Old Canon settles in his stall, prayers continue, and after about ten minutes the Canon shouts: “Beadle, tell that man to dine with me at five.”
Beadle: “Dr. A.’s compliments, and whether you would give him the pleasure of your company at dinner at five.”
D.D.: “Very sorry, I am engaged.”
Beadle: “D.D. regrets he is engaged.”
Old Canon: “Oh, he won’t dine!”
The cathedral was very empty, and fortunately this conversation was listened to by a small congregation only. I can, however, vouch for it, as I was sitting close by and heard it myself.
Bodley’s Library, too, was full of good stories, though many of them do not bear repeating. When I first began to work there, Dr. Bandinell was Bodleian Librarian. Working in the Bodleian was then like working in one’s private library. One could have as many books and MSS. as one desired, and the six hours during which the Library was open were a very fair allowance for such tiring work as copying and collating Sanskrit MSS. I well remember my delight when I first sat down at my table near one of the windows looking into the garden of Exeter. It seemed a perfect paradise for a student. I must confess that I slightly altered my opinion when I had to sit there every day during a severe winter without any fire, shivering and shaking, and almost unable to hold my pen, till kind Mr. Coxe, the sub-librarian, took compassion on me and brought me a splendid fur that had been sent him as a present by a Russian scholar, who had witnessed the misery of the Librarian in this Siberian Library. Now all this is changed. The Library is so full of students, both male and female, that one has difficulty in finding a place, certainly in finding a quiet place; and all sorts of regulations have been introduced which have no doubt become necessary on account of the large number of readers, but which have completely changed, or as some would say, improved the character of the place. As to one improvement, however, there can be no two opinions. The Library and the reading-room, the so-called Camera, are now comfortably warmed, and students may in the latter place read for twelve hours uninterruptedly, and not be turned out as we were by a warning bell at four o’clock. And woe to you if you failed to obey the warning. One day an unfortunate reader was so absorbed in his book that he did not hear the bell, and was locked in. He tried in vain to attract attention from the windows, for it was no pleasant prospect to pass a night among so many ghosts. At last he saw a solitary woman, and shouted to her that he was locked in. “No,” she said, “you are not. The Library is closed at four.” Whether he spent the night among the books is not known. Let us hope that he met with a less logical person to release him from his cold prison.
Dr. Bandinell ruled supreme in his library, and even the Curators trembled before him when he told them what had been the invariable custom of the Library for years, and could not be altered. And, curiously enough, he had always funds at his disposal, which is not the case now, and whenever there was a collection of valuable MSS. in the market he often prided himself on having secured it long before any other library had the money ready. Now and then, it is true, he allowed himself to be persuaded by a plausible seller of rare books or MSS., but generally he was very wary. He was not always very courteous to visitors, and still less so to his under-librarians. The Oriental under-librarian Professor Reay, in particular, who was old and somewhat infirm, had much to suffer from him, and the language in which he was ordered about was such as would not now be addressed to any menial. And yet Professor Reay belonged to a very good family, though Dr. Bandinell would insist on calling him Ray, and declared that he had no right to the e in his name. In revenge some people would give him an additional i and call him Dr. Bandinelli, which made him very angry, because, as he would say to me, “he had never been one of those dirty foreigners.” Silence was enjoined in the library, but the librarian’s voice broke through all rules of silence. I remember once, when Professor Reay had been looking for ever so long to find his spectacles without which he could not read the Arabic MSS., and had asked everybody whether they had seen them, a voice came at last thundering through the library: “You left your spectacles on my chair, you old ——, and I sat on them!” There was an end of spectacles and Arabic MSS. after that. There were two men only of whom Dr. Bandinell and H. O. Coxe also were afraid, Dr. Pusey, who was one of the Curators, and later on, Jowett, the Master of Balliol.
There was a vacancy in the Oriental sub-librarianship, and a very distinguished young Hebrew scholar, William Wright, afterwards Professor at Cambridge, was certainly by far the best candidate. But as ill-luck—I mean ill-luck for the Library—would have it, he had given offence by a lecture at Dublin, in which he declared that the people of Canaan were Semitic, and not, as stated in Genesis, the children of Ham. No one doubts this now, and every new inscription has confirmed it. Still a strong effort was made to represent Dr. Wright as a most dangerous young man, and thus to prevent his appointment at Oxford. The appointment was really in the hands of Dr. Bandinell; and after I had frankly explained to him the motives of this mischievous agitation against Dr. Wright, and assured him that he was a scholar and by no means given to what was then called “free-handling of the Old Testament,” he promised me that he would appoint him and no one else. However, poor man, he was urged and threatened and frightened, and to my great surprise the appointment was given to some one else, who at that time had given hardly any proofs of independent work as a Semitic scholar, though he afterwards rendered very good and honest service. I did not disguise my opinion of what had happened; and for more than a year Dr. Bandinell never spoke to me nor I to him, though we met almost daily at the library. At last the old man, evidently feeling that he had been wrong, came to tell me that he was sorry for what had happened, but that it was not his fault: after this, of course, all was forgotten. Dr. Wright had a much more brilliant career opened to him, first at the British Museum, and then as professor at Cambridge, than he could possibly have had as sub-librarian at Oxford. He always remained a scholar, and never dabbled in theology.
Some very heated correspondence passed at the time, and I remember keeping the letters for a long while. They were curious as showing the then state of theological opinion at Oxford; but I have evidently put the correspondence away so carefully that nowhere can I find it now. Let it be forgotten and forgiven.