IN A COLLEGE GARDEN

THE RIVER ISISOn the right is the gold-and-white barge of Magdalen College undergoing repair. The masts and barges of other Colleges line the side of the river, and Folly Bridge closes the prospect.

THE RIVER ISIS

On the right is the gold-and-white barge of Magdalen College undergoing repair. The masts and barges of other Colleges line the side of the river, and Folly Bridge closes the prospect.

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from; the question would go round; and the prophet would retreat from the refrigerator.” “But suppose him a sort of Kipling, twenty or thirty feet broader every way——”

“Send up some buttered crumpets and slow poison” was the epitaph of the conversation, which was, after all, between children of a cynical age and in the hour of tea. But there is many a true thing said at tea in Oxford. The hours from four to seven are nothing if not critical. It is an irresponsible, frivolous time, and an interregnum between the tyranny of exercise and the tyranny of food. Nothing is now commended; yet nothing is envied. I suspect that some of the causes of the University love of parody might be found by an investigator in the Oxford tea. Over his crumpet or “slow poison” the undergraduate who is no wiser than he should be legislates for the world, settles even higher matters, and smilingly accepts a viceroyalty from Providence. With some it is a festival of Slang—venerable goddess! I have heard a philologist trace a little Oxford phrase to the thieves of Manchester a century ago or more. Now he plans profound or witty speeches for the Union, devises “rags” and rebellions, and writes for the undergraduate magazines, and has his revenge in a few well-chosen words upon coaches, dons, captains of football, and all forms of Pomposity, Dulness, and Good Sense. “Common-sense,” says one, “is nonsenseà la mode.” He luxuriates in the criticism of life, and blossoms with epigrams. He says in his heart, “In much wisdom is much grief: and he that[Pg 382]increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow,” and sets himself to make sayings which, if not truer than proverbs, are funnier. Others prowl:i.e.they go through that promiscuous calling upon acquaintances which is the bane of half its beneficiaries. Some of these prowlers seem to live by this kind of canvassing—thieves of others’ time and generous givers of their own. They will boast of having taken twenty teas in one afternoon. But on Sunday comes their judgment. They wear a soberer aspect on their way to the drawing-rooms of Oxford hostesses. In the comfortable chairs sit the incurable habitués—cold, saturnine spectators, or impudent, stiff-hearted epigrammatists, handing round at regular intervals neat slices from the massy joints of their erudition or their wit. They smile sadly and yet complacently over their tea-cups as the prowler enters. They wait until the victim is in right position, viz. with a perfectly true remark about the weather, or Sunday, or sport, or dentists; and then suddenly “slit the thin-spun life” with an unseasonable query or corroboration. The hostess smiles imperceptibly. In a few moments the prowler is gone. “Mr. ——,” says the hostess, “you pronounce the sweetest obituaries I ever meet, but I have never known you to pronounce them over the deceased.”

Here glow the lamps,And teaspoons clatter to the cosy humOf scientific circles. Here resoundsThe football field with its discordant train,The crowd that cheers but not discriminates....

There are also teas with the young, the beautiful,[Pg 383]and the virtuous in the plain and exclusive northernmost haunts of learning in Oxford. The University could not well do without their sweet influences. Yet if men, in their company, are often better than themselves, as is only right, they are perhaps less than themselves. Also, in wit carnivals, it is permitted to women to use all kinds of weapons, from a sigh to a tea-urn; to men they are not permitted, although they have nothing sharper or more rankling in their armoury. Hence, on the part of generous women, a sort of pity, and on the part of men some timidity and (short of rudeness) tergiversation. And I am not privileged to give an account of a real Somerville tea.

But it is a thing impossible to praise in rhyme or prose the pleasures of tea at Oxford—perhaps especially in autumn, as the sun is setting after rain—when a man knows not whether it is pleasanter to be rained upon at Cumnor, or to be dried again by his fire—and the bells are ringing.

Not that Nepenthes which the wife of ThoneIn Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena,Is of such power to stir up joy as this,To life so friendly.

Perhaps, as you light candles, and ask, “What is warmth without light?” your companion replies, “A minor poet”; and when you ask again in irritation, “What is light without warmth?” he is ready with, “An edition of Tennyson with notes.” And not even the recollection of such things and worse can spoil the charm of Oxford tea. Then it is that the homeliness of Oxford[Pg 384]is dearest. And what a carnival of contrasts in men and manners can be seen in a little room. “Oxford,” writes theOxford Spectator,—

