CHAPTER VIII.

Second Year In Cambridge--Takes His Degree.

During the first term of his second year in Cambridge, his average hours of reading decreased; yet he had still a taste for study, and had not yet thrown aside what remained of his former ambition to distinguish himself. He and the Duke of Montrose declaim on the respective merits of Charles V. and Francis I.; they tossed up for sides, and Charles V. fell to Spencer. This keeps him at hard study for some time; meanwhile he hears Ollivant declaim, and thinks he will get both prizes. After the declamation, in which he comes off more creditably than he expected, he has half a hope of a prize, which he says he should be surprised though delighted to receive. He did get one, but not so high as he expected. Here and there in his journal at this time a few expressions of discontent escape from him about Cambridge; the cause being partially what has been related in the chapter before last. This had also, conjointly with another circumstance, the effect of cutting short his University career. He writes in the autobiography:--

"I made some good progress during this year, but I should have done much more had I been constantly regular. I must have suffered great loss by my interruptions, as I find by my journal that for about four weeks at the end of the long vacation, when I had come home and was taken up with shooting, I did not make one hour's study; and two more long intervals of cessation from reading took place in the Christmas and Easter vacations, when a little steady application, if it were but for three hours a-day, would have kept my mind attentive, and given me a great advantage. After my first examination, I entertained some thoughts {49} of waiving my privilege of taking an honorary degree, and going through the Senate House examinations with a view to University honours; but I lost all wish to remain at Cambridge towards the end of the second autumn. I was at times quite disgusted with the place, for such reasons as I have stated; besides which, my father and mother had made a plan, which pleased me greatly, of going for a year on the Continent, in which I was to accompany them. My brother Frederick, who was come home about this time, was to be of the party likewise, and happy was I in the prospect of being again some time in his company; but as an opportunity occurred for him to go to South America, with Sir Thomas Hardy, with the hope of being made Commander, this professional advantage was justly preferred."

Some of the heads at Cambridge as well as Lady Spencer urged him at this time to stand for a fellowship, but he gave up the idea, and it ended in his joining a new club they had formed--the Eton club. These clubs at the Universities are looked upon with no great favour by proctors and others who have charge of the morals of the students. Their dinners entail great expenses on the members, and they end as the first meeting did in his case: "They all made an enormous row, and I too, by the bye." He came to spend the Christmas of 1818 at Althorp, and closes the year with a succession of parties, Pope Joan, and bookbinding. There is one little incident recorded in his journal at this time which gives us a perfect insight into his character. One might expect that at this age, nineteen, he would be very romantic and dreamy, and that we should find many allusions to those topics which engross so much of the time of novel-reading youths and maidens nowadays. Nothing of the sort. There is an affair of the heart, but his conduct in it, with his remarks on it, are worthy of a sexagenarian. At a party, which took place at his father's, he dances with various young ladies, among the rest a certain Miss A., who, he says, "was a great flame of mine two years ago; she is not so pretty as I thought her then, but she is a delightful partner. I was again in love, but not violently to-night." Two or three days after this, he is at another party, and {50} dances with a new set of partners to the extent of three quadrilles. Of one of these he thus speaks--"I was delighted with Miss B., who is a pleasant unaffected girl, and I am doomed to think of her I suppose for two or three days instead of Miss A. I was provoked that she would not give me her fan at parting." Was it not cool and thoughtful of him to mark out the time such a change of sentiment was likely to last? The next page of the journal brings the subject before us still more clearly. His mother took him for a walk around Althorp, and told him that she was planning a house for the parsonage at Brington: "Which they say is to be mine when I am old enough; it might be made a most comfortable and even a pretty place, and if I live to come to it I can figure to myself some happy years there with a fond partner of my joys, if I can meet with a good one. 'Here then, and with thee, my N.' [Footnote 2] would have been my language some time ago; but how my opinions even of such important things change with my increasing years. This thought often occurs to me, and will I hope prevent me from ever making any engagements which cannot be broken, in case my fancy should be altered during the time which must elapse before the completion of them." It will be seen, further on in the biography, how this affair ended. There is a very good lesson in what he has left for young men of his age. If reason were allowed to direct the affections, many would be preserved from rash steps that embitter their whole lives. It seems amusing to a Catholic to find the prospects of a clergyman's happiness so very commonplace; but it will be a relief to learn by-and-by how very different were his ideas when he became a clergyman, and built and dwelt in that identical parsonage that now existed only in his own and his mother's mind. He gets a commission in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry before returning to Cambridge for Hilary term this year.

[Footnote 2: A quotation, as the reader may remember, from _Guy Mannering_.]

