7. Simon Mayr’s ‘II fanatico per la musica’ (1798); Guiseppe Naldi was a fine bass but Mrs Elizabeth Billington (1768–1818) has been described as ‘the greatest singer England has ever produced’ whilst for Haydn she was ‘ein grosses Genie’ (Groves).
8. These three sons of the tenth Earl of Buchan were all well-known public figures at this time. The eleventh Earl (1742-1829) was much involved in the history and antiquities of Scotland; the Hon. Henry Erskine (1746-1817) was Lord Advocate for Scotland at the same time his brother Thomas (1750–1823) was Lord Chancellor during the ‘Ministry of All the Talents’ of 1806–07.
9. She had been a moderately successful actress, who was able to leave the stage when her son arranged for his pension (he had been Under Secretary of State for the previous five years) to be paid direct to her.
10. The Rothiemurchus forester.
11. In fact this was a common title of honour in Persia,
12. Former Prime Minister (‘Ministry of All the Talents’ 1806–07), he was installed on 14 December, 1809.
13. Jane Porter: The Scottish Chiefs—A Romance (five volumes, the first of many editions published in London 1810).
14. E.G.’S eldest child, born 1832.
15. Attributed to her father’s Scottish legal contemporary Lord Brougham.
16. A prominent M.P. advocate of reform. He seconded Colonel Wardle’s motion censuring the Duke of York and at this point of his career had been sent to the Tower for breach of privilege.
17. In fact he chose to leave the Tower by water thus leaving the mob of his supporters without their idol; this helps to explain the riot.
18. Heart of Midlothian, ch. vii.
19. The eponymous hero of Smollet’s novel (1771) was a coach boy.
20. John Braham (‘a beast of an actor but an angel of a singer’ according to Sir Walter Scott) was well-known but Angelica Catalani (1780–1849), despite ‘Very little formal musical instruction’, was a huge London success 1806–14.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1810–1811
IT was a very great trial, this arrangement, to have to give up the highlands, to be still separated, we who were all so happy together, and whose hearts were in Rothiemurchus. Many a passion of tears our little patchwork room witnessed for the first week. Afterwards our young spirits revived and we set ourselves to work in earnest to be busy and happy under our new circumstances.
University College is said to be the most ancient of all the Colleges in Oxford, as may be supposed from King Alfred getting the credit of being its founder. The two quadrangles which form the principal part of the Edifice occupy a considerable space in the High Street. Each quadrangle is entered through large arched gateways approached by flights of broad steps.1 The line of building separating the two quadrangles extends sufficiently behind to separate the Master’s gardens from the Fellows’. It is appropriated to the kitchen offices principally. My Uncle’s Lodgings forming a larger house than he required, he let some of the upper rooms of the side looking to the Street, retaining on the ground floor a dining room, drawing room and pantry, two bedrooms, with two dressing closets above. The upper storey he let. The other side, the wedge, contained on the ground floor the hall and staircase, back passage and back staircase, the study, and through the study the Library, a very long room filled with old dusty books in cases all round, reaching from the ceiling to the floor; most of these books were unreadable, being a collection of divinity from very ancient times, belonging to the College, and not of late much added to. In this room there was no furniture, neither curtains, nor carpet, nor fireplace; but three chairs, one table, and a pianoforte were put into it for us, and this was our Schoolroom. Through this Library was a small room with a fireplace, used by my Uncle to heat his irons for his poker pictures. This little room opened into a very pretty garden, where our happiest hours were spent. Over this suite were the private apartments of my Uncle and Aunt, and our patchwork room over the study. Above again were the servants’ rooms, storerooms and lumber rooms. The kitchens were all underground. It was all very nice, except that long melancholy Library, which was always like a prison to us; there was no view from the windows, no sun till quite late in the day, not an object to distract our attention from our business. A judicious arrangement perhaps; we lost no time there certainly.
