THE FIRST WEEK
The first two or three days were busy with interviews, initiations,
addresses, and all the academic panoply which Oxford brings into action
against her neophytes.
First of all, the Senior Tutor, Mr. Ardle, had to be visited. He was a
deaf and hostile little man whose side-whiskers and twitching eyelid
and manner of exaggerated respect toward undergraduates combined to
give the impression that he regarded them as objectionable discords in
an otherwise justly modulated existence.
Michael in his turn went up the stairs to Mr. Ardle’s room, knocked at
the door and passed in at the don’s bidding to where he sat sighing
amid heaps of papers and statistical sheets. The glacial air of the
room was somehow increased by the photographs of Swiss mountains that
crowded the walls.
“Mr.?” queried the Senior Tutor. “Oh, yes, Mr. Fane. St. James’. Your
tutor will be the Dean—please sit down—the Dean, Mr. Ambrose. What
school are you proposing to read?”
“History, I imagine,” said Michael. “History!” he repeated, as Mr.
Ardle blinked at him.
“Yes,” said the Senior Tutor in accents of patient boredom. “But we
have to consider the immediate future. I suggest Honor Moderations and
Literæ Humaniores.”
“I explained to you that I wanted to read History,” said Michael,
echoing himself involuntarily the don’s tone of patient boredom.
“I have you down as coming from St. James’,” snapped the Senior Tutor.
“A school reputed to send out good classical scholars, I believe.”
“I’m not a scholar,” Michael interrupted. “And I don’t intend to take
Honor Mods.”
“That will be for the college to decide.”
“Supposing the college decided I was to read Chinese?” Michael
inquired.
“There is no need for impertinence. Well, well, for the present I have
put you down for the lectures on Pass Moderations. You will attend my
lectures on Cicero, Mr. Churton on the Apologia, Mr. Carder on Logic,
and Mr. Vereker for Latin Prose. The weekly essay set by the Warden for
freshmen you will read to your tutor Mr. Ambrose.”
Then he went on to give instructions about chapels and roll-calls and
dining in hall and the various regulations of the college, while the
Swiss mountains stared bleakly down at the chilly interview.
“Now you’d better go and see Mr. Ambrose,” said the Senior Tutor, and
Michael left him. On the staircase he passed Lonsdale going up.
“What’s he like?” asked Lonsdale.
“Pretty dull,” said Michael.
“Does he keep you long?”
Michael shook his head.
“Good work,” said Lonsdale cheerfully. “Because I’ve just bought a
dog.” And he whistled his way upstairs.
Michael wondered what the purchase of a dog had got to do with the
Senior Tutor, but relinquished the problem on perceiving Mr. Ambrose’s
name on the floor below.
The Dean’s room was very much like the Senior Tutor’s, and the
interview, save that it was made slightly more tolerable by the help of
a cigarette, was of much the same chilliness owing to Michael’s
reiterated refusal to read Honor Moderations.
“I expected a little keenness,” said Mr. Ambrose.
“I shall be keen enough when I’ve finished with Pass Mods,” said
Michael. “Though what good it will be for me to read the Pro Milone and
the Apology all over again, when I read them at fifteen, I don’t know.”
“Then take Honor Moderations?” the Dean advised.
“I’ve given up classics,” Michael argued, and as the cigarette was
beginning to burn his fingers and the problem of disposing of it in the
Dean’s room seemed insoluble, he hurried out.
Lonsdale was whistling his way downstairs from his interview with Mr.
Ardle.
“Hallo, Fane, what did he say to you?”
“I think all these dons are very much like schoolmasters,” growled
Michael resentfully.
“They can’t help it,” said Lonsdale. “I asked old Ardle if I could keep
a dog in college, and he turned as blue as an owl. Any one would think
I’d asked him if I could breed crocodiles.”
In addition to these personal interviews the freshmen had certain
communal experiences to undergo. Among these was their formal reception
into the University, when they trooped after the Senior Tutor through
gothic mazes and in some beautiful and remote room received from the
Vice-Chancellor a bound volume of Statuta et Decreta Universitatis.
This book they carried back with them to college, where in many rooms
it shared with Ruff’s Guide and Soapy Sponge’s Sporting Tour an
intellectual oligarchy. Saturday morning was spent in meeting the
Warden at the Warden’s Lodgings, where they shook hands with him in
nervous quartets. Michael when he discussed this experience with his
fellows fancied that the Warden’s butler had left a deeper impression
than the Warden himself. On Sunday afternoon, however, when they
gathered in the hall to hear the annual address of welcome and
exhortation, the great moon-faced Warden shone undimmed.