Oxford is a stage,And all the men in residence are players:They have their exeats and examinations;And one man in his time plays many parts,His acts being seven ages. At first the Freshman,Stumbling and stuttering in his tutor’s rooms.And then the aspiring Classman, with white tieAnd shy, desponding face, creeping alongUnwilling to the Schools. Then, at the Union,Spouting like Fury, with some woeful twaddleUpon the “Crisis.” Then a Billiard-player,Full of strange oaths, a keen and cunning card,Clever in cannons, sudden and quick at hazards,Seeking a billiard reputationEven in the pocket’s mouth. And then the Fellow,His fair, round forehead with hard furrows lined,With weakened eyes and beard of doubtful growth,Crammed with old lore of useless application,And so he plays his part. The sixth age shiftsInto the lean and study-worn Professor,With spectacles on nose and class at side;His youthful nose has grown a world too largeFor his shrunk face; and his big, manly voice,Turning again towards childish treble, pipesAnd whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,That ends this strange, eventful historyIn utter donnishness and mere nonentity,Without respect, or tact, or taste, or anything.

I said that undergraduate magazine humour was a tea-table flower. I should have said that it flowers at tea and is harvested after dinner. The penning of it is a nocturnal occupation, and the best wit is sometimes the result of that pregnant nervousness which comes from competing with time. It was until very lately[Pg 386][Pg 385]

THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE AND OLD CLARENDON BUILDINGSThe steps from Cat Street lead to the enclosure of the Theatre, the east entrance of which is seen. Above the entrance, and crowning the roof of the Theatre, rises Sir Christopher Wren’s cupola, from the windows of which a panorama appears of unsurpassed beauty and interest.On the right of the picture is the south front of the Clarendon Building.

THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE AND OLD CLARENDON BUILDINGS

The steps from Cat Street lead to the enclosure of the Theatre, the east entrance of which is seen. Above the entrance, and crowning the roof of the Theatre, rises Sir Christopher Wren’s cupola, from the windows of which a panorama appears of unsurpassed beauty and interest.On the right of the picture is the south front of the Clarendon Building.

On the right of the picture is the south front of the Clarendon Building.

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a tradition that undergraduate journalism should be anonymous. Of many good and feeble things the authorship will now probably never be known. “Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?” And it is an odd thing that so few reputations have been promised or made therein. Probably the writers of the CambridgeLight Greenand the “Lambkin Papers” in theJ.C.R.of Oxford have alone not only shown but fulfilled their promise in contributions to an undergraduate periodical. The explanation is that the cleverest men are content to produce either parody or what is narrowly topical, and both of these are usually born in their graves. “Parody,” said a don, “is always with us, and nearly always against us.” Parody and its companions are, in fact, a sort of unofficial bull-dogs, that persecute all forms of bad, and even good, behaviour which do not come within the proctor’s jurisdiction. The proctor is a favourite victim. “O vestment of velvet and virtue,” runs an obvious parody in theShotover Papersof 1874, by “Gamble Gold,”—

O vestment of velvet and virtue,O venemous victors of vice,Who hurt men who never have hurt you,Oh, calm, cruel, colder than ice.Why wilfully wage ye this war? isPure pity purged out of your breast?O purse-prigging Procuratores,O pitiless pest!

The wise fool, the foolish wise man, the impostor, and the ungainly fanatic, are all game to the undergraduate[Pg 390]satirist. “We draw our bow at a venture,” he writes; “so look to it, don and undergraduate, boating men and reading men; look to it, O Union orators, statesmen of the future; look to it, ye patrons of St. Philip’s and St. Aldate’s; look to it, ye loungers in the Parks; look to it, ye Proctors, and thou, O Vice-Chancellor, see that your harness be well fitted, that between its joints no arrow shall pierce. Our aim is careless, but perhaps it may strike deep; if we cannot smite a king we shall contentedly wing a freshman.” Not seldom this note of Titanic defiance is struck by the freshman himself. If he cannot be an example of what is most subtle in literature or most brilliant in life, he will peacefully consent to be in his own person a warning against the commonplace. He is, indeed, very often among the parodists, although as a rule he does not get beyond imitation. Perhaps the large percentage of parodists will account for that timidity of poets which has left Cambridge almost without a tribute from its countless band. The gay, sarcastic man who dines next to you, or is a fellow-officer at the Union, is bound to hear of your serious follies in print, and will as infallibly make that an excuse for rushing into print himself. I have even heard it seriously urged that the number of critics in Oxford accounts for the silence of nearly every one else, and that not the irresponsible undergraduate alone blasts the blossoms of wisdom while he takes the sting out of foolishness. A cautious use of high teas might be recommended as a step towards seriousness.[Pg 391]

