My Autobiography: A FragmentMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
My Autobiography: A Fragment
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Asianists -- Germany -- Biography; Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max), 1823-1900
Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, was quite a representative of Old
Oxford, and a well-known character in the University. I had been
introduced to him by Baron Bunsen, and he showed me much hospitality.
I was warned that I should find him very stiff and forbidding. His own
Fellows called him the East-wind. But though he certainly was
condescending, he treated me with great urbanity. He had a very
peculiar habit; when he had to shake hands with people whom he
considered his inferiors, he stretched out two fingers, and if some of
them who knew this peculiarity of his, tendered him two fingers in
return, the shaking of hands became rather awkward. One of the Fellows
of his college told me that, as long as he was only a Fellow, he never
received more than two fingers; when, however, he became Head Master
of a school, he was rewarded with three fingers, or even with the
whole hand, but, as soon as he gave up this place, and returned to
live in college, he was at once reduced to the statutable two fingers.
I don’t recollect exactly how many fingers I was treated to, and I may
have shaken them with my whole hand. Anyhow, I am quite conscious now
of how many times I must have offended against academic etiquette.
How, for instance, is a man to know that people who live at Oxford
during term-time never shake hands except once during term? I doubt,
in fact, whether that etiquette existed when I first came to Oxford,
but it certainly had existed for some time before I discovered it.
Dr. Jenkins, Master of Balliol, was also the hero of many anecdotes.
It was of him that it was first told how he once found fault with an
undergraduate because, whenever he looked out of window, he
invariably saw the young man loitering about in the quad; to which the
undergraduate replied: “How very curious, for whenever I cross the
quad, I always see you, Sir, looking out of window.” He had a quiet
humour of his own, and delighted in saying things which made others
laugh, but never disturbed a muscle of his own face. One of his
undergraduates was called Wyndham, and he had to say a few sharp words
to him at “handshaking,” that is, at the end of term. After saying all
he wanted, he finished in Latin: “Et nunc valeas Wyndhamme,”—the last
two syllables being pronounced with great emphasis. The Master’s
regard for his own dignity was very great. Once, when returning from a
solitary walk, he slipped and fell. Two undergraduates seeing the
accident ran to assist him, and were just laying hands on him to lift
him up, when he descried a Master of Arts coming. “Stop,” he cried,
“stop, I see a Master of Arts coming down the street.” And he
dismissed the undergraduates with many thanks, and was helped on to
his legs by the M.A.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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