WORCESTER
Worcester College was founded toward the end of the Thirteenth Century, as Gloucester Hall. In the middle of the Sixteenth Century it was called St. John Baptist Hall. And when, an hundred and fifty years later, a Worcestershire man left in his will the sum of ten thousand pounds "for the erection of an ornamental pile of buildings in Oxford, for a College," it again changed its name and its form, and became Worcester, as the world now sees and knows it.
The rules of Worcester, in its early days, were unusually strict. Each Tutor lived in an angle of the Quadrangle, and it was his particular business to keep the men from going to each other's rooms during the working-hours, which were many and long. Chapel, according to time of year, was attended at six thirty, or seven thirty, in the morning; dinner at twelve noon; supper was at seven o'clock instead of the usual six. The Gate was shut at nine; and at ten the key was taken to the Principal's room, after which no one was permitted to leave or to enter. The Tutors received all parental remittances and allowances; they paid all bills; and they handed the balance, if any, to the student for whom the whole was intended. And the undergraduate who contracted a debt amounting to over ten shillings "with any person keeping a cook-shop or a coffee-house, or any public-house whatsoever" was summarily expelled.
The uniform of the students, by a decree of 1744, consisted of "open-sleeved, purple gowns, square caps, black silk and white silver tuffs, equally mixt."
Scott made a Literary Landmark of Amy Robsart. Her ill-used body was brought secretly from Cumnor, where she met her unhappy fate, to Worcester College, and was placed, according to Dugdale, " in the Great Chamber, where the mourners did dine and that where the gentlewomen did dine, and beneath the stairs a great hall, being all hung with black cloth and garnished with scutcheons."
She was buried under the floor of the Choir of the Church of St. Mary the Virgin; but her grave was unmarked until 1874. Her cruel and ambitious husband created no memorial whatever to her memory.
Prominent in the annals of Gloucester Hall is the name of Thomas Allen. He was a Scholar at Trinity in 1561, and a Fellow in 1565. But about 1570 he migrated to Gloucester, where he soon made himself felt as a power. Mathematics, Antiquities, and Philosophy were his strong points. He was skilled also as an Astrologer; and by many of his fellow-beings he was looked upon as a Magician, his own scout declaring that ghosts went up and down his staircase, like swarms of bees, at all hours of the night. Aubrey says that in his later life, during the Long Vacations, he was wont to ride from Oxford into the country round about, to pay visits to his acquaintances. On one of these occasions the servant-maid, going to make his bed, and hearing a thing in a case cry "Tick-tick-tick," concluded, naturally, that the thing must contain Allen's Devil; whereupon, in order to drown the Imp, she picked up its abode with a pair of tongs and threw the whole combination out of the casement into the mote. The object caught on a bush, however, and would not be submerged, which was proof enough that the Devil was in it. "And so," continues Aubrey, "the good old gentleman got his watch again!"
Allen was an enthusiastic collector of autographs and manuscripts, which are supposed to have gone into possession of his favorite pupil Kenelm Digby, and to have been used by that writer in the preparation of his various works.
Allen gave up his own ghost in Gloucester Hall, and was buried with great pomp in what is now known as the Chapel of Trinity.
Kenelm Digby entered Gloucester Hall as a Gentleman Commoner in 1618, and he was committed to the particular care of Allen; but in 1620 he left Oxford without a degree. He was looked upon in his time as "The Magazine of All the Arts, and the Ornament of his Nation." Aubrey tells us that he was not only master of a good graceful style, but, what was better and more uncommon, "he also wrote an admirable hand, both fast and Roman."
Richard Lovelace was matriculated at Gloucester Hall in 1634, when he was accounted the most amiable and beautiful person that eye had ever beheld; of much modesty, virtue, and courtly deportment, which made him the admiration and adoration of the female sex. He wrote many verses in his undergraduate days, and "The Scholar," a comedy of his, was acted in Gloucester Hall in 1636, and with great applause. When he had been but two years at college he was unusually distinguished by the receipt of the degree of Master of Arts, on account of his inestimable charm of person and manner; which seems, in the light of modern times, to be hardly a sufficient reason for the premature honor. No wonder, as Aubrey says, "Lovelace was not only an exceedingly handsome man but proud!"