Some, even to-day, fly speedily from tea to work. Upon others, and in some degree upon these, dinner lays a cheerful hand in anticipation. The optimist becomes “happier and wiser both.” The very pessimist rises at least to a cynic. Under the head of dinner I include, first and least, the discussion of the cook’s poetry and prose, if one may be permitted to make the distinction, since his joints have been called “poems in prose”; second, the feast of reason, etc.; third, those acts of pleasure or duty which came naturally to the wise diner. The first two are hardly distinct acts. “Wedevour” says Leigh Hunt, “wit and argument, anddiscussa turkey and chine.” The word “dinner” was once derived from the Greek word for terrible, and was held to imply not so much its terrors for the after-dinner speaker, as for the man who came simply to eat. Most Oxford colleges have accordingly an elaborate and forcible set of rules for humiliating the sordid man. In old days he apparently quoted from the Bible, which every one knew, just as every one knows theTimesto-day; and consequently a quotation from the Bible was punished along with puns, quotations from Latin and Greek, and oaths. As unbecoming to a feast of reason, flannels and other clothes belonging to the barbaric hours of life are forbidden. The unpunctuality of such as obviously come only to devour is treated in the same way. Gross inadvertence or apparent physical incapacity to do anything but eat have also been punished in gentlemen both punctual and suitably clothed; but these and other excesses of[Pg 392]virtuous intention are not always sanctioned by the High Table. The punishment usually takes the form of a fine to the extent of two quarts of beer, which the sufferer has to put in circulation among his judges. Punning, too, is attacked. It was time that the pun should go. It was becoming too perfect, and a monopoly of the mathematical mind. Two hundred years ago men laughed at this:—“A chaplain in the University of Oxford, having one leg bigger than the other, was told that his legs might bechaplainstoo, for they were never like to befellows.” To-day, it is doubtful whether it would be honoured by the fine or “sconce.” Yet the pun has in a sense been supplanted not very worthily by the “spoonerism.” That, too, has become a very solemn affair. It is in the hands of calculating prodigies, and men are expected to laugh at “pictures defeated” instead of “features depicted” and the like. It smacks of the logic required for a pass degree, while the old punssentent plus le vin que l’huile. Yet the spoonerism is venerable in years; and Anthony Wood records among his pieces of humour the saying of Dr. Ratcliff of Brasenose, that “a proud man will buy a dagger or die a beggar.” Nor is the anecdote extinct, as one may learn from the laughter at any High Table, where it is known that men do not discuss ontology. Oxford humour, at and after dinner, may be divided under these heads:—

(1) The Rag.(2) The Epigram.(3) Humour.

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The first, saving when it amounts to house-breaking or assault, or should endanger the perpetrator under the last Licensing Act, consists in the thoughtful preparation and execution of something unexpected for the benefit of an offending person, or in the elaboration of something visibly and audibly funny for fun’s sake at the expense of the artists alone. It was “a rag,” for example, two hundred and fifty years ago, as also more recently, to make a various and crowded ceremony of the enforced exit of a popular undergraduate. The hero may be mounted on a hearse or a steam-roller, and proceed with stately accompaniment. Or he may go in pink with a pack of bull-dogs, and whips dressed as proctors, to the tune of “ The Conquering Hero.” Some prefer twenty-four barrel-organs, if obtainable. But the “rag” is a branch of decorative art that deserves a volume with illustrations. No one who has not studied it can guess at the beautiful work which is devoted to the conversion of a gentleman’s bedroom into a sitting-room. Any one who would teach us how divine a thing the rag can be made, would be heartily thanked. I may remark, in passing, that it gives full play to the intellect,—is, in fact, a counterpart to the occupations of the schoolmen, and is neither less practical nor less ingenious, and reaches its highest perfection in the hands of scholars who can do nothing without remembering Plato, and say nothing without remembering Aristophanes. Lest I should be suspected of not being on the side of the angels in recent controversy, I will give no examples, save a trifling one[Pg 394]which has just been recalled for me by a volume of Hazlitt. We made a supper party of six with Corydon, our host at —— in Oxford. His gestures (particularly a gracious way of bowing his head as he smiled) had a magic that quickly made our number seem inevitable and right. Very soon all were talking eagerly in harmonious alternation. A choicely laden board of cold viands, which none seemed to have noticed, stood unvisited, and was finally cleared. Corydon was speaking (of nothing in the least important) when the servant carried in a strange but dainty course of little, fine old books that sent the conversation happily into every nook that rivers from Helicon visit. Again and again came in dishes of the same character, for which Corydon’s purse and library had been ransacked. The wealth of how many provinces—to use an honoured phrase—had gone to the preparation of that meal! “And by the way, I have some cold fowls and wine and fruit ready,” the host said suddenly.... One found that Shelley and champagne were good bosom friends; another that a compôte of port, Montaigne, and pomegranate was incomparable.... This Hazlitt also was at that excellent supper and “rag.” Nor can I omit a mention of the strong sculptor who strove all night in the midst of a wintry quadrangle, in order to astonish the college with a snow statue of the most jovial fellow of the society, with a cigar between his teeth and a bottle in each hand. Mr. Godley has sung of a more boisterous rag, “the raid the Saxon made on the Cymru men,” which was in this way:[Pg 395]—

