A. Hamilton Gibbs

THE DON

Tutors—Their slackness—The real and the ideal tutor—Dr Newton on tutor’s fees—Dr Johnson’s recommendation of Bateman—Public lecturers—Terrae Filius and a Wadham man’s letter.

Just as the schoolmaster is considered the natural enemy of boys, so is the Don popularly credited with being the natural enemy of the Undergraduates. The originator of this wonderful theory is presumably the lady novelist who, with no deeper knowledge of Oxford than that obtained from a minute study of the coloured photographs in railway trains, has pictured the Don in her vivid imagination to be a crusty, inhuman, and gouty septuagenarian who, in the intervals of delivering abstruse lectures, passes his days in sending men down and otherwise suppressing all vitality and humanity.

Anything more completely ridiculous it would be impossible to imagine. Conceive a body of charming and delightful men, very kindly and sympathetic, always ready to go out of their way to help a man in financial or moral difficulties, cultured, intellectual, hard working, thorough sportsmen in the best sense of that much abused word, full of loyalty to their college and to the university, delighted by the athletic or scholastic triumphs of the men with whom they are in close contact—and then you do not obtain anything more than a true description of those men who do so much to uphold the honour of the university, and who are remembered with respect and even affection by the generations of Undergraduates who pass through their hands.The eighteenth-century Don, on the contrary, was a person altogether different. In the desire to bring out the light and shade of his personality I am frustrated by the superabundance of the latter and the minute quantity of the former. In dealing with the Georgian Don I have taken each species separately: the Tutor, the Lecturer, the Examiner, the Head of a college, and so forth.

It appears that the old-time fresher, having been admitted to a college, was at once recommended to a tutor whom he interviewed in his rooms. The Hoxton man, who came up with his mother and his dad, found himself called upon by his prospective tutor to sit down and make small work of several quarts of liquid refreshment to the healths of various “traitors.” Being somewhat flurried at this boisterous reception, the lad was assured that he did not come to the university to pray, and that in any case, he, the tutor, would look after him like a father. Of being called upon to do any work with him there was no whisper. Gibbon, on the other hand, on being placed under the tutorship of Dr Waldegrave, was desired to attend that gentleman’s rooms each morning from ten to eleven and read the Comedies of Terence. This he accordingly did, but with so little advantage to himself that, after a few weeks, he quietly dropped away and saw his tutor no more. To counterbalance the accusation of slackness against Dr Waldegrave, Gibbon described him as having been a “learned and pious man of a mild disposition, strict morals and abstemious life, who seldom mingled in the politics or jollity of the college.” This worthy man departed from the precincts of Magdalen, and Gibbon had nothing good to say for his successor. “The second tutor,” wrote Gibbon, “whose literary character did not command the respect of the college, well remembered that he had a salary to receive, and only forgot that he had a duty to perform.... Excepting one voluntary visit to his rooms during the titular months of his office, the tutor and pupil lived in the same college as strangers to each other.”

The vindicator of Magdalen leaped into the breach on behalf of the tutors against Gibbon, and gave a hundred reasons why Gibbon was in the wrong. But there are numberless other instances of utter laziness among that section of the Don world. Malmesbury, for instance, related in his usual cheery and optimistic manner, that his tutor, “an excellent and worthy man, according to the practice of all tutors at that moment, gave himself no concern about his pupils. I never saw him but during a fortnight, when I took it into my head to do trigonometry.” This witness matriculated at Merton thirteen years after Gibbon’s time.

Another example of bad tutorship may be quoted from William Fitzmaurice, second Earl of Shelburne, who went up in 1753. “At sixteen, I went to Christ Church, where I had again the misfortune to fall under a narrow-minded tutor.... He was not without learning, and certainly laid himself out to be serviceable to me in point of reading.... I came full of prejudices. My tutor added to those prejudices by connecting me with the anti-Westminsters, who were far from the most fashionable part of the college, and a small minority.”[24]

