In a book such as this, where the University of Oxford provides the
one central sun round which, planet-wise, the diverse essays revolve,
each all but breaking from all connection with the rest, and only
just held back by that gravitating force--in such a book, it would be
a pity not to seek to make that force more strong. In what way could
this be better done than by some account of Oxford climbing, where the
University provides not only the spiritual background, but the very
physical basis of the theme?
Then, too, there is another reason for the attempt. The art of
roof-climbing, at Oxford, alas! no less than elsewhere, is in need of
defenders who will speak out for her. Herself still inarticulate,
she needs the good offices of any champion she can find amidst the
universal enmity in which she finds herself. Poor struggling wretch,
in expectation of foes, she has found them: but has been deceived, too
often, in those that should have been friends.
Indigenous authority, not, perhaps, without some show of reason,
though here and there one of its Argus eyes may consciously wink at
the art’s clandestine or unobtrusive practice, will yet trim the vials
of punitive wrath for the foolish one who is discovered. That was to
be looked for; but there is hardship when brother turns on brother
(big bully on baby brother); climbers there are that have the Alps for
their pleasure, and are privileged in acquaintance with the princely
among mountains, who yet grudge the poor stay-at-home his sincerest
flattery, tell him he is to be despised for his ascents, rebuked for
his foolhardiness, and chastised for his disobedience.
Poor Cinderella of Climbing! May the Prince soon come, and cast his
favourable glance upon her. Meanwhile let it be for me to play the part
of Matrimonial Agency, display and recite her charms and publish them
abroad, so that perchance they may thus catch the eye of the destined
Sprig of Royalty.
With forethought, knowing the fastidious taste of these gentlemen
in their search for a true princess, let us recite her personal
charms--the glimpses of beauty and of cold unknown secrets which even
her more humble wooer may find--her beauty, which is the reward, given
to a mind tense and braced by the hard labour of unwonted muscles on
slippery places. Imagine a prickly ridge of the horned and perforated
tiles deemed suitable for roof-trees, gained by a climb up the body of
a companion, laid flat along the sloping roof. All around are stone and
brick ranges, peaks which more than their Alpine counterparts deserve
to be called Clocher or Tour, showing in the darkness little of their
dilettante symmetry of the artificial: the deep valleys between filled
with their rivers of light, carrying their noisy freight along: cols in
the near range vouchsafing their strange glimpses of the more distant:
beneath, a wide and gloomy desert, with here and there lamp-posts for
oases of our symbol of mountain-water.
Throughout, a jump in nearness to the stars, and a fellow-tingling
unwarranted by a bare forty-feet approximation to them. By our own act
we are cut off from men: the thickness of a single wall, if but it be
the outer house-wall, dispossesses us of our humanity, and gives back
our lost kinship with the stars.
Peak and col, valley, river, and pass--all are there: but the real,
broad-sustaining Alps do not gape suddenly to a show of the imagined
trolls of our story-books at work beneath, and full of unintelligible
hatred against ourselves. While here, on our tile-summits and
pipe-couloirs, we know the trolls for a reality, their life the
very negation of the fount of our new spirit gained in the traverse
from plastered side to plain of a wall; the rousing of their
incomprehensible rage leading to pursuit and loss of our world.
Signs of their inhabitance are all around us: vents, traps for the
feet, showing signs of the furnaces where they are ever at labour to
fuse the dead message of the written page into living matter of a
brain for the breathing hole of some typho of a senseless machine,
whose groans are chained to the production of sweetest music in
College organ-pipes; sudden lights flashed out by one of the trolls,
to the displaying of a pair of legs spider-wise across the entrance
to his lair, or the painted globe sphering the radiance shed upon the
small-hourly labours of the troll of highest Matterhorn.
And yet the peril of them is greater in imagination than in
reality--dazzled by the light in which he loves to bathe himself, he
cannot see the wanderer on the heights, who may dance unobserved in
the view of public streets. The troll-kind are like some power able to
shake the earth, and to overwhelm life when the time comes, but now
only manifesting a greater grandeur to the eyes--volcano, flame, or
flood: engrossed in their own subterranean labours, they give scarce
a thought to us, and we may even mock at them from without; discover
yourself, however, and he becomes the arch-enemy, like the all-powerful
earth-force, ready to annihilate those whom it supports, and yet some
evil power they have had upon the Climber--they have lured him to
desist from praises of his lady, and to run off in disquisitions upon
their ugly selves. Thwart them, Climber, and return to your Princess!
She has granted Beauties--she does not deny Adventures: no--you may
meet with strange ones on the tops--unexpected sights that would lose
half their strangeness if they had been known and sought.