Mist upon the marches lay, dark the night and late,Came the bands of Saxondom, knocking at a gate,—Mr. Jones the person was whom they came to see—He, they said, had courteously asked them in to tea.Did they, when that college gate open wide was thrown,Go and see the gentleman, as they should have done?No: in Impropriety’s indecorous tones(Quite unmeet for tea-parties) loud they shouted “Jones!”Straightway did a multitude answer to their call—Un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech—Mr. Joneses all—Loud as Lliwedd’s echoes ring all asserted, “WeNever asked these roistering Saesnegs in to tea!”Like the waves of Anglesey, crashing on the coast,Came the Cymru cohorts then: countless was their host:Retribution stern and swift evermore assailsHim who dares to trifle with gallant little Wales....

Did they, when that college gate open wide was thrown,Go and see the gentleman, as they should have done?No: in Impropriety’s indecorous tones(Quite unmeet for tea-parties) loud they shouted “Jones!”

Straightway did a multitude answer to their call—Un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech—Mr. Joneses all—Loud as Lliwedd’s echoes ring all asserted, “WeNever asked these roistering Saesnegs in to tea!”

Like the waves of Anglesey, crashing on the coast,Came the Cymru cohorts then: countless was their host:Retribution stern and swift evermore assailsHim who dares to trifle with gallant little Wales....

One who might be supposed to know said in 1899 that where a Cambridge man would know an article from theEncyclopædia Britannicaby heart, an Oxford man would abridge it in an epigram; and there, he contended, was a difference and a distinction. But the epigram is said to be dying. It were greatly to be regretted, if that were true, since the epigram was the handsomest medium ever chosen by inexperience for its own expression. As poetry is a criticism of life by livers, so the epigram is a criticism of life by those who have not lived. It used to be the toga of the infant prodigy at Oxford. “If only life were a dream, and I could afford hansoms!” or “A little Jowett is a dangerous thing!” used to pass muster in a crowd of epigrams. But I seemed to see the skirt of[Pg 396]the departing epigram this year, when a young man exclaimed that he had discovered that, “After all, life is the thing,” in a discussion concerning conduct and literature: and the shock was hardly lessened by the critical repartee that the remark was “not only true but inadequate.” A few years ago smaller notions than that were not allowed to go into the world without their fashionable suit. That was the epigram. It was a verbal parallel to legerdemain. The quickness of the fancy deceived the brain: or rather the brain made it a point of courtesy to be deceived. For there was a kindly conspiracy between the speaker and the hearer in the matter of epigrams. A certain degree of skill was expected of the latter, who knew almost infallibly whether a saying was an epigram, just as he would have known a hearse or a skiff. It was the jingling bell which every one but the exceptionally clever wore in his cap, to prove that he aspired to talk. All were epigrammatists, and regarded as alien nothing epigrammatical. When “Lady Windermere’s Fan” was played at Oxford, even those who had not heard them before laughed at the epigrams in the Club scene. One such remarked to a persevering imitator of Wilde: “The epigrams in ‘Lady Windermere’ were a faint echo of yourself.” But these are other times, and when the same youth, bald and still young, very recently ventured to clothe a little truism archaically, the curate next to him touched a note of horror mingled with contempt as he said, “That sounded like an epigram.” In one respect an Oxford dinner is the better for the absence[Pg 397]of epigram. The machine-made article is impossible. It used to be as ineffectual as the prayers of Thibet. A man might be seen, forgetful of the world, nursing his faculties from soup to ice, in the gestation of an epigram. Thus it tended to cast a shadow over conversation, and to replace the genial, slow, and whist-like alternations of good talk with the sudden follies of snap or the violences of bridge. Breakfast itself was sometimes made the occasion of duels, with a thrust and parry not oftener than twice in a course. A man would come melancholy to luncheon because he had not hit upon a good thing in the lecture which preceded it. Nevertheless, there was something to be said for the manufacture, if not for the manufacturer. His epigrams could be repeatedspontaneouslyby another. Thus an elderly morose undergraduate, unable to knot a bow, would one day ejaculate at the wrong moment: “A woman is never too stupid to be loved, nor too clever to love.” The next evening a simple and dashing boy would make a hit with it, by nice judgment of time and place. Much applause was sometimes accorded to the wit of laborious, obscure young men who were content to father their offspring upon the illustrious. Thus, one undergraduate was once found slaving at an original work, entitled “Addenda to the Posthumous Humour of the late Master of Balliol.”