In the light of these adverse criticisms it is interesting to note the statutorial view as to the ideal tutor. According to Amhurst, who quoted statute (d), it was ordained that “no person shall be a tutor who has not taken a degree in some faculty, and is not (in the judgment in the head of the college or hall to which he belongs) a man of approv’d learning, probity and sincere religion.” But can these requirements be called sufficient if the hundreds of tutors against whom their pupils flung accusations of slackness, drunkenness, and other hobbies, all satisfied them?The Loiterer, evidently with this insufficent statute in mind, made some very intelligent remarks À propos of this question. “Scarce any office,” he wrote, “demands so many different requisites in those who would fill it properly, as that of a college Tutor, and in none perhaps is propriety of Choice so little attended to. The Tutor of a College goes off to a Living, dies of an Apoplexy, or is otherwise provided for; a Successor must be found; and as few who have better prospects chuse to undertake so disagreeable an office, the Society is sometimes under the necessity of appointing a person, who is no further qualified for it than by the possession of a little classical, or mathematical information. With this slender stock of knowledge, and without any acquaintance with the World or any insight into Characters, He enters on his office with more Zeal than Discretion, asserts his own opinions with arrogance and maintains them with obstinacy, calls Contradiction, Contumacy, and Reply, Pertness, and deals out his Jobations, Impositions, and Confinements, to every ill-fated Junior who is daring enough to oppose his sentiments, or doubt his opinions. The consequence of this is perfectly natural. He treats his pupils as Boys and they think him a Brute. From that moment all his power of doing good ceases; for we learn nothing from him, who has forfeited our confidence. Such is the Portrait of what Tutors too often are, might I be indulged in pointing out what they should be, very different would be the Character I should sketch. I would draw him modest in his disposition, mild in his temper, gentle and insinuating in his address; scarce less a man of the world than a man of letters. His Classic Knowledge (though far above mediocrity) should be the least of his acquirements; General Knowledge should be his forte, and the application of it to general purposes his aim. He should not only improve those under his care in his publick lectures, but should endeavour at least to direct them in their private studies; he should encourage them to read, and should teach them to read with taste.”

At this point The Loiterer’s friend interrupted and insisted that no man was ever born to be a tutor if tutors must possess all the attributes contained in that description. Upon this The Loiterer said that he knew only one man in the entire university who came up to the standard, and that man was his own tutor.

Gibbon made a scornful allusion to the salary of tutors. On this subject Dr Newton penned a multitude of indignant sheets because a certain Undergraduate, named Joseph Somaster, demanded permission to leave Hart Hall and transfer himself to Balliol for the reason that he had an offer of obtaining a tutor there who required no fees. With regard therefore to tutors’ fees, “it may be observed,” wrote the reverend Doctor, “that the University doth allow Tutors to Receive a consideration for their care of the Youth entrusted to them; that, as this is very Reasonable in itself, so hath it ever been the Practice of Tutors to Receive a Consideration for such their care; that the consideration they have received, not being limited by any Statute, hath varied, and is, at this day, different in different Houses of Education within the University; that the tutor’s demand being known, and not objected to before a Scholar is enter’d under his care, the same, upon entrance, becomes the consideration that is agreed to be paid for his care. That the Labourer is worthy of his Hire; that some Hire is both a better Encouragement to a Tutor, and a greater obligation upon him to take a due care, than no Hire; that the greatest Hire, of which any tutor in the University is, at this day thought worthy, compar’d with the Expence he hath been at, and the Pains he hath taken, and the Years he hath spent in order to Qualifie himself for this trust, and also, with the further Labour and Time he must employ in discharging it faithfully, is very small. That unless Learning be the very lowest of all attainments, and the Education of Youth the very lowest of all Professions, Thirty Shillings a Quarter, for near three times as many Lectures, is not so extravagant a demand, as that he who pays it, should do it with an unwilling hand. Much less that any one, who hath Himself been a Tutor, and who hath experienc’d a faithful Tutor’s trouble and anxiety, should think it too much for any of his Fellow-Labourers in the same Vocation, although their circumstances should be so affluent that they need not any reward, or their Friendship so particular that they do not desire it.”[25]

In the time of Dr Johnson the college tutors lectured in Hall as well as in their own rooms, and, in addition, they set weekly themes for composition—for the non-performance of which the fine was half a crown. The day for giving in these themes was Saturday. George Whitefield, though only a poor starveling servitor with scarce a penny to bless himself with, was twice fined by his tutor because he failed to compose his theme.

