LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class 
 
OXFORD FROM WITHIN 
 
\ I 
 
 THE Tl'RI. 
 
OXFORD 
 
 FROM WITHIN 
 
 BY HUGH DE SELINCOURT 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BY YOSHIO MARKING 
 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 GEORGE W. JACOBS ftp CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
ID 4- 
 
 All rights rttervtd 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter the First i 
 
 Chapter the Second 41 
 
 Chapter the Third 84 
 
 Chapter the Fourth 141 
 
 A Note by the Artist 173 
 
 228636 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 In Colour 
 
 The Turl Frontispiece 
 
 Little Venice To face p. 8 
 
 Trinity Gate 26 
 
 Magdalen Tower 50 
 
 Grove Street 70 
 
 In the Broad 80 
 
 Iffley Road 1 10 
 
 St. Peter-in-the-East 128 
 
 Oriel 138 
 
 The Radcliffe Camera 154 
 
 Trinity Chapel 160 
 
 Magdalen in the Rain 178 
 
 In Sepia 
 
 Merton Chapel 16 
 
 All Souls 20 
 
 In Front of the Sheldonian 44 
 
 vij 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Christ Church : Tom Quad To face p. 54 
 New College Tower 74 
 
 Merton Street 9 
 
 Iffley Church 106 
 
 The Martyrs' Memorial 120 
 
 V1IJ 
 

 OXFORD FROM 
 WITHIN 
 
 CHAPTER THE FIRST 
 
 ONE evening an elderly conscientious writer sat 
 in a little room at the top of a narrow house, 
 when two stairs at a time feet thundered up his 
 staircase; the door was rapped loudly, and, 
 being violently opened, was violently shut by 
 a tempestuous intruder. The writer put his 
 hands over the topmost sheet of papers which 
 lay on his desk in a neat heap ; for not only was 
 he conscientious, he was also modest. If in con- 
 sequence of his heart's purity, his strength was as 
 the strength of ten, the intruder's strength was 
 as the strength of twelve, for the hands were 
 swiftly lifted and the topmost sheet disclosed its 
 secret. Thereon was neatly written " Oxford," 
 and under " Oxford " was neatly written the 
 four-lettered English equivalent of Hades. 
 
'OXFORD 
 
 "A book-full more words remain to be 
 added," said the industrious writer. 
 
 " O compiler of books, why add them ?" 
 
 " The word describes feelings roused by in- 
 competence." 
 
 " It better describes the place." 
 
 " Alma mater, home of lost causes, whisper- 
 ing the last enchantments of the Middle Ages." 
 The industrious writer dreamed. 
 
 "A stagnant marsh of useless knowledge, 
 withdrawn from the flowing river of life ; where 
 young men learn to be prigs and are inoculated 
 with the poison of respectability : where the 
 Medusa head of tradition is polished to slay the 
 sons of Progress. Kindly mother of curates and 
 schoolmasters and dons : a step-mother to poets. 
 A place of sloth and superiority : a trap baited 
 by the beauty of old buildings : a prop for 
 institutions which are moribund and spread 
 the odour of decay throughout the life of the 
 country." The violent intruder shouted. A 
 sad grave eye was fixed upon him. That was 
 his only answer. Accordingly he continued : 
 
 " It is supposed to be the home of learning, 
 but the learning is of such an order that the 
 rich and the athletic are alone respected. Taste 
 for the right thing in waistcoats or caps is culti- 
 vated more surely than a taste for the right thing 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 in science or literature or art. It has no proper 
 values, and having no proper values, it may 
 teach young men how to become pedants or 
 cricketers, but it cannot teach them how to live." 
 
 "You are speaking," said the industrious 
 writer, " against youth and against learning ; 
 not so much against Oxford as the people who 
 live in Oxford." 
 
 "The two are inseparable," fumed the in- 
 truder. 
 
 " Would you annihilate the place ?" his friend 
 mildly persisted, "or would you slaughter all 
 young men another and a vaster massacre of 
 the innocents and destroy learning root and 
 branch out of the land ?" 
 
 So they tussled it out. Two such people often 
 inhabit one and the same man. 
 
 2. 
 
 Many a colt thinks he can get on much faster 
 without the cart which he has been bred to 
 draw dragging behind him, and many a young 
 man kicks against the wisdom and tradition of 
 the past in his anxiety to further the progress 
 of humanity. Speed and spirit are qualities of 
 both ; but the old cart, but humanity, must 
 follow the road, however winding, and the colt's 
 hide must be hardened to harness, his speed be 
 
 i 2 
 
OXFORD 
 
 tempered by obedience, and his spirit must by 
 reverence be strengthened. The future is an 
 inevitable blending of the present and the past. 
 
 Oxford is now the symbol of the past, and 
 now more than ever is that symbol of value, 
 because the present is more universally alive 
 than at any other period in the history of the 
 nation the great Elizabethan years not ex- 
 cepted. Space is being conquered and the 
 material possibilities of a man's life widened 
 almost beyond recognition. And all these things 
 are toys with which the children are too busy : 
 at best they are conveniences and helps to the 
 main business of life, which is not pleasure 
 and not excitement. That main business has 
 not much changed during the centuries; the 
 essential needs of human nature reverence, 
 love, and joy have not changed. The modern 
 house is better lighted, is cleaner, and is more 
 easily and more safely left ; but the man who 
 lives in it, is he more susceptible to beauty, is 
 he honester in love, is he more sensitive to 
 kindness, and is he gentler and wiser than the 
 man who drove to Oxford in the Tantivy, or 
 the poor scholar who trudged on foot with a 
 special licence in his pocket permitting him to 
 beg for his food ? 
 
 "Now then, solemnity!" the intruder shouted; 
 4 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 " head your paragraph ' Thoughts in a Great 
 Western Third-Smoker on approaching Ox- 
 ford': you have high authority for your head- 
 ing's length." 
 
 The shout indeed came in the nick of time 
 and prevented the industrious writer from lean- 
 ing forward to shake the hand of a massive 
 clergyman who sat opposite to him, so impatient 
 had he become of modern cleverness. 
 
 He looked at the occupants of the carriage, 
 and found them typical. That they were all 
 seven of them bound for Oxford he knew from 
 the ticket examination at Paddington. There 
 was a pale youth in glasses who assiduously 
 read Great Thoughts : there was the massive 
 clergyman who dozed and smoked in the 
 intervals of reading a paper-bound copy of 
 Harnack : he thought he'd just see what the 
 fellow had to say for himself: certainly not 
 enough to warrant the stir they made about 
 him, his opinion seemed to be, as he placidly 
 smoked ; and that his day at any rate was 
 safe from Disestablishment was perhaps that 
 opinion's corollary, as he placidly dozed. There 
 was a mild-looking lady who nursed a leather 
 bag, and might have been the wife or sister of 
 an eager-faced little man, her neighbour. He 
 read the Atkenaum and Notes and Queries 
 
 5 
 
OXFORD 
 
 with a kind of fidgetty voracity : he kept 
 pinching his pince-nez more securely on the 
 sharp bridge of his nose, from which they 
 were in danger of falling every time he shook 
 with silent mirth. His little outbursts were 
 most surprising unseemly the very solemn and 
 plump-faced man evidently considered, for he 
 looked over the top of his Punch with un- 
 mistakable reproof on his staid features at each 
 recurrence of the mirth. There were two 
 young men engaged in colouring straight- 
 grained briar pipes and discussing their friends. 
 The seven prepared to leave the carriage, and 
 our friend looked out on the river and the bold 
 hoardings of drapers and the spires of the town 
 rising above and beyond the odd medley of little 
 houses ; he saw the reservoir and caught a 
 glimpse of the burial-ground. Then the train 
 stopped in the station, and he got out. The 
 immense letters of its magical name stared at 
 him with a dull stare of mockery. He imme- 
 diately walked to the top of the platform, glad 
 to be rid of the familiar noise and bustle ; and, 
 waiting for the local train that was to take him 
 a few stations further, he wondered where the 
 enchanted spirit of the place was now hidden, 
 and how he could track it to its source. It 
 pleased him to think that he was going to 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 Burford: he looked forward to the five miles 
 drive from Shipton. Charlbury, Ascot-under- 
 Wychwood, Stow-on-the-Wold. . . . What 
 names ! Their charm was powerful enough to 
 silence any intruder. 
 
 3. 
 
 The road to Burford winds from the station 
 into and through the straggling town of Ship- 
 ton, and then straight up the long hill which 
 grows steeper towards its summit and leads to a 
 sloping plateau. From this plateau the hills 
 curve on all sides in beautiful long lines to the 
 horizon, and the lines are pricked out by fir- 
 trees in thin single file or in stalwart little clumps. 
 Once it was part of a vast deer-forest, which 
 belonged to the King ; the stags gave way to 
 highwaymen in its adventurous history, and 
 now its large peace is broken only by the 
 occasional rush of a motor-car and by the larks, 
 which sing madly in the springtime. Then the 
 road sinks swiftly again with a sharp twist into 
 the village of Fulbrook, and with a curve into 
 the green meadows, through which the Wind- 
 rush flows, and up from which rises steeply the 
 old town of Burford. 
 
 tc Ha !" shouted the intruder, waking from 
 
 7 
 
OXFORD 
 
 his sleep, " the farther you leave Oxford behind 
 you, the nearer you think you are getting to its 
 elusive spirit, whatever on God's earth that may 
 be." But the infernal glee, which sounded in 
 his voice, was forced. " You wait a bit, my loud 
 young friend," was the only answer vouchsafed 
 him. 
 
