Part 4

Within the walls of a place so redolent of Law it is not strange to find that Blackstone (he of the "Commentaries") had his rooms, but it is remarkable to find how diverse are the professions which have been adorned by Fellows of All Souls. Statesmen one might expect, and it is not difficult to conjure up the form of the late Marquis of Salisbury, stooping over a volume of Constitutional Law in the Codrington Library. Easier, perhaps, to imagine him thus than in the garb of a Christian warrior, as he stands in one of the niches of the Chapel reredos. The Fellows of All Souls are supposed under their statutes to be splendide vestiti, and in this respect Lord Salisbury, who was probably never aware of what he wore, must have singularly fallen short of the standard. But even so he would seem a more natural personage to haunt the still quadrangles of the College than his antagonist, Mr. Gladstone, who was an honorary Fellow of the College, but whose impulsive, eager vivacity would harmonize ill with the spirit of the place.

To-day it seems almost strange to find that All Souls has recruited the ranks of great ecclesiastics, but so it is. From there came Archbishop Sheldon, Bishops Heber and Jeremy Taylor, and many other great divines. Even Architecture can claim a Fellowship of All Souls for one of its greatest masters, Sir Christopher Wren.

But time presses. Oxford, all beautiful in her surroundings, great in her history, splendid in her buildings, unique in such foundations as have just been described, means so much more to most who have claimed her as their Alma Mater. They have had some inkling of all these things: especially perhaps they have imbibed, and made their lifelong possession, a sense of her natural charms: but no matter what their college may have been, no matter how little illustrious, historically or architecturally, it is round the college life, the rooms, the friendships, the homely details, that their loving memory hangs. It is there that first they knew what independence meant: there that the chairs and table were their very own: there that they could come and go almost as they liked: there that they first knew the delight of voluntary work.

How it all comes back! A freshman passes the Entrance Examination just well enough to get rooms in College--the last set vacant. They look out upon a wall at the back of the buildings; in themselves they are small and dark, the bedroom a mere cupboard. But they are his own. He enters and finds a pot of marmalade and a tin of Bath Olivers on the table, put there by the forethought of his scout. He gets his boxes open: hangs up the school groups and the picture of his home: puts his books into the shelves--and has made his abode complete. He waits impatiently for the cap and gown he has ordered. The door flies open, and in rushes his special friend, who has preceded him from Marlborough. The old threads are picked up and knit together in a moment--and so the life begins. There is not much variety from day to day: chapel first thing, at which five attendances are required weekly, Sunday morning service (owing to its length) counting as two--then breakfast, seldom altogether alone. It is the most sociable meal of the day, which says much for the youth and health of the breakfasters! Should it be Sunday the undergraduate may hope (often in vain) to be asked to breakfast by some man in lodgings. Otherwise he will be condemned to feed either upon cold chicken--tasteless and a little dry--or upon gherkin pie, known only (by the mercy of Providence) to certain colleges in Oxford, and consisting of a dish of cold fat, interspersed with gherkins, and covered with lid of heavy pastry.

Afterwards, on week days, there are lectures, then a quick change to flannels and a hurried luncheon, and then in summertime the river or the cricket fields. Back again he comes to cold supper and long draughts of shandygaff in hall; then a pipe or two and a chat, and then (sometimes) a spell of reading before bed and sleep. But all this is nearly forty years ago:--a mere memory:--but yet it is things like these that first come to mind when Oxford's name is heard.

And then the scout! How many memories he brings! The college servants were a race apart with curious standards of their own. It is true they fattened on the undergraduate. Did not the cook of a certain college disdain to enter his son at the college for which he cooked, and send him to Christ Church? Did not each scout bear away all that was left upon his masters' tables in a vast basket, beneath the weight of which he could scarcely stagger home? Quite true, but all the same how would the freshman have fared had not his scout looked after him, seen that he did what it behoved him to do, and kept him not seldom from some faux pas? A senior scout had often an almost fatherly regard for the men upon his staircase. One, who comes at once to mind, would stand and urge and argue long enough by the bedside of some lazy youth, for whom an interview with the Dean was imminent, persuading him to get up for Chapel, and the same man would take it seriously to heart if any of his particular gentlemen behaved in a manner which he considered unseemly. A good scout attached himself to his many masters and never forgot them. If any member of a college revisits his old haunts after years of absence, the one man who may be depended upon to give him a warm welcome is his old scout.

Of the tutors and fellows of the colleges, and their frequent kindness to the junior members of their college, this is not the place to expatiate. They are of course an intimate part of every man's college life, and around them many happy memories will generally dwell. The point that it is desired to emphasize is that, in looking back upon Oxford, it is these matters that have been briefly described--the details of the college and the college life--that are remembered with the greatest affection.

A Trinity man will tell you of the Grinling Gibbons carvings in the Chapel, but he thinks with greater tenderness of an old armchair in his rooms in the garden quad. A Corpus man will take a pride in belonging to a college that has always set before itself a high standard of learning, and is suitably possessed of a magnificent old library, but it is of his quaint old rooms in the little quiet quad that he dreams, when his thoughts go back again to Oxford.

