D. Broster - The Vision Splendid (D. K. Broster) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

Yet those earliest pictures of Evangelical Clapham, of his father pacing up and down the lawn under the elms in earnest talk with Mr. Wilberforce, of his mother smiling at her guests assembled round the great mahogany dining table (to meet, perhaps, Mrs. Hannah More or Mr. Gisborne of Yoxall, the famous preacher), were soon overlaid with others. In 1808 John Hungerford's health, shaken by his exertions for the General Abolition Act of the previous year, began to cause anxiety. The doctors recommended change of scene, and air more bracing than that of Clapham village, suggesting a temporary retirement to the neighbourhood of the Sussex or the Berkshire Downs. Mrs. Hungerford having a distant relative in the latter county – the young wife of the Rector of Compton Regis – and a suitable house at Compton Parva, the next village, falling vacant, this house was bought, the Hungerfords intending to divide their time between Clapham and Berkshire. But John Hungerford, worn out with his labours in the cause to which he had sacrificed everything, died a few months later, and Mrs. Hungerford, with her son, was left in circumstances considerably reduced. The large West Indian income reverted, on her husband's death, to other hands, and so the mansion at Clapham had to be sold, and the newly-acquired house at Compton became their permanent home. But at Compton, too, death had been busy, for the Rector was now a widower, almost inseparable from his baby girl. At Mrs. Hungerford's request he undertook to prepare Tristram for Eton. Herein he was carrying out her own wishes against those of her friends of the Common, who were inclined to regard public schools as nurseries of vice and Cambridge as the only tolerable University. Already Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Venn had urged tutors at home in preference to this scheme, and Mr. Zachary Macaulay had suggested that Tristram should accompany Tom to his private school in preparation for Cambridge. But all the Heathcotes from time immemorial had gone to Eton and Oxford, and Mrs. Hungerford, praying always against the spirit of worldliness, intended Tristram to follow the tradition.

And so for three years Tristram rode his pony to the Rectory, and learnt to write Latin verse, while Mrs. Hungerford did her best to counteract the Rector's educational plans for his little daughter. Disappointed in his hopes of a son, Mr. Grenville said that there was no reason why Horatia should not be as good a scholar as any boy, and to this end she was to begin Latin at five and Greek at six, and meanwhile he gave her everything she wanted. But before Horatia had mastered Mensa, a table , the white pony had ceased its visits to the Rectory, for its rider was in his first term at school.

Save for one thing, Eton did not bulk very large in Tristram's experience. He took with him there a questioning mind and a strong body. The first he soon learnt to disguise; the second brought him the thing that counted, his friend. Fond of all games, he gave himself assiduously to rowing, a sport then rather winked at than formally recognised by the authorities, and towards the end of his fourth year had attained the position of a captain. When selecting a crew for the Boats of the Fourth of June, he happened to cast his eye on a delicate-looking boy of his own age, above him in class, whose brilliant but rather uncertain oarsmanship he had once or twice observed, and, though he rather doubted his staying power, resolved to include him. Nor, when he asked him to take an oar in the Defiance , and Dormer, flushing with pleasure, had accepted, stoutly denying the imputation that he was not strong, had Tristram any idea that he himself had just performed the most pregnant action, perhaps, of his life.

The Fourth of June came, and Tristram's recruit did not belie his promise, nor did he fail in the severer test of Election Saturday, when, amid fireworks and bell-ringing, the Defiance chased the Mars round and round Windsor Eyot and finally bumped her. It was not, indeed, until they had landed that Tristram's well-earned triumph was somewhat dashed by the news that Number Four had fainted, and that they could not bring him to. He ran back to find that not all the Thames water which was being ladled over his unconscious comrade was having any effect, and, conscience-stricken, he picked him up and went off with him in search of more skilled assistance, divided between alarm, admiration for his pluck, and a certain protective sensation quite new to him. To the end of his life he was always to entertain for Charles Dormer somewhat similar feelings.

The result of it all was a verdict that the boy had slightly strained his heart and must pass a week in bed. The remorseful Tristram visited him daily, and thus, in talks more intimate than they could probably have compassed by other means, their friendship had its birth. Later, Tristram took Dormer home with him for the holidays, and the compassionate soul of Selina Hungerford was able to spend itself on the boy, who, she felt secretly sure, had never had a real mother.

The time came at last for Tristram to go up to Oxford. In the selection of a college Mrs. Hungerford accepted the choice of Mr. Grenville, who voted unhesitatingly for Oriel. Copleston, the Provost, he had known and admired since undergraduate days, and he had followed the ascent of Oriel, under Provost Eveleigh, towards her present pre-eminence. He had seen her choose her Fellows for their intellectual promise rather than for their social qualities, and he had seen her force upon a University content hitherto with a farce, a system of real examination for the B.A. degree. He had also seen (though without quite realising its import) the gradual formation of that group of Fellows called the Noetics, who were products of the French Revolution though they were ignorant of the philosophy of the Continent, who, asking the why and the wherefore, pulled everything to pieces, and who had the temerity to apply even to religion itself the unfettered discussion meted out in Common Room to all subjects alike. Into this atmosphere of liberal thought the Rector was responsible for plunging the son of John Hungerford, born in the sacred village of Clapham, and destined by his parents for the ministry.

The son of John Hungerford, however, was the last to complain of his immersion, especially as his friend, too, was entered at Oriel. That questioning spirit, which he had learnt to disguise at Eton, now found a suitable soil and blossomed accordingly. Tristram had, moreover, the fortune to fall for instruction to the great Whately himself, the Noetic of the Noetics, the "White Bear," who treated his pupils rather like the host of dogs which he took with him on his walks round Christ Church meadows, throwing stones for them into the Cherwell. With his boisterous humanity, his disturbing habit of launching Socratic questions, his almost equally disturbing habit of imparting information lying full length on a sofa, he kept the minds of his disciples in a continual ferment, and when, as in Tristram's case, the critical faculty was already highly developed, the result was so stimulating that an apt pupil might very well pass even beyond the ideas of his master. Above all things, Whately hated shams; he repudiated all authority, whether of the Church or of tradition, and held that there was nothing which should not be submitted to reason. Yet, in an Erastian age, he upheld the freedom of the Church from the State, though he denounced the priesthood as an invasion of Christian equality. He reduced dogma to a residuum, yet, for his able defence of that residuum, he might rank as a Christian apologist.

His views at first appealed very strongly to Tristram, who thought that he was going to be able to reconcile reason, religion, learning, and the general scheme of things. But after a while he discovered that this process was not so easy, and Dormer, the High Churchman, was responsible for making it harder still. And at the end of his time at Oxford he found his opinions in such a state of flux that he determined to postpone taking Orders. Mrs. Hungerford, rather to the surprise of the conscience-stricken Rector, put no pressure on her son, and a noble lord writing at this juncture in search of a tutor for his heir, Tristram was glad to accept the post.