Literary Landmarks of Oxford/Pembroke
PEMBROKE
William Herbet, Earl of Pembroke, gave his name to Pembroke College, and as, perhaps, "Mr. W. H." "the onlie begetter" of the Sonnets of Shakspere; he may be written down as a Literary Landmark of unique distinction. But Pembroke was a nursery of learning before the Sonnets were conceived. It was originally occupied by Clerks of the Civil and Canon Law, when it was known as Segrym's Hall, until, in the reign of Henry VI., a large entrance was built, and from this it got the name of Broadgates Hall. It was a popular spot in Oxford in somewhat later times, when the ladies, serious and frivolous, were "so farthingaled, so penthoused-out far beyond their bodies, with bucklers of pasteboard, that they could not pass through any other door except sidewise!" In 1624, during the reign of James I., Broadgates became, by Letters Patent, the "College of Pembroke in the University of Oxford"; and as such it was styled a "Perpetual College of Divinity, Civil and Canon Law, Arts, Medicine and Other Sciences."
John Addington Symonds once called Master John Heywood a "Prose Chaucer."
He studied at Oxford, according to Wood, "in that ancient hostel called Broadgates, in the Parish of St. Aldgates." But "the crabbedness of Logick not suiting with his airie genie, he returned to London," where, in the course of time, with his "Mixed Plays" or "Interludes," he " began to revolutionize the Stage, and to usurp, with his inventions, the place of the earlier Mysterie and Myracle Plays"; giving, as it were, a sort of variety-entertainment flavor to the dramatic productions of the mediaeval minstrels, and inserting, after a fashion, a little of "Too-Much-Johnson"-" Half-a-King" sentiment into the serious Middle-Aged "School-for-Scandal"-"London-Assurance" dramas which had immediately preceded them.
William Camden went to Broadgates from Magdalen in 1567, where he spent some two or three years; composing there certain short Latin graces, which were said before, and after, meat, much later than his own time; and turning his attention seriously to the study of antiquated things.
Fulke Greville, friend and schoolmate of Sidney and his pall-bearer, an alleged student at Broadgates, was one of the two men of the earlier days whom Charles Lamb would have liked to have seen in the flesh, the other man being Sir Thomas Browne, also a Son of Broadgates. No doubt Charles Lamb's desire has been gratified, in a way, and he has met his two friends somewhere, in the Spirit-Land.
Wood is responsible for taking Greville to Oxford " in the condition of a Gentleman Commoner, either before or after he went to Cambridge." But even Wood cannot tell whether Greville was at Broadgates or at Christ Church, nor does he think that "it doth matter much" anyway, seeing that he was properly a Cambridge Man. Nevertheless Pembroke, as the successor of Broadgates, claims Greville for its own. That Pembroke is justified in congratulating itself upon the possession of Sir Thomas Browne the records prove. He became a Fellow Commoner in 1623; or, as Wood hath it, "he took degree of Arts as member of said College, entered on the physic line, and practised that faculty for sometime in these parts—"meaning, it is supposed, in Oxfordshire. It is not very clear why Lamb wished to have had a personal acquaintance with this ancient writer on mediaeval subjects, whose works were so famous in his own day and were so often translated into other tongues. But Lamb, whom everybody, except Carlyle, loved, and whom everybody still loves, had a strong capacity for loving everybody. And there are men still living who would like to have known Charles Lamb himself in the flesh. There is one man still living, in Princeton, New Jersey, who, when he has kissed his Father and his Mother—in the spirit— when he has patted his dogs, and has talked with his friends, is going to hang around the Golden Staircase until he can catch the eyes of Charles Lamb, and of Mary Lamb, the Sister of Charles!
Very little is set down concerning the undergraduate life of Francis Beaumont, the pen-partner of Fletcher, and not unknown, as a writer, to Charles Lamb. He entered Broadgates, in 1590, at the age of twelve; and he was "acquiring great classical learning" when his father's death, a year or two later, necessitated his retirement, without a degree.
Pembroke's most Distinguished Son was Samuel Johnson, although, as is generally the case, his Alma Mater did not so regard him during the days of his undergraduate infancy. He performed much better, as a man, than he promised as a boy. The Rev. Douglas Maclane, a Fellow of Pembroke, gives in "The Colleges of Oxford" very completely the story of Johnson's associations with Pembroke.