Of humour, the third division, there is nothing to be said. It has been met with at the Union, in spite of the notice:[Pg 398]—

Lost!A sense of humourby the following gentlemen——They will take in exchange early numbersofSword and Trowelor a selectionof hatbands.

For the most part, the heavier vices and lighter virtues of speech are said to flourish there. “It is a pity,” said a critic of the Union, “that so many ingenious youths should disarm themselves by pretending to be in the House of Commons, which they rival as a club.” A Frenchman has said that its histrionic wealth at one time equalled the house of Molière. Indeed, as a home of comedy it is the most amusing and accomplished in Oxford; and on that account, probably, the public theatre seldom provides anything but opera and farce. A bland, clever youth, stooping like a candle in hot July—his body and a scroll of foolscap quivering with emotion, as he suggests to a smiling house that the Conservative party should bury its differences under the sole management of Mr. Redmond: a stiff, small, heroic figure—with a mouth that might sway armies, a voice as sweet as Helicon, as irresistible and continuous as Niagara—pouring forth praise of the English aristocracy and the Independent Labour Party, to a house that believes or disbelieves, and applauds: a minute, tormented skeleton, acrobatic and ungainly, so eloquent on the futility of Parliament, that he might govern the Empire, if he could govern himself: one who is not really comfortable without a cigarette, yet awes the house by his superb complacency, as he utters now and[Pg 399]then a languid epigram about the Irish peasantry or indigo, in the brief intervals of an apparent colloquy with himself:—these and a multitude of the fervid, the weighty, the listless, the perky, and the dull, are among the Union orators of yesterday. “I went to the Union to be amused,” says one. “They were debating a question of literature. A brilliant man opened; a learned opposed. Others followed—some for, some against, the motion; others again made observations. I was not disappointed. I was edified. There was no research. There was little originality. But there was a dazzling simplicity and lucidity, and an extraordinary power of treating controversially the profoundest matters as if they were common knowledge; above all, the reserved gestures, the self-control, were dignified, and made me believe that I was listening to the opinions of an assembly of middle-aged men of the world, and not a handful of students not yet past their majority.” But the glories of Union oratory are weekly: the theatre is consequently a favourite evening lounge; some even prefer it on Thursdays. It is noticeable that the house is more familiar than elsewhere in its praise or disapproval of the players. Half a dozen in the dress circle will hold a (rather one-sided) conversation with the stage for half an evening. It is also customary, and especially on Saturdays, for the audience to sing the choruses of songs to their taste many times over, and then to revive them in the quiet streets. Banquets, and the reception given to the speeches of actors and managers, and the nature of those speeches[Pg 400]as well, prove the hearty fellowship between University and stage. It has long been so. “At a stage play in Oxford,” says one old author, “(at the King’s Arms in Holywell) a Cornishman was brought in to wrestle with three Welshmen, one after another, and when he had worsted them all, he called out, as his part was, Have you any more Welshmen? Which words one of Jesus College took in such indignation that he leaped upon the stage and threw the player in earnest.” It must be admitted, however, that such familiarities on the stage itself are now unknown.

To a stranger walking from the Union or the theatre, after Tom has sounded the ideal hour of studious retirement, Oxford might well appear to be a nest of singing birds. The windows of brilliantly lighted rooms, with curtains frequently undrawn, in dwelling-house or college, reveal rows of backs and rows of faces, with here one at a piano and there one standing beside, singing lustily, while the rest try with more or less success to concentrate their talents upon the chorus: probably they are singing something fromGaudeamus, Scarlet and Blue, or other song-books for students, soldiers, and sailors; or, it may be, a folk song that has never come into print. Sometimes, in the later evening, the singing is not so beautiful. For here those sing who never sang before, and those who used to sing now sing the more. Perhaps only the broadest-minded lover of grotesque contrasts will care for the ballads flung to the brightening moon among the battlements and towers. But the others should not[Pg 402][Pg 401]

JESUS COLLEGEThe romantic tower and lowering gateway of the College are almost in the centre of the picture—a bit of Exeter College appearing above the buildings to the left.Two masters are engaged in vigorous argument in front of the Principal’s door, over which is a “hood” of the Georgian period, in quaint contrast with the surrounding style of architecture.

JESUS COLLEGE

The romantic tower and lowering gateway of the College are almost in the centre of the picture—a bit of Exeter College appearing above the buildings to the left.

Two masters are engaged in vigorous argument in front of the Principal’s door, over which is a “hood” of the Georgian period, in quaint contrast with the surrounding style of architecture.

