Literary Landmarks of Oxford/Hertford
HERTFORD
Hertford is one of the three colleges of Oxford which do not pronounce themselves as they are spelled the other two being Magdalen and Worcester. HERT sounds like HAR in the vernacular; and as Hertford is spoken it is, sometimes, not easy for the ear to distinguish it from the Harvard College of America. This, however, is colloquial and universal English, not an invention of Oxford, which is wonderfully ingenious in the twisting of local phrases. St. Mary's Hall, for instance, has been known familiarly to generations of undergraduates as "Skimmery," St. Edmund as "Ted's" or "Teddy Hall," and Worcester is further contracted into "Wuggins." In regard to more personal matters the Oxford man of to-day contents himself with cutting off the natural final syllable of a necessary word and replacing it with an inevitable "ER"; or else he adds the "ER" to a consonant of but a single syllable. The freshman is a "fresher," or perhaps a "colleger"; his chair and his couch are his "sitter" and his "bedder"; the exercise he takes in his "ecker"; the lecture he attends is a "lecker"; the Dean before whom he appears is a "Dagger"; the degree he takes, on passing, is a "degrugger"; and the train to London leaves him, not at Paddington Station, but at "Padder." All of which is very instructive, and of great value to him in the ordinary every-day conversation of later life!
Hertford has had a strange but comparatively uneventful history, which is too long and too complicated to be set down fully here. It was originally founded, at the end of the Thirteenth Century, as Hart Hall; and it seems to have been curiously and most confusedly mixed up with Exeter and New, and later, with Magdalen. In 1740 a zealous and executive Principal succeeded in obtaining a royal charter, making it a perpetual college under the name of Hertford; but as such, owing to serious lack of endowment, it went out of existence altogether at the end of about half a century. In 1818 the President and Fellows of Magdalen were authorized to repair the decayed buildings of Hertford for the reception of Magdalen Hall.
In 1874 it was determined to revert to the original style; the foundation of Magdalen Hall was dissolved, and the Principal and Scholars thereof, together with certain other Fellows, were incorporated as the Principal, Fellows and Scholars of Hertford College, in the University of Oxford. Men associated with Hart Hall, for the sake of lucidity, will be noticed here. Those associated with Magdalen Hall, to make the confusion less confounded, will be treated under the head of Magdalen College.
Hertford itself, with its quarter of a century of present existence, has had as yet no time to create lasting Landmarks in Literature.
In Hart Hall, in 1600 and for a short time, was John Seldon, the Antiquary, who, however, did not graduate.
And on the strength of testimonials from Trinity College, Dublin, went Jonathan Swift to receive his degree from Oxford in 1792, when he was recorded as being "a member of Hart Hall." Little else is recorded of him in Oxford, except that he was already beginning to try his 'prentice hand at Literature; and it was in that year (1792) that John Dryden, on the authority of Dr. Johnson, said to him: "Cousin Swift, you will never be a poet!"