Oscar Browning (17 January 1837 – 6 October 1923) was a British educationalist, historian and bon vivant, a well-known Cambridge personality during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. An innovator in the early development of professional training for teachers, he served as principal of the Cambridge University Day Training College (CUDTC) from 1891 to 1909. He was also a prolific author of popular histories and other books.
The son of a prosperous distiller, Browning was educated at Eton, and then King's College, Cambridge. On graduating in 1860 he returned to Eton as an assistant master. A vociferous and active opponent of the school's traditional curriculum and teaching methods, he introduced novel and progressive techniques to the classroom, to the general approval of his pupils but to the dismay of the Eton authorities. He was controversially dismissed from his post in 1875, ostensibly because of repeated disregard for school rules, but an underlying issue was disquiet arising from his lifestyle, particularly his close and affectionate relationships with boys under his care.
Browning returned to King's, where he continued his individualistic approach to teaching, and rapidly established himself as a leading Cambridge personality. Again, his methods were far more popular with his students than with his colleagues. An avid social climber and self-promotionist, he cultivated a range of acquaintances in the social and political worlds – he stood unsuccessfully three times for Parliament – and published a number of books on English, European and world history. He also wrote on educational theory and produced a well-regarded biography of the writer George Eliot. Despite this output, he failed to gain scholastic recognition and was repeatedly overlooked for higher college posts and academic honours. However, his pioneering work in teacher education, particularly through his leadership of the CUDTC, was later recognised as a formative factor in the development of the university's present-day Department of Education.
After his retirement in 1909 Browning moved to Rome and remained active as a writer until his death in 1923. Among his late works were two volumes of autobiography and further historical works, including a history of Italy. At the end of his life, having earlier been denied a knighthood, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to education.
Life Childhood
Oscar Browning was born on 17 January 1837, at No. 8 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London. His parents were William Shipton Browning, a prosperous distiller, and Mariana Margaret, née Bridge, the daughter of a sea captain. He was the fourth child, and two more daughters followed. Oscar was born prematurely, the survivor of twins the elder of who died stillborn; Oscar escaped the same fate only through the diligence and determination of a nurse.
While Oscar was still in his infancy the family moved to Windsor in Berkshire, where according to his own account Browning grew up in a succession of houses. One of these was close to the Long Walk, where "Queen [Victoria] passed our windows in her almost daily ride". Browning's early education was conducted in various schools and by tutors. Having failed to gain entrance to Eton College as a "lower boy" – on several occasions according to his own account – Browning was sent in 1848 to live with his elder brother William, by then curate of St Mary's Church, Everdon, near Daventry, to prepare for the entrance examinations that would admit him to Eton as a Scholar. He passed in the summer of 1850, and took up his place the following January as a "Colleger", just before his fourteenth birthday.
Eton and Cambridge Browning was initially shocked by life at Eton, which his biographer Ian Anstruther describes at that time as "a rough world of its own in which the weaker boys were helpless, and where the delights and depravities of vice were imposed on the youngest without restraint". In 1853 Browning began a journal, in which his descriptions of daily life suggest, say Pam Hirst and Mark McBeth in their account of Browning's life, that Eton, "[r]ather than a royally-endowed school [was] more like a Dickensian orphanage". Although his first Eton years were unhappy, his work pleased his tutor, William Johnson, who wrote of him: "Oscar reads like a student of literature ... at last I have found a genuine student combining taste with knowledge, aesthetics with grammar, sociability with thoughtfulness". Johnson's approach to education and teaching influenced Browning for the rest of his life.
Although not generally popular, Browning secured election to the exclusive Eton Society, known as "Pop". He also won a contest to write and deliver a suitable oration when Albert, the Prince Consort, visited Eton on Founder's Day in 1854. As Browning matured and his interests widened, his formal schoolwork suffered, to Johnson's distress, but the scope and extent of his reading is evidenced by a list of his books, included in his journal in November 1854: Byron and Edward Gibbon are accompanied by works from Addison, Sydney Smith, Thomas Arnold, and many more writers, classic and contemporary. Summers were often spent in Brussels, where his mother and younger sisters had moved following his father's death in 1853. On one occasion Browning contrived to be included in the royal party when the King of the Belgians visited the Emperor Napoleon III in Calais.
Browning left Eton in 1856, having gained entry to King's College, Cambridge, where he began in October. Students at King's, the sister-foundation to Eton, were all Etonians, and Browning, who found their continuing association stifling, generally preferred the company of men from other colleges, especially Trinity, where he found kindred spirits who shared his growing radical approach to education. Unlike his Eton years, Browning's time at Cambridge passed serenely.
