The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green Part 14

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 101]

at once came to the rescue with the simple but energetic compendium of boating instruction, "Put your oar in deep, and bring it out with a jerk!"

Bearing this in mind, our hero's efforts met with well-merited success; and he soon pa.s.sed that mansion which, instead of cellars, appears to have an ingenious system of small rivers to thoroughly irrigate its foundations. One by one, too, he pa.s.sed those house-boats which are more like the Noah's arks of toy-shops than anything else, and sometimes contain quite as original a mixture of animal specimens. Warming with his exertions, Mr.

Verdant Green pa.s.sed the University barge in great style, just as the eight was preparing to start; and though he was not able to "feather his oars with skill and dexterity," like the jolly young waterman in the song, yet his sleight-of-hand performances with them proved not only a source of great satisfaction to the crews on the river, but also to the promenaders on the sh.o.r.e.

He had left the Christ Church meadows far behind, and was beginning to feel slightly exhausted by his unwonted exertions, when he reached that bewildering part of the river termed "the Gut." So confusing were the intestine commotions of this gut, that, after pa.s.sing a chequered existence as an aquatic shuttlec.o.c.k, and being a.s.sailed with a slang-dictionary-full of opprobrious epithets, Mr. Verdant Green caught another

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tremendous crab, and before he could recover himself, the "tub"

received a shock, and, with a loud cry of "Boat ahead!" ringing in his ears, the University Eight pa.s.sed over the place where he and "the Sylph" had so lately disported themselves.

With the wind nearly knocked out of his body by the blade of the bow-oar striking him on the chest as he rose to the surface, our unfortunate hero was immediately dragged from the water, in a condition like that of the child in ~The Stranger~ (the only joke, by the way, in that most dreary play) "not dead, but very wet!" and forthwith placed in safety in his deliverer's boat.

"Hallo, Giglamps! who the doose had thought of seeing you here, devouring Isis in this expensive way!" said a voice very coolly. And our hero found that he had been rescued by little Mr. Bouncer, who had been tacking up the river in company with Huz and Buz and his meerschaum. "You ~have~ been and gone and done it now, young man!"

continued the vivacious little gentleman, as he surveyed our hero's draggled and forlorn condition. "If you'd only a comb and a gla.s.s in your hand, you'd look distressingly like a cross-breed with a mermaid! You ain't subject to the whatdyecallems - the rheumatics, are you? Because, if so, I could put you on sh.o.r.e at a tidy little shop where you can get a gla.s.s of brandy-and-water, and have your clothes dried; and then mamma won't scold."

"Indeed," chattered our hero, "I shall be very glad indeed; for I feel - rather cold. But what am I to do with my boat?"

"Oh, the Lively Polly, or whatever her name is, will find her way back safe enough. There are plenty of boatmen on the river who'll see to her and take her back to her owner; and if you got her from Hall's, I daresay she'll dream that she's dreamt in marble halls, like you did, Giglamps, that night at Smalls', when you got wet in rather a more lively style than you've done to-day. Now I'll tack you up to that little shop I told you of."

So there our hero was put on sh.o.r.e, and Mr. Bouncer made fast his boat and accompanied him; and did not leave him until he had seen him between the blankets, drinking a gla.s.s of hot brandy-and-water, the while his clothes were smoking before the fire.

This little adventure (for a time at least) checked Mr. Verdant Green's aspirations to distinguish himself on the river; and he therefore renounced the sweets of the Isis, and contented himself by practising with a punt on the Cherwell. There, after repeatedly overbalancing himself in the most suicidal manner, he at length peacefully settled down into the lounging blissfulness of a "Cherwell water-lily;" and on the hot days,

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 103]

among those gentlemen who had moored their punts underneath the overhanging boughs of the willows and limes, and beneath their cool shade were lying, in ~dolce far niente~ fashion, with their legs up and a weed in their mouth, reading the last new novel, or some less immaculate work, - among these gentlemen might haply have been discerned the form and spectacles of Mr. Verdant Green.

CHAPTER XI.

