The Past

High on your summit, Wisdom’s mimick’d AirSits thron’d, with Pedantry her solemn sire.In every glance and motion you display,Sage Ignorance her gloom scholastic throwsAnd stamps o’er all your visage, once so gay,Unmeaning Gravity’s serene repose.[Pg 325]

High on your summit, Wisdom’s mimick’d AirSits thron’d, with Pedantry her solemn sire.

In every glance and motion you display,Sage Ignorance her gloom scholastic throwsAnd stamps o’er all your visage, once so gay,Unmeaning Gravity’s serene repose.[Pg 325]

And so he goes through life, with all the pomp of learning—of the reality, none—complacent, imposing, and yet hardly a man.

Of the college cook it is easy to say too much. He is a potentate against whom there is no appeal on earth. “Much knavery,” says Ben Jonson, “may be vented in a pudding.” In the days of theShotover Papershe could offer in exchange for a recipe “an introduction to some country families.” At the monastic door of his kitchen, as he meditates his mysteries, something of the Middle Ages clings to him yet, and he is half an abbot, contemptuous of a generation that makes small demand upon his subtlety and wealth. It is said that he comes of brilliant ancestry and has fallen. What heights there may be in the world from which a man could be said to fall in becoming a college cook, I do not know. For years he made clear the distinction between fancy and imagination. By fancy he lived, and on his fancies generations fed. He could disguise the meanest materials, and make them illustrious, subtle, or exquisitely sweet. He wasanimal propter convivia natum. In his grey kitchen, with chestnut beams aloft, a visitor seemed to assist at the inauguration of a perpetual spring. On the one hand was the earth—the raw material—the mere flesh or fish; and out of this, with upturned sleeves, like artist or conjuror, he made the flowers flourish and the leaves abound. By the perfume, it was a mysterious indoor Mayday. And so[Pg 326]he lived, and was feared and respected. But it was admitted that he had rivals. Something in a grander style was yet to be done....

It was mid-February. Wherever I looked, I saw first the cold white sky above and the snow beneath, and secondly the red faces of skaters out of doors, and indoors the blaze of great fires and the purple and gold of wine. Winter was to be met in every street—white-haired, it is true, but nevertheless a lusty, red-faced fellow, redder than autumn, with a grip of the hands and a roaring voice. As I passed the kitchen, the cook was silently at work. His hair was like the snow, his face like the fire. The brass, steel, pewter, and silver shone. The kitchen, with its fragrance, lustre, and quietness, was like an altar. There, too, was the priest, with stainless vestment and sacerdotal bearing. And as I left him and mounted the stairs, I seemed unblest. I found Scott tedious, Pater excessive, and Sir Thomas Browne a trifler, and threw them aside. Soon there was a knock at the door, and a man—a throne, domination, princedom, virtue, power—swept magnificently in. A light and a warmth, beyond the power of fire to bestow, accompanied him. He bent down solemnly and laid a little white covered plate upon the hearth. Before I could speak—“the gods themselves are hard to recognise”—he was gone. I uncovered the plate with something of my visitant’s solemnity—

Fair spirit of ethereal birth,In whom such mysteries and beauties blend!Still from thine ancient dwelling-place descend,And idealise our too material earth;[Pg 327]Still to the Bard thy chaste conceptions lend,To him thine early purity renew;Round every image, grace majestic throw;Till rapturously the living song shall glowWith inspiration as thy being true,And Poesy’s creations, decked by thee,Shall wake the tuneful thrill of sensuous ecstasy.

It was the climacteric of his career, and he shall go down to posterity upon the palates of men, not as one who worked out his recipes to three places of decimals, or as a distinguished maker of “bishop” or “posset,” or as one worth his weight in oysters, but as the creator of that necessary which is in fact brown bread, toasted and buttered.

Most pontifical of all college servants was old Acamas, who was not long ago to be seen, in his retirement, apparently beating the city bounds, and now and then standing sentry and defender of some old gate or archway. I first noticed him in the chapel quadrangle of——, and could almost have mistaken him for a fellow of the old school, such was his aspect, and the reverent, half-wondering air with which he surveyed the buildings. But he took off his hat to the junior fellow, and I was undeceived. There was something pathetic in that salute. He was himself apparently far worthier than the young man in flannels of the chapel and the ancient arms; and he seemed to know it, as he bent and trembled over his stick to declaim:—

“He may be a very clever young gentleman, but,[Pg 328]bless me, it is not the Greek that makes the scholar. There was the old President, who never looked at his book, and was all for horses;—but he had a way with him; he would swear just so, so; he was a scholar, if ever a man was. But the new ones are just all book or all play. They came in about the same time as bicycles and steam ploughs and such nonsense. And there’s too much lady about the college now; and such ladies! they are so dressed that it is hard to tell which of them is quite respectable....”

And so he went on, a little less reverent than he looked. But it was only a crimson heat of old age, and soon passed.

