The Life of Froude

by Herbert W. Paul

CHAPTER X

THE OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP

ON the 16th of March, 1892, Froude's old antagonist, Freeman, who had been Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford since Stubbs's elevation to the Episcopal Bench in 1884, died suddenly in Spain. The Prime Minister, who was also Chancellor of the University, offered the vacant Chair to Froude, and after some hesitation Froude accepted it. The doubt was due to his age. "There are seventy-four reasons against it," he said. Fortunately he yielded. "The temptation of going back to Oxford in a respectable way," he wrote to Skelton, "was too much for me. I must just do the best I can, and trust that I shall not be haunted by Freeman's ghost." Lord Salisbury did a bold thing when he appointed Froude successor to Freeman. Froude had indeed a more than European reputation as a man of letters, and was acknowledged to be a master of English prose. But he was seventy-four, five years older than Freeman, and he had never taught in his life, except as tutor for a very brief time in two private families. The Historical School at Oxford had been trained to believe that Stubbs was the great historian, that Freeman was his prophet, and that Froude was not an historian at all. Lord Salisbury of course knew better, for it was at Hatfield that some of Froude's most thorough historical work had been done. Still, it required some courage to fly in the face of all that was pedantic in Oxford, and to nominate in Freeman's room the writer that Freeman had spent the best years of his life in "belabouring." Some critics attributed the selection to Lord Salisbury's sardonic humour, or pronounced that, as Lamb said of Coleridge's metaphysics, "it was only his fun." Some stigmatised it as a party job. Gladstone's nominee Freeman, had been a Home Ruler, Froude was a Unionist; what could be clearer than the motive? But both nominations could be defended on their own merits, and a Regius Professorship should not be the monopoly of a clique.

Lord Salisbury's choice of Froude was indeed, like Lord Rosebery's subsequent choice of Lord Acton for Cambridge, an example which justified the patronage of the Crown. A Prime Minister has more courage than an academic board, and is guided by larger considerations. Froude was one of the most distinguished living Oxonians, and yet Oxford had not even given him an honorary degree. Membership the Scottish Universities Commission in 1876 was the only official acknowledgment of his services to culture that he had ever received, and that was more of an obligation than a compliment. "Froude," said Jowett, "is a man of genius. He has been abominably treated." Lord Salisbury had made amends. Himself a man of the highest intellectual distinction, apart from the offices he happened to hold, he had promoted Froude to great honour in the place he loved best, and the most eminent of living English historians returned to Oxford in the character which was his due.

The new Professor gave up his house in London, and settled at Cherwell Edge, near the famous bathing-place called Parson' s Pleasure.* He found the University a totally different place from what it was when he first knew it. Dr. Arnold, who died in 1842, the year after his appointment, was the earliest Professor whose lectures were famous, or were attended, and Dr. Arnold did exactly as he pleased. There was no Board of Studies to supervise him, and it was thought rather good of a Professor to lecture at all. Now the Board of Studies was omnipotent, and a Professor's time was not his own. He was bound in fact to give forty-two lectures in a year, and to lecture twice a week for seven weeks in two terms out of the three. The prospect appalled him. "I never," he wrote to Max Muller,+ "I never gave a lecture on an historical subject without a fortnight or three weeks of preparation, and to undertake to deliver forty-two such lectures in six months would be to undertake an impossibility. If the University is to get any good out of me, I must work in my own way." He did not, however, work in his own way, and the University got a great deal of good out of him all the same.

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* The house is now, oddly enough, a Catholic convent.
+ April 18th, 1892.
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Lord Salisbury, in making Froude the offer, spoke apologetically of the stipend as small, but added that the work would be light. The accomplished Chancellor was imperfectly informed. The stipend was small enough: the work was extremely hard for a man of seventy-four. Froude's conscientiousness in preparation was almost excessive. Every lecture was written out twice from notes for improvement of style and matter. His audiences were naturally large, for not since the days Mr. Goldwin Smith, who resigned in 1866, had anything like Froude's lectures been heard at Oxford. When I was an undergraduate, in the seventies, we all of course knew that Professor Stubbs had a European reputation for learning. But, except to those reading for the History School, Stubbs was a name, and nothing more. Nobody ever dreamt of going to hear him. Crowds flocked to hear Froude, as in my time they flocked to hear Ruskin.

