Literary Landmarks of Oxford/Christ Church
CHRIST CHURCH
The local historians are fond of speaking of Christ Church as "A Venerable Pile." "Venerable pile" is a venerable phrase, which has done as much duty, in the works of topographical writers, as "glory crowned heights" has done in the verses of war-poets, or as the expression "a wealth of golden hair" has done in the romances of all days.
Christ Church College as "a pile" is not particularly "venerable." It was founded early in the Sixteenth Century by Wolsey and Henry the Eighth, "Ego et Rex," the Cardinal, as was his way, doing all the work; the King, as was his way, taking all the contemporary credit and glory. Posterity, however, has set things right; and Wolsey has no grander or more lasting monument.
When the local historians call Christ Church "the most magnificent House of Learning in Europe," they are not so far astray. Royalty and aristocracy have made it magnificent by their presence and by their support; and Men of Mind, from Sir Philip Sidney to John Ruskin and Gladstone, have made it magnificent by their learning.
One Frideswyde, daughter of Didan and Saffrida, is associated with the beginnings of Christ Church College, which was built upon the site of her Nunnery. She was born in the first quarter of the Eighth Century, and she has since become a legalized Saint.
Her name is original, and suggestive of the modern British novel whose writers must already be weary of the Gladises and the Hildegardes and the Glendowins of their creation. Frideswyde Didan, or even Saffrida Didan, bestowed upon the willowy heroine with the inevitable wealth of golden hair will make the fortune of the first lady-novelist who introduces her to Mudie's Library, and to American servant-girl, and school-girl, readers. Robert de Ewelme, who was of Christ Church some six or seven hundred years later, would suit admirably the proud faced hero, with the clear blue eyes; and the Lady Elizabeth de Montacanute, who figures as a Benefactress of the College, might give her name to the gentle, self-contained governess who is to be married, in the last chapter, to the haughty baronet by the Perpetual Curate, her father, who stoops when he walks, and who is generally absent-minded, and always short of sight.
Anthony Wood claimed for Christ Church that in its Hall was used stage scenery for the first time in England. The play was "Passions Calmed," the year wa 1636, and the occasion was a visit of King Charles the First. Mr. Wood made the statement public, he said, "in order that posterity may know that what is now seen in the play-houses of London is originally due to the inventions of Oxford scholars." There are authorities, however, who believe that posterity, in this case, has been misinformed by the old Annalist.
It will surprise the members of the modern college dramatic companies, by the way, to hear that while Wood was exceedingly proud of the efforts of the amateurs of his College, he was forced to confess that theatricals, after the Restoration, were carried a little too far by the students, who had "arrived to strong degree and streyn of impudence." And it will, perhaps, surprise the faculties to learn that after the performances in Christ Church the Dean was in the habit of giving the performers a supper?
A contemporary historian tells us that in this same 1636 King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria saw, also at Christ Church, a play called "The Floating Island," by William Strode, the Public Orator, which play Lord Carnovan declared to be the very worst he had ever seen, except one at Cambridge! However, his lordship confessed that the shifting scenery was good; and that it was afterwards imitated at the London theatres; thereby following, or endorsing, the statement of Wood.
The Second Charles and his Queen were at Christ Church in 1665, when, on November 7th, the first number of "The Oxford Gazette" appeared, printed on a half sheet, and on but one side of the paper. It was carried to London, after the issue of a few copies, to become "The London Gazette," with an unbroken record of considerably over two centuries, thus establishing for Oxford another Literary Landmark,—such as it is.
The intelligent local guide, whose boast it was that he "could do the 'alls, collidges, and principal hedifices in a nour and a naff," and whose descendants, and successors, still direct attention to the sights of the town and the University, informed the Squire of Manor Green, pointing to Christ Church, that that edifice was "built by Card'nal Hoolsy four 'undered foot long and the famous Tom Tower as tolls wun undered and wun hevery night that being the number of stoodents on the foundation." With Tom Tower and the great Cardinal the present chronicler has nothing to do. But of such students of the Foundation as have left behind them footprints in books he will try to deal; touching just here, in passing, upon the fact, that students of high degree, in the way of rank and of genius, are sometimes as full of pranks as are the men of ordinary mental calibre and of more lowly social status.
For it is gravely reported that when the basin of the fountain of Christ Church was cleaned out in 1835, it was found to be literally paved with brass knockers, broken fragments of sign-boards, and various other external ornaments and devices. What was done to the pavors is not stated, but several Oxford students who were caught in the act of stealing knockers at Northampton, in the same year, were called upon to pay court expenses, to write an apology in the local paper, and to donate twenty pounds to the Lunatic Asylum. The Lunatic Asylum, in that connection, is good!