[Pg 405][Pg 404][Pg 403]

judge harshly or with haste. These are but part of the motley in which learning clothes itself. Much sound and fury is here no proof of deep-seated folly; nor quietness, of study; nor are a man’s age, dignity, and accomplishments in mathematical proportion to the demureness of his deportment. I notice on one little tankard these philosophies in brief, scrawled with a broken pen:—

Ah! who would lose thee,When we no more can use or even abuse thee?ΠΑΝΤΑ ΡΕΙQui vit sans folie n’est pas si sage qu’il croit.The old is better.How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnished, not to shine in use.ΜΙΣΕΩ ΜΝΑΜΟΝΑ ΣΥΜΠΟΤΑΝAssiduitate non desidia.Too much study is sloth.Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando.Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées.

Ah! who would lose thee,When we no more can use or even abuse thee?

ΠΑΝΤΑ ΡΕΙ

Qui vit sans folie n’est pas si sage qu’il croit.

The old is better.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnished, not to shine in use.

ΜΙΣΕΩ ΜΝΑΜΟΝΑ ΣΥΜΠΟΤΑΝ

Assiduitate non desidia.

Too much study is sloth.

Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando.

Quittez le long espoir et les vastes pensées.

And though some are evidently framed with an eye confined to the tankard, how applicable all are to the shining pewter and life itself!

You shall be in one small sitting-room, on an evening, while in one corner a ditty from theStudentenliederis hummed; in another, Hagen’sCarmina Medii Ævior W. B. Yeats or Marlowe is declaimed; in another,[Pg 406]you shall hear ghosts or sports discussed; in a fourth, the orthodoxy of theInferno: yet the whole company shall be one in spirit. And the same in another such room—where a dozen men are divided into groups around three of the number who are reading, for discussion, the rules of the Salvation Army, theAnthologia Planudea, and a Blue Book.

At the top of an adjacent staircase there is a lonely gentleman eating strawberries and cream, and thinking about wall-paper; or one like a gnome, amidst innumerable books,—his floor strewn with notes, phrases, queries,—writing a prize essay; or one reading law, with his newly-presented football cap on his head; one reading Kipling and training a meerschaum; one alternately reading theOrganonof Aristotle and quoting verbatim from Edgar Allen Poe to admiring workers at the same text; or one digesting opium, and now and then looking for five minutes at one or other of a huge pile of books at his side—Paul Verlaine, Marlowe, Jeremy Taylor, theOdyssey, Ariosto, and Pater. The staircases creak or clatter with the footsteps of men going up and down, to and from these rooms. Outside one or two sets of rooms the great outer door—the “oak”—is fastened, a signal that the owner wishes to be undisturbed, and practically an invitation to trials of strength with heel and shoulder from the passer-by. In the faintly lighted quadrangles, men are hurrying, or sauntering, or resting on the grass among the trees. Perhaps there is a light in the college hall. The sound of a castanet dance played by a band—or a song—comes through the window. The music[Pg 407]grows wilder. The chorus swallows up the song. There are half a dozen conductors beating time, among the crowded benches of the audience. The small lights are but stains upon the air, which is composed of cigar and cigarette smoke. Mirth is eloquently expressed in every way, from laughter to a snore. The candles begin to fall from the brackets; the seats are carried out; and, to a still wilder tune, two hundred men join hands and dance. The band is given no rest: in fact, they are unable to rest, and the same glow sits in their cheeks. But in the darkness they slip away. For all the candles are out, and there is a bonfire making red weals upon the grey walls; then another dance; and a hundred times, “Auld lang syne,” until the college is quiet, and but rarely a light is seen through curtains and over battlements: and the long Oxford night begins.Large reponens, we build up the fire. If it be autumn, we will hardly permit it ever to go out, thus consoling ourselves for the transitory glow of the sun, and fantastically handing on the sunsets of many summers and the dawns of many springs, in that constant flame. Sitting before it, we seem to evolve a fiery myth, and think that Apollo and Arthur and other “solar” heroes more probably leapt radiant from just such a fire before the eyes of more puissant dreamers in the old time. The light creeps along the wall, fingering title after title of our books. They are silently preluding to a second spring, when poets shall sing instead of birds, and we shall gather old fragrant flowers, not from groves, but from books. We see coming a long, new summer, a bookish summer,[Pg 408]when we shall rest by olive and holm oak and palm and cypress, and not leave our chairs—a summer of evenings, with tropic warmth, no cloud overhead, and skies of what hue we please.

There many Minstrales maken melody,To drive away the dull Melancholy,And many Bardes, that to the trembling chordCan tune their timely voices cunningly:And many Chroniclers, that can recordOld loves and warres for Ladies doen by many a Lord.

