Rowlandson's Oxford

by A. Hamilton Gibbs

Tutors—Their slackness—The real and the ideal tutor—Dr Newton on tutor’s fees—Dr Johnson’s recommendation of Bateman—Public lecturers—Terrae Filius and a Wadham man’s letter.

Just as the schoolmaster is considered the natural enemy of boys, so is the Don popularly credited with being the natural enemy of the Undergraduates. The originator of this wonderful theory is presumably the lady novelist who, with no deeper knowledge of Oxford than that obtained from a minute study of the coloured photographs in railway trains, has pictured the Don in her vivid imagination to be a crusty, inhuman, and gouty septuagenarian who, in the intervals of delivering abstruse lectures, passes his days in sending men down and otherwise suppressing all vitality and humanity.

Anything more completely ridiculous it would be impossible to imagine. Conceive a body of charming and delightful men, very kindly and sympathetic, always ready to go out of their way to help a man in financial or moral difficulties, cultured, intellectual, hard working, thorough sportsmen in the best sense of that much abused word, full of loyalty to their college and to the university, delighted by the athletic or scholastic triumphs of the men with whom they are in close contact—and then you do not obtain anything more than a true description of those men who do so much to uphold the honour of the university, and who are remembered with respect and even affection by the generations of Undergraduates who pass through their hands.

The eighteenth-century Don, on the contrary, was a person altogether different. In the desire to bring out the light and shade of his personality I am frustrated by the superabundance of the latter and the minute quantity of the former. In dealing with the Georgian Don I have taken each species separately: the Tutor, the Lecturer, the Examiner, the Head of a college, and so forth.

It appears that the old-time fresher, having been admitted to a college, was at once recommended to a tutor whom he interviewed in his rooms. The Hoxton man, who came up with his mother and his dad, found himself called upon by his prospective tutor to sit down and make small work of several quarts of liquid refreshment to the healths of various “traitors.” Being somewhat flurried at this boisterous reception, the lad was assured that he did not come to the university to pray, and that in any case, he, the tutor, would look after him like a father. Of being called upon to do any work with him there was no whisper. Gibbon, on the other hand, on being placed under the tutorship of Dr Waldegrave, was desired to attend that gentleman’s rooms each morning from ten to eleven and read the Comedies of Terence. This he accordingly did, but with so little advantage to himself that, after a few weeks, he quietly dropped away and saw his tutor no more. To counterbalance the accusation of slackness against Dr Waldegrave, Gibbon described him as having been a “learned and pious man of a mild disposition, strict morals and abstemious life, who seldom mingled in the politics or jollity of the college.” This worthy man departed from the precincts of Magdalen, and Gibbon had nothing good to say for his successor. “The second tutor,” wrote Gibbon, “whose literary character did not command the respect of the college, well remembered that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to perform.... Excepting one voluntary visit to his rooms during the titular months of his office, the tutor and pupil lived in the same college as strangers to each other.”

The vindicator of Magdalen leaped into the breach on behalf of the tutors against Gibbon, and gave a hundred reasons why Gibbon was in the wrong. But there are numberless other instances of utter laziness among that section of the Don world. Malmesbury, for instance, related in his usual cheery and optimistic manner, that his tutor, “an excellent and worthy man, according to the practice of all tutors at that moment, gave himself no concern about his pupils. I never saw him but during a fortnight, when I took it into my head to do trigonometry.” This witness matriculated at Merton thirteen years after Gibbon’s time.

Another example of bad tutorship may be quoted from William Fitzmaurice, second Earl of Shelburne, who went up in 1753. “At sixteen, I went to Christ Church, where I had again the misfortune to fall under a narrow-minded tutor.... He was not without learning, and certainly laid himself out to be serviceable to me in point of reading.... I came full of prejudices. My tutor added to those prejudices by connecting me with the anti-Westminsters, who were far from the most fashionable part of the college, and a small minority.”[24]

In the light of these adverse criticisms it is interesting to note the statutorial view as to the ideal tutor. According to Amhurst, who quoted statute (d), it was ordained that “no person shall be a tutor who has not taken a degree in some faculty, and is not (in the judgment in the head of the college or hall to which he belongs) a man of approv’d learning, probity and sincere religion.” But can these requirements be called sufficient if the hundreds of tutors against whom their pupils flung accusations of slackness, drunkenness, and other hobbies, all satisfied them?

The Loiterer, evidently with this insufficent statute in mind, made some very intelligent remarks à propos of this question. “Scarce any office,” he wrote, “demands so many different requisites in those who would fill it properly, as that of a college Tutor, and in none perhaps is propriety of Choice so little attended to. The Tutor of a College goes off to a Living, dies of an Apoplexy, or is otherwise provided for; a Successor must be found; and as few who have better prospects chuse to undertake so disagreeable an office, the Society is sometimes under the necessity of appointing a person, who is no further qualified for it than by the possession of a little classical, or mathematical information. With this slender stock of knowledge, and without any acquaintance with the World or any insight into Characters, He enters on his office with more Zeal than Discretion, asserts his own opinions with arrogance and maintains them with obstinacy, calls Contradiction, Contumacy, and Reply, Pertness, and deals out his Jobations, Impositions, and Confinements, to every ill-fated Junior who is daring enough to oppose his sentiments, or doubt his opinions. The consequence of this is perfectly natural. He treats his pupils as Boys and they think him a Brute. From that moment all his power of doing good ceases; for we learn nothing from him, who has forfeited our confidence. Such is the Portrait of what Tutors too often are, might I be indulged in pointing out what they should be, very different would be the Character I should sketch. I would draw him modest in his disposition, mild in his temper, gentle and insinuating in his address; scarce less a man of the world than a man of letters. His Classic Knowledge (though far above mediocrity) should be the least of his acquirements; General Knowledge should be his forte, and the application of it to general purposes his aim. He should not only improve those under his care in his publick lectures, but should endeavour at least to direct them in their private studies; he should encourage them to read, and should teach them to read with taste.”

At this point The Loiterer’s friend interrupted and insisted that no man was ever born to be a tutor if tutors must possess all the attributes contained in that description. Upon this The Loiterer said that he knew only one man in the entire university who came up to the standard, and that man was his own tutor.