MR. VERDANT GREEN'S SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

ARCHERY was all the fashion at Brazenface. They had as fine a lawn for it as the Trinity men had; and all day long there was somebody to be seen making holes in the targets, and endeavouring to realize the ~pose~ of the Apollo Belvidere; - rather a difficult thing to do, when you come to wear plaid trousers and s.h.a.ggy coats. As Mr.

Verdant Green felt desirous not only to uphold all the inst.i.tutions of the University, but also to make himself acquainted with the sports and pastimes of the place, he forthwith joined the Archery and Cricket Clubs. He at once inspected the manufactures of Muir and Buchanan; and after selecting from their stores a fancy-wood bow, with arrows, belt, quiver, guard, tips, ta.s.sels, and grease-pot, he felt himself to be duly prepared to

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represent the Toxophilite character. But the sustaining it was a more difficult thing than he had conceived; for although he thought that it would be next to impossible to miss a shot when the target was so large, and the arrow went so easily from the bow, yet our hero soon discovered that even in the first steps of archery there was something to be learnt, and that the mere stringing of his bow was a performance attended with considerable difficulty. It was always slipping from his instep, or twisting the wrong way, or threatening to snap in sunder, or refusing to allow his fingers to slip the knot, or doing something that was dreadfully uncomfortable, and productive of perspiration; and two or three times he was reduced to the abject necessity of asking his friends to string his bow for him.

But when he had mastered this slight difficulty, he found that the arrows (to use Mr. Bouncer's phrase) "wobbled," and had a predilection for going anywhere but into the target, notwithstanding its size; and unfortunately one went into the body of the Honourable Mr. Stormer's favourite Skye terrier, though, thanks to its s.h.a.ggy coat and the bluntness of the arrow, it did not do a great amount of mischief; nevertheless, the vials of Mr. Stormer's

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 105]

wrath were outpoured upon Mr. Verdant Green's head; and such ~epea pteroenta~ followed the winged arrow, that our hero became alarmed, and for the time forswore archery practice.

As he had fully equipped himself for archery, so also Mr. Verdant Green, (on the authority of Mr. Bouncer) got himself up for cricket regardless of expense; and he made his first appearance in the field in a straw hat with blue ribbon, and "flannels," and spiked shoes of perfect propriety. As Mr. Bouncer had told him that, in cricket, att.i.tude was every thing, Verdant, as soon as he went in for his innings, took up what he considered to be a very good position at the wicket. Little Mr. Bouncer, who was bowling, delivered the ball with a swiftness that seemed rather astonishing in such a small gentleman. The first ball was "wide;" nevertheless, Verdant (after it had pa.s.sed) struck at it, raising his bat high in the air, and bringing it straight down to the ground as though it were an executioner's axe. The second ball was nearer to the mark; but it came in with such swiftness, that, as Mr. Verdant Green was

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quite new to round bowling, it was rather too quick for him, and hit him severely on the -, well, never mind, - on the trousers.

"Hallo, Giglamps!" shouted the delighted Mr. Bouncer, "nothing like backing up; but it's no use a.s.suming a stern appearance; you'll get your hand in soon, old feller!"

But Verdant found that before he could get his hand in, the ball was got into his wicket; and that while he was preparing for the strike, the ball shot by; and, as Mr. Stumps, the wicket-keeper, kindly informed him, "there was a row in his timber-yard." Thus Verdant's score was always on the ~lucus a non lucendo~ principle of derivation, for not even to a quarter of a score did it ever reach; and he felt that he should never rival a Mynn or be a Parr with anyone of the "All England" players.

Besides these out-of-door sports, our hero also devoted a good deal of his time to acquiring in-door games, being quickly initiated into the mysteries of billiards, and plunging headlong into pool. It was in the billiard-room that Verdant first formed his acquaintance with Mr. Fluke of Christ Church, well known to be the best player in the University, and who, if report spoke truly, always made his five hundred a year by his skill in the game. Mr. Fluke kindly put our hero "into the way to become a player;" and Verdant soon found the apprenticeship was attended with rather heavy fees.

At the wine-parties also that he attended he became rather a greater adept at cards than he had formerly been. "Van John" was the favourite game; and he was not long in discovering that [s]taking shillings and half-crowns, instead of counters and "fish," and going odds on the colours, and losing five pounds before he was aware of it, was a very different thing to playing ~vingt-et-un~ at home with his sisters for "love" -

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 107]

(though perhaps cards afford the only way in which young ladies at twenty-one will ~play~ for love).

