Did you ever happen to know a man who spent a whole Christmas vacation
in Oxford, and survived it? I did. And this is how it came to pass.
"Frank," said the governor one evening after dinner, when the
conversation had turned upon my approaching return to college, and the
ticklish question of supplies had been disposed of--"when the deuce do
you mean to go up for your degree? I have a notion this next term is
your fifteenth, young man?"
"Why no, sir--that is, not exactly; you know"----
"Oh! true--I forgot that confounded rustication business. Well, it's
your fourteenth at all events, and I think that's enough."
"Well, sir, I was thinking to have a shy at it after Christmas."
"Shy at it! You've always been _shying_ at it, I think. I hope it mayn't
end in a _bolt_, Master Frank!"
I laughed dutifully at the paternal wit, and promised to go to work in
earnest the moment I reached Oxford.
This was a resolution announced periodically like the ballot question,
and with much the same result. So the governor only shook his head,
yawned, looked at the bottle, which stood between us nearly empty, and
prepared apparently for an adjournment.
"I'll tell you what, sir," said I, emptying what remained in the
decanter into my glass, and swallowing it with a desperate energy
befitting the occasion, "I'll stay up the Christmas vacation and read."
"The deuce will you! Why, Frank," continued the governor, sorely
puzzled, "you know your cousins are coming here to spend the Christmas,
and I thought we should all make a merry party. Why can't you read a
little at home? You can get up something earlier, you know--much better
for your health--and have two hours or so clear before breakfast--no
time like the morning for reading--and then have all the day to yourself
afterwards. Eh, why not, Frank?"
"If you'll allow me to ring for another bottle of this Madeira, sir, (I
declare I think it's better than our senior common-room have, and they
don't consider theirs small-beer,) I'll tell you.----I never could read
at home, sir; it's not in the nature of things."
"I doubt whether it's much in your nature to read any where, Frank: I
confess I don't see much signs of it when you are here."
"In the first place, sir, I should never have a room to myself."
"Why, there's the library for you all day long, Frank; I'm sure I don't
trouble it much."
"Why, sir, in these days, if there are any young ladies in the house,
they take to the library as a matter of course: it's the regular place
for love-making: mammas don't follow them into the company of folios and
quartos while there are three volumes of the last novel on the
drawing-room table; and the atmosphere is sentimentality itself; they
mark favourite passages, and sigh illustrations."
"Precious dusty work, Frank, flirtations among my book-shelves must be;
but I suppose the girls don't go much beyond the bindings: they don't
expect to get husbands by being blue."
"Not exactly, sir; reviews and title-pages constitute a good part of
modern literary acquirements. But upon my honour, sir, one hears young
ladies now talk of nothing but architecture and divinity. Botany is
quite gone out; and music, unless there's a twang of Papistry about it,
is generally voted a bore. In my younger days--(really, sir, you needn't
laugh, for I haven't had a love affair these two years)--in my younger
days, when one talked about similarity of tastes and so forth, it meant
that both parties loved moonlight, hated quadrilles, adored Moore's
Melodies, and were learning German; now, nine girls out of ten have a
passion for speculative divinity and social regeneration."
"Ay, one sort of nonsense does just as well for them as another: your
cousin Sophy bothers me to build an Elizabethan pigsty, and wanted her
poor mother to dance with the butler in the servants' hall last
Christmas, when the fellow was as drunk as an owl: I hope it mayn't end
in her figuring off herself with the footman; for Sophy is rather a pet
of mine, and a right-down English girl after all. But, Frank, if you
can't read in peace in the library, you surely could have a room fitted
up for yourself up stairs; and you shall have the great reading-desk,
with lights, that was your grandfather's, that stands in my little
sanctum; (he made more use of it, poor man, than I do;) or I don't know
but what I might spare you the little room itself, if it would suit
you--eh?"
"Oh, my dear father! I wouldn't disturb you on any account," said I,
rather alarmed at the extent of my worthy parent's liberality in the
cause, and fearing it might end in the offer of the whole family to pack
themselves in the attics, and leave me a first floor to
myself--calculating, too, the amount of hard reading commensurate with
such imposing preparations. "What would become of the justice business
of the parish, sir, if we shut up your tribunal? I don't suppose my
mother would like to have the constables and the illegitimates
introduced either into the drawing-room or the kitchen," (this was, as I
meant it to be, a poser; if Mr Hawthorne senior had a hobby, it was his
magisterial authority.) "The fact is, that at home, up-stairs or
down-stairs, I couldn't read. I should have not only my own idleness,
but the various idlenesses of the whole family combined, to fight
against. My sisters would be knocking at the door every half hour, if
only to ask how I was getting on: Bob would tease me to come out
skating, and Charles would start me perpetually after wild-ducks or
woodcocks. And you yourself, sir, if I am not much mistaken, would think
it odd if I didn't take a ride with you as usual after breakfast. Then
one can't be expected to crawl about one's books by candlelight on a
winter's morning; and after a six o'clock dinner who can read? After tea
you know, sir, my mother always likes a rubber when I'm at home; and if
you are going to have those girls, Jane and Sophy, down this
Christmas"----
"Ah! well--I see, Frank; I'm afraid it's a hopeless case. Perhaps you
had better stay up at Oxford after all; you won't have much to disturb
you there, I suppose. If you don't get moped to death, I certainly don't
see what's to hinder your reading. You don't feel inclined to try North
Wales in the winter, I suppose, eh?"
"No, sir," said I, swallowing a last glass of Madeira at a gulp, and
rising, to cut short a conversation which was beginning to take rather
an awkward turn--"No, sir, not exactly."
"Why, I don't know, Frank: why not? you'd find the climate cooler, you
know," persevered the governor, as he followed me into the drawing-room.
