Social Transformations of the Victorian Age: A Survey of Court and Country

CHAPTER XIV
THE NEW OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE

Changes in the social life of Oxford and Cambridge visible on the surface since 1860. Social differences between Oxford and Cambridge as places of residence. General results of the unattached student system established in 1868. The idea of the University as distinct from the colleges, socially prominent in earlier days, has acquired new prominence since. The admission of non-collegiate students. Vicissitudes in the popularity of the Union as a social club and as a debating society. Its earlier distinction repeated in later years. The unattached students’ scheme in its practical details and working. Academic successes of students, especially in Theology. The Extension Lectures scheme, personal details and general results.

Under the new and quickening influences imported into the second half of the present century, the changes in the conditions of social life are more visible at the two great Universities than at the public schools. The public school boy has been seen hastening to the railway station that he may catch the train which is to convey him from the place of industry, not to the old holiday fields, but to a fresh seat of studious exertion. In like manner, a fair proportion of Oxford and Cambridge graduates now pass the greater portion of their lives in hurrying to catch trains from their academic termini to scenes of provincial activity. The commercial traveller of the old order as Dickens described him was not more incessantly on the road than the Oxford or Cambridge Extension lecturer. He, like the movement he represents, is the product of the age that has given us Bradshaw. Oxford and Cambridge have in fact been brought to the doors of those who cannot themselves go to Cambridge or Oxford. Nor is the new element, among those who have taken their degree, the only change that has been witnessed in the personnel of the place. Enough has been written about the domestic revolution which has transformed what till the later sixties, had continued a cloister into a flourishing provincial centre of family life; about the nursemaids with perambulators in the parks, the children trundling their hoops along Addison’s Walk, or playing ball under the statelier avenue which fringes the Christ Church meadows. In reality this feature in the social polity of Oxford, however interesting or striking, has never marked so visible a contrast to the preceding epoch as it may have done at Cambridge. The capital on the Isis has always been a considerable county town. From a time to the contrary of which memory does not run, Oxford has had extra-academical attractions of its own for persons without any interest in its studies. It has always been a hunting, steeplechasing, and generally a sporting centre. Its neighbourhood is probably more picturesque than that of its sister on the Cam. Like other midland counties, its environments have never been without more manor houses and country gentlemen’s residences than is the case with the academic section of East Anglia. As far back, therefore, as the later fifties certainly, and it may be much further, social Oxford possessed an existence not less distinct from, or independent of, academic Oxford, than Windsor, Harrow on the Hill, Rugby, Cheltenham, or Marlborough possess a social machinery of their own apart from the schools which are a feature in their respective neighbourhoods.

What will really strike the eye of one revisiting Oxford after a long interval is less the signs of the latest developments of domestic life than the appearance of greater youthfulness in the undergraduates. Where this juvenility is real, and not the illusion of the spectator’s own advancing years, it is largely to be explained by the order of students new since 1868. Not without much opposition or till after long resistance, the Oxford statutes in that year relaxed the most exclusive condition written on their page by the disciplinarian severity of Archbishop Laud. A return to the mediæval usage was sanctioned. Once more it became possible, after a lapse of three centuries, for young men to go to the University without going to college. The Vice-Chancellor matriculated students furnished with credentials of respectability, and with enough of learning to satisfy the masters of the schools. Provided, in other words, they had a fair prospect of passing Responsions, which do not constitute one of the public examinations, but mark the survival of the old entrance ordeal prescribed in the days when the University was everything and the Colleges comparatively nothing. If he were not legally of age, the formal consent to his life in lodgings of his parents or guardians was further required from the non-ascript undergraduate, as well as a general testimonial to the probability of his deriving educational benefit from his new opportunities. Littlego might be excused by the delegates in the case of students not intending to proceed to their degree, but only to study systematically some special subject. In the place, however, of the ‘Smalls’ testamur, or its equivalent, the special student was tested closely as to his aptitudes for the subject of study he professed.

The total yearly cost, all entrance fees included, of the non-collegiate youth would average between £50 and £60, instead of thrice that sum, not perhaps an exaggerated estimate, for his collegiate brother. £10 covers handsomely all the initial outlay. The period of residence required for the degree is twelve terms. These must be kept in what is called ‘full term’ which is rather later than the almanac term, and also in a duly licensed lodging house. In exceptional cases these conditions may be dispensed with. In no case will the undergraduate who has no porter’s lodge to pass before he ‘knocks in’ at night find more liberty than the intramural student. His landlord or landlady in the town may perhaps promise not to communicate some irregularity to the authorities. But so surely as the unattached commits the smallest breach of academic discipline, sooner or later it will reach the official ear; he will find himself a marked man.