Studies seem to him a necessary evil now, and he writes with a kind of a sigh of relief when he notes, a few pages on, that he has taken his last compulsory lesson in Latin. {51} Balls and parties of all kinds are his rage. George and a friend of his had notice of a ball coming off in Northampton in a few days, and he heard that his "ladye love" would be one of the company, so they determined to be there. He writes letters, gets an invitation for his friend, and makes all the preparation possible for a week previous. The day comes, it is rainy; but, no matter, they pack their best suits into trunks, bring the necessary apparatus for making a good appearance, they search the town for a conveyance, and at length procure a team for a tandem at Jordan's. Off they go, eighteen miles the first stage, then eight more; they bait their horses and dine; off again for full sixteen miles. He has also to run the risk of a cross-examination from whatever members of his family he may happen to meet at the ball, and to answer the difficult question, "What brought you here?" It is raining in torrents, it is a cold February day; but all difficulties appear trifles to the two young adventurers as they urge their team over the hills and plains of Northamptonshire. Even Spencer boasts in his journal that he is now a first-rate whip. They arrive in high glee, forgetting their hardships in the glow of anticipation, and are greeted with the bad news, as they jump from their conveyance, that the ball has been put off until next month. To make matters worse, the bearer of these unfavourable tidings assured them that he wrote to them to give this information, and they had an additional motive to chagrin in the fact of their having forgotten to ask for their letters in the hurry and anxiety to come off. He notes in the journal--"Feb. 10. We set off again in our tandem for Cambridge, truly _dimissis auribus_, but with a resolution to try again on the 5th March." On the 5th of March they faithfully carried out this resolution. The ball took place, but the ladies they were anxious to meet did not come, so they only half enjoyed the thing. Spencer took a hack and rode off to Althorp to make his appearance at his father's. He was very nervous about the prospect of a meeting with his parents, and having to give an account of himself. Fortunately the Earl was deep in some measure for furthering George's happiness, and looked upon his son's {52} arrival as an auspicious visit. Everything thus passed off smoothly, and the youngsters arrived in Cambridge with their tandem "without accidents, but with two or three narrow escapes." His journal here has few incidents out of the ordinary line of his daily life; he learns to wrestle with success; so as to bring his antagonist to the ground with a dilapidation of the _res vestiaria_. He practises a good deal at jumping, and one day, in clearing a hedge, a bramble caught his foot, which brought him with violence to the ground; by this mishap his eye was ornamented with a scar which gave him some trouble afterwards. He also gets a shying horse to ride: this noble charger had a particular dislike to carts: he shied at one in the market-place in Cambridge, and soon left his rider on the flags. Spencer mounted again, but found on his return, after a good ride, that his toe was sprained, and it kept him indoors for five or six days. This chapter of accidents was amply counterbalanced by the agreeable fact that he had just attended his twenty-fifth divinity lecture, and had obtained the certificate which was to insure him the imposition of his bishop's hands, whenever he might think it convenient to put himself to the trouble of going through the ceremony. His course is now coming to an end; he becomes a freemason, and rises four degrees in the craft before the end of June. A bishop visits Trinity College, and standing in solemn grandeur, with a staff of college officers dressed out in their insignia encircling him, his lordship delivers a grave expression of his displeasure at the stupidity some twenty students gave evidence of during their examination. Spencer comes out in the first class once more; his brother Frederick is in Cambridge at the time, and as soon as the result is known they take coach for London. Here they spend their time agreeably between dining at home and abroad, going to Covent Garden, and taking sundry lessons from an Italian dancing-master, until July 5th, when George returns to Cambridge to take out his degree. We will hear himself now giving an account of this great event.

"My college labours terminated with the end of the second year's college examination for the classes, which took {53} place on the 1st of June, 1819. On the 5th of June the result was declared, when, as I have before said, I was in the first class again, and second to Ollivant. This was rather a disappointment, and gave me some reasonable discontent. For the cause of my not being, as I might have expected, as far above the others as I had been the year before, I saw clearly was a degree of carelessness in my reading, especially of one subject that is, the three first sections of Newton's Principia, which were appointed for the second year's reading, and for which I had not had a taste as for other parts of mathematics. However, the time was now past to recover my place, and soon the importance of this little matter vanished into nothing. I then went to London till the beginning of July, when I returned to Cambridge to receive my degree as Master of Arts from the Duke of Gloucester, who came in person at the commencement of this year to confer the degrees as Chancellor of the University, and to be entertained with the best that the colleges could raise to offer him in the way of feasts and gaieties. My Cambridge cares and troubles were now well-nigh past, and I enjoyed greatly the position I held at this commencement as steward of the ball, and a sort of leader of the gaieties in the presence of the Royal personages, because I was the first in rank of those who received their honorary degrees.

