John Viriamu Jones and other Oxford memories

Front matter

THE LIBRARY

OF

LOS ANGELES

Preface

IT is not an easy task to write the story of the chief interests and activities of forty years ago — of life as it was then lived. The account first written must be sifted and re-sifted and examined from every point of view. It should be laid aside for long periods and looked at again with vision and imagination freshened and restored. Statements of fact which seem to the writer to be beyond suspicion or doubt must still be confirmed by reference to every available source of information. Above all, if the record is to be of value, its preparation requires the combination and the careful comparison of the impressions and memories of many men ; requires too, if that most difficult of attainments, accuracy, is to be approached, the searching and critical inspection of many eyes. It is a great pleasure, as well as a duty, gratefully to acknowledge all the kindness which has helped me to reach the level of accuracysuch as it is — to be found in the following pages.

The whole or nearly the whole of the proofs or manuscript has been read by four kind friends- Mrs. E. M. Barry, Dr. A. G. Vernon Harcourt, F.R.S., the Rev. R. D. Pierpoint, and Mr. Roland Trimen, F.R.S. I thank them warmly for help in the correction of errors and for other improvements which their critical vi Preface

experience has led them to suggest. To Mr. Trimen I am also indebted for the amusing reminiscence of Willemoes-Suhm in the first chapter.

It is impossible adequately to acknowledge all that I owe to Viriamu's sister, Mrs. S. Home. How large a part of the book is really hers will be inferred by the reader who turns over the pages of the first five chapters, especially those of I and IV, or consults the references under Mrs. Home's name in the Index. But this is by no means all ; for her memories of the past have inspired and stimulated mine, even as mine, I am glad to know, have brought fresh gleams of light to her. The whole work has been submitted to Mrs. Home, every difficulty discussed with her, and throughout I have been helped and encouraged by her sure literary instinct and unfailing sympathy.

Mr. S. Home has also taken a warm interest in the work and has written for it the history of the youth of Thomas Jones, Viriamu's father, at the beginning of Chapter I, together with the account of the Swansea Literary Society in Chapter IV. The recovery of the manuscript of the essay on ' Ulalume ' is also due to Mr. Home's kind efforts.

The manuscript and proof-sheets have been read by Viriamu's brothers — Sir David Brynmor-Jones, K.C., M.P., and Mr. Leif Jones, M.P., who have made many valuable suggestions. Furthermore, Sir David has himself written the account of Viriamu's labours on behalf of Welsh education incorporated in Chapter V, and has introduced modifications into the sketch of his father's

Preface vii

youth on pages 5-7, changes which emphasize the fact that Thomas Jones the Poet-Preacher, like so many other illustrious Welshmen, came from rural Wales and from intimate association with the life of the farm.

Mrs. Viriamu Jones has afforded me valuable information on many points, and several important links were recovered from correspondence and other papers most kindly lent to me b}' her.

I venture to hope that Viriamu's youth and the scene of Oxford life in the Seventies and earliest Eighties, which forms its setting, have been truthfully pictured. If only the representation be true, I have gained the beginning and the end of my desire. The fresh and vivid beauty of youth is all its own. It speaks for itself and is not to be heightened by literary subtlety or elaborate embellishment.

The first half of the book has been submitted to four of Viriamu's most intimate Balliol friends, Professor C. H. Firth, Professor W. P. Ker, Sir Harry Reichel, and Professor C. E. Vaughan, and all these men of trained and critical judgement have encouraged me to hope that the pages give a true picture of the life they knew so well. Not only have they afforded me the greatest pleasure and encouragement by their kindly sympathy, but they have also suggested many improvements and enabled me to add many memories.

I have furthermore been encouraged by the sympathy of two other Balliol men who have read the first five chapters, Mr. A. L. Smith who took his M.A., and Mr. P. E. Matheson who entered the College, in 1877— Viriamu's second year. These chapters have also been viii Preface

kindly read by Mrs. Matheson, who knew Viriamu well in the Cardiff period of his life.

I cannot sufficiently express my thanks to Sir Isambard Owen for the admirable account of the absolutely essential part taken by Viriamu in the foundation, and in guidance during the critical earliest years, of the University of Wales. My only regret is that it was impossible to introduce this important episode in the history of Welsh education in its proper place in the volume, instead of being compelled to print it as one of the Appendices (III).

