Chapter VII: Saturday's Letters (4)

"I understand by one of your daughters that you have brought him up a
_fine padd_ to keep here for his health's sake. Now I will tell you
the use of an horse in Oxford, and then do as you think fit.
The horse must be kept at an _ale-house_ or an _inn_, and he must
have leave to go once _every day_ to see him eat oats, because the
master's eye makes him fat; and it will not be genteel to go often
to an house and spend nothing; and then there may be some danger of
the horse growing _resty_ if he be not used often, so you must give
him leave to go to _Abingdon_ once every week, to look out of the
tavern window and see the maids sell turnips; and in one month or
two come home with a surfeit of poisoned wine, and save _any
farther trouble_ by dying, and then you will be troubled to send
for your horse _again_. . . ."

The humour of college tutors has not greatly altered in two hundred years. I have known one or two capable of the sardonic touch in those concluding words. But conceive its effect upon the squire's lady and daughters! No: you need not trouble to do so, for the squire describes it: "When the tutor was gone out of the room, I asked how they liked the person and his converse. My boy clung about his mother and cry'd to go home again, and she had no more wit than to be of the same mind; she thought him too weakly to undergo so much hardship as she foresaw was to be expected. My daughter, who (instead of catechism and _Lady's Calling_) had been used to read nothing but speeches in romances, and hearing nothing of _Love_ and _Honour_ in all the talk, fell into downright _scolding_ at him; call'd him the _merest_ scholar; and if this were your _Oxford_ breeding, they had rather he should go to _Constantinople_ to learn manners! But I, who was older and understood the language, call'd them all great fools. . . ."

On the tutor's return they begged to have his company at dinner, at their inn: but he declined, kept the young man to dine with him, and next day invited the family to luncheon. They accepted, fully expecting (after the austerity of his discourse) to be starved: "and the girles drank chocolette at no rate in the morning, for fear of the _worst_." But they were by no means starved. "It was very pleasant," the squire confesses, "to see, when we came, the _constrain'd_ artifice of an unaccustomed complement." There were silver tankards 'heaped upon one another,' 'napkins some twenty years younger than the rest,' and glasses 'fit for a _Dutchman_ at an _East-India Return_.' The dinner was full enough for ten. "I was asham'd, but would not disoblige him, considering with myself that I should put this man to such a charge of forty shillings at least, to entertain me; when for all his honest care and pains he is to have but forty or fifty shillings a quarter; so that for one whole quarter he must doe the drudgery to my son for nothing." After dinner, our good squire strolled off to a public bowling-green, "that being the onely recreation I can affect." And "coming in, I saw half a score of the finest youths the sun, I think, ever shined upon. They walked to and fro, with their hands in their pockets, to see a match played by some scholars and some gentlemen fam'd for their skill. I gaped also and stared as a man in his way would doe; but a country ruff gentleman, being like to _lose_, did swear, at such a rate that my heart did grieve that those fine young men should _hear_ it, and know there was such a thing as swearing in the kingdom. Coming to my lodging, I charged my son never to go to such publick places unless he resolved to quarrel with me."

And so, having settled the lad and fitted him up with good advice, the father, mother, and sisters returned home. But the squire, being summoned to Oxford shortly after to "sit in _parliament_" (presumably in the last Parliament held at Oxford, in March, 1681), took that opportunity to walk the streets and study the demeanour of the "scholars." And this experiment would seem to have finally satisfied him. "I walk'd the streets as late as most people, and never in ten days ever saw any scholar rude or disordered: so that as I grow old, and more engaged to speak the _truth_, I do repent of the _ill-opinion_ I have had of that place, and hope to be farther obliged by a very good _account_ of my son."

