His own reason of existence is not so obvious. It was, as w

Produced by Al Haines.

[Illustration: Cover art]

[Illustration: _IN CORNMARKET STREET. Drawn by T. H. Crawford._]

ASPECTS

OF

MODERN OXFORD

BY

A MERE DON

(A. D. GODLEY)

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY_

J. H. Lorimer, Lancelot Speed, T. H. Crawford,

and E. Stamp

LONDON

SEELEY AND CO. LIMITED

Essex Street, Strand

1894

----

CONTENTS

I--OF DONS AND COLLEGES

II--OF UNDERGRADUATES

III--OF SIGHTSEERS

IV--OF EXAMINATIONS

V--UNIVERSITY JOURNALISM

VI--THE UNIVERSITY AS SEEN FROM OUTSIDE.

VII--DIARY OF A DON

VIII--THE UNIVERSITY AS A PLACE OF LEARNED LEISURE.

----

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

In Cornmarket Street. _By T. H. Crawford_ . . . . . . . . .

_Frontispiece_

In Christchurch Cathedral. _By J. H. Lorimer_

New College, Oxford. _By E. Stamp_

Corpus Christi College. _By J. H. Lorimer_

Smoking-Room at the Union. _By T. H. Crawford_

Cricket in the Parks. _By L. Speed_

Waiting for the Cox. _By L. Speed_

Ringoal in New College. _By L. Speed_

Golf at Oxford. The Plateau Hole And Arnold's Tree. _By L. Speed_

Commemoration: Outside the Sheldonian Theatre. _By T. H. Crawford_

In College Rooms. _By T. H. Crawford_

A Ball at Christchurch. _By T. H. Crawford_

The Deer Park, Magdalen College, Oxford. _By J. H. Lorimer_

In Convocation: Conferring a Degree. _By E. Stamp_

A Lecture-Room in Magdalen College. _By E. Stamp_

The Library, Merton College. _By E. Stamp_

Reading the Newdigate. _By T. H. Crawford_

A Dance at St. John's. _By T. H. Crawford_

The Radcliffe. _By E. Stamp_

In the Bodleian. _By E. Stamp_

Sailing on the Upper River. _By L. Speed_

Porch of St. Mary's. _By J. Pennell_

In Exeter College Chapel. _By E. Stamp_

Parsons' Pleasure. _By L. Speed_

Fencing. _By L. Speed_

Lawn Tennis at Oxford. _By L. Speed_

Bowls in New College Garden. _By L. Speed_

Coaching the Eight. _By J. H. Lorimer_

Evening on the River. _By E. Stamp_

ASPECTS OF MODERN OXFORD

I--OF DONS AND COLLEGES

'We ain't no thin red heroes, nor we ain't no blackguards too,

But single men in barracks, most remarkable like you.'

_Rudyard Kipling_.

Fellows of Colleges who travel on the continent of Europe have, from

time to time, experienced the almost insuperable difficulty of

explaining to the more or less intelligent foreigner their own reason of

existence, and that of the establishment to which they are privileged to

belong. It is all the worse if your neighbour at the _table d'hote_ is

acquainted with the Universities of his own country, for these offer no

parallel at all, and to attempt to illustrate by means of them is not

only futile but misleading. Define any college according to the general

scheme indicated by its founder; when you have made the situation as

intelligible as a limited knowledge of French or German will allow, the

inquirer will conclude that '_also_ it is a monastic institution,' and

that you are wearing a hair shirt under your tourist tweeds. Try to

disabuse him of this impression by pointing out that colleges do not

compel to celibacy, and are intended mainly for the instruction of

youth, and your Continental will go away with the conviction that an

English University is composed of a conglomeration of public schools.

If he tries to get further information from the conversation of a casual

undergraduate, it will appear that a _Ruderverein_ on the Danube offers

most points of comparison.

Fellows themselves fare no better, and are left in an--if

possible--darker obscurity. That they are in some way connected with

education is tolerably obvious, but the particular nature of the

connexion is unexplained. Having thoroughly confused the subject by

showing inconclusively that you are neither a monk, nor a schoolmaster,

nor a _Privat Docent_, you probably acquiesce from sheer weariness in

the title of _Professor_, which, perhaps, is as convenient as any other;

and, after all, _Professoren_ are very different from Professors. But

all this does nothing to elucidate the nature of a College. To do this

abroad is nearly as hard as to define the function of a University in

England.

[Illustration: _IN CHRISTCHURCH CATHEDRAL. By J. H. Lorimer._]

For even at home the general uneducated public, taking but a passing

interest in educational details, is apt to be hopelessly at sea as to

the mutual relation of Colleges and Universities. In the public mind

the College probably represents the University: an Oxonian will be

sometimes spoken of as 'at College;' University officials are confused

with heads of houses, and Collections with University examinations.