“You have come to Oxford,” he concluded, “some of you to hunt foxes,
some of you to wear very large and very unusual overcoats, some of you
to row for your college and a few of you to work. But all of you have
come to Oxford to remain English gentlemen. In after life when you are
ambassadors and proconsuls and members of Parliament you will never
remember this little address which I have the honor now of delivering
to you. That will not matter, so long as you always remember that you
are St. Mary’s men and the heirs of an honorable and ancient
foundation.”
The great moon-faced Warden beamed at them for one moment, and after
thanking them for their polite attention floated out of the hall. The
pictures of cardinals and princes and poets in their high golden frames
seemed in the dusk faintly to nod approval. The bell was ringing for
evening chapel, and the freshmen went murmurously along the cloisters
to take their places, feeling rather proud that the famous quire was
their quire and looking with inquisitive condescension at the visitors
who sat out of sight of those candle-starred singers.
In hall that night the chief topic of conversation was the etiquette
and ritual of the first J. C. R. wine.
Michael to his chagrin found himself seated next to Mackintosh, for
Mackintosh, cousin though he was of the sparkish Lonsdale, was a gloomy
fellow scornful of the general merriment. As somebody had quickly said,
sharpening his young wit, he was more of a wet-blanket than a
Mackintosh.
“I suppose you’re coming to the J. C. R.?” Michael asked.
“Why should I? Why should I waste my time trying to keep sober for the
amusement of all these fools?”
“I expect it will be rather a rag,” said Michael hopefully, but he
found it tantalizing to hear farther down the table snatches of
conversation that heard more completely would have enlightened him on
several points he had not yet mastered in the ceremony of wine in the
J. C. R. However, it was useless to speculate on such subjects in the
company of the lugubrious Mackintosh. So they talked instead of Sandow
exercises and mountain-climbing in Cumberland, neither of which topics
interested Michael very greatly.
Hall was rowdy that evening, and the dons looked petulantly down from
high table, annoyed to think that their distinguished visitors of
Sunday evening should see so many pieces of bread flung by the
second-year men. The moon-faced Warden was deflected from his
intellectual revolutions round a Swedish man of science, and sent the
butler down to whisper a remonstrance to the head of one of the
second-year tables. But no sooner had the butler again taken his place
behind the Warden’s chair than a number of third-year men whose table
had been littered by the ammunition of their juniors retaliated without
apparent loss of dignity, and presently both years combined to bombard
under the Scholars. Meanwhile the freshmen applauded with laughter, and
thought their seniors were wonderful exemplars for the future.
After hall everybody went crowding up the narrow stairs to the J. C.
R., and now most emphatically the J. C. R. presented a cheerful sight,
with the red-shaded lamps casting such a glow that the decanters of
wine stationed before the President’s place looked like a treasure of
rubies. The two long tables were set at right angles to one another,
and the President sat near their apex. All along their shining length
at regular intervals stood great dishes of grapes richly bloomed, of
apples and walnuts and salted almonds and deviled biscuits. The
freshmen by instinct rushed to sit altogether at the end of the table
more remote from the door. As Michael looked at his contemporaries, he
perceived that of the forty odd freshmen scarcely five-and-twenty had
come to this, the first J. C. R. Vaguely he realized that already two
sets were manifest in the college, and he felt depressed by the
dullness of those who had not come and some satisfaction with himself
for coming.
The freshmen stared with awe at Marjoribanks, the President of the J.
C. R., and told one another with reverence that the two men on either
side of him were those famous rowing blues from New College, Permain
and Strutt; while some of them who had known these heroes at school sat
anxiously unaware of their presence and spoke of them familiarly as
Jack Permain and Bingey. There were several other cynosures from New
College and University near the President’s chair, a vivid bunch of
Leander ties. There were also one or two old St. Mary’s men who had
descended to haunt for a swift week-end the place of their renown, and
these were pointed out by knowing freshmen as unconcernedly as
possible.
One by one the President released the decanters, and round and round
they came. Sometimes they would be held up by an interesting
conversation; and when the sherry and the port and the burgundy were
all standing idle, a shout of “pass along the wine” would go up, after
which for a time the decanters would swing vigorously from hand to
hand. Then suddenly Marjoribanks was seen to be bowing to Permain, and
Permain was bowing solemnly back to his host. This was a plain token to
everybody that the moment for drinking healths had arrived. A great
babel of shouted names broke out at the end of the Common Room remote
from the freshmen, so tremendous a din that the freshmen felt the
drinking of their own healths at their end would pass unnoticed. So
they drank to one another, bowing gravely after the manner of their
seniors.