What a fine, decent figure he was. He was clothed in a dull black suit, with black tie, and an old-shaped hat, and wore his gloves. He had unquestionably a professional mien, and could not have been a gardener or groom. He was something old, settled in the land and known to the stars, traditional. His sorrow was nothing less dignified than disestablishment. It was time to be going. The enemy was in possession and insulting. He had been in the Balliol fellows’ garden ages ago, and knew what a line the old buildings made against the sky, and what the scene is now. He would walk about, hoping to express a volley of scorn by his silence to persons with no ear for silence. He never went into Tom quad at Christ Church without missing the figure of Mercury—perhaps a copy from John of Bologna, and taken down early last century—which used to preside over the fountain, still known as[Pg 330][Pg 329]

THE TOM QUADRANGLE, CHRIST CHURCH, FROM THE SOUTH ENTRANCEThis Quadrangle was formerly cloistered. The springers, the wall ribs of the vaulting, and the bases of the buttresses may be seen on the two sides of the Quadrangle shown in the picture.The Great Hall and tower founded by Cardinal Wolsey are on the right or southern side, whilst opposite, over the eastern buildings, rise the tower and spire of “The Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford.”Part of the basin of the fountain is seen on the left.The time is late afternoon in summer.

THE TOM QUADRANGLE, CHRIST CHURCH, FROM THE SOUTH ENTRANCE

This Quadrangle was formerly cloistered. The springers, the wall ribs of the vaulting, and the bases of the buttresses may be seen on the two sides of the Quadrangle shown in the picture.The Great Hall and tower founded by Cardinal Wolsey are on the right or southern side, whilst opposite, over the eastern buildings, rise the tower and spire of “The Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford.”Part of the basin of the fountain is seen on the left.The time is late afternoon in summer.

This Quadrangle was formerly cloistered. The springers, the wall ribs of the vaulting, and the bases of the buttresses may be seen on the two sides of the Quadrangle shown in the picture.

The Great Hall and tower founded by Cardinal Wolsey are on the right or southern side, whilst opposite, over the eastern buildings, rise the tower and spire of “The Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford.”

Part of the basin of the fountain is seen on the left.

The time is late afternoon in summer.

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“Mercury,” and used as a water ordeal or court of ultimate appeal by undergraduates. “That old pagan fellow,” he used to say, “told you more about the size of that quadrangle than the guide-books do”; and certainly nothing short of that or a playing fountain would so pleasantly expound the spaciousness of Wolsey’s square. When some one proposed burning in effigy certain officials at the time of Edward VII.’s coronation, he “did not remember that such things were done at George’s.”

He stopped to look at the new buildings of the college, and pointing at the whitened stone, said, “I don’t believe that stone is stone at all.” As he passed an entry, full of bicycles, he said sadly, without a thought of scorn, “It was built by public subscription,” and with his hand in his pocket, he seemed to be thinking that the finest thing in the world was to be the sole founder of a college. He once had a distant prospect of the Banbury Road, and would like to make night beautiful with its burning.

He still leaves Oxford by coach, or not at all. I believe that he calls Market Street “Cheyney Lane,” and Brasenose Lane “St. Mildred’s,” and Pembroke Street “Pennyfarthing Street.” To hear him talk of St. Scholastica’s day gives one a pretty notion of the antiquity of Oxford and himself. In 1354, on that day, several scholars found fault with the wine of a city vintner, and threw it at his prosperous face. The vintner gathered his neighbours and threatened. St. Martin’s bell was rung, and the city made fierce[Pg 334]preparations at the accustomed summons. Then St. Mary’s bell was rung, and the University came forth with bows and arrows and slings. “Slay,” and “Havock,” and “Give good knocks,” cried the citizens. The fight was long and bloody, and disastrous to the scholars. So for many centuries the city had to appear penitentially at St. Mary’s on St. Scholastica’s day. In 1825 this institution ceased at the corporation’s request. But Acamas will never forgive them, and hardly the University for giving way. “When laudable old customs dwindle, ’tis a sign learning dwindles,” he would say, as Hearne said, when there were no longer any fritters at dinner. Nor is he to be moved by the mundane glories of his college in the schools or elsewhere. A brilliant “examinee” of the college, and his particular aversion, having gained a First in Law, when it was pointed out to him by the scholar’s scout, the old man remarked: “And now I hope he knows what a privilege it is to belong to this college.”

How slow and decorous he was at the buttery hatch, performing even his own business as if he were about that of another. He carried a plate as if it were a ceremony; and his imperturbability would have completely endowed a railway porter and several judges. In hall, when once the needs of all the diners had been supplied, he would stand like “Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved,” an effigy, a self-constituted symbol of olden piety and order, bent on asserting sweet ancient things, while fellows raced into hall, and undergraduates raced[Pg 336][Pg 335]

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE AND MERTON TOWER, FROM CHRIST CHURCH MEADOWSTo the left of the picture shows a portion of the east boundary wall of the gardens of Christ Church, shadowed by elegant silver birch.Part of Corpus Christi College looks over the Fellows’ Garden, divided from Christ Church Meadows by a wall, upon which is a fence of flowering dahlias.The Chapel tower of Merton College rises grandly against the sunset sky.In the foreground a pathway fenced from the Meadows runs farther on, under the old south city wall, passing under the Fellows’ Garden of Merton, shown in another picture.

