Old Friends at Cambridge and Elsewhere

by John Willis Clark

Richard Okes was born in Cambridge, 15 December, 1797. His father, Thomas Verney Okes, was a surgeon in extensive practice. Tradition is silent respecting the future Provost’s childhood and early education; but, as in those days boys began their lives at Eton at a very early age, it is probable that when he was little older than a child he was sent to fight his battles among the collegers, in what even devoted Etonians have called ‘a proverb and a reproach’—Long Chamber. In 1816, when he was rather more than eighteen, he obtained a scholarship at King’s College; but it appears from the University records that he did not formally matriculate until November in the following year. In those days, be it remembered, King’s College was a very different place from what it is now, both structurally and educationally. The magnificent site, on which Henry VI. intended to place an equally magnificent college, was occupied by no structures of importance except the Chapel, and the Fellows’ Building, part of a second grand design which, like the first, was never completed. The scholars, or at all events the greater part of them, were packed into Old Court—the small, irregular quadrangle west of the University Library, to which the founder intended originally to limit his college. It must have been a curious structure—picturesque and interesting from an archeological point of view, but unwholesome and uncomfortable as a place of residence. The very nicknames given to some of the chambers—“the Tolbooth,” “the Block-house,” and the like—are a sufficient proof of their discomfort. In one of these, on the ground floor, facing Clare Hall, young Okes resided; and until a few months ago, when the last remnant of this part of the old college was absorbed by the University Library, the present generation could form a fairly correct idea of the gloom and damp that their ancestors were obliged to put up with. But members of Kings College had to endure something far worse than physical discomfort. It had been the object of their founder to make his college independent of the University, and, as a consequence of these well-intentioned provisions, scholars of King’s were not allowed to compete for University honours, but obtained their degrees as a matter of course. The result is not difficult to conceive. In every society there will be some whose love of letters, or whose ardour for distinction, is so strong that nothing can check it; but, as a rule, the young Etonians who were obliged to spend three years in Cambridge threw learning to the winds, and enjoyed to their hearts’ content the liberty, not to say license, of their new surroundings. It was a bad state of things; and that Okes felt it to be so is proved by the eagerness with which he, a strong Conservative, set himself to get it abolished as soon as he had the power to do so. We do not claim for the late Provost any specially studious habits as a young man; he was too genial and too fond of society to have ever been a very hard reader; but his scholarship in after years would not have been as accurate as it certainly was had he wasted his time at Cambridge; and, as a proof that he aimed at distinction, it should be mentioned that he obtained Sir William Browne’s prize for Greek and Latin Epigrams in 1819 and 1820. To the very end of his life he was fond of writing Latin verse; and when the Fellows of his college congratulated him on his ninetieth birthday in Latin and English poems, he replied in half-a-dozen Latin lines which many a younger scholar could not have turned so neatly.

He proceeded to his degree in 1821, and was in due course elected Fellow of his college. Soon afterwards he returned to Eton as an Assistant-Master. Mr Gladstone was one of the first set of boys who, in Eton phrase, were ‘up to him’ in school. He filled his difficult position with a judicious blending of severity and kindliness that made him thoroughly respected by everybody, and at the same time beloved by those boys who saw enough of him to discover that his dignified and slightly pompous demeanour concealed a singularly warm and sympathetic heart. His house was well-conducted and deservedly popular; and though in those days masters did not see much of their pupils in private, he contrived to turn several of his boys into life-long friends. In 1838 he became Lower Master—an office which he held until he returned to Cambridge in 1850. While in that influential position he introduced at least one reform into the school; he got what was called ‘an intermediate examination’ established, by which the collegers were enabled to test their capacities before submitting to the final examination which was to determine their chances of obtaining a scholarship at King’s.

In November 1850, the Provostship of King’s College having been vacated by the death of the Rev. George Thackeray, Dr Okes was elected his successor. So anxious was he to abolish the anomalous position of King’s-men with regard to University degrees that, on his way from Eton to Cambridge to be inducted into his new dignity, he stayed a few hours in London to take counsel with the Bishop of Lincoln, as Visitor of the college, on the best way of effecting an alteration. The needful negotiations were pressed forward without loss of time, and on the 1st May, 1851, the college informed the University of their willingness to abolish the existing state of things. The University, as might have been expected, took time to consider the matter; and it was not until February 18, 1852, that the Senate accepted the proposed reform. Meanwhile Dr Okes had been elected Vice-Chancellor, and, in virtue of that office, had the pleasure of signing the report which concluded the negotiations. His year of office as Vice-Chancellor ended, he took but little part in University business. He served on the Council of the Senate from 1864 to 1868, and he was occasionally a member of Syndicates; but, with these exceptions, he devoted himself to the affairs of his college.

When he returned to the University the ancient constitution still subsisted, and it may be doubted whether he could ever have brought himself into cordial sympathy with the changes inaugurated by the statutes which came into operation in 1858. The abolition of the old Caput, and the virtual dethronement of the Heads of Colleges, must have seemed to him to be changes which savoured of sacrilege. Still, when a reform had been once carried he accepted it loyally, and never tried by underhand devices to thwart its provisions, or to diminish its force. He was too straight-forward to pretend that he liked change, but he was too honest to take away with one hand the assent that he gave with the other. In regard to his own college he was before all things an Etonian, and he clung to the ancient system by which King’s was recruited exclusively from Eton. But, when it was decided, in 1864, to throw the college open, under certain restrictions, to all comers, he offered no violent resistance to the scheme, though he did not like it; and it may be doubted whether he ever felt that the newcomers were really King’s-men. His sense of duty, as well as his natural kindliness, compelled him to accept them; but he looked upon them as aliens. This strong conservative bias, opposed to the liberal instincts of a society which his own reform had created, sometimes brought him into collision with his Fellows; but such differences were not of long duration. He was never morose. He never bore a grudge against any one. His sense of humour, and his natural gaiety of spirits, carried him through difficulties which his habitual tone of mind would hardly have enabled him to surmount. When his portrait was painted by Herkomer, the artist showed him as he lived, with a smile on his kind face. It was objected that so jocose a countenance was at variance with the dignity of his position. ‘What would the Provost of King’s be without his jokes?’ was the reply of a sarcastic contemporary. The remark had a deeper meaning than its author either imagined or intended.