Michael had determined to take nothing but burgundy, and when he had
exchanged sentiments with the most of his year, he congratulated
himself upon the comparative steadiness of his head. Already in the
case of one or two reckless mixers he noticed a difficulty in deciding
how many times it was necessary to clip a cigar, an inclination to
strike the wrong end of a match and a confusion between right and left
when the decanters in their circulation paused before them.
After the first tumult of good wishes had died down, Marjoribanks
lifted his glass, looked along to where the freshmen were sitting and
shouted “Cuffe!” Cuffe hastily lifted his glass and answering
“Marjorie!” drained his salute of acknowledgment. Then he sat back in
his chair with an expression, Michael thought, very like that of an
actress who has been handed a bouquet by the conductor. But Cuffe was
not to be the only recipient of honor, for immediately afterward
Marjoribanks sang out “Lonsdale!” Lonsdale was at the moment trying to
explain to Tommy Grainger some trick with the skin of a banana which
ought to have been an orange and a wooden match which ought to have
been a wax vesta. Michael, who was sitting next to him, prodded
anxiously his ribs.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Lonsdale indignantly. “Can’t you see I’m
doing a trick?”
“Marjoribanks is drinking your health,” whispered Michael in an agony
that Lonsdale would be passed over.
“Hurrah!” shouted Lonsdale, rising to his feet and scandalizing his
fellows by his intoxicated audacity. “Where is the old ripper!” Then
“Mark over!” he shouted and collapsed into Tommy Grainger’s lap.
Everybody laughed, and everybody, even the cynosures from New College
and University, began to drink Lonsdale’s health without heel-taps.
“No heelers, young Lonsdale,” they called mirthfully.
Lonsdale pulled himself together, stood up, and, balancing himself with
one hand on Michael’s shoulder, replied:
“No heelers, you devils? No legs, you mean!” Then he collapsed again.
Soon all the freshmen found that their healths were now being drunk,
all the freshmen, that is, from Eton or Winchester or Harrow. Michael
and one or two others without old schoolfellows among the seniors
remained more sober. But then suddenly a gravely indolent man with a
quizzical face, who the day before in the lodge had had occasion to ask
Michael some trifling piece of information, cried “Fane!” raising his
glass. Michael blushed, blessed his unknown acquaintance inwardly and
drank what was possibly the sincerest sentiment of the evening. Other
senior men hearing his name, followed suit, even the great Marjoribanks
himself; and soon Michael was very nearly as full as Lonsdale. An
immense elation caressed his soul, a boundless sense of communal life,
a conception of sublime freedom that seemed to be illimitable forever.
The wine was over. Down the narrow stone stairs everybody poured. At
the foot on the right was a little office—the office of Venables, the
steward of the J. C. R., the eleusinian and impenetrable sanctum of
seniority called Venner’s. Wine-chartered though they were, the
freshmen did not venture even to peep round the corner of the door, but
hurried out into the cloisters, where they walked arm-in-arm shouting.
Michael could have fancied himself at a gathering of mediæval witches.
The moon temporarily clouded over by the autumnal fog made the corbels
and gargoyles and sculptured figures above the cloisters take on a
grotesque vivacity, as the vapors curled around them. The wine humming
in his head: the echoing shouts of his companions: the decorative
effect of the gowns: the chiming high above of the bells in the tower:
all combined to create for Michael a nightmare of exultation. He was
aware of a tremendous zest in doing nothing, and there flowed over him
a consciousness that this existence of shout and dance along these
cloisters was really existence lived in a perpetual expression of the
finest energy. The world seemed to be going round so much faster than
usual that in order to keep up with this new pace, it was necessary for
the individual like himself to walk faster, to talk faster, to think
faster, and finally to raise to incoherent speed every coherent
faculty. Another curious effect of the wine, for after all Michael
admitted to himself that his mental exhilaration must be due to
burgundy, was the way in which he found himself at every moment walking
beside a different person. He would scarcely have finished an excited
acceptance of Wedderburn’s offer to go to-morrow and look at some Dürer
woodcuts, when he would suddenly find himself discussing
sympathetically with Lonsdale the iniquity of the dons in refusing to
let him keep his new dog in one of the scouts’ pigeon-holes in the
lodge.