That foundation which is consecrated to the education of Welsh Oxonians

is generally referred to in the remote fastnesses of the Cymru as Oxford

College. As usual, a concrete material object, palpable and visible, is

preferred before a cold abstraction like the University. Explain to the

lay mind that a University is an aggregate of Colleges: it is not, of

course, but the definition will serve sometimes. Then how about the

London University, which is an examining body? And how does it happen

that there is a University College in Oxford, not to mention another in

Gower Street? and that Trinity College across the water is often called

Dublin University? All these problems are calculated to leave the

inquirer very much where he was at first, and in him who tries to

explain them to shake the firm foundations of Reason.

It may be a truism, but it is nevertheless true--according to a phrase

which has done duty in the Schools ere now--that the history of the

University is, and has been for the last five hundred years, the history

of its Colleges; and it is also true that the interweaving of Collegiate

with University life has very much complicated the question of the

student's reason of existence. We do not, of course, know what may have

been the various motives which prompted the bold baron, or squire, or

yeoman of the twelfth or thirteenth century to send the most clerkly or

least muscular of his sons to herd with his fellows in the crowded

streets or the mean hostelries of pre-collegiate Oxford; nor have we

very definite data as to the kind of life which the scholar of the

family lived when he got there. Perhaps he resided in a 'hall;'

according to some authorities there were as many as three hundred halls

in the days of Edward I.; perhaps he was master of his own destinies,

like the free and independent unattached student of modern days--minus a

Censor to watch over the use of his liberties. But what is tolerably

certain is that he did not then come to Oxford so much with the

intention of 'having a good time' as with the desire of improving his

mind, or, at least, in some way or other taking part in the intellectual

life of the period, which then centred in the University. It might be

that among the throngs of boys and young men who crowded the straitened

limits of mediaeval Oxford, there were many who supported the obscure

tenets of their particular Doctor Perspicuus against their opponents'

Doctor Inexplicabilis rather with bills and bows than with disputations

in the Schools; but every Oxonian was in some way vowed to the

advancement of learning--at least, it is hard to see what other

inducement there was to face what must have been, even with all due

allowance made, the exceptional hardships of a student's life. Then

came the Colleges--University dating from unknown antiquity, although

the legend which connects its foundation with Alfred has now shared the

fate of most legends; Balliol and Merton, at the end of the thirteenth

century; and the succeeding centuries were fruitful in the establishment

of many other now venerable foundations, taking example and

encouragement from the success and reputation of their earlier compeers.

In their original form colleges were probably intended to be places of

quiet retirement and study, where the earnest scholar might peacefully

pursue his researches without fear of disturbance by the wilder spirits

who roamed the streets and carried on the traditional feuds of Town and

Gown or of North and South.

[Illustration: _NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD. Drawn by E. Stamp._]

By a curious reverse of circumstances the collegian and the '_scholaris

nulli collegio vel aulae ascriptus_' of modern days seem to have changed

characters. For I have heard it said by those who have to do with

college discipline that their _alumni_ are no longer invariably

distinguished by 'a gentle nature and studious habits'--qualities for

which, as the Warden of Merton says, colleges were originally intended

to provide a welcome haven of rest, and which are now the especial and

gratifying characteristics of that whilom roisterer and boon companion,

the Unattached Student.

We have it on the authority of historians that the original collegiate

design was, properly speaking, a kind of model lodging-house; an

improved, enlarged, and strictly supervised edition of the many hostels

where the primitive undergraduate did mostly congregate. Fellows and

scholars alike were to be studious and discreet persons; the seniors

were to devote themselves to research, and to stand in a quasi-parental

or elder-brotherly relation to the juniors who had not yet attained to

the grade of a Baccalaureus. Very strict rules--probably based on those

of monastic institutions--governed the whole body: rules, however, which

are not unnecessarily severe when we consider the fashion of the age and

the comparative youth of both fellows and scholars. Many scholars must

have been little more than children, and the junior don of the fifteenth

century may often have been young enough to receive that corporal

punishment which our rude forefathers inflicted even on the gentler sex.

'Solomon said, in accents mild,

Spare the rod and spoil the child;

Be they man or be they maid,

Whip 'em and wallop 'em, Solomon said'

--and the sage's advice was certainly followed in the case of scholars,

who were birched for offences which in these latter days would call down

a 'gate,' a fine, or an imposition. Authorities tell us that the early

fellow might even in certain cases be mulcted of his dress, a penalty

which is now reserved for Irish patriots in gaol; and it would seem that

his consumption of beer was limited by regulations which would now be

intolerable to his scout. Some of the details respecting crime and

punishment, which have been preserved in ancient records, are of the

most remarkable description. A former Fellow of Corpus (so we are

informed by Dr. Fowler's History of that College) who had been proved

guilty of an over-susceptibility to the charms of beauty, was condemned

as a penance to preach eight sermons in the Church of St.