He entered as a Commoner at the end of October, 1728, and he does not seem to have been a particularly attractive sort of person, except to a certain wild and irreverent set of his fellow-students. On his arrival he passed one morning, as was the custom, in the chambers of his Tutor, whom he decided to be "no scholar"; and he went no more. The next time he met his Tutor on the street he treated his Tutor very rudely, an act of which he boasted in his later years. He cheerfully paid a fine of two pence for non-attendance at a lecture, which he said, openly, was not worth a penny! He was, according to Bishop Percy, "generally to be seen lounging at the College gate, with a circle of young students around him, whom he was entertaining with his wit and keeping from their studies. But he would never let any of them say 'Prodigious,' or otherwise misuse the English language in any way." He denied, in after days, that he was gay and frivolous at that time. "I was mad and violent, Sir! It was bitterness which they mistook for frolic. I was miserably poor; and I thought to fight my way by my literature and my wit; so I disregarded all power and all authority."
Other men, without knowing it, no doubt, are still fighting the same hard battle, on college campuses, in the same unsatisfactory manner.
Johnson's room, says Dr. Maclane, "was a very small one, in the second story, over the Gateway; and now [1891] practically unaltered. Anyone who has occupied the narrow tower staircase," he adds, "can imagine the noise of Johnson's form tumbling down in hot pursuit. The present balusters must be the same as those he clutched in his headlong descents."
A Literary Landmarker, only the other day, toiling up that narrow staircase to Johnson's rooms, instinctively clutched the balusters, as, with his eyes shut, he fancied he met the ghost of Johnson tumbling down. It is very pathetic to think of Johnson, in 1784, shortly before he died, as paying his last earthly farewell visit to those rooms. He had a strong desire to see them with his earthly eyes once again; but he was so weak, and so feeble, that the porter had to push him up, and to lead him down. There was no headlong descent then, except in an involuntary way. But still the ghost of the impetuous young Sam, and of the infirm old Doctor, haunt the staircase!
Mr. Maclane, in his freshman year, occupied those same apartments for sentimental reasons; and, according to his unimpeachable authority, they are, as we have seen, still virtually as they were when Johnson knew them, although on two occasions they have narrowly escaped destruction by fire. Maclane gave them up in his second undergraduate year, because in the growing twelve
months of studious maturity he felt himself as unworthy of them. But when one looks at them now, one cannot help fancying that he felt that they were unworthy of him. The sitting-room, with a window looking out on to St. Aldate's Church, is small enough; but the bed-room, with a bit of a window from which can be gained a glimpse of the Quadrangle, is the smallest, packing-box example of a bed-room in which a full-grown, overgrown college, lad was ever placed. In these chambers nothing that Johnson knew but the walls (newly papered), and the ceiling (newly whitewashed), and the floors (newly carpeted), are now left. And a story above Johnson's rooms has been added to the Tower since Johnson's time.
His portrait hangs, in an indifferent light, over the mantel in the Senior Common Room. It is claimed for it that it is an original, or a replica, by Sir Joshua Reynolds; and that it was painted for Bennet Langton. But in 1899 it was carefully examined by Mr. Charles F. Bell, Assistant Keeper of the Ashmolean, and an authority upon the subject, who writes, in a personal note, that as it was not Langton's, and as it does not appear in any of the earlier records of Reynolds's work, he considers it to be, most probably, an old copy, made, perhaps, in Reynolds's studio, by one of the Master's many followers.
Two of Johnson's desks are preserved in the present Library, which he knew as the Dining Hall, of Pembroke; and his tea-pot is in a cabinet in the Bursary, not far from a life portrait of Shenstone. Little did those collegians think, as collegians, that their college would ever care to preserve, as sacred relics, anything of theirs. How many of the freshmen of the present can tell that they may not do deeds, with their heads, which in later years will lead to the exhibition, in University Halls, on either side Atlantic, of their beer-mugs and their photographs, by the side of battered and historic foot-balls, and base-balls, and tennis-rackets, and groups of winning teams, in all sorts of battered and historic attitudes?
An entire volume might be written upon the subject of Johnson's Oxford alone.
He liked greatly, after his undergraduate days, Kettell Hall, on Broad Street, now numbered 54, on the north side, an old stone building, ivy-covered, and gabled, entered by a door studded with iron nails. It was the one-time home of his friend Dr. Thomas Warton. There Johnson spent a month once, not writing his Dictionary, as the guide-books say, but studying in the libraries of the different colleges, certain authorities on etymology which were not accessible to him in London.