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE AND MERTON TOWER, FROM CHRIST CHURCH MEADOWS

To the left of the picture shows a portion of the east boundary wall of the gardens of Christ Church, shadowed by elegant silver birch.Part of Corpus Christi College looks over the Fellows’ Garden, divided from Christ Church Meadows by a wall, upon which is a fence of flowering dahlias.The Chapel tower of Merton College rises grandly against the sunset sky.In the foreground a pathway fenced from the Meadows runs farther on, under the old south city wall, passing under the Fellows’ Garden of Merton, shown in another picture.

To the left of the picture shows a portion of the east boundary wall of the gardens of Christ Church, shadowed by elegant silver birch.

Part of Corpus Christi College looks over the Fellows’ Garden, divided from Christ Church Meadows by a wall, upon which is a fence of flowering dahlias.

The Chapel tower of Merton College rises grandly against the sunset sky.

In the foreground a pathway fenced from the Meadows runs farther on, under the old south city wall, passing under the Fellows’ Garden of Merton, shown in another picture.

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out. He was one with the coats of arms emblazoned on the panels or the glass, and the benefactors’ portraits up among the shadows of the roof timber, and with the dial on the grass, which says, “I change and am the same.”

He is now seldom outside the old city wall, unless he goes in May to the river through Christ Church or between Merton and Corpus. When he sees Tom tower he makes the melancholy revelation that he once heard Tom boom one time less than the appointed number. As for the flowers in the window-boxes, it is “cook’s work”; he has seen the like ornament “on pastry.” On a bank holiday he is clothed in extraordinary dignity and gloom, and stands with an expression that wields a mace, in the hope of repelling the pleasure-seeker from some holy or learned retreat. If he were not mistaken for an eminent person, it would fare ill with those whose footsteps he dogs, lest they should commit some desecration. He can hardly permit smoking in the quadrangles, and has to turn his back to avoid seeing the accursed thing. At one time, a man dared not run through the purlieus of the Divinity School, for fear of the nod of Acamas.

He is a mirror of good manners, which he has learned out of love, and not necessity. He has a great store of antique information—statutes, precedents, fables—which, as in an aumbry, he keeps fragrant by much meditation, and is pleased to display. His elaborate courtesies are interpreted almost as insults by the new generations; men wonder what they have done to[Pg 340]deserve his withering respect. It is reported that on one occasion, at twilight, a vigorous gentleman brushed past him, between the Camera and Brasenose. Acamas turned, with a soft and bitter protest against “a gentleman forcing what he could command.” “If,” said he, “the Vice-Chancellor were here, he should know that a gentleman had insulted an old college servant by mistaking him for a townsman.” ... He bowed and almost broke his heart when he recognised the beaming face of the Vice-Chancellor.

He is the corrector of all new abuses and the defender of old, and through his father, a college butler and long since dead, he has the times of Trafalgar fresh in his mind, with imposing third-hand memories of the days when Oxford was Jacobite. The subtle distinguishing marks of all the colleges, as far as concerns fashions of morals and manners, scholarship and sport, he knows by heart, and professes such an experienced acquaintance with like matters that in the High or by the Long Bridges he knows at sight a “Greats” man or a “Stinks” man or a mathematician; of which last he is a determined hater; and when on one occasion he remarked on the good looks of a certain plain person, he was forced to explain that he meant “good-looking for a mathematician.” He would at need devise a new coat of arms for Magdalen or St. John’s, or improve “the devil that looks over Lincoln.”

Of “his own college” he knows everything, from the cobweb on Jeremy Taylor in the library to the[Pg 341]oldest beam in the kitchen roof. He knows the benefactors and their benefactions, their rank, and everything but the way to pronounce their names; and has a kind of unofficial bidding prayer in celebration of their good deeds. His ideal of a head of a college is an odd mixture of Dean Gaisford and Tatham of Lincoln; for he demands some eccentricity along with dignity and repute, and in the course of three-quarters of a century he has combined the two. The common-room chairs he knows better than those who sit in them—their history and their peculiarities, and who have sat therein. By nice observation he is aware of the correct way of crossing a quadrangle, and of whose furniture should be consumed in bonfires. The spires and gateways of the city are close friends to him, and “Isn’tshebeautiful,” or “Isn’thelooking well,” or “They have their little ways,” is his comment as he passes one or other of the things that have brooded over his life continually. He can tell when the bats will come out of the tower in a fine January or a windy March; when the swifts shall scream first by All Saints’; and the colour of New College tower when a storm is due from the west. I can think of him as being the deity of the place, in a mythopœic age, and picture himcorniger, with fritillaries in his hoary locks, as the genius of Isis, up in a niche at the Bodleian.[Pg 342]

I have no doubt that the past had many such to show, and that the present, when it has graduated into a past, will not be found wanting; but the ways of the college servants of old are buried deep in oblivion. They were less numerous then, when a senior and a junior student slept in the same room, and the latter made the beds, etc. Upon scholars, Bible-clerks, and the like, fell a great many of the duties which are now the scout’s—as waiting at the fellows’ table in hall, and the pleasanter although more thankless task of calling up the fellows and more luxurious commoners in the morning. Not only was the scholar or “servitor” a practical servant for part of his time, but the regular servants could be students also, and we may guess from the Corpus statutes that they must sometimes have attended lectures and have taken degrees. A story runs that a vain scholar had sent some Latin verses to his tutor by the hand of a servant, who quickly read and corrected them, to the humiliation of the scholar, when he received them back, with the comment, that his work seemed to have been revised by one who was acquainted with the Latin tongue. No doubt a man of this stamp often rose, or if he stayed in college made his attainments profitable. A man who was once manciple at Wadham became a noted maker of mathematical instruments. The manciple bought and distributed provisions in the college: the cook or[Pg 344][Pg 343]

THE ENTRANCE TO QUEEN’S COLLEGE FROM LOGIC LANEThe cupola and entrance gate beneath, appearing across the road at the end of Logic Lane, form one of the most attractive objects in the High Street.Behind the cupola shows part of the campanile and pediment of the buildings of the College on the north side of the Great Quadrangle. The statue is that of Queen Caroline, consort of George II. The buildings on the left of the picture belong to University College.