So in Oxford it was settled that I should stay; a tolerable character
for the last term or two, and the notorious fact that I was going up at
Easter, ostensibly for a class, obtained me the necessary permission:
strange that, in the University, one should require leave to read! My
friends, John Brown and Harry Chesterton, were to stay up too; and we
promised ourselves some hours of hard work, and many merry ones
together. The vice-principal and one of the juniors, the only fellows
that would be in residence, were both gentlemen, and always treated the
under-graduates as such; we should get rid of the eternal rounds of beef
and legs of mutton that figured at the commoners' table in hall; there
would be no morning chapel; and altogether, having had nearly enough of
the noisy gayety of a full term, we looked forward to the novelty of a
few quiet weeks in college with a degree of pleasure which surprised
even ourselves.
But alas! under-graduates are but mortals, and subject to somewhat more
than the ordinary uncertainties of mortal life. It wanted but a week to
the end of term; all our plans were settled. Brown was to migrate from
his own rooms in "Purgatory"--as we used to call the little dark back
quadrangle, where, from sheer laziness, which made him think moving a
bore, he had remained ever since his first location there as a freshman,
up three pair of stairs; so that, when his intimate friends wished to
ascertain if he was at home, we used to throw a stone through the
window--and was to take up his abode in "Elysium," where he would be
Chesterton's next-door neighbour, and in the same number as myself. We
were to have a quiet breakfast in each others' rooms in turn every
morning; no gross repast of beef-steaks and "spread-eagle" fowls, but a
slight relish of anchovy toast, potted shrimps, or something equally
ethereal; and the _chasse-café_ limited to one cigar and no bottled
porter. It was cruel to interfere with such unexceptionable
arrangements; but a college, though it have a head, has no heart worth
mentioning; and, in an evil hour, they rusticated John Brown. At least
they forbade his staying up the Christmas vacation; and, for the credit
of my friend's character, let me explain. Why John Brown should have
been a person particularly distasteful to the fellows of ---- College,
was a matter at first sight rather hard to understand. He was not what
is called a rowing man; was never found drunk in the quad, or asleep at
the hall lecture; never sported a pink, or drove a team; was not known
to have been concerned in any of the remarkable larks which occurred in
our times; was neither an agent in the Plague of Frogs, nor an actor in
the private theatricals; was not a member of the Agricultural Society,
which made the remarkable experiments with clover and ryegrass in the
college quadrangle; had no talent for midnight howling, sang very small
in a chorus, capped all the fellows diligently, and paid his battels to
the minute. He was known to have asked twice for the key of the library,
put down his name for the senior tutor's pet lecture in "Cornelius
Nepos," bought the principal's sermon on the "Via Media," and was
suspected of having tried to read it. He was not clever enough to sneer
at the tutors, or stupid enough to disgust them. He was too sleepy to
keep late hours, too fat to pull in the boat, too stingy to give
supper-parties. How on earth came the fellows not to like John Brown? "A
most respectable man," the principal always said he was. "Sir," said he
to his anxious father, when, at the end of his second term, he took the
opportunity of a professional visit to Oxford to call to know how the
hope of the Browns was progressing--"Sir, I consider your son a most
respectable person: I may say a most respectable person;" and as the
principal had taken wine with him once at dinner, and bowed to him at
collections, and read "Mr John Brown" twice upon a card at the end and
beginning of term, and thus had every opportunity of forming an opinion,
and expressed that opinion oracularly, in a Johnsonian fashion, Governor
Brown was satisfied. How did the fellows come not to like John
Brown?--pronounced "most respectable" by the principal--declared by his
scout to be "the quietest gentleman as he ever a knowed;" admitted by
the under-graduates to be "a monstrous good fellow, but rather slow;"
how came John Brown to fail in recommending himself to the favour of his
pastors and masters--the dean and tutors of ----? Why, in the first
place, John Brown, the elder, was a wine-merchant; a well-educated man,
a well-behaved man; but still a wine-merchant. Now the dean's father
was--I beg his pardon, had been--a linen-draper; neither well-educated
nor well behaved; in short, an unmitigated linen-draper. Consequently
the dean's adoration of the aristocracy was excessive. There are few
such thorough tuft-hunters as your genuine Oxford Don; the man who,
without family or station in society, often without any further general
education and knowledge of the world than is to be found at a country
grammar-school, is suddenly, upon the strength of some acquaintance with
Latin and Greek, or quite as often, from having first seen the light in
some fortunately endowed county, elevated to the dignity of a
fellowship, and permitted to take rank with gentlemen. The "high table"
in hall, the Turkey carpet and violet cushioned chair in the common
room, the obsequious attention of college servants, and the more
unwilling "capping" of the under-graduates, to such a man are real
luxuries, and the relish with which he enjoys them is deep and strong.