Mr Vickery, the Organist of Magdalen, taught us Musick, he was clever, but perfectly mad; half his lesson he spent in chattering, the other half in dancing. So except my Aunt came in, or he thought she was coming, we got very little instruction from him. Jane made no progress at all, I not much, but I don’t think I lost what I had formerly learned, because I was so fond of playing that I kept myself up for my own pleasure, spending at least two hours a day at the pianoforte. Our writing master was an elderly man of the name of Vincent, much in the same style as our old friend Mr Thompson; he, however, taught nothing beyond writing and arithmetick and the mending of pens, which last accomplishment we found about as useful an an as any of the many we learned. A young Mr Neale taught us drawing remarkably well; he drew before us during the lesson, and left us to copy what we had seen him do, an excellent plan. Our Aunt was so kind as to keep us up in History, Geography, French, etc., and our Uncle, with his refined tastes, his many accomplishments, was of the utmost use to us in fixing our attention on wiser things than had hitherto chiefly employed us. For one thing, he opened to us what had been till then a sealed book—the new testament. He taught us to make its precepts our rule of life, shewed us that part of our Saviour’s mission here on earth was to be to us an example, and he explained the catechism so clearly that we, who had always just learned it by rote every Sunday most grudgingly, now took pleasure in repeating what we comprehended and found was to be of use. My little artifices and equivocations were never passed by him, but they were so kindly checked, so reproved as a duty, that I soon disliked to pain him by employing them. Neither did I find such subterfuges necessary. No one punished me for accidental faults, nor was a harsh word ever addressed to me, I therefore insensibly lost the bad habits given by our nursery miseries. Truly this visit to Oxford was one of the fortunate chances of my life.
My uncle was invariably good to me, but Jane was his favourite, honest, natural, truthful Jane. Her love of reading, drawing, gardening and poetry, kept them constantly together, whilst I was more my Aunt’s companion. Still, we were often dull, for they were a good deal out at dinner with the other Heads of Houses, and we had then long evenings alone in the Study, Anne popping up every now and then to look after us. We were allowed to make ourselves tea, however, and we had tea to breakfast, and butter upon our bread, and a small glass of good ale—College home brewed ale—at dinner. How fat we got. Our regular walk was our only grievance. Neither my Aunt nor Anne would let us run, it was not considered correct to run in Oxford, not even in the parks or the Christ Church meadows; we were to move sedately on, arm in arm, for our arms were not allowed to fall naturally. They were placed by my Aunt in what she called a graceful position, and so they were to remain, and when we remonstrated and said Mama had never stiffened us up so, we were told that our Mother was by no means a model of elegance, a son of heresy in our ears, we being persuaded she was as near perfection as mortal woman could be as far at least as appearance went. We were quite shocked to find her not appreciated. How we skipt upstairs for our bonnets when my Uncle proposed to walk out with us. No graceful arm in arm for him. The moment we were out of the town, away we raced just as we liked, off to Joe Pullen’s tree, or along the London road, nay round the Christ Church meadows. If old Anne could but have seen us. We told her of our doings though, which was some satisfaction. Sometimes our walks with him were quieter. He took us into the different Colleges, to shew us the hall of one, the stained glass windows of another, the Chapel of a third. He told us the histories of the founders, with the dates of their times, and he gave us short sketches of the manners of those days, adverting to the events then passing, the advance of some arts since, the point at which a certain
style of architecture, for instance, had stopt. We went over the Bodleian and the Radcliffe Libraries, and to the Museum and the Theatre! and the Schools, and very often we returned to the chapel window at New College, and the picture over the Communion table at Magdalen—Christ bearing the Cross—supposed to be Spanish, and perhaps by Velasquez; it had been taken in a ship that had sailed from a port in Spain.2 Sometimes he made us write little essays on different subjects in prose, and even try to rhyme, beginning with bouts-rimés, at which my Aunt beat us all. I cannot say that my versifying ever did him or me much credit, I never could confine either ideas or expressions in metrical bondage, but I poetised capitally in prose, while Jane strung off couplets by the hundred with very little trouble beyond writing them down.