In returning to Brazenface late from these parties, our hero was sometimes frightfully alarmed by suddenly finding himself face to face with a dreadful apparition, to which, by constant familiarity, he gradually became accustomed, and learned to look upon as the proctor with his marshal and bulldogs. At first, too, he was on such occasions greatly alarmed at finding the gates of Brazenface closed, obliging him thereby to "knock-in;" and not only did he apologize to the porter for troubling him to open the wicket, but he also volunteered elaborate explanations of the reasons that had kept him out after time, - explanations that were not received in the spirit with which they were tendered. When our freshman became aware of the mysteries of a gate-bill, he felt more at his ease. Mr.

Verdant Green learned many things during his freshman's term, and, among others, he discovered that the quiet retirement of college-rooms, of which he had heard so much, was in many cases an unsubstantial idea, founded on imagination, and built up by fancy.

One day that he had been writing a letter in Mr. Smalls' rooms, which were on the ground-floor, Verdant congratulated himself that his own rooms were on the third floor,

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and were thus removed from the possibility of his friends, when he had sported his oak, being able to get through his window to "chaff"

him; but he soon discovered that rooms upstairs had also objectionable points in their private character, and were not altogether such eligible apartments as he had at first antic.i.p.ated.

First, there was the getting up and down the dislocated staircase, a feat which at night was sometimes attended with difficulty. Then, when he had accomplished this feat, there was no way of escaping from the noise of his neighbours. Mr. Sloe, the reading-man in the garret above, was one of those abominable nuisances, a peripatetic student, who "got up" every subject by pacing up and down his limited apartment, and, like the sentry, "walked his dreary round" at unseasonable hours of the night, at which time could be plainly heard the wretched chuckle, and crackings of knuckles (Mr.

Sloe's way of expressing intense delight), with which he welcomed some miserable joke of Aristophanes, painfully elaborated by the help of Liddell-and-Scott; or the disgustingly sonorous way in which he declaimed his Greek choruses. This was bad enough at night; but in the day-time there was a still greater nuisance. The rooms immediately beneath Verdant's were possessed by a gentleman whose musical powers were of an unusually limited description, but who, unfortunately for

[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 109]

his neighbours, possessed the idea that the cornet-a-piston was a beautiful instrument for pic-nics, races, boating-parties, and other long-vacation amus.e.m.e.nts, and sedulously practised "In my cottage near a wood," "Away with melancholy," and other airs of a lively character, in a doleful and distracted way, that would have fully justified his immediate homicide, or, at any rate, the confiscation of his offending instrument.

Then, on the one side of Verdant's room, was Mr. Bouncer, sounding his octaves, and "going the complete unicorn;" and his bull-terriers, Huz and Buz, all and each of whom were of a restless and loud temperament; while, on the other side, were Mr. Four-in-hand Fosbrooke's rooms, in which fencing, boxing, single-stick, and other violent sports, were gone through, with a great expenditure of "Sa-ha!

sa-ha!" and stampings. Verdant was sometimes induced to go in, and never could sufficiently admire the way in which men could be rapped with single-sticks without crying out or flinching; for it made him almost sore even to look at them. Mr. Blades, the stroke, was a frequent visitor there, and developed his muscles in the most satisfactory manner.

After many refusals, our hero was at length persuaded to put on the gloves, and have a friendly bout with Mr. Blades. The result was as might have been antic.i.p.ated; and Mr. Smalls doubtless gave a very correct ~resume~ of the proceeding (for, as we have before said, he was thoroughly conversant with the sporting slang of ~Tintinnabulum's Life~), when he told Verdant,

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that his claret had been repeatedly tapped, his bread-basket walked into, his day-lights darkened, his ivories rattled, his nozzle barked, his whisker-bed napped heavily, his kissing-trap countered, his ribs roasted, his nut spanked, and his whole person put in chancery, stung, bruised, fibbed, propped, fiddled, slogged, and otherwise ill-treated. So it is hardly to be wondered at if Mr. Verdant Green from thenceforth gave up boxing, as a senseless and ungentlemanly amus.e.m.e.nt.