And if he have but the luck to immortalize himself by holding some
University office, to strut through his year of misrule as proctor, or
even as his humble "pro," then does he at once emerge from the obscurity
of the family annals a being of a higher sphere. And when there comes up
to commemoration a waddling old lady, and two thin sticks of virginity,
who horrify the college butler by calling the vice-principal "Dick," no
wonder that they return to the select society of their native town with
an impression, that though Oxford was a very fine place, and they had
real champagne, and wax candles, and every thing quite genteel, and dear
Richard was very kind, still they did think he was grown rather proud,
as he never once asked after his old acquaintances the Smiths, and
didn't like to be teased about his old flame Mary. No wonder that in the
visits, few and far between, which, during the long vacation, the
pompous B.D. pays to his humble relations in the country, (when he has
exhausted the invitations and the patience of his more aristocratic
friends,) they do not find a trace remaining of the vulgar boy, who,
some twelve years ago, quitted the seat of the provincial muses to push
his fortunes in the University of Oxford. In vain does his uncle give up
his after-dinner pipe, and in place of the accustomed Hollands and
water, astonish the dusty decanter with port of an unknown vintage in
honour of his illustrious nephew; in vain does the good old lady
afore-mentioned, the unworthy mother of so bright a son, quit the
instruction of pious Mr Jabez Jenkins, the "Independent" minister, and
turn orthodox and high-church for the nonce, when her dearly beloved
Richard "officiates" for the rev. the vicar; no ties of home or kindred,
no memories of boyhood, no glow of early recollections, touch the
case-hardened parasite of college growth; and when he has banished his
younger brother to Australia, under pretext of making his fortune,
married both his sisters, and erected a cheap monument to the
linen-draper's widow as the "relict of the late Thomas Thompson,
_Esquire_," he waits in peaceful expectation of a college living, with
the consciousness of having done his duty by his relations, and
delivered himself from a drag upon his new career. I do not mean to set
too high a value on gentle birth, or to limit nobility of character by
that of blood; I believe my tailor to be one of nature's gentlemen, (he
never duns,) and I know my next neighbour, Sir John, thirteenth baronet
as he is, to possess the soul of a huckster, because he sells his fruit
and game: still these are the exceptions, not the rule; and there are
few cases of men rising from low origin--rising, that is, from
circumstances, not from ability--not the architects, but the creations
of their own fortunes, (for that makes all the difference)--who do not
carry with them, through all the gradations of their advancement, the
plebeian instincts, while they forget, perhaps, the homely virtues of
the class from which they spring. There is a nobility of birth, seldom
to be counterfeited or mistaken, wholly irrespective of the rank and
wealth which are either its graceful accompaniments or its insufficient
substitutes; fostered and strengthened by early habits and education,
but none the less originally innate--as much an endowment from heaven as
beauty, strength, or talent, and more valuable than all. Many men have
the tact to adapt themselves to the station and the society to which
they have risen, however much above their own level; they acquire the
habits and the tastes, seldom the feelings, of a gentleman. They act the
character well; it is carefully studied, and on the whole well
sustained; it is a correct and painstaking performance, and the points
tell distinctly; but there is throughout that indirect appeal to the
audience which marks it to be only acting. They are more studiously
aristocratic than the aristocracy, and have a horror of vulgarity which
is in itself essentially vulgar.
And such a man was the dean of ----. On the philosophic principle of
hating all to whom we are under obligations, if there was any thing he
cordially detested, it was trade. His constant aim was to forget his
unfortunate origin himself, if possible to lead others who knew him to
forget it, and to keep strangers from knowing it at all. And as he
shrank from every shape and sound plebeian, so he industriously
cultivated every opening to "good society." There was not a member of
his own college, graduate or under-graduate, of any pretensions to
family, who could not speak from experience of the dean's capital
dinners, and his invariable urbanity. No young honourable, or tenth
cousin to an honourable, ever got into a row, that he had not cause to
bless the dean's good offices for getting him out. And if some of the
old stagers contented themselves with eating his dinners, and returning
them in the proportion of one to five, the unsophisticated gratitude of
youth, less cunning in the ways of the world, declared unhesitatingly,
in its own idiomatic language, "that old Hodgett was a regular brick,
and gave very beany feeds." And so his fame travelled far beyond his own
collegiate walls, and out-college honourables and gentlemen-commoners
were content to make the acquaintance, and eat the dinners that were so
freely offered. And as the dean had really some cleverness, and "a
well-assorted selection" of anecdotes and illustrations "from the best
markets," (as his worthy father would have advertised it,) and could
fill the chair at his own entertainments with ease if not with
gracefulness, and moreover was not close with his purse-strings, and
could always be reckoned safe for a L.20 note if a dun was troublesome,
(well knowing that even under-graduates make exceptions in favour of
debts of honour,) he became, among his younger friends especially, a
very popular man. And when those who had enjoyed his good fare, and
profited by his friendly offices with duns and proctors, found that,
after all, he was "nobody," all they said was, that it was a pity, and
that he was a monstrous good fellow none the less. And one invited him
to spend the Christmas with him down at the governor's in Kent, where
there was to be a regular houseful, and merry-making of all sorts, and
another would have him into Norfolk in September for the shooting--(the
dean never shot, but wisely said nothing about it until he got into
good quarters, when he left his younger friends to beat the stubbles,
while he walked or drove with Lady Mary and Lady Emily, and eat the
partridges;)--so that on the whole he felt himself rather an ill-used
individual if there was a week of the vacation for which he had not an
invite. If such a rare and undesirable exception did happen, seldom
indeed did he bestow himself, even for a day or two, upon his mother and
sisters at Nottingham; and never did he, by any oversight, permit a
letter to be addressed to him there; if it could not conveniently bear
the address of some of his titled entertainers, it was to meet him at
his college, to which he usually retired to await, with sufficient
discontent, an invitation, or the beginning of term; while he took pains
to have it understood, that his temporary seclusion was hardly spared
him from the hospitable importunities of those whom he delighted to call
"his many friends," in order to attend to important business.
Occasionally, indeed, it would happen that the natural sagacity of some
old English gentleman, or the keen eye of an experienced courtier, would
fathom at a glance the character of his son's invited guest, and treat
him with a distant politeness which he could neither mistake nor get
over; but, on the whole, his visits among his aristocratic entertainers
were agreeable enough, and he was not a man to stick at an occasional
trifle. His youthful _protégés_ were glad to be able to repay in the
country many kind offices at Oxford, and to become patronizers in their
turn; and the seniors redoubled, in the case of their son's friend, the
hospitality and courtesy they would have readily shown to a stranger,
and were not eager to scrutinize the motives which might have induced
him to be civil to the hopeful stripling, whom, in their partial view,
the whole university might well have delighted to honour.