 Burford leans bravely up the steep hill-side, 
 recalling the past in all its old stone houses, as 
 snow in sheltered places recalls the winter that 
 has lately gone. It is a survival, beautiful in its 
 grey stones, and a little deplorable in its poverty. 
 In spite of the civic rights, of which the towns- 
 men are still proud, the town has a plaintive air 
 of being on show, and of living, like a poor old 
 coquette, upon the glories of past days. For at 
 Burford William of Malmesbury records that a 
 synod was held in 705, at which Ina, King of 
 Wessex, commissioned his kinsman Aldhelm, 
 the abbot, to write a book on the Roman 
 observance of Easter : here Cuthred rebelled 
 against the cruelty of King Ethelbald and beat 
 him in a great battle : Queen Elizabeth, hunt- 
 ing in Wychwood Forest, visited Burford, and 
 King Charles on his way to Oxford: William 
 of Orange on his way to London stayed at the 
 little town in 1688, and the townsmen gave 
 him two saddles, because at that time Burford 
 
 8 
 
PROM WITHIN 
 
 saddles were famous throughout England. 
 Then there was life in Burford there was even 
 a corporation. Cuthred's fight survives only in 
 the name of a field called Battle Edge. And 
 now the mace and the seals are in the keeping 
 of the doctor, the son of the last Alderman or 
 Mayor, Mr. Thomas Cheatle, and nothing re- 
 mains of the past life but its shell and the 
 beautiful church of St. John the Baptist. The 
 old houses seem peopled chiefly by memories. 
 
 As he walked up the wide, steep main-street 
 and his eyes lingered on each strange doorway, 
 each mullioned window, each gabled house, be 
 very sure the intruder was loud upon him, 
 counting the number of inns and publics, point- 
 ing out the dullness of the faces, the rudeness 
 of the children, the dreary stagnation of the 
 inhabitants. 
 
 "When you are tired," the intruder cried, 
 "and beaten, come here to sleep and die: 
 vitality is the only value." 
 
 Our friend climbed the hill more swiftly. 
 As he reached the top and the little old town 
 lay beneath him, the sky put on the panoply of 
 evening, and the celebration of night's approach 
 slowly began. The beauty deepened, as the rite 
 proceeded. The whole heritage of the long past 
 faded into the majesty of the present moments ; 
 
 9 
 
OXFORD 
 
 all questions, all problems were silenced, dumb 
 as the intruder's voice, in reverence. Man's 
 little doings mattered little before the great busi- 
 ness of the sunset ; but man's handiwork here 
 at any rate was in harmony with the beauty of 
 the hills and the sky. 
 
 4- 
 
 So he hesitated round Oxford, as a man hesi- 
 tates before an important decision, and hovers 
 round the outskirts of a deliberate plan. For 
 there the intruder clamours as an intruder ; he 
 has not yet been made at home. But our friend 
 did very wisely. The intruder once admitted 
 must be soothed, and being soothed becomes 
 an agreeable companion. Irresponsibility is 
 natural to him, and it must be admitted that the 
 industrious writer needs at times to be clapped 
 irreverently on the back and startled from his 
 conscientious treading of the beaten track. The 
 slap may even send him stumbling desperately 
 upon a good thing. 
 
 Also, in spite of the intruder's sneers at our 
 friend's pleasant notion that the beauty of a 
 simple old place like Burford might lead to the 
 possibility of his better understanding a complex 
 old place like Oxford, our friend's following of 
 his instinct was unexpectedly rewarded. For 
 
 10 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 on his re-entry into The Bull, where he had 
 very properly chosen to stay, he ran into a young 
 man whom he knew. Now this young man 
 was of singular interest to one engaged, as our 
 friend was engaged, in a study of Oxford ; for 
 he afforded an engagingly exaggerated instance 
 of a not uncommon effect which a four years' 
 sojourn at Oxford occasions. In consequence, 
 our friend welcomed the meeting with enthu- 
 siasm, raised not so much by the young man's 
 actual personality as by the impression which 
 Oxford had stamped upon his personality and 
 which was discernible everywhere about him. 
 That impression went deeper in this case than 
 his manner, though he spoke fluently and more 
 kindly than was quite necessary, and it went 
 deeper than his raiment, though he was clad in 
 a shaggy old tweed coat and grey flannel trousers. 
 The rumour proved true that he had taken with 
 some friends an old house at Burford, in which 
 they endeavoured to prolong, in surroundings 
 as similar as possible, the old life at Oxford. As 
 they crossed the bridge over the Windrush (his 
 house was in the valley) the young man said : 
 " No self-respecting person could go and sit in 
 an office after living among the last enchant- 
 ments of the Middle Ages." 
 
 It was an unhappy remark and set the intruder 
 
 ii 
 
OXFORD 
 
 shouting. He was allowed to shout. The in- 
 dustrious writer was too interested to pay atten- 
 tion to the clamour. 
 
 He found that the house and its situation 
 were alike beautiful. It lay in the dreaming 
 valley of the Windrush ; a little tributary from 
 the Windrush raced singing under the back 
 windows, and cut the house sharply off from 
 an orchard. From the front windows you looked 
 on to the Priory woods sloping in a feathery 
 line along the valley. He was shown over the 
 house, that was in a state of disorder. One 
 small room had been made into a little chapel, 
 in which incense had been lately burned. He 
 was not informed how often the chapel was 
 used for service, but it became clear during the 
 course of the evening that it was not used suffi- 
 ciently often or sufficiently well to allay a certain 
 peevishness which seemed the dominant note 
 of the household. Everything, including the 
 time and the world, was out of joint for these 
 young Hamlets. Their life was like an eternal 
 coffee-party in rooms at college. The only 
 change was for all to move on one place, as in 
 the classic mad tea-party. But there was no 
 Dormouse to put in the teapot ; or were they 
 all dormice, and was it the energy of the Hare 
 and the Hatter that was wanting ? 
 
 12 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 But suddenly our friend grew serious, and 
 remembered, and understood. His first impres- 
 sion had been correct. The charm of Oxford 
 and of their life at Oxford had bitten in to them 
 so deeply that they had decided it was the only 
 life possible for them. He remembered his own 
 anguish at leaving the place, which had lasted 
 on for many months and still returned at in- 
 tervals, and the memory of his anguish roused 
 keen sympathy in him. There seemed so much 
 that was brave and good in their effort, though 
 the result after three years was a lamentable 
 failure. But without dons and without vaca- 
 tions. . . . He could not however silence the 
 chuckles of the intruder, who needed no con- 
 vincing as to the baneful effect of Oxford. 
 " Look," he persisted in sneering, " at the result 
 of four years' education in that place. What 
 kind of life are they living, with their little toy 
 of a Church and their quaint little poses and 
 their finicking little volumes of verse ?" 
 
 What is education ? our earnest friend asked 
 himself. Certainly to him it had very little to 
 do with enabling a boy to earn a living as quickly 
 as possible. Round and round he went, until 
 he clutched at a generalisation and stopped at 
 the unsatisfying answer: To develop the best 
 in a man. From isolated instances, at any rate, 
 
OXFORD 
 
 little could be deducted. Still, his visit was 
 exceedingly interesting. Only matrimony or 
 an earthquake seemed forces sufficiently potent 
 to release the young men from the muddle into 
 which they had allowed their lives to sink ; or 
 perhaps a very high flood. . . . Anyhow their 
 devotion to Oxford was mistaken. They had 
 missed the meaning of the kind mother's lesson, 
 and their error caused our conscientious friend 
 to desire more acutely than ever to know quite 
 precisely what that lesson did definitely mean. 
 For the intruder's shouts only served to 
 strengthen his conviction that she had a lesson, 
 a fine and a beautiful lesson. 
 
 And that night among his dreams was one 
 in which a young man stopped to look at the 
 sun shining on a rose-bush and by so doing 
 missed his train and the post he was after ; and 
 in his dream a mad intruder shouted that Oxford 
 and the rose-bush should be destroyed. The 
 memory of the wonderful place smiled upon 
 him. 
 
 5- 
 
 All next day he hovered at Burford in pre- 
 paration, very like, as it seemed to him, some 
 acolyte preparing himself for a priestly cere- 
 mony, in which a holier holy was to be revealed. 
 
 H 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 The intruder had it that a man could hypnotise 
 himself into any belief or vision, and scouted 
 the notion that preparation cleared the mind 
 from the dust of trivialities, and induced rever- 
 ence which helped the imagination to approach 
 the mystery of tradition. 
 
 Our friend however read with assiduity the 
 history of Oxford, and learned how the build- 
 ings slowly gathered and developed from 
 hostelries to halls and from halls to colleges : 
 how the real beginning of the Studium Generate 
 at Oxford is due to a settlement therein of a 
 body of Masters and scholars in or about 1 1 67, 
 in consequence of an exodus from Paris, caused 
 by the royal edicts, and the consequent failure 
 of free access to the great centre of European 
 education. He sent his mind far back into the 
 Middle Ages, when the Senate was held in the 
 Church of St. Mary the Virgin, and tried to 
 picture the dirty little medieval town, with no 
 High Street and no great buildings, in which 
 the scholars, mostly in their early 'teens, banded 
 themselves together in houses to escape the 
 anger of the townspeople, and the professors 
 united to exclude from their number the char- 
 latan or the incompetent ; the scholar struggling 
 to become a body corporate to learn, the pro- 
 fessor a body corporate to teach. Before his 
 
OXFORD 
 
 eyes rose the vision of Chaucer's Clerke, the 
 ideal scholar of that or any age, with his hollow, 
 sober face and his threadbare cloak ; who pre- 
 ferred to have "twenty bookes clad in blak or 
 read " at his bed's head than rich robes or gay 
 sautrie ; who studied alchemy but yet had little 
 gold in his coffer; who spent all the money 
 he got from friends on books and learning ; who 
 prayed busily for the souls of his benefactors ; 
 who spoke not a word more than was necessary ; 
 
 " And that was sayd in forme and reverence 
 And short and quyk and ful of hy sentence ; 
 Sowynge in moral virtue was his speche 
 And gladly woulde he lerne and gladly teche." 
 
