THE PRINCE'S COLLEGE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1611, 30 November 1912, Page 11

THE PRINCE'S COLLEGE.

, (By R.H.G., in. tKe "Manchester Guardian.") Miigdalen College, to which the Prince of Wales hais gone, is one of the three colleges which would be named at once if you asked which were the "blood" col-, leges of Oxford. The answer would-be Christ Church, Magdalen, and New College, The three divide among them most of the freshmen from Eton and Harrow, and a.Winchester boy hardly ever goes anywhere else. Consequently they are expensive for the rich man;,but tho poor man who gets a scholarship need not have a bad time, for the large enough ' to ioontain more sets 'than one. At Clirist Church the poor' .man is least in the life of the place, partly because, the rich : set there is so big as to leave little' room, for others, and partly because it is. more given, to hunting and polo than to tho normal Oxford means of exeroise. At the other two colleges • a rich mail is as likely, to row or play football as to hunt; and the result is that most. of the men! know one another to 6ome extent. 1 . • The social characteristics of modern Oxford aro of comparatively recent making. They date really from-the middle of the' last century, when the old ( distinctions -of ; gentleman' commoner and .. :' nobleman commoner ' were abolished,- and all -undergraduate members ~of colleges . not' "on _.tlie foundation"—in. receipt of scholarships— ' became plain commoners without distinction .or differing: scales of fees. At _ Magdalen the change was slow;'not until the eoventies was there any large number of commoners in residence. But it is a rich foundation, with singularly beautiful buildings; and as tho gradual extinctions of the life'interests allowed to the old Dons under the' University Commission's report .began to leave room for an cetic body of tutors, Magdalen showed high : in the class lists, her boat went up 'on the river, and cricket and football Blues "came her way.

William of Waynflete— Founder. Before that change the college had had four hundred years of an. existence not greatly to be distinguished from that of most other colleges. .It has always been a beautiful place, and for its beauty it is chiefly: known to the outside world today. When William ,of Waynflete, successor to William .of Wykeham alike in the See of Winchester and in the occupation of pious founder, set about making ' the college ih 1458 he choso a site beyond the city wall. So the college has ample ground, wide lawns, the Grove, which is'park enough to accommodate a herd of deer, and thb ; charming water-walks—a • raised .path between tall, avenues of elm. round a greit meadow enclosed by the , liver Cherwell, and one of its side-ehan-' nels; in spring, with the blue periwinkle by the . path's edge; the red. and 'white Say trees, the chestnuts coming into bloom, and the streams enclosing all; the water-walks are one of the. peculiar delights of Oxford. The'most lovely buildings—the Cfloister quadrangle with the Chapel and Hall, the Founder a Tower—are; the original college buildings; they were finished about 1490. The,"Prince of Wales's _rooms are in this \ quadrangle, > arid he will look out upon that • tower and: the more famous' Magdalen.' Tower rising beyond the Chapel and Hall. Magdalen Tower was built .as soon'as the;. Cloisters were finished; but the legend that Wolsey, who was a mcm-' . ber of : the college and bursar for a,time, had tne building, of' it has not stood against -modem-:mvestigatiori; The next big piece of:.building.-, was the - detached block l overlookng ;the v .Grove 1 called -the > New Buildings. It dates from 1739, and is ; not a bad example of • the- classical craze of ..the. time. ■ All' the • fame, it is terrible to think that there was then, a scheme for pulling down 'thi Cloisters, and 'making an enormous quad in the'classical style stretch- : ing 'from. the Grove to the Tower. Tfio drawings for it are still -kept in Senior Common-room. The New Buildings are almost entirely Dons'- rooms. : The latest buildings :of all, St. Swithun's Quad-rangleiildesighed-ibyi'Bodlojw andii.Garner, are sometimes said ; ,to be the-only happy pieoe of modern construction in Oxford; they . were put up about. .five-and-twenty years ago. ...

Famous Madgalen Men, An earlier Prince of Wales, Prince Arthur, sou of Henry VII, was at the college ia : H95-6. Cardinal Wolsey, Cardinal Reginald Pole, Foxe of the "Book of Martvrs," John Hampden, Sir Thomas Bodley, Joseph Addison, Gibbon, and, in recent times, Eoundell Palmer, Robert Xpwe, and Charles Reade were all Magdalen; men. Addison Has left his name to the waterwalks.. Gibbon's legacy.is less amiable: he wrote savagely of the indolence and ease of the college in a day. which no Oxford college can recall with much satis! faction!. fCHafles Reade can'.bq rememberi ed still,' in ;his pwn'!coat.-'w,ita brags buttons,and his 'rooms' lined' with. great mirrors." ■'■. '"Owing .to .her. .position beyond the : wall on the London side of the city, and owing also; to her useful' trees for, fortification and : gun emplacements, Magdalen was a busy place during the. Civil War, when the Court was at Oxford; Prince Rupert ■is said to have, used the oollege almost as his headquarters, and .from. Magdalen he sallied' forth on the raiding. ; expedition which incidentally caused the death of Hampden. In the next century the college came into history for its defianco of James 11. He wished to fix. a Roman Catholic president upon the college, and it held out'against nim, even to the point of dis- • possession of the president, the Fellows, _ and nearly all the Demies (the scholars of the college are called Demies). The ultimate'restoration of the dispossessed is.still. celebrated, on October 25.- -.

Sport and ..Customs, Nowadays; as has been said, the college is good at most things that Oxford does. Its considerable revenues allow it to attach to itself various professors, aud it has lately enlarged the number of these Waynflete Chairs. It has demyships for. postgraduate study and Fellowships for natural science. ' Its Dons-can turn a witty verse, or write ultra-modern history in conjunction with Mr. Kipling, as wellias shepherd their men into first classes. The eight is often head,' and 1 never far from Head, of the river; and the Grand Challenge Cup and tho Stewards' Cup have .been brought back [from Henley -to the ' Junior Common-room. Magdalen usually supplies a notable part of the 'Varsity Eight, and. is, not long abr Eent from other lists of Blues. It runs a pack of beagles - in ■ conjunction with • another college. Until quite reoently it was one of the peculiarities of the oollege to have none of those literary and debating societies whereat young men in other colleges air their fledgling opinions! and.to keep aloof from the union. But within tho , last fifteen years this peculiarity has departed. Magdalen still has no wine club, like the Myrmidons at Merton, or the Trinity Wine Club, or the Octagon, at Brasenose. But every Sunday night'there is a sort of Collego Wine in Junior Common-room; and even a Myrmidon will cherish among his dearest recollections of Oxford the evening when he was asked by a Magdalen' man to Common-room. Another custom of the college is that undergraduates do not breakfast in their rooms, but in Common-room. To go from roll-call or chapel to the big blazing fire there, tho long tables with men dropping in and out (it was,not a set, formal, meal) and the toast and colfce and. dishes coming up constantly fresh and .hot from tho kitchen/ was jollier than going back to 'one's own rooms and a breakfast dependent on the mercies of one's scout. Pot one other thing besides tin'beauty of the buildings the college is.known to the stranger in Oxford—the singing in chap»l. .The choir.-is part of the original foundation, and the choir-boys Were the origin of Magdalen College School. Tiie. stransor may think that the singing' -is rivaled by that aMiie Cathedral; nnd New College riien have their views about their own choir. ■ But a Magdalen man l\o?s not argue the point; he could not Possibly be convinced if he did.