Old Stephen Penton may have had a rambling head; but unless I have thumbed the bloom off his narrative in my attempt to summarise it, the reader will allow that he knew how to write. He gives us the whole scene in the fewest possible touches: he wastes no words in describing the personages in his small comedy--comic idyll I had rather call it, for after a fashion it reminds me of the immortal chatter between Gorgo and Praxinoe in the fifteenth idyll of Theocritus. There the picture is: the honest opinionated country squire; the acidulous tutor; the coltish son; the fond, foolish, fussing mother; the prinking young ladies with their curls and romantic notions; the colours of all as fresh as if laid on yesterday, the humour quite untarnished after two hundred years. And I wonder the more at the vivacity of this little sketch because, as many writers have pointed out, no one has yet built upon University life a novel of anything like first-class merit, and the conclusion has been drawn that the elements of profound human interest are wanting in that life. "Is this so?" asks the editor of Stephen Penton's reminiscences in a volume published by the Oxford Historical Society--

"In spite of the character given to Oxford of being a city of short
memories and abruptly-ended friendships, in spite of the inchoative
qualities of youths of eighteen or twenty, especially in respect to
the 'ruling passion' so dear to novelists, yet surely in the three or
four years spent at Oxford by an incredible company of young students
'fresh from public schools, and not yet tossed about and hardened in
the storms of life'--some of them Penton's 'finest youths,' some
obviously otherwise--there must be, one would think, abundance of
romantic incident awaiting its Thackeray or Meredith. For how many
have these years been the turning point of a life! . . ."

There at any rate is the fact: _the_ novel of University life has not been written yet, and perhaps never will be. I am not at all sure that _The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green_ do not mark the nearest approach to it-- save the mark! And I am not at all sure that _The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green_ can be called a novel at all, while I am quite certain it cannot be called a novel of first-class merit. _Tom Brown at Oxford_ still counts its admirers, and has, I hear, attained the dignity of translation into French; but Tom Brown, though robust enough, never seemed to get over his transplantation from Rugby--possibly because his author's heart remained at Rugby. 'Loss and Gain' is not a book for the many; and the many never did justice to Mr. Hermann Merivale's 'Faucit of Balliol' or Mr. St. John Tyrwhitt's 'Hugh Heron of Christ Church.' Neither of these two novels obtained the hearing it deserved--and 'Faucit of Balliol' was a really remarkable book: but neither of them aimed at giving a full picture of Oxford life. And the interest of Miss Broughton's 'Belinda' and Mr. Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' lies outside the proctor's rounds. Yes (and humiliating as the confession may be), with all its crudities and absurdities, _Verdant Green_ does mark the nearest approach yet made to a representative Oxford novel.

How comes this? Well, to begin with, _Verdant Green_, with all his faults, did contrive to be exceedingly youthful and high-spirited. And in the second place, with all its faults, it did convey some sense of what I may call the 'glamour' of Oxford. Now the University, on its part, being fed with a constant supply of young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty, does contrive, with all its faults, to keep up a fair show of youth and high spirits; and even their worst enemies will admit that Oxford and Cambridge wear, in the eyes of their sons at any rate, a certain glamour. You may argue that glamour is glamour, an illusion which will wear off in time; an illusion, at all events, and to be treated as such by the wise author intent on getting at truth. To this I answer that, while it lasts, this glamour is just as much a fact as _The Times_ newspaper, or St. Paul's Cathedral, just as real a feature of Oxford as Balliol College, or the river, or the Vice-Chancellor's poker: and until you recognise it for a fact and a feature of the place, and allow for it, you have not the faintest prospect of realising Oxford. Each succeeding generation finds that glamour, or brings it; and each generation, as it passes, deems that its successor has either found or brought less of it. But the glamour is there all the while. In turning over a book the other day, written in 1870 by the Rev. Robert Stephen Hawker, I come on this passage:--

"When I recall my own undergraduate life of thirty years and upwards
agone, I feel, notwithstanding modern vaunt, the _laudator temporis
acti_ earnest within me yet, and strong. Nowadays, as it seems to
me, there is but little originality of character in the still famous
University; a dread of eccentric reputation appears to pervade
College and Hall: every 'Oxford man,' to adopt the well-known name,
is subdued into sameness within and without, controlled as it were
into copyism and mediocrity by the smoothing-iron of the nineteenth
century. Whereas _in_ my time and before it there were distinguished
names, famous in every mouth for original achievements and 'deeds of
daring-do.' There were giants in those days--men of varied renown--
and they arose and won for themselves in strange fields of fame,
record and place. Each became in his day a hero of the Iliad or
Odyssey of Oxford life--a kind of Homeric man."

