Life
Bonamy Price was born in St Peter Port, Guernsey, on 22 May 1807. From the age of 14, he was privately tutored by the Reverend Charles Bradley, the curate of High Wycombe.[39] In 1825, he went up to Worcester College, Oxford, where he gained a Double First in Classics and Mathematics in 1829.
One examiner later noted: ‘His examination was brilliant' (the Venerable J. Garbett, Testimonial of 19 December 1851 in Anon 1851: 18). During this time, he was an occasional pupil of Thomas Arnold at Laleham and formed friendships with the Newman brothers and other members of the Tractarians, although he later attacked their Anglo-Catholic position in the Edinburgh Review (see Price 1851).Price was appointed Mathematical Master at Rugby School in 1830 under the headship of Arnold and was promoted to a Classical Master in 1832; he subsequently took charge of the fifth form. In 1834,[40] he married Lydia Rose. They were to have five daughters. In 1838, Price succeeded James Prince Lee[41] as master to “the twenty”, the select cadre of fifth formers from whom the vacancies in the sixth form were decided by competition. He would remain at Rugby until 1850. As a teacher, he was reputed to be stimulating and encouraging, but impartial and open to different viewpoints. Certainly, his former pupils flocked to provide testimonials when he applied for the Greek Chair at Edinburgh University in 1851.[42]
However, this application was unsuccessful, and Price moved to London devoting himself to business and literary work. During this second period of his career, he developed an interest in currency and banking, though somewhat at variance with the prevailing views in the City, as noted by Kadish (1989). He was also a member of two government commissions—on the Scottish Fisheries and the Queen's Colleges in Ireland.
Price was a warm Liberal, but became a strong constitutionalist insisting on the importance of the Lords as a second chamber.[43] A vivid thinker, a lively talker, he was generally acknowledged as a great school teacher, but neither really a scholar nor an academic, despite his own self-estimation in that respect. As Kadish comments, ‘he was hardly of the calibre to either change, or come to terms with, the institutional constraints imposed on the professoriate. And he certainly lacked the scholarly stature of Rogers' (Kadish 1989: 40). Whilst Kadish suggests that Price made efforts to adapt his courses to both Oxford's curriculum and subjects of current popular debate, such as bimetallism, he nonetheless concludes that ‘his influence as a teacher had been minimal. His manner was considered more suitable for schoolboys than for university students... Other factors were the eccentricity of his views and his inability to offer any clear insights into the treatment of current problems' (ibid.: 44).
Price favoured the expansion of women's education, signing some prominent petitions, and in the 1870s at the invitation of the secretary, Catherine Winkworth, he lectured in support of the Committee on Higher Education for Women. He was made an Honorary LLD by Edinburgh University in 1881, and in 1883 was elected an Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford. He died on 8 January 1888 after many months of declining health, at his London home, 29 Michael's Grove, Brompton.
3