CORPUS CHRISTI
In 1516 Bishop Foxe, of Winchester, Keeper of the Privy Seal to Henry VII. and to Henry VIII., founded at Oxford a College which was dedicated "To the Honour of the Most Precious Body of our Lord Jesus Christ [hence its name, 'Corpus Christi '], of His Most Spotless Mother, and of all the Saints- Patrons of the Cathedral Churches of Winchester, Durham, Bath, Wells and Exeter."
It was the earliest institution in Oxford to make any provision for the cultivation of Greek and Latin; and the main idea of the Founder was to leave a place wherein "as in a hive, scholars, like clever bees might, night and day, make wax and sweet honey, to the honour of God and the advantage of themselves and all Christian men." The bees were kept busy, and each shining hour was improved, in the early days of the hive. The students were permitted to play ball in the garden, now and then, but when they went out for a walk they were to go three together. "Nor had they long vacations" we read; "Scholars were only to be away twenty days in the whole year; Fellows for forty days; unless they went abroad to improve their scholarship." The students had to pass a severe examination: "to write off a Latin letter; to compose fair verses; to be initiated into Logic, and to have some training in plain song." Mr. Wells, as an example of all this, cites the case of the famous Jewel, who began to study at four A.M., who went to bed at ten P.M., who spent whole days in the Library; who took no recreation but walking, and even then, if he did not meditate, or instruct the two boys who were his companions, "he argued in Aristotelian fashion." That he soon collapsed, physically and mentally, overladen with the weight of the honey of information he had sipped not only from the Tree of Knowledge and from the Flower of Learning, but from Greek Roots, is not surprising.
There is a medium to draw, in college life, between the unusual Jewel Boy and the Boy of the regulation Diamond, between too much argument in Aristotelian fashion, and too hard tackling in the football way!
Nicholas Udall, Dramatist and Scholar, went to Corpus in 1520, when he was but fifteen years of age. He received his degree of B. A. four years later, when he became a Probationary Fellow. He was one of the earliest adherents of the Protestant movement among the Oxford tutors, and it is supposed to be on this account that he waited some ten years before he became a Master of Arts. He distinguished himself, at the University, as the author of certain clever Latin verses; but his "Ralph Roister Doister," the earliest known original comedy in the English language, was not written until he was Head Master of Eton, between the years 1534 and 1541.
Good Isaac Walton, in his "Lives," tells the story of Richard Hooker's troubles and trials at Corpus. In 1568 the boy Hooker, in the fifteenth year of his age, went up to receive a "clerk's place in the gift of the President of Corpus." He depended upon many gifts during his life of seventeen years at Corpus. When he was about twenty he was elected to a Scholarship, and later he passed to a Fellowship, gaining knowledge day by day; until, in 1581, he received the doubtful gift of a wife not doubtful because she was a wife, but doubtful because she was that particular kind of a wife; and he went" from that garden of purity, of pleasure, of peace and of sweet conversation, into the thorny wilderness of a busy world, into those corroding cares that attend the married priest and a country parsonage."
If you Clerks, and Scholars, and Fellows, wish to learn what befel Hooker, read Walton's "Life of Hooker." But remember that there are wives and wives,—and that wives like Hooker's wife are in the great minority.
Anthony Wood called her a "clownish, silly woman, and withal a mere Xanthippe." Walton said that she was "ill-tempered, neither rich nor beautiful," and he believed that she would never have become Mrs. Hooker if the usually judicious gentleman "had not been near-sighted and bashful," which latter characteristic would imply that Hooker was wooed, and won, in Leap-Year—Old Style! The marriage, according to all accounts, was not a very happy one. Nevertheless Hooker, in his last will and testament, made his "well beloved" wife "his sole executrix and residuary legatee"; and in the same document he paid a passing compliment to his father-in-law!
In the College-books the Judicious Hooker was very variously spelled: hooker, huker, hoocker; always without the capital H. It does not seem to have been dropped, that H, in its pronunciation; but in type and in manuscript it was let down to what proof-readers and type-setters in our day call, technically, a lower font or case.