Men who are now middle aged, or even elderly, looking back to their college days will recollect that there prevailed an invisible system of surveillance, and even espionage, much more close and real than it was at all pleasant in the days of one’s youth to admit. That supervision has now become more subtle, ubiquitous and unavoidable, till at last the unattached freshman realizes that wherever he may be, he lives and moves in a whispering gallery, as much as if he were a famous figure, in the heart of London society and of the London season.

The practical success of this innovation was immediate. It has been tolerably complete. Within thirty years of its introduction, that is on the 1st of January 1896, the University books showed the existence of 480 graduate or undergraduate non-collegiates. Of these 245 were at the date mentioned in statu pupillari. The authorities to which these students are immediately subject are the Vice-Chancellor, the two Proctors, a Censor who stands in the relation of College tutor to the whole body; two other tutors associated with him who give advice on all subjects, and seven delegates, being members of Convocation. The Censor is the head of the whole unattached system; to him intending students should apply for all practical information. The teaching available for the University alumni now mentioned is at least as effective and wide as any of the colleges can offer.

At the instance of Mr Jowett, a great friend of the scheme, other colleges than Balliol soon opened their lecture rooms to non-collegiate guests. The Honour tutors especially allocated to the unattached, include distinguished Fellows of Balliol, Christ Church, Lincoln, Magdalen, University College, Wadham and Worcester, as well as famous theologians from Keble, or a non-collegiate M.A. not less accomplished than the present Professor of Modern History, Mr York Powell of Christ Church. The extent to which the young men thus provided for have profited by their opportunities, may be judged from the following epitome of examinational statistics. Two first classes in Classical Moderations, 2 also in Mathematical; 13 seconds in Classical Moderations; 39 third classes in the same examination; 7 Mathematical thirds in Moderations; these represent the distinctions gained in the older Honour Schools by the students who as an institution have not yet completed their third decade. Although thus far they do not seem to have done very brilliantly in the Philosophy and History Schools, they have won a first class in Jurisprudence, 2 in Modern History, 12 in Theology, 3 in Natural Science, one in Oriental Studies, as well as some dozen places in these studies below the coveted level of classis prima. The Bachelor of Civil Law examination is known to be one of the hardest on the Isis. In this the unattached may be credited with one first class, one second, as well as one third and one fourth. During the period now spoken of, several University prizes have been carried off by the new comers. Thus a non-collegiate candidate has won the Denyer and Johnson scholarship in Theology four times, the Pusey and Ellerton scholarship (Hebrew) the same number, as also the Senior and Junior Kennicott (also Hebrew). The Davis scholarship in Chinese was for the fifth time won a few years ago by an unattached, and for the second time the Taylorian scholarship in Modern Languages. Among older and better known distinctions open to all comers, the Arnold Historical essay has been won by an unattached; the Chancellor’s English essay, and the Ellerton essay have been won twice. While it will thus be seen that the new students have acquitted themselves specially well in Theology, they have in twenty-four cases gained open scholarships, and in three cases open Fellowships. The Bowden Sanskrit, the Burdett-Coutts scholarships also figure among their list of honours. In the Pass schools 310, a proportion of 72 per cent., have satisfied the examiners. As an instance of their being on their entrance up to the scholastic level of the average public school boy, 30 or 40 unattached have elected to pass Responsions before matriculation and have done so without any difficulty.

The general conduct of the new undergraduates, who, some prophets had predicted, would demoralize the University by their rowdy example, has been with scarcely an exception, exemplary. Only one disciplinary case, to employ the euphemism of the last official report, seems to have occurred. With the enterprising alacrity which to their own credit, to the good of their colleges, to the benefit of the whole University, the representatives of the different societies on the Isis display in attracting special talent to the foundations in which they are respectively interested, some absorption of the unattached into the colleges was inevitable. It has, however, been less than one might have expected. The average of these migrations does not vary much, and seems to proceed at the rate of between 20 and 25 per year. Nor, apparently, does there exist any dissatisfaction among the non-collegiates with their own position in the City of Colleges. Thus when they migrate to a college, the attraction is generally found to be the exceptional facilities for instruction in a special study, e. g. Natural Science or History, afforded by the foundation in question. As, by implication, has been already stated, Mr J. A. Froude’s successor in the Chair of Modern History was, throughout the greater portion of his career, a non-collegiate. Together with the present Recorder of Londonderry, Professor York Powell was one of the first batch of unattached students in 1868. Superior conveniences for the studies respectively to their taste, rather than economy, were the motives which sent the future Professor and the future Irish lawyer, Mr T. G. Overend, to the University and not to college. Mr Powell took his degree as a member of Christ Church; Judge Overend was unattached to the last. Both obtained high Honours in the Schools. The after success of each began directly they left the University. Having been called to the Irish Bar in 1874, Mr Overend was in 1885 the leader of his circuit as well as a Queen’s Counsel. His health alone caused him to give up his practice and take a County Court judgeship.