There are men still living in Oxford to whom De Quincey's old servant at Worcester has pointed out the rooms of his famous master, on No. Ten Staircase.
De Quincey entered the college about 1803, on an allowance of one hundred pounds a year. Very little is known of his life there.
Dr. Cotton, the head of the College, remembered him as a quiet and studious man, who did not frequent wine-parties, although he was not an abstainer. He was remarkable, even in those days, for his rare conversational powers and for his extraordinary stock of information upon all sorts of subjects. He did not make many friends, but he read a great deal; and he was looked upon, generally, as a very uncommon person. He had tasted the destructive drug in London, but it was in Oxford that he became addicted to its use, although not yet its slave. He passed a very brilliant written examination for his degree of B. A., but he never appeared for it in person; and he left Oxford without it. His name was taken off the College books in 1810 and he went to London to find solace in Charles Lamb, in the opera, and in opium.
When De Quincey was at Oxford, says James Hogg, Worcester was in bad repute. There were no very good tutors, and the young men there were greatly low in point of attainment, and very free and irregular in their habits, owing to the lax discipline which prevailed. De Quincey had great contempt for the general acquirements of the Examiners, for the sort of examinations to be gone through, and especially for the trickery of the Examiners in their trying the students in some particular passages and points in which they, the students, could easily make themselves perfectly at home. So, at the end of the first day of the examinations, although he felt satisfied that he would pass, he walked quietly out of the town never to return to it, according to Hogg, except for one short stay of half an hour. This was nearly a century ago; and things at Oxford in that line have greatly changed, it is hoped, for the better.
No man, Graduate, Undergraduate, or Visitor, who leaves Oxford, voluntarily or involuntarily, in these days, ever feels that he does not want to go back to it, in the spirit, if not in the flesh.
No one knows whether Henry Kingsley was precocious or dull at Oxford. Nobody seems to know anything about Henry Kingsley, at Oxford or anywhere else. In "The Memoir of Charles Kingsley," by Mrs. Kingsley, she does not even mention the name of Henry Kingsley, her famous husband's equally famous brother. The Encyclopædias, the Dictionaries of Authors, ignore him, or dismiss him with a line or two; he is rarely if ever mentioned, in the Biographies, in the Auto-biographies, or in the Reminiscences of his contemporaries; and yet he wrote some of the most wholesome, most fascinating novels of his century.
All we can learn of him are the bare facts, that he was educated at King's College, London, and at Worcester College, Oxford; and that, in 1853, when he was twenty-three years of age, he went to Australia to gain the personal experiences which resulted in "The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlin," his first, and not his worst, romance.
That he loved Oxford, and went often back to Oxford, in spirit, if not in. body, is shown throughout his work. He sent "Ravenshoe" to "St. Paul's" in Oxford, which was, perhaps, St. John's. He educated Lord Welter and Austin Elliot at Christ Church. John Thornton in "Austin Elliot," was a Servitor at Christ Church, who fell in love with the pretty daughter of "a well-to-do farmer living down the river not far from Oxford." Arthur Silcote was the youngest Tutor at Balliol. And "Leighton Court" is described as being "very like Balliol, uncommonly like Oriel, and a perfect replica of University."
Henry Kingsley, whatever was his life in Oxford, proved himself in after life to have been one of the best examples of the Oxford man. And if you care to see what sort of an imaginary Oxford man a real Oxford man can create, read the story of Charles Ravenshoe—who, like his creator, was brave, honest, simple, open-hearted, open-handed, and one of the noblest characters in modern fiction; and thereby you will see what Oxford has done, and can do, for the men she calls her Sons.
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