 Old Chaucer's picture of the unworldly 
 scholar came before our friend with such dis- 
 tinctness that his imagination was tinder to the 
 great conception of Walter de Merton and 
 caught fire with enthusiasm at its evolution. 
 For it was Walter de Merton who in the 
 thirteenth century gave a shape to the groping 
 of the scholars and teachers towards union, and 
 by so doing laid the foundation-stone of Uni- 
 versity life. Merton was anxious to secure for 
 the secular priesthood the academic advantages 
 which were almost the monopoly of the religious 
 orders. Merton's idea was based on the life in 
 a monastery ; but whereas the monk's time was 
 
 16 
 
MERTON CHAPEL 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 mapped carefully out with ceremonial duties and 
 religious obligations, or, as in some cases, with 
 work at a handicraft, the time of his scholars 
 was to be left free for the pursuit of learning. 
 It excited our friend the idea of these men 
 set apart quietly from the turmoil of the dark 
 Middle Ages to further the knowledge of man- 
 kind. They enjoyed all the advantages of a 
 monastery, its seclusion, its corporate life, and 
 were hindered by no monastic limitations. They 
 seemed to stand in our friend's fancy in a brave 
 position, unhampered by the world or the 
 Church, neither in the place of the fighter nor 
 in the haven of the peaceful man. Their fight 
 was to conquer ignorance. Their quest was in 
 search of knowledge. They were pioneers. 
 
 And our friend watched, as he read, the 
 actual buildings rise and learned how William 
 of Wykeham found at last the perfect architec- 
 tural expression for Merton's collegiate idea 
 the quadrangle, without which a college now 
 is inconceivable. William of Wykeham's site for 
 his New College was made difficult to handle 
 by the line of the city wall ; but over the initial 
 difficulties he another good pioneer so skil- 
 fully triumphed that all later founders were 
 glad to follow his magnificent example. 
 
OXFORD 
 
 6. 
 
 For benefactors continued to appear, who 
 wished to put the good of learning within reach 
 of the people of their district, or, like Walter 
 de Merton, of their persuasions. Merton moved 
 his Domus Scolarium de Merton from his estate 
 in Maldon, Surrey, to Oxford about the year 
 1265, and from that time the University, as we 
 know it, properly dates. University College, 
 in spite of the attractive myth, later corrob- 
 orated by a forgery, that King Alfred was the 
 founder, began its real life about the same time. 
 Then Balliol struggled into existence, and its 
 birth was so prolonged that Balliol men claim 
 precedence in antiquity ; and it must be con- 
 fessed that our friend more heartily than ever 
 before cursed his undergraduate laziness which 
 robbed him of the pleasure of pointing out to 
 certain Balliol friends the unwilling origin of 
 their college. For John de Balliol, the Lord of 
 Barnard Castle, was a truculent fellow, who fell 
 foul of the Bishop of Durham. The Bishop 
 imposed a stern penance, that the Lord of 
 Barnard Castle should be scourged at the door 
 of Durham Abbey, and that he should provide 
 perpetual maintenance for some poor scholars 
 at Oxford. To the scourging he submitted 
 
 18 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 with a good grace, but to the latter part of the 
 penance he seems to have taken, oddly enough, 
 far less graciously. Six years elapsed before he 
 could bring himself to establish a few scholars 
 in Oxford, and then he subscribed only eight- 
 pence towards their united upkeep. However, 
 on his deathbed (three years later) he begged 
 his wife, the Lady Dervorguilla of Galloway, 
 to attend more piously for his soul's sake to the 
 business. But again there was an unaccountable 
 delay, until the lady's conscience and her Fran- 
 ciscan confessor, Richard of Slickbury, moved 
 her to fulfil this painfullest part of the Bishop's 
 penance. Then at length, about 1282, she 
 founded a society of sixteen scholars under 
 two Proctors in three houses in Horsemonger 
 Street, now called the Broad. 
 
 Walter de Stapeldon, who was made Bishop 
 of Exeter in 1 307, provided residence at Oxford 
 for twelve scholars, who lived at Stapeldon Hall, 
 afterwards called Exeter College. Adam de 
 Brome received letters patent from Edward II. 
 in 1 324 to found a college, but what site he chose 
 or why it is now called Oriel nobody knows. 
 Robert de Eglesfield, chaplain to the great 
 Queen Philippa, wife of Edward III., obtained 
 the royal permission in 1 341 for a college which 
 was properly named Queen's College. It was 
 
 19 2 2 
 
OXFORD 
 
 to consist of a Provost and twelve Fellows, 
 twelve for the twelve Apostles ; and, if possible, 
 seventy scholars were to be educated at a time, 
 that being the supposed number of the disciples 
 sent out into the world by Jesus Christ. The 
 founders particularly desired that the students 
 should be summoned to dinner " per clarionem," 
 and a trumpet sounds to this day at that hour, 
 in all probability to remind the students of the 
 last trump of doom. William of Wykeham in 
 1396 bought land for his " College of St. Mary 
 de Winton in Oxenforde " after he had founded 
 his school at Winchester: in 1379 the builders 
 began to carry out his magnificent architectural 
 expression of Merton's collegiate idea, and in 
 1 387, on Palm Sunday, the Warden and scholars 
 marched ceremoniously into residence, and New 
 College it then uncontrovertibly was. 
 
 In 1427 Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, 
 (Oxford was within his diocese) founded Lincoln 
 on the site of the dilapidated church of 
 St. Mildred. In 1438 Archbishop Chichele 
 founded " The College of all the Souls of the 
 Faithful Departed in Oxford," with the inten- 
 tion of " endowing a society whose members 
 would continuously pro vide the Church, the law, 
 and the public service of the University and 
 State with scholars trained in the higher studies 
 
 20 
 
ALL SOULS 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 and learning." William Patten of Waynflete, 
 whom Henry VI. had sent from Winchester 
 with his scholars to inaugurate the King's 
 foundation at Eton, founded the college of 
 St. Mary Magdalen to be to his school of 
 St. Mary the Virgin at Eton what William of 
 Wykeham's New College was to his school at 
 Winchester, and the foundation stone was laid 
 on May 5, 1473. In 1509 the Bishop of Lincoln 
 and Sir Robert Sutton endowed an inn or hostel 
 of scholars who lived at the Brazen Nose, and 
 Brasenose College began its corporate existence. 
 Then the great Revival of Learning, passing 
 through Europe, reached Oxford ; and Richard 
 Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, a statesman under 
 Henry VII. and Henry VIIL, spent his declining 
 years in the foundation of a college, in which 
 for the first time it was ordained that there 
 should be teachers of Greek. Foxe was helped 
 in his scheme by Hugh Oldham, and the scheme 
 showed the influence of the Renaissance. Not 
 only was Greek to be compulsory, but foreigners 
 were to be welcomed and provision be made 
 for one Fellow to spend three years in Italy or 
 elsewhere on the Continent. Nine years later, 
 in 1525, Cardinal Wolsey started his great 
 college Cardinal College, as it was first called, 
 now known as Christ Church. The buildings 
 
 21 
 
OXFORD 
 
 were only half finished at the fall of Wolsey 
 from power, but his fickle master did not lose 
 interest in the foundation ; he continued the 
 building, and when it was decided to create a 
 bishopric at Oxford the See was established at 
 St. Frideswide's, which had become the Chapel 
 of Christ Church. The great bell Tom too 
 was removed from Osney Abbey, and at nine 
 every night it tolls one hundred and one notes 
 (the Thurston bequest having added one to the 
 number of King Henry's students). 
 
 In 1555 Sir Thomas Pope bought the site 
 of Bishop Hatfield's Benedictine college of 
 Durham, and being an Oxfordshire yeoman 
 he endowed his Trinity College with special 
 advantages for Oxfordshire men ; and St. John's 
 College was founded by Sir Thomas White, a 
 famous Lord Mayor of London, in the same 
 year. Elizabeth gave Dr. Hugh Price permis- 
 sion to establish Jesus College for a Principal, 
 eight Fellows and eight scholars, and it became 
 the national college for men of Wales. In 1613 
 Nicolas Wadham and Dorothy his wife founded 
 their college, and Broadgates Hall, changing its 
 name to Pembroke College, was inaugurated in 
 1624, at which ceremony Studiosus non Grad- 
 uatus Commensalis Collegii^ Sir Thomas Browne 
 delivered an oration on the text Lateportensis 
 
 22 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 Pembrochiensis et vice versa Pembrochiensis Late- 
 portensis. 
 
 So the great University gathered and grew. 
 Worcester followed in 1714, Hertford in 1723, 
 and all the old Halls became incorporated into 
 colleges, except St. Edmund's Hall. And still 
 colleges were being founded. Mansfield College 
 rose in rivalry to Keble ; Ruskin Hall. . . . 
 