Thus far the unattached graduates in residence never at any given time seem to have exceeded 50. Their rivalry with the colleges is, therefore, in point of numbers not very formidable. Nor do they seem appreciably to have affected the social or intellectual life of the place. Like the great public schools the two Universities are to the present generation what they were to its predecessors. Athletic accomplishments have declined as little as general scholarship. The pastimes, however, are conducted far more economically than was once the case. Instances of young men being hampered during their professional struggles by the evil legacy of University debts have decreased so steadily as to justify the hope of their ultimate and entire disappearance. Thus the Oxford undergraduate as Leech used to depict him, or as Thackeray in Pendennis drew the typical pupil of both Universities; throwing away his father’s money at the end of the term in London in exaggerated tips to hotel waiters and cabmen, is to-day as much of an anachronism as the Etonian in his teens who has not learnt that if care is taken of the shillings, the pounds will take care of themselves. In one particular, though perhaps accidentally, the non-collegiate undergraduate as an institution has coincided an interesting modification of the social conditions of Oxford life. Early in the present century, the conception of an academic as distinct from and independent of a collegiate polity was more present to the undergraduate of that epoch than it was to his successors half a century or so later. This fact is one among the explanations of the popularity of the University Union Debating Club during the student days of Mr Gladstone as well as of the comparative disfavour into which it had fallen during the student days of, for example, Lord Randolph Churchill. There appear, however, periodically to take place reactions in favour of the nursery ground of future orators. Mr Asquith, already of Cabinet rank, to whom probabilities, as well as Lord Rosebery’s words, point as a coming leader of the House of Commons, belonged to a slightly older generation than Churchill. Before he took his degree in 1863, he had established the same sort of reputation for himself in the Union as had been won two or three generations earlier by Mr Gladstone, and as seventeen years afterwards was to be won in the same arena by Mr G. N. Curzon, in 1897 Foreign Under Secretary.

During the later sixties, there came into existence, as further developments of what was practically a collegiate example, social clubs for undergraduates. These, in effect, though not in theory, were generally recruited from a few colleges. Such societies have doubtless not lost their earlier popularity. They have witnessed a fresh access of favour to the University Union Club. They have perhaps helped themselves to contribute to it by causing the Union, in the supply of creature comforts, to compete with the collegiate lounges. A room for the reading of novels had been regarded as a dangerous innovation at the Union before 1865. It was not till after that year that a smoking room was sanctioned, or the refreshments of tea or coffee supplied. That in the future as in the past the chief work of the Universities will be done through the agency of the colleges is no doubt not less true than that at Eton, like Harrow, the tutorial system will co-exist with the most liberal and sweeping innovations which may be introduced. The colleges depend for their success on the same conditions as the non-collegiate delegacies. In prosperous seasons when trade is good and money plenty, there will be few vacant rooms either inside the college walls or outside in the licensed lodging houses. When times are bad, the list diminishes. Thus in the October term of 1896, 621 freshmen entered the colleges as compared with 734 in the preceding twelvemonths; Christ Church had only increased by 11; Worcester doubled its numbers; at the same time Magdalen, always a popular college with the public, had fallen from 53 to 40, Balliol from 49 to 36, Lincoln from 24 to 17. As for the non-collegiates, there was not only no increase but an actual diminution; the figures here were less by 11 than in the preceding twelvemonth.