“After all,” Lonsdale pointed out earnestly, “they’re never really
full, and the dog isn’t large—of course I don’t expect to keep him in a
pigeon-hole when he’s full grown, but he’s a puppy.”
“It’s absurd,” Michael agreed.
“That’s the word I’ve been looking for,” Lonsdale exclaimed. “What was
it again? Absurd! You see what I say is, when one scout’s box is full,
move the poor little beast into another. It isn’t likely they’d all be
full at the same time. What was that word you found just now? Absurd!
That’s it. It is absurd. It’s absurd!”
“And anyway,” Michael pointed out, “if they were all full they could
chain him to the leg of the porter’s desk.”
“Of course they could. I say, Fane, you’re a damned good sort,” said
Lonsdale. “I wish you’d come and have lunch with me to-morrow. I don’t
think I’ve asked very many chaps: I want to show you that dog. He’s in
a stable off Holywell at present. Beastly shame! I’m not complaining,
of course, but what I want to ask our dons is how would they like to be
bought by me and shut up in Holywell?”
And just when Michael had a very good answer ready, he found himself
arm-in-arm with Wedderburn again, who was saying in his gravest voice
that over a genuine woodcut by Dürer it was well worth taking trouble.
But before Michael could disengage Wedderburn’s Dürer from Lonsdale’s
dog, he found himself running very fast beside Tommy Grainger who was
shouting:
“Five’s late again! Six, you’re bucketing! Bow, you’re late! Two,
_will_ you get your belly down!”
Then Grainger stopped suddenly and asked Michael in a very solemn tone
whether he knew what was the matter with the crew. Michael shook his
head and watched the others steer their devious course toward him and
Grainger.
“They’re too drunk to row,” said Grainger.
“Much too drunk,” Michael agreed.
When he had pondered for a moment or two his last remark, he discovered
it was extraordinarily funny. So he was seized with a paroxysm of
laughter, and the more he laughed, the more he wanted to laugh. When
somebody asked him what he was laughing at, he replied it was because
he had left the electric light burning in his room. Several people
seemed to think this just as funny as Michael thought it, and they
joined him in his mirth, laughing unquenchably until Wedderburn
observed severely in his deepest voice:
“Buck up, you’re all drunk, and they’re coming out of Venner’s.”
Then like some patient profound countryman he shepherded them all up to
the large room on a corner staircase of Cloisters, where the “after”
was going to be held. The freshmen squeezed themselves together in a
corner and were immensely entertained by the various performers,
applauding with equal rapture a light comedian from Pembroke, a tenor
from Corpus, a comic singer from Oriel and a mimic from professional
London. They drank lemon squashes to steady themselves: they joined in
choruses: they cheered and smoked cigars and grew more and more
conscious as the evening progressed that they belonged to a great
college called St. Mary’s. Their enthusiasm reached its zenith, when
the captain of the Varsity Eleven (a St. Mary’s man even as they were
St. Mary’s men) sang the St. Mary’s song in a voice whose gentleness of
utterance and sighing modesty in no way abashed the noisy appreciation
of the audience. It was a wonderful song, all about the triumphs of the
college on river and cricket-field, in the Schools, in Parliament and
indeed everywhere else. It had a fine rollicking chorus which was
repeated twice after each verse. And as there were about seventeen
verses, by the time the song was half over the freshmen had learned the
words and were able to sing the final chorus with a vigor which
positively detonated against the windows and contrasted divertingly
with the almost inaudible soloist.
Last of all came Auld Lang Syne, when everybody stood up on chairs and
joined hands, seniors, second-year men and freshmen. Auld Lang Syne
ended with perhaps the noisiest moment of all because although Lonsdale
had taken several lemon squashes to steady himself, he had not taken
enough to keep his balance through the ultimate energetic repetition,
when he collapsed headlong into a tray of syphons and glasses, dragging
with him two other freshmen. But nobody seemed to have hurt himself,
and downstairs they all rushed, shouting and hulloaing, into the cool
moonlight.
The guests from New College and University and the “out-of-college” men
hurried home, for it was close upon midnight. In the lodge the freshmen
foregathered for a few minutes with the second-year men, and as they
talked they knew that the moment was come when they must proclaim
themselves free from the restrictions of school, and by the kindling of
a bonfire prove that they were now truly grown up. Bundles of faggots
were seized from the scouts’ holes: in the angle of St. Cuthbert’s quad
where the complexion of the gravel was tanned by the numberless
bonfires of past generations the pile of wood grew taller and taller:
two or three douches of paraffin made the mass readily inflammable: a
match was set, and with a roar the bonfire began. From their windows
second-year men, their faces lighted by the ascending blaze, looked
down with pleasant patronage upon the traditional pastime of their
juniors. The freshmen danced gleefully round the pyre of their boyhood,
feeding it with faggots and sometimes daringly and ostentatiously with
chairs: the heat became intense: the smoke surged upward, obscuring the
bland aspectful moon. Slowly upon the group of law-breakers fell a
silence, as they stood bewitched by the beauty of their own handiwork.