The Council of the Royal Society kindly allowed me to reprint from the Year-Book the late Sir William Muggins's brief sketch of Viriamu's life. Messrs. Macmillan permitted the reproduction in Chapter X of two articles contributed by the author to Nature.

In the chapters on the Union I have received much kind help from men who took part in the debates and the administration of the Society in the Seventies — from Mr. A. A. Baumann, Rev. F. R. Burrows, Lord Curzon, Mr. M. H. Gould, and Lord Milner. Dr. Dixey also kindly recalled several incidents recorded in these chapters, as well as that forming the subject of Appendix IV. In my frequent visits for the purpose of consulting the Minute-books I have always received the most courteous assistance from Mr. W. Gill, the Steward of the Society, and in many visits to the Library from the Library clerk.

*

The account of the late Professor Rolleston has been submitted to his son Dr. H. D. Rolleston, his senior

Preface ix

demonstrator Dr. W. Hatchett Jackson, the Radcliffe Librarian, and his old friend Dr. A. G. Vernon Harcourt, F.R.S. Many changes and additions have been made in consequence of the kind suggestions which were received.

On special points which arose in the course of the work I have appealed to my friends Mr. F. Madan and Mr. R. L. Poole. Mrs. Margaret L. Woods has read the proofs of Appendix II on the 'Signal-elm' in ' Thyrsis ' and has expressed her full agreement with the conclusion arrived at therein. Other generous assistance is acknowledged in the text.

The able and sympathetic assistance that has been so freely rendered must not be allowed to diminish my responsibility in the smallest degree. This I share with none, but claim the whole of it for any and every detail that the reader may feel inclined to criticize.

In these days when books are so often printed on what may be described as fine sawdust, and their illustrations upon a surface of china clay, the author who desires to use real paper is likely to have a hard time. My task in securing good material has been made easy by the skilled advice of Mr. Horace Hart, Controller of the Oxford University Press, upon whom I have also relied in deciding all questions that arose concerning the type. From him and those members of the staff of the Oxford Press with whom I have been brought into contact, I have always received the most courteous x Preface

consideration — so much so indeed that the printing of the book has not been a troublesome piece of work but a pleasant one. Messrs. Witherby have shown in the illustrations that it is quite possible to print satisfactorily from half-tone blocks on a smooth surface of true paper, a surface without the glaring polish of the heavy clay-loaded material— miscalled 'art' paper — that is ordinarily employed.

The binding of the book has been chosen in honour of the beloved native land to which Viriamu gave the years of his mature and ripened experience ; in honour, too, of that dear home of my youth, the College within whose walls I fell with a glad surprise into the happy dream of Oxford life. For the colours of both Jesus College and the beautiful land which it represents in Oxford are green and white — symbolic of youth and of Spring. And the spirit of youth and of Spring has come back to me from the past as I have been writing. May the reader feel the bright presence that has inspired the work, and will live on, the cheering companion of other work in other days. If the hope be vain I know only too well where the cause of failure lies. It is in him who has tried but failed to interpret all the beauty and the charm that have been brought to him on the wings of memory.

EDWARD B. POULTON.

OXFORD, Jan. i, 1911.

Contents

PAGE

JOHN VIRIAMU JONES. CHAPTERS I— V

SLIGHT SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOHN VIRIAMU JONES. By the late Sir William Huggins, P.R.S., O.M., K.C.B., D.C.L., LL.D 3

Chapter I. John Viriamu Jones. Swansea, Read- Ing, London : 1856-1876 ... 5

III. OXFORD LIFE (continued). ... 60

IV. LITERARY INTERESTS AND ENDEAVOURS:

1876-1881 85

VI. MEMORIES OF THE UNION IN THE SEVEN- TIES . 135

VII. MEMORIES OF THE UNION IN THE SEVEN- TIES. PERSONAL EXPERIENCES . . 167

VIII. GEORGE ROLLESTON, LINACRE PROFESSOR OF HUMAN AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY AT OXFORD, 1860- 1881 183