Christopher Wordsworth in his book on the universities in the eighteenth centuries made it clear that when Dr Johnson was at Pembroke in 1728, “Undergraduates generally depended entirely upon the Tutor to guide all their reading. His first tutor Jordon was like a father to his pupils, but he was intellectually incompetent for his important position. For this reason Johnson recommended his old schoolfellow Taylor to go to Christ Church on account of the excellent lectures of Bateman then tutor there.” In Johnson’s own words in reference to Mr Jordon, “He was a very worthy man, but a heavy man, and I did not profit much by his instructions. Indeed, I did not attend him much. The first day after I came to college, I waited upon him, and then staid away four. On the sixth, Mr Jordon asked me why I had not attended. I answered, I had been sliding in Christchurch meadow. And this I said with as much non-chalance as I am now talking to you. I had no notion that I was wrong or irreverent to my tutor.” To this self accusation Boswell replied, “That, Sir, was great fortitude of mind!” “No, Sir,” snapped Johnson, “stark insensibility.”[26]

It is unnecessary to arraign further damning evidence against the Georgian tutor. He stands convicted on the cases which I have related. Were I called upon indeed to summon other witnesses for the prosecution, I have but to turn to any eighteenth-century authority. No one has a word to say in his favour. By every one he is pronounced to be an idle, self-indulgent, dishonest, utterly unintellectual creature, conspicuously lacking in “learning, probity, and sincere religion.”

The next division of the genus Don is the public lecturer, in regard to whom there are, so Amhurst informed us, a number of statutes concerning the public lecturers in all faculties: appointing, with the utmost exactness, where they shall read, when they shall read, what they shall read, how they shall read, and to whom they shall read. “All these (as I have frequently observed) are almost totally neglected; out of twenty public lectures, not above three or four being observed at all, and they not statutably observed: for the auditors, who belong to the same college with the lecturer in any faculty, do not wait upon him to the school, where he reads, and back again, as they ought to do; so far from it, that not one in ten goes to hear these lectures, nor do they (who do attend) take down what they hear in writing; neither do they (I believe) diligently read over the same author at home, which the public professor undertook to explain; nor are persons punished (as the statutes require) for any of these omissions.” Even if it be admitted that three or four is an exaggeratedly low estimate of the number of these lectures, and that the “auditors” are just as lazy as the men who deliver them, yet it is not to be wondered at that the Undergraduates did not read over the authors, or write down what they heard. All the lectures were delivered by Dons who knew next to nothing about their subject, and they were in consequence very tedious and worthless affairs.

The lectureships were bestowed “upon such as are utterly and notoriously ignorant of them, and never made them their study in their lives. They are given away, as pensions and sinecures, to any body that can make a good interest for them, without any respect to his abilities or character in general, or to what faculty in particular he has apply’d his mind. I have known a profligate debauchee chosen professor of moral philosophy; and a fellow, who never look’d upon the stars soberly in his life, professor of astronomy; we have had history professors, who never read anything to qualify them for it, but Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant-killer, Don Belicanis of Greece, and such like valuable records; we have had likewise numberless professors of Greek, Hebrew and Arabick, who scarce understood their mother tongue; and, not long ago, a famous gamester and stock-jobber was elected to M—g—t, professor of divinity; so great it seems is the analogy between dusting of cushions, and shaking of elbows, or between squand’ring away of estates, and saving of souls!”

A South View of the Observatory at Oxford.

Terrae Filius was moved to the above denunciations and reminiscences of lecturers, who, he said, were elected perhaps on the principle that “he can do no mischief; ergo, he shall be our man,” by the receipt of a letter from a Wadham man who recounted his own personal experiences of lecturers and their ways. It runs thus:—

In the face of personal experience of this kind how is it possible to believe that to obtain a degree was anything but a question of independent work or the judicious administration of “pourboires”? To attend at the right hour for a lecture which was never read, to be fined for non-attendance, and finally to have great difficulty in persuading the authorities to sign the necessary dispensation is a Gilbertian absurdity. No other instance more striking than this letter can be found in all the eighteenth-century chronicles of the attitude of Dons towards the Undergraduates in their charge. Once certain of their annual stipend their duties went by the board; and the Dons, whether lecturers or Heads of colleges, whether they knew each other personally or not, banded together to ensure their own safety, and signed to a lie in regard to the delivering of lectures with the utmost unconcern.