15 - The undergraduate experience, I: Philip Yorke and the Wordsworths

Summary

PHILIP YORKE

A FELLOW COMMONER AT QUEENS' COLLEGE

I have now finished the Book of Homer, that I was doing before the Holidays … I hope to be able when I come home at Whitsuntide, to show your Lordship the Verses and Themes, that I shall have done since Easter, & hope that your Lordship sometime or other, will have an Opportunity to try me in some Book. Your Lordship was so kind as to hint to me to translate a Paper in the Spectator into Latin, which I hope to be able to show your Lordship at Whitsuntide.

So wrote Philip Yorke, aged fourteen, from Harrow School to his guardian, the second Earl of Hardwicke of Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire. Philip, the son of the earl's younger brother, Charles, had come into the earl's charge in 1770 on his father's death. As the typical letter that is quoted above indicates, Philip Yorke's years at Harrow were spent in intensive scholarship. Schoolboy scrapes were few, and rather touchingly apologised for to his redoubtable guardian – as was, indeed, any slight delay in picking up his quill to respond to Hardwicke's insistent letters. Philip turned to authors his uncle pressed on him, and sent his classical verses and themes to Wimpole for comment, which was sometimes adverse. In addition to his regular Harrow lessons Philip worked with a private tutor, Samuel Weston (a fellow of St John's), and pursued with him a special course of study.