To which I am constrained to reply, "Mere stuff and nonsense!" Mr. Hawker--and more credit to him--carried away Homeric memories of his own seniors and contemporaries. But was it in nature that Mr. Hawker should discover Homeric proportions in the feats of men thirty years his juniors? How many of us, I ask, are under any flattering illusion about the performances of our juniors? We cling to the old fond falsehood that there were giants in _our_ days. We honestly believed they were giants; it would hurt us to abandon that belief. It does not hurt us in the least to close the magnifying-glass upon the feats of those who follow us. But this generation, too, will have its magnifying-glass. "There were giants in our days?" To be sure there were; and there are giants, too, in these, but others, not we, have the eyes to see them.

Say that the scales have fallen from our eyes. Very well, we must e'en put them on again if we would write a novel of University life. And, be pleased to note, it does not follow, because we see the place differently now, that we see it more truly. Also, it does not follow, because Oxford during the last twenty years has, to the eye of the visitor, altered very considerably, that the characteristics of Oxford have altered to anything like the same extent. Undoubtedly they have been modified by the relaxation and suspension of the laws forbidding Fellows to marry. Undoubtedly the brisk growth of red-brick houses along the north of the city, the domestic hearths, afternoon teas and perambulators, and all things covered by the opprobrious name of "Parks-system," have done something to efface the difference between Oxford and other towns. But on the whole I think they have done surprisingly little.

Speaking as a writer of novels, then, I should say that to write a good novel entirely concerned with Oxford lies close upon impossibility, and will prophesy that, if ever it comes to be achieved, it will be a story of friendship. But her glamour is for him to catch who can, whether in prose or rhyme.

ALMA MATER.

Know you her secret none can utter?
Hers of the Book, the tripled Crown?
Still on the spire the pigeons flutter;
Still by the gateway flits the gown;
Still on the street, from corbel and gutter,
Faces of stone look down.

Faces of stone, and other faces--
Some from library windows wan
Forth on her gardens, her green spaces
Peer and turn to their books anon.
Hence, my Muse, from the green oases
Gather the tent, begone!

Nay, should she by the pavement linger
Under the rooms where once she played,
Who from the feast would rise and fling her
One poor _sou_ for her serenade?
One poor laugh from the antic finger
Thrumming a lute string frayed?

Once, my dear--but the world was young then--
Magdalen elms and Trinity limes--
Lissom the blades and the backs that swung then.
Eight good men in the 'good old times--
Careless we, and the chorus flung then
Under St. Mary's chimes!

Reins lay loose and the ways led random--
Christ Church meadow and Iffley track--
'Idleness horrid and dogcart' (tandem)--
Aylesbury grind and Bicester pack--
Pleasant our lines, and faith! we scanned 'em:
Having that artless knack.

Come, old limmer, the times grow colder:
Leaves of the creeper redden and fall.
Was it a hand then clapped my shoulder?
--Only the wind by the chapel wall.
Dead leaves drift on the lute; so . . . fold her
Under the faded shawl.

Never we wince, though none deplore us,
We, who go reaping that we sowed;
Cities at cock-crow wake before us--
Hey, for the lilt of the London road!
One look back, and a rousing chorus!
Never a palinode!

Still on her spire the pigeons hover;
Still by her gateway haunts the gown;
Ah, but her secret? You, young lover,
Drumming her old ones forth from town,
Know you the secret none discover?
Tell it--when _you_ go down.

Yet if at length you seek her, prove her,
Lean to her whispers never so nigh;
Yet if at last not less her lover
You in your hansom leave the High;
Down from her towers a ray shall hover--
Touch you, a passer-by!

[1] "The Quest of the Sangraal," R. S. Hawker.

JUNE.

The following verses made their appearance some years ago in the pages of the _Pall Mall Magazine_. Since then (I am assured) they have put a girdle round the world, and threaten, if not to keep pace with the banjo hymned by Mr. Kipling, at least to become the most widely-diffused of their author's works. I take it to be of a piece with his usual perversity that until now they have never been republished except for private amusement.

They belong to a mood, a moment, and I cannot be at pains to rewrite a single stanza, even though an allusion to 'Oom Paul' cries out to be altered or suppressed. But, after all, the allusion is not likely to trouble President Kruger's massive shade as it slouches across the Elysian fields; and after all, though he became our enemy, he remained a sportsman. So I hope we may glance at his name in jest without a suspicion of mocking at the tragedy of his fate.