One of the most notable of all the actions of the undergraduates of Christ Church, but one to be avoided in present-day Seats of Learning, was performed on a very cold winter's night some years ago. Out of wet snow and stones dug from the streets, mortared by water taken from the fountain, and freezing as it was applied, was made a solid, impregnable gate to the entrance of the Hall; which gate shut out Dean and Chapter from morning chapel, and left the students to remain undisturbed in their beds until late in the afternoon.
Mr. Wade, in his "Walks in Oxford," says that "the celebrated John Wyckliffe " was once Warden of Canterbury College, instituted in 1363, and granted in later times by Henry VIII. to Christ Church, its site being upon the present Canterbury Court. Mr. Moore, in his "Gossipy Guide to Oxford," says that Wyckliffe used to preach in a chapel which once stood at the eastern end of the Library. But, it is believed now that this John Wycliffe was another John Wycliffe, not "The Morning Star of the Reformation."
In this same Canterbury College tradition says that Sir Thomas More was tutored by Linacre. William Camden spent some little time at Christ Church, as well as at Magdalen and at Pembroke. In these colleges, as elsewhere, he devoted all his spare minutes to the study of antiquarian lore; and at Christ Church, especially, he was fortunate, according to his own statements, in the support and encouragement of a fellow-student, Sir Philip Sidney, who followed him to Oxford in 1568.
According to Wood, Camden was at Magdalen, as a Chorister, in 1566; thence he was transported to Broadgates, which afterwards became Pembroke, where he stayed two years and a half; and then he was given entertainment, as long as he cared to remain, in the lodgings of a Canon of Christ Church, who was much impressed by the learning and various virtues which Camden had displayed at the other colleges.
Philip Sidney, "at whose great birth," according to Ben Jonson, "all the muses met," was the most distinguished, perhaps, of all the Sons of Christ Church. He entered in 1568. He was especially licensed to eat flesh during Lent, being somewhat subject to sickness, as we are told; and he made such great and brilliant progress in learning, between his fourteenth and his sixteenth years, that even his teachers "found something in him to observe and learn, above what they themselves usually read and taught. His talk, even as a youth, was ever of knowledge, and his very play tended to enrich his mind." One of his Tutors carried this admiration so far as to wish to have engraved upon his tombstone the great and important fact that he, the Tutor, had had Sidney for a pupil. Tutors rarely make such peculiarly marked antemortem requests, in our days; although there lived, not long ago, in a small town in Scotland, an humble Pedagogue, whose proud boast it was that he had taught the English alphabet to Andrew Lang!
The plague raging in Oxford in 1571, Sidney left the University hurriedly, never to return. He left his degree behind him, and he had no time, in later years, to go back to claim it.
Fuller sent Benjamin Jonson to Trinity College, Cambridge, upon what authority is not now known, for Jonson himself, the son of a bricklayer in London, told Drummond, of Hawthornden, once, that he was taken from school, and put to a trade; and that the degree he possessed from each University was given by favor, and not by study. According to Anthony Wood, Jonson's M. A. degree from Oxford was conferred in 1619, when, at the invitation of certain of the poetical Dons of the University, he went to Christ Church College, was a member thereof, and continued there some time, in the writing and composing of plays; which is Wood's excuse for numbering him among the Worthies of Oxford, and which will account for his presence in these records of the University.
Robert Burton was already devoting himself to the study of Melancholy, and its Anatomy, when he entered Christ Church from Brazenose in 1599. An original Latin comedy of his was enacted by the students in the Hall of Christ Church on Shrove Tuesday, February, 1617 or 1618. It is one of the rarest of printed works to-day, and it is described as a witty exposure of the practises of the professors of the art of chicanery; in which the manners and habits of a fraternity of vagabonds are portrayed with considerable humor and skill.
Very little of the detail of Burton's private life is known, and the personal anecdotes concerning him which have come down to us, are few and far between. Wood, however, tells us that he was that curious combination, "a melancholy, humorous person." Having foretold the date of his own demise, he kept, by accident or by design, his appointment with Death; Wood reporting certain of his friends as declaring that he sent his soul up to Heaven through a noose about his neck, in order that his prophecy might be fulfilled, thereby proving the unusual melancholy of his humor.
Another authority states that in "the intervals of his vapors he would be exceeding cheerful, and then he would fall into such a state of despondency that he could only get himself relief by going to the Bridge-foot, at Oxford, and hearing the bargemen swear at one another, at which he would set his hands at his side, and laugh most profusely." This would seem to be a proof of the extraordinary humor of his melancholy.
The bargemen at the foot of the Bridge at Oxford to-day have lost all sense of humor in their profanity, which is simply melancholy unrelieved.
Burton gave up the ghost in Christ Church; and he is buried in the Lady Chapel of the Cathedral.