THE ENTRANCE TO QUEEN’S COLLEGE FROM LOGIC LANE

The cupola and entrance gate beneath, appearing across the road at the end of Logic Lane, form one of the most attractive objects in the High Street.

Behind the cupola shows part of the campanile and pediment of the buildings of the College on the north side of the Great Quadrangle. The statue is that of Queen Caroline, consort of George II. The buildings on the left of the picture belong to University College.

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cooks and butlers were sometimes called upon to furnish a banquet of “nine hundred messes of meat, with twelve hundred hogsheads of beer and four hundred and sixteen of wine,” as at Balliol, when a Chancellor of twenty-two years of age was installed: the porter was prominent, but as yet much subordinated to the head of the college, to whom he delivered the keys at an early hour: the barber, who was sometimes also the porter, was the welcome dispenser of true and false news, and at Wadham survived until the sixties of last century, when he insisted that the amateur actors should have their wigs dressed by him, under pain of being betrayed to the Warden. Of the old servants—heu prisca fides—we can only guess at the devotion, from the story of old Thomas Allen’s servitor, who was overawed by his master’s mathematical instruments and his reputation of astrologer, and would “impose on freshmen or simple people” by telling them that spirits were often to be met coming up Allen’s staircase “like bees.” John Earle has preserved the ways of an old college butler, from his experience as a fellow of Merton.

“An old College Butler is none of the worst students in the house, for he keeps the set hours at his book more duly than any. His authority is great over men’s good names, which he charges many times with shrewd aspersions, which they can hardly wipe off without payment. His Box and Counters prove him to be a man of reckoning; yet he is stricter in his accounts than a usurer, and delivers not a farthing[Pg 348]without writing. He doubles the pain ofGallobelgicus, for his books go out once a quarter, and they are much in the same nature, brief notes and sums of affairs, and are out of request as soon. His comings in are like a Tailor’s from the shreds of bread, the chippings, and remnants of the broken crust: excepting his vails from the barrel, which poor folks buy for their hogs, but drink themselves. He divides a halfpenny loaf with more subtility thanKekerman, and subdivides thea primo ortumso nicely, that a stomach of great capacity can hardly apprehend it. He is a very sober man, considering his manifold temptations of drink and strangers, and if he be overseen, ’tis within his own liberties, and no man ought to take exceptions. He is never so well pleas’d with his place, as when a Gentleman is beholding to him for showing him the Buttery, whom he greets with a cup of single beer and sliced manchet, and tells him ’tis the fashion of the College. He domineers over Freshmen when they first come to the Hatch, and puzzles them with strange language of Cues and Cees, and some broken Latin which he has learnt at his Bin. His faculty extraordinary is the warming of a pair of Cards, and telling out a dozen of Counters for Post and Pair, and no man is more methodical in these businesses. Thus he spends his age, till the tap of it is run out, and then a fresh one is set abroach.[Pg 349]”

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With cares that move, not agitate the heart.

Inother cities the past is a tradition, and is at most regretted. In Oxford it is an entailed inheritance. Nevertheless, by way of a gaudy foil to this hale immortality, fashions flourish there more luridly, and fade more suddenly, than elsewhere. Afraid, therefore, that I might stumble upon anachronisms unaided, I addressed myself as a seeker after truth to several freshmen who might have been expected to know practically everything. One wished to be excused because he was standing for the secretaryship of the Union, and was “somewhat out of touch with ordinary life.” He had been busily opening debates in half the colleges of Oxford, in order to prove his sound principles and high capabilities, and enclosed this table of labours:—

11th inst., at ——: “That in the opinion of this house His Majesty’s government has done its best.”

12th, at ——: “That the struggles of the poor towards a larger and freer life are not to be discouraged.”

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13th, at——: “That vegetarianism is opposed alike to our traditions and our present needs.” Also later (to oppose): “That a wave of imperialism causes a reformation in the standards of literature.”

(14th, twenty-first birthday.)

18th, at ——: “That poets are the interpreters of their age.”

19th, at ——: “That in encouraging sports this University approaches more nearly to the Greek ideal than at any other period of its existence has been the case.”

20th, at ——: “A paper on ‘Mentality in Life and Art.’”

21st, at ——: “That Oxford has not sufficiently realised and reformed its national position since imperialism became an acknowledged fact.”

Another gentleman of more tender years and less exuberance forwarded themenuof his college junior gaudy, in itself a pleasant reminder of the more solid occupations of undergraduates. He had made a table of a day’s life, alongside the dishes, like this:—

He had “no time for more.”