 7- 
 
 Our friend was brought up from his dreamy 
 reconstruction of the past sharply at the 
 present. He pushed the big book away and 
 leant back in his chair. What would Walter 
 de Merton, or Walter de Stapeldon, or William 
 of Wykeham or any of the other pious founders 
 say if they saw Oxford now ? The thing had 
 grown to such tremendous proportions ! An 
 idea came from a man, like a seed from a tree, 
 took root, became a two-leafed weed, a sprig, a 
 sapling, until at last a gigantic oak-tree looked 
 up at the sun. All the populous provincial 
 towns had their own Universities flourish- 
 ing Manchester, Liverpool, London, Cardiff, 
 Durham, Dublin, Glasgow, Edinburgh. What 
 had been looked upon as a luxury, and its gift 
 
 as a kindness, was now regarded as a necessity, 
 
 23 
 
OXFORD 
 
 and its gift was an obligation that must be 
 within the reach of all men. And of all women 
 too. Our friend sat up again with a start, as 
 though he were himself a pious founder of the 
 Middle Ages, and remembered that twenty-five 
 years ago the education of women was treated, 
 being new, with the same kind of resentment 
 and derision as their claim for suffrage was being 
 treated at the present moment. And there at 
 Oxford awaited him the visible beginnings of a 
 nation's struggle towards enlightenment. 
 
 His mind leapt back to the ancient civilisa- 
 tions of Egypt, of Greece, of Rome. The 
 moral conditions of life seemed to him to have 
 changed so amazingly little, while physical 
 conditions of life had changed so amazingly 
 much. The world was fuller and more ac- 
 cessible. Steam and electricity linked it all 
 up, and changed the nature of every political 
 problem by the swift transmission of news. 
 And yet of the world within a man, of his soul 
 what greater wisdom had the centuries taught 
 humanity ? There the problem remained iden- 
 tically the same as it had always been, and one 
 for which life demanded from every man born 
 into the world his personal answer. And then 
 he paused. He seemed to see a glimmering line 
 
 of difference between ancient and modern times. 
 
 24 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 He seemed to see that, whereas the ancient 
 civilisation tended towards the cultivation of 
 exquisite individuals, the tendency of modern 
 civilisation was to awaken the whole nation to 
 the responsibility of life. 
 
 8. 
 
 Fortunately at this point in his meditations 
 our friend was interrupted by the intruder, who 
 began to clamour that the place had always 
 been a clerical nest ; first the Monks and then 
 the Anglican Bishops pulled back into their 
 dreary line the searcher after knowledge, or, if 
 like Wyclif he were disobedient, burnt him. 
 The intruder, as his manner was, shouted and 
 was silent. But our friend could not dismiss 
 the point so simply. He saw in this history 
 of Oxford, which had been engrossing him, 
 the symbol of the nation's struggle towards 
 freedom. Slow the movement was and tor- 
 tuous, but advancing. Learning and religion 
 must always be indissolubly connected, and the 
 very inevitability of the connection was the 
 chief factor in setting them continually at odds. 
 But Oxford had never been aloof from the life 
 of the nation. On the contrary, in the case of 
 Wyclif, and later of Wesley, and later still of 
 
 25 
 
OXFORD 
 
 Newman, Oxford had roused a wave of influence 
 which spread over England. 
 
 Wyclif appealed strongly to our friend. He 
 liked the idea of the King of England sub- 
 mitting the Pope's edicts to the first scholar 
 in his realm, and the scholar's brave answer 
 that money could be levied justly by the 
 Pope only for his actual needs, and that no 
 Christian was bound to maintain his worldly 
 luxuries. 
 
 " An exception !" the intruder started up to 
 exclaim. " It's only for some thirty years (and 
 after a tremendous struggle) that a dissenter 
 from the Thirty-Nine Articles was recognised as 
 a member of the University. And now pre- 
 cisely now, what are those dull, detrimental 
 fellows doing, now that distress and destitution 
 are looked upon not as providing outlet for the 
 sentimental sweetness of old maids and for the 
 fumbling good works of charity, but as a 
 national disgrace, a mess which has got to be 
 cleared up in as businesslike a manner as possible 
 do they not purse their lips to cry ' Socialism ' ? 
 and behave as if the foundations of their religion 
 and their society were being attacked ? What 
 use are their brains at the present juncture ? 
 They are now and always have been a negligible 
 quantity. Their stomachs are too soft and weak 
 
 26 
 
TRINITY GATE 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 to let them digest a new idea without belching 
 and contortion." 
 
 These angry words made our friend feel un- 
 comfortable. He disliked to have his dreams 
 brought in this rude way to a practical, abrupt 
 issue. The thing went far deeper. This argu- 
 ment to the second could not be fairly used 
 about an institution with the age of centuries. 
 Like many bad aguments, it was unanswerable. 
 But our industrious friend had in his mind a 
 vague thought, as elusive as the smell of a 
 primrose, that there were questions of greater 
 importance than the immediate solution of the 
 Poor Law, and that Oxford stood for some- 
 thing bigger than any social problem. And the 
 opinion, too vague and incomprehensible to 
 be definitely expressed, remained with him in 
 spite of the intruder's taunts that many delicate 
 reasons are to be found for laziness. 
 
 9- 
 
 He sighed deeply, from a kind of mental 
 repletion, and opened another book, being 
 anxious, late as it already was, to discover, 
 before his acolyte's day of preparation came to 
 its inevitable end, how the scholars lived 
 through all the different centuries. He wanted 
 
 27 
 
OXFORD 
 
 to bridge, if possible, the gulf that seemed to 
 yawn between the Clerke of Oxenforde and 
 the Blood of his own day. And at last anec- 
 dotes that he read in the cheerful book stood 
 out like stepping-stones in a ford and showed 
 pa possible path to his imagination, though, when 
 he tried to picture the background of the clerk's 
 life, the thin clear figure quickly relapsed into 
 uproarious, medieval darkness. The scholar 
 emerged, however, into the light in Tudor 
 times, and our friend found that he could don 
 the dress and be present at Elizabeth's first 
 royal visit without too fierce a stretch. He 
 was among the lads who on their knees shouted 
 Vivat Regina, as she entered the town : he 
 noticed the politic snubs she gave to the dons 
 who were too Puritan or too Roman in their 
 proclivities : he watched her talking with the 
 undergraduates and repaying with a smile or a 
 tip a pretty compliment. When she was indis- 
 posed at her lodgings she sent for young Peter 
 Carew and made him recite a Latin speech, 
 with which she was so pleased that she called 
 in Secretary Cecil and bade the boy repeat it. 
 " I pray God," she said, to encourage him, " I 
 pray God, my fine boy, thou mayst say it so 
 well as thou didst to me just before." And 
 this Peter Carew did and immediately rushed 
 
 28 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 away to tell his tutor of his triumph. The 
 spirit of the life became clear as he read of the 
 Queen's visit, for Elizabeth seemed more than 
 ever to be the very epitome of her time. He 
 filled in the picture with Thomas Lever, the 
 Preacher's, more staid account : " From 5 to 
 6 a.m., there was common prayer with an 
 exhortation of God's word in a common chapel, 
 and from 6 to 10 either private study or 
 common lectures. At 10 o'clock generally 
 came dinner, most being content with a penny 
 piece of beef amongst four. After this slender 
 dinner the youths were either teaching or learn- 
 ing until 5 p.m., when they have a supper not 
 much better than their dinner. Immediately 
 after they went either to reasoning in problems 
 or unto some other study until 9 or 10 of the 
 clock, and then being without fire were fain to 
 walk or run up and down half an hour to get 
 a heat on their feet before they went to bed." 
 It became clear from these two accounts how 
 the scholars managed " to join learning with 
 comely exercises as Castiglione in his book 
 The Courtier doth trimly teach." 
 
 29 
 
OXFORD 
 
 'io. 
 
 It became less difficult for our friend to 
 realise that all through the Stuart period the 
 scholars were frequently and severely birched ; 
 privately or before their college or even before 
 the whole University in accordance with the 
 seriousness of their misdemeanour. Frequent- 
 ing inns and taverns, omitting to cap or to give 
 the wall to a don, breaking a friend's mortar- 
 board, or smoking the Nicotine weed known 
 as tobacco, were some offences among innumer- 
 able others punishable with the rod : and the 
 orders regulating its infliction, he smiled to 
 think, were probably still on the statute book, 
 though their strict enforcement was unlikely 
 to be further insisted upon. He wondered 
 whether the young undergraduates were still 
 caned during the martial rule of the siege, 
 when they loyally enrolled themselves to fight 
 and drink for their King. Civil War suddenly 
 seemed to assume a vivid aspect as he noted 
 the dates October 29, 1642, and June 24, 1646, 
 between which the King and his Court were at 
 Oxford, and he wondered whether the legend 
 that war was the finest rouser of a nation's spirit 
 held good for the nation in whose country the 
 
 war was being carried on, and shuddered at the 
 
 30 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 popular sentimental little imitations, miscalled 
 patriotism, of that ghastly reality. Whatever 
 most successfully blunted the finer instincts of 
 humanity was certainly the most satisfactory 
 training for a modern campaign in which calcu- 
 lation was of more use than courage. 
 
 From the experience of poor Nic. Amhurst 
 our friend gained insight into the manners of 
 early Georgian Oxford. Nicholas was too 
 unruly a fellow to be allowed to reside at St. 
 John's College by Dr. Delaune. He was 
 accordingly sent down and, being sent down, 
 betook himself to London and produced, in 
 imitation of the Spectator, fifty numbers of 
 a pamphlet Terrtf-Filius in which he poured 
 out his contempt against Oxford and the dons 
 and Dr. Delaune. In one number he addressed 
 "all gentlemen-schoolboys in His Majesty's 
 dominions who are designed for the University 
 of Oxford." He continues, " I observe in the 
 first place that you no sooner shake off the 
 authority of the birch, but you affect to dis- 
 tinguish yourselves from your dirty school- 
 fellows by a new suit of drugget, a pair of 
 prim ruffles, a new bob-wig and a brazen- 
 hiked sword. . . . After you have swaggered 
 about town for some time, and taken your leave 
 of all your old aunts and acquaintance, you set 
 
OXFORD 
 
 out in the stage-coach to Oxford, with recom- 
 mendatory letters in your pockets to somebody 
 or other in the college where you are to be 
 admitted, who introduces you as soon as you get 
 there, amongst a parcel of honest-merry fellows, 
 who think themselves obliged in point of 
 honour and common civility to make you 
 drunk, and carry you, as they call it, a corpse 
 to bed." 
 