"From this time there has been a complete cessation with me of all mathematical studies, and almost of all my classical, to which I have hardly ever again referred. For when I again returned to regular study, I had nothing in my mind but matters of theology. It was at this time, after leaving Cambridge, when I remained principally fixed as an inmate in my father's house, till I was settled in the country as a clergyman, that I was in the character of what is called a young man about town. It was with my dear brother Frederick, who was at home at the time, as I before observed, that I began in earnest to take a share in the enjoyment of London life. I have seen the dangers, the pleasures, and the miseries of that career, though all in a mitigated degree, from the happy circumstance of my not {54} being left alone to find my way through it, as so many are at the age of which I speak. With many, no doubt, the life in London is the time for going to the full depth of all the evil of which Oxford or Cambridge have given the first relish. My father and mother were not like many aged veterans in dissipation--whom in the days when the fashionable world was most accounted of by me, I have looked on with pity--who to the last of their strength keep up what they can of youth, in pursuing still the round of the gay parties of one rising generation after another. They (my parents) hardly ever went into society away from home. They kept a grand establishment, when in London, at Spencer House, as well as at Althorp in the winter, when the first society, whether of the political, or the literary and scientific, were constantly received. It would, therefore, have been unreasonable in me to be fond of going out for the sake of society, when, perhaps, none was to be met with so interesting as that at home; besides this, my father and mother were fond of being surrounded by their family circle; and if I or my brothers, when staying with them in London, went out from home several times in succession, or many times a week, they would generally express some disappointment or displeasure; and though I used at the time to be sometimes vexed at this kind of restraint, as I was at other restraints on what I might have reckoned the liberty of a young man, I used generally, even then, to see how preferable my condition was. I now most clearly see that the feelings of my parents in this matter were most reasonable, and that it was a great blessing to me that I was situated in such circumstances. They were desirous that we should see the world, and when any amusement was going on, or party was to take place, which she thought really worthy of attention, as not being so frivolous as the general run of such things, my mother zealously assisted in procuring us invitations, and providing us with needful dresses; as, for instance, at this time she gave to my brother Frederick and me very handsome full-dress uniforms (his being, of course, that of a naval officer, mine of the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, in which I then held a commission), {55} that we might appear at balls and parties where full-dress was required, such as foreign ambassadors sometimes gave. These were, she thought, really worth going to on account of extraordinary or remarkable characters who came to them, whether English or foreigners. Thanks to their regular domestic habits, and to the strict authority which my mother still kept over us all, while being at Spencer House, I should have found it almost as difficult as in a well-regulated college to go into any extravagant irregularities, and so I was hardly tempted to do so. My feeling habitually was to try and avoid invitations and engagements from home, far from seeking them eagerly."

The incidents we are able to add from his journal during the interval between leaving Cambridge and going abroad are very meagre, yet, since they are characteristic of the man's feelings, a few will be inserted. From the journal: "Tuesday, July 20. We got up and went to a dreadful formal breakfast at 10½. At one we were dressed, and the company began to arrive for a public breakfast, to be given to-day to the people of the county in honour of the marriage of Lord Temple. The collation was in the greenhouse, and lasted off and on till about 6!" He goes through the particulars of the entertainment, the quadrilles and country dances, the partners' perfections, &c., &c.; but when Lady Buckingham asked himself and his brother to stay a little while longer, much as they liked it, they would not do so, because their mother desired them to be home at a certain time. One must admire his obedience even at the expense of his enjoyment, when he might calculate upon the implicit consent of his mother to their acceding to such a request, and from such a quarter. Another thing we gather from this is, that F. Ignatius, even when a youth, could never bear what was formal or ultra-refined; he always liked natural ease and unaffected simplicity. "We find him turn away from a blue-stocking, and steal three days' thoughts from his "flame" to bestow them on one more unaffected and simple. The next incident he chooses to record is, that the clergyman of the church he used to attend had gone to spend his honeymoon, and that a preacher whom he did not admire took his pulpit {56} in his absence. There are some partings of friends, and a great variety of amusements, to fill up the pages for a month or so. Father Ignatius used to tell a very remarkable anecdote about this period of his life; he used it to illustrate the sacrifices that people can willingly make for the law of fashion, and how reluctant they are to make even the smallest for the love of God. There was a great ball to be given somewhere in London; it was to be a most splendid affair, full in all particulars of dress and etiquette, and one of those that the Countess Spencer thought really worth going to. A celebrated _coiffeur_ was imported direct from Paris, and he had a peculiar style of hair-dressing that none of that craft in London could hope to imitate with success. All the _belles_, marchionesses of high degree, who intended figuring at the ball, hired the French _coiffeur_. He accepted all the engagements, but found they were so many that it would take twenty-four hours' hard work, without a moment's repose, to satisfy all. He had to begin at three o'clock in the afternoon of the day preceding the ball, and Father Ignatius knew one lady who was high upon his list. She had her hair dressed about four, and, lest it might be disarranged, slept in her arm-chair, with her neck in stocks, for the night. This lady, be it remembered, was no foolish young _belle_, but a matron who might have conveniently introduced her granddaughter to the circle she attended. "These people," he used to say, "laugh at the folly of St. Peter of Alcantara and other mortified saints; and we, who aspire to be saints, will undergo with difficulty what worldlings cheerfully endure for vanity and folly." He often laughed at this, and often laughed others into seriousness at his comments on it.

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