Of the third answer I can just see this fragment, in a fine confident penmanship, among the flames: “Oxford life falls under three heads, which I shall discuss separately. They are Religion, Education, and Social Life. And first of Education. My tutor breakfasts at eight. He has forty-eight pupils, and four ladies from Somerville College. He has one lecture and to-morrow’s to prepare. In the afternoon he will be fresh and cheerful at the college barge, watching the races. He is writing two books, and is on the Board of Guardians. In spite of this the great thing about Oxford education is the way it stamps a man—‘the cast of Vere de Vere,’ as the poet says; no matter in what position in life his lot is thrown, a certain easy grace——”

I find a more rational description of an Oxford day as it was in 1867, and as it was up to the publication of Mr. Rhodes’s will, in theOxford Spectator, one of the most enduring of undergraduate periodicals.

“The whole History of Philosophy,” says the writer, E. N[olan], “is simply the story of an ordinary Oxford day.... In the morning, when I awake, the eastern dawn, as it shines into my room, gives my philosophy[Pg 354]an Oriental tinge. I turn Buddhist, and lie thinking of nothing. Then I rise, and at once my tenets are those of the Ionics. I think, with Thales, that Water is the great first principle. Under this impression I take my bath. Then, yielding to Animaxander, I begin to believe in the unlimited, and straightway, in a rude toilette, consume an infinite amount of breakfast. This leads to the throwing open of my window, at which I sit, an unconscious disciple of Anaximenes, and a believer in the universal agency of Air. I lock my door and sit down to read mathematics, seeming a very Pythagorean in my loneliness and reverence for numbers. I am disturbed by a knock. I open the door and admit my parlour-maid, who wishes to remove the breakfast things. She is evidently an Eleatic, for she makes an abstraction of everything material, and reduces my table to a state of pure being. Again I am alone, and as I complete my toilet before my mirror, I hold, as Heraclitus did, the principle of the becoming, and think that it, and it only, should be the rule of existence. I saunter to the window, and ponder upon the advantages or otherwise of taking a walk. I am kept at home by some theory of the Elements, such as possessed Empedocles. Now I bethink me of my lunch, and I become an Atomist in my hunger, as I compare the two states of Fulness and Void. At last Atomistic Necessity prevails, and I ring my bell. Lunch over, I walk out, and am much amused, as usual, with the men I meet. I notice that those who have intellect superior to their fellows neglect their personal appearance.[Pg 355]These, I think, are followers of Anaxagoras: they believe in νοῦς, and they deny the Becoming. Others I noticed to be bent upon some violent exercise. I feel myself small and weak beside them, wondering much whether I, who to them am but half a man, am man enough to be considered, sophistically, the measure of all things. I console myself with remarking to myself that I surely know my work for the Schools better than they. Behold! I am Socratic. Virtue, I say, consists in knowing. So I chatter away to myself, feeling quite Platonic in my dialogue, until I meet a luckless friend who is to be examined next day in Moderations. I walk out with him far into the country, talking to him about his work, and struggling against my deeply-rooted antipathy to exertion of any kind. Surely Aristotle could not have been more peripatetic, or Chrysippus more Stoical. The dinner-hour makes me Epicurean, and I pass unconsciously over many stages of philosophy. I spend an hour in the rooms of a friend who is reading hard for honours. I come away but little impressed with the philosophy of the Schoolmen. The evening passes like a dream. I have vague thoughts of recurring to my former good habits of home correspondence; but this revival of letters passes by, leaving me asleep in my chair. Here, again, as at dinner, I doubtless pass through many unconscious stages. At length I begin to muse upon bed. It is a habit of mine to yield to the vulgar fascinations of strong liquors before retiring for the night. Philosophy, I learn, works in a circle, ever[Pg 356]returning unto itself. It is for this reason, perhaps, that my last waking act is inspired both by Hegel and Thales. Hegel prompts me to crave for Spirit: Thales influences me to temper it with Water.”

Yet, if the Oxford day, as is fitting, can always be expressed in terms of philosophy, it is sometimes more complex, often more simple than that; and it is longer. It begins and ends at 7A.M.At that hour, the student and the fanatical novel-reader, forgetful of time, the passive Bacchanalian, and the man who prefers the divine, long-seated Oxford chair to bed, are usually persuaded to retire; for unacademic voices of servant and starling begin to be heard in the quadrangle. The blackbird is awake in the shrubbery. Very soon the scout will appear, and will not know whether to say “Good-night” or “Good-morning,” and with the vacant face of one who has slept through all the blessed hours of night, will drive men to bed. There is a dreamy laying aside of books—volumes of Daudet and Dickens, Fielding and Abbé Prévost, Morley, Roberts and Poe,—old plays and romances,—Stubbs, and the Chronicles, Stuart pamphlets,—Thucydides, Aristotle, and later Latin than Quintilian. If there is to be a Divinity examination later in the morning, there are Bibles scattered up and down, epitomes, and a sound of men’s voices asking the difference between one and another version of a parable, and “Who was Gallio?” and preparing all the playful acrobatics that will pass for knowledge in the Schools. While these are trying to sleep, with the gold sunlight winning through their[Pg 358][Pg 357]

EXETER COLLEGE CHAPEL, FROM SHIP STREETThe Chapel of the College, rebuilt by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1857, rises in the centre of the picture, and with its spire forms a conspicuous feature in Ship Street.Below is that part of the College fronting “The Turl.”On the right are some of the buildings of Jesus College.The sun of a late summer afternoon strikes the western gable of the Chapel.