John Fell entered Christ Church at the early age of eleven years, and on the nomination of his father, Dr. Samuel Fell, at that time Dean of the College, whose chair in the Deanery the son himself was to occupy, and most creditably, some years later. The younger Fell was expelled in 1648 for taking up arms in defence of the Royalist Cause. But he remained in Oxford, living in a house opposite Merton and persistently celebrating the rites of his church, under certain severe restrictions. After the Restoration he was promoted to a Canonry at Christ Church, and, in 1660, he became the Dean of the College, where he did much for the discipline of the undergraduates and for the advancement of learning in general. He was accused of being one of the authors of "The Whole Duty of Man," an impeachment to which, however, he never pleaded guilty ; although he made it his own Whole Duty to see that by the men under him, as much as was possible, their Whole Duty was done. He held the examiners up to their work, said Wood, and if they could not, or would not, do their Duty, he would do it himself to the putting down of many.
Fell is said to have planted the trees on the Old Broad Walk, in 1670, and to have been instrumental in the recasting of Great Tom, some ten years later. He was a good man, a good churchman, and a good friend to his college; but he is only remembered now by the paraphraser of some ancient Latin lines, who, although the reason why he could not tell, has put himself on imperishable record, as not at all loving Dr. Fell.
Dr. John Fell's rooms were, it is so said, in Beam Hall, where Latin church-services were secretly held in the time of the Commonwealth.
He was buried in the Cathedral, and his monument is in the west bay of the nave.
John Locke appeared at Christ Church in 1652, when, and where, he does not seem to have been a very hard student. He evidently preferred the reading of light romances, and the frequenting of the society of pleasant and witty companions, to the cultivation and strengthening of his understanding.
He continued to live in Oxford for some time after his graduation, lecturing on Greek and Rhetoric and on Moral Philosophy. Later he obtained a Medical Studentship, but he never received his degree of M. D. from Christ Church. And in 1684, for alleged "seditious demeanor," he was requested by Dean John Fell to step down and out. Curiously enough, he was expelled not as John, but as "James" or as "Joseph" Locke; his name, as well as his misconduct, being regarded in a Pickwickian sense. It made no difference to the wise Judges what Nathaniel Daniel, or Daniel Nathaniel, did. He was wrong, anyway!
The Connections of Humphrey Prideaux with Oxford centre chiefly about Christ Church, to which he went in 1668, as a student. Later he was Hebrew Lecturer there, and even after he left Oxford his name was kept on the books of Christ Church for some years as an unsalaried Librarian. Dean Aldrich called him "an incorrect and muddy-headed man, who did little but the heaping up of notes." His apologists, however, ascribe any want of correctness to type-setters and to proof-readers, and they doubt the muddiness of his brain. The heaping up of notes, when they are correct notes, is a very useful performance, sometimes; and is not to be disparaged, altogether!
Thomas Otway was a student at Christ Church from 1669 until 1672. He studied little but theatrical literature ; and he left college suddenly and without a degree, to try his fortunes upon the stage, where his career was very short, and where he also failed in getting his degree. He appeared but once, and in a small part, when, according to Downes, "the full house put him to such a sweat and tremendous agony that being ' dash't ' it spoilt him for an actor."
He must have missed that theatrical training which Wood lamented at Christ Church, half a century earlier; for no amateur who has arrived at what Wood calls "a strange degree of impudence," behind the footlights in college halls, is likely to be "dash't" upon the ordinary professional boards!
John Wesley left the Charter House School to enter Christ Church in 1720, where, we are told, he began to display an extraordinary conscientiousness and ascetic tendency; devoting himself particularly, and devotedly, to the study of the works of Thomas a Kempis and Jeremy Taylor. He became, in 1726, a Fellow of Lincoln, in which College, in later days, he is better remembered, and is still honored.
In his "Random Records" George Colman, the Younger, writes: "On my entrance at Oxford, as a member of Christ Church, I was too foppish a follower of the prevailing fashions [1779] to be a reverential observer of academical dress. In truth I was an egregious little puppy; and I was presented to the Vice-Chancellor to be matriculated in a grass-green coat, with the furiously bepowdered pate of an ultra-coxcomb." Two years later he left Oxford, without his degree, to complete his education at King's College, Aberdeen.
Henry G. Liddell and Robert C. Scott, so intimately associated in undergraduate minds as "Liddell and Scott," were at Christ Church together as undergraduates, from 1830 to 1833; and ten years later their familiar Dictionary was given to the world. Scott became Master of Balliol in 1854, and Liddell, Dean of Christ Church in 1855; and thus in their greatness as Dons, as through all their life's work, there was but little in time and in space to divide them.