Peter-in-the-East. Such was the inscrutable wisdom of a bygone age.

Details have altered since then, but the general scheme of college

discipline remains much the same. Even in the days when practice was

slackest, theory retained its ancient stringency. When Mr. Gibbon of

Magdalen absented himself from his lectures, his excuses were received

'with an indulgent smile;' when he desired to leave Oxford for a few

days, he appears to have done so without let or hindrance; but both

residence and attendance at lectures were theoretically necessary. The

compromise was hardly satisfactory, but as the scholars' age increased

and the disciplinary rule meant for fourteen had to be applied to

eighteen, what was to be done? So, too, we are informed that in the

days of our fathers undergraduates endured a Procrustean tyranny. So

many chapel services you must attend; so many lectures you must hear,

connected or not with your particular studies; and there was no

relaxation of the rule; no excuse even of 'urgent business' would serve

the pale student who wanted to follow the hounds or play in a cricket

match. Things, in fact, would have been at a deadlock had not the

authorities recognised the superiority of expediency to mere morality,

and invariably accepted without question the plea of ill-health. To

'put on an _aeger_' when in the enjoyment of robust health was after all

as justifiable a fiction as the 'not at home' of ordinary society. You

announced yourself as too ill to go to a lecture, and then rode with the

Bicester or played cricket to your heart's content. This remarkable

system is now practically obsolete; perhaps we are more moral.

[Illustration: _CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE. Drawn by F. H. Lorimer._]

Modern collegiate discipline is a parlous matter. There are still the

old problems to be faced--the difficulty of adapting old rules to new

conditions--the danger on the one hand of treating boys too much like

men, and on the other of treating men too much like boys. Hence college

authorities generally fall back on some system of more or less ingenious

compromise--a course which is no doubt prudent in the long run, and

shows a laudable desire for the attainment of the Aristotelian 'mean,'

but which, like most compromises, manages to secure the disapproval

alike of all shades of outside opinion. We live with the fear of the

evening papers before our eyes, and an erring undergraduate who has been

sent down may quite possibly be avenged by a newspaper column reflecting

on college discipline in general, and the dons who sent him down in

particular. Every day martinets tell us that the University is going to

the dogs from excess of leniency; while critics of the

'Boys-will-be-boys' school point out the extreme danger of sitting

permanently on the safety valve, and dancing on the edge of an active

volcano.

In recent years most of the 'Halls' have been practically extinguished,

and thereby certain eccentricities of administration removed from our

midst. It was perhaps as well; some of these ancient and honourable

establishments having during the present century rather fallen from

their former reputation, from their readiness to receive into the fold

incapables or minor criminals to whom the moral or intellectual

atmosphere of a college was uncongenial. This was a very convenient

system for colleges, who could thus get rid of an idle or stupid man

without the responsibility of blighting his University career and his

prospects in general; but the Halls, which were thus turned into a kind

of sink, became rather curious and undesirable abiding-places in

consequence. They were inhabited by grave and reverend seniors who

couldn't, and by distinguished athletes who wouldn't, pass Smalls, much

less Mods. At one time 'Charsley's' was said to be able to play the

'Varsity Eleven. These mixed multitudes appear to have been governed on

very various and remarkable principles. At one establishment it was

considered a breach of courtesy if you did not, when going to London,

give the authorities some idea of the _probable_ length of your absence.

'The way to govern a college,' the venerated head of this institution is

reported to have said, 'is this--_to keep one eye shut_,' presumably the

optic on the side of the offender. Yet it is curious that while most of

the Halls appear to have been ruled rather by the _gant de velours_ than

the _main de fer_, one of them is currently reported to have been the

scene of an attempt to inflict corporal punishment. This heroic

endeavour to restore the customs of the ancients was not crowned with

immediate success, and he who should have been beaten with stripes fled

for justice to the Vice-Chancellor's Court.

[Illustration: _SMOKING-ROOM AT THE UNION. Drawn by T. H. Crawford._]

Casual visitors to Oxford who are acquainted with the statutes of the

University will no doubt have observed that it has been found

unnecessary to insist on exact obedience to all the rules which were

framed for the student of four hundred years ago. For instance, boots

are generally worn; undergraduates are not prohibited from riding

horses, nor even from carrying lethal weapons; the _herba nicotiana sive

Tobacco_ is in common use; and, especially in summer, garments are not

so 'subfusc' as the strict letter of the law requires. Perhaps, too, the

wearing of the academic cap and gown is not so universally necessary as

it was heretofore. All these are matters for the jurisdiction of the

Proctors, who rightly lay more stress on the real order and good

behaviour of their realm. And whatever evils civilisation may bring in

the train, there can be no doubt that the task of these officials is far

less dangerous than of old, as their subjects are less turbulent. They

have no longer to interfere in the faction fights of Northern and

Southern students. It is unusual for a Proctor to carry a pole-axe,

even when he is 'drawing' the most dangerous of billiard-rooms. The

Town and Gown rows which used to provide so attractive a picture for the

novelist--where the hero used to stand pale and determined, defying a

crowd of infuriated bargemen--are extinct and forgotten these last ten

years. Altogether the streets are quieter; models, in fact, of peace and

good order: when the anarchical element is loose it seems to prefer the

interior of Colleges. Various reasons might be assigned for this:

sometimes the presence of too easily defied authority gives a piquancy

to crime; or it is the place itself which is the incentive. The open

space of a quadrangle is found to be a convenient stage for the

performance of the midnight reveller. He is watched from the windows by

a ring of admiring friends, and the surrounding walls are a kind of

sounding-board which enhances the natural beauty of

'Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay' (with an accompaniment of tea-tray and poker

_obbligato_). Every one has his own ideal of an enjoyable evening.

II--OF UNDERGRADUATES

'In the sad and sodden street

To and fro

Flit the feverstricken feet

Of the Freshers, as they meet,

Come and go.'

_Q_

Whatever the theory of their founders, it is at no late period in the

history of colleges that we begin to trace the development of the modern

undergraduate. It was only natural that the 'gentle natures and studious

habits' of a select band of learners should undergo some modification as

college after college was founded, and comparative frivolity would from

time to time obtain admission to the sacred precincts. The University

became the resort of wealth and rank, as well as of mere intellect, and

the gradual influx of commoners--still more, of 'gentlemen

commoners'--once for all determined the character of colleges as places

of serious and uninterrupted study. Probably the Civil War, bringing

the Court to Oxford, was a potent factor in relaxation of the older

academic discipline; deans or sub-wardens of the period doubtless

finding some difficulty in adapting their rules to the requirements of

undergraduates who might from time to time absent themselves from chapel

or lecture in order to raid a Parliamentary outpost.

But perhaps the most instructive picture of the seventeenth-century

undergraduate is to be found in the account-book of one Wilding, of

Wadham (published by the Oxford Historical Society), apparently a

reading man and a scholar of his college, destined for Holy Orders. The

number of his books (he gives a list of them) shows him to have been

something of a student, while repeated entries of large sums paid for

'Wiggs' (on one occasion as much as 14*s*--more than his 'Battles' for

the quarter!) would seem to suggest something of the habits of the 'gay

young sparks' alluded to by Hearne in the next century. On the whole,

Master Wilding appears to have been a virtuous and studious young

gentleman. Now and then the natural man asserts himself, and he treats

his friends to wine or 'coffea,' or even makes an excursion to

'Abbington' (4*s.*!). Towards the end of his career a 'gaudy' costs

2*s.* 6*d.*, after which comes the too-suggestive entry, 'For a purge,

1*s.*' Then comes the close: outstanding bills are paid to the alarming

extent of 7*s.* 8*d.*; a 'wigg,' which originally cost 14*s.*, is

disposed of at a ruinous reduction for 6*s.*--the prudent man does not

give it away to his scout--and J. Wilding, B.A., e. Coll., Wadh.,

retires to his country parsonage--having first invested sixpence in a

sermon. Evidently a person of methodical habits and punctual payments;

that had two wigs, and everything handsome about him; and that probably

grumbled quite as much at the 10*s.* fee for his tutor as his modern

successor does at his 8*l.* 6*s.* 8*d.* But, on the whole, collegiate

and university fees seem to have been small.

After this description of the _vie intime_ of an undergraduate at

Wadham, history is reserved on the subject of the junior members of the

University; which is the more disappointing, as the historic Muse is not

only garrulous, but exceedingly scandalous in recounting the virtues and

the aberrations of eighteenth-century dons. Here and there we find an

occasional notice of the ways of undergraduates--here a private memoir,

there an academic _brochure_. We learn, incidentally, how Mr. John

Potenger, of New College, made 'theams in prose and verse,' and

eventually 'came to a tollerable proficiency in colloquial Latin;' how

Mr. Meadowcourt, of Merton, got into serious trouble--was prevented, in

fact, from taking his degree--for drinking the health of His Majesty

King George the First; and how Mr. Carty, of University College,

suffered a similar fate 'for prophaning, with mad intemperance, that

day, on which he ought, with sober chearfulness, to have commemorated

the restoration of King Charles the Second' (this was in 1716); how Mr.

Shenstone found, at Pembroke College, both sober men 'who amused

themselves in the evening with reading Greek and drinking water,' and

also 'a set of jolly sprightly young fellows .... who drank ale, smoked

tobacco,' and even 'punned;' and how Lord Shelburne had a 'narrow-minded

tutor.' From which we may gather, that University life was not so very

different from what it is now: our forefathers were more exercised about

politics, for which we have now substituted a perhaps extreme devotion

to athletics. But for the most part, the undergraduate is not prominent

in history--seeming, in fact, to be regarded as the least important

element in the University. On the other hand, his successor of the

present century--the era of the Examination Schools--occupies so

prominent a place in the eyes of the public that it is difficult to

speak of him, lest haply one should be accused of frivolity or want of

reverence for the _raison d'etre_ of all academic institutions.