EXETER COLLEGE CHAPEL, FROM SHIP STREET

The Chapel of the College, rebuilt by Sir George Gilbert Scott in 1857, rises in the centre of the picture, and with its spire forms a conspicuous feature in Ship Street.

Below is that part of the College fronting “The Turl.”

On the right are some of the buildings of Jesus College.

The sun of a late summer afternoon strikes the western gable of the Chapel.

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eyelids, one or two picked men are rising of their own free will, and some because they have to run in the Parks before a training breakfast; others are arguing with themselves or with their scouts that it cannot possibly be nearly half-past seven; or later on, that a passing bell or a bell-wether has been mistaken for the college chapel bell; others expelling the awakening scout with more frankness: some doze and doze, with alternate pricks of conscience and necessity, and desperately deciding to rise, have to saunter about, too late for chapel, too early for breakfast; the majority murmuring that all is well, and enjoying the pleasantest of thefts from daylight; for, to the man who need not, or will not, rise, the chapel bell is a blithe and kindly spirit, that sets a crown upon the bliss of oncoming sleep and gives a keener edge to his complacency, as he thinks of the cold, sleepy virtue that walks in the world below. The chaplain, a man of habit, is also getting up. No one has ever seen a fellow late for chapel.

When the service is over, those who have attended are either awake or asleep again. The service itself is of an awakening kind, and has a vigour that is unknown outside Oxford.

Oh, dear and saintly chaplain,Time toils after you in vain!When you stroked the Eight to glory,Did you prove this quite so plain,As at morning chapel dailyAnd at evensong again?[Pg 362]

So run the verses which express the kind of vigour in vogue.

Now the perfervid reading man, and the man whose genealogical tree is conspicuous for a constant succession of maiden aunts, go to their cocoa and eggs: and, within three hours afterwards, the average man, to porridge, fish, eggs and bacon, coffee and oranges; the decadent, to cigars, liqueurs and wafers; the æsthete, to his seven wonders and a daffodil; and some, of all classes, to the consolations of philosophy and soda-water. Only the last-named habitually break their fast in solitude. For it is in Oxford the most social meal of the day. It may begin at any time from eight until half-past eleven—anything later being “brunch”—and last until half-past one. Some even believe that an invitation to breakfast embraces the afternoon. Lectures seldom interfere with the meal, since the man who leaves for their sake is not usually missed. A very early breakfast is pregnant with yawns, and may also be forgotten; a very late one is unhappily curtailed. Ten o’clock is an ideal to be striven after. The host has to be studious not to invite two men who are “blues,” or who are entered for the same examinations, or who are freshmen from the same school, which would be apt to produce treatises instead of conversation. It is dangerous also to have two epigrammatists. For that leads to a game of shuttlecock and battledore between the two, and of patience among the rest.... He knows that four men incapable of these things are coming, and as he peeps from his bedroom to see that all is ready,[Pg 363]he hears their steps and laughter echoing up the stairs. He is rapidly surveying them all in his mind, wondering how such excellent ingredients will mix, when they enter, having picked one another up by good fortune on the way, and already got rid of a possible tendency to talk about politics, weather, or dreams. They discuss everything. One who is bound to be a fellow starts on “the æsthetic value of dons.” One who has never left England offers a suggestive remark on Swiss scenery or the effect of palms against a sunrise in the Pacific. The transitions are indescribably rapid; yet the link of merely an epigram or a laugh, or possibly the very sense of contrast and incongruity, makes the whole run on as some fine hedge of maple, hawthorn, holly, elm, beech, and wild cherry runs on, and is fine and nothing else, except to a botanist. The talk is a play in five acts: each man is in turn a chorus. But whether the subject be freshmen, or Disraeli, or Sancho Panza, or the English aristocracy, it is treated as it never was before. Perhaps that is the result of the detached attitude of a number of very young men. Perhaps it is because each in turn, of the five average men, is touched with genius temporarily by accretion from the other four. One says a dull thing, another a silly thing, a third a rash thing, a fourth a vague thing, and straightway the fifth catches fire and blazes with something of the true light from heaven, and he not less than the rest is astonished. The spirit of the conversation is as different from the prandial spirit as shortbread from wedding cake. It has neither the richness of that nor the frivolity of tea.[Pg 364]The breakfast talker seems to depend very little on memory. He remembers fewer stories, less of the book he read on the night before, than at a later meal. He is thrown more entirely upon the resources of his own fantasy. The experience of sleep still lies like a great water between him and yesterday. In the cold, young, golden light, among the grey stones of the quadrangle, the brain, too, rejoices in its own life, and forgets to look before and after. Habit is weaker. He catches another glimpse of the “clouds of glory,” if only in a mirage. He is renovated by the new day; and although by dinner-time he will have advanced to warmer sympathies and a more tranquil satisfaction, there will then be something more cynical in his indolent optimism than in the sharp but easily warded points of morning wit.... Of course, a breakfast party of men in training for the Torpids is another thing. That is a question of arithmetic. So, too, with a breakfast given formally to freshmen, which is mainly a question of time and stories about dons. Breakfasts with fellows are either of the best kind, or they are ceremonies. There are some colleges, where the fellows not only feel that there is no need of condescension, but they do not condescend: the elder is not expected to be preternaturally simple, nor the younger to be abstruse. In other colleges, such breakfasts of the great and small are sometimes farces and sometimes ceremonies. The don knows that the other’s knowledge of theRepublicis small; the undergraduate is equally aware of the fact: the one assumes that he has an index to the othe[Pg 365]r’s mind; the other that one so scathing in his opinion of essays will be the same in his treatment of little quips about the Colonial Secretary or accounts of pheasant-shooting in the Christmas vacation: one is determined to pounce; the other not to be pounced upon. The scout who changes the dishes indicates whether it is a ceremony or a farce. If he smiles, it is the one; if he does not, it is the other. Not everybody, indeed, in these colleges has the same misfortune, though any one may, as the young man who carefully prepared a paraphrase of one of the obscurest articles in theEncyclopædia Britannicaand two brand new epigrams artfully inwoven, and served them up as he sat down at the breakfast table of the bursar, who smiled and commented moodily: “What a boon theEncyclopædiais to the tired man!” But breakfast with even the best of dons has this disadvantage, that he can bring it to an end with a word; so that his guest may afterwards be seen disconsolately reading a newspaper, and feeling that to have eaten food is hardly more to have breakfasted than to have dined.