Johnson's favorite inn at Oxford, when he stopped at an inn, was The Angel, on the south side of High Street, the greater part of the site of which is occupied by the New Examination Schools. From there he wrote to Mrs. Thrale in 1777: "I have been searching the Library for my Lives [of the Poets] and little have I got." Well knows an humble searcher for Lives in Oxford, of the present time, how little is " got," some days, out of libraries!
There is a fragment of The Angel still remaining at No. 83 High Street.
Wood tells us that the first coffee-house in Oxford was opened in 1650 by " one Jacob, a Jew, at The Angel, in the Parish of St. Peter in the East; and it was, by some who delighted in novelty, drunk." The coffee was drunk, not the house! Lord Eldon tells of a meeting with Johnson in Oxford in 1773, when Lady Eldon, then Mrs. John Scott, poured out for the great lexicographer only fifteen cups of tea. He is known to have consumed, on more occasions than one, over twenty cups at a sitting; and we are told that once, in the Common Room of University College, he "drank off three bottles of port without being the worse of it." How much he was the worse of fifteen or twenty cups of tea is not stated.
According to that indefatigable and usually correct grubber into wholly forgotten facts, to whom all Johnson-lovers owe so much, Dr. Birkbeck Hill, Johnson left Pembroke as a student in 1729, and without a degree. But he frequently revisited it. And he loved it to the very, very last. In June, 1782, Hannah More wrote to her sister: "Who do you think is my principal guide in Oxford. Only Dr. Johnson! And we do so gallant about! You can imagine with what delight he showed me every part of his own College [Pembroke]. After dinner Johnson begged to conduct me to see the College; he would let no one show it me but himself. 'This was my room, this Shenstone's.' Then, after pointing out all the rooms of the poets who had been at this College, 'In short,' he said, 'we were a nest of singing birds!'"
It is an unfailing pleasure to "gallant" about Oxford, with any party, or absolutely alone; but with Johnson and Hannah More it must have been delightful indeed. Alas! no one knows now, positively, where Shenstone and the other singing birds nested. And there is no Johnson, or ghost of Johnson, to tell us.
Johnson's song-birds did not sing in concert; for William Shenstone, whose nest he pointed out so familiarly, did not go up to Pembroke until 1732, some time after Johnson had gone, voluntarily, down. Johnson says that Shenstone found "delight and advantage" at Pembroke, "for he continued his name in the books ten years," though he, also, took no degree.
He studied poetry with his friend Graves, and, in 1737, he published, in Oxford, but anonymously, a small volume of "Poems on Various Occasions; Written for the Entertainment of the Author; and Printed for the Amusement of a Few Friends Prejudiced in the Author's Favour." This book, in later years, he attempted to suppress.
Shenstone is represented at Pembroke as studious, but shy and retiring; as rather unpopular than otherwise; and as being regarded as somewhat of a coxcomb by those who were not among the friends prejudiced in his favor.
Richard Graves, Poet and Naturalist, now almost, if not quite, forgotten, had a varied experience at Pembroke. He went up in 1732, Shenstone's year. He began his college career with a very sober little party of collegians, who amused themselves in the evenings by reading Greek and drinking water. In this set he remained for six months, when he joined a band of jolly, sprightly young fellows, who drank ale, smoked tobacco, sang bacchanalian catches, and, worst of all, punned, the whole evening. Naturally he sank lower in the social scale, and finally consorted with men who treated him to arrack punch—and who did not even pun! Graves used to breakfast with Shenstone, who, he tells us, "wore his own hair." He and Whitfield received together, in 1736, their degrees of B. A.
George Whitfield, also entering in 1732, and a Servitor, had a hard time at college. The Master was harsh to him, and he underwent daily some contempt from the students, a few of whom threw dirt at him on the streets. And there was plenty of dirt in the streets ! Boswell reports Johnson as claiming to have been at Pembroke with Whitfield "before Whitfield began to be better than other people." But they were probably not in residence there together. And Johnson was hardly one of the throwers of dirt.
Whitfield does not seem to have belonged to the set of Shenstone and Graves. Very early in his college career he became attached to the Wesleys, and to their methods; he was conspicuous, even in the Oxford of those days, for the austerity of his asceticism, and for his enthusiasm and zeal in his labors for the care of the sick, the poor, and the imprisoned.
Blackstone was a contemporary of Shenstone and of his poetical friends at Pembroke, although a year or two their junior. Whether poetry was then his natural bent, or whether he was inspired by the poets about him to indulge himself in verse, is not to be determined now; but at Pembroke he lisped in soon-forgotten numbers, we are told, as a relaxation, and before he went to All Souls to lecture upon that law which is devoted to reason rather than to rhyme.