IX. MANY MEMORIES 221

X. OXFORD REFORM AND THE BRITISH EX- AMINATION SYSTEM .... 257 xii Contents

PAGE

APPENDIX I. SOME BALLIOL MEN IN RESIDENCE WITH

II. THE 'SIGNAL-ELM' IN 'TuvRsis* . . 291

III. JOHN VIRIAMU JONES AND THE UNIVER-

SITY or WALES. By Sir Isambard Owen, D.C.L., M.D., Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol . . . 302

IV. AN ARTICLE IN 'VANITY FAIR' AND ITS

SEQUEL IN ' PRIVATE BUSINESS ' AT THE UNION ON FEB. 25, 1875 . . . 313

V. THE LIFE-HISTORY OF THE LIVER-FLUKE,

THE CAUSE OF ' ROT ' IN SHEEP . . 315

INDEX 323

ILLUSTRATIONS

John Viriamu Jones : September 1890. From an untouched negative by Norman May & Co., Limited ...... Frontispiece

' The Ten St. Giles' ' : Summer Term, 1880 . Facing p. 73

The Standing Committee of the Union : Lent

Term, 1879 Facing p. 167

George Rolleston. From a drawing by W. E.

Miller, 1877 Facing p. 183

The making of the Ruskin Road at North Hinksey: Summer of 1874. From a photograph by Messrs. H. W. Taunt & Co., Oxford Facing p. 246

CHAPTERS I-V JOHN VIRIAMU JONES

THE DEAREST OF ALL THE DEAR FRIENDS GIVEN TO ME BY OXFORD

As sometimes in a dead man's face, To those that watch it more and more, A likeness, hardly seen before,

Comes out — to some one of his race :

So, dearest, now thy brows are cold, I see thee what thou art, and know Thy likeness to the wise below,

Thy kindred with the great of old.

A SLIGHT SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOHN VIRIAMU JONES

BY THE LATE SIR WILLIAM HUGGINS, P.R.S., O.M., K.C.B., D.C.L., LL.D. From The President's Anniversary Address read to the Royal Society of London, on St. Andrew's Day, Nov. 30, 1901.

ONCE again the Fates cut the thread of a life prematurely, and a man great in promise and great in his power of inspiring others has fallen. Viriamu Jones, Principal of the University College of South Wales, possessed of great natural powers, a man of high ideals, charming in his personality, inheriting much grace of diction, almost irresistible in his persuasiveness, in a true sense lived a long life, though he died at the early age of forty-five. His successes began early; at sixteen he won a scholarship in Geology 1 ; prizes, medals, and other scholarships followed during his studentship at University College, London ; and at nineteen he took his degree with first-class honours. At Oxford, having obtained high honours in mathematics, and in the Natural Science School, he was elected Principal and Professor of Mathematics and Physics in Firth College, Sheffield. Two years later, at the early age of twenty-seven, he was chosen, over many older candidates, to the responsible post of the First Principalship of the University College of South Wales. Deep, as it may well be, is the gratitude of the College and of Wales to their first principal. Chiefly through his efforts and power of persuasion, £70,000

1 This statement is not quite correct. For an account of his London career see pp. 26-9 of the present work.

B2 for the building of the new College, as well as a free site, were obtained.

His scientific work was mainly in electrical science, particularly in connection with Electrical Standards. In 1897 he worked out a simplification of his former methods and a more general solution of the problem discussed by him in 1888 of the mutual induction of a circle and a coaxial helix. The results are contained in a paper read before the Society in that year. He was a man of wide sympathies ; he occupied many of his hours of relaxation from scientific work in studying the poetry of Robert Browning, who had been, at one time, an attentive listener in his father's congregation. His father was a man of rare gifts and eloquence, who was known as the Poet- Preacher of Wales. — Year-Book of the Royal Society, 1902, pp. 188, 189.

CHAPTER I

JOHN VIRIAMU JONES SWANSEA, READING, LONDON : 1856-1876

JOHN VIRIAMU JONES was born at Pentrepoeth, near Swansea, January 2, 1856. He was named after John Williams of Erromango, ' Viriamu ' being the native attempt to pronounce the missionary's name. By his family and most intimate friends he was called 'Vir', pronounced 'Vere'. His Balliol friends spoke of him as 'J.V.' He was the third child and second son of the Rev. Thomas Jones, known as the ' Poet- Preacher' of Wales, a man whose wonderful life— unfortunately still unwritten l — would even now, nearly thirty years after his death, be received with warmth and enthusiasm, especially in his beloved native land.

