Original HAD heard so much from English sources of the precocity and forwardness of very young people in America, that I was quite prepared to find a commendably opposite state of things in England, and I must say that, generally speaking, I was not disappointed. The extent to which young ladies and gentlemen under twenty-two can sit up straight and refrain from conversation here, impressed me as much as anything I have seen in society. I have not observed any of this shyness in married ladies or older gentlemen; and that struck me oddly, too, for in America it is only with advancing years that we become conscious of our manners.
I have no doubt that, if the Eights had been in America--where they
would probably be called the Octoplets--and Mr. Sanders Horton had been
a Harvard Sophomore, and Lord Symonds's father had made his fortune out
of a patent shoe-lace-tag, and we had all been enjoying ourselves over
there, we might have noticed a difference both in the appearance and the
behaviour of these young gentlemen. They would certainly have been older
for their years, and more elaborately dressed. Their complexions would
probably not have been so fresh, nor their shoulders so broad, and the
pencilling on Mr. Horton's upper lip, and the delicate, fair marking on
Lord Symonds's, would assuredly have deepened into a moustache. Their
manners would not have been so negatively good as they were in Oxford,
where they struck me as expressing an ideal, above all things, to avoid
doing those things which they ought not to do. Their politeness would
have been more effusive, and not the least bit nervous; though I hope
neither Mr. Horton nor Lord Symonds will mind my implying that in Oxford
they were nervous. People can't possibly help the way they have been
brought up, and to me our host's nervousness was interesting, like his
English accent, and the scout and the quad. Personally, I liked the
feeling of superinducing bashfulness in two nice boys like those--it was
novel and amusing--though I have no doubt they were much more afraid of
Lady Torquilin than of me. I never saw a boy, however, from twelve to
twenty-three--which strikes me as the span of boyhood in England--that
was not Lady Torquilin's attached slave after twenty minutes'
conversation with her. She did not humour them, or flatter them, or talk
to them upon their particular subjects; she was simply what they called
'jolly' to them, and their appreciation was always prompt and lively.
Lady Torquilin got on splendidly with both Mr. Sanders Horton and Lord
Symonds. The only reason why Mr. Horton's lunch was not an unqualifiedly
brilliant success was that, whenever she talked to one of our hosts, the
other one was left for me to talk to, which was usually distressing for
both of us.
It was an extremely nice lunch, served with anxious deference by the
respectable-looking little man who had come upstairs, and nervously
commanded by Mr. Horton at one end with the cold joint, and Lord Symonds
at the other with the fowl. It began, I remember, with bouillon. Lady
Torquilin partook of bouillon, so did I; but the respectable scout did
not even offer it to the young gentlemen. I caught a rapid, inquiring
glance from Lady Torquilin. Could it be that there was not bouillon
enough? The thought checked any utterance upon the subject, and we
finished our soup with careful indifference, while Lord Symonds covered
the awkwardness of the situation by explaining to me demonstratively
the nature of a Bump. I did not understand Bumps then, nor did I succeed
during the course of the afternoon in picking up enough information to
write intelligently about them. But this was because Lord Symonds had
no bouillon. Under the circumstances, it was impossible for me to put my
mind to it.
Presently Mr. Horton asked us if he might give us some salmon--not
collectively, but individually and properly, Lady Torquillin first; and
we said he might. He did not help Lord Symonds, and relapsed himself,
as it were, into an empty plate. It was Lady Torquilin's business to
inquire if the young gentlemen were not well, or if salmon did not agree
with them, and not mine; but while I privately agitated this matter, I
unobservantly helped myself to mayonnaise. 'I--I beg your pardon,' said
Mr. Sanders Horton, in a pink agony; 'that's cream!' So it was, waiting
in a beautiful old-fashioned silver pitcher the advent of those idylls
that come after. It was a critical moment. Only one thing occurred to me
to say, for which I hope I may be forgiven.
Original 'Yes,' I returned, 'we like it with fish in America. At which Mr. Horton looked interested and relieved. And I ate as much of the mixture as I could with a smile, though the salmon had undergone a vinegar treatment which made this difficult. 'It is in Boston, is it not,' remarked Lord Symonds politely, 'that the people live almost entirely upon beans?' And the conversation flowed quite generally until the advent of the fowl. It was a large, well-conditioned chicken, and when the young gentlemen, apparently by mutual consent, refrained from partaking of it, the situation had reached a degree of unreasonableness which was more than Lady Torquilin could endure.
'Do you intend to eat?'
'Oh, we'd like to, but we can't,' they replied, earnestly and
simultaneously.
'We're still in training, you know,' Lord Symonds went on. 'Fellows have
got to train pretty much on stodge.' And at this juncture Mr. Horton
solemnly cut two slices of the cold beef, and sent them to his friend,
helping himself to the same quantity with mathematical exactness. Then,
with plain bread, and gravity which might almost be called severe, they
attacked it.