 Still, it seemed that manners had improved. 
 He remembered Antony Wood's account of his 
 inauguration a hundred years before, when with 
 other freshmen he was made to stand up on a 
 form in hall and say some humour or witty 
 speech, and if this met with the approval of 
 the elder men he was given hot sack to drink, 
 but if with their disapproval, cold salted water. 
 As he turned back to the speech which earned 
 for Antony his cup of hot sack, and which in 
 consequence he proudly relates in full, our 
 friend's thoughts wandered on to his own fresh- 
 man days and to his own Freshman's Wine, 
 dwelling, a little mournfully it must be owned, 
 upon the disastrous effects of Claret and Bur- 
 gundy, j udiciously mixed, upon a young head. 
 " Blades," " Smarts," " Bloods "; the name was 
 after all the chief difference between them ; 
 every college would always harbour, he smiled 
 
 32 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 to hope, its " Best Man " and its " Push," and 
 there would always be the Nicholas Amhurst 
 type who, excluded from its society, would be 
 righteously indignant against its very obvious 
 and very pardonable faults, pro bono publico 
 and for the relief of his feelings. The satirical 
 letter written by Amhurst in the character of a 
 " Smart " to Terrce-Filius seemed extremely pat 
 to this frame of mind. " Amongst all the vile 
 trash and ribaldry with which you have lately 
 poisoned the public, nothing is more scandalous 
 and saucy than your charging our university 
 with the want of civility and good manners. 
 Let me tell you, sir, for all your haste we have 
 as well-bred accomplished gentlemen in Oxford 
 as anywhere in Christendom ; men that dress 
 as well, sing as well, dance as well, and behave 
 in every respect as well, though I say it, as any 
 men under the sun. You are the first audacious 
 Wit-would that ever called Oxford a boorish, 
 uncivilised place ; and, demure sir, you ought 
 to be horsed out of all good company for an 
 
 impudent priggish jackanapes Who has 
 
 handsomer tie wigs or more fashionable cloaths, 
 or cuts a bolder bosh, than Tom Paroquet ? 
 Where can you find a handier man at a tea- 
 table than Robin Tattle ? Or, without vanity, 
 I may say it, one that plays better at ombre 
 
 33 3 
 
OXFORD 
 
 than him who subscribes himself an enemy to 
 all such pimps as thou art." The salient point 
 about such satire was its uselessness. For in 
 reality those excellent " smarts " or " bloods " 
 who incensed intelligent Nicholas Amhurst, as 
 they have incensed many another less con- 
 spicuous personage than themselves, defy carica- 
 ture by their own beautiful innocence. Our 
 friend remembered an instance of a dear man, 
 perfect to the last button of him, who was a 
 rowing " blue," and who, during a conversation 
 on the growing lack of religion among men at 
 Oxford, remarked with cherubic seriousness, 
 " I dunno ; I don't see why people should think 
 Oxford such a beastly atheistical place ; every- 
 one wears a bowler hat on Sundays." Such a 
 remark would be beyond even the daring of 
 caricature. Nature beggars every art. 
 
 ii. 
 
 The intruder kept an ominous silence. Life 
 for him was far too serious an affair to allow 
 indulgent smiles over the drunkenness and 
 imbecility of youth. Youth for him meant 
 ardour and hope; youth for him meant the 
 stirring time when the foundations were being 
 laid for manhood's achievement. But our friend 
 
 34 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 disregarded the threat of his scowl and, blessing 
 his silence, opened another book to bring the 
 story of Oxford life nearer to his own time. The 
 book was written by a staunch old Conservative 
 coeval, as it appeared, with his grandfather 
 who was inclined to lament the popularity of the 
 railway and the cessation of the coach, and who 
 referred to the Shelley Memorial as "a beautiful 
 shrine in memory of one whose unsavoury life 
 demands no such triumph of design and sculp- 
 ture. ... It is indeed one of the outcomes of the 
 damnable modern doctrine that genius is superior 
 to the laws and customs guiding and restraining 
 ordinary humdrum mortals who pay their taxes, 
 settle their butcher's bills and remain faithful to 
 their wives." The sentence struck our friend as 
 being so funny, flatly printed in cold black ink, 
 that he blinked and read it again, and then, turn- 
 ing to the intruder's pale face of anguish at such 
 blasphemy, remarked that Oxford was at any 
 rate in advance of somebody. This gentleman 
 wrote of the grand old days when unpopular 
 deans (our friend thought wistfully of one little 
 dean, too shrewd to be unpopular) were screwed 
 up in their rooms, when town and gown rows 
 flourished, and it was the fashion to fight bargees : 
 " but the present historian (I who tell you)," so 
 wrote this engaging gentleman, " saw recently 
 
 35 32 
 
OXFORD 
 
 an Oxford man accidentally hustle a bargee and 
 say, ' I'm sorry. . . / No Oxford man of a past 
 age would ever have hustled a bargee acci- 
 dentally : he would have done it of malice pre- 
 pense and he would not have apologised. Nor 
 would it have mattered if he did, for the occa- 
 sion would anyway have demanded the tapping 
 of claret. In this modern instance . . . not a 
 blow was exchanged ; but in those old days here 
 recalled that scholar would have retorted with 
 what I believe was then called * a prop in the 
 eye,' and there would have been much trouble. 
 But this bargee looked as though he could, and 
 would, have eaten any modern Oxonian and 
 asked for more." 
 
 The poor modern Oxonian fared ill as the poor 
 poet in the mind of the engaging old pugilist. 
 Perhaps there was some subtle connection be- 
 tween flooring a bargee in one's youth and re- 
 maining faithful to one's wife and paying one's 
 butcher's bill in years of maturity, a connection 
 which might, if only the clue were found and 
 followed, work out into a Mid- Victorian ideal 
 and divulge the dark secret of the Mid-Victorian 
 mind. Our friend, on the look out for develop- 
 ments and tendencies, worried at the puzzle, 
 like a dog at a bone, but it remained for him 
 meatless and fruitless. Only he started an un- 
 
 36 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 expected fact, which disappeared again, swiftly 
 as a startled hare, before he could spy closely into 
 it, that the more nearly he approached his own 
 day the more surprising did the changes in 
 custom appear, and the more impossible did it 
 become for him to follow the gradual process 
 of the change, The results only stared at him 
 in fierce contrast. At any rate the phantom, 
 which had sometimes been scaring, of the 
 physical degeneracy of the race was properly 
 and finally exposed by the pugilistic author's 
 own bluff honesty. It was well perhaps to pause 
 before extending to a whole race the personal 
 wish that lies in the heart of all men : "O mihi 
 praeteritos referat si Jupiter annos." 
 
 I2 - 
 
 So our friend, primed with much lore, closed 
 his books and went to bed in the old inn at 
 Burford. He smiled to think, as he undressed, 
 what a pity it was that he had been too lately 
 curious. He had, with the royal arrogance of 
 youth, accepted everything as it was. First his 
 shyness, then his familiarity with the place, and 
 lastly, his love of it and departure had been the 
 stages of his progress. But in the place itself he 
 had taken no interest : that had been strictly 
 
 37 
 
OXFORD 
 
 confined to his own impressions, which now 
 appeared infinitesimally trivial. His kindly 
 appropriation of the place touched the extreme 
 limit of absurdity, and yet he realised that he 
 was far from being alone in his iniquity; he 
 realised that, when he stood in the porch of his 
 own college at one o'clock on the next day, he 
 would provoke many a look, almost pronounced 
 enough to be called a stare, from the group 
 which always gathered there at that time the 
 group of present appropriators and the little 
 dean stepping hurriedly through the group, with 
 his furtive smile of recognition. . . . Nothing 
 at all would have changed, except perhaps the 
 porter and the little dean, and they would be 
 not yet noticeably older. 
 
 That porch epitomised much. There some 
 notices were hung (notices more private to the 
 college than lists of lectures and teams were hung 
 elsewhere), and there the " best men " amiably 
 lounged and decided in what rooms they would 
 lunch. One incident stood out blazingly illus- 
 trative. Among the " best men " was standing 
 one a real tennis Blue who in dress was 
 easily the best. The slit up the back of his coat 
 was the perfect length, his waistcoat the perfect 
 pattern, his socks the perfect colour, and his 
 hair in perfect order. He spoke too with a per- 
 
 38 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 feet natural drawl that defied imitation. Now 
 it happened to be the fashion at that time to 
 wear a brightly-coloured handkerchief pro- 
 truding from the side of your pocket, so from 
 his pocket a handkerchief protruded to the 
 exactly right extent. Into the porch came a shy 
 scholar, who knew much about some things, 
 but nothing about what was the thing. The 
 perfect man, who by some strange chance knew 
 the scholar slightly, greeted him with the exactly 
 right wag of the head, much to the shy scholar's 
 embarrassment, who, feeling bound to hide his 
 shyness under a remark, glanced at the notice- 
 board and said, " Oh, excuse me, but your 
 handkerchief is dropping out of your pocket." 
 The perfect man looked at him with some 
 amazement, and seeing that the remark was in- 
 spired by serious benevolence, replied, "Thanks, 
 most awfully," and hid that last touch in his 
 pocket. The shy scholar disappeared round the 
 corner ; there was a shout of laughter from the 
 group, and the handkerchief resumed its pris- 
 tine droop from the pocket. The little incident 
 seemed to throb with significance. 
 
 The intruder foamed at the memory. But 
 then, he sympathised too keenly with the 
 scholar's awkwardness, and was unaware how 
 extremely kind a heart beat under the perfect 
 
 39 
 
OXFORD 
 
 man's irreproachable waistcoat. Its benevolence 
 certainly ought to have atoned for any slight 
 deficiency in his mental equipment, and the in- 
 truder succumbed a little painfully to the charge 
 of envy, for the perfect man's affability and 
 manner were undoubtedly enviable. Why was 
 it, our industrious friend mildly mused as he 
 fell asleep, that almost the last thing brains 
 helped a man to was sociability ? At first, at 
 any rate, brains seemed to make easy intercourse 
 with others a thing of insuperable difficulty, 
 whereas they should act in precisely the opposite 
 way. An odd little procession of gauche young 
 men with brains trooped ridiculously before his 
 departing consciousness. 
 
 He dreamed that the Vice-Chancellor lectured 
 him at length before the assembled University 
 upon his impertinent musings on Oxford, and 
 not believing in his complete lack of control 
 over the intruder (in his dream most pitifully 
 pleaded) caned him severely, while the gowned 
 congregation applauded. 
 
 40 
 
CHAPTER THE SECOND 
 
 ' 
 
 HE was so weighed down, on awaking in the 
 morning, with the high purpose of his day's 
 journey, that the first Station omnibus, which 
 he had resolved to catch, departed without him. 
 He was vexed but philosophic ; partly, no 
 doubt, owing to the pleasant fact that the dis- 
 covery of the hour's lateness was made in time 
 to prevent a foolish scramble into clothes and a 
 more foolish snatching of breakfast. He turned 
 over and warmly dozed. Eventually he rose. 
 He dressed in a leisurely manner, ate a proper 
 breakfast and comfortably caught the next 
 omnibus. 
 
 His acolyte's preparation of the previous 
 evening seemed mythically remote as he 
 stepped from the train on to the Oxford 
 platform. There was no magic in the round- 
 eyed stare of the name's lettering. It was 
 unusual to arrive on that side of the station, 
 and he had forgotten to notice the green, wide 
 
 4 1 
 
OXFORD 
 
 sweep of Port Meadow. In fact he was just 
 unromantically there. Still, the sun was shin- 
 ing and lunch would be waiting for him in 
 two hours' time at the agreeable rooms of a 
 man with whom he had been " up " and who 
 had become a don. While he was leaving his 
 bag at the Cloak Room, he smiled to remember 
 that the pious founder preferred a second beat- 
 ing in a church porch to the founding of his 
 friend's college. There was an odd consolation 
 in the thought. 
 
 " Like Henry James arriving in New York," 
 our friend proceeded to think, " I will realise 
 the importance of first impressions, and be 
 ready for them." He slowly walked down the 
 station hill, blinking in the sunlight, and saw 
 the huge announcement of marmalade that had 
 grown through its excellence into an industry. 
 The taste certainly that was most surely culti- 
 vated was this taste for marmalade, and the 
 taste carried with it an aroma of the place. A 
 sad horse-drawn tram jerked to a start, and 
 stopped again to receive a bustling, slow, old 
 woman, who seemed to have come from the 
 country ; then it jerked on again and the off- 
 side horse gave a lazy ridiculous jump, that it 
 mistook for a canter, and fell back into its 
 habitual trot. And yet this was precisely the 
 
 42 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 place where the ancient abbeys of Osney and 
 of Rewley stood: and along this very way 
 Matilda must have escaped from the Castle 
 with three faithful knights, wrapped in sheets 
 for better concealment, as they passed over the 
 deep white snow. It was no use. Romance 
 fled before Marmalade and the Trams and the 
 Railway Stations ; and he became aware only 
 of a pain that crept upon his stomach. It was 
 his last discomfiture. He peered up through 
 trees at the great mound and the prison, that 
 was once the castle of Oxford. They told him 
 nothing. He was in despair. He hailed a 
 hansom-cab and was driven, his eyes shut, to 
 the nearest entrance to the Parks. The red 
 freshness of Keble, and the modern brightness 
 of the Museum refreshed him a little by de- 
 manding nothing from him. He strode round 
 the Parks and stood by the sluggish Cherwell 
 on the look out for water-rats, until it was time 
 to go and lunch with his friend the don which 
 at length he sulkily set out to do. 
 
 2- 
 
 A surprise was in store for our friend. Very 
 early in the course of lunch, which had been 
 discreetly laid by an elderly scout and in 
 
 43 
 
OXFORD 
 
 which Chester biscuits and marmalade naturally 
 figured, the young don said " So ; thou art the 
 man " : to which accusation our friend humbly 
 replied " I am he/' and waited for the charge 
 to be more roundly stated. But there was a 
 silence ; and then in a tone of sincere emotion 
 the young man murmured " What a chance !" 
 and to the fragmentary, astonished " Why ?" 
 with which his murmur was received, he im- 
 pressively said, " Because Oxford is the most 
 beautiful city in the world, as it now actually is 
 and could be made . . ." His sentence ended 
 in a deep sigh. Our friend sat up, startled by 
 the shock of unexpected enthusiasm, and an 
 unresponsive "Yes" was the only word that 
 his lips could find to utter. 
 
 " For instance," the young don proceeded 
 and stopped abruptly, eyeing our friend with 
 the look of a conspirator searching for and 
 summing up evidence of trustworthiness ; and 
 he must have found firmer ground in our 
 friend's mind than his tentative "Well?" could 
 have afforded, for with sudden eagerness he 
 went on : 
 
 " There are certain architectural excrescences 
 which could be removed. The destructive in- 
 stinct of exhilarated youth could be made to 
 serve a good purpose. A little organisation has 
 
 44 
 
u 
 
 IN FRONT OF THE SHELDONIAN 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 been formed: its members are practical and 
 earnest, and are, moreover, sworn to secrecy." 
 
 " By me," said our friend, " you shall not be 
 betrayed." 
 
 " Its members are sworn to secrecy. A bump 
 supper is imminent. A hypnotist has been en- 
 gaged of accredited powers. He will be dis- 
 guised as a waiter, and will suggest to the most 
 riotously inclined spirits our plan. Our plan is 
 nothing more and nothing less than to remove 
 from the front of the Sheldonian Theatre those 
 hideous, those atrocious busts which now most 
 outrageously deform it. How will this be 
 negotiated ? you may rightly enough object. 
 The walls are high ; the walls are precipitous ; 
 they afford no foothold ; ladders are unwieldy 
 and dangerous and difficult to obtain. I answer : 
 Everything has been foreseen. Imagine to your- 
 self the excited crowd gathered by the cunning 
 of the hypnotist in front of these dismal effigies, 
 shouting that the time has come for those warts 
 to be removed from the fair face of the city. 
 An occasional stone is flung; when from the 
 crowd emerges a Rhodes scholar with a weighted 
 lasso of specially prepared, thin, silk-spun rope. 
 The loop whirls through the air and encircles 
 the head of Socrates ; the crowd yells as it is 
 tugged tight, and yells louder as after a 
 
 45 
 
OXFORD 
 
 Herculean pull the monstrous thing totters 
 and falls. Again the lasso flies on its unerring 
 course through the air, another dreadful effigy 
 lies shattered on the ground. The police try 
 vainly to prevent this beautifying by destruction. 
 The excitement grows intenser, the shouts grow 
 louder, the scene becomes big tremendous- 
 Homeric. And then you know/' he proceeded 
 in quieter tones, " and then you know in the 
 morning there is a great hubbub. Vandals at 
 play, young Barbarians, all the usual headlines. 
 But we come forward and inculcate judiciously 
 into the public mind the exact nature of the 
 blessing that has been wrought. The poor 
 pieces are picked up and disposed of, and the 
 University goes on its usual course but in cleaner 
 surroundings. One sighs to think how malig- 
 nant an influence those horrible busts must have 
 worked upon young and growing minds. How 
 many young men must have been turned away 
 from wisdom by those staring reminders of men 
 who have practised it !" 
 
 3- 
 
 Our friend was too astounded at the young 
 don's enthusiasm to be able to raise any objec- 
 tions to his fantastic scheme. He merely 
 
 46 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 meekly suggested a tour of inspection through 
 the place in which he had lived for four years. 
 " I'll be your tourist, if you'll be my guide," he 
 chaunted with idiotic mournfulness. And forth 
 they immediately sped, their throats burned by 
 coffee, drunk in their haste too hot. To Merton, 
 to Magdalen, to New College, along the High 
 to the House, to University, to Worcester and 
 to Balliol, and still he saw nothing but cold 
 stones in various beauty of shape and setting, 
 and still he learned nothing except to hate the 
 continuous sound of the young don's eager voice 
 and to respect his knowledge and enthusiasm. 
 It all seemed distant and apart. The closelier 
 he peered, the farther the secret shrank away 
 from him, as fairies are said to hide from mortals. 
 Indeed he seemed to be under an enchanter's 
 spell. This peering pursuit revealed nothing to 
 him but his own insensibility to everything but 
 the persistent call of memory. The place was 
 too familiar, and too dear : or rather it stood for 
 him as the symbol of too much that was dear. 
 The intruder shouted at his sentimental regrets 
 and his foolish fancies. Did he expect stones 
 to be anything but stones and cold and grey ? 
 Or what did he expect of them ? well know- 
 ing, with his intruder's prescience, that to 
 discover an answer to these questions was pre- 
 47 
 
OXFORD 
 
 cisely the moment's difficulty. Our friend grew 
 miserably tired; his legs ached and his head 
 most vilely at the persistent flow of the young 
 don's architectural and antiquarian lore. 
 
 "This is a mere glimpse of a bird : you must 
 stay a month and let the thing soak into you," 
 the young don urged. 
 
 " I'll stay a week," our friend desperately said, 
 and crept away. 
 
 Dudgeon held him, as he made his arrange- 
 ments, and having made them he sadly wandered. 
 Down the High he wandered and stood on 
 Magdalen Bridge. There dudgeon changed to 
 grief, intolerable grief at what, he did not 
 know. It was like an acute feeling of loss, not 
 loss of anything so definite as a friend, and 
 vaguer even than the sense of days that cannot 
 be recalled. For he had no wish to recall any 
 days. He remembered everything too well to 
 feel such loss acutely. Those days were part of 
 his possession. But as he stood looking down 
 into the slowly-moving water he seemed to have 
 been taken quite out of his life, and to have lost 
 the sense of Time. He felt the sadness of 
 humanity's slow movement towards death, and 
 the years of a man's life seemed very short and 
 his doings trivial. 
 
 The old town standing there between rivers 
 48 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 among the hills began to have a meaning to him, 
 against which no intruder clamoured. 
 
 4- 
 
 Dreaming, he left the bridge and went dream- 
 ing into Magdalen, past the chapel into the old 
 roofed Cloister Quadrangle, with its solemn 
 arches and its pavement of great stone-slabs ; 
 and there in that epitome of the old place his 
 attention was arrested from dreams by a gargoyle 
 -the grotesque and almost shapeless rendering 
 of a beast. A fact as obvious as the stones 
 around him, a fact which like many another he 
 had for long idly known, touched his imagina- 
 tion and became alive : that the men who made 
 all these buildings for the glory of God and of 
 learning were as determined as any other artist 
 to leave an expression of themselves out of their 
 lives, a little less transitory, a little less temporary 
 than their own human lives themselves might 
 actually be. Naturally the intruder jeered with 
 all his critical might at the discovery of this 
 notable commonplace; but, commonplace and 
 familiar as the fact indubitably was, it struck our 
 friend so freshly hard that he brushed the in- 
 truder on one side as a silly fellow critical sneers 
 and all. He looked at the strange misshapen 
 
 49 4 
 
OXFORD 
 
 thing and at all the other gargoyles. They 
 seemed to grin at him from the door of the past 
 which was now at last opening. They sym- 
 bolised, he remembered reading, virtues and 
 vices and told the story of David's conquest over 
 the Lion and Goliath : the Lion the emblem of 
 Courage, the Pelican the emblem of Vigilance, 
 and the Hippopotamus carrying his young upon 
 his shoulders, which was the true symbol of a 
 good Tutor : there was the Dog for Flattery, 
 the Deer for Timidity, the Lycanthropos for 
 Violence, the Griffin for Courteousness, the 
 Boxers for Contention and the Mantichora for 
 Pride. To the sculptor they were no more 
 symbols than to Leonardo his beautiful young 
 god was St. John the Baptist or to Shakespeare 
 his brave Elizabethans were dead Romans. It 
 remained for the ecclesiastics to find suitable 
 meanings and names for the life which grew in 
 stone round their edifices ; and this it must 
 have taxed them to do when their own vices 
 were used as ornaments to their own buildings. 
 But the artists cared little so long as they 
 expressed the life they saw around them, and 
 the animals they hunted or kept for food or 
 read of in their portentous Bestiaries. This 
 freedom offended some, and St. Bernard wrote 
 strongly against them. " Not that I censure 
 
 5 
 

 MAGDALEN TOWER 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 proper ornament, but only what is fantastical 
 and superfluous. For pictures are the books of 
 the laity or unlearned ; but by pictures I mean 
 such as portray the Passion of Christ and the 
 sufferings of the saints." And just as modern 
 circulating librarians have banded themselves 
 together to suppress any expression of life in 
 fiction which they consider might corrupt a 
 young girl's mind, so the medieval ecclesiastics 
 passed a resolution to limit the expression of life 
 in stone ornament to what they considered to be 
 proper. The analogy startled our friend to 
 laughter, and he began to wonder whether the 
 time would ever come when these physical 
 values of right and wrong would seem as fan- 
 tastic as the grotesques now staring stonily at 
 him. 
 
 " Oh, never mind the weather, well catch 
 cold together," sang a young clerk of Oxenford 
 to himself, as he returned from a lecture, and 
 disappeared up his staircase. It brought our 
 friend up from his medieval musings with a 
 funny, sharp bump, and made him laugh at the 
 whole motley confusion of life which seemed 
 in this illustrious seat of learning to be expressed 
 with almost too daring an exaggeration of effect. 
 He took out his notebook to record in immortal 
 words the secret which the gargoyles had taught 
 
 51 42 
 
OXFORD 
 
 him ; but the page then and thereafter remained 
 to the exquisite delight of the intruder a blank, 
 perfect except for some casual thumb-marks. 
 However, in spite of that, a weight was lifted 
 from his mind, and from that moment he made 
 his way about the old city with reverence and 
 gaiety, delighting in all the many beautiful 
 things which awaited his inspection. 
 
 5. 
 
 The awe of the acolyte was not on account 
 of this awakening dispersed, but deepened into 
 a more human feeling which the intruder by 
 slow degrees began to share in his own rather 
 truculent manner. For the buildings offered 
 magnificent contrasts, varied as life itself. The 
 threatening castle and the thick battlemented 
 wall in the garden of New College frowned as 
 fiercely to his imagination as the fairy turrets 
 of Magdalen laughed gaily into the air : move- 
 ment caught and expressed for ever with all the 
 grace of the moment and all the constancy of 
 the everlasting. Such an entrance would give 
 a proper welcome to the man who tested a 
 philosopher by the quality of his laugh, and 
 from the top of a joy-trembling tower it was 
 right that songs should be sung in honour of 
 
 52 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 the Spring, when the morning of May-day 
 dawned. What room for wonder that such a 
 tower should perceptibly move to the music ? 
 And along the austere curve of the High, past 
 the august wall of Queen's, he might walk with 
 an eye for the solemn charm of University, for 
 its friendly gateways and all the sober beauty 
 of its curving frontage, on to the reverent gaiety 
 of St. Mary's. He must stop before that Porch ; 
 and see again how all the bulk of the great 
 building was forced by the sweep of delicate 
 compelling curves above the stone figure of the 
 Virgin and Her Child to do her honour, how 
 two sphinxes watched above her and how above 
 the sphinxes stood the open book on which the 
 great legend was written DOMINUS ILLU- 
 MINATIO MEA. 
 
 There was no better approach to the fantastic 
 delicacy of the low, broad staircase that led to 
 Christ Church's enormous hall than the im- 
 pressive width and size of Tom's gigantic quad. 
 The big bell was well housed. 
 
 And always on every side the same contrasts 
 struck him, between austereness and gaiety. It 
 was noticeable in the buildings, in their gar- 
 goyles and their aged grandeur, in their dancing 
 traceries and solemn bulk. It was noticeable in 
 the inhabitants, the austere and sometimes 
 
 53 
 
OXFORD 
 
 even painful don and the light-hearted under- 
 graduate ; and nowhere more than in the "men" 
 themselves, between the blood and the sombre 
 student. No one looked older than some of the 
 fellows, no one could look younger than some 
 of the "men," in their rakishly crumpled 
 mortarboards and their tattered, little ridiculous 
 gowns. Our friend was again and again re- 
 minded of a small nephew of nine, who shaking 
 his head sadly over a school-friend of ten, called 
 him " a bad man." They were bad men surely 
 of the same calibre who broke every window 
 one fine night in Tom's great quadrangle, 
 because they were not allowed to attend a ball, 
 at which they much wanted to be present. The 
 exploit gave work to the glaziers and trouble to 
 the authorities to retain against such protesters 
 the dignity of their position. How they 
 managed to retain that dignity so well remains 
 a marvel until one remembers their great ally, 
 Time, who is apt to bring the youngest rebel 
 to their side. 
 
 But the effect of contrast, which had struck 
 our industrious friend with the suddenness of a 
 shock, mounted to its climax that evening. He 
 began the evening by dining at High Table. 
 The experts, whose names were familiar on the 
 front page of many a textbook and many a 
 
 54 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 treatise, assembled in the Senior Common Room, 
 and having gathered, ascended in due order of 
 seniority to the Hall, up a narrow, winding 
 stone staircase. Dinner began. Our friend, 
 overawed by the number of illustrious men who 
 watched him from the panelled wall behind, 
 was silent. Moreover, he was aware that he 
 could broach no subject on which an expert was 
 not present to correct him. One neighbour 
 smiled benignantly at him and conversed 
 (wisely) with the man on his left ; the other was 
 already in the thick of a discussion on the impor- 
 tance of a new text of Suetonius which had lately 
 been published ; so our friend was at liberty to 
 observe. And as he was doing so (most rever- 
 ently, because facts and details which had always 
 eluded him seemed here to be at everybody's 
 tongue's tip), his benignant neighbour, whose 
 reputation was European, turned on him and 
 asked, " Can you tell me the date of the Battle 
 of Idris ?" or some place which had previously 
 been connected in our friend's mind hazily with 
 a mineral water. " No, I am afraid I cannot," 
 our friend emphatically replied; and his neigh- 
 bour, waiting a few moments for a lull, called 
 out to a man at the far end of the table, 
 
 " Mr. , could you tell me the date of the 
 
 Battle of Idris ?" On which summons Mr. 
 