There is a tradition, accepted at first as truth by the present chronicler, that Hooker's were the rooms designated as "No. Two Pair Right, in the Library Staircase, in the Front Quadrangle"; but the Rev. Thomas Fowler, D.D., LL.D., F.S.A., the President of Corpus, in 1899, is satisfied that the Hooker who occupied those particular premises was one Peter Hooker, not Richard. And thus in Oxford, as elsewhere, the more one finds out, the less one seems to know. Any baldness visible in the present writer is owing to the involuntary hair-tearing caused by the discovery that his discoveries were apparently no discoveries at all!
Where Hooker's rooms really were, was known conclusively half a century ago, it is believed. But they seem to have gone up their own chimney, wherever that was.
Edward Young was at this College for a short season, between his life at New and his appointment to a Fellowship at All Souls, in 1708; but he has left no enduring Landmark within the gates of Corpus.
The British and American Boys of a good many years ago, who were brought up on "Sandford and Merton," and on porridge and milk, will, naturally, be more interested to hear about the peculiarities of Thomas Day than will be those boys, of a younger growth, who never went out to be bored to death by the didactic Mr. Barlow.
The creator of Tommy Merton, of Harry Sandford, and of Mr. Barlow, was sent from the Charter House School to Corpus in 1763, where he began to distinguish himself, at once, by a sort of harmless eccentricity of character and deportment. He was peculiarly kind and devoted to animals— which is not particularly a sign of eccentricity—but he gave almost all of his spending money to the poor—which is, perhaps, eccentricity carried to an extreme! He drank nothing but water; he lived sparingly; he boxed with everybody who came along; he studied philosophy; and he left college at the end of three years, without a degree, to begin, in rather an unusual way, the active practice of the philosophy he had studied. He believed that the natural woman was not the proper mate for a philosopher of his kind; and he set himself out to make a wife for himself, selecting from an orphan asylum a young girl of twelve for the experiment. The experiment was not a success! He began her education, physical, mental, and moral, upon purely philosophical principles. But she screamed, and she persisted in screaming, when, in order to quiet her nerves, he fired pistols at her legs, and dropped boiling sealing-wax down her neck; which proved that she lacked the qualities of a Stoic. She betrayed the secrets which were told to her in order that her reticence might be tested; which showed that she was not to be trusted. And, worst of all, she cared naught for science or literature. So he married her to some other man, who was not so philosophically particular, and he took to himself a wife who was philosopher enough to walk, bare-footed, in the snow of a morning, in order to cure herself of a cold in her head, which she had contracted the night before. It is pleasant to read, in Day's Biography, that the young woman of the orphan asylum respected Mr. Day, although she could not love him; and that Mrs. Day came up to all his ideals, and made him a very happy man. After he died suddenly, kicked by a horse, Mrs. Day, we are told, "took to her bed, closed her bed-curtains, and never again allowed the light of the sun to visit her. She remained two years thus," it is added, "and was then reunited, in the grave, to him whom she had so tenderly loved!"
One short extract, taken, at absolute random, from "The History of Sandford and Merton," will show how philosophical is the work upon which Mr. Day's literary fame now rests, and how seriously Mr. Day treated the amusements of boyhood: "Thus," he says, in passing, " Thus had Tommy a new employment and diversion for the winter nights—the learning of arithmetic. Almost every night did Mr. Barlow [that dreaded Mr. Barlow] and Harry and he [Tommy] amuse themselves with little questions that related to numbers, by which means Tommy [poor Tommy] became, in a short time, so expert that he could add, subtract, multiply, or divide, almost any given sum with little trouble and great exactness."
That was the sort of diversion and amusement enjoyed by Tommy on winter evenings. His amusements and diversions, by daylight and by candle-light, at other seasons of the year, were all of the same cheerful and diverting character. If you want to know what happened to Tommy, read—or re-read—the book. You have been told here what became of Mr. Day.
Mr. Day himself, take him for all-in-all, is perhaps the most diverting Landmark in English Literature!
