V. BRASENOSE IN MODERN TIMES.
The period from the Restoration to 1800 was in Oxford as elsewhere marked rather by the excellence of individuals than by a high standard of general culture. In the first part of the period Brasenose is not especially distinguished, except by an undue prominence in the records of the Vice-Chancellor’s Court; but as we approach the close of the eighteenth century there are signs of a period of great prosperity, which distinguished the headships of Cleaver, Hodson and Gilbert, the first and last of whom were Bishops of Chester (then of Bangor, and finally of St. Asaph) and Chichester respectively. The signs of this are unmistakable. The numbers show an unusual increase, and the College is in the front both in the class-lists and in outdoor sports. The high-water mark was perhaps reached when the story could be told of Dr. Hodson (in about 1808), which is related in Mark Pattison’s Memoirs. “Returning to College, after one Long Vacation, Hodson drove the last stage into Oxford, with post-horses. The reason he gave for this piece of ostentation was, ‘That it should not be said that the first tutor of the first College of the first University of the world entered it with a pair.’ … The story is symbolical of the high place B.N.C. held in the University at the time, in which however, intellectual eminence entered far less than the fact that it numbered among its members many gentlemen commoners of wealthy and noble families.”
But intellectual eminence there certainly was at this time, for in the class-lists of Mich. 1808 to Mich. 1810, out of thirty-seven first-classes Brasenose claimed seven, monopolizing one list altogether; and out of seventy-five second-classes it held twelve. This was the period of what has been called the “famous Brasenose breakfast.” Reginald Heber won the Newdigate in 1803 with a poem which will never be forgotten—his Palestine. His rooms were on Staircase 6, one pair left, under the great chestnut in Exeter Garden called Heber’s Tree. In 1803 Sir Walter Scott went to Oxford with Richard Heber, Reginald’s brother. The story may be told in Lockhart’s[220] words: Heber “had just been declared the successful competitor for that year’s poetical prize, and read to Scott at breakfast in Brazen Nose College the MS. of his Palestine. Scott observed that in the verses on Solomon’s Temple one striking circumstance had escaped him, namely that no tools were used in its erection. Reginald retired for a few minutes to the corner of the room, and returned with the beautiful lines—
‘No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung,
Majestic silence!’”[221]
In connection with this literary and social side of the College may be mentioned the Phœnix Common-room or Club, the only social Club in the University which is more than a century old. It was started in 1781 or 1782 by Joseph Alderson, an undergraduate of Brasenose, afterwards Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a full constitution with officers and rules in 1786. It has always nominally consisted of twelve members, generally dining together once a week. The records of the Club are singularly complete, even to the caricatures on the blotting-paper of the dinner-books. Of the twelve original members five were soon elected to Fellowships, and such names as Frodsham Hodson (afterwards Principal), Viscount Valentia (d. 1844), Earl Fortescue (d. 1861), Reginald Heber (Bishop of Calcutta), Lord George Grenville (d. 1850), the Earl of Delawarr, the friend of Byron, Richard Harington (afterwards Principal), Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne (“S. G. O.”), and the present Deans of Rochester and Worcester, have raised it to no ordinary level. Its contemporary from 1828 to 1834, the Hell-fire Club, was of a very different character; but from one or two dubious incidents in its career has found its way into literature.[222] The incident which produced from the pen of Reginald Heber the humorous poem entitled the Whippiad[223] was connected with members of the Phœnix, though not with a meeting of the Club. The Senior Tutor had incautiously endeavoured to wrest a whip from Bernard Port, who had been loudly cracking it in the quadrangle; but alas, the representative of constitutional authority soon measured his length on the grass, being, not for the first time (as Heber maliciously notes) “floored by Port.”
The Ale Verses were an ancient social custom, probably at least as old as the Restoration. On Shrove Tuesday the butler presented a copy of English verses on Brasenose Ale to the Principal, written by some undergraduate, and received thereupon a certain sum of money. The earliest extant poem is of about the year 1700; but there is a long gap from that year till 1806, and they are not continuously preserved till from 1826, having been printed first in about 1811. They supply all kinds of contemporary information, collegiate, academical and political, chiefly of course by way of allusion. At last in 1886 the College Brew-house was removed to make room for new buildings, and with it went the Ale Verses, except that in 1889 one more set was issued. In 1888 a Fellow of the College printed a Latin dirge over the sad surcease; but soon the Verses will be forgotten, and the Brew-house.
On the river Brasenose has always been prominent: never once in the Eights or Torpids has it sunk below the ninth place. In the first inter-collegiate races, in 1815, Brasenose is at the head, and when the records begin again, in 1822, again takes the lead. At the present time (June 1891) B.N.C. has started head in the Eights on 110 days.[224]
The only clubs which had cricket grounds of their own in about 1835 were the Brasenose and the Bullingdon (Ch. Ch.), and even in 1847 the Magdalen, i. e. the University Club, was the only additional one. Early cricketing records are difficult to find; but in recent times no College has been able to show such a record as B.N.C. in 1871, when it had eight men in the University eleven, and when sixteen of the College beat an All-England eleven. In 1873 sixteen of B.N.C. also beat the United North of England eleven. The Inter-University high-jump of 1876, when M. J. Brooks of B.N.C. cleared 6 feet 2½ inches, was an extraordinary performance.
The characteristics of the College at all times have been remarkably similar and persistent, if the present writer can trust his judgment. They may be described as, first and foremost, a marked but not exclusive predilection for the exercises and amusements of out-door life, the result of sound bodies and minds, and in part, no doubt, of a long connection with old county families of a high type. And next a certain pertinacity, perseverance, power of endurance, doggedness, patriotism, solidarity, or by whatever other name the spirit may be called which leads men to do what they are doing with all their might, to undergo training and discipline for the sake of the College, and hang together like a cluster of bees in view of a common object. The Headship of the River for any length of time cannot possibly be obtained by fitful effort, or the unsustained enthusiasm of a single leader; but rather (and herein consists its value) by a continuous, often unconsciously continuous, effort of several years, backed up by the general support of the College. Lastly, Brasenose seems to be singularly central, intermediate, and in a good sense average and mediocre. Its position and buildings, its history, its achievements, the roll of Brasenose authors, all give evidence that the College is a good sample of the best sort of academical foundation. A writer who might wish to select a single College for study as a specimen of the kind, would find the history of Brasenose neither startling nor commonplace, neither eccentric nor uninteresting, neither full of strong contrasts nor deficient in the signs of healthy corporate life.
Among the alumni of Brasenose in this period, to omit the names of living persons, are the following: Thomas Carte the historian (1699); John Napleton (matr. 1755), an academical reformer; Dr. John Latham, president of the College of Physicians (1778); Bishop Reginald Heber (1800); Richard Harris Barham, author of the Ingoldsby Legends, after whom a College club is named the Ingoldsby (1807); Henry Hart Milman, Dean of St. Paul’s (1810); and the Rev. Frederick William Robertson, of Brighton, the preacher (1837). Mr. Buckley has compiled a list of more than four hundred Brasenose authors, and twenty-seven bishops or archbishops.