In the eyes of such a man, John Brown was not likely, at first starting,
to find much favour. Had he been a rich man, and sported the velvet cap
and silk gown, the unhappy fact of his father's being in trade might
have been winked at. If not in the front rank of the dean's friends he
might have filled a vacant seat occasionally at his dinner-table, and
been honoured with a friendly recognition in the quadrangle. At it was,
he did not condescend to remember that such a man was on the college
books. Happy ignorance, if only it could have lasted. But one unlucky
morning a late supper party had decidedly thinned the attendance at the
hall lecture; and Mr Hodgett, having been disappointed of an invitation
to a very select dinner at the principal's, was in no very benignant
humour, and "hauled up" the defaulters. Among them was one of the dean's
pets--who, having done the same thing a dozen times before, was rather
astonished at the summons--and the usually regular John Brown. What
excuses the rest of the party made is immaterial. John, I believe, said
nothing, beyond a remark as to his having been rarely absent. The
result, however, was, that he and the rest got an imposition, which cost
them half-a-guinea each to get done by the under-cook, (it was Greek
_with_ the accents, which comes expensive,) while the Honourable Lumley
Skeffington was dismissed with a jocular reproof, and an invitation to
breakfast. Now, if Mr Skeffington had had the sense to have kept his own
and his friend's counsel, this might have been all very well. But being
a somewhat shallow-pated youth, and a freshman to boot, he thought it a
very fine thing to talk about at his next wine-party, and boast that he
could cut lecture and chapel when he pleased--the dean and he understood
each other. Brown happened to be present; (for though not good company
enough for the dean, he was for his betters; your _parvenu_ is far more
exclusive in his society than your born gentleman;) he quietly enquired
into the facts; and finding that what he had before been inclined to
consider as undue severity in his own case, was positively an injustice
compared with that of another, appreciating thoroughly the character of
the party he had to deal with, and coupling the present with certain
previous minor snubbings from the same quarter, he from that moment
declared war.
Now, the Rev. Mr Hodgett, sedate and dignified as he was, had better
have danced a hornpipe in his thinnest silks amongst a bed of stinging
nettles, or have poked sticks into a wasp's nest, or amused himself with
any other innocent recreation, than have made an enemy of John Brown. It
was what he himself would have called a wrong move, and it played the
deuce with his game. John was the very man who could annoy him, and he
did. None of us knew he had so much ingenuity, or so much malice in his
composition, until he commenced his hostilities against the dean. The
fact was, he was more piqued, perhaps, than any other man in college
would have been by so small a matter. Too sensible to be really ashamed
of being the son of a man in trade, he was conscious, nevertheless, that
it was in some sort a disadvantage to him, and that, descended as he was
from an old and once knightly line, (his father had been an ill-used
younger son,) he did not quite occupy his proper position in the world.
His feeling of this made him sensitive to a fault; it led him rather to
shun than to seek the society of his contemporaries; and much as he was
esteemed by myself and others who knew him well, I will not say that he
was a universal favourite. Men did not understand him: at that time of
life (alas, why not always?) most of us are open and free-hearted; they
did not relish his shy and reserved manner, his unwillingness to take
the initiative in any social intercourse, his _exigéance_ to a certain
extent of those forms which the freedom of college friendship is apt to
neglect. "Why didn't you turn into my rooms the other night, when you
came in from Oriel?" said I to him early in our acquaintance. "Hobbs
says he told you I had some men to supper."--"You didn't ask me," was
the quiet reply.--"I couldn't see you, or else I should; but you might
have known I wanted you; don't serve me such a trick as that again, old
fellow." But it let me into a secret of his character, and ever after
that, I was as particular in my invitations as possible. Men thought him
proud, and cold, and touchy, which he was not; and stingy, which he
scorned to be, from his contempt for ostentation in any shape. The
rarity of his wine-parties, and his never having other wines produced
than port or sherry, he himself explained to me--"Men would say, it was
easy for me to sport claret and champagne, when I could get them for
nothing." But if an unthinking freshman broke out in praise of the said
excellent port or sherry, (as indeed they might well be pardoned for
doing, considering the quality of what they commonly imbibed,) he would
say at once--"Yes, I believe it is good; I know my father considers it
so, and it has been in bottle above twelve years." There was no shirking
the question for a moment. And excellent wine he got for me from his
father, at a moderate price, at his own offer. Hating then, as he did
undisguisedly, the tuft-hunting and affectation of _haut-ton_, which was
so foreign to his own nature, he felt, perhaps excusably, annoyed at
their palpable existence and apparent success, in a man, whose station,
as he said, ought to have kept him from meanness, if it could not give
him dignity.
At all events, his method of retaliation--"taking down the dean"--as he
called it was most systematic and persevering. He let the matter of the
imposition pass over quietly; was for some months doubly attentive to
all his college duties; carefully avoided all collision with his
adversary; kept out of his way as much as he could; and whenever brought
into contact with him, was as respectful as if he had been the
Vice-chancellor. This had its effect: John began to rise in the dean's
good graces; and when he called upon him in the usual course of
etiquette, to mention that he should be absent the vacation of three
days which intervenes between the two short terms, the meeting, on one
side at least, was almost cordial. A day or two after his return, (he
had been to visit a friend, he said,) we were in his rooms at breakfast
together, when the dean's scout entered with his master's compliments to
request Mr Brown's company to breakfast. Then it was that John's eyes
dilated, and he rubbed his hands, as soon as the door was shut, with an
excitement rather unusual.
"Do you know who breakfasts with the man to-morrow? Do you, Hawthorne?"
"Why, I had a message this morning," said I, "but I don't mean to go. I
shall have a headach or something to-morrow. I have no notion of going
there to eat my own bread and butter, and drink his very bad tea, and
see a freshman swallow greasy ham and eggs, enough to turn the stomach
of any one else; and then those Dons always make a point of asking me to
meet a set of regular muffs that I don't know. The last time I went,
there were only two reading-men in spectacles, perfect dummies, and that
ass, young Medlicott, who talks about hunting, and I believe never
crossed the back of anything higher than a donkey."
"You had better come to-morrow; perhaps you will have some fun."
"Why, who is going there, do you know?"
"I haven't a notion; but do come. I must go, and we will sit together,
and I'll get the cook to send up a dish of deviled kidneys for you."
There was something in his eye as he said this which I could not make
out, and it rather puzzled me to find him so willing to be of the party
himself. However, he was an odd fellow, so I promised to go, and we
parted; certainly with little anticipation on my part of what the "fun"
was to be.