My Uncle could versify by the hour. There was an horrifying fragment in our ‘Elegant Extracts’ which we used to read over for ever with great delight—the ride of a certain Sir Bertram, his arrival at an enchanted Castle, with the beginning of fearful adventures there, cut short just at the exciting moment. This in the course of a forenoon he made an ancient Ballad of, in order to amuse us, in this style:—
Sir Bertram did his steed bestride
And turned towards the Wold
In hopes o’er those wild moors to ride
Before the curfew tolled.
He had an immensity of fun in him besides this readiness, and was the authour of many satirical pleasantries and political squibs called forth by the events of the day, some of which found their way into the newspapers, as—
Sir Arthur, Sir Arthur, Sir Hew and Sir Harry
Sailed boldly from England to Spain,
But not liking there long to tarry,
They wisely sailed all back again.
Sir Arthur was the Duke of Wellington! His second sailing did better. Then there was—
The City of Lisbon,
The gold that lay in the City of Lisbon.
which in our home had little coloured vignettes all down the page, representing the subject of each new announcement. ‘The Court of Enquiry,’ with little officers in regimentals seated all round a table; the ‘fraternal hug’ of the french ally to the poor overwhelmed Portuguese, etc. Never a letter almost went to the Doune without containing either in pen or pencil some clever allusion to the times. His caricatures were admirable, particularly of living characters, the likenesses were so perfect. Some of these he composed on the common playing cards, the hearts and diamonds being most humorously turned into faces, hands, furniture, etc. He began a series from Shakespeare, which are really fine as compositions. His graver style, whether in water colour, chalks, reeds, pencil or burned in, are considered to have shewn great genius, his many sketches from nature being particularly valuable, from their spirit and truthfulness. There were portfolios full of these in their ruder states, hundreds finished, framed, and dispersed among his friends. We had a great many at the Doune taken in Rothiemurchus, Dunkeld and the West Highlands. My Aunt’s little boudoir was hung with others. In his dining room were more; there were some at the Bodleian, and the altarpiece in his own College chapel—Christ blessing the bread—was of his own poker painting. In the Museum was a head, I think of Leicester; and while we were with him he was busy with a tiger the size of life, the colouring of the old oak panel and the various tints burned on it so perfectly suiting the tiger’s skin. Jane was his great assistant in this work, heating the irons for him in the little end room, and often burning portions of the picture herself. A print was taken from his water colour drawing of part of the High Street, in which his own College figures conspicuously. They are rare now, as he sold none. One was afterwards given to me, which we have framed and hung in our entrance hall.
Two facts struck me, young as I was, during our residence at Oxford; the ultra Tory politicks and the stupidity and frivolity of the society. The various Heads, with their respective wives, were extremely inferiour to my Uncle and Aunt. More than half of the Doctors of Divinity were of humble origin, the sons of small gentry or country clergy, or even of a lower grade; many of these, constant to the loves of their youth, brought ladies of inferiour manners to grace what appeared to them to be so dignified a station. It was not a good style. There was little talent and less polish and no sort of knowledge of the world, and yet the ignorance of this class was less offensive than the assumption of another, where a lady of high degree had fallen in love with her brother’s tutor and got him handsomely provided for in the church that she might excuse herself for marrying him. Of the lesser clergy there were young witty ones, odious—and young learned ones, bores—and elderly ones, pompous. All, of all grades, kind and hospitable. But the Christian pastor, humble and gentle, and considerate and self sacrificing, occupied with his duties, and filled with the ‘charity’ of his Master, had no representative, as far as I could see, among these dealers in old wines, rich dinners, fine china, and massive plate. The religion of Oxford appeared in those days to consist in honouring the King and his ministers, and in perpetually popping in and out of chapel. All the Saints’ days and all the eves of Saints’ days were kept holy. Every morning and every evening there were prayers in every College chapel, lengthened on Wednesdays and Fridays by the addition of the Litany. My Uncle attended the morning prayers regularly, Jane and I with him, all being roused by the strokes of a big hammer, beat on every staircase half an hour before by a scout. In the afternoons he frequently omitted this duty, as the hour, six o’clock, interfered with the dinner parties, the company at that time assembling about five.
