"Through many an hour of summer suns,
By many pleasant ways,
Like Hezekiah's, backward runs
The shadow of my days."
When I came up, I found Guy quite established and at home. He was a
general favorite with all the men he knew at college, though intimate
with but very few. There was but one individual who hated him
thoroughly, and I think the feeling was mutual--the senior tutor, a
flaccid being, with a hand that felt like a fish two days out of water,
a large nose, and a perpetual cold in his head. He consistently and
impartially disbelieved every one on their word, requiring material
proof of each assertion; an original mode of acquiring the confidence of
his pupils, and precluding any thing like an attempt at deception on
their part. I remember well a discussion on his merits that took place
in the porter's lodge one night just after twelve. When several had
given their opinions more or less strongly, some one asked the gate-ward
what he thought of the individual in question, to which that eminent
functionary thus replied: "Why, you see, sir, I'm only a servant, and,
as such, can't speak freely, but I wish he was dead, I do."
As I have said, Livingstone disliked Selkirk heartily, and did not take
the trouble to conceal it. He used to look at him sometimes with a
curious expression in his eyes, which made the tutor twirl and writhe
uncomfortably in his chair. The latter annoyed him as much as he
possibly could, but Guy held on the even tenor of his way, seldom
contravening the statutes except in hunting three days a week, which he
persisted in doing, all lectures and regulations notwithstanding. He
rode little under fourteen stone even then; but the three horses he kept
were well up to his weight, and he stood A 1 in Jem Hill's estimation as
"the best heavy-weight that had come out of Oxford for many a day;" for
he not only went straight as a die, but rode _to_ hounds instead of
_over_ them. I suppose this latter practice is inherent in University
sportsmen. I know, in my time, the way in which they pressed on hounds,
for the first two fields out of cover or after a check, used to make the
gray hairs, which were the brave old huntsman's crown of glory, stand on
end with indignation and terror, so that he prayed devoutly for a big
fence which, like the broken bridge at Leipsic, might prove a stopper to
the pursuing army. There was the making of a good rider in many of them,
too; they only wanted ballast, for they knew no more of fear than Nelson
did, and would grind over the Vale of the Evenlode and the Marsh Gibbon
double timber as gayly and undauntedly as over the accommodating
Bullingdon hurdles. And what screws they rode! ancient animals bearing
as many scars as a _vieux de la vieille_, that were considered short of
work if they did not come out five days a fortnight. This was Guy's
favorite pursuit; but he threw off the superfluity of his animal
energies in all sorts of athletics: in sparring especially he attained a
rare excellence; so well-known was it, indeed, that he passed his first
year without striking a blow in anger, through default of an antagonist,
except a chance one or two exchanged in the _melée_ which is imperative
on the 5th of November.
I did not hunt much myself, for my health was far from strong, and, I
confess, my University recollections are not lively.
After the first flush of novelty had worn off, they bored one
intensely--those large wines and suppers where, night by night, a score
of Nephelégeretæ sat shrouded in smoke, chanting the same equivocal
ditties, drinking the same fiery liquors miscalled the juice of the
grape, villainous enough to make the patriarch that planted the vine
stir remorsefully in his grave under Ararat--each man all the while
talking "shop," _à l'outrance_. The skeleton of ennui sat at these
dreary feasts; and it was not even crowned with roses. I often used to
wonder what the majority of my contemporaries conversed about, when in
the bosom of their families, during the "long." They couldn't _always_
have been inflicting Oxford on their miserable relatives; the weakest of
human natures would have revolted against such tyranny; and yet the
horizon of their ideas seemed as utterly bounded by Bagley and
Headington Hill as if the great ocean-stream had flowed outside those
limits. Some adventurous spirits, it is true, stretched away as far as
Woodstock and Abingdon, but I doubt if they returned much improved by
the grand tour.
One of their most remarkable characteristics was the invincible terror
and repugnance that they appeared to entertain to the society of women
of their own class. When the visitation was inevitable, it is
impossible to describe the great horror that fell on these unfortunate
boys. The feeling of Zanoni's pupil, as the Watcher on the Threshold
came floating and creeping toward him, was nothing to it.
For example, at Commemoration--to which festival "lions" from all
quarters of the earth resorted in vast droves--when one of this class
was hard hit by the charms of some fair stranger, he never thought of
expressing his admiration otherwise than by piteous looks, directed at
her from an immense distance, out of shot for an opera-glass; when in
her immediate vicinity his motto was that of the Breton baron--_mourir
muet_. Claret-cup flowed and Champagne sparkled, powerless to raise him
to the audacity of an avowal. Under the woods of Nuneham, in the gardens
of Blenheim, amid the crowd of the Commemoration ball, the same deep
river of diffidence flowed between him and his happiness. My own idea is
that, after all was over, the silent ones, like Jacques' stricken deer,
used to "go weep" over chances lost and opportunities neglected. With
waitresses at wayside inns, _et id genus omne_, they were tolerably
self-possessed and reliant; though even there "a thousand might well be
stopped by three," and I would have backed an intelligent barmaid
against the field at odds; indeed, I think I have seen a security nearly
allied to contempt on the fine features of a certain "lone _star_" as
she parried--so easily!--the compliments and repartees of a dozen
assailants at once, accounted, in their own quadrangles, Millamours of
the darkest dye.