Thomas Jones was born at Rhayader, July 17, 1819, the son of Evan Jones of that little town, a commercial traveller in the woollen trade, himself the son of Griffith Jones, a tenant-farmer of Cae-newydd near Rhayader, who came of a yeoman family which had been settled for a long time at Llandderw in Radnorshire.

Mr. S. Home has kindly written the following brief history of the youth of Thomas Jones :—

His own account, as given to his daughter [Mrs. Home] was that, when he was a very little boy, his grandfather took him one morning to the top of a hill at Rhayader, and solemnly prayed for him — that he might grow up to

1 A short account will be found in the Diet, of Nat. Biog., and a brief biographical sketch was published by his widow in the introductory pages of Lyric Thoughts of the late Thomas Jones, the Poet- Preacher, London, 1886.

be a good man and always do God's will to the best of his ability. Then he told him that nothing else in the world was worth striving for, oneness with the Divine Spirit being the great secret of life. The impression thus made upon the imaginative responsive boy was ineffaceable : it marked an epoch which he ever loved to recall.

Both his parents died when he was very young, and he was then brought up by his grandfather. He attended a school at Rhayader till he was over twelve when he was apprenticed to and went to reside with Mr. Winstone, a cloth-weaver at Llanwrtyd. Alone for the first time with utter strangers, he sat down on the ground in the sad, still twilight and, in his own words, ' wept his heart out.' Then, outworn with grief, he lifted his eyes to the encircling mountains, and feltsuddenly soothed by the thought that some day he might climb over them and be free.

A few years later, having spent his Sundays at the Welsh Chapel and Sunday School, and read books given to him by the minister, he left his beloved hills and tramped to Llanelly, then as now a centre of Welsh industry. Here he supported himself for two years as a collier, and spent nearly all his earnings in buying books. He was a great reader and already ambitious of qualifying himself for the ministry.

His oratorical gifts impelled him sometimes to hazard a dinner-hour address to his fellow-workmen. On one of these occasions he was interrupted by jeers, whereupon the preacher descended from his rostrum, and challenged the offender to fight, the result being to ensure a respectful hearing for the future.

He attracted the attention of the Rev. David Rees of Capel Als, Llanelly, one of the leading Independent Ministers of South Wales, under whose guidance a small private seminary for the training of students for the ministry was carried on. Befriended by Mr. Rees he was received as a student into this institution in 1840, and after four years' instruction, during which in

1856-76] Thomas Jones, the Poet-Preacher 7

due course he began itinerant preaching in the districts round Llanelly, he was ordained minister of Bryn Chapel in that town in 1844.

The great orator, whose youth has been sketched in the preceding paragraphs, was ordained as an Independent minister at the age of twenty-five, became Chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales (1871-2), and during the years of his London pastorate (1858-69) made Bedford Chapel (1861-9) a centre of spiritual and intellectual life.

Robert Browning, himself a member of the congregation, wrote an Introduction to a volume of the Poet- Preacher's sermons, published after his death.1 I quote from it the following impressions of the great poet and thinker: —

I should think it impossible that such an outpour of impetuous eloquence could lie quietly condensed by the limitations of the ordinarily accepted sermon — its regular beginning, middle, and end. Indeed, as often as not, when the scheme of the projected discourse had been stated with due precision, its merely introductory portion would in delivery not merely grow alive but expand with ever fresh and fresh accretions of fact and fancy, old analogy and modern instance, till the orator (as those gone-by divines have it) sermocinando ultra clepsydram, 1 would exceed his hour-glass ', to the dissatisfaction of nobody. Yet I was told at the time that this manager of fluent English — copious, varied, wanting in neither imagery nor colour — had acquired when adult such mastery over an absolutely foreign language. Some of the incitements to discursiveness might arise from a facile promptitude in finding illustrations of whatever

