Chapter 6

An interest, rather historical than personal, attaches to the group portrait that occupies a position of honour over the fireplace; it represents the three Oxford divines--John Fell (already mentioned), Dolben, who later was Archbishop of York, and Allestree, afterwards Provost of Eton, who braved the penal law against churchmen by reading the forbidden Church Service daily all through the time of the Commonwealth.

Nowhere, so much as in Christ Church, is the poet's description of Oxford appropriate; her students may:

"Stand, in many an ancient hall, Where England's greatest deck the wall, Prelate and Statesman, prince and poet; Who hath an ear, let him hear them call."

[Plate XIX. Christ Church : The Hall Interior]

CHRIST CHURCH (3) "TOM" TOWER

"Those twins of learning, which he raised in you, Ipswich and Oxford, one of which fell with him; The other, though unfinished, yet so famous, So excellent in art, and still so rising, That Christendom shall ever speak his virtue." SHAKESPEARE, /Henry VIII/.

Oxford is described by Matthew Amold as,

"Beautiful city, with her dreaming spires,"

yet it is for her towers, especially, that she is famous. Glorious as St. Mary's is, it certainly does not surpass Magdalen Tower; and it may well be doubted whether the genius of Wren has not excelled both Magdalen and St. Mary's in "Tom" Tower. Gothic purists, of course, do not like it. There is a well-authenticated story of a really great architect who, in the early days of the twentieth century, was asked to submit a scheme for its repair; after long delay he sent in a plan for an entirely new tower on correct Gothic lines, because (as he wrote) no one would wish to preserve "so anomalous a structure" as Tom Tower. The world, however, does not agree with the minute critics; it is easy to find fault with the details of "Tom," but in proportion, in dignity, in suitability to his position, the greatest qualities that can be required in any building, "Tom" is pre-eminent. This is the more to be wondered at, as the tower was erected a century and a half after the great gateway which it crowns.

The genius of Wolsey had planned a magnificent front, but only a little more than half of it was completed when Henry VIII ended the career of his greatest servant, and altered the plans of the most glorious college in Europe. It was not till the period just before the Civil War that the northern part of the front of Christ Church was built by the elder Dean Fell, and the work was only completed when his son, the famous Dr. Fell, doomed to eternal notoriety by the well-known rhymes about his mysterious unpopularity, employed Wren to build the gate tower. Yet the whole presents one harmonious design, worthy of the most famous of Oxford founders and of the greatest of British architects. It is fitting that it should be Wolsey's statue which adorns the gate--a statue given by stout old Jonathan Trelawny, one of the Seven Bishops, whose name is perpetuated by the refrain of Hawker's spirited ballad, which deceived even Macaulay as to its authenticity:

"And must Trelawny die? Then thirty thousand Cornish men Will know the reason why."

Tom Tower appeals to Oxford men through more than one of their senses; it is a most conspicuous object in every view; and in it is hung the famous bell, "Great Tom," the fourth largest bell in England, weighing over seven tons. This once belonged to Osney Abbey, when it was dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury, and bore the legend:

"In Thomae laude resono Bim Bom sine fraude."

It was transplanted to Christ Church in the reign of Queen Mary, and at the time it was proposed to rechristen it "Pulcra Maria," in honour at once of the Queen and of the Blessed Virgin; but the old name prevailed. Every night but one, from May 29, 1684, until the Great War silenced him, Tom has sounded out, after 9 p.m., his 101 strokes, as a signal that all should be within their college walls; the number is the number of the members of the foundation of Christ Church in 1684, when the tower was finished. During the war Tom was forbidden to sound, along with all other Oxford bells and clocks, for might not his mighty voice have guided some zeppelin or German aeroplane to pour down destruction on Oxford? Few things brought home more to Oxford the meaning of the Armistice than hearing Tom once more on the night of November 11, 1918.

[Plate XX. Christ Church: "Tom" Tower]

A patriotic tradition claims for Tom the honour of having inspired Milton's lines in "Il Penseroso":

"Hear the far-off curfew sound Over some wide-watered, shore, Swinging slow with sullen roar."

But it is difficult to believe this; Milton's connection with Oxford does not get nearer than Forest Hill, and blow the west wind as hard as it would, it could scarcely make Tom's voice reach so far. And the "wide-watered shore" is only appropriate to Oxford in flood time, the very last season when a poet would wish to remember it.

The view in Plate XX of the tower is taken from the front of Pembroke, and must have been often admired by Oxford's devoted son, Samuel Johnson, when, as a poor scholar of Pembroke, "he was generally to be seen (says his friend. Bishop Percy) lounging at the college gate, with a circle of young students round him, whom he was entertaining with his wit and keeping from their studies."

ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE

[Plate XXI. St. John's College : Garden Front]

"An English home--gray twilight poured On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep, all things in order stored, The haunt of ancient Peace." TENNYSON, Palace of Art.