The education was suited to the divinity. A sort of supervision was said to be kept over the young riotous community, and to a certain extent the Proctors of the University and the Deans of the different Colleges did see that no very open scandals were committed. There were rules that had in a general way to be obeyed, and there were Lectures which must be attended, but as for care to give high aims, provide refining amusements, give a worthy tone to the character of responsible beings, there was none ever even thought of. The very meaning of the word education did not appear to be in the very least understood. The College was a fit sequel to the School. The young men herded together, they lived in their rooms, or they lived out of them in the neighbouring villages, where many had comfortable establishments. Some liked study, attended the Lectures, and read up with their tutors, laughed at by others who preferred hunting, gaming, supper parties, etc. The Chapel going was felt to be an ‘uncommon bore,’ and was shirked as much as possible, little matter, as no good could possibly follow so vain a ceremony. All sorts of contrivances were resorted to, to enable the dissipated to remain out at night, to shield a culprit, deceive the dignitaries. It was a drive at random of a low and most thoughtless kind; the extravagance consequent on which often ruined parents who had sacrificed much to give a son the much prized University education. The only care the Heads appeared to take with regard to the young minds they were supposed to be placed where they were and paid well to help to form, was to keep the persons of the students at the greatest possible distance. They conversed with them never, invited them to their homes never, spoke or thought about them never. A perpetual bowing was their only intercourse; a bow of humble respect acknowledged by one of stiff condescension limited the intercourse of the old Heads and the young, generally speaking. Of course there were exceptional cases, and the Deans and the Tutors were on more familiar terms with the students, but quite in the Teacher and pupil style, very little of the anxious improver on the one side, and the eager for knowledge on the other. I do not know what encouragement was given to the Excelsior few, but I well remember the kind of punishment inflicted on the erring many, sufficient perhaps for the faults noticed. Too late out, not at Chapel, noise at Lecture—these delinquencies doomed the perpetrators to an ‘imposition.’ A certain number of pages from a classick authour transcribed, that was all, in a legible hand. A task that really was of some use, though no one would think it, for several decent young men belonging to the town made a livelihood by
writing them, at so much a page. There was a settled price, and when the clean looking leaves had been turned over by my Uncle, for it was into the study of the Head that these mockeries had to be delivered, my Aunt claimed them, as she found them invaluable for patch papers. Mr Rowley, the Dean, had drawn for her, with a great array of compasses, a small hexameter, which she had had executed in tin, and after this pattern she cut up all these papers, sitting between dinner and tea, while my Uncle finished his port wine.
Our breakfast hour was at nine o’clock; dinner was at four, except on company days, when it was half an hour later, and such dinners! The College cook dressed them. The markets were ransacked for luxuries, the rich contents of the cellar brought out. Port, sherry, and Madeira of vintages most prized some twenty years before. Beautiful plate, the best glass and china and table linen. Desserts of equal costliness. It was a great affair a dinner, sixteen the table held: big men in wide silk cassocks that would have stood alone, scarves besides, and bands; and one or two of the older ones in powdered wigs. The ladies were very fine, quite as particular about their fashions, and as expensive too, as the husbands were about the wines, very condescending in manner to one another as if each were a princess holding her court. Mr Moises used to say that the two little girls in white frocks were the only live creatures that looked real amongst them all. It was certainly an unnaturally constrained life that these people passed at Oxford. To us the dulness was intolerable; we were often oppressed by it even to tears, as our pillows and a large red mulberry tree in the garden could have testified, for to the garden we generally repaired to recover from these occasional fits of melancholy and to read over and over again our mother’s letters from the Doune. She had found a boat load of Altyre Cummings by the side of the river the day she reached home. The Lady Logie and Alexander had been up on a visit. All the old servants had asked so much after Jane and me. All the old people so regretted our absence. Never was such a season for fruit, the guignes superb, and William and little Mary on the ponies riding all over the country. What a contrast to our company dinners, our walks with Anne, the bare, dull Library, and our masters, and the little bit of garden where we tried to play.
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