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

Three years later when according to the conventional view the ‘rich vulgarians,’ as the Mrs Major Pompley of My Novel calls them, must have entirely crowded out the sons of squires as well as the humanities themselves, another country gentleman’s son, the late Edward Herbert who died at Marathon in 1870, had as his brother scholar at Balliol, also from Eton, another son of a Western squire, Edmond Warre, to-day Headmaster of his old school. In the same year the son of a ‘squarson’ to employ Sidney Smith’s useful term, also an Etonian, Henry Barter of Merton, the evil associations of plutocracy notwithstanding, won the highest mathematical together with second class classical honours at Oxford, and was only just beaten by the present Bishop of Hereford, for the University Scholarship in mathematics. This list of instances belongs to the era (the fifties) when the corruptions of the new wealth were most rampant at Eton, seems to refute the mechanical charge; that list may be closed with the name of a country gentleman’s son, since then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Michael Hicks-Beach, who, Eton and Christ Church notwithstanding, took a first class in the Modern History schools in 1858. About the same time the member of a Liverpool mercantile family, the son of a great statesman, W. H. Gladstone, had not at Eton so unlearned all he had been taught elsewhere as to be prevented from winning a studentship at Christ Church. His contemporary at Eton, A. C. Swinburne, the poet, won at Oxford the Taylor scholarship for modern languages about the same time. The catalogue might be extended indefinitely. The representative names likely to convey the fullest idea to the general reader have now been mentioned. A further selection of patronymics would confuse rather than instruct or interest. It will be enough to say that in or since the sixties down to 1896, of the highest honours in the Schools or in the Colleges at Oxford 400 were obtained by the sons of country gentlemen who, notwithstanding the new wealth had like their fathers before them been sent to Eton and who were not apparently quite demoralized by that ordeal. At Cambridge the total of Academic distinctions won by Etonians of the same grade as at Oxford, is as might have been expected higher, and amounts in round numbers to 550. A competent judge in these matters, speaking with no personal prejudice in favour of the school of Henry VI.42 or of its Cambridge sister King’s College, but with much experience of classical examinations, J. Y. Sargent, told the present writer not long ago, that Eton was the one school in England whose boys could write tolerable Greek prose.

Any social change that may have come over the place since the introduction of the new wealth into the country would seem to be very different in fact from that described by fiction. The presence of a large number of boys whose parents derive their income from no hereditary acres and whose domestic associations are therefore different from those of the country gentleman’s son has indeed produced an effect, but one which is the very opposite of its current misrepresentation. Before the Victorian era opened, well-to-do commercial fathers were, as readers of Coningsby will remember, in the habit of sending their sons to the seat of education most in vogue with the titled and untitled patricians of the realm. Such influence as these have had has proved notoriously healthful to the whole school community. The newcomers have with scarcely an exception been trained from childhood to an adequate appreciation of the value of money and are the last boys in the world to be permitted to squander it for mere show. Before their advent to the place, Eton might have been charged with narrowness or partiality in the composition of its life; congenial enough as the training ground of peers, opulent commoners, diplomatists, and other destined dignitaries of State or Church, but less salutary for lads who had their own way to make in the world, and who while doing so, must expect to come into collision with the men of the City, the office, and the shop. The genius of every great English school is essentially democratic. Boys are valued by their fellows not for what they have, but for what in themselves they are; not for the antiquity of their family descent, nor for the depth of their father’s purse. The boy who dazzled his mates with the glitter of sovereigns fresh from the Mint would be suppressed as promptly by the public opinion of the place as the toady or the parasite. To-day no English lad is so little likely idly to waste his parents’ cash as the young Etonian.