One befell upon a chapel--that chapel whose top is adorned with the
four symbolic figures known to common repute as Faith, Hope, Charity,
and Mathematics. To the Climber they are rather Spirits of the Heights,
beckoning him on with enticement of gesture, expression still alluring
spite of that strange emaciation, that attrition of feature given to
them in their high desolate realm by the unruly Elements....
The chapel--if you will allow a short excursus--is a good climb; it
is best taken from the west; the heights once gained, there follows
a spread-eagle traverse on a ledge past the clock (to resist setting
its hands at sixes and sevens--if that metaphor be allowed--is hard).
Thirty feet below are the flag-stones of the quad; next time you pass
beneath the chapel arch, think of slow midnight figures shuffling along
that narrow ledge above, feeling with anxious feet for the unseen,
unpleasant wires, ridges, and minor anfractuosities with which it is
beset.
From the ledge there is a press-up (without holds) on to the
balustrade: what may be called the shoulder is now reached. The final
pitch, a very interesting eastward-facing pipe, is left to climb: and
then there we are in the pure air of truth with Mathematics and the
rest of them.
Seldom is there space on summits for an encounter with Adventure.
Here, however, a flat-topped balustrade runs round the top; this, on
a second visit, we thought should be perambulated, and perambulation
was in progress when suddenly the leader stopped short--another step
and he would have been plunged in a crevasse. True, it was so narrow
that he could not have fallen past his arms; but then this was none of
your smooth cold ice-cracks. It belonged to the volcano rather than the
glacier--a square pipe leading down twistingly to red-hot fires below.
Lucky for him he had not stepped unwarily, now to be wedged in it, his
helpless body fast, suffering a double and simultaneous metamorphosis,
into frozen mutton above, smoked ham below.
It was only a chimney really, but you have no idea how curious a
chimney looks from above, especially a big square one like this,
without vestige of chimney-pot, and edge flush with the balustrade in
the centre of which it had taken it into its head to debauch. And then
its position, thus in the very chapel--that was strange. With the poet
we asked:
‘What occupation do you here pursue?
This is a lonesome place for one like you’;
but we got no answer--the embers did not even give one ‘flash of mild
surprise,’ and we never knew what manner of man was warmed at the blaze
we had seen dying.
So much for Adventure; now let us seek Romance.
Wadham Gardens are beautiful--but usually only to be seen as setting
to a flower show, to the accompaniment of a band, and upon payment
of a shilling. The Climber sees them free of charge, in their own
self-sufficient beauty (not decreased by the moonlight), and solitary.
Even the owls are almost silent--birds of the twilight more than of the
midnight. The squirrels (for there are still squirrels, even here, far
within the brick-and-mortar girdle)--they are long asleep. The Warden
is safe in bed. The Climber, who is here partly for the garden’s sake,
partly to prospect for a route up the College, swishes through the
soaking grass along by the shadow of the pines and cedars. Ha!--‘Wer
reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?’--What is that dark form that
he sees ‘cross and recross the strips of moon-blanched green’? The
Climber, cautiously approaching, greets with joy a hedge-pig (hedgehog,
called by the general name--illogical and less euphonious). He is very
tame; even permits a finger to stroke the only strokeable part of him,
his soft furry stomach, before rolling up into a pin-cushion. Leaving
him thus defensive and spherical, the Climber passes on, only by the
next tree to find another; and the performance is repeated.
No route was found that night; but as in the Alps not seldom the
off-day in the upland valley brings with birds and flowers a new and
equal joy with that of the summits, so the moon-lit hedge-pigs of
Wadham touched a chord of romance all their own, and vivified that
night with as strong a memory as any hard-won roof-tree could have
done.
But it is not always through such moon-lit Edens that the Climber
passes; sometimes it is the fierce flames of the Cities of the Plain.
Trinity (to make a necessary digression) has a roof, which, once
reached, is mostly walking. It has also a quad with gravel paving,
an absence of Bodleian libraries in close propinquity, and the usual
complement of chairs. In addition, it sometimes makes six bumps.
After one of those occasions it was therefore not unexpected when
the Climber, perambulating the Trinity leads, saw beyond the further
roof-tree Vesuvius in full eruption--red smoke in a whirling column,
full of blazing sparks sailing up and off on the wind. Crawling up the
roof-tree and looking over, the Climber saw a sight, not unfamiliar
in itself, but strange when viewed from such a viewpoint, and with
such detachment. A bit of hell was here on earth. Devils in deshabille
were dancing round a flaming pyre, screaming, with shrieking laughter.
Others, issuing from the dark doors round the prison-like yard,
brought with them offerings for the fire. The iron gates that barred
the further side of the square from the night beyond were reminders
that none might pass out from this pit: ‘Lasciate ogni speranza’ was
doubtless inscribed upon their outer face. It was a relief to find that
the servers of the flames brought no writhing Spirits of the Damned,
but mere inanimate combustibles.