Lady Torquilin and I looked at each other reproachfully. This privation
struck us as needless and extreme, and it had the uncomfortable moral
effect of turning our own repast into a Bacchanalian revel. We frowned,
we protested, we besought. We suggested with insidious temptation that
this was the last day of the races, and that nobody would know. We
commended each particular dish in turn, in terms we thought most
appetising. It was very wrong, and it had the sting which drives
wrong-doing most forcibly home to the conscience, of being entirely
futile, besides engendering the severe glances of the respectable scout.
The young gentlemen were as adamant, if adamant could blush. They
would not be moved, and at every fresh appeal they concentrated their
attention upon their cold beef in a manner which I thought most noble,
if a trifle ferocious. At last they began to look a little stern
and disapproving, and we stopped, conscious of having trenched
disrespectfully upon an ideal of conduct. But over the final delicacy
of Mr. Horton's lunch, the first of the season, Lady Torquilin regarded
them wistfully. 'Not even gooseberry tart?' said she. And I will not say
that there was no regret in the courageous rejoinder:
'Not even gooseberry tart.'
I am not pretending to write about the things that ought to have
impressed me most, but the things that did impress me most, and these
were, at Mr. Sanders Horton's luncheon, the splendid old silver college
goblets into which our host poured us lavish bumpers of claret-cup, the
moral support of the respectable scout, and the character and dignity
an ideal of duty may possess, even in connection with cold beef. I came
into severe contact with an idiom, too, which I shall always associate
with that occasion. Lord Symonds did not belong to Pembroke College,
and I asked him, after we had exchanged quite a good deal of polite
conversation, which one he did belong to.
'How lovely these old colleges are,' I remarked, 'and so nice and
impressive and time-stained. Which one do you attend, Lord Symonds?'
'Maudlin,' said Lord Symonds, apparently taking no notice of my
question, and objecting to the preceding sentiment.
'Do you think so?' I said. I was not offended. I had made up my mind
some time before never to be offended in England until I understood
things. 'I'm very sorry, but they do strike an American that way, you
know.'
Lord Symonds did not seem to grasp my meaning. 'It is jolly old,' said
he. 'Not so old as some of 'em. New, for instance. But I thought you
asked my college. Maudlin, just this side of Maudlin bridge, you know.'
'Oh!' I said. 'And will you be kind enough to spell your college, Lord
Symonds? I am but a simple American, over here partly for the purpose of
improving my mind.'
'Certainly. "M-a-g-d-a-l-e-n,"' returned Lord Symonds, very
good-naturedly. 'Now that you speak of it, it is rather a rum way of
spelling it. Something like "Cholmondeley." Now, how would you spell
"Cholmondeley?"'
I was glad to have his attention diverted from my mistake, but
the reputation of 'Cholmondeley' is world-wide, and I spelled it
triumphantly. I should like to confront an American spelling-match
with 'Magdalen,' though, and about eleven other valuable orthographical
specimens that I am taking care of.
In due course we all started for the river, finding our way through
quads even greyer and greener and quieter than Exeter, and finally
turning into a pretty, wide, tree-bordered highway, much too well
trodden to be a popular Lovers' Walk, but dustily pleasant and shaded
withal. We were almost an hour too early for the races, as Mr. Horton
and Lord Symonds wished to take us on the river before they were obliged
to join their respective crews, and met hardly anybody except occasional
strolling, loose-garmented undergraduates with very various ribbons on
their round straw hats, which they took off with a kind of spasmodic
gravity when they happened to know our friends. The tree-bordered walk
ended more or less abruptly at a small stream, bordered on its hither
side by a series of curious constructions reminding one of all sorts
of things, from a Greek warship to a Methodist church in Dakota, and
wonderfully painted. These, Mr. Horton explained, were the College
barges, from which the race was viewed, and he led the way to the Exeter
barge. There is a stairway to these barges, leading to the top, and Mr.
Horton showed us up, to wait until he and Lord Symonds got out the punt.
The word 'punting' was familiar to me, signifying an aquatic pursuit
popular in England, but I had never even seen a punt, and was very
curious about it. I cannot say, however, that the English punt, when our
friends brought it round, struck me as a beautiful object. Doubtless it
had points of excellence, even of grace, as compared with other punts--I
do not wish to disparage it--but I suffered from the lack of a standard
to admire it by. It seemed to me an uninteresting vessel, and I did not
like the way it was cut off at the ends. The mode of propulsion, too,
by which Mr. Horton and Lord Symonds got us around the river--poking a
stick into the mud at the bottom and leaning on it--did not impress me
as being dignified enough for anybody in Society. Lord Symonds asked me,
as we sat in one end enjoying the sun--you get to like it in England,
even on the back of your neck--what I thought of punting. I told him I
thought it was immoderately safe. It was the most polite thing I could
think of at the spur of the moment. I do not believe punting would ever
become popular in America. We are a light-minded people; we like an
element of joyous risk; we are not adapted to punt.
