Aspects of Modern Oxford Part 4

There is the same kind of unalterableness about the few favoured individuals to whom the spirit of the age has allowed a secure and permanent residence in Oxford; a happy cla.s.s which is now almost limited to Heads of Houses and College servants. You scarcely ever see a scout bearing the outward and visible signs of advancing years; age cannot wither them, nor (it should be added) can custom stale their infinite variety of mis-serving their masters. Perhaps it is they who are the repositories of tradition. And even Fellows contrive to retain some of the characteristics of their more permanent predecessors, whom we have now learnt to regard as abuses. Hard-worked though they are, and precarious of tenure, they are, nevertheless, in some sort imbued with that flavour of humanity and _dolce far niente_ which continues to haunt even a Common Room where Fellows drink nothing but water, and only dine together once a fortnight.

For times are sadly changed now, and a fellowship is far from being the haven of rest which it once was, and still is to a few. Look at that old Fellow pacing with slow and leisurely steps beneath Magdalen or Christchurch elms: regard him well, for he is an interesting survival, and presently he and his kind will be nothing but a memory, and probably the progressive spirit of democracy will hold him up as an awful example. He is a link with a practically extinct period. When he was first elected _verus et perpetuus socius_ of his college--without examination--the University of Oxford was in a parlous state. Reform was as yet unheard of, or only loomed dimly in the distance. n.o.blemen still wore tufts--think how that would scandalise us now!--and 'gentlemen commoners' came up with the declared and recognised intention of living as gentlemen commoners should. Except for the invention of the examination system--and the demon of the schools was satisfied with only a mouthful of victims then--Oxford of the forties had not substantially changed since the last century--since the days when Mr. Gibbon was a gentleman commoner at Magdalen College, where his excuses for cutting his lectures in the morning were 'received with a smile,' and where he found himself horribly bored by the 'private scandal' and 'dull and deep potations' of the seniors with whom he was invited to a.s.sociate in the evening. Not much had changed since those days: lectures were still disciplinary exercises rather than vehicles of instruction, and the vespertinal port was rarely if ever interrupted in its circulation by 'the man who comes at nine.' Many holders of fellowships scarcely came near the University; those who did reside were often not much concerned about the instruction of undergraduates, and still less with 'intercollegiate compet.i.tion.' Perhaps it was not their life's work: a fellowship might be only a stepping-stone to a college living, when a sufficiently fat benefice should fall vacant and allow the dean or sub-warden to marry and retire into the country; and even the don who meant to be a don all his days put study or learned leisure first and instruction second, the world not yet believing in the 'spoon-feeding'

of youth. Very often, of course, they did nothing. After all, when you pay a man for exercising no particular functions, you can scarcely blame him for strictly fulfilling the conditions under which he was elected.

'But what do they do?' inquired--quite recently--a tourist, pointing to the fellows' buildings of a certain college. 'Do?!!' replied the Oxford cicerone--'do? ... why them's fellows!' But if there was inactivity, it is only the more credit to the minority who really did interest themselves in the work of their pupils. Not that the relation of authorities to undergraduates was ever then what it has since become--whether the change be for the better or the worse. Few attempts were made to bridge the chasm which must always yawn between the life of teacher and taught. Perhaps now the attempt is a little over-emphasised; certainly things are done which would have made each particular hair to stand on end on the head of a Fellow of the old school. In his solemn and formal way he winked at rowing, considering it rather fast and on the whole an inevitable sign of declining morals.

He wore his cap and gown with the anachronistic persistency of Mr. Toole in 'The Don,' and sighed over the levity of a colleague who occasionally sported a blue coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. Had you told him that within the present century College Tutors would be seen in flannels, and that a Head of a House could actually row on the river in an eight--albeit the ship in question be manned by comparatively grave and reverend seniors, yclept the Ancient Mariners--he would probably have replied in the formula ascribed to Dr. Johnson: 'Let me tell you, sir, that in order to be what you consider humorous it is not necessary that you should be also indecent!' But there is a lower depth still; and grave dignitaries of the University have been seen riding bicycles.

All this would have been quite unintelligible to the youthful days of our friend, whom we see leisurely approaching the evening of his days in the midst of a generation that does not know him indeed, but which is certainly benefited by his presence and the picture of academic repose which he displays to his much-troubled and hara.s.sed successors: a peaceful, cloistered life; soon to leave nothing behind it but a bra.s.s in the College chapel, a few Common Room anecdotes, and a vague tradition, perhaps, of a ghost on the old familiar staircase. Far different is the lot of the Fellow _fin de siecle_; 'by many names men know him,' whether he be the holder of an 'official' Fellowship, or a 'Prize Fellow' who is ent.i.tled to his emoluments only for the paltry period of seven years. And what emoluments! Verily the mouth of Democracy must water at the thought of the annual 'division of the spoils' which used to take place under the old _regime_: spoils which were worth dividing, too, in the days when rents were paid without a murmur, and colleges had not as yet to allow tenants to hold at half-a-crown an acre, lest the farm should be unlet altogether. But now if a Prize Fellow receives his 200*l.* a year he may consider himself lucky; and remember that if he is not blessed with this world's goods, the grim humours of the last Commission at least allowed him the inestimable privilege of marrying--on 200*l.* a year. After all, it is not every one who receives even that salary for doing nothing.

