"

MACAULAY, /Horatius/, adapted.

Academic bridges, over the Cam or elsewhere, are a great feature at Cambridge. At Oxford they were unknown till this century, when University first of all threw its modest little arch over Logic Lane; later, in 1913. the "Bridge of Sighs," which forms the subject of Plate XXIV, was completed. There was a hard struggle before leave could be obtained from the City Council for thus bridging a public thoroughfare; University only maintained their claim to a bridge by a long lawsuit, in which the college rights were firmly established by the production of charters, which went back to the reign of King John. The great opposition to the Hertford Bridge was said to be due to regard for the feelings of the old Warden of New College, who considered that it would injure the view of his college bell-tower.

Whether this story be true or not, Hertford obtained its permission at last, and Sir Thomas Jackson added a new attraction to Oxford's buildings. His genius has been especially shown in triumphing over the difficulties of the Hertford site, for it was no easy thing to unite into a harmonious whole, buildings so various; his new chapel-- opened in 1908--is worthy to rank with the best cla.s.sic architecture in Oxford.

The variety of the Hertford buildings only reflects the chequered history of the foundations that have occupied them. As early as the thirteenth century Hart Hall stood on this site. In the eighteenth century this old hall was turned into a college by an Oxford reformer, Dr. Newton. But unfortunately Newton's endowments were not equal to his ambition, and the first Hertford /College/ fell into such decay that finally its buildings were transferred to an entirely different foundation, Magdalen Hall. Almost immediately afterwards, old Magdalen Hall, which stood close to Magdalen College, was burned down, and the society sold their site, thus made empty, to their wealthy namesake, and migrated, in 1822, to what had formerly been Hertford College. Finally, in 1874, Magdalen Hall was re-endowed by the head of the great financial house of Baring as "Hertford College"

once more.

This college then unites the traditions of two old halls, and of its own predecessor, and from all of them it derives some famous names.

Hart Hall was the home of John Selden, one of the greatest of English scholars; Hertford College had an undistinguished English prime minister in Henry Pelham, and a most distinguished leader of opposition in Charles James Foxe; while Magdalen Hall was even more rich in traditions, as being the home of the translator of the Bible, William Tyndale, as the centre of Puritan strength in the Laudian days, when from its ranks were filled the vacancies all over Oxford caused by the expulsions of Royalists, and finally as having trained Lord Clarendon, famous as Charles II's minister, still more famous as the historian, whose monumental work was one of the first endowments of the Oxford Press.

All these traditions are now concentrated in the one college, and, as has been said, the buildings have been greatly extended to meet the needs of the new foundation. When Hertford College is completed according to the plans already drawn by Sir Thomas Jackson, it will reach from All Souls' to Holywell. This last northern part of its front has been delayed by the European War.

The new--or, rather, the revived--college has, as yet, hardly had time to make Oxford history, but the influence of its second Princ.i.p.al. Dr. Boyd, whose long reign, happily not yet over, began in 1877, has had the result of finding for Oxford new benefactors in one of the wealthiest of the London City Companies; the Drapers'

magnificent gifts of the new Science Library and of the Electrical Laboratory are good instances to show that the days of the "pious founder" are not yet over.

[Plate XXIV. Hertford College : The Bridge]

ST. EDMUND HALL

"Or wander down an ancient street Where mingling ages quaintly meet, Tower and battlement, dome and gable Mellowed by time to a picture sweet."

A. G. BUTLER.

The group of buildings, shown in Plate XXV, is not only picturesque-- it also ill.u.s.trates Oxford history from more than one point of view.

The apse of the Chapel of Queen's on the left belongs to a building already spoken of, which is the most perfect example of a small basilican church in Oxford. The church tower in the centre, though itself dating from the fourteenth century, is the most modern part of one of the oldest churches in Oxford, St. Peter in the East. The crypt and the chancel of this church go back to the time of the Conquest, and are probably the work of Robert d'Oili, to whom William the Conqueror gave the city of Oxford; he was first an oppressor and then a benefactor; in the former character, he built the castle keep, still standing near the station; in the latter, he was the builder, besides St. Peter, of the churches of St. Michael and of the Holy Cross; parts of his work survive in all three.

The churchyard, at all events, of St. Peter in the East, deserves a visit, lying as it does between the beautiful garden of New College and the picturesque buildings of St. Edmund Hall.