Between nine and one o’clock the different species of Oxford kind are either within doors—sleeping, talking, or working—or to be seen in various conditions of unrest; observers and observed in the High, in pairs or singly; and, if freshmen, either stately in scholars’ gowns or apparently anxious to convince others that they have just picked up their commoners’ gowns; sauntering to the book-shops, or to look at a cricket pitch or a dog; or hurrying to lectures with an earnest[Pg 366]ness that strangely disappears when they are seated and the lecture is begun.

In the stream of men there is one thin black line that is unwavering—the line of men, with white fillets of sacrifice under their chins, going to the examination Schools. This is the only place in the world where the plough is still wrought into a weapon of offence. They are under the care of a suitable, ferocious, wild man, who is one of the Old Guard of the opposition to women at Oxford; and in his bleak invitation to ladies, to proceed to their appointed rooms, lays terrible stress upon the word “women,” as if it were a term of abuse in his strange tongue. He is partly responsible for the reply of an undergraduate to an American who asked, what might be the name of the buildings which he so admired and which made him feel at home?

“That,” said the undergraduate, “is the Martyrs’ Memorial.”

“And who are those going in?”

“They are the Martyrs.”

“But I thought they were burned three hundred years ago?”

“Sir,” said the undergraduate impressively, “they are martyred twice daily.”

“Well, I guess Oxford is very Middle Age and all that, but I didn’t know it went so far as that”: and the humane visitor went away, talking of agitation in theNew York Herald.

Of all Oxford pastimes, that of going to the book[Pg 367]sho[Pg 368]p

ENTRANCE TO THE DIVINITY SCHOOLThe doorway through which a servant with a silver “poker” is preceding the Vice-Chancellor leads to the old Divinity School.The window at the end of the lobby—usually called the “Pig Market”—looks into Exeter College garden.

ENTRANCE TO THE DIVINITY SCHOOL

The doorway through which a servant with a silver “poker” is preceding the Vice-Chancellor leads to the old Divinity School.

The window at the end of the lobby—usually called the “Pig Market”—looks into Exeter College garden.

[Pg 371][Pg 370][Pg 369]

after breakfast is one of the most wise. There the undergraduate meets the don whose lecture he has slighted; in fact, he meets every one there, or escapes them, if he thinks fit, behind one of the tall piles. Some prefer leap-frog and hopping contests in the quadrangle. In some colleges they are said to read Plato under the trees in the morning: in others, it is to be presumed, in spite of the negligent capers of the wearers, that the hours are spent in choosing the necktie or waistcoat best suited to “flame in the forehead of the morning sky.” Another amusement is to go to the Divinity School and see the Vice-Chancellor, seated between the two neat and restless proctors, conferring degrees. Near, and on either side of the daïs, the ladies are enjoying the scene, with no traces of any selfish “I would an’ if I could.” Below them sit dons who are to present members of their colleges,—a pale, superb, militant priest conspicuous among the rows of English gentlemen. Farther removed from authority is the Opposition, half a hundred undergraduates, who merrily applaud the perambulations of the mace-bearer or the deportment of their friends. Pale blue, and scarlet, and peach-coloured hoods make a brave contrast with the dead grey light and colourless stone of traceried ceiling and pillared walls, and the dim foliage of trees and ivy outside.

