Algernon Charles Swinburne at Balliol

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE AT BaLLIOL An exhibition held at BALLIOL COLLEGE HISTORIC COLLECTIONS CENTRE ST CROss CHURCH, ST CROss ROAD, OXFORD 12 & 13 September 2015 INTRODUCTION ‘ the grandest thing ever yet done by a youth — though he is a Demoniac youth’ ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE verse, Poems and Ballads (1866) is, in part, a result (1837-1909) may not be a household name today, of the mutually influential friendships he formed but in the past he was infamous for his shockingly with them. republican and sexual poetry, introduced to The interest in radical politics that led Swinburne children as a standard author at school, and so to write A Song of Italy (1867) and Songs Before highly regarded by his fellow writers that he Sunrise (1871), was also fuelled by friendships made was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize at Balliol, and so in spite of leaving Balliol without a for Literature. He remains one of Balliol’s most degree, the connections made during Swinburne’s distinguished former students, and this exhibition time here had a significant and long-lasting marks his connection with Balliol College and influence on his life and work. celebrates the 150th anniversary of Atalanta in These connections are explored in this booklet Calydon (1865), one of his earliest and most using items from the collection of Swinburne significant works. The critic John Ruskin claimed material in the College’s Library and Archive that that it was ‘the grandest thing ever yet done by a has been built up both by donation and purchase. youth—though he is a Demoniac youth’. The most recent acquisition was that of the library He studied Greek and Latin with influential tutor of Swinburne expert Rikky Rooksby in 2013, who and subsequent Master of Balliol, Benjamin Jowett, collected a near-complete set of publications by so it is perhaps unsurprising that Atalanta in and about the poet. This addition makes Balliol’s Calydon is based on a myth and written in the form Swinburne collection one of the largest and most of a Greek tragedy. The golden ‘roundels’ on the important collections of Swinburne material in cover were designed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the world. one of the most important Pre-Raphaelite artists, EXHIBITED: Swinburne, A.C., Atalanta in Calydon whom Swinburne met as a student whilst several (London: Edward Moxon, 1865) [Swinburne Collection c 001/01]; of them were working in Oxford. His collection of [Swinburne Collection a 05]. EXHIBITION AND caTALOGUE BY Fiona Godber Assistant Librarian, Balliol College Atalanta in Calydon page 1, front The organiser would like to thank Dr Rikky Rooksby for his cover and detail of roundel. assistance with the content of this exhibition, and his continued (London: Edward Moxon, 1865) support and information. This catalogue could not have been written without his book A.C. Swinburne: A Poet’s Life (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997). She would also like to thank Seamus Perry, Fellow Librarian, for his contributions to the sections on Jowett and Swinburne’s republicanism, and Naomi Tiley, Anna Sander, and Rachel McDonald for their practical and moral support. © Balliol College, University of Oxford, 2015 Published by Balliol College, University of Oxford COVER ILLUSTRATIONS: Catalogue design by Becky Clarke Design FRONT COVER Caricature of Benjamin Jowett and Algernon www.becky-clarke.com Charles Swinburne © The Estate of Max Beerbohm Printed by Ciconi BACK COVER Golden 'roundels' designed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti ISBN 978-1-78280-554-0 for the cover of Atalanta in Calydon (London: Edward Moxon, 1865). 1 Balliol College Archives, SWINBURNE AT BALLIOL Examinations Register IVa, 1852-1868 ‘ industrious but eccentric’ SWINBURNE CAME TO BALLIOL in 1856, him to be ‘industrious but eccentric’. This initial when the College was the most prestigious verdict was perhaps more apt than Scott realised, college in the University of Oxford. From being as it describes Swinburne’s life and career quite one of the least distinguished in 1800, the move accurately. Later essays were judged ‘very away from giving places by personal favour respectable but peculiar’, and Swinburne himself to the first open and meritocratic admissions was found to be ‘well-disposed but very irregular process in the University meant that by the time in his habits’, though the details of these habits are Swinburne arrived, Balliol was Oxford’s academic unknown. He won a prize for work in French and powerhouse. Several new buildings, including a Italian, but began to neglect his studies and failed Chapel to replace the existing medieval one, were the first set of University exams. Jowett tried to built in the 1850s, contributing to the feeling that intervene, but his work continued to decline and Balliol was a dynamic and modernising place. he was ‘admonished for irregularity’. After two Benjamin Jowett, one of Swinburne’s tutors, formal warnings