Before this last foundation is spoken of, a word must be said as to the road round which these three buildings are grouped--Queen's Lane.

It survives, almost unaltered, from Pre-Reformation Oxford, and, winding as it does its narrow way between high walls, it is an interesting specimen of the "lanes" which threaded mediaeval Oxford, a city in which the High Street and, to a smaller extent, Cornmarket Street were the only real thoroughfares; the rest of the city was a network of narrow ways.

But from the historic point of view, the most interesting part of the picture is its right side, where stand the buildings of St. Edmund Hall. This is the only survival of the system of residence in the earliest University, of the Oxford which knew not the college system.

Before the days of "pious founders," the students had to provide their own places of residence, and very early the custom grew up of their living together in "halls," sometimes managed by a non-academic owner, but often under the superintendence of some resident Master of Arts, who was responsible, not for the teaching, but, at any rate in part, for the discipline of the inmates of his hall. These halls had at first no endowments and no permanent existence; they depended for their continuity on the person of their head. Gradually they became more organized; but when once the college system had been introduced, it tended, by its superior wealth and efficiency, to render the "halls" less and less important. They lost even the one element of self-government which they had once had, the right of their members to elect their own Princ.i.p.al; this right was usurped by the Chancellor. Hence, though five of the halls were surviving at the time of the University Commission (of 1850), all of them but St.

Edmund Hall have now disappeared.

In theory, "hall" and "college" have much in common; one Cambridge college indeed has retained the name of "hall," and two of the women's colleges in Oxford have preferred to keep the old style. In practice, their difference lies in the two facts that colleges are wealthier, with more endowments, and that they are self-governing, with Fellows who co-opt to vacancies in their own body and elect their head. St. Edmund Hall has its head appointed by the fellows of Queen's, with which inst.i.tution it has long been connected.

[Plate XXV. St. Peter-in-the-East Church and St. Edmund Hall]

The origin of this hall is an unsolved problem: it derives its name according to one theory from Edmund Rich, the last Archbishop of Canterbury to be canonized, and probably the first recorded Doctor of Divinity at Oxford. But this theory is very doubtful, and Hearne, most famous of Oxford antiquarians, and probably the best known member of St. Edmund Hall, did not believe it. In any case, most of the buildings of the hall date long after St. Edmund, and belong to the middle of the seventeenth century. Hearne himself is sufficient to give interest to any foundation. He was a great scholar and a careful editor of the early English Chroniclers in days when learning was decaying in Oxford; even now his work as an editor is not altogether superseded. But it is not to this that he owes his fame; it is rather to the fact that he has high rank among the diarists of England, and the first place among those of Oxford. For thirty years (1705-1735) in which latter year he died, he poured into his diary everything that interested him--scholarly notes, political rumours, personal scandal, remarks on manners and customs. The 150 volumes came into the possession of his fellow Jacobite, Richard Rawlinson, the greatest of the benefactors of the Bodleian, and only now are they being fully edited; ten volumes have been issued by the Oxford Historical Society, and still there are a few more years of his life to cover. As a specimen of Hearne's style may be quoted his remarks, when the sermon on Christmas Day, 1732, was postponed till 11 a.m.

"The true reason is that people might lie in bed the longer. . . .

The same reason hath made them, in almost all places in the University, alter the times of prayer, and the hour of dinner (which used to be 11 o'clock) in almost every place (Christ Church must be excepted); which ancient discipline and learning and piety strangely decay." Hearne was critical rather of past history than of present- day rumour; he records complacently (in 1706) that at Whitchurch, when the dissenters had prepared a great quant.i.ty of bricks "to erect a capacious conventicle, a destroying angel came by night and spoyled them all, and confounded their Babel." Hearne would by no means have approved of the Methodist principles of six members of his hall in the next generation, who were expelled for their religious views (1768). A furious controversy, with many pamphlets, raged over them, and the Public Orator of the University wrote a bulky indictment of them, which was answered by another pamphlet with the picturesque t.i.tle of "Goliath Slain." Pamphleteers were more free in their language in those days than they are now.

The hall has always been a strong religious centre, and plays a very useful part in the University--by giving to poor men, seeking Holy Orders, a real Oxford education, based on the true Oxford principle of community of life.