THE FAMOUS BALLAD OF THE JUBILEE CUP.

You may lift me up in your arms, lad, and turn my face to the sun,
For a last look back at the dear old track where the Jubilee Cup was
won;
And draw your chair to my side, lad--no, thank ye, I feel no pain--
For I'm going out with the tide, lad, but I'll tell you the tale
again.

I'm seventy-nine, or nearly, and my head it has long turned grey,
But it all comes back as clearly as though it was yesterday--
The dust, and the bookies shouting around the clerk of the scales,
And the clerk of the course, and the nobs in force, and
Is 'Ighness, the Prince of Wales.

'Twas a nine-hole thresh to wind'ard, but none of us cared for that,
With a straight run home to the service tee, and a finish along the
flat.
"Stiff?" Ah, well you may say it! Spot-barred, and at
five-stone-ten!
But at two and a bisque I'd ha' run the risk; for I was a greenhorn
then.

So we stripped to the B. Race signal, the old red swallow-tail--
There was young Ben Bolt, and the Portland colt, and Aston Villa, and
Yale;
And W. G., and Steinitz, Leander, and The Saint,
And the German Emperor's Meteor, a-looking as fresh as paint;

John Roberts (scratch), and Safety Match, The Lascar, and Lorna
Doone,
Oom Paul (a bye), and Romany Rye, and me upon Wooden Spoon;
And some of us cut for partners, and some of us strung to baulk,
And some of us tossed for stations--But there, what use to talk?

Three-quarter-back on the Kingsclere crack was station enough for me,
With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee!
And I leaned and patted her centre-bit, and eased the quid in her
cheek,
With a 'Soh, my lass!' and a 'Woa, you brute!'--for she could do all
but speak.

She was geared a thought too high, perhaps; she was trained a trifle
fine;
But she had the grand reach forward! _I_ never saw such a line!
Smooth-bored, clean-run, from her fiddle head with its dainty ear
half-cock,
Hard-bit, _pur sang_, from her overhang to the heel of her off hind
sock.

Sir Robert he walked beside me as I worked her down to the mark;
"There's money on this, my lad," said he, "and most of 'em's running
dark;
But ease the sheet if you're bunkered, and pack the scrimmages tight,
And use your slide at the distance, and we'll drink to your health
to-night!"

But I bent and tightened my stretcher. Said I to myself, said I,--
"John Jones, this here is the Jubilee Cup, and you have to do or die."
And the words weren't hardly spoken when the umpire shouted "Play!"
And we all kicked off from the Gasworks end with a "Yoicks!" and a
"Gone away!"

And at first I thought of nothing, as the clay flew by in lumps,
But stuck to the old Ruy Lopez, and wondered who'd call for trumps,
And luffed her close to the cushion, and watched each one as it
broke,
And in triple file up the Rowley mile we went like a trail of smoke.

The Lascar made the running: but he didn't amount to much,
For old Oom Paul was quick on the ball, and headed it back to touch;
And the whole first flight led off with the right, as The Saint took
up the pace,
And drove it clean to the putting green and trumped it there with an
ace.

John Roberts had given a miss in baulk, but Villa cleared with a
punt;
And keeping her service hard and low, The Meteor forged to the front,
With Romany Rye to windward at dormy and two to play,
And Yale close up--but a Jubilee Cup isn't run for every day.

We laid our course for the Warner--I tell you the pace was hot!
And again off Tattenham Corner a blanket covered the lot.
Check side! Check side! Now steer her wide! And barely an inch of
room,
With The Lascar's tail over our lee rail, and brushing Leander's
boom!

We were running as strong as ever--eight knots--but it couldn't last;
For the spray and the bails were flying, the whole field tailing
fast;
And the Portland colt had shot his bolt, and Yale was bumped at the
Doves,
And The Lascar resigned to Steinitz, stale-mated in fifteen moves.

It was bellows to mend with Roberts--starred three for a penalty
kick:
But he chalked his cue and gave 'em the butt, and Oom Paul scored the
trick--
"Off-side--no-ball--and at fourteen all! Mark cock! and two for his
nob!"--
When W. G. ran clean through his lee, and yorked him twice with a
lob.