It is rather startling, in view of the comparative maturity of the modern college "man," to read of Thomas Keble as entering Corpus when he was fourteen years and five months old; of his brother John as entering when he was two months older; and of Thomas Arnold as having reached the great age of fifteen and two-thirds when he was matriculated. The late Mr. Justice Coleridge's contribution of the account of the life and doings of these "men" at Oxford, in the early years of the last century, makes pleasant, soothing reading. Corpus was small in its numbers, and humble in its buildings, he tells us; and the mode of tuition was in harmony with those circumstances. They were not entirely set free from the leading strings of school; accuracy was cared for; they were accustomed to spoken questioning and answering in the classrooms; they lived on the most familiar terms with each other; boys in age and action, but by no means boys in their interests in literature, ancient and modern, and in contemporary matters of all kinds. They debated classic and romantic questions; they discussed poetry and history, logic and philosophy; they fought over the current battles of the Peninsular and Continental campaigns with maps before them; and their habits were inexpensive and temperate. This may appear to some persons as being out of all keeping with the regular college course; but to certain old fashioned minds it seems to be what college "men" go to college for!
Mr. Coleridge does refer to one "break-up-party " at the end of each term, in which they " indulged their genius more freely, and when their merriment was, to say the truth, somewhat exuberant and noisy." But, he adds, "the authorities wisely forebore too strict an inquiry into this." The most serious of parents and guardians, to this day, will hardly care to make too close an inquiry into little things like these; or to condemn altogether the strictly effervescing-water-black-coffee-Egyptian-cigarette-"Lit."-dinners which give their Jacks a chance to play a little now and then, and do not make them dull boys by means of too much study and too much work.
Keble's rooms are said to have been, and perhaps they were, "at the top of No. Five Staircase in the right-hand corner of the Quadrangle," formerly, according to exploded tradition, occupied by Hooker.
John Keble won his scholarship to Corpus in 1806, and a Double First in 1811, upon the strength of which latter he became a Fellow of Oriel in the same year, and was thereafter more intimately associated with the latter institution of learning.
In 1831, four years after the publication of "The Christian Year, Thoughts in Verse, for Sundays and Holidays," he became Professor of Poetry in the University.
Thomas Arnold, than whom there never lived a professional teacher more universally loved and more universally respected by the men he taught, was a fellow-student of Keble at Corpus, and a fellow-Fellow at Oriel. In 1811 he was elected a Scholar of Corpus. "Retired he was in his habits," says Mr. Justice Coleridge in a letter to Stanley, "and not forward to interfere with the pursuits and studies of the younger men; but I am bound to record not only his learning and good taste, but the kindness of his heart and his readiness to assist them by advice and by criticism of their compositions. . . . He was a mere boy, in appearance, as well as in age; but in a very short time we discovered that he was quite equal to take part in the arguments of the Common Room. He was fond of conversation on serious matters, and vehement in argument; fearless, too, in advancing his opinions—which, to say the truth, often startled us a good deal. . . . Arnold's bodily recreations were walking and boating. It was a particular delight to him, with two or three companions, to make what he called a 'skirmish' across the country. On these occasions we deserted the road, crossed fences and leaped ditches or fell into them. He enjoyed the country 'round Oxford, and while out in this way his spirits would rise, and his mirth overflowed. Though delicate in appearance, and not given to promise of great muscular strength, his form was light, and he was capable of going long distances and of bearing much fatigue."
There is no record of his abiding-place at Corpus. G. V. Cox, also, has most pleasant recollections, of Thomas Arnold at Corpus. And he speaks most enthusiastically of him as Professor of Modern History in 1841. The audience at his Inaugural Lecture, too numerous to be contained in the usual Lecture-room in the Clarendon, adjourned to the Sheldonian Theatre, a very unusual move in those days. And there, we are told, he held his hearers spellbound by his earnest manner and interesting matter. The younger men heard him with delight—their attendance was not compulsory—and the elder men submitted readily to learn history anew under the teaching of this talented master. Unhappily his talks were few; for he died the next year.
That was Thomas Arnold as a College Undergraduate and as a College Don. What was Thomas Arnold as the Head of a great English Public School, Mr. Thomas Hughes has told us in an almost immortal book.