1 December, 1888.

HENRY RICHARDS LUARD[^[118]].

Nearly half a century has elapsed since Dr Luard became a member of Trinity College. When he came up, the University was a very different place from what it is now; the Statutes of Elizabeth were still in force; and the only study which obtained official recognition was that of mathematics. It is true that a Classical Tripos existed, but anybody who wished to be examined in it was obliged to obtain an honour in Mathematics first. The first Commission was not appointed until 1850, the year in which he proceeded to the degree of Master of Arts. Nor were the changes that resulted from their labours so sweeping as to alter, to any overt and material extent, the character of the University. The University of our own time, due to more recent legislation, did not come into being until he had reached middle life.

These prefatory sentences are necessary to explain his character, which has often been misunderstood. He passed his youth and many years of his manhood in the old University, and though he was compelled, intellectually, to admit the advantage of many of the changes which have taken place in recent years, I doubt if he ever cordially accepted them. He was a man of the older generation, who had lived down into the present, and though he made friends in it, and derived many substantial advantages from it, he was always casting lingering looks behind, and sighing for a past which he could not recall. He remembered the time when the resident Fellows of his college were few in number, when they all lived in college rooms, and met every day at the service in Chapel or the dinner in Hall, and commonly took their daily exercise, a walk or a ride, in each other’s company. As his older friends passed away, he found a difficulty in making new ones; he felt out of his element; he was distracted by the multiplicity of tastes and studies; and vehemently disapproved of the modifications in the collegiate life which the new statutes have brought about. Though he himself, by a strange irony of fate, was the first Fellow to take advantage of the power of marrying and still retaining the Fellowship, he bitterly regretted that such a clause had ever become law; and it is hardly too much to say that he predicted the ruin of the college from such an innovation. And yet he was by no means an unreasoning or unreasonable Conservative. In many matters he was a Reformer; I have even heard him called a Radical; but, when his beloved college was concerned, the force of early association was too strong, and he regarded fundamental change as sacrilege.

Luard was fourteenth wrangler in 1847, a place much lower than he had been led to expect. The cause of his failure is said to have been ill-health. His disappointment, however, was speedily consoled by a Fellowship, a distinction to which he is said to have aspired from his earliest years. A friend who sat next him when he was a student at King’s College, London, remembers his writing down, “Henry Richards Luard, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge,” and asking, “How do you think that looks?” But, though he was really a first-rate mathematician, his heart was elsewhere. He delighted in classical studies, especially Greek, and to the end of his life continued to collect early editions, and more, to read Greek authors. Not long ago, in the interval between two pieces of hard work, I think between two volumes of his edition of Matthew Paris, I found him reading the Supplices of Euripides. He complained that it was dull, but he went through with it. His acquaintance with Greek scholarship was very accurate and remarkable. He knew all about the emendations in which the scholars of the last century displayed their ingenuity; he spoke of Bentley, Porson, Gaisford, Elmsley, and the rest, as though they had been his personal friends, and he could quote from memory, even to the last, many of their most brilliant achievements. For Porson he had a special cult, and the Life of him which he contributed to the Cambridge Essays (1857) is a model of what such a composition should be, as remarkable for good taste and temperate criticism, as for erudition. He resented any slights on Porson as almost a personal affront; and spoke with unmeasured denunciation of any edition of a Greek Play, or other classical work, in which Porson did not seem to be fully appreciated. He had a priceless collection of Porsoniana, books which had belonged to Porson, and had been annotated by him, with notices of his life and labours, all of which he bequeathed to the Library of Trinity College; and he edited Porson’s Correspondence, and the Diary of Edward Rud, which throws so much light on the history of the college during the stormy reign of Dr Bentley. It must be confessed that Luard’s affection for these giants of classical criticism rather blinded him to the merits of their successors in our own time. He had a particular dislike for English notes; and I had rather not try to remember what I have heard him say about English translations printed side by side with the original text.

Let it not be supposed, however, that Luard confined his attention in literature to the classics. He was an insatiable reader of books on all subjects, and if the book was a new one he was particular that his copy should be uncut. He liked to read sitting in his armchair, and to cut the leaves as he went along. What he began, he considered it a point of honour to finish. It was a joke against him that he had read every word of The Cornhill Magazine, which he had taken in from the beginning; and I have heard him admit, more than once, that this was really the case. I think it quite likely that he had submitted the volumes published under the authority of the Master of the Rolls, to the same searching investigation; for he could give a curiously minute account of the merits and demerits of each work, supported, as usual with him, by numerous quotations, cited with much volubility of utterance, and, it may be added, with unerring accuracy. The pace at which he got through a ponderous volume—without skipping, be it remarked—was really astonishing, and when he had come to the end he could not only give a clear and connected account of what he had read, but it became part of himself, and he could quote long afterwards any passage that had specially struck him.