[Illustration: _CRICKET IN THE PARKS. By Launcelot Speed._]

His own reason of existence is not so obvious. It was, as we have said,

tolerably clear that the mediaeval student came to Oxford primarily for

the love of learning something, at any rate; but the student _fin de

siecle_ is one of the most labyrinthine parts of a complex civilisation.

Of the hundreds of boys who are shot on the G.W.R. platform every

October to be caressed or kicked by Alma Mater, and returned in due time

full or empty, it is only an insignificant minority who come up with the

ostensible purpose of learning. Their reasons are as many as the colours

of their portmanteaus. Brown has come up because he is in the sixth

form at school, and was sent in for a scholarship by a head-master

desiring an advertisement; Jones, because it is thought by his friends

that he might get into the 'Varsity eleven; Robinson, because his father

considers a University career to be a stepping-stone to the

professions--which it fortunately is not as yet. Mr. Sangazur is, going

to St. Boniface because his father was there; and Mr. J. Sangazur

Smith--well, probably because _his_ father wasn't. Altogether they are

a motley crew, and it is not the least achievement of the University

that she does somehow or other manage to impress a certain stamp on so

many different kinds of metal. But in this she is only an instrument in

the hands of modern civilisation, which is always extinguishing

eccentricities and abnormal types; and even Oxford, while her sons are

getting rid of those interesting individualities which used to

distinguish them from each other, is fast losing many of the

peculiarities which used to distinguish it from the rest of the world.

It is an age of monotony. Even the Freshman, that delightful creation

of a bygone age, is not by any means what he was. He is still young,

but no longer innocent; the bloom is off his credulity; you cannot play

practical jokes upon him any more. Now and then a young man will

present himself to his college authorities in a gown of which the

superfluous dimensions and unusual embroidery betray the handiwork of

the provincial tailor; two or three neophytes may annually be seen

perambulating the High in academic dress with a walking-stick; but these

are only survivals. Senior men have no longer their old privileges of

'ragging' the freshman. In ancient times, as we are informed by the

historian of Merton College, 'Freshmen were expected to sit on a form,

and make jokes for the amusement of their companions, on pain of being

"tucked," or scarified by the thumb-nail applied under the lip. The

first Earl of Shaftesbury describes in detail this rather barbarous jest

as practised at Exeter College, and relates how, aided by some freshmen

of unusual size and strength, he himself headed a mutiny which led to

the eventual abolition of 'tucking.' Again, on Candlemas Day every

freshman received notice to prepare a speech to be delivered on the

following Shrove Tuesday, when they were compelled to declaim in undress

from a form placed on the high table, being rewarded with "cawdel" if

the performances were good, with cawdel and salted drink if it were

indifferent, and with salted drink and "tucks" if it were dull. This is

what American students call 'hazing,' and the German _Fuchs_ is

subjected to similar ordeals. But we have changed all that, and treat

the 'fresher' now with the respect he deserves.

Possibly the undergraduate of fiction and the drama may have been once a

living reality. But he is so no more, and modern realistic novelists

will have to imagine some hero less crude in colouring and more in

harmony with the compromises and neutral tints of the latter half of the

nineteenth century. The young Oxonian or Cantab of fifty years back, as

represented by contemporary or nearly contemporary writers, was always

in extremes:--

'When he was good he was very, very good;

But when he was bad he was horrid,'

like the little girl of the poet. He was either an inimitable example

of improbable virtue, or abnormally vicious. The bad undergraduate

defied the Ten Commandments, all and severally, with the ease and

success of the villain of transpontine melodrama. Nothing came amiss to

him, from forgery to screwing up the Dean and letting it be understood

that some one else had done it; but retribution generally came at last,

and this compound of manifold vices was detected and rusticated; and it

was understood that from rustication to the gallows was the shortest and

easiest of transitions. The virtuous undergraduate wore trousers too

short for him and supported his relations. He did not generally join in

any athletic pastimes, but when the stroke of his college eight fainted

from excitement just before the start, the neglected sizar threw off his

threadbare coat, leapt into the vacant seat, and won his crew at once

the proud position of head of the river by the simple process of making

four bumps on the same night, explaining afterwards that he had

practised in a dingey and saw how it could be done. Then there was the

Admirable Crichton of University life, perhaps the commonest type among

these heroes of romance. He was invariably at Christ Church, and very

often had a background of more or less tragic memories from the far-away

days of his _jeunesse orageuse_. Nevertheless he unbent so far as to do

nothing much during the first three and a half years of his academic

career, except to go to a good many wine parties, where he always wore

his cap and gown (especially in female fiction), and drank more than any

one else. Then, when every one supposed he must be ploughed in Greats,

he sat up so late for a week, and wore so many wet towels, that

eventually he was announced at the Encaenia, amid the plaudits of his

friends and the approving smiles of the Vice-Chancellor, as the winner

of a Double-First, several University prizes, and a Fellowship; after

which it was only right and natural that the recipient of so many

coveted distinctions should lead the heroine of the piece to the altar.