He yorked him twice on a crumbling pitch, and wiped his eye with a
brace,
But his guy-rope split with the strain of it, and he dropped back out
of the race;
And I drew a bead on The Meteor's lead, and challenging none too
soon,
Bent over and patted her garboard strake, and called upon Wooden
Spoon.

She was all of a shiver forward, the spoondrift thick on her flanks,
But I'd brought her an easy gambit, and nursed her over the banks;
She answered her helm--the darling!--and woke up now with a rush,
While The Meteor's jock he sat like a rock--he knew we rode for his
brush!

There was no one else left in it. The Saint was using his whip,
And Safety Match, with a lofting catch, was pocketed deep at slip;
And young Ben Bolt with his niblick took miss at Leander's lunge,
But topped the net with the ricochet, and Steinitz threw up the
sponge.

But none of the lot could stop the rot--nay, don't ask _me_ to
stop!--
The Villa had called for lemons, Oom Paul had taken his drop,
And both were kicking the referee. Poor fellow! He done his best;
But, being in doubt, he'd ruled them out--which he always did when
pressed.

So, inch by inch, I tightened the winch, and chucked the sandbags
out--
I heard the nursery cannons pop, I heard the bookies shout:
"The Meteor wins!" "No, Wooden Spoon!" "Check!" "Vantage!"
"Leg before!"
"Last lap!" "Pass Nap!" At his saddle-flap I put up the helm and
wore.

You may overlap at the saddle-flap, and yet be loo'd on the tape:
And it all depends upon changing ends, how a seven-year-old will
shape;
It was tack and tack to the Lepe and back--a fair ding-dong to the
Ridge,
And he led by his forward canvas yet as we shot neath Hammersmith
Bridge.

He led by his forward canvas--he led from his strongest suit--
But along we went on a roaring scent, and at Fawley I gained a foot.
He fisted off with his jigger, and gave me his wash--too late!
Deuce--vantage--check! By neck and neck, we rounded into the
straight.

I could hear the 'Conquering 'Ero' a-crashing on Godfrey's band,
And my hopes fell sudden to zero, just there with the race in hand--
In sight of the Turf's Blue Ribbon, in sight of the umpire's tape,
As I felt the tack of her spinnaker crack, as I heard the steam
escape!

Had I lost at that awful juncture my presence of mind? . . . but no!
I leaned and felt for the puncture, and plugged it there with my toe
. . .
Hand over hand by the Members' Stand I lifted and eased her up,
Shot--clean and fair--to the crossbar there, and landed the Jubilee
Cup!

"The odd by a head, and leg before," so the Judge he gave the word:
And the Umpire shouted "Over!" but I neither spoke nor stirred.
They crowded round: for there on the ground I lay in a dead-cold
swoon,
Pitched neck and crop on the turf atop of my beautiful Wooden Spoon.

Her dewlap tire was punctured, her bearings all red-hot;
She'd a lolling tongue, and her bowsprit sprung, and her running gear
in a knot;
And amid the sobs of her backers, Sir Robert loosened her girth
And led her away to the knacker's. She had raced her last on earth!

But I mind me well of the tear that fell from the eye of our noble
Prince,
And the things he said as he tucked me in bed--and I've lain there
ever since;
Tho' it all gets mixed up queerly that happened before my spill,
--But I draw my thousand yearly: it'll pay for the doctor's bill.

I'm going out with the tide, lad.--You'll dig me a humble grave,
And whiles you will bring your bride, lad, and your sons
(if sons you have),
And there, when the dews are weeping, and the echoes murmur "Peace!"
And the salt, salt tide comes creeping and covers the popping-crease,

In the hour when the ducks deposit their eggs with a boasted force,
They'll look and whisper "How was it?" and you'll take them over the
course,
And your voice will break as you try to speak of the glorious first
of June,
When the Jubilee Cup, with John Jones up, was won upon Wooden Spoon.