Nine o'clock the next day arrived, and punctual to the minute might be
seen two freshmen, from opposite corners of the quadrangle, steering for
the dean's rooms. Ten minutes afterwards, an interesting procession of
coffee-pots and tin-covers warned me to finish my toilet; and following
them up the staircase, I found a tolerably large party assembled.
"Just in time--just in time, Mr Hawthorne," said the dean, who appeared
to be in high good-humour, "as my old pupil, Sir Charles Galston, used
to say, (you don't know him, do you? he's your county man, too, I
believe,)--as he always used to say, 'Gad, Hodgett, just in time to see
the muffins break cover!' ha, ha! Take those tins off, Robert."
We sat down, and for some time every thing went on as slow as it usually
does at breakfast parties. At length, taking advantage of a pause, after
laughing his loudest at one of our host's stories, John Brown broke out
with "How is Mrs Hodgett, sir?"
If Mrs Hodgett, instead of the dean's most respectable mother, had been
his lawful wife, hitherto unacknowledged through fear of losing his
fellowship, he could not have looked more thoroughly horrified. I myself
was considerably taken aback; some of the other men, who knew the
reverend gentleman's tenderness on the subject of his family connexions,
picked their chicken-bones, and stirred their coffee with redoubled
attention. John Brown and the two freshmen alone looked as cool as
cucumbers.
"Eh? oh--h," stammered the party addressed, "quite well, thank
you--quite well. Let me give you some of this--oh, it's all gone! We'll
have some more; will one of you be kind enough to ring? My friend,
Lord"----
"No more for me, thank you, sir, I beg," said John. "Have you heard from
Mrs Hodgett since the vacation?"
"No--yes; oh dear, yes, several times!" (It was about five days back.)
"She was quite well, thank you. In town at present, I believe. You were
in town during the vacation, I think, Mr Wartnaby? Did you meet your
uncle Sir Thomas there, or any of the family?"
"Sir T-T-Thom...." began young Wartnaby, who stammered terribly.
"I beg your pardon, sir," struck in John Brown, "are you sure Mrs
Hodgett is in town? I saw her in Nottingham myself on Friday; I made my
first acquaintance with her there, and a very charming old lady she is."
Mr Hodgett's confusion could only be rivaled by Mr Brown's perfect
self-possession. I began to see the object of his kind enquiries; so,
probably, did the victim himself. The other men who were present
thought, I suppose, that it was only an unfortunate attempt of John's to
make himself agreeable; and while some were amused by it, a more
considerate friend kicked my shins in mistake for his, under the table.
"She certainly told me, sir, she should be going up to London in a few
weeks, to purchase her winter stock, I think she said; but I did not
understand that she was to be there now."
John had got on thus far before his enemy could rally at all; but the
dean grew desperate, and resolved to make a diversion at all hazards;
and as he reached his hand out, apparently in quest of a slice of toast,
cup, saucer, and a pile of empty plates, went crashing on the floor.
"Bless me, how very awkward!" said he, with a face as red as fire.
"Never mind, sir," said a freshman from Shrewsbury, just entered who had
not opened his lips before, and thought it a good opportunity; "it's all
for the good of trade."
Never was a stale jest so unconsciously pointed in its application.
Brown laughed of course, and so did we all; while the dean tried to
cover his confusion by wiping his clothes--the cup having been an empty
one. The freshman, seeing our amusement, thought he had said a very good
thing, and began to talk very fast; but nobody listened to him.
"Talking of trade," mercilessly continued the tormentor, "I was
uncommonly pleased with Nottingham the other day. Your brother-in-law,
Mr Mogg, was exceedingly civil to me, (I took the liberty of mentioning
your name, sir;) he showed me the whole process of stocking-making; very
interesting indeed it is--but of course you have seen it often; and I
really think, for a small establishment, Mr Mogg's is one of the best
conducted I ever saw. You don't know Mr Mogg, Hawthorne, do you? Get the
dean to give you a letter to him, if you ever go to Nottingham; a very
good sort of man he is, and has his whole heart in his business. 'Some
men are ashamed of their trade, sir' said he; 'I a'n't. What should I
do, I should like to know, if trade was ashamed of me?' And really Mrs
Mogg"----
"Ah yes!" said Mr Hodgett, hitherto overwhelmed by John's eloquence, (he
never talked so fast,) and utterly at a loss how to meet it, "Mogg is a
great man in his line at Nottingham. I shouldn't wonder if he was member
some day; he has a large wholesale connexion."
"And retail, too, sir," chimed in John. "I bought six pair of the nicest
sort of stockings there I have seen for a long time: did I show them to
you, Hawthorne? 'These,' said Mr Mogg, 'I can recommend; I always'"----
"If you won't take any more coffee, gentlemen," said the dean, jumping
up and looking at his watch, "I am afraid, as I have an appointment at
ten"----
"I declare, so have I," said Brown; "but I had quite forgotten it, our
conversation has been so very agreeable. Good-morning, sir; and if you
are writing to Mrs Hodgett, pray make my compliments." And with this
Parthian shaft he quitted the field.
Having adjusted the difficult questions which are apt to arise as to the
ownership of caps and gowns, the rest of the party took leave. The
facetious freshman, after putting in an ineffectual claim upon one or
two of the most respectable of the caps, at last marched off with the
dean's, as being certainly more like the new one he had bought the day
before, than the dilapidated article with a broken board and half a
tassel, which was the tempting alternative, and possessing also the
common property of having a red seal in it. He was not allowed, however,
to remain long in peaceful possession of his prize. Scarcely had he
reached his rooms, when Robert, the dean's scout, came to inform him
that he had left his own cap (which Robert presented to him with a grin)
behind him, and taken away Mr Hodgett's in mistake; enlightening him, at
the same time, as to the fact, that fellows' caps, by special exemption,
were "not transferable." And when he ventured to send back by Robert an
apology, to the effect that the very ancient specimen could not at all
events be his, and a humble request that the dean would endeavour to
ascertain which of his friends whom he had met at breakfast had also
"made a mistake," that official, remembering his happy _debût_ as a
conversationalist, instantly sent for him, and read him a severe lecture
upon impertinence.