The great contrast which in comparing it with its normal condition two or three decades ago would be noticed by the Oxonian who revisits Oxford to-day is the change from an habitually stationary to a visibly locomotive population on the part of those who formerly seldom left their college rooms. Down the chief streets of the towns on the Isis and the Cam respectively, even at the very height of term time, there is a constant succession of cabs conveying young men in the prime of life to the railway termini. These are the fellows and tutors of the different colleges whose predecessors seldom or never used to leave their University during term, save when college business took them for a few hours to their lawyers in Lincoln’s Inn, or to the college estate bailiffs and stewards in the country. Such are not the missions that explain this increase of railway bound traffic when as yet no vacation is in sight. Those now spoken of as hurrying off to some provincial spot are well known in their University and a few hours hence will be warmly welcomed at their provincial destinations as Extension Lecturers on subjects of popular interest. What has happened is this. Certain enlightened inhabitants of both sexes in some district of manufacturing Lancashire or in agricultural Devon have been struck with the state of ignorance in which their school course has left many young men and women. At the same time they have noticed indications of a wish with those of maturer years to make up for early neglect by later application to branches of study of all kinds. Books alone have failed to supply the want. Intelligent and profitable reading is a scientific habit properly to be acquired only by those who have been drilled into it and who have already some general acquaintance with the topics treated in the written page.

The County Council, as we have repeatedly seen, discharges already some of the functions and dispenses some of the funds of an Educational Department. Very possibly private munificence accompanies if it does not prompt this corporate enterprise. The next step is to communicate with the University Extension Lecture agency at whichever University, Oxford, Cambridge, London, or Victoria, according to the preference displayed. After the expenses have been guaranteed, the lecturer appears. To enable his hearers intelligently to grasp his plan of discourse, the discourse itself is prefaced by the distributions of a synopsis, which is in its way a work of literary art, whose readers, without any other help than its perusal may gather something more than a mere foretaste of the ground to be covered, or of the instruction to be conveyed. Such a syllabus as that of the Oxford lectures by Mr Shaw or Mr Marriott on different periods of English or French history, like the Reformation of 1529, the Revolution of 1689, or the age of Louis XIV. at once assists the working men for whom they were planned, and serves as a model for the taking of notes. Each lecture of every course of twelve is followed by a class during which the lecturer is in the Scotch term heckled by his audience. Essays are set, looked over, and returned to the writers with marginal corrections. At the end of each course an examination of both sexes is held, and certificates of merit are granted. The sons and daughters of the local gentry, day labourers in factory, field, office, or shop figure in nearly equal numbers among the students, the women being slightly the more numerous, and acquit themselves equally well in the examinations.

The system has only attained to its present completeness within the last few years. The idea of it had occurred to Oxford reformers so far back as 1850 when residents and non-residents alike were asking how the educational machinery on the Isis or the Cam could be made more available for all classes of their fellow subjects. The Oxford Hebdomadal Board was addressed on the subject, the names of Lord Ashley, Mr Gladstone, Lord Sandon being among the signatories.

The great Dr Pusey, whose mind was as truly liberal as his Churchmanship was high, had been struck recently by the number of great Anglican divines who were the sons of small tradesmen. It was for Oxford to revive the example of the ancient monks of Durham, and to devise means for bringing the University within the reach of the poorest in the land. Another member of Christ Church whose pointed features, dark complexion, saturnine habit and rare scholarship will be recalled by many readers of these lines, Mr Osborne Gordon, joined with Professor Hussey in impressing by almost daily protests this popular duty on his too exclusive Alma Mater. At this time religious tests existed in all their historic severity. There was no matriculation without signing the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Common Prayer Book, and no degree till after a like process with reference to the Three Articles of the Thirty-Sixth Canon.

These facts account for the then dominant Liberalism of educated opinion inside and outside the University. Had tests ceased to exist when they were abolished in Ireland, as both Canning and Sir Robert Peel at one time or another had suggested, it is scarcely speculation to say that the demand which in 1868 brought about the unattached system and, after another decade or so, the Extension Lecture system, might not have organized itself with such drastic results. The non-collegiates might have come into existence while as yet the Great Western Railway approached the Cherwell no nearer than Didcot. The Extension Lecture machinery was not less dependent upon the propulsive power of steam than the iron engine of Stephenson itself. To-day Bradshaw’s Guide is as indispensable a part of the lecturer’s equipment as his manuscript notes. Here, as at other points in our secondary education, more organization and more endowments are required. There should be more inducements to young and competent graduates who have the knack of imparting their own knowledge to large or small classes to take up this work as a career, not as an occasional auxiliary to other occupations. The Extension centres also need to be supplemented more largely with local colleges such as that for which Reading is indebted to Oxford and Exeter to Cambridge.