Literary Landmarks of Oxford/Exeter
EXETER
Exeter College was originally founded, in 1315, by one Bishop Stapledon, of the See of Exeter, when it was known as Stapledon Hall, the name "Exeter" not having been given to it until nearly a century later.
The many Men of Mind who have claimed Exeter as their Nourishing Mother, have devoted their talents to the other arts, and to the sciences, rather than to what has been called " mere literature, as such," and their Landmarks, naturally, need not be preserved in this particular connection. Seldon, the Antiquary; John Ford, the Dramatist; Sir William Lyell, the Geologist; William Morris and Sir Edward Burne-Jones, the Painters, have left their footprints—more or less distinct—in its halls and quadrangles; but of its sons, James Anthony Froude is almost the only writer of our own day, or of any other day, who can consistently be noticed here; Ford's association with the College being doubted by the later authorities. Something about Hazing at Oxford will be said later; but it is cheering to be able to record the fact that as early as 1637, one Rector Prideaux, of Exeter, succeeded in abolishing, in his own college, the amiable and amusing custom of "tucking the freshmen.
Wood thus explains what "tucking" was: "That is to set the nail of the thumb to the chin, just under the lip; and by the help of the other fingers, under the chin, they would give a mark which sometimes produced blood." Other writers tell us that not infrequently, in order to intensify the humor of the performance, salt and water were applied to the fresh wound.
It is to be hoped that later-day second-class men, in their search for novel and ingenious tortures upon their juniors will not accept this as a hint for future playful entertainment.
John Prideaux, Bishop of Worcester, was Student and Fellow of Exeter; and he became its Rector in 1612. The Hall-porter, in 1899, who had been servant of the College, boy and man, "for fifty years, come next October," spoke proudly to the Landmarker of a silver tankard, the gift of Rector Prideaux, and itself called, familiarly, "Prideaux," as being still in the Buttery, but not visible to strangers' eyes, even for the usually all-obtaining shilling! It seems, according to the Hall-porter in question, that it is a custom for Exeter Hall-porters in general, on their appointment to office, to keep " Prideaux " filled up with beer (and "Prideaux" holds a quart), for the benefit of the undergraduates; and undergraduates, it was gravely added, are "h'always h'unusual thirsty," on such occasions.
Professor Max Miiller, in his " Literary Recollections," spoke of Froude, while a Fellow of Exeter, as busy writing novels in his rooms in the High Street, opposite St. Mary's Church. There he finished the "Nemesis of Faith," which cost him his Fellowship, which led to his banishment to Tasmania, and which was publicly burned, not in the Quadrangle of Exeter, as tradition hath it, but in one of the class-rooms, by an irate professor who found a copy of it in the hands of an unfortunate student.
There is something absolutely pathetic in Oxford's long time complacent satisfaction in the thoroughfare familiarly known as "The High."
Its admirers have told the world for years that in size and beauty it has, and can have, no equal. Robert Montgomery apostrophized it as "The Town's Majestic Pride"; and even Sir Walter Scott, who was not an Oxford man, and who was above all things an Edinburgh man, declared that the High Street of his native city was "the most magnificent in Great Britain—except High Street in Oxford"! The High Street in Oxford, the guide-books state, is two thousand and thirty-eight feet in length, and eighty-five feet in width. Unfortunately they do not go into the detail of inches, which, in the dimensions of a street of that extent, are important. This is about as long as from the Fifth Avenue Hotel to the Holland House, in New York, and less than half as broad as is Pennsylvania Avenue, at Washington, in certain sections.
"The High," in "its stream-like wanderings, is a glorious street," as Wordsworth said of it in one of his Sonnets. But, to the trans-Atlantic visitor to Oxford, somehow, the "glories" of High Street are the streets and lanes that lead out of it: Oriel Street, Logic Lane, The Turl, and the rest of them, queer and delightful themselves and leading, always, to something delightful and queer. Every one of these streets has been trod, and trod again, by the present Landmarker, hat in hand in his reverence for the memories of the men who have trod them in days gone by. He comes back to "The High" invariably, with a feeling that they are the real Oxford, while High Street, despite "its spires and domes and towers," and with its cabs and print-shops and crowds of "eager novices robed in fluttering gowns" is not altogether the sole poetic presence of which the poet sings as "overpowering the soberness of reason."
Froude's works were not thrown into the fire when he went back to Oxford in later years, as Regius Professor of History. He was then exceedingly popular, and his lectures, both public and private, were largely attended, although lectures, as a rule, were not a particularly favorite source of instruction or amusement in Oxford; and despite the fact that Dr. Stubbs complained, in 1886, that some of his own talks "were delivered to two or three listless men."
Froude became a Fellow of Exeter in 1842, and Regius Professor of History as successor of Freeman in 1892. Tradition hath it that "he lived up the Fellows' Staircase." But that is mere tradition; and that is as far, in his case, as tradition goes. Nobody seems to remember where his apartments were; and, as usual, nobody in Oxford seems to care.