for neglecting his studies, he was had been involved in educational reform across temporarily dismissed or ‘rusticated’ from the the University, and although he did not become College in 1859. He returned briefly, but finally Master until 1870, he was a popular and influential chose to leave without a degree. teacher and very much at the heart of the College while Swinburne was here. Swinburne’s academic career started EXHIBITED: Balliol College Archives, Examinations Register IVa, 1852-1868; Photograph of the new Salvin Building c.1860 well enough – in one of his earliest college [Phot57-2 ‘Shadows of Balliol’ album] ; Photograph of the new Balliol examinations, the Master, Robert Scott declares Chapel c.1860 [Phot57-4 ‘Shadows of Balliol’ album]. LEFT Photograph of the new Salvin Building c. 1860 RIGHT Photograph of the new Balliol Chapel c. 1860 2 3 ‘ He was strangely tiny’ ‘ the song saluting friends’ ‘He was strangely tiny. His limbs were small and delicate, and his sloping shoulders ThE LOFTY AIM of ‘The Old Mortality influenced, described him as ‘the guide of my looked far too weak to carry his great head, the size of which was exaggerated by Club’ was ‘the interchange of thought among boyhood in the paths of my free thought and the tousled mass of red hair standing almost at right angles to it.’ its members on the more general questions of republican faith’. (Swinburne’s cousin, Lord Redesdale, to Swinburne’s friend and biographer, Edmund Gosse) literature, philosophy and science’, with particular This early draft of ‘To John Nichol’ shows the attention to English literature. Whilst Swinburne poet at work, for example repeatedly switching (seated, centre left) looks mildly at the camera in between the words ‘clear’, ‘full’, and ‘sweet’ in the their group photograph, the exaggeratedly stern fourth line. Written around twenty-five years after MANY PEOPLE REMARKED on Swinburne’s because of other interests. He was involved in small size and odd physical appearance, which political debates at the Oxford Union, and was expressions of other members suggest it may their time at Balliol, the poem nostalgically recalls included fluttering movements of his hands. In also a founding member of a student society based not have been quite as serious as it appears. It their youth and another member of the Club Boswell’s Clap and other essays: Medical Analyses of in Balliol called ‘The Old Mortality Club’, named did, however, have a lasting effect on Swinburne who had drowned at the age of twenty-six (G.R. Literary Men’s Afflictions, Dr William Ober suggests because each member had recently been seriously because of the abiding friendship he established Luke, seated, left), and celebrates their enduring that he was born prematurely and with mild brain unwell. Members wrote essays and poems to read with its founder, John Nichol (seated, centre friendship in spite of time and distance. damage and hydroencephaly, which would explain to each other, and the results were printed in right), who would become a professor of English these and other symptoms including problems three issues of Undergraduate Papers. Swinburne’s Literature at Glasgow University. EXHIBITED: Swinburne, A.C., ‘To John Nichol’ Nichol was a confirmed republican and sceptical [Literary MSS fascicule, fol.3]; Photograph of ‘The Old with eyesight. As this essay, written while he was a contributions show the breadth of his interests, Mortality Club’ c.1858, from the Club’s minute book student at Balliol, shows, he consistently misjudged as they include essays on Elizabethan literature towards religion, and Swinburne, strongly [Bodleian MS. Top. Oxon. d. 242, inside back cover]. the width of the page and has to curve his writing and contemporary poetry, as well as a humorous downwards to fit, something that can be seen in review of a non-existent book, and part of a poem BELOW Photograph of ‘The Old Mortality Club’ c.1858 his writing throughout his life. on an Arthurian subject, ‘Queen Yseult’. © The Bodleian Libraries, the University of Oxford. The essay, ‘On the source of false impressions’, has RIGHT Draft of Swinburne's poem, ‘To John Nichol’. not been marked, only initialled by a tutor, so it is EXHIBITED: Exhibited: Swinburne, A.C., Essays written while hard to know whether it was considered a good an undergraduate, ‘On the source of false impressions’ [MS 415 (2)]; Undergraduate Papers, issues 1-3, the printed journal of The Old piece of work, but it is certainly true that by 1858 Mortality Club [Swinburne Collection r 01]. Pellegrini, Carlo, Before Swinburne’s academic performance was in decline Sunrise, published in Vanity Fair, 21 November 1874. ABOVE One of Swinburne's undergraduate essays, ‘On the source of false impressions' RIGHT Undergraduate Papers cover and title page 4 5 SWINBURNE AND THE PRE-RAPHAELITES ‘ light and song and wind’ SWINBURNE SPENT PART of his childhood enjoying the wild landscape of Northumberland, and returned there for tutoring in preparation for beginning his studies at Balliol.

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