During the Long Vacation "Tom Brown," then an undergraduate at Oxford, went a' fishing in pleasant waters, with certain college friends, when an old newspaper brought to the party the news of Arnold's death. "Tom" was in the stream, it will be remembered, when the item was shouted out at him:— "His hand stopped half way in his cast, and his lines and flies went all tangling round and round his rod. You might have knocked him over with a feather. . . . He felt completely carried off his mental and intellectual legs; as if he had lost his standing-point in the invisible world. Besides which, the deep, loving loyalty which he felt for his old leader made the shock intensely painful. . . . 'Thank you,' he said at last, dropping the paper, ' I shall go for a walk.' And away he strode, up the moor, at the back of the house, to be alone, and to master his grief, if possible."
He went to Rugby at once, did that overgrown Rugby school-boy. He was too late for the funeral and he knew that; but he wanted to stand over "all that was left of him he loved and honored, lying still and cold under the Chapel floor."
"If he could only have seen the Doctor again for one five minutes," he thought; "have told him all that was within his heart, what he owed to him, how he loved and reverenced him; and that he would, by God's help, follow his steps, in life and death, he could have borne it all without a murmur." And then he though: "But I am not sure that he does not know it all. May he not now be near me, in this very Chapel? If he be, am I sorrowing as he would have me sorrow—as I shall wish to have sorrowed when I shall meet him again?"
There are some of us who believe that the Good Teacher was near. And that he did hear, and that the Teacher and the Pupil did understand and explain it all—when they met again—many years later, as we count time.
It was not the imaginary "Tom Brown" who thought those thoughts; it was the real Tom Hughes. And the Teacher who taught that Boy of Rugby to think those thoughts, if he did nothing else in the world of thinking, certainly did not live and teach in vain.
Ruskin, after taking his degree at Christ Church, went frequently back to Oxford in the later days of his strength; and Professor Max Miiller reported him as being most charming and gentle in conversation, saying all his bitter things through the medium of pen and ink. In society he was tolerant and agreeable, as diffident as a young girl, full of questions, grateful for any information, and even in art topics listening almost deferentially to others who laid down their ideas of the law in his presence. This is a new view of Ruskin; and it does not sound like the Ruskin whom we have read and whom we never have heard talk.
Professor Max Muller added: "I remember once taking Emerson to lunch with him [Ruskin], in his rooms at Corpus College. Emerson was an old friend of his, and in many respects a cognate soul. But some indifferent subject turned up, and a heated discussion ensued; and Ruskin was so upset that he had to quit the room and leave us alone. Emerson was most unhappy, and did all he could to make peace, but he had to leave without a reconciliation."
This does not sound like the Ruskin who was tolerant and agreeable in conversation, who simply wrote, and did not say, his bitter things. It is almost impossible to fancy any man, diffident as a young girl, or bumptious as a freshman, who would quarrel with Emerson on any subject and refuse to be reconciled.
Ruskin's rooms at Corpus, occupied by the Dean in the summer of 1899, were "No. Two Fellow's Building. One Pair, Left." They are opposite the rooms of the Bursar. And they have a quiet, restful tone to them, with an outlook on to green fields. Curiously enough there were at least two men in the College who knew where they were! Ruskin was Slade Professor of Arts from 1869 to 1879; and again from 1883 to 1885.
In a printed letter Dean Liddell thus described Ruskin when he became Slade Professor: "He is a very strange fellow, always dressing in a great-coat with a brown velvet collar, and a large neck-cloth tied over his mouth, and living quite in his own way among the old set of hunting and sporting men that Gentlemen Commoners usually are. ... I am glad to say they do not bully him, as I should have been afraid they would."
Ruskin's influence over the undergraduates must have been extraordinary, if, as Max Miiller said, he could persuade the men to take up spade and wheelbarrow and help him make a road which he thought would prove useful to a hamlet near to the town. A Lecturer to-day who would play so active and marked a part in the Society for Village Improvement as to influence his students to water the grass in a neighboring village might well afford to shake his fist, even at Emerson!