1 The Divine Order and other Sermons. Edited by Brynmor Jones, 1884.

was the subject under treatment in occurrences of the actual day and hour, political or social. I remember that Thackeray's funeral, with circumstances attending it that had been mentioned in a weekly paper issued the evening before, was made to exemplify some point of doctrine which it very profitably involved and absorbed altogether. This much is said in order to prepare myself rather than the reader for a possible disappointment ; the matter, the graver substratum of the sermon, will undoubtedly remain for judgment, and may fearlessly accept it ; but the bright and glancing surface manner, the thorough earnestness, a sensibility quivering through that rich and flexible voice, and an illumination of intellect in every expressive feature — these must needs be taken on trust; and I should be hardly faithful to mine if I hesitated so far to bear witness. But it was not eloquence alone which attracted you to Bedford Chapel; the liberal humanity of the religionist to be heard there acknowledged an advocate wherever his quick sense could detect one, however unconscious that his sayings might be pressed into the service ; and Tennyson, with Matthew Arnold, Ruskin, and Carlyle, would find themselves claimed as the most energetic of helpers when they least expected it. Indeed, it was a fancy of mine that, in certain respects and under certain moods, a younger Carlyle might, sharing the same convictions, have spoken so, even have looked so ; but the clear-cut Celtic features, the lips compressed as with the retention of a discovered prize in thought or feeling, the triumph of the eyes, brimful of conviction and confidence — these, no less than the fervency of faith and hope, were the orator's own.

The following account kindly written for me by Mrs. S. Home, Vir's sister, clearly shows that the Poet-Preacher's first wife was a remarkable woman, and that her six children were likely to be the inheritors

1856-76] Viriamu's mother 9

of power from both parents, and to be swayed by the powerful influence of both : —

My mother, Jane Jones, was born at Dowlais, a village near Merthyr, in the year 1822. I know nothing of her mother's family except that they were old inhabitants of Dowlais, that her mother married, at a very early age, a son of John Jones of Morriston, and that, a month before her child was born, her youthful husband met with a fatal accident when sliding on an ice-covered pond. When the baby came, her husband's brother, David Jones, went to her, and took her, when she was fit to travel, to his home at Morriston, near Swansea, where he and his wife lived with his father. After two years the young widow married again an Independent minister named Roberts, who had a chapel at Dowlais. He was a handsome, able, and kindly man. I can recall him as a very old man, upright in carriage, with piercing eyes which twinkled humorously.

By this time the child was so endeared to her grandfather and uncle that they begged to keep her altogether, and it was arranged for the little Jane to be her uncle's adopted daughter, to be taught to call him 'father' and be his entirely.

In due course her mother gave birth to six children, but always kept in touch with the eldest daughter, who visited the home at Dowlais from time to time, so that my mother felt quite one of them, and the word ' halfsister' never came in. She was made to feel inevitably of more consequence in their little world ; for her 'father' at Morriston was well off, giving her the best education which could be had, and showering nice clothes upon his idol and granting her every whim. Her grandfather died when she was about ten, and she missed her playfellow from the chimney-corner, and wept over the empty chair. She grew up to be a selfreliant young girl, serious and thoughtful ; and managed the home with ability and tact, good temper and kindliness. She gradually became the leading spirit in Libanus Chapel (Independent denomination), where her 'father' was an elder of the church, and she mothered the Sunday School children, and advised the mothers, who came to consult her about their upbringing.

She was sought in marriage many times, but always said ' No '. When she was well over twenty-five the old minister of the chapel died, and the deacons invited various young preachers to come on trial, just as is described by Barrie in The Little Minister. Among them was Thomas Jones, whose renown was even then spread through Wales, and romantic stories of his tour from North to South, rousing every torpid village with stirring eloquence, riding on his pony ' Bess' over the hills and through the valleys in the enthusiasm of his mission, were well known to my mother. He came, saw, and conquered more than the deacons and the congregation,— my mother's heart. He accepted the ministry of Libanus, and married my mother about a year afterwards. It was no wonder that she took him : he was a striking personality. To daring, impetuosity, originality, and a rich, powerful voice which could ring through the chapel like a clarion or sink into the softest music a mother makes crooning over her babe, were united a beautiful physique, classical features, eyes 'deeply, darkly, beautifully blue', elasticity of movement in a well-knit nervous frame.

My mother was about five feet four in height, slender and light of foot — features not quite regular, wise, kind though critical — eyes whose colour I cannot recall — a firm mouth and chin and clear, pale complexion.