A certain Italian poet used “to retire to bed for the winter.” He had some wisdom, and we will follow him in spirit; but, having Oxford rooms and Oxford armchairs, that were not dreamed of in his philosophy, we need not stay abed. Few of the costless luxuries are dearer than the hour’s sleep amidst the last chapter of the night, while the fire is crumbling, grey, and murmurous, as if it talked in its sleep. The tenderest of Oxford poets knew these nights:—

About the august and ancientSquareCries the wild wind; and through the air,The blue night air, blows keen and chill;Else, all the night sleeps, all is still.Now the loneSquareis blind with gloom,A cloudy moonlight plays, and fallsIn glory uponBodley’swalls:Now, wildlier yet, while moonlight pales,Storm the tumultuary gales.O rare divinity of Night!Season of undisturbed delight:Glad interspace of day and day!Without, an world of winds at play:Within, I hear what dead friends say.[Pg 409]Blow, winds! and round that perfectDomeWail as you will, and sweep, and roam:AboveSaint Mary’scarven home,Struggle and smite to your desireThe sainted watchers on her spire:Or in the distance vex your powerUpon mine ownNew Collegetower:You hurt not these! On me and mineClear candlelights in quiet shine:My fire lives yet! nor have I doneWithSmollett, nor withRichardson:With, gentlest of the martyrs!Lamb,Whose lover I, long lover, am:WithGray, where gracious spirit knewThe sorrows of arts lonely few....

And it is day once more; and beauty, the one thing in Oxford that grows not old, seems a new-born, joyous thing, to a late watcher who looks out and sees the light first falling on dewy spires.[Pg 411][Pg 410]

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Inspring, when it rained, says Aubrey, Lord Bacon used to go into the fields in an open coach, “to receive the benefit of irrigation, which he was wont to say was very wholesome because of the nitre in the aire, and the universal spirit of the world.” Nor is it difficult in a college garden to associate the diverse ceremonial of Nature with the moods and great days of men. What, for example, can lay such fostering hands upon the spirit that has grown callous in the undecipherable sound of cities, as the grey February clouds that emerge from the sky hardly more than the lines in mother-of-pearl or the grain of a chestnut? I have thought,—in that garden,—that we are neglectful of the powers of herb and flower to educate the soul, and that the magical herbalists were nobly guessing at difficult truths when they strove to find a “virtue” in every product of lawn and sedge. There is a polarity between the genius of certain places and certain temperaments; our “genial air” or natal atmosphere is, we may think, enriched by the soul of innumerable plants, beyond the[Pg 414]neighbourhood of which some people are never quitethemselves. And this college garden of smooth, shining lawn, and trees that seem more than trees in their close old friendship with grey masonry, has a singular aptness to—I had almost said a singular knowledge of—those who have first been aware of beauty in its shade. “If there be aught in heredity, I must perforce love gardens; and until the topographer of Eden shall arise, I have set my heart on this.” So says a theologian, one of its adornments in academic black and white.

Old and storied as it is, the garden has a whole volume of subtleties by which it avails itself of the tricks of the elements. Nothing could be more romantic than its grouping and contrasted lights when a great, tawny September moon leans—as if pensively at watch—upon the garden wall. No garden is so fortunate in retaining its splendour when summer brusquely departs, or so rich in the idiom of green leaves when the dewy charities of the south wind are at last accepted. None so happily assists the music and laughter and lamps of some festivity. And when in February the heavy rain bubbles at the foot of the trees, and spins a shifting veil about their height and over the grass, it seems to reveal more than it conceals. The loneliness of the place becomes intense, as if one were hidden far back in time, and one’s self an anachronism. It is a return to Nature. The whole becomes primeval; and it is hard to throw off the illusion of being deep in woods and in some potent presence[Pg 416][Pg 415]—

THE FELLOWS’ GARDEN, MERTON COLLEGEThe portion of this garden shown is bounded by the south-east portion of the old City Wall, with one or two bastions still remaining, and the terrace walk formed on a mound level with the top of the steps, shown in the picture, commands a fine view of Christ Church Meadows and the Broad Walk. A grand avenue of lime trees is on the left, where at a lower level is placed an armillary sphere.The time is near sunset.

THE FELLOWS’ GARDEN, MERTON COLLEGE

The portion of this garden shown is bounded by the south-east portion of the old City Wall, with one or two bastions still remaining, and the terrace walk formed on a mound level with the top of the steps, shown in the picture, commands a fine view of Christ Church Meadows and the Broad Walk. A grand avenue of lime trees is on the left, where at a lower level is placed an armillary sphere.

The time is near sunset.

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Hoc nemus ...Quis deus incertum est, habitat deus.

At such times the folded gloom gives up the tale of the past most willingly.