He was invited to join the intellectual group known as the Apostles, was President of the Cambridge Union in 1859, and that same year was elected a fellow of King's – a lifetime appointment which would provide a fallback should his career in other fields falter. In a wider sphere he discovered his political identity as a Radical Liberal, a disciple of John Stuart Mill. Among the more significant friendships initiated at Cambridge was that with Henry Sidgwick from Trinity College, later a leading educational reformer, of whom Browning would write: "I consulted him on every important matter, and never failed to follow his counsel".
Browning graduated in 1860, taking fourth position in the Classical Tripos. His immediate future was undecided; perhaps travel, the English Bar, or an academic post at Cambridge. Instead, he accepted an invitation to return to Eton as an assistant master. Apart from the financial and domestic security this would bring, he saw it as an opportunity to put some of his more enlightened educational ideas into practice. He would later say that his objective as a schoolmaster was "that every pupil of mine should have an experience as different as possible from what my own had been."
Eton schoolmaster Young reformer
When Browning began teaching at Eton he found the college's governance was largely unchanged from its foundation in the 15th century, and its general curriculum barely reformed from those days: classical Latin and Greek texts learned through repetition, a little mathematics, and all other subjects taught as optional extras. However, change was in the air; in 1861 the government set up the Clarendon Commission to enquire into the conditions of Britain's nine leading public schools.
When the commission investigated Eton, the newly appointed headmaster, Edward Balston, presented a cautious traditionalist view of the curriculum and governance, and saw no need for significant changes. The 25-year-old Browning, giving evidence on 2 July 1862, gave a rather more radical viewpoint. He thought that too little recognition was given to scholarly prowess as against athletic achievement, and that the formal curriculum should be overhauled to include the teaching of French and history. His wider-ranging criticisms included the nature and standard of chapel services, and the over-tolerance of the boys' beer-drinking habits.
This reforming zeal was not shared by Browning's more traditionally-minded colleagues, who included his exact contemporary Edmond Warre, a vociferous opponent of reform who in due course became Eton's headmaster and later, provost. Nevertheless, the Clarendon Commission's report, issued in 1864, was critical of the school and largely endorsed the views of Browning and the reformers. By this time Browning had become a housemaster, which provided him with scope to put his personal educational ethos into practice. His house, under the domestic supervision of his mother, was initially the smallest in the college, with just nine boarders. As the house grew, it became known for numerous characteristic features; Richard Davenport-Hines, in a biographical sketch, summarises the general ambience thus: "His house had a controversially Pre-Raphaelite tone; the food was nourishing and plentiful, the curtains were by William Morris ... There was much jolliness and ragging led by the man–boy at the centre, but the bronzes and marbles in his corridors discouraged rough-housing ... OB passionately desired to reform Eton so that it could educate an effective governing class for a democratic age; these new rulers, in his ideal, would rest their power on the Platonic virtues of wisdom and goodness as well as hereditary privilege."
Although not opposed to healthy physical activity – he was a keen climber and member of the Alpine Club, and promoted sports and games among the junior boys – Browning disavowed the cult of athleticism. As an alternative to "Pop", which he thought had become infested with athletics-worship, he began a Literary Society, to which distinguished visiting speakers were invited. He instituted regular poetry and play readings, and encouraged the appreciation of music with performances by local musicians of works by emergent modern composers such as Brahms. Many wealthy and influential parents sought places for their sons in Browning's house. As a result, his income rose spectacularly, from the assistant master's stipend of £42 per annum plus fees from tutoring, to something between £2,500 and £3,000 as a result of his profits from boarding fees. "I am so prosperous", he wrote in 1866, "as almost to be astonished myself".
In 1868 Browning published his first full-length work, a school textbook in the form of a new edition of the writings of the Roman historian Cornelius Nepos. He was a regular contributor of articles and reviews to some of the leading contemporary journals. He extended his educational work beyond the boundaries of the school, becoming secretary of the Windsor and Eton Association for the Education of Women.
Hornby and controversy
In 1868 Balston resigned, and was succeeded as headmaster by James John Hornby. This appointment broke with the tradition that Eton headmasters always came from King's College, Cambridge (Hornby was an Oxford man). The change was welcomed by Browning: "We shall now be governed on the principles that universally obtain in human society". Hornby introduced modest curriculum and timetable changes which incorporated history, science, modern languages and other subjects into the main curriculum. However, the anti-reform instincts at Eton remained strong, and Hornby soon identified with the more traditionalist factions led by Warre.