There is no school which so far as social discipline is concerned better enables its boys to dispense with the University and yet lose so little by not going there, or which turns out its boys such ready-made little men of the world as the foundation of Henry VI. That this is to-day the special attribute of Eton, possessed by it in common perhaps with Harrow, is due to the circumstance of its having become representative of the entire life, commercial, not less than squirearchical or patrician, urban not less than rural, of the whole country. The truth is that the nouveau riche, as he is represented by the popular imagination, is the product of romance, or the creation of the stage. The antagonism between the socially emancipated of yesterday and the descendants of houses which had become considerable before constitutional government in England was known is imaginary and in direct contradiction of the experiences of daily life. The son of the new man of one generation as to his tastes, his prejudices, his politics, his pursuits, the performance of his duties, the choice of his pleasures, becomes, in the next, socially indistinguishable from the scion of the oldest nobility. On all points he has unconsciously, as is the way with the imitative race of boys, modelled himself after the pattern of those country gentlemen, divines, civilians, soldiers, and sailors, who are for the most part the reverse of plutocratic, and whose sons have been brought up at home under conditions which would make them physically intolerant of the bad taste that may be defined as a missing of the due proportion of relative things. The Lancashire trader’s son who at school finds himself next in form to the boy of ancient family is quick to imbibe the social traditions and intuitions with which the atmosphere is charged. He has been sent to school to make acquaintances perhaps as well as to learn; but certainly not to dazzle his schoolfellows by the glitter of his father’s gold. If the Manchester lad possesses more pocket money than some of those in his ‘house,’ he is pretty certain also to set them a wise example in the careful spending of it. The truth is that with the whole system of public examinations and with literary competitions narrowing the entrance to all kinds of professional life, the genius of the place at the great public schools has undergone the same modifications as at the Universities. The schoolboy who has obtained his exeat for a few days as he bounds off to the station to catch his train, may be thought to have left all care behind him. Enjoyment, however, is very probably not the reason of his visit to his friends in London.

Sandhurst or Woolwich examinations, competitions for the home or foreign service at Burlington House are quite as likely to be the object in view as the visit to the dentist by day or to the theatre by night. This early acquaintance with the responsibilities of life exerts a sobering influence on the most constitutionally volatile of Eton or Harrow striplings. The lad whose path of pleasure is darkened by the shadow of the ubiquitous examiner loses prematurely the juvenile appetite for veal and ham pies, jam tarts, ginger beer, even for cocoanut paste. When there are not examinations at a distance, the ingenuity of Oxford and Cambridge provides the machinery for them hard by the Playing Fields on the Thames or Byron’s Tree at Harrow on the Hill. ‘Posing’ in some form goes on all the year round. It has become in effect obligatory on the public school boy to obtain before going up to the University the certificate which frees him from the Littlego examination, or which if he enters on other careers, secures him an analogous dispensation.

The higher certificates in the University examinations are not easy to obtain. They uniformly indicate a high standard of proficiency. The success of Eton in these ordeals has been steadily progressive during the last twenty years. From 39 in 1875 the Eton candidates had risen to 88 in 1896. The total of certificates and distinctions won by these, an aggregate of 1,413 candidates, was, during this period of twenty years, 1,516. Meanwhile the number of Eton boys who, without passing through an intermediary stage at the professional crammers, take good places direct from their school in the Indian and Home Civil Service competitions has increased during the last few years by something like 10 per cent. The Eton ‘Army’ class is also doing well. The number of boys proceeding to Sandhurst and even to Woolwich straight from school as others proceed straight to the University increases annually. These statistics go some way towards disproving the conventional reproach made largely by ignorance against the most representative of English public schools of being socially and economically demoralized, or intellectually sunk in indolence by the malignant influences of the new wealth. If there were any truth in such an accusation, the maintenance of the traditional standard of scholarly excellence in exceptional cases would not be combined, as to-day it is, with the visibly demonstrated improvement in the work of the rank and file of the boys. The truth is, that at all our great schools, Eton like the rest, the new elements among the boys have tended to produce a wholesome change in the public opinion of the place distinctly favourable to a higher average of school industry. The ideal Etonian of history is, and seems likely long to continue, the fourteenth Earl of Derby, translator of the Iliad, and perhaps the most brilliant parliamentary debater of the century. ‘He saps like Gladstone, and he fights like Spring.’ So runs Lord Lytton’s spirited and familiar line concerning this most typical of Eton worthies. No one would have welcomed more warmly than he the statistical evidence here given that under its latest Headmaster, the study of the new ologies, and the manual mechanics practised in the Eton workshops which Dr. Warre has established have not ousted the older humanities from their place, and that, the new wealth notwithstanding, it has ceased to be a reproach against any boy at the old school that he is a sap.43

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.