The casual stranger sees little in the garden but neatness and repose. He may notice how luckily the few trees occur, and what warmth the shrubbery bestows, when they are black with rain and the crocus petals are spilt in silence. In a little while he may be privileged to learn what a great space for the eye, and especially for the imagination, the unknown gardener has contrived out of a few roods of high-walled grass. He will perhaps end by remarking that an acre is more than so many square yards, and by supposing that it is unique because it is academic.

But it is no merely academic charm that keeps him there, whether the sun in October is so bright on the frosty grass that the dead leaves disappear when they fall,—or on a spring evening the great chestnut expands; its beauty and magnitude are as things newly and triumphantly acquired; and it fills the whole space of sky, and in a few minutes the constellations hang in its branches.

It is rather perfect than academic; a garden of which the most would say that, after their own, it is the best. Its shape and size are accidents, for it embraces the sites of an old hall, a graveyard, and an orchard of Elizabeth’s time; and the expert mole might here and there discover traces of a dozen successive fashions since it was clipped and carved by a dialist and[Pg 420]peppered with tulips. But a thoughtful conservatism and a partnership between many generations have given it an indubitable style. The place has, as it were, a nationality, and the inevitable boundaries are apparently the finishing-strokes of the picture and not its aboriginal frame. Yet it is no natural garden into which any one may stroll and scatter the ends of cigarettes. A strong customary law is expressed by the very aspect of the place. Hence, part of it is still sacred to the statelier leisure of the dons. Hence, where any one can go, whether by right, or from a lack of beadles, it is the good fortune of every one to find himself alone when he reaches the spot. Even so, the trees have never quite their just tribute of dignity and ceremonial. They would be pleased to welcome back the days when Shenstone could only visit Jago secretly, because he wore a servitor’s gown; when even Gibbon remembered with satisfaction “the velvet cap and silk gown which distinguish a gentleman commoner from a plebeian student”; and when, within living memory, the “correct thing for the quiet, gentlemanly undergraduate was a black frock-coat and tall hat, with the neatest of gloves and boots,” on his country walk. The garden, when its borders were in scrolls, knots, and volutes, was certainly not among

The less ambitious Pleasures foundBeneath theLiceatof an humble Bob,

but was chiefly honoured by those who had graduated into a grizzled wig “with feathery pride,”—Mr. Rake[Pg 421]well of Queen’s or Beau Trifle of Christ Church, or the ornate gentleman who are depicted in Ackerman,—and by dons who had never lost their self-respect by the scandal of keeping the company of undergraduates. When Latin was the language of conversation at dinner and supper, the trees looked their best. The change came, perhaps, in the days of the President who went about the world mutteringMors omnibus communis, or when our grandfathers made the gravel shriek with their armchair races across the quadrangles; for in those days, according to an authority on roses, undergraduates either read, or hunted, or drove, or rowed, or walked (i.e.up and down the High). The pile of the lawn continued to deepen, and the trees to write new legends upon the sky.

The limes are in number equal to the fellows of the college, and, with the great warden horse-chestnut and the lesser trees, make up a solemn and wise society. They waste no time. Now and then they talk a little, and when one talks, the others follow; but as a rule the wryneck or the jackdaw talks instead; and with them it seems to be near the end of the day, nothing remaining savebenedictus benedicat. In the angriest gale and in the scarcely grass-moving air of twilight the cypresses nod almost without sound. They are sentinels, unarmed, powerful in their unknown watchword, solemn and important as negroes born in the days of Haroun Alraschid. They say the last word on calm. And so old—— goes there often, to remember the great days of the college fifty years ago, and, looking[Pg 422]priest-like with his natural tonsure and black long gown, seems to worship some unpermitted graven image among the shadows. Whenheis in the garden, the intruder may see a complete piece of mediæval Oxford; for the louvre, and the line of roofs, and the mullioned windows are, from that point of view, as they were in the founder’s time.

At the feet of the trees are the flowers of the seasons in their order. Here and there the precious dark earth is visible, adding a charm to the pale green stems and leaves and the splendid or thoughtful hues of blossom. The flower borders and plots carve the turf into such a shape that it seems a great quiet monster at rest. One step ahead the grass is undivided, enamelled turf: underfoot, the innumerable blades have each a colour, a movement, a fragrance of their own,—as when one enters a crowd, that had seemed merely a crowd, and finds in it no two alike.

On one side is the shrubbery, of all the hues of the kingdom of green. Underneath the shrubs the gloom is a presence. The interlacing branches are as the bars of its cage. You watch and watch—like children who have found the lion’s cage, but the lion invisible—until gradually, pleased and still awed, you see that the caged thing is—nothingness, in all its shadowy pomp and immeasurable power. Seated there, you could swear that the darkness was moving about, treading the boundaries. When I first saw it, it was a thing as new and strange as if I had seen the world before the sun, and withdrawing my eyes and looking at the fresh limes[Pg 424][Pg 423]

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