One sex was as well represented as the other. Froude had left the dons celibate and clerical. He found them, for the most part, married and lay. There was every variety of opinion in the common rooms, and every variety of perambulators in the parks. London hours had been adopted, and the society, though by no means frivolous or ostentatious, was anything rather than monastic. At Oxford, as in London, Froude was almost always the best talker in the room. He had travelled, not so much in Europe as in America and the more distant parts of the British Empire. He had read almost everything, and known almost every one. His boyish enthusiasm for deeds of adventure was not abated. He believed in soldiers and sailors, especially sailors. Creeds, Parliaments, and constitutions did not greatly attract or keenly interest him. Old as he was by the almanac, he retained the buoyant freshness of youth, and loved watching the eights on the river as much as any undergraduate. The chapel services, especially at Magdalen, brought back old times and tastes. As Professor of History he became a Fellow of Oriel, where he had been a commoner in the thick of the Oxford Movement. If the Tractarian tutors could have heard the conversation of their successors, they would have been astonished and perplexed. Even the Essayists and Reviewers would have been inclined to wish that some things could be taken for granted. Modern Oxford was not altogether congenial to Froude. While he could not be called orthodox, he detested materialism, and felt sympathy, if not agreement, with Evangelical Protestants. Like Bacon, he would rather believe all the legends of the Talmud than that this universal frame was without a mind.

Of the questions which absorbed High Churchmen he said, "One might as well be interested in the amours of the heathen gods." On the other hand, he had no sympathy with the new school of specialists, the devotees of original research. He believed in education as a training of the mental faculties, and thought that undergraduates should learn to use their own minds. "I can see what books the boys have read," he observed, after examining for the Arnold Prize, "but I cannot see that they make any use of what they have read. They seem to have power of assimilation." The study of authorities at first hand, to which he had given so much of his own time, he regarded as the work of a few, and as occupation for later years. The faculty of thinking, and the art of writing, could not be learned too soon.

Few indeed were the old friends who remained at Oxford to welcome him back. Max Muller was the most intimate of them, and among his few surviving contemporaries was Bartholomew Price, Master of Pembroke, a clergyman more distinguished in mathematics than in theology. The Rector of Exeter* gave a cordial welcome to the most illustrious of its former Fellows. The Provost of Oriel+ was equally gracious. In the younger generation of Heads his chief friends were the Dean of Christ Church,^ now Bishop of Oxford, and the President of Magdalen.# But the Oxford of 1892 was so unlike the Oxford of 1849 that Froude might well feel like one of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. And if there had been many changes in Oxford, there had been some also in himself. He had long ceased to be, so far as he ever was, a clergyman. He had been twice married, and twice left a widower. His children had grown up. His fame as an author extended far beyond the limits of his own country, and of Europe. He had made Carlyle's acquaintance, become his intimate friend, and written a biography of him which numbered as many readers as The French Revolution itself. He had lectured in the United States, and challenged the representatives of Irish Nationalism on the history of their own land. He had visited most of the British Colonies, and promoted to the best of his ability the Federation of South Africa. Few men had seen more, or read more, or enjoyed a wider experience of the world. What were the lessons which after such a life he chiefly desired to teach young Englishmen who were studying the past? The value of their religious reformation, and the achievements of their naval heroes. The Authorised Version and the Navy were in his mind the symbols of England's greatness. Greater Britain, including Britain beyond the seas, was the goal of his hopes for the future progress of the race. There were in Oxford more learned men than Froude, Max Muller for one. There was not a single Professor, or tutor, who could compare with him for the multitude and variety of his experience. Undergraduates were fascinated by him, as everybody else was. The dignitaries of the place, except a stray Freemanite here and there, recognised the advantage of having so distinguished a personage in so conspicuous a Chair. Even in a Professor other qualities are required besides erudition. Stubbs's Constitutional History of England may be a useful book for students. Unless or until it is rewritten, it can have no existence for the general reader; and if the test of impartiality be applied, Stubbs is as much for the Church against the State as Froude is for the State against the Church. When Mr. Goldwin Smith resigned the Professorship of Modern History, or contemplated resigning it Stubbs wrote to Freeman, "It would be painful to have Froude, and worse still to have anybody else." He received the appointment himself, and held it for eighteen years, when he gave way to Freeman, and more than a quarter of century elapsed before the painful event occurred. By that time Stubbs was Bishop of Oxford, translated from Chester, and had shown what a fatal combination for a modern prelate is learning with humour. If Froude had been appointed twenty years earlier, on the completion of his twelve volumes, he might have made Oxford the great historical school of England. But it was too late. The aftermath was wonderful, and the lectures he delivered at Oxford show him at his best. But the effort was too much tor him, and hastened his end.