Of course we were no sooner fairly landed in the quadrangle, than all
who had any acquaintance with Brown surrounded him with entreaties for
an explanation. What possessed him to make such a dead set at the dean?
How came he to be so well up in the family history? How long had he had
the pleasure of an acquaintance with dear old Mrs Hodgett? And who
introduced him to Mr Mogg?
It turned out that John had made an expedition to Nottingham during the
vacation on purpose; he had called on the old lady, whose address he had
with some difficulty obtained; presented his card, "Mr John Brown, ----
Coll.;" stated that he was a stranger, very desirous to see the lions of
Nottingham, of which he had heard so much; and having the honour of
knowing her son, and the advantage of being at the same college with
him, and having so often heard her name mentioned in their many
conversations, that he almost felt as if she was his intimate
acquaintance, had ventured to intrude upon her with a request that she
would put him in the way of seeing the town and its manufactures to the
best advantage. Much taken, no doubt, by John's polite address, which by
his own recapitulation of it must have been highly insinuating, and
delighted to see any one who could talk to her about her son, and to
learn that she herself was talked about among his grand friends in
Oxford, the worthy Mrs Hodgett begged John Brown to walk in; and finding
that there was nothing high about him, and that he listened with the
greatest interest to all her family details and reminiscences, she took
courage to ask him to eat a bit of dinner with her and her daughter at
two o'clock, after which she promised him the escort of her son-in-law,
Mr Mogg, the principal (that was what they called them up at Nottingham,
just as they did in Oxford, she observed) of the great stocking-house
over the way. Such a man he was! she said; every bit as good as a book
to a stranger; "he knowed every think and every body." John assured her
such universal knowledge was not common among principals of houses in
Oxford; and declared that he should appreciate the services of such a
guide proportionately. And as an introduction to the whole family was
just the thing he wanted, he at once accepted the invitation with many
thanks. In short, an arrangement was made which pleased all parties;
all, that is, with the exception of Mr Spriggins, the head shopman, who
usually took his meals with the family, but on that day, to his great
disgust, not being considered of quality to meet their unexpected guest,
(not being a principal,) received intimation that his dinner would be
served in the counting-house. The dinner passed off, no doubt, much more
satisfactorily than more formal affairs of the kind. John had a good
appetite and good-humour, and so had the old lady; and no doubt, even in
Miss Hodgett's eyes, the young Oxonian was no bad substitute for Mr
Spriggins. Even that gentleman, could he have foreseen all that was to
follow from this visit, would have exchanged for his blandest smile the
stern glance with which he regarded, from the little back window of the
counting-house, the procession of John, with Miss Hodgett under his arm,
from the drawing-room, to take the seat which should have been his;
would have made him his most obsequious bow, and regarded him as the
best customer that had ever come inside their doors.
But perhaps I am wronging Mr Spriggins in assuming that he thought the
usurper of his rights worthy of a glance at all: and certainly I am
anticipating my story. John dined with the old lady; drank her currant
wine in preference to her port, ate her seed biscuits, and when Mr Mogg,
in pursuance of a message from his mother-in-law, called to renew in his
own person the offer to show his relation's distinguished friend, (Mrs
Hodgett had hinted her suspicions that John Brown was a nobleman,) he
was ready, though rather sleepy, to commence his lionizing. Mr Mogg was
exceedingly civil, showed him every thing worth seeing, from the castle
to the stocking-frames; and by the time they returned together to supper
at the old lady's, they had become very thick indeed. John called the
next day and took his leave of both parties, with a promise not to pass
through Nottingham without renewing his acquaintance, and that he would
not fail to mention to his friend the dean how much he had been
gratified by his reception; both which pledges he scrupulously redeemed.
Mr Hodgett's indignation was unbounded; if the united powers of
vice-chancellor, doctors, proctors, and convocation, could, by rummaging
up some old statute, have expelled John Brown for paying a visit to
Nottingham, he would have moved the university to strive to effect it.
Happily these powers never are united, or there is no saying what they
might not do. So John remained a member of the college still. The dean
seldom looked at him if he could help it; he tried once the soothing
system by praising him at collections, but it only elicited from John a
polite enquiry after Mr and Mrs Mogg.
What man could do to extricate himself from his unfortunate position,
the dean did. He wrote off immediately to his mother, entreating her, by
her hopes of his advancement in life, not to allow the name of Hodgett
to be any longer contaminated by any touch of linen-drapery. He
suggested that she should at once make over the business to her foreman,
Spriggins, reserving to herself an interest in the profits, and retire
to a small and genteel cottage in the suburbs, where no impertinent
intruder could detect the linen-draper's widow. She, worthy old soul,
though it did grieve her, no doubt, to part with her shop, in which were
centred the interests and associations of so many years, yet would have
set fire to it with her own hands, and emigrated to America--though she
knew it only as a place where banks always broke, and people never paid
their debts--if it could in anyway have furthered his interests whom she
loved better than he deserved. She always looked upon him as a
gentleman, and did not wonder he wished to be one, though she herself
had no manner of taste for becoming a lady.
But in the simplicity of her heart, she planned that even this sacrifice
to her motherly affection might be turned to some account in the way of
trade. Accordingly, there appeared in the _Nottingham Herald_ an
advertisement, extending across two columns, headed with imposing
capitals, by which the public were informed that Mrs Hodgett being about
to decline her long-established linen-drapery business in favour of Mr
Spriggins, the whole stock was to be turned into ready money
immediately, "considerably below prime cost;" by which means the public
had no doubt an opportunity of giving full value to Mrs H. for sundry
old-fashioned patterns and faded remnants, which the incoming Spriggins
would otherwise have "taken to" for a mere song.