Dean Liddell lies in the burial ground of the Cathedral.
John Ruskin remembered Liddell as "one of the rarest types of nobly presenced Englishmen," and said that he was the only one in Oxford among the Masters of his (Ruskin's) day, who knew anything of art.
Nearly half a century ago, in a small New England town, lived a small boy, not yet into his "teens," who wished a certain lexicon, supposed to be necessary only to boys much his senior in years and in experience, and which he could not afford to buy. The sympathetic vendor of second-hand books to whom he appealed, impressed by the unexpected desire of so immature-looking a student, sold the volume on the instalment plan, the boy collecting old bones in the streets and disposing of them to a dealer in such things for a cent or two a pound, until the necessary amount, only a dollar or two, was raised, and the account settled. The title of the work was Liddell and Scott's "Greek-English Lexicon" and the boy, a good many years later, told the story, in Oxford 
once to one of its compilers, who said that he considered it the most touching compliment which he and his co-laborer had ever received. The book —well thumbed by more than one generation of young students—is still carefully preserved and cherished in a private library in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the name of the boy was John Fiske!
Oxford knew well, and still well remembers, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was Mathematical Lecturer from 1855 until 1881, and his rooms at Christ Church are still pointed out. They were the large suite, in the Tower, on the First Quadrangle, Staircase No. Seven, on the left as one enters the establishment.
He must have been, if all the stories still told about him are true, one of the most eccentric of Eccentrics. He did not care for young men, it seems, but he liked young women, who all liked him; and Oxford is now full of women, mature and immature, who adore the gentle memory of the creator of " Alice." One of them, still a young woman, who was but a baby when "Wonderland" was originally visited, says of him that " he was a man whom one had to read backward." He had to be looked at "As Through a Looking Glass." She describes him as moody, and as a man of strong dislikes. But he liked her; and, hand in hand, on the roofs of the College, she, as a child, and he used to wander, he always amiable and full of queer conceits of speech and of imagination.
What Sidney was at Christ Church in his own days was William E. Gladstone two centuries and a half afterwards. The later man made great and brilliant progress in learning. His talk, as an undergraduate, was of knowledge, and he, too, enriched his mind even in his hours of play. His distinguishing traits, we are told, were diligence, good conduct, studious habits and classical attainments. He went to Oxford in 1829, and he left, with a Double First, in 1831.
There is not much about which to gossip in the existence of the undergraduate of studious habits and of classical attainments, unfortunately; and almost the only picture of Gladstone at Christ Church which has come down to us is a very slight sketch from the pen of Lord Houghton, who says: "At that time [1829] we at Cambridge were full of Mr. Shelley; and a friend of ours suggested that as Shelley had been expelled from Oxford, and had been very badly treated at that University, it would be a good thing for us to defend him there. . . . We accordingly went to Oxford, then a long, dreary, post-chaise journey of ten hours; and were hospitably entertained by a young student of the name of Gladstone."
The debate at the Union, by the way, was a hot one, but the young student named Gladstone took no part in it. It resulted in a vote of ninety to thirty-three, affirming the superiority of Shelley over Byron. The only Oxonian who spoke in Shelley's favor was a young student of Balliol, named Manning, afterwards to become a Cardinal of the Church of Rome, but then in close and familiar relationship with Gladstone.
Gladstone's rooms were on Canterbury Quadrangle. If his life in those rooms had been less studious and more playful, if he had stolen knockers and frozen out Dons, instead of devoting himself to the classics and to winning a Double First, he might have proved a more amusing figure in these records; but he would hardly have proved so useful and so distinguished a figure in the history of his country and of the world.
John Ruskin entered Christ Church in 1833, and he won the Newdigate Prize some years later. A most entertaining letter of his, in verse, telling of his early experiences in college, is worth repeating here in part:
"A night, a day past o'er—the time drew near
The morning came—I felt a little queer;
Came to the push, paid some tremendous fees;
Passed, and was capped and gowned with marvellous ease.
"Then went to the Vice-Chancellor to swear
Not to wear boots, nor cut or comb my hair
Fantastically;—to shun all sins,
As playing marbles or frequenting inns;
"Always to walk with breeches black or brown on;
When I go out to put my cap and gown on;
With other regulations of the sort, meant
For the just ordering of my comportment.
Which done, in less time than I can rehearse it, I
Found myself member of the University!"
The final rhymes are worthy of the reputation for ingenuity in that line, displayed by Lord Byron, who made "intellectual" fit with "henpecked you all"; and by Professor Andrew West, of Princeton, who declared once in verse that the chorister who could "his anthem hum" might justly wear "chrysanthemum!"
Ruskin's most important work in Oxford was done in his later years, when he was in residence in Corpus, and was Slade Professor of Art.