My father would put sermons into the fire if she did not like them, and went to his study meekly at her bidding to write revised editions. She always knew her own mind and did whatever she thought it right to do, undeterred by persuasion or any obstacle. Nothing could unbalance or flurry her. Once, when a servant fell downstairs, and my father, in great agitation, was

1856-76] Viriamu's mother n

rushing for a doctor, she said quietly, ' Let me see first whether she is really hurt,' and proceeded to feel limbs and head.

It was so always. Through the dazzling excitement of his career at Bedford Chapel, London, where the place was crammed from gallery to floor and people sat all up the pulpit stairs and stood in the aisles, she was self-possessed and dignified, receiving compliments with reserve, as if she were weighing the giver of them and measuring the truth of their utterances. She had an unerring instinct for values : the friends she made were the best intellectually and the most cultivated socially of the hundreds of her acquaintances. She was eager to help the struggling young men and women who came to the church — got at them and made them feel that she understood their temptations in the great whirlpool of London, invited them to her house and listened to the story of their lives. I met many of them after her death, who paid tribute of tears to her memory. Hers was a growing soul, such as Meredith loved to depict.

When she fell into the last sleep, after years of weakness and pain, it was with one gentle sigh that she gave up the spirit that had been a clear flame for the past weeks. She bade us good-bye ten minutes before, six of us, told each one who was old enough to understand the fault most of all to be guarded against, simply caressed the babies, then turned to papa, who was kneeling by her bed, and clasped him in her arms until they relaxed in death.

I remember that Robert Browning came into the vestry after the service, the week after my mother's funeral, put both arms round papa, and, with tears in his eyes, spoke a few strong words of sympathy and understanding.

I think such a mother must have had great influence on Vir's character. Some thinkers consider that from our very birth the blank sheet of the brain is written upon in indelible ink (here I am quite out of my depth), that directing tendencies and impulses are given and fixed from the earliest moment, — the deepest impressions made before consciousness comes ; but to my ignorance this plunges us into the deep question of heredity, and transmitted qualities, and the problem whether the sheet is indeed a blank, or crowded with the hieroglyphics of past generations.

Vir and I once spent a summer's day in the garden here discussing the rival theories on this point, or rather he discoursed and balanced one against the other, holding a brief for and against each in turn. I remember Vir saying, as if to himself, ' Can acquired characteristics be transmitted ? Given a child from birth, transplant it from a cottage to a palace — will the peasant child be absolutely the creature of his environment, except for some physical resemblance to the parents ? '

The problem as thus stated omits an essential thought. That 'physical resemblance to the parents' would include hereditary faculty and power of every kind. Surroundings only determine the use to which the weapon will be put, — of high importance without doubt, but no justification for so strong an expression as ' the creature of his environment '.

These considerations are not out of place in attempting to estimate the intellectual equipment with which Vir started the race of life. The theory of heredity, generally although by no means universally received at the present day, would attribute his power and his success to the fact that his parents were what they were, far more than to the influences which they brought to bear upon him. The distinction of the hereditary equipment would, without these influences, have ensured a distinguished career : parental solicitude and wisdom at their very highest might make a worthy citizen but could never give an edge to a weapon that was dull by nature.

1856-76] The dual control of destiny 13

When a man chooses his wife, when a woman chooses her husband, he and she take the one irrevocable step that, far more than any others they may take hereafter, will decide, for good or for evil, for success or for failure, the destiny of their children.

I wish to guard against misconception. I have tried to weigh against each other the two mighty sets of causes which together control the destiny of every human life. I have concluded that the hereditary material is weightier than the influence of surroundings, the ' inherent ' equipment than the ' acquired ' training which is bestowed upon it. But this conclusion is no justification for the criminal folly of neglecting the environment of the developing individual. Even if one set of causes be less weighty than the other, it is still hardly possible to over-estimate its importance. Furthermore, the responsibility for the inherent equipment of offspring ends with the choice of a mate : responsibility for making the best of the equipment endures through the whole period of intellectual growth. And this responsibility is heaviest when the quality is highest : only the finest steel can take the keenest edge, but the edge cannot be given except by unceasing care and skill. We may confidently believe that John Viriamu Jones would under any circumstances have achieved success, but we may be equally sure that the great work to which he was called needed for its performance not only a weapon of the highest quality, but one fashioned by the unceasing love and patience of parents who were great and wise and tender,— fashioned too by a remarkable educational career. In the next and in later chapters