The people were beginning to come down upon the barges when we returned
from this excursion, and it was thought best that we should take our
places. The stream was growing very full, not only of laborious punts
containing three brightly-dressed ladies and one perspiring young man,
but of all kinds of craft, some luxuriously overshadowed with flounced
awnings, under which young gentlemen with cigarette-attachments reposed,
protecting themselves further with Japanese paper umbrellas. The odd
part of this was that both they and their umbrellas seemed to be taken
by themselves and everybody else quite au sérieux. This, again, would be
different in America.
Mr. Horton left us with Lord Symonds, who had not to row, he explained
to us, until later in the day; and presently we saw our host below, with
the rest of his bare-legged, muscular crew, getting gingerly into the
long, narrow outrigger lying alongside. They arranged themselves with
great care and precision, and then held their oars, looking earnestly at
a little man who sat up very straight in the stern--the cox. He was my
first cox, for I had never seen a boat-race before, excepting between
champions, who do not row with coxes, and I was delighted to find how
accurately he had been described in the articles we read about English
boating--his size, his erect-ness and alertness, and autocratic dignity.
At a word from the cox every man turned his head half-way round and
back again; then he said, in the sternest accents I had ever heard,
'Are--you--ready?' and in an instant they were off.
'Where are they going?' Lady Torquilin asked.
'Oh, for a preliminary spin,' said Lord Symonds, 'and then for the
starting-point.'
'And when do the barges start?' I inquired, without having given the
matter any kind of consideration.
'The barges!' said Lord Symonds, mystified. 'Do you mean these? They
don't start; they stay here.'
'But can we see the race from here?' I asked.
'Beautifully! They come past.'
'Do I understand, Lord Symonds, that the Oxford boat-race takes place
out there?'
'Certainly,' said he. 'Why not?'
'Oh, no particular reason,' I returned--'if there is room.'
'Rather!' the young gentleman explained. 'This is the noble river Isis,
Miss Wick.'
'It may not be so big as the Mississippi, but it's worthy of your
respectful consideration, young lady,' put in Lady Torquilin. Thus
admonished, I endeavoured to give the noble river Isis my respectful
consideration, but the barges occupied so much space in it that I was
still unable to understand how a boat-race of any importance could
come between us and the opposite bank without seriously inconveniencing
somebody.
It did, however, and such was the skill displayed by the coxes in
charge that nobody was hurt. It came off amid demonstrations of the most
extraordinary nature, tin whistles predominating, on the opposite bank,
where I saw a genuine bishop capering along with the crowd, waving his
hat on his stick. It came off straight and tense and arrowy, cheered to
the last stroke.
'So near it!' said Lord Symonds, after shouting 'Well rowed, Pembroke!' until he could shout no longer.
'Near what?' I asked.
'A bump,' said he, sadly; 'but it was jolly well rowed!' and for the
moment I felt that no earthly achievement could compare with the making
of bumps.
Such excitement I never saw, among the Dons on the barges--my first
Dons, too, but they differed very much; I could not generalise about
them--among their wives, who seemed unaggressive, youngish ladies, as
a rule, in rather subdued gowns; among the gay people down from 'Town,'
among the college men, incorrigibly uproarious; among that considerable
body of society that adds so little to the brilliance of such an
occasion but contributes so largely to its noise. And after it was over
a number of exuberant young men on the other side plunged into the noble
river Isis and crossed it with a few well-placed strides, and possibly
two strokes. None of them were drowned.
After that we had a joyous half-hour in the apartments, at Exeter, of
Mr. Bertie Corke, whose brown eyes had Peter's very twinkle in them, and
who became established in our affections at once upon that account. Mr.
Corke was one of the Exeter Eight, and he looked reproachfully at
us when we inadvertently stated that we had lingered to congratulate
Pembroke.
'Pembroke got a bump, you know, yesterday,' I remarked, proud of the
technicality.
'Yes,' returned Mr. Bertie Corke, ruefully, 'bumped us.'
This was an unfortunate beginning, but it did not mar our subsequent
relations with Miss Peter Corke's brother, which were of the pleasantest
description. He told us on the way down once more to the noble river
Isis the names of all those delightful elderly stone images that had
themselves put over the college doors centuries ago, when they were
built, and he got almost as many interiors into half an hour as
his sister could. He explained to us, too, how, by the rules of the
University, he was not allowed to play marbles on the college steps,
or to wear clothes of other than an 'obfusc hue,' which was exactly the
kind of thing that Peter would tell you--and expect you to remember. He
informed us, too, that according to the pure usage of Oxonian English he
was a 'Fresher,' the man we had just passed being an unattached student,
a 'tosher,' probably walking for what in the vulgar tongue might be
called exercise, but here was 'ekker.' In many ways he was like Peter,
and he objected just as much to my abuse of the English climate.
The second race was very like the first, with more enthusiasm. I have a
little folding card with 'The Eights, May 22 to 28, 1890,' and the names
of the colleges in the order of starting, printed in blue letters on the
inside. The 'order of finish' from 'B. N. C.' to 'St. Edm. Hall' is in
Mr. Bertie Corke's handwriting. I'm not a sentimentalist, but I liked
the Eights, and I mean to keep this souvenir.