What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Whether it may have been that any antagonism between Whately and Shuttleworth caused the former to be prejudiced against Wiccamical things and men, or whether the relationship of the two feelings were vice versâ, I cannot say. But I certainly thought and think still, that I suffered in his estimation from the fact that I was a Wykehamist. In writing on educational matters in or about 1830 (p. 79 of Miss Whately’s first volume), Whately says: “To compare schools generally with colleges generally may seem a vague inquiry, but take the most in repute of each—Eton, Westminster, Harrow, etc., v. Oriel, Brasenose, Balliol, Christchurch, etc., etc.” Now, I cannot but feel that so singular an omission of Winchester from so short a list of the schools “most in repute,” glaringly in contradiction as it was with all that the whole English world—even the non-academical world—knew to be the fact, could have been caused only by preconceived and unreasoning prejudice. Of course to me the utterance above quoted comes only as a confirmation of what the personal observation of my undergraduate days led me to feel, for I knew nothing of it till I read Miss Whately’s volumes published in 1866.

Yet I do not doubt that I may have occasionally “rubbed Whately the wrong way,” as the phrase goes. He was, as I have said, a most autocratically minded man. And we Wykehamists, as the reader may have perceived from my Winchester reminiscences, were not accustomed to be ruled autocratically. We lived under the empire, and I might almost say, in an atmosphere of law, as distinguished from individual will. It was constantly in our minds and on our tongues, that the “informator” or the “hostiarius” could or could not do this or that. We lived with the ever-present consciousness that the suprema lex was not what this master or the other master, or even the Warden might say, save in so far as it coincided with the college statutes. And I doubt not that Whately perceived and understood the influence of this habit of mind in something or other that I might have said or done. It was probably something of the sort which led to his telling me that he wanted no New College manners at Alban Hall.

My “Winchester manners” however, enabled me I remember to understand him when some of his own flock could not. He would at a Euclid lecture say, “Take any straight line,” scrawling, as he said the words, a line as far from straight as he could draw it, to the utter bewilderment of some among his audience, who, I believe, really thought that the Principal was a shocking bad draughtsman, while the despised Wykehamist perfectly understood that his object was to show that the process of reasoning to be illustrated in no wise depended on accuracy of lines or angles.

There is another passage in one of the letters published by his biographer, which illustrates Whately’s aversion from all Wiccamical men and things, and at the same time his utter ignorance of them. “It is commonly said at Oxford,” he writes, “at least it used to be, that it was next to impossible to make a Wykehamist believe that any examination could be harder than that which the candidates for New College undergo.” My reader has already been told in some degree what that examination was, and the nature of it. It was a real and serious examination, whereas that of candidates for admission to Winchester College was a mere form; and it was certainly a searching examination into the thoroughness with which schoolboys had done their schoolboy work. But the supposition that any New College man ever imagined his examination in election chamber to be of equal difficulty with the subsequent work at the university, or with that in the schools for honours, is an absolute proof that the person so supposing never knew anything about them, or had come much into contact with them.

I have said that Whately’s reputation for a very pronounced Liberalism, certainly at that time unparalleled among his brother heads of houses at Oxford, had been my father’s reason for placing me at Alban Hall. And all that reached the undergraduate world in connection with him was of a nature to lead the academic mind to regard him as a phenomenon of Radicalism. And it is curious to recall such impressions, while reading at the present day such a passage as the following (Life of Whately, vol. i., p. 302). The Archbishop is writing about the schemes then in agitation for the application of a portion of the revenues of the Irish Church to the purposes of national education. The italics in the following transcription are mine.

“It is concluded, first, that in parishes where there is a very small or no Protestant population, the revenues of the Church will be either wholly or in part, as the case may be, transferred to the education board, as the incumbents drop, their life interests being reserved; secondly, that in the event of an increase of the Protestant population, such portion of the funds thus alienated, as may be thought requisite, shall be drawn from the education board, and restored to the original purpose; thirdly, that in the event of a further diminution of the Protestants, a further portion shall be withdrawn from the Church, and applied to the purpose of general education. This last supposition is merely conjectural, but is so strictly the converse of the preceding, that every one at once concludes, and must conclude by parity of reasoning, that it must be contemplated. Now it will not be supposed by any one, who knows much of the state of Ireland, that we contemplate as probable any such increase of the Protestant population as to call for the restoration of a considerable portion of the alienated funds. In a few places, perhaps, attempts may be made, I fear with disastrous results, by some zealous Protestant landlords to increase with this view the proportion of Protestants on their estates; but on the whole we neither hope nor fear any such result. What alarms us is, the holding out the principle of such a system as the apportioning the revenues of the Church and of the education board to the varying proportions of the Roman Catholic population to the Protestant; and again the principle of making the funds for national education contingent upon the death of incumbents. The natural effect of the latter of these provisions must be to place the clergy so circumstanced in a most invidious, and in this country a most dangerous situation. No one who knows anything of Ireland would like to reside here surrounded by his heirs, on whom his income was to devolve at his death. And such would be very much the case with an incumbent, who was regarded as standing between the nation and the national benefit, viz., of provision for the education of their children. Then in respect of the other point, every Protestant who might come to settle, or remain settled in any parish, would be regarded as tending towards the withdrawing or withholding, as the case might be, of the funds of the national education, and diverting them to the use of an heretical establishment.

“The most harassing persecutions, the most ferocious outrages, the most systematic murders, would in consequence be increased fourfold. Bitter as religious animosities have hitherto been in this wretched country, it would be to most persons astonishing that they could be so much augmented, as I have no doubt they would be, by this fatal experiment. When instead of mere vague jealousy, revenge and party spirit, to prompt to crime and violence, there was also held out a distinct pecuniary national benefit in the extermination of Protestants, it would be in fact a price set on their heads, and they would be hunted down like wolves.... Better, far better, would it be to confiscate at once and for ever all the endowments held by the clergy, and leave them to be supported by voluntary contribution, or by manual labour. However impoverished, they and their congregations would at least have security for their lives.”

“To seek to pacify Ireland,” he writes a little further on, “by compliance and favour shown to its disturbers would be even worse than the superstitious procedure of our forefathers, with their weapon salve, who left the wound to itself, and applied their unguents to the sword which had inflicted it.”

Writing to his friend Senior on Parliamentary Reform he says that a system of £10 qualification “could not last, but must go on to universal suffrage.” His own plan would be universal suffrage with a plurality of votes to owners of property in proportion to the amount of it, and a system of election by degrees—parishes e.g. to elect an elector. “Some may,” he concludes, “perhaps think at the first glance that my reform is very democratical. I think that a more attentive mind will show that it is calculated to prevent in the most effectual way the inroads of excessive democracy. I can at least say that no one can dread more than myself a democratical government, chiefly because I am convinced it is the most warlike.”

Such were the utterances of an advanced Liberal in the first half of this century. Was I far wrong in saying that Whately’s Liberalism would have made very good modern Conservatism?