The riotous preparations and annunciatory yells had died away to an
intimate murmur of conversation. From the lodge came Shadbolt the
unctuous head-porter to survey for a moment this mighty bonfire:
conscious of their undergraduate dignity the freshmen chaffed him,
until he retired with muttered protests to summon the Dean.
“What will the Dean do?” asked one or two less audacious ones as they
faded into various doorways, ready to obliterate their presence as soon
as authority should arrive upon the scene.
“What does the Dean matter?” cried others, flinging more faggots on to
the fire until it crackled and spat and bellowed more fiercely than
ever, lighting up with its wavy radiance the great elms beyond the
Warden’s garden and the Palladian fragment of New quad whence the dons
like Georgian squires pondered their prosperity.
Presently against the silvery space framed by the gateway of St.
Cuthbert’s tower appeared the silhouette of the Dean, lank and tall
with college cap tip-tilted down on to his nose and round his neck a
gown wrapped like a shawl. Nearer he came, and involuntarily the
freshmen so lately schoolboys took on in their attitude a certain
anxiety. Somehow the group round the bonfire had become much smaller.
Somehow more windows looking upon the quad were populated with
flickering watchful faces.
“Great Scott! What can Ambrose do?” demanded Lonsdale despairingly, but
when at last the Dean reached the zone of the fire, there only remained
about eight freshmen to ascertain his views and test his power. The
Dean stood for a minute or two, silently warming his hands. In a ring
the presumed leaders eyed him, talking to each other the while with
slightly exaggerated carelessness.
“Well, Mr. Fane?” asked the Dean.
“Well, sir,” Michael replied.
“Damned good,” whispered Lonsdale ecstatically in Michael’s ear. “You
couldn’t have said anything better. That’s damned good.”
Michael under the enthusiastic congratulations of Lonsdale began to
feel he had indeed said something very good, but he hoped he would soon
have an opportunity to say something even better.
“Enjoying yourself, Mr. Lonsdale?” inquired the Dean.
“Yes, sir. Are you?” answered Lonsdale.
“Splendid,” murmured Michael.
A silence followed this exchange of courtesies. The bonfire was
beginning to die down, but nobody ventured under the Dean’s eye to put
on more faggots. Under-porters were seen drawing near with pails of
water, and though a cushion aimed from a window upset one pail, very
soon the bonfire was a miserable mess of smoking ashes and the moon
resumed her glory. From an upper window some second-year men chanted in
a ridiculous monotone:
“The Dean—he was the Dean—he was the Dean—he was the Dean! The Dean—he
was the Dean he was—the Dean he was—the Dean!!”
Mr. Ambrose did not bother to look up in the direction of the glee, but
took another glance at Michael, Lonsdale, Grainger and the other
stalwarts. Then he turned away.
“Good night,” Lonsdale called after the retreating figure of the tall
hunched don, and not being successful in luring him back, he poured his
scorn upon the defaulters safe in their rooms above.
“You are a lot of rotters. Come down and make another.”
But the freshmen were not yet sufficiently hardy to do this. One by one
they melted away, and Lonsdale marked his contempt for their
pusillanimity by throwing two syphons and his gown into the Warden’s
garden. After which he invited Michael and his fellow die-hards to
drink a glass of port in his rooms. Here for an hour they sat,
discussing their contemporaries.
In the morning Shadbolt was asked if anybody had been hauled for last
night’s bonner.
“Mr. Fane, Mr. Grainger and the Honorable Lonsdale,” he informed the
inquirer. Together those three interviewed the Dean.
“Two guineas each,” he announced after a brief homily on the
foolishness and inconvenience of keeping everybody up on the first
Sunday of term. “And if you feel aggrieved, you can get up a
subscription among your co-lunatics to defray your expenses.”
Michael, Grainger and Lonsdale sighed very movingly, and tried to look
like martyrs, but they greatly enjoyed telling what had happened to the
other freshmen and several second-year men. It was told, too, in a
manner of elaborate nonchalance with many vows to do the same
to-morrow.