Now, since the time that John Brown began first to take so deep an
interest in the Hodgett family, he had regularly invested fourpence
weekly in a copy of the _Nottingham Herald_. By this means he had the
satisfaction of congratulating the dean upon the birth of a nephew, in
the person of a son and heir of the Moggs: and though so carefully did
that gentleman avoid all communication with his tormentor, that he was
obliged for two whole days to watch an opportunity to convey the
intelligence; yet, as he finally succeeded in announcing it in the
presence of the tutor of a neighbouring college, who was a profound
genealogist and a great gossip, his pains, he declared, were
sufficiently repaid. The eagerness with which he pounced upon the
advertisement may be imagined; and finding, from a little _N. B._ at the
bottom, that handbills with further particulars were to be had at the
office, he lost no time in procuring half a dozen by post; and one
morning the usual receptacles for university notices, the hall-door and
the board by the buttery, were placarded with staring announcements, in
red and black letters, six inches long, of Mrs HODGETT'S speculation.
One was pushed under the dean's door; one stuck under the knocker at the
principal's; one put into the college letterbox for "the senior
common-room;" in short, had good Mrs Hodgett herself wished to have the
college for her customers, she could hardly have distributed them more
judiciously.
In short, no pains were spared by John Brown to tease and worry the dean
with all the particulars of his family history, which he would most have
wished to bury in oblivion. And to do him justice, he in his turn spared
no pains to get rid of John Brown. He would have allowed him to cut
lectures and chapels _ad libitum_, if he thus could have spared all
personal intercourse, and escaped his detested civilities. Finding that
would not do, he tried the opposite course, and endeavoured either to
get him rusticated at once, or to disgust him with the college, and thus
induce him to take his name off. John was cautious--very cautious; but a
war against the powers that be, is always pretty much of an uphill game;
and so at last it proved in his case.
John had another enemy in the college, of his own making too; this was
Mr Silver, the junior tutor. He was a man of some scholarship and much
conceit; took a first class when very young, having entered college a
mere schoolboy, and read hard; got his appointment as tutor soon after,
and sneered at older men on the strength of it. He pretended to be
exceedingly jocular and familiar with his pupils, but was really always
on the alarm for his dignity. His great delight was to impress the
freshmen with an idea of his abilities and his condescension. "Always
come to me, Mr ----, if you find any difficulties in your reading--I
shall be most happy to assist you." This language, repeated to all in
turn, was, not unnaturally, literally understood by the matter-of-fact
John Brown; who, perhaps, could see no good reason why a college tutor
should _not_ be ready to aid, as far as he could, the private studies of
those who are so often in want of sensible advice and encouragement.
However, it did not occur to him, when he took up to Mr Silver's rooms
one morning after lecture, a passage that had puzzled him, that he was
doing a very odd thing, and that the tutor thought so. As these
consultations became more frequent, however, he began to perceive, what
other men were not slow to tell him, that Mr Silver thought him a bore.
And the moment this flashed upon him, with his unfortunate antipathy to
any thing like humbug, he began another war of independence. He selected
crabbed passages; got them up carefully by the help of translations,
scholiasts, and clever friends; and then took them up hot to Mr Silver.
And when he detected him slurring a difficulty instead of explaining it,
or saying there was no difficulty at all, John would bring up against
him his array of objections to this or that rendering, and arguments for
and against various readings, &c., till Mr Silver found himself fairly
out of his depth. At first this puzzled him, and he very nearly
committed the mistake of pronouncing John Brown a first-rate scholar in
the common-room; but when he found his performance at lecture did not by
any means keep pace with the remarkable erudition sometimes displayed by
him in private, he began in his turn to suspect the trick. He dared not
refuse to play his part, when called upon, in these learned discussions,
though he dreaded them more and more; for his college reputation was at
stake, and there were some among the older fellows who looked upon him
as rather an assuming young man for understanding what they did not
pretend to, and would have been glad to have had a joke against him; but
he began cordially to hate John Brown; he gave him all the difficult
bits he could at lecture; sneered at him when he dared; and practised
all those amiable embellishments which make schoolmasters and tutors
usually so beloved, and learning in all its branches so delightful.
It is not to be wondered at, then, if John's kind friends somewhat
damaged his reputation among the Dons, and watched their opportunity to
annihilate him. It came, and they were down upon him at once. Some
half-dozen noisy men, the survivors of a supper-party, had turned into
Brown's rooms (he seldom sat up so late) for a parting cigar. Having
accomplished this, they took it into their heads to dance a quadrille in
the middle of the covered thoroughfare, for the benefit of the echo, to
the music of six individual tunes sung in chorus. So strange a
performance brought down some of the fellows; the men were not
recognised, but traced to Brown's rooms. He refused to give up their
names--was declared contumacious; and, in spite of the good-natured
remonstrances of the principal and one or two of the others, his enemies
obtained a majority in the common-room; and it was decided that John
Brown was too dangerous a character to be allowed to remain in college
during vacation. But they had not got rid of him yet.
About two miles out of Oxford, on the C---- road, if any one takes the
trouble to turn up a narrow lane, and then follow a footpath by the side
of the canal, he will come to one of the most curious-looking farmhouses
that he (or at least I) ever met with. It is a large rambling
uninhabited-looking place; the house, as is not unusual, forming one
side of a square enclosure, of which the barns and outhouses make up the
rest. The high blank walls of these latter, pierced only here and there
by two or three of the narrowest possible lancet-holes, give it
something the air of a fortification. Indeed, if well garrisoned, it
would be almost as strong a post as the Chateau of Hougoumont; with this
additional advantage, that it has a moat on two sides of it, and a
canal, only divided from it by a narrow towing-path, on a third. The
front (for it has a front, though, upon my first visit, it took me some
time to find it, it being exactly on the opposite side to the approach
at present in use, and requiring two pretty deep ditches to be crossed,
in order to get at it from the direction)--the front only has any
regular windows; and of these, most of the largest are boarded up,
(some, indeed, more substantially closed with brick and mortar) in order
to render it as independent as possible of the glazier and the assessor
of taxes. There is a little bridge, very much decayed, thrown across the
narrow moat to what was, in former days, the main entrance; but now the
door was nailed up, the bridge ruinous, and the path leading to it no
longer distinguishable in the long rank grass that covered the wet
meadows upon which the house looked out. It was a place that filled you
involuntarily with melancholy feelings; it breathed of loneliness and
desolation, changed times and fallen fortunes. I never beheld it but I
thought of Tennyson's "Mariana in the moated Grange"--
"Unlifted was the clicking latch,
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated Grange."
