THE OXFORD DAY
With cares that move, not agitate the heart.
In other 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.”
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 the
_menu_ of 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:--
_Soup_
Macedoine. _The Senior Proctor._
_Fish_
Turbot and Lobster Sauce. _My tailor: and to buy a meerschaum._
_Entrées_
Tomates Farcées. _My Coach._
_Joint_
Saddle of Mutton. _If possible, my philosophy tutor._
_Game_
Pheasants. _Aristotle._
_Sweets_
Pudding à la Belleline. _Eights._
_Glace_
Neapolitain. _The Master._
_Savoury_
Oysters à la Bonne Bouche. _Jones’s hair._
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 the _Oxford
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
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.
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 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 7 A.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
[Illustration: 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.]
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 daily
And at evensong again?
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, 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. 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 the _Republic_ is small; the undergraduate is
equally aware of the fact: the one assumes that he has an index to the
other’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 the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ and 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 the _Encyclopædia_ is 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 earnestness
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 the _New York Herald_.
Of all Oxford pastimes, that of going to the bookshop
[Illustration: 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.]
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 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 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; 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 the
_Intellectuels_, or as the “Guide Conversationelle” translates the word,
the Prigs. That guide, which appeared in the _J.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
L’Américain. The Anglo-Saxon.
L’Espion. The proctor.
Le Chauvinisme. Imperialism.
Le Morgue. Self-respect.
Le Noble. The good fellow.
Le Bourgeois pauvre. The tosher [an unattached student].
Le Mauvais Repas. Hall [dinner].
Le Repas. The Grid [iron; an Oxford social club].
Le Culte. The Salvation Army.
Le Fou. The earnest man.
Le Lion. The don.
L’Intellectuel. The Prig.
Merci. ----
Vous me devez cinq francs. Oh! it doesn’t matter.
Je suis Athée. I am broad.
Il est dans le mouvement. He is a gentleman.
Il a manqué son coup. I hate that man.
Suivre les cours. Reading for a second.
Républicain de Vieille Roche. Little Englander.
Opportuniste. Conservative (or) Liberal.
Socialiste. Radical.
Collectiviste. Socialist.
Le vertu. Our English way.
Etre vicieux. To be out of it.
Il arrivera. His father got that place.
J’ai peur. Where’s the good of ragging?
C’est faux. In some respects you are right.
Tu en as menti. Surely you must be mistaken.
Abruti. My dear Sir!
The river (or _l’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 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
[Illustration: 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.
]
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 nonsense _à 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 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 hum
Of scientific circles. Here resounds
The football field with its discordant train,
The crowd that cheers but not discriminates....
There are also teas with the young, the beautiful, 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 Thone
In 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 is dearest. And what a carnival of contrasts in
men and manners can be seen in a little room. “Oxford,” writes the
_Oxford 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 tie
And shy, desponding face, creeping along
Unwilling to the Schools. Then, at the Union,
Spouting like Fury, with some woeful twaddle
Upon 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 reputation
Even 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 shifts
Into the lean and study-worn Professor,
With spectacles on nose and class at side;
His youthful nose has grown a world too large
For his shrunk face; and his big, manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history
In 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
[Illustration: 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.
]
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 Cambridge _Light Green_ and the
“Lambkin Papers” in the _J.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 the _Shotover Papers_ of 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? is
Pure 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 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.
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. “We _devour_” says Leigh Hunt, “wit and argument, and
_discuss_ a 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 the
_Times_ to-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 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 be _chaplains_ too, for they were
never like to be _fellows_.” 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 puns _sentent 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.
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 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:--
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, “We
Never 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 assails
Him 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 the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ by 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
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 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 repeated _spontaneously_
by 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:--
Lost!
A sense of humour
by the following gentlemen----
They will take in exchange early numbers
of _Sword and Trowel_ or a selection
of 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 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 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 from _Gaudeamus, 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
[Illustration: 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.]
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 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 the _Studentenlieder_ is hummed; in another, Hagen’s
_Carmina Medii Ævi_ or W. B. Yeats or Marlowe is declaimed; in another,
you shall hear ghosts or sports discussed; in a fourth, the orthodoxy of
the _Inferno_: 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, the _Anthologia 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 the _Organon_ of
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, the _Odyssey_, 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 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, 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 chord
Can tune their timely voices cunningly:
And many Chroniclers, that can record
Old 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 ancient _Square_
Cries 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 lone _Square_ is blind with gloom,
A cloudy moonlight plays, and falls
In glory upon _Bodley’s_ walls:
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.
Blow, winds! and round that perfect _Dome_
Wail as you will, and sweep, and roam:
Above _Saint Mary’s_ carven home,
Struggle and smite to your desire
The sainted watchers on her spire:
Or in the distance vex your power
Upon mine own _New College_ tower:
You hurt not these! On me and mine
Clear candlelights in quiet shine:
My fire lives yet! nor have I done
With _Smollett_, nor with _Richardson_:
With, gentlest of the martyrs! _Lamb_,
Whose lover I, long lover, am:
With _Gray_, where gracious spirit knew
The 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.
IN A COLLEGE GARDEN