Lectures are a less stately pleasure. Some lecturers walk up and down the room as in a cage, and pause only for a more genial remark than usual, with uplifted gown and back to the blazing fire. Others laugh at their[Pg 372]own jokes, or even at jokes which they leave unexpressed. Some are stern and impassioned: some appear to be proposing a health; others, again, a vote of condolence. One came in clothed for travel, twenty minutes late, and after a few remarks, said that brevity was the most pardonable of the virtues, and that he had to catch a train; and left. In the old days, Merton was famous for Schoolmen, Christ Church for poets, All Souls’ for orators, Brasenose for disputants, and so on, says Fuller. That is not quite so now. Yet, as then, “all are eminent in some one kind or other,” although the undergraduate does not always perceive it. Some are noted for research, some for views, some for condensation. An impartial observer once remarked that, “even when he is abridging an abridgment, an Oxford lecturer always had views.” A scratching, coughing, whispering silence is respectfully observed. Once upon a time, a lady (not English) entered a famous hall, guide-book in hand, spectacles on nose; went from place to place, contemplated all, and incurred only the amazement of the lecturer and the admiration of the audience. It is to be noticed that the audience of what M. Bardoux good-naturedly calls Monks, is in most cases far more interested in note-books than in the lecturer. Some will spend three consecutive hours in lecture rooms, and therein compile very curious anthologies. Even that does not conduce to enthusiasm; and nobody in recent years has been electrified in an Oxford lecture room. “I have discovered,” writes an outsider, “with much difficulty that there are two[Pg 373]classes in Oxford, the learned and the unlearned: my difficulty arose from the fact that the latter were without coarseness and the former without enthusiasm.” And certainly in a city that loves to light bonfires, and is never more herself than when she is welcoming a guest, enthusiasm is astonishingly well concealed. It may be detected occasionally among gentlemen who are conducting East-Enders from quadrangle to quadrangle, or among those who like the ground-ivy beer at Lincoln College on Ascension Day, or among those who salute financiers and others in the act of becoming Doctors of Civil Law at the Encænia. It was said that some one unsuccessfully spread his gown as a carpet for the late Mr. Rhodes’s feet: it is certain that some played upon him with little jets of truth very heartily, and asked Socratic questions, on that august occasion.

At luncheon there is, however, some enthusiasm; not for the meal, which is commonly a stupid one, but for the long afternoon, to be spent in the parks, or on the river, or in the country, east to Wheatley, west to Fyfield. These matters, or the prospect of a long bookish afternoon indoors or (in the summer) under a willow on the Cherwell or Evenlode, encroach too absolutely upon luncheon to allow it to be anything more than an affair of knives and forks. As for the country, a man used frequently to walk so as to know all the fields for twenty miles on every side. But the walker is vanishing. Games take away their thousands; bicycles their hundreds; the motor car destroys twos and threes. On Sundays walking is almost fashionable;[Pg 374]on week-days it is in danger of becoming notorious as the hall-mark of a “reading man.” An uninteresting youth was once asked, as a freshman, what exercise he favoured, and replied, “I belong to the reading set and go walks.” The remark was generally considered to lower him to the rank of theIntellectuels, or as the “Guide Conversationelle” translates the word, the Prigs. That guide, which appeared in theJ.C.R.in June 1899, is so characteristic in its humour that I cannot apologise for quoting from it:—

Guide Conversationelle de l’Étranger à Oxford

The river (orl’après midi) is the new college of the nineteenth century. As an educational institution it is unquestioned. The college barges represent perhaps the most successful Oxford architecture of the age. Certainly it was a thought of no mean order which set that tapering line of gaudy galleys to heave and shimmer along the river-side, against a background of trees and grass, and themselves a background for the white figures of the oarsmen. It is a fine lesson in eloquence to listen to the coaches shouting reprimand and advice, in sentences one or two words long, to a panting crew. One can see the secret of English success in the meek reception which a number of hard-working, conscientious, abraded men give to the abuse of an idler on the bank. On the afternoon of the races all is changed. The man who yesterday shouted “Potato sacks!” or “Pleasure boat!” now screams “Well rowed all!” Before and behind him flows all of the University that can run a mile. The faces of all are expressive in every inch; all restraint of habit or decorum is gone for the time being. The racing boats make hardly a sound; and for the most part the rowers hear not a sound from the bank, but only the click of their own rowlocks. Here and there a rattle is twirled; a bell rings; a pistol is fired; and a pair or several pairs of boats creep into the side, winners and losers, and languidly[Pg 376]watch the still competing boats as they pass. The noise of rattles, bells, pistols, whistles, bagpipes, frying-pans, and shouts can be heard in all the colleges and in the fields at Marston and Hinksey, where it has a kind of melody. Close at hand, it has a charm for the experienced tympanum: for in the cries of the victorious colleges the joy of victory is too great to allow of any discordant crow of mere triumph; the cries of those about to be beaten are too determined to have in them anything of hate. Such is the devout enthusiasm of the runners on the bank that if their own college boat is bumped they will sometimes run on to cheer the next boat that passes. The mysteries of harmony are never so wonderful as when, opposite the barge of a college that has made its bump, the sound of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments goes up, from dons, clergymen, old members of the college, future bishops, governors, brewers, schoolmasters, literary men, all looking very much the same, and in their pride of college forgetting all other pride. “If the next great prophet comes in knickerbockers, with good legs and a megaphone, he will be received in Oxford,” says one as he leaves the river. “Was a prophet possible? Would he be a warrior, or an orator, or a quiet actor and persuader? Out of the wilderness, or out of the slum?” Such were the questions asked. “In any case he would not be listened to in Oxford,” thought one. “Why not? provided his accent was good,” thought another. “Comfort yourself,” said a third; “some one would ask at hall table what school he came[Pg 378][Pg 377]

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