Rhodes Scholars and other foreigners in Oxford might not understand even a word of the ceremonies that occurred at the beginning and end of their years in Oxford. Matriculation and graduation occurred in Christopher Wren's magnificent Sheldonian Theatre. Most of the words uttered by the university's chancellor and other dignitaries were in Latin. Newly arrived Americans would also discover that their class year was determined by the date when they entered Oxford not when they graduated.6
Tradition reigned supreme. A story regarding New College is probably apocryphal yet accurately illustrates the Oxford state of mind. Sometime in the nineteenth century it was discovered that the beams in the roof above the dining hall were full of beetles and rotten. The college council despaired at finding old oak trees that would provide replacements of a suitable caliber. One of the younger fellows ventured to suggest that the college might own forests containing the right kind of trees. (Like several of its counterparts, New College possessed vast tracts of land throughout the country.) College officials contacted their chief forester, who had not visited Oxford for many years. His response went something like, “Well, sirs, we was wonderin' when you'd be askin'.” He then revealed that some years after the college was founded in the fourteenth century a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the college hall. For over five hundred years the chief foresters had tended the grove, awaiting word that new beams were needed.
Early in the twentieth century many hallowed customs were still retained in full force. At Magdalen whenever a don passed away the college slaughtered one of its deer and served it for dinner. Magdalen was the center of each year's May Morning celebrations, when at 6:00 a.m. on the first of May choristers sang from the top of the college tower, to the delight of the throngs below. Every third year the Lord Mayor of Oxford inspected the medieval city wall that ran through New College; since the fourteenth century the college had been permitted to use the wall as part of its structure in return for keeping it in good repair. On the fourteenth of January in the first year of each century there was a ceremony called “All Souls Mallard.” The warden led a torch-lit procession through the grounds of All Souls, searching for a mallard which, supposedly, had been startled out of a drain when the college was being constructed. In the other ninety-nine years of each century the “Mallard Song” was sung at the college gaudy. Except for the bulldogs and the slaughter of deer, these customs and terms remain little changed today.
During its eight centuries of existence, the university had experienced its ups and downs. In the high and late Middle Ages, its philosophers, theologians, and jurists were the equal of any at the University of Paris or other renowned centers of scholarship on the continent. On the other hand, the eighteenth century marked a low point. Standards sank to abysmal depths, with many of the tutors paying more attention to the comfortable perquisites of life as an Oxford don than to maintaining high standards for themselves and their students. The future economist Adam Smith spent six years at Balliol in the 1740s. Only rarely did any tutor inquire about his activities, and so he spent most of his time reading whatever he chose. Once he was nearly expelled when someone discovered that he owned a book unfit for undergraduates: David Hume's A Treatise on Human Nature. His contemporary Edward Gibbon called his fourteen months at Magdalen College “the most idle and unprofitable” of his entire life.7 The nineteenth century, however, witnessed a revival. By 1900 on the whole Oxford was again equal or superior to the best institutions in the United States and on the continent.8
The list of its graduates was indeed impressive. Over the centuries they included Roger Bacon, Thomas Wolsey, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Donne, Thomas Hobbes, Robert Boyle, John Locke, Jonathan Swift, John Wesley, Samuel Johnson, Percy Bysse Shelley (who was expelled from University College in 1811 after publishing “The Necessity of Atheism”), John Henry Newman, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), T.E. Lawrence, Oscar Wilde, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Sixteen of the thirty-two men who had served as prime minister in the period from the 1720s to 1900 were Oxford graduates, and traditionally Oxford represented a majority of each prime minister's cabinet. From 1604 to 1950 the university also elected its own two members of Parliament. Given Oxford's preeminence in academe, government, and other fields, it is not surprising that when one began one's studies there one “went up.” An expelled student was “sent down.” The person who successfully graduated “went down.”
The value of an Oxford education both for the students and for the nation did not always go unquestioned. On the one hand, the statesman William Gladstone believed that “To call a man an Oxford man is to pay him the highest compliment that can be paid to a human being.” On the other, the writer Max Beerbohm admitted, “When I was growing up, I was an amiable, studious, and well-mannered youth. It was only Oxford that made me insufferable.”9 Because of the university's sometimes overblown sense of importance, George Bernard Shaw argued that Britain would be better off if both Oxford and Cambridge were razed.
Traditionally, Oxford was a sort of finishing school for the scions of noble or wealthy families. In college one would get a smattering of learning but also gain social polish and make valuable friends. The great majority of students thus were content to obtain a gentleman's “Second” or “Third.” Most of the “Firsts” were won by scholarship students. These were usually the bright, ambitious sons of lower-middle or working-class families. They had won any of the dozens of open scholarships offered by the colleges.
One additional feature that could not escape the notice of any visitor to Oxford was the utter masculinity of the place. The students, the dons, and even the housekeepers were male. This idiosyncrasy would not have puzzled most of the new arrivals, for many of the American colleges and universities from which they came, especially those along the eastern seaboard, were also male-only.
There were female students in Oxford. They were, however, “in” but not quite “of” the university. Between 1878 and 1893 five women's colleges had been founded. They were Lady Margaret Hall, Somerville College, St. Hugh's College, the Society of Oxford Home Students (later renamed St. Anne's College), and St. Hilda's College. These institutions existed in a kind of academic limbo. They were farther from the city center than their male counterparts. They were also poorer. Some of the twenty men's colleges, by contrast, owned tens of thousands of acres throughout the country plus entire blocks of real estate in Oxford and London. Women were permitted to attend most of the university lectures, and they could sit for the same examinations taken by their male counterparts. During these occasions, however, they sat apart, were carefully chaperoned, and could not speak to the men. Moreover, the university did not grant degrees to the women; they had to be content with diplomas granted by their colleges.10
Settling In
In October 1904 the first class of American Rhodes Scholars arrived in Oxford shortly before the start of Michaelmas term.11 Nearly all of them had sailed together from Boston in the S. S. Ivernia. This sailing party was the beginning of a tradition that would last nearly eighty years. In their days on board ship they would form strong bonds with each other. Many of these friendships would last not only through their Oxford years, but also through their careers.
On board the Ivernia the scholars found awaiting them a message sent by President Theodore Roosevelt. He offered his congratulations and also reminded them that they had an obligation to uphold the best traditions of American scholarship and culture.12 The nervousness that many of them already had about this new scholarly experiment was thus compounded by the knowledge that their government would be looking over their shoulders.
At sea the young men were objects of curiosity to their fellow passengers, who wanted to see these perfect specimens of American youth. After the first awkward day of trying to live up to their image, most of them resorted to beer and cards. One of the poker groups acquired the name Chianti Club, and it continued its regular sessions after arrival in Oxford.13
In 1904 and most years thereafter, the group was met at the Southampton or Liverpool docks by the Oxford Secretary, who then escorted them by train to Oxford. For nearly thirty years the Briton who greeted them as they disembarked from the ship was the avuncular Francis Wylie. After arrival at the Oxford train station he dispatched them by cab to the porters' lodges of their respective colleges. Frank Aydelotte (1905) later recounted how he and two