The mention of Corpus brings to mind the fact, that this is almost the only college of those in the front rank to retain the charm of being small both in size and in numbers. All who have in their day belonged to a college of this kind will remember with pleasure the absence of "sets", and the possibility of knowing every other member of the college. Were Corpus to be revisited to-day by any of its distinguished members of the past, such as Lord Tenterden, John Taylor Coleridge, Dr. Arnold of Rugby, or John Keble, he would find far less change than in almost any other college in Oxford. Till lately much the same might have been said of Oriel, where one is brought to a pause the moment the gate is passed by the sight of one of the most beautiful of all quadrangles, of which the chief adornment is the charming porch of the hall, with its canopy and wide flight of steps. But Oriel is no longer to rank as one of the moderate-sized colleges. Enriched by Mr. Rhodes it has pushed its way into the High Street, and a new quadrangle is beginning already to arise. The fame of the College has been great. It has sent out an extraordinarily large number of prominent Churchmen, and the place is also full of memories of such men as Sir Walter Raleigh, Gilbert White, Tom Hughes, and that great provost and scholar Dr. Monro. It must be hoped that its increase in size, and the publicity of its buildings, will not detract from the excellence of the College, though it must be allowed that, by joining the ranks of the larger colleges, it loses something of its individuality and charm.

Among those larger foundations Balliol is perhaps the best known, and in some ways the most remarkable. It has had a curious history. Founded almost at the same time as Merton, it is by its own members held to be the oldest of all the colleges. But alas! the front that it presents, though respectable enough, is quite modern, and cannot be included among the things that help to make Oxford lovely. Then, again, for hundreds of years it remained an obscure place with no pretensions of any kind. Since the Mastership of Dr. Jenkyn in comparatively recent times it has managed, by throwing open its scholarships, to attract the finest scholars from all over the country. It can now boast a world-wide reputation; for the Balliol scholarship is known by all to be the chief prize offered in the University.

Balliol has had many remarkable masters, but none more so than Dr. Benjamin Jowett, a man of such wide sympathies that he attracted to the College an extraordinary assortment of men. Not only were distinguished men of learning to be found there, but a good sprinkling of the scions of the noble houses of the country, while rooms were always found for men of every colour and nationality--Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics. As the men so the buildings present an extraordinary mixture. The Library and the old Dining Hall are of fifteenth-century work. The new Hall and the principal front (already mentioned) are by Waterhouse--mid-Victorian; while, to crown all, the Chapel was erected by Butterfield, whose confidence in his own creations prevented him from being influenced by the great architectural beauties of Oxford, and caused him to have no hesitation in setting up buildings, so incongruous with the spirit of Oxford, as Balliol Chapel and Keble College. It is, then, for its mental, rather than its physical beauty, that Balliol claims attention. The inevitable mention of the College has taken up space, which might well have been bestowed upon the many lovely bits of ancient stonework that feast the eye in quiet corners and retired quadrangles, each going to form that inner beauty which Oxford wears within her robe of natural adornment.

But there are more secret treasures still. It is wonderful as one contemplates the walls, the towers, the domes, the battlements, the spires, that mark the position of this or that famous portion of the University city, to try to realize the wealth of treasure that is hidden there. The foreigner who comes in August and sits upon the steps of the Clarendon Building while he studies Baedeker from beneath the shadow of a tilted Panama, knows most about them. Most, that is to say, excepting always the knowledge of those to whose care they are entrusted. The ordinary English man or woman, unconnected with Oxford, has never heard of them. The undergraduate and the ordinary don has seen some part just now and then, when some enthusiastic guests have had to be taken round the sights.

And yet a book of many volumes might be written to tell of the things both rare and exquisite that Oxford hugs most close to her breast. He who cares to look may find them everywhere. There is not a college in all the University that does not possess something precious, either for its intrinsic beauty or for its historical interest. And it is not hard to find these treasures: they are gladly shown to all who care to see; though it might be thought, from the small general knowledge of their existence, that they are so jealously guarded as to make it next to impossible to gain access to them. In the Bodleian Library alone are countless objects of the greatest beauty and interest spread out beneath glass cases for all who will to see. Scores of illuminated manuscripts of all nations, and of such age that it is a marvel to see the colours still so bright and pure: historical books and documents of the most fascinating description, such as the exercise books used by Edward VI and Elizabeth when children: the collection of relics of Oxford's greatest poet, Shelley,--his watch, some few autograph poems, and more than one portrayal of his refined and rather boyish face.

Speaking of portraits brings to mind the wealth of these that in the picture galleries, and in college halls and libraries, Oxford possesses. Not only does she prize them for their beauty--and how great that is can best be seen in Christ Church Hall, upon the walls of which the works of Gainsborough, Hogarth, Lely, Reynolds and other great painters hang--but from the story that they tell of the fame her sons have won, and of the love they bore her, in token of which they joyfully poured out their wealth that she might be more worthily adorned.