The 'official' variety of Fellow, or the Prize Fellow who chooses to be a College Tutor, is a schoolmaster, with a difference. He has rather longer holidays--if he can afford to enjoy them-and a considerably shorter purse than the instructors of youth at some great schools. He is so far unfortunate in his predecessors, that he has inherited the reputation of the Fellows of old time. Everybody else is working: the Fellow is still a useless drone. As a matter of fact, the unfortunate man is always doing something--working vehemently with a laudable desire to get that into eight weeks which should properly take twelve; or taking his recreation violently, riding forty miles on a bicycle, with a spurt at the finish so as not to miss his five-o'clock pupil; sitting on interminable committees--everything in Oxford is managed by a committee, partly, perhaps, because 'Boards are very often screens;' or sitting upon a disorderly undergraduate. On the whole, the kicks are many, and the halfpence comparatively few. He has the Long Vacation, of course, but then he is always employed in writing his lectures for next term, or compiling a school edition, or a handbook, or an abridgment of somebody else's school edition or handbook, in order to keep the pot boiling--more especially if he has fallen a victim to matrimony, and established himself in the red-brick part of Oxford. It is true that there is the prospect--on paper--of a pension when he is past his work, but in the present state of College finances that is not exactly a vista of leisured opulence. Altogether there is not very much repose about _him_. College Tutors in these days are expected to work. It is on record that a tourist from a manufacturing district on seeing four tutors s.n.a.t.c.hing a brief hour at lawn-tennis, remarked, 'I suppose there's _another shift_ working inside?' Such are the requirements of the age and the manufacturing districts.

Nor are beer and skittles unadulterated the lot of the undergraduate either--whatever the impression that his sisters and cousins may derive from the gaieties of the Eights and 'Commem.' For the spirit of the century and the 'Sturm und Drang' of a restless world has got hold of the 'Man,' too, and will not suffer him to live quite so peacefully as the Verdant Greens and Bouncers of old. Everybody must do something; they must be 'up and doing,' or else they have a good chance of finding themselves 'sent down.' I do not speak of the reading man, who naturally finds his vocation in a period of activity--but rather of the man who is by nature non-reading, and has to sacrifice his natural desires to the pressure of public opinion acting through his tutor.

Perhaps he is made to go in for honours; but even if he reads only for a pa.s.s, the schools are always with him--he is always being pulled up to see how he is growing; or at least he must be serving his College in one way or another--if not by winning distinction in the schools, by toiling on the river or the cricket-field. Then he is expected to interest himself in all the movements of the last quarter of the nineteenth century; he must belong to several societies; he cannot even be properly idle without forming himself into an a.s.sociation for the purpose. If he wants to make a practice of picnicing on the Cherwell he founds a 'Cherwell Lunch Club,' with meetings, no doubt, and possibly an 'organ'

to advocate his highly meritorious views. An excellent and a healthy life, no doubt! but yet one is tempted sometimes to fear that the loafer may become extinct; and then where are our poets to come from? For it is a great thing to be able to loaf well: it softens the manners and does not allow them to be fierce; and there is no place for it like the streams and gardens of an ancient University. If a man does not learn the great art of doing nothing there, he will never acquire it anywhere else; and it is there, and in the summer term, that this laudable practice will probably survive when it is unknown even in Government Offices.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _COACHING THE EIGHT. By J. H. Lorimer._]

For there is a season of the year when even the sternest scholar or athlete and the most earnest promoter of Movements yields to the _genius loci_; when the summer term is drawing to a close, and the May east winds have yielded to the warmth of June, and the lilacs and laburnums are blossoming in College gardens; when the shouting and the glory and the bonfires of the Eights are over, and the invasion of Commemoration has not yet begun. Then, if ever, is the time for doing nothing. Then the unwilling victim of lectures shakes off his chains and revels in a temporary freedom, not unconnected with the fact that his tutor has gone for a picnic to Nuneham. Perhaps he has been rowing in his College Eight, and is ent.i.tled to repose on the laurels of 'six b.u.mps;' perhaps he is not in the schools himself, and can afford to pity the unfortunates who are. And how many are the delightful ways of loafing!

You may propel the object of your affections--if she is up, as she very often is at this time--in a punt on that most academic stream, the Cherwell, while Charles (your friend) escorts the chaperon in a dingey some little distance in front; you may lie lazily in the sun in Worcester or St. John's gardens, with a novel, or a friend, or both; you may search Bagley and Powderhill for late bluebells, and fancy that you have found 'high on its heathy ridge' the tree known to Arnold and Clough. Or if you are more enterprising you may travel further afield and explore the high beech woods of the Chiltern slopes and the bare, breezy uplands of the Berkshire downs; but this, perhaps, demands more energy than belongs to the truly conscientious loafer.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _EVENING ON THE RIVER. Drawn by E. Stamp._]

Well, let the idle undergraduate make the most of his time now; it is not likely that he will be able to loaf in after-life. Nor (for the matter of that) will his successors be allowed to take their ease here in Oxford even in the summer, in those happy days when the University is to be turned into an industrial school, and a place for the education no longer of the English gentleman but the British citizen. Will that day ever come? The spirit of the age is determined that it shall. But perhaps the spirit of the place may be too much for it yet.