Brown and I, in some of our peregrinations, had stumbled upon this old
house; and after having walked round it, and speculated upon its
history, made our way through an open door into the spacious court-yard.
If the outside looked desolate, however, the interior was lively enough:
cattle, pigs, geese, ducks, and all the ordinary appurtenances of a
well-stocked farm, gave token that the old place was still tenanted; and
a large mastiff, who stalked towards us with a series of enquiring
growls, evidently demanding our business, and suspicious of our good
intentions, made us not at all sorry to see a stout good-natured-looking
dame, a perfect contradiction to the poet's woe-worn "Mariana," who,
after bidding Boxer hold his noise, volunteered a compendious history of
herself and husband in answer to our simple question as to the name of
the place. How good Farmer Nutt and herself had lived there for the last
seventeen years; how the old place belonged to Squire somebody, and
folks said that some gentry used to live in it in times past; what a
lonesome-like life they thought it when they first came, after living in
the gay town of Abingdon; how, by degrees, they got to think it pretty
comfortable, and found the plashy meadows good pasturage, and the house
"famous and roomy-like;" this, and much besides, did we listen to
patiently, the more so because an attempt or two at interruption only
served to widen the field of her discourse. The wind-up of it all,
however, was, that we were asked to walk in and sit down, and so we did.
A civil farmer's wife, a very common character in most parts of England,
is, I am sorry to say, somewhat too much of a rarity about Oxford;
whether their tempers are too severely tried by the "fast men," who hunt
drags and ride steeple-chases to the detriment of young wheat and
new-made fences; or by the reading-men, who, in their innocence, make
pertinacious visits in search of strawberries and cream in the month of
March, or call for the twentieth time to enquire the nearest way to
Oxford, (being ignorant of all topography but that of ancient Rome and
Athens;) or whether they regard all gownsmen as embryo parsons and
tithe-owners, and therefore hereditary enemies; whatever be the reason,
it generally requires some tact to establish any thing like a friendly
relation with a farmer or his wife in the neighbourhood of the
university. However, Mrs Nutt was an exception; and nothing could exceed
the heartiness with which she set out her best wheaten bread and rich
Gloucester cheese, and particular ale--an advance towards further
acquaintance which we met with due readiness. In short, so well were we
pleased with the good dame's hospitable ways, and her old-fashioned
house, and even with her good-humoured loquacity, that our first visit
was not our last. The farmer himself, a quiet, good-natured, honest
yeoman of about sixty, who said very little indeed when his wife was
present, (he had not much chance,) but could, when disposed, let out
many a droll story of "College Gents" in bygone days, when he was a
brewer's apprentice at Abingdon, came, by invitation, to taste the
college tap, and carried home in each pocket a bottle of wine for "the
missus."
When John Brown, Esquire, found his intentions of wintering within the
walls of ---- so unexpectedly defeated, he cast about diligently in his
own mind for a resting-place for himself, his books, and a nondescript
animal which he called a Russian terrier. Home he was determined not to
go--any where within the boundaries of the University, the College were
equally determined he should not stay; and we all settled that he would
fix himself for the vacation either at Woodstock, or Ensham, or
Abingdon; the odds were in favour of the latter place, for John was a
good judge of ale. It was not, therefore, without considerable
astonishment that one morning, at breakfast in my room, after devouring
in rigid silence a commons of broiled ham for two, and the last number
of _Pickwick_, (John seldom laughed, but read "Boz" as gravely as he
would Aristotle,) we heard him open his heart as follows:--
"I say, old fellow, where do you think I am going to put up this
vacation?"
"Really, John, you're such an odd fellow it's impossible to guess; if it
had been summer, I shouldn't have been at all surprised to hear of your
having pitched a tent at Bullingdon, or hired a house-boat, and lived
Chinese fashion on the river; but I suppose you would hardly think of
that plan at this time of the year."
"Nonsense, man; you know the Moated Grange, as you call it--old
Nutt's!--I've taken lodging there."
"The Grange! Well, there's no accounting for tastes; but if there were
any empty rooms in the county jail, I almost think I should prefer them,
especially when one might possibly get board and lodging there gratis."
"Don't be absurd; I shall be very comfortable there. I'm to have two
rooms up-stairs, that will look very habitable when they've cleaned down
the cobwebs, and got rid of the bats; Farmer Nutt is going to lay poison
for the rats to-night, and I can go in, if I like, on Monday."
"Upon my honour, John, Chesterton and I can never come and see you in
that miserable hole."
"Don't, then; I'm going there to read: I sha'n't want company."
It turned out that he was really in earnest; and the day after the
University term was ended, the Grange received its new tenant. We went
down there to instal him; it was the first time Chesterton had seen the
place, and he was rather envious of our friend's selection, as he
followed him up-stairs into the quaint old chambers, to which two
blazing log-fires, and Mrs Nutt's unimpeachable cleanliness, had
imparted an air of no little comfort. The old oaken floor of the
sitting-room had been polished to something like its original richness
and brilliancy of hue, and reflected the firelight in a way that warmed
you to look at it. There was not a cobweb to be seen; and though old
Bruin snuffed round the room suspiciously, Farmer Nutt gave it as his
conscientious opinion that every rat had had a taste of the "pyson."
There was no question but that if one could get over the dulness of the
place, as far as accommodation went there need be little cause to
complain.
"I shall get an 18-gallon of Hall and Tawney, and hire an easy-chair,"
said John, "and then _won't_ I read?"
Full of these virtuous resolutions we left him; and how he got on there
my readers shall hear another day.