Guy accounted for this unfortunate peculiarity by saying that a cigar
in the mouth was the normal state of many of these men; so that, when
circumstances debarred them from the Havana courage, they lost all
presence of mind, and, being unable to retreat under cover of the smoke,
lapsed instantly into a sullen despair, suffering themselves to be shot
down unresistingly. Perhaps some future philosopher will favor us with a
better solution to this important problem in physics; I know of none.
After all, the reading men did best, though we did not think so then,
when we saw them creeping into morning chapel jaded and heavy-eyed,
after a debauch over Herodotus or the Stagyrite. They had a purpose in
view, at all events, and, I believe, were placidly content during the
progress of its attainment--in the seventh heaven when their hopes were
crowned by a First, or even a Second. True; the pace was too good for
some of the half-bred ones, and such as could not stand the training,
who departed, to fade away rapidly in the old house at home, or to pine,
slowly, but very surely, in remote curacies.
Some of these, I fancy, must have sympathized with Madame de Staël's
consumptive niece, who answered to the question, "Why she was weeping
all alone?" "_Je me regrette._" When, resting in their daily walk,
shortened till it became a toil to reach the shady seat under the elms
at the garden's end, they watched the stalwart plowmen and drovers go
striding by, without a trouble behind their tanned foreheads except the
thought that wages might fall a shilling a week, was there no envy, I
wonder, as they looked down on the wan hands lying so listless across
their knees? Would they not have given their First, and their fellowship
in embryo to boot, to have had the morning appetite of Tom Chauntrell,
the horse-breaker, after twelve pipes overnight, with gin and water to
match, or to have been able, like Joe Springett, the under keeper, to
breast the steepest brae in Cumberland with never a sob or a painful
breath? Did they never murmur while thinking how brightly the blade
might have flashed, how deftly have been wielded, if the worthless
scabbard had only lasted out till, on some grand field-day, the word was
given, "Draw swords?" Some felt this, doubtless; but the most part, I
imagine, were possessed with a comfortable assurance that their short
life had been useful, if not ornamental; and so, to a certain extent,
they had their reward. At any rate, their ending was to the full as
glorious as that of some other friends of ours, who crawl away from the
battle-ground of the _Viveurs_ to die, or to linger on helpless
hypochondriacs.
If I have spoken depreciatingly or unfairly of the mass of my college
coevals (and it may well be so), I do full justice, in thought at least,
to some brilliant exceptions. I founded friendships there which, I
trust, will outlive me.
I do not forget Warrenne, too good for the men he lived with, a David in
our camp of Kedar--always going on straight in the path he thought
right--though ever and anon his hot Irish blood would chafe fiercely
under the curb self-imposed--and laboring incessantly, with all
gentleness, to induce others to follow; a Launcelot in his devotion to
womankind; a Galahad in purity of thought and purpose. I have never
known a man of the world so single-hearted, or a saint with so much
_savoir vivre_.
I see before me now Lovell, with his frank look and cheery laugh, the
model of a stalwart English squirehood; and Petre, equal to either
fortune; in reverse or success calm and impassible as Athos the
mousquetaire; regarding money simply as a circulating medium, with the
profoundest contempt for its actual value--_se ruinant en prince_. He
edified us greatly, on one occasion, by meeting his justly offended
father with a stern politeness, declining to hold any communication with
him by word or letter till he (the sire) "could express himself in a
more Christian spirit."
Then there was Barlowe, the pearl of gentlemen riders, the very apple of
Charles Symond's eye; unspoiled by a hundred triumphs, and never
degenerating into the professional, though I believe his idea of earthly
felicity was,
A match for £50, 10 st. 7 lb. each. Owners up. Over 4 miles of a fair
hunting country.
I see him, too, with his pleasant face, round, rosy, and beardless as a
child-cherub of Rubens, tempting pale men with splitting heads to throw
boots at him in the bitterness of their envy as he entered their rooms
on the morning after a heavy drink, his eyes so clear and guileless that
you would never guess how sharp they could be at times when a dangerous
horse was coming up on his quarter. A strange compound his character was
of cool calculation and sentimental simplicity. The most astute of
trainers never got the better of him in making a match; and I am sure,
to this day, he believes in ----'s poetry, and in the immutability of
feminine affection.
How agreeable he was about the small hours, chirping over his grog;
alternating between reminiscences of "My tutor's daughter" and recitals
of choice morsels in verse and prose; misquoting, to the utter
annihilation of rhythm and sense, but all with perfect gravity, good
faith, and satisfaction!
_Nec te, memorande, relinquam_--true Tom Lynton! not clever, not even
high-bred, but loved by every one for the honestest and kindest heart
that ever was the kernel of a rough rind.
Do we not remember that supper where the Fathers of England were being
discussed? Every one, drawn on by the current, had a stone to throw at
his relieving officer, the complaint, of course, being a general
tightness in the supplies. At last, Tom, who, though his own sire was an
austere man, could not bear to hear the absent run down, broke in,
gravely remonstrating,
"Well, gentlemen," he said, "remember they're our _fellow-creatures_, at
all events."
They drank "Lynton and the Governors" with a compound multiplication of
cheers.
I might mention more; but a face rises just now before me which makes me
close the muster-roll--the face of one who united in himself many, very
many of the best qualities of the others; of one whom I shrink from
naming here, lest it should seem that I do so lightly--a face that I saw
six hours before its features became set forever.