Of other pictures too Oxford has goodly store. Over two hundred thousand engraved portraits are in the Hope Collection, while water-colours by Turner, David Cox, and other masters are the gems of the Ashmolean collection. Keble College cherishes one famous picture. In the Liddon Memorial Chapel is hung Holman Hunt's "Light of the World".

How much the beauty of the interior of Oxford's ancient buildings is increased by the glowing colours of the light, that finds its way through stained-glass windows, it is hard to say. These windows are so numerous and so beautiful that it is difficult to imagine what many a chapel, hall, and library would be without them. They are of every date, from ancient fragments, such as may be seen in the windows of the Library at Trinity, to the great Sir Joshua Reynolds' window in New College Chapel, and the still later examples of Burne-Jones' art, which are among the chief beauties of the Cathedral; and they include such splendid instances of old Flemish art as may be found in Lincoln College Chapel.

Of carved work in wood and stone there is much that is precious, though many of the larger statues are not examples of the highest form of art. Still there are traceries and capitals of exquisite design to be found everywhere, and of statuary there is at least Onslow Ford's pathetic figure of the poet Shelley to be seen at University College, beneath a dome which does its best to mar the whole effect.

Of wood carvings the most beautiful are Grinling Gibbons' work at Trinity and Queen's, and the most interesting the old oak altar at Wadham, brought there from Ilminster, the home of Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, the founders of the College.

New College and Corpus each can boast the possession of their founder's pastoral staff, silver gilt, and in the former case both jewelled and enamelled; while Exeter and Magdalen prize among their chief treasures tapestry hangings of great beauty, the former designed by Burne-Jones, and executed by William Morris (both Hon. Fellows of the College), the latter of considerable antiquity, having been presented to the College by Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII. But so innumerable are the artistic delights hidden in every corner of Oxford that it is impossible to do more than thus suggest their existence.

And now, before it is quite time to turn away, we will out into the sunshine once again. There is one memory of Oxford to which expression has not yet been given. It is connected with the sparkle, the gladness, the sunshine of the place: it is the music of the sound of Oxford--the song, if you will, it always used to sing. To-day there is a difference. The rumble of the tramcar, the hoot of the motor, are heard in her streets, and since the era of much married fellows, the wail of the infant rises from the solid phalanx of perambulators on the pavement. But once upon a time--how long ago!--all through the summer day and summer night there was a kind of music in the air. The whisper of the wind that stirred the willows made soft accompaniment of the splash of paddle in the stream: the birds sang lustily amid the gentle rustle of the garden trees, and when the thrush retired to roost the nightingale took up the tale. The very footfall of the men hurrying to lecture was a pleasant sound, for then they needed not to punctuate their progress with the sharp tang of the bicycle bell. And best of all the bells made music morning and evening at the chapel hours. Not the despairing music of a peal, that falls and rises only to fall again, till nervous men are racked, but a cheerful note--just one--but different from each side; and, amongst all, that one that each man knew to be his own and loved, and knows it still to-day and loves it still. It is true enough that other sounds, less musical, are heard by memory's ears. Sometimes the nightingale would take to flight, affronted that her note was drowned by "the shout of them that triumph, the song of them that feast", as the College kept high revel in honour of the Eight. Even now it is possible to hear the raucous yell of "Dra-ag", to summon those who lingered over luncheon and kept the char-à-banc from starting for the Cowley cricket grounds, and none who have once heard it can forget the roar mingled with the rattles, pistol shots and bells, that draws closer and even closer, as the Eights come racing to the Barges. Scarcely music, perhaps, but for all that a part of the song of Oxford life.

But in all the sweetest sounds that have till now gone up from earth to heaven Oxford has had its part. Not only have birds and meadows, trees and rippling streams made constant music to the God who made them, but the heart and voice of man have not unworthily joined in. What of Keble and Clough from Oriel, singing indeed a different strain, but singing for all that? What of Bishops Heber and Ken, from All Souls and from New? Of Robert Browning of Balliol, and Landor Trinity's chief poet? And lastly what of Shelley, recognized at last as singer of immortal verse? These and a host of lesser songsters, each with his several songs, joining with the glorious harmonies that have for so long been sent up from Magdalen, New College, and from that ancient fane where once St. Frideswide rested, make good the claim of Oxford as a city of sweet song.

There is no more to say--or rather there is no space in which to say it--and thoughts which have been revelling in Oxford's loveliness must be turned once more to the homelier duties from which they have for a while escaped, and he who writes must lay aside his pen all sorrowful that on such a theme he could no better write.

And he who reads? Surely someone will say "So this is Oxford! This is the chief of all our seats of learning, and no word of wise professors or of lecture halls!" Just so. It is not at the lectures men learn most. It is the spirit of the place, the friends they make, the living in an atmosphere so fair and sweet, that counts for almost all. It must be that, wherever they may walk in after years, their share in what has been wrought so beautiful and hallowed by the life and work of noble men, will tend to guide their footsteps in the higher path.