‘[Maria Giberne] was always a most excellent talker and narrator, but her great power lay in the portraits she did in chalks. At a very short sitting, and even from memory, she would draw a portrait which was at least perfectly and undeniably true. I have heard her drawings criticised, and her drapery called conventional, but her faces, to my apprehension, were proof against all criticism. Perhaps they are better in outline than when filled up and tinted…. Her interest in the whole [Tractarian] circle was insatiable, and there was hardly anything she would not do and dare for a sight of one she had not yet seen.’[4]

Given, therefore, Miss Giberne’s ardour in the matter, and her frequently-recurring opportunities as a visitor, it would seem almost certain that she would not have let slip any chance of portraying so noticeable a luminary as Hurrell Froude, often absent, like herself, from Oxford, during 1831-1833, and away from it almost altogether afterwards. Her discovered sketch-books, preserved in the hands of relatives and friends, yield, so far, but a single page in which Froude appears.

She groups and labels him with other conspirators’ at a historic moment,[5] in the one Oxford Common Room which ‘stank of logic.’ Something in the too quiescent gesture of the graceful person ‘on the box,’ as well as in the nature of the circumstance, make one suspect that the whole was drawn not on the spot, nor from memory, but from hearsay at the time. Were such the case, the implication would be that Miss Giberne had a good prior knowledge of Froude’s face and figure, and even that she was not committing these to paper for the first time. This little drawing is the property of her nephew, George Pearson, Esq., of Manchester; it is owing to his courtesy and kindness that it is here made public.

The picture of Dartington Parsonage, the antique house in the vale three miles from Totnes, Devonshire, where Hurrell Froude was born, and where he died, is from a larger water-colour drawing by Arthur Holdsworth Froude, in the possession of his sister, the Baroness Anatole von Hügel. The Parsonage, in its mediæval simplicity, was first sketched by Archdeacon Froude, then the newly-appointed Rector, in 1799; this sketch yet exists on a fly-leaf of the Parish records. He at once rebuilt the whole west wing, planted shrubs and vines, and drained away the pond; but there were no other alterations until after his death and the removal of the family in 1859-60, when his grandson Arthur drew the house from memory. Even now, the porch, and everything to the right of it, upstairs and down, is practically the very same as in Hurrell’s time; elsewhere the gables have disappeared, and the tourelle has changed its place. The Parish Church (of fourteenth century work, like the Hall) is from an old negative by Messrs. Brinley and Son, of Totnes. This view from the south-west shows the low railing over the Froude vault, which lay in the angle of the porch, next the wall. The Church being taken down in 1878, the strong plain Tower was left alone and intact, standing sentinel over the dead; and the large slab shown in the foreground of the modern photograph, covering the burial-place of Hurrell Froude and of his kindred, is

as it looks to-day. The print of Oriel College great quadrangle is from a photograph copyrighted many years ago by Messrs. Henry W. Taunt and Co., of Oxford, and here used by their permission. The inner top tier of three windows next the angle of the Chapel marks the rooms occupied by Froude. They are on the second floor of Staircase No. 3, the door being at the right hand as one mounts the stairs. The beautiful Porch and the whole front have since been renovated, and the tall bold Regnante Carolo again runs around the ruined open stone-work parapet, shown in our illustration, which an Oriel man of the Thirties saw every day as he went in and out of Hall.

It remains only to thank the family of William Froude, Esq., and the Rev. Charles Martin, the present Rector of Dartington; the Rev. G. Kenworthy, Vicar of Bassenthwaite, whose generosity and knowledge have supplied the Editor with many biographical data of the Spedding family; the Rev. T. Herbert Bindley for authentic information about Codrington College; the Rev. J. Christie for much painstaking friendliness, and the use of a page of one of the Theta letters for a fac-simile; the Rev. G. A. Williams, and several other kind correspondents of Tractarian lineage, who have patiently answered inquiries. Lastly, a more intimate acknowledgment is especially due to the Rev. W. H. Carey, of SS. Michael and All Angels, Woolwich; for chiefly through the sense of his steady encouragement, based on an enthusiasm for Hurrell Froude, the Editor’s task, more than once interrupted and laid by, was pushed on to its completion.

Oxford, October, 1904

HURRELL FROUDE

I

SOME MEMORANDA OF HIS LIFE
AND OF HIS IDEALS