"To me," said a well-known authority upon education, "these athletics are the devil." To me no form of athletics is the devil but that of paying other people to be athletic for you; and this, unhappily--and partly, I believe, through our neglect to provide our elementary schools with decent playgrounds--is the form affected nowadays by large and increasing crowds of Englishmen. The youth of our urban populations would seem to be absorbed in this vicarious sport. It throngs the reading-rooms of free public libraries and working men's institutes in numbers which delight the reformer until he discovers that all this avidity is for racing tips and cricket or football "items." I am not, as a rule, a croaker; but I do not think the young Briton concerns himself as he did in the fifties, sixties, and seventies of the last century with poetry, history, politics, or indeed anything that asks for serious thought. I believe all this professional sport likely to be as demoralising for us as a nation as were the gladiatorial shows for Rome; and I cannot help attributing to it some measure of that combativeness at second-hand--that itch to fight anyone and everyone by proxy--which, abetted by a cheap press, has for twenty years been our curse.

Curse or no curse, it is spreading; and something of its progress may be marked in the two following dialogues, the first of which was written in 1897. Many of the names in it have already passed some way toward oblivion; but the moral, if I mistake not, survives them, and the warning has become more urgent than ever.

THE FIRST DIALOGUE ON CRICKET.

1897.

Some time in the summer of 1897--I think towards the end of August--I was whiling away the close of an afternoon in the agreeable twilight of Mr. D--'s bookshop in the Strand, when I heard my name uttered by some one who had just entered; and, turning about, saw my friend Verinder, in company with Grayson and a strapping youth of twenty or thereabouts, a stranger to me. Verinder and Grayson share chambers in the Temple, on the strength (it is understood) of a common passion for cricket. Longer ago than we care to remember--but Cambridge bowlers remember--Grayson was captain of the Oxford eleven. His contemporary, Verinder, never won his way into the team: he was a comparatively poor man and obliged to read, and reading spoiled his cricket. Therefore he had to content himself with knocking up centuries in college matches, and an annual performance among the Seniors. It was rumoured that Grayson--always a just youth, too-- would have given him his blue, had not Verinder's conscientiousness been more than Roman. My own belief is that the distinction was never offered, and that Verinder liked his friend all the better for it. At the same time the disappointment of what at that time of life was a serious ambition may account for a trace of acidity which began, before he left college, to flavour his comments on human affairs, and has since become habitual to him.

Verinder explained that he and his companions were on their way home from Lord's, where they had been 'assisting'--he laid an ironical stress on the word--in an encounter between Kent and Middlesex. "And, as we were passing, I dragged these fellows in, just to see if old D--' had anything." Verinder is a book-collector. "By the way, do you know Sammy Dawkins? You may call him the Boy when you make his better acquaintance and can forgive him for having chosen to go to Cambridge. Thebes did his green, unknowing youth engage, and--as the _Oxford Magazine_ gloomily prophesied--he bowls out Athens in his later age." The Boy laughed cheerfully and blushed. I felt a natural awe in holding out an exceedingly dusty hand to an athlete whose fame had already shaken the Antipodes. But it is the way of young giants to be amiable; and indeed this one saluted me with a respect which he afterwards accounted for ingenuously enough--"He always felt like that towards a man who had written a book: it seemed to him a tremendous thing to have done, don't you know?"

I thought to myself that half an hour in Mr. D--'s shop (which contains new books as well as old) would correct his sense of the impressiveness of the feat. Indeed, I read a dawning trouble in the glance he cast around the shelves. "It takes a fellow's breath away," he confessed. "Such a heap of them! But then I've never been to the British Museum."

"Then," said I, "you must be employing researchers for the book you are writing."

"What?" he protested. "_Me_ writing a book? Not likely!"

"An article for some magazine, then?"

"Not a line."

"Well, at least you have been standing for your photograph, to illustrate some book on Cricket that another fellow is writing."

He laughed.

"You have me there. Yes, I've been photographed in the act of bowling-- 'Before' and 'After': quite like Somebody's Hair Restorer."

"Well," said I, "and I wish you had contributed to the letterpress, too. For the wonder to me is, not that you cricketers write books (for all the world wants to read them), but that you do it so prodigiously well."

"Oh," said he, "you mean Ranji! But he's a terror."

"I was thinking of him, of course; but of others as well. Here, for instance, is a book I have just bought, or rather an instalment of one: _The Encyclopaedia of Sport_, edited by the Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire, Mr. Hedley Peek, and Mr. Aflalo, published by Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen: