II

It seemed to me such a piece of good fortune to have been asked down to

Oxford at Commemoration by a gentleman implicated in the remarkable

ceremony which goes on under that name, who kindly offered me the

hospitality of his college, that I scarcely waited even to thank him, I

simply took the first train. I had had a glimpse of Oxford in former

years, but I had never slept in a low-browed room looking out on a

grassy quadrangle, opposite a mediæval clock-tower. This satisfaction

was vouchsafed me on the night of my arrival; I was inducted into the

rooms of an absent undergraduate. I sat in his deep arm-chairs; I burned

his candles and read his books. I hereby thank him as tenderly as

possible. Before going to bed I took a turn through the streets and

renewed in the silent darkness that impression of the charm imparted to

them by the quiet college-fronts, which I had gathered in former years.

The college-fronts were now quieter than ever, the streets were empty,

and the old scholastic city was sleeping in the warm starlight. The

undergraduates had retired in large numbers, encouraged in this impulse

by the collegiate authorities, who deprecate their presence at

Commemoration. However many young gownsmen may be sent away, there

always remain enough to make a noise. There can be no better indication

of the resources of Oxford in a spectacular way than this fact that the

first step toward preparing an impressive ceremony is to get rid of the

undergraduates.

In the morning I breakfasted with a young American who, in common with a

number of his countrymen, had come hither to seek stimulus for a finer

quality of study. I know not whether he would have reckoned as such

stimulus the conversation of a couple of those ingenuous youths of

Britain whose society I always find charming; but it added, from my own

point of view, to the local colour of the entertainment. After this was

over I repaired, in company with a crowd of ladies and elderly people,

interspersed with gownsmen, to the hoary rotunda of the Sheldonian

theatre, which every visitor to Oxford will remember, with its curious

cincture of clumsily-carven heads of warriors and sages perched upon

stone posts. The interior of this edifice is the scene of the classic

hooting, stamping, and cat-calling by which the undergraduates confer

the last consecration upon the distinguished gentlemen who come up for

the honorary degree of D.C.L. It is with the design of attenuating as

much as possible this incongruous chorus, that the heads of colleges, on

the close of the term, a few days before Commemoration, speed their too

demonstrative disciples upon the homeward way. As I have already hinted,

however, the contingent of irreverent lads was on this occasion quite

large enough to produce a very handsome specimen of the traditional

rumpus. This made the scene a very singular one. An American of course,

with his fondness for antiquity, his relish for picturesqueness, his

"emotional" attitude at historic shrines, takes Oxford much more

seriously than its customary denizens can be expected to do. These

people are not always upon the high horse; they are not always in an

acutely sentient condition. Nevertheless, there is a certain maximum of

disaccord with their beautiful circumstances which the ecstatic

Occidental vaguely expects them not to transcend. No effort of the

intellect beforehand would enable him to imagine one of those

silver-gray temples of learning converted into a semblance of the Bowery

Theatre when the Bowery Theatre is being trifled with.

The Sheldonian edifice, like everything at Oxford, is more or less

monumental. There is a double tier of galleries, with sculptured pulpits

protruding from them; there are full-length portraits of kings and

worthies; there is a general air of antiquity and dignity, which, on the

occasion of which I speak, was enhanced by the presence of certain

ancient scholars, seated in crimson robes in high-backed chairs.

Formerly, I believe, the undergraduates were placed apart--packed

together in a corner of one of the galleries. But now they are scattered

among the general spectators, a large number of whom are ladies. They

muster in especial force, however, on the floor of the theatre, which

has been cleared of its benches. Here the dense mass is at last severed

in twain by the entrance of the prospective D.C.L.'s walking in single

file, clad in crimson gowns, preceded by mace-bearers and accompanied by

the Regius professor of Civil Law, who presents them individually to the

Vice-Chancellor of the university, in a Latin speech which is of course

a glowing eulogy. The five gentlemen to whom this distinction had been

offered in 1877 were not among those whom fame has trumpeted most

loudly; but there was something very pretty in their standing in their

honourable robes, with heads modestly bent, while the orator, equally

brilliant in aspect, recited their titles sonorously to the venerable

dignitary in the high-backed chair. Each of them, when the little speech

is ended, ascends the steps leading to the chair; the Vice-Chancellor

bends forward and shakes his hand, and the new D.C.L. goes and sits in

the blushing row of his fellow-doctors. The impressiveness of all this

is much diminished by the boisterous conduct of the collegians, who

superabound in extravagant applause, in impertinent interrogation, and

in lively disparagement of the orator's Latinity. Of the scene that

precedes the episode I have just described I have given no account;

vivid portrayal of it is not easy. Like the return from the Derby, it is

a carnival of "chaff"; and it is a singular fact that the scholastic

festival should have forcibly reminded me of the great popular "lark."

In each case it is the same race enjoying a certain definitely chartered

license; in the young votaries of a liberal education and the London

rabble on the Epsom road it is the same perfect good-humour, the same

muscular jocosity.

After the presentation of the doctors came a series of those collegiate

exercises which have a generic resemblance all the world over: a reading

of Latin verses and English essays, a spouting of prize poems and Greek

paraphrases. The prize poem alone was somewhat attentively listened to;

the other things were received with an infinite variety of critical

ejaculation. But after all, I reflected, as the ceremony drew to a dose,

this discordant racket is more characteristic than it seems; it is at

bottom only another expression of the venerable and historic side of

Oxford. It is tolerated because it is traditional; it is possible

because it is classical. Looking at it in this light, one might manage

at last to find it impressive and romantic.

I was not obliged to find ingenious pretexts for thinking well of

another ceremony of which I was witness after we adjourned from the

Sheldonian theatre. This was a lunch-party at the particular college in

which I should find it the highest privilege to reside. I may not

further specify it. Perhaps, indeed, I may go so far as to say that the

reason for my dreaming of this privilege is that it is deemed by persons

of a reforming turn the best-appointed abuse in a nest of abuses. A

commission for the expurgation of the universities has lately been

appointed by Parliament to look into it--a commission armed with a

gigantic broom, which is to sweep away all the fine old ivied and

cobwebbed improprieties. Pending these righteous changes, one would like

while one is about it--about, that is, this business of admiring

Oxford--to attach one's self to the abuse, to bury one's nostrils in the

rose before it is plucked. At the college in question there are no

undergraduates. I found it agreeable to reflect that those gray-green

cloisters had sent no delegates to the slangy congregation I had just

quitted. This delightful spot exists for the satisfaction of a small

society of Fellows who, having no dreary instruction to administer, no

noisy hobbledehoys to govern, no obligations but toward their own

culture, no care save for learning as learning and truth as truth, are

presumably the happiest and most charming people in the world. The party

invited to lunch assembled first in the library of the college, a cool,

gray hall, of very great length and height, with vast wall-spaces of

rich-looking book-titles and statues of noble scholars set in the midst.

Had the charming Fellows ever anything more disagreeable to do than to

finger these precious volumes and then to stroll about together in the

grassy courts, in learned comradeship, discussing their precious

contents? Nothing, apparently, unless it were to give a lunch at

Commemoration in the dining-hall of the college. When lunch was ready

there was a very pretty procession to go to it. Learned gentlemen in

crimson gowns, ladies in brilliant toilets, paired slowly off and

marched in a stately diagonal across the fine, smooth lawn of the

quadrangle, in a corner of which they passed through a hospitable door.

But here we cross the threshold of privacy; I remained on the farther

side of it during the rest of the day. But I brought back with me

certain memories of which, if I were not at the end of my space, I

should attempt a discreet adumbration: memories of a fête champêtre in

the beautiful gardens of one of the other colleges--charming lawns and

spreading trees, music of Grenadier Guards, ices in striped marquees,

mild flirtation of youthful gownsmen and bemuslined maidens; memories,

too, of quiet dinner in common-room, a decorous, excellent repast; old

portraits on the walls and great windows open upon the ancient court,

where the afternoon light was fading in the stillness; superior talk

upon current topics, and over all the peculiar air of Oxford--the air of

liberty to care for intellectual things, assured and secured by

machinery which is in itself a satisfaction to sense.