[Illustration: _WAITING FOR THE COX. Drawn by Lancelot Speed._]

Possibly the Oxford of a bygone generation may have furnished models for

these brilliantly coloured pictures; or, as is more probable, they were

created by the licence of fiction. At any rate the 'man' of modern times

is a far less picturesque person--unpicturesque even to the verge of

becoming ordinary. He is seldom eccentric or _outre_ in externals. His

manners are such as he has learnt at school, and his customs those of

the world he lives in. His dress would excite no remark in Piccadilly.

The gorgeous waistcoats of Leech's pencil and Calverley's '_crurum non

enarrabile tegmen_' belong to ancient history. He is, on the whole,

inexpensive in his habits, as it is now the fashion to be poor; he no

longer orders in a tailor's whole shop, and his clubs are generally

managed with economy and prudence. If, however, the undergraduate

occasionally displays the virtues of maturer age, there are certain

indications that he is less of a grown-up person than he was in the

brave days of old. It takes him a long time to forget his school-days.

Only exceptionally untrammelled spirits regard independent reading as

more important than the ministrations of their tutor. Pass-men have been

known to speak of their work for the schools as 'lessons,' and, in their

first term, to call the head of the College the head-master. Naturally,

too, school-life has imbued both Pass and Class men with an enduring

passion for games--probably rather a good thing in itself, although

inadequate as the be-all and end-all of youthful energy. Even those who

do not play them can talk about them. Cricket and football are always

as prolific a topic as the weather, and nearly as interesting, as many a

perfunctory 'Fresher's breakfast' can testify.

[Illustration: _RINGOAL IN NEW COLLEGE. Drawn by Lancelot Speed._]

The undergraduate, in these as in other things, is like the young of his

species, with whom, after all, he has a good deal in common. Take, in

short, the ordinary provincial young man; add a dash of the schoolboy

and just a touch of the _Bursch_, and you have what Mr. Hardy calls the

'Normal Undergraduate.'

[Illustration: Ringoal]

It used to be the custom to draw a very hard-and-fast line of

demarcation between the rowing and the reading man--rowing being taken

as a type of athletics in general, and indeed being the only form of

physical exercise which possessed a regular organization. Rumour has it

that a certain tutor (now defunct) laid so much emphasis on this

distinction that men whose circumstances permitted them to be idle were

regarded with disfavour if they took to reading. He docketed freshmen

as reading or non-reading men, and would not allow either kind to stray

into the domain of the other. However, the general fusion of classes and

professions has levelled these boundaries now. The rowing man reads to a

certain extent, and the reading man has very often pretensions to

athletic eminence; it is in fact highly desirable that he should, now

that a 'Varsity 'blue' provides an assistant master in a school with at

least as good a salary as does a brilliant degree. Yet, although the

great majority of men belong to the intermediate class of those who take

life as they find it, and make no one occupation the object of their

exclusive devotion, it is hardly necessary to say that there are still

extremes--the Brutal Athlete at one end of the line and the bookish

recluse (often, though wrongly, identified with the 'Smug') at the

other. The existence of the first is encouraged by the modern tendency

to professionalism in athletics. Mere amateurs who regard games as an

amusement can never hope to do anything; a thing must be taken

seriously. Every schoolboy who wishes to obtain renown in the columns

of sporting papers has his 'record,' and comes up to Oxford with the

express intention of 'cutting' somebody else's, and the athletic

authorities of the University know all about Jones's bowling average at

Eton, or Brown's form as three-quarter-back at Rugby, long before these

distinguished persons have matriculated. Nor is it only cricket,

football, and rowing that are the objects of our worship. Even so staid

and contemplative a pastime as golf ranks among 'athletics;' and perhaps

in time the authorities will be asked to give a 'Blue' for croquet.

These things being so, on the whole, perhaps, we should be grateful to

the eminent athlete for the comparative affability of his demeanour, so

long as he is not seriously contradicted. He is great, but he is

generally merciful.

Thews and sinews have probably as much admiration as is good for them,

and nearly as much as they want. On the other hand, the practice of

reading has undoubtedly been popularised. It is no longer a clique of

students who seek honours; public opinion in and outside the University

demands of an increasing majority of men that they should appear to be

improving their minds. The Pass-man pure and simple diminishes in

numbers annually; no doubt in time he will be a kind of pariah.