 55 
 
OXFORD 
 
 looked round without surprise, and immediately 
 answered pat with the year and the month and 
 the day of the month, and having answered re- 
 sumed his conversation. Our friend strangled 
 an absurd desire to cry out, " Come up top." 
 The bottom in such a class was his place. The 
 only date he knew other than the landing of 
 William the Conqueror in 1066 was the Battle 
 of Issus in 333, and that piece of knowledge 
 was nullified by his uncertainty as to whether it 
 was A.D. or B.C. If a little knowledge were a 
 dangerous thing, how safe was all the present 
 company ! He did the best he could under the 
 circumstances and drank deep at the nearest 
 approach within his reach to the Pierian spring. 
 In wine he found his immediate comfort and 
 winked at the intruder, who awoke to remind 
 him that in that august assembly lurked a con- 
 spirator, and pointed to the place where the 
 hypnotist would be at work upon his fell sug- 
 gestiveness. Dinner ended. They repaired with 
 their napkins to the Common Room, where 
 dessert awaited the company, and coffee, which 
 was administered by the youngest fellows. 
 There one of the four parsons present attracted 
 our friend's notice by the fact that a small eye 
 twinkled irresistibly in his extremely serious 
 face, and that his voice had a gentle, slow depth 
 
 56 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 which bore no relationship to the usual intona- 
 tion of a curate's voice. His whole bearing 
 was in pleasant contrast (ah ! this home of fierce 
 contrasts) to the muscular heartiness of a Rugby 
 football forward, who coached his college eight 
 and preached from the pulpit bluff doctrines of 
 muscular Christianity, which he described as 
 being of the old school. He was far too familiar 
 a figure in the University to seem out of place 
 in any Common Room. The company sat in a 
 large semicircle round the fire, and it happened 
 that a silence fell upon them all, with the ex- 
 ception of a little group, which included the 
 two contrasts in the cloth. They were discuss- 
 ing with such fervour the character of some 
 man that the attention of all was idly attracted. 
 The muscular Christian, beating his right fist 
 on his open left palm, vociferated, " Well, I say 
 that he is a very good chap at bottom ": to 
 which with the most delicate of smiles his 
 serious-faced friend replied in his clear, sweet 
 voice, " Yes, but we don't want to look at 
 his . . ." The last word was lost in shouts of 
 laughter from everyone. The sentence danced 
 round the room with the seemliness of a naked 
 imp, and the venerable place became for the ten 
 minutes that remained before the company's 
 disposal, to our industrious friend's astonish- 
 
 57 
 
OXFORD 
 
 ment a smoking-room. Facilis descensus 
 Averno. 
 
 After the dispersal our friend went to the 
 rooms of a " man " he knew, summoned by the 
 Secretary of the Peter Pan Society. The pro- 
 ceedings began with gossip about the Alpine 
 Club, a branch of which had been formed in 
 Oxford to scale architectural heights, and con- 
 tinuing with an ardent explanation of what 
 Nietzsche meant by Preachers of Death ended 
 with a spirited performance of scenes from The 
 Merry Widow. 
 
 And then our friend adjourned to his own 
 rooms. From the window there was an exten- 
 sive view of the town and of the sky. It was a 
 night brave with stars, and very still. There was 
 no wind ; only from time to time the gentlest 
 puff of wind, like a sigh of the sleeping earth, 
 was perceptible. A window near was noisily 
 opened, and let out shoutings from a cheerful 
 party to friends leaving; then it was noisily shut. 
 Laughter and running steps on cobble-stones 
 sounded along the street, and all was again still, 
 except for the busy sound of shunting trains in 
 the distance, which seemed to prick out the 
 stillness. Then a clock began to strike twelve, 
 and from over all the city the many clocks, each 
 in its own solemn tone, told the hour of mid- 
 58 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 night. The telling was impressive. Often before 
 our friend had stood at his window in college 
 and listened to the clocks striking twelve. But 
 never before had he been so keenly aware of the 
 moment's immense solemnity. He was aware, 
 probably because of his acolyte's preparation, of 
 Time and Time's progress, which should cer- 
 tainly be proclaimed in deep grave tones ; and 
 he was aware that there was always something 
 affecting when the expression of a great thing 
 was in accord with the great thing itself. Even 
 the intruder was impressed and, turning un- 
 easily within him, had the grace to own that 
 there were points about Oxford. 
 
 Bravely to realise life ; that was the thing. * 
 All Preachers of Death a mighty phrase- 
 should hear that proclamation of midnight. 
 And there at midnight, while the townspeople 
 and the " men " and the fellows and most of 
 the motley society of human existence har- 
 boured within the old city were sleeping, our 
 friend at his open window felt in the star-lit 
 darkness near to the very heart of life itself, 
 and was filled with elated reverence at his 
 share in the great business. Nothing alive, 
 not even himself, seemed paltry in the light 
 that shone there. / Nowhere had the past 
 played its part more beautifully than in the 
 
 59 
 
OXFORD 
 
 city on which he looked, and on which the 
 stars were gaily twinkling. It is good when 
 the heritage of the past is beauty good and 
 uplifting. 
 
 6. 
 
 Often in the days when our friend was " up " 
 and reading for his Divinity Schools (as Divvers 
 is occasionally called), he betook himself, with 
 his "Acts," to a particular seat in Addison's 
 Walk, which commanded (with a crook of the 
 neck) a view of the little weir that rushes 
 from under a little house. There, in the bend 
 opposite to him where the water was quiet, a 
 water-rat lived, and at five o'clock, which was 
 the usual time of our friend's visit, took a meal. 
 Our friend had been brought up with extreme 
 strictness, and had travelled with St. Paul and 
 St. Peter in their respective journeys so many 
 times in the nursery, in his Preparatory School 
 and at his Public School, that no ghost of a 
 fierce examiner rose in his mind to disturb his 
 great pleasure in watching the water-rat. He 
 loved water-rats for many reasons. When he 
 was a small boy he had tried from a punt to 
 shoot them with his elder brother's pistol, as 
 they swam across the river, and the splash of 
 the water had shown him exactly how far he 
 
 60 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 was from hitting them. Then, as he grew up, 
 he read Thoreau's "Week on the Concord," 
 and his previous attachment became romantic 
 when he read of a water-rat " that fumbled for 
 melons," and of water-rats that swam by the 
 boat " with no fire to dry themselves that we 
 knew of." This attachment grew to love 
 when he read, as he soon did, George Mere- 
 dith's poem, " The Old Chartist" : 
 
 " What is yon brown water-rat about 
 Who washes his old poll with busy paws ? 
 
 What does he mean by't ? 
 It's like defying all our natural laws 
 
 For him to hope that he'll get clean by't." 
 
 Nor was the attachment lessened by reading 
 Mr. Kenneth Graham's "Wind in the Willows." 
 Well, a dozen times he must have watched the 
 little old fellow take his meal about the hour 
 of five. He was an exquisite, not only in the 
 way in which he kept his fur, but also in his 
 choice of food and his manner of eating it. 
 First his head appeared from under a bush on 
 the bank, its " needle-muzzle " working, then 
 he trotted over the dried mud by the edge of 
 the stream and sat down on the brink. Having 
 carefully chosen one from among the bunch of 
 quivering reeds that grew in the stream, he 
 dived to its root. The reed quivered and shook, 
 
 61 
 
OXFORD 
 
 and was dragged slowly under, while its root 
 appeared on the surface in the rat's mouth. He 
 swam to shore, sat up on his back legs on the 
 dried mud, and, holding the reed in his front 
 paws, nibbled not more than a quarter of an 
 inch of the three-foot reed ; then he was ready 
 for another, and after that for another. The 
 meal ended, he washed himself with all the 
 care described in the poem and trotted back 
 across the dried mud to his home under the 
 bush : 
 
 " If cleanliness is next to godliness 
 
 The old fat fellow's heaven's neighbour." 
 
 This water-rat, like many another old fat 
 fellow, certainly had his place in the corporate 
 life of Oxford. But when our friend went to 
 his favourite seat in Addison's Walk, every- 
 thing there was precisely as it used to be ; the 
 mud was still dry, the reeds were still bunched 
 in the same patterned outlines, the little house 
 had not yet been washed away by the water, 
 only the water-rat was not there. The rat's 
 absence hurt him. All the other old fat fellows 
 were there, as prosperously and roundly present 
 as ever; but his favourite had gone to another 
 hole on the stream's bank, or perhaps to another 
 stream, or perhaps, even, to use the euphemistic 
 
 62 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 phrase, had gone to a better land ; heaven's 
 neighbour had passed to heaven's kingdom. Our 
 friend missed the touch of a vanished paw and 
 grew sad. He fell into a reverie. And in his 
 reverie his furry favourite became a scholar in 
 the lore of the stream and in the history of the 
 reeds, and very learned in the music of the 
 weir. Other rats consulted him; young rats 
 sat in rows to listen to his words and learn how 
 to make the best of life. What was the best 
 in a rat's life, he was beginning vaguely to 
 wonder, when his thought took a sharp and 
 disconcerting turn to the personal, and con- 
 fronting him inquired with sudden vigour 
 what was the best in a man's life. 
 
 The intruder helped him towards this painful 
 brink by shouting to him to drop his analogy 
 or work it more bravely out : and the rude 
 fellow began to chuckle as he watched the 
 dreamer grow dizzy at the prospect. Not con- 
 tent with that, he gave him a dangerous push 
 towards destruction by insisting how far that 
 secret was divulged to young men in the 
 University. All ways in this bewildering place 
 seemed to lead him to the same blank wall. 
 But the unexpectedness of this last obstruction 
 served at any rate one good purpose by enabling 
 our friend