St. John's shares with Trinity and Hertford the distinction of having been twice founded. As the Cistercian College of St. Bernard, it owed its origin to Archbishop Chichele, the founder of All Souls', and it continued to exist for a century as a monastic institution. At the Reformation it was swept away with other monastic foundations by the greed of Henry VIII, but it was almost immediately refounded, in the reign of Mary, by Sir Thomas White, one of the greatest of London's Lord Mayors. In all these respects it has an exact parallel in Trinity, which had existed as a Benedictine foundation, being then called "Durham College," and which was refounded, in the same dark period of English History, by another eminent Londoner, Sir Thomas Pope. It is characteristic of England and of the English Reformation that men, who were undoubtedly in sympathy with the old form of the Faith, yet gave their wealth and their labours to found institutions which were to serve English religion and English learning under the new order of things.

For the first generation after the Founder, St. John's was torn by the quarrels between those who wished to undo the work of the Reformation altogether, and those who wished to carry it further and to destroy the continuity of English Church tradition. The final triumph of the Anglican "Via Media" was the work, above all others, of William Laud, who came up as scholar to St. John's in 1590, and who, for most of the half century that followed, was the predominant influence in the life of the University. First in his own college and then in Oxford generally, he secured the triumph of his views on religious doctrine and order. Of these, it is not the place to speak here, nor yet of Laud's services to Oxford as the restorer of discipline, the endower and encourager of learning, the organizer of academic life, whose statutes were to govern Oxford for more than two centuries; but it is indisputable that Laud takes one of the highest places on the roll of benefactors, both to the University as a whole and to his own college.

It was fitting that one who did so much for St. John's should leave his mark on its buildings; the inner quadrangle was largely built by him, and it owes to him its most characteristic features, the two classic colonnades on its east and west sides, and the lovely garden front, one of the three most beautiful things in Oxford: the north- east corner of this is shown in Plate XXI.

Laud's building work was done between 1631 and 1635, and in 1636 Charles I and his Queen visited Oxford and were entertained in the newly-finished college. Much bad verse was written on this event, two lines of which as a specimen may be quoted from the quaintly-named poem, "Parnassus Biceps":

"Was I not blessed with Charles and Mary's name, Names wherein dwells all music? 'Tis the same."

The part of the entertainment to royalty on which the Archbishop specially prided himself was the play of The Hospital of Lovers, which was performed entirely by St. John's men, without "borrowing any one actor." Laud goes on to observe that, when the Queen borrowed the dresses and the scenery, and had it played over again by her players at Hampton Court, it was universally acknowledged that the professionals did not come up to the amateurs--a truly surprising and somewhat incredible verdict. St. John's, however, was always strong in dramatic ability; Shirley, the last great representative of the Elizabethan tradition, was a student there, and the library has the rare distinction of having possessed longest the same copy of the works of Shakespeare; it still has the second folio, presented in 1638, by one of the fellows. St. John's connection with the lighter side of literature has lasted to our own day; the most famous of Oxford parodies is still the Oxford Spectator, which has not been surpassed by any of its many imitators in the last half century.

Other colleges, however, might challenge the supremacy of St. John's in the humours of literature.. In the richness and beauty of its garden it stands unrivalled, whether quantity or quality be the basis of comparison. It is not only that before the east front, seen in Plate XXI, stretches the largest garden in Oxford; thanks to the skill and the care of the present garden-master, the Rev. H. J. Bidder, this shows from month to month, as the pageant of summer goes on, what wealth of colour and variety of bloom the English climate can produce. It may be said to be laid out on Bacon's rule: "There ought to be gardens for all months in the year, in which severally things of beauty may be then in season"; only for "year" we naturally must read "academic year." If Bacon is right, that a garden is the "purest of human pleasures," then, indeed, St. John's should be the Oxford paradise.

WADHAM COLLEGE (1) THE BUILDINGS

"Here did Wren make himself a student home, Or e'er he made a name that England loves; I wonder if this straying shadow moves, Adown the wall, as then he saw it roam." A. UPSON.

[Plate XXII. Wadham College : The Chapel from the Garden]

The buildings of Wadham College have been pronounced by some good judges to be the most beautiful in Oxford. This is not, however, the usual opinion, nor is it my own, though, perhaps, it might be accepted if modified into the statement that Wadham is the most complete and perfect example of the ordinary type of college. However that may be, there are three points as to these buildings which are indisputable, and which are also most interesting to any lover of English architecture. They are: (1) Wadham is less altered than any other college in Oxford. (2) It is the finest illustration of the fact that the Gothic style survived in Oxford when it was being rapidly superseded elsewhere. (3) No building in Oxford (very few buildings anywhere) owe their effect so completely to their simplicity and their absence of adornment.

These three points must be illustrated in detail.

Wadham is the youngest college in Oxford, for all those that have been founded since are refoundations of older institutions (but, as its first stone was laid in 1610, it has a respectable antiquity); yet the Front Quad is completely unaltered in design, and of the actual stonework, hardly any has had to be renewed. Could the Foundress return to life, she would find the college, which was to her as a son, completely familiar.

The second point is a more important one. In the reign of Elizabeth, classical architecture was being rapidly introduced; Gothic was giving way before the style of Palladio, even as the New Learning was banishing 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 documents 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 classical 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 classical, 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 glass 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 illustrate 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 glass that Oxford can show. Even for those who are not students of glass, 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 unsurpassed, though the glory of these is passing. 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 fellowships 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 illustrious 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 asserting 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 attitude 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 associated 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, pronounced him one of the three greatest men he had met in England. Certainly he was great, if greatness means to anticipate 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 classic architecture in Oxford.