Colleges compete with each other in the Schools. Evening papers prove

by statistics the immorality of an establishment where a scholar who

obtains a second is allowed to remain in residence. The stress and

strain of the system would be hardly bearable were it not decidedly less

difficult to obtain a class in honours than it used to be--not, perhaps,

a First, or even a Second; but certainly the lower grades are easier of

attainment. Then the variety of subjects is such as to appeal to every

one: history, law, theology, natural science (in all its branches),

mathematics, all invite the ambitious student whose relations wish him

to take honours, and will be quite satisfied with a Fourth; and eminent

specialists compete for the privilege of instructing him. The tutor who

complained to the undergraduate that he had sixteen pupils was met by

the just retort that the undergraduate had sixteen tutors.

[Illustration: _GOLF AT OXFORD. THE PLATEAU HOLE AND ARNOLD'S TREE.

Drawn by Lancelot Speed._]

The relation of the University to the undergraduate is twofold; it is

'kept'--as a witty scholar of Dublin is fabled to have inscribed over

the door of his Dean, 'for his amusement and instruction'--and if the

latter is frequently formal, it is still more often and in a great

variety of ways 'informal,' and not communicated through his tutor. Not

to mention the many college literary societies--every college has one at

least, and they are all ready to discuss any topic, from the Origin of

Evil to bimetallism--there are now in the University various learned

societies, modelled and sometimes called after the German _Seminar_,

which are intended to supplement the deficiencies of tuition, and to

keep the serious student abreast of the newest erudition which has been

'made in Germany,' or anywhere else on the Continent. Then there is the

Union as a school of eloquence for the political aspirant; or the

'private business' of his college debating society, where a vote of

censure on Ministers is sometimes emphasised by their ejection into the

quadrangle, may qualify him for the possible methods of a future House

of Commons.

III--OF SIGHTSEERS

'The women longed to go and see the _college_ and the _tutour_.'

_'The Guardian's Instruction' by Stephen Penton._

When the late Mr. Bright asserted that the tone of Oxford life and

thought was 'provincial with a difference,' great indignation was

aroused in the breasts of all Oxford men--residents, at least; whether

it was the provincialism or the 'difference' wherein lay the sting of

the taunt. Probably it was the first. For, although it is a tenable

hypothesis that _Kleinstaedtigkeit_ has really been a potent factor in

the production of much that is best in art and literature, still nobody

likes to be called provincial by those whose business is in the

metropolis. Caesar said that he would rather be a great man at Gabii,

or whatever was the Little Pedlington of Italy, than an ordinary person

at Rome; but the modern Little Pedlingtonian would seldom confess to so

grovelling an ambition, whatever might be his real feelings. He would

much sooner be one of the crowd in London than mayor of his native city:

so at least he says. And so he is very angry if you call him

provincial, and venture to insinuate that his views of life are limited

by the jurisdiction of his Local Board or City Council; and thus the

University of Oxford refused for a long time to forgive John Bright, and

did not quite forget his strictures even when it gave him an honorary

degree and called him 'patriae et libertatis amantissimus.' And yet the

authorities had done what they could to keep the University provincial.

It was only after many and deep searchings of heart that the Hebdomadal

Council consented to countenance the advent of the Great Western

Railway; while the ten miles which separate Oxford from Steventon

preserved undergraduates from the contaminating contact of the

metropolis there was still hope, but many venerable Tories held that

University discipline was past praying for when a three-hours' run would

bring you into the heart of the dissipation of London. Some there were

who could not even imagine that so terrible a change had really taken

place; it is said that Dr. Routh, the President of Magdalen, who

attained the respectable age of ninety-nine in the year 1855 (he was

elected towards the close of the last century as a _warming-pan_, being

then of a delicate constitution and not supposed likely to live!),

persistently ignored the development of railways altogether; when

undergraduates came up late at the beginning of the winter term, he

would excuse them on the ground of the badness of the roads.

We have changed all that, like other provincial centres; and

undergraduates who want to 'see their dentist'--a venerable and

time-honoured plea which we have heard expressed by the delicate-minded

as 'the necessity for keeping a dental engagement'--may now run up to

town and back between lunch and 'hall;' the latter function having also

marched with the times, and even six-o'clock dinner being now almost a

thing of the past. Not so long ago five was the regular hour. In the

early seventies seven-o'clock dinner was regarded as a doubtful

innovation; and there we have stopped for the present. But the

fashionable world outside the colleges imitates London customs--always

keeping a little way behind the age--and what has been called the 'Parks

System' actually dines as late as 7.45 when it is determined to be _tres

chic_. It is only one sign of the influx of metropolitan ideas; but

there are many others. Oxford tradesmen have learnt by bitter

experience that the modern undergraduate is not an exclusive preserve

for them like his father. That respected county magnate, when he was at

Oriel, bought his coats from an Oxford tailor and his wine from an

Oxford wine-merchant, to whom--being an honest man--he paid about half

as much again as he would have paid anywhere in London, thereby

recouping the men of coats or of wines for the many bad debts made by

dealing with the transitory and impecunious undergraduate. But his son

gets his clothes in London, and his wine from the college, which deals

directly with Bordeaux. And the tone and subject of conversation is

changed too. Oxford is thoroughly up to date, and knows all about the

latest play at the Criterion and the latest scandal in the inner circle

of London society--or thinks it does, at any rate: there is no one who

knows so much about London as the man who does not live there.