Well might the Climber lie there gazing till the flames were sinking on
to the ember-pile, and the corybantic Zoroastrian bacchanals (for all
the three rituals they combined) had begun to slink off to their cells.
To ease stiff limbs, the chapel was taken on the homeward way; and
from its top the final flare was seen--a last great blaze, streamers
of burning paper floating eastwards away (scaring, no doubt, Eden’s
nocturnal browsers), showers of sparks, and then all sinking to a mere
flicker in the quiet night. And so to bed.
The Climber can thus penetrate into secret places, see strange sights,
have familiar ones for him transmogrified. But this is not all. Profit
is combined with pleasure. In an emergency, how useful he can prove.
He may perhaps be allowed to relate a case in point: One Lent Term,
after a heavy fall of snow, the inmates of a certain College, which
shall be nameless, finding the snow hang heavy on their feet, took it
into their heads to take it into their hands, and thence dispatched it
as a challenge through the windows of their neighbour College--through
the very windows once source of light to the famous Galetti (gone down
to posterity, by one of Clio’s whims, with name distorted almost out
of recognition). After much shouting and the filling of the historic
chamber with snow, the challenge was taken up.
I am no Homer to describe the combat, nor were I one, would this be the
place to do so....
Long had they struggled, when there arrived on the field a messenger.
His message, delivered with more jocularity than he would have
exhibited in Greek drama, was to the effect that the Dean had been
peeping through some alleyway, had seen that any direct interference
was useless, and had resorted to the method of blockade. All the gates
were shut, and the prophets of Baal were to be mercilessly dealt
with. ‘Que faire’? Hostilities ceased; earth became united in its
opposition to Olympus. Racked brains gave birth to hasty plans--all
proved abortive, till suddenly one--a full-armoured Minerva--flashed
from its parent’s engendering lead. ‘The Climber, the Climber!’ was all
the cry. Soon he appeared, triumphantly escorted, and bearing in his
arms his rope. One end of this went through the window (that window,
serving more often for the passage of insults, not wholly unaccompanied
by injuries, now consecrated to pacific use), and was grasped within
by six strong men. The other end became a loop, into which the foot of
one of the aliens was inserted. No sooner this, than, hey presto! a
pull by the six, and, an alien no longer, he was clinging to his own
country’s boundary--the window-sill. No Customs examination or landing
formalities--other stalwarts gripped him, and he disappeared into the
bowels of his fatherland, a pair of legs for an instant waving farewell
to his late enemies.
This was repeated more than a score of times, till at length not one
remained for the cunning Dean and his unwreaked vengeance. Barred
gates, alert porters, grinning scouts, confidently waiting dons:--who
was the instrument to bring them all to nought?--the Climber!
This much for its use to others. Rich use to the Climber himself
it has too. Not only as a way out of the prosaic world of streets
and staircases into another where for a glorious dusky hour he may
feel free, alone with himself, the night, and active limbs, but also
as a true training for the more grave realities of nobler peaks in
other lands. General exercise for arms (lying sadly fallow if only
the ordinary run of games be followed), and back and legs--that is
something; but more special practice is given in lightness of balancing
and in training a dizzy head. Cat-soft feet are needed there where
tell-tale tiles are crossed, where dons abound, and where sharp-hearing
porters lurk. Light, even-pulling arms alone can with safety grip frail
roof-trees, tiles, or chimney-pots. Then, in reality, it is not common
to be above precipices of the true vertical: here in the comfortable
city they are never to be avoided. It is physically no doubt as easy to
step across above a plumb drop than where the ground is sloping; but
however steep the slope, there is some comfort in it for the untrained
head, while every crumb of it drops away down the perpendicular.
Soon, however, under necessity’s spell, the reluctant cerebellum
(where, I am told, our balance-bump is to be found) becomes used to the
smooth uncompromising walls, and the Climber can sally qualmless forth
to tackle Dolomites or Cumberland climbs.
Beauty, Romance, Adventure; Help to others; Use, both for mind and
body, to oneself: I hope the Climber has said enough to show our
Cinderella forth for What she really is. And, gentle reader, you will
not grumble if her champion, for reasons not obscure, can display no
betraying blazon on his shield. Having championed his fair, and been
acclaimed victor in the lists, he rides triumphant forth to kneel
before his sovran liege--the British Public. ‘What is your name, that I
may honour you?’ ‘Sire, if you will permit me, I will present you with
my card.’ Which done, he vanishes, leaving not a wrack behind save the
white pasteboard with the two words upon it:
ΑΝΩΝΥΜΟΣ ΤΙΣ