[Illustration: _COMMEMORATION: OUTSIDE THE SHELDONIAN THEATRE. Drawn by

T. H. Crawford._]

But if Oxford goes to London, so does London come to Oxford. Whether it

be fitting or not that the site of a theoretically learned University

should be in summer a sort of people's park or recreation-ground for the

jaded Londoner, the fact is so: the classes and the masses are always

with us in one form or another. It has become a common and laudable

practice for East-end clergymen and the staff of Toynbee Hall and the

Oxford House to bring down their flocks on Whit-Monday or other

appropriate occasions; and one may constantly see high academic

dignitaries piloting an unwieldy train of excursionists, and trying to

compress University history into a small compass, or to explain the

nature of a college (of all phenomena most unexplainable to the lay

mind) to an audience which has never seen any other place of education

than a Board school. As for the classes, they have raised the Eights

and 'Commem.' to the rank of regular engagements in a London season, and

they go through both with that unflinching heroism which the English

public invariably display in the performance of a social duty: they

shiver in summer frocks on the barges, despite the hail and snowstorms

of what is ironically described as the 'Summer' term; and after a hard

day's sightseeing they enjoy a well-earned repose by going to

Commemoration balls, where you really do dance, not for a perfunctory

two hours or so, but from 8.30 to 6.30 a.m. In spite of these hardships

it is gratifying to observe that, whether or not the University succeeds

in its educational mission, it appears to leave nothing to be desired as

a place of amusement for the jaded pleasure-seeker. People who go to

sleep at a farce have been known to smile at the (to a resident) dullest

and least impressive University function. Ladies appear to take an

especial delight in penetrating the mysteries of College life. Perhaps

the female mind is piqued by a subdued flavour of impropriety, dating

from a period when colleges were not what they are; or more probably

they find it gratifying to the self-respect of a superior sex to observe

and to pity the notoriously ineffectual attempts of mere bachelors to

render existence bearable. So much for the term; and when the vacation

begins Oxford is generally inundated by a swarm of heterogeneous

tourists--Americans, who come here on their way between Paris and

Stratford-on-Avon; Germans, distinguished by a white umbrella and a red

'Baedeker,' trying to realise that here, too, is a University, despite

the absence of students with slashed noses and the altogether different

quality of the beer. Then with August come the Extension students; the

more frivolous to picnic at Nuneham and Islip, the seriously-minded to

attend lectures which compress all knowledge into a fortnight's course,

and to speculate on the future when they--the real University, as they

say--will succeed to the inheritance of an unenlightened generation

which is wasting its great opportunities.

[Illustration: _IN COLLEGE ROOMS. Drawn by T. H. Crawford._]

At Commemoration a general sense of lobster salad pervades the

atmosphere, and the natural beauties of colleges are concealed or

enhanced by a profusion of planking and red cloth; the architectural

merit of a hall is as nothing compared to the elasticity of its floor.

The Eights, again, provide attractions of their own, not especially

academic. The truly judicious sightseer will avoid both of these festive

seasons, and will choose some time when there is less to interfere with

his own proper pursuit--the week after the Eights, perhaps, or the

beginning of the October term, when the red Virginia creeper makes a

pleasing contrast with the grey collegiate walls. Nor will he, if he is

wise, allow himself to be 'rushed' through the various objects of

interest: there are, it is believed, local guides who profess to show

the whole of Oxford in two hours; but rumour asserts that the feat is

accomplished by making the several quadrangles of one college do duty

for a corresponding number of separate establishments, so that the

credulous visitor leaves Christ Church with the impression that he has

seen not only 'The House,' but also several other foundations, all

curiously enough communicating with each other. And in any case, after

a mere scamper through the colleges, nothing remains in the mind but a

vague and inaccurate reminiscence, combining in one the characteristics

of all; the jaded sightseer goes back to London with a fortunately

soon-to-be-forgotten idea that Keble was founded by Alfred the Great,

and that Tom Quad is a nickname for the Vice-Chancellor. Samuel Pepys

seems to have been to a certain extent the prototype of this kind of

curiosity or antiquity hunter, and paid a 'shilling to a boy that showed

me the Colleges before dinner.' (Curiously enough, 'after dinner' the

honorarium to 'one that showed us the schools and library' was 10*s.*!)

[Illustration: _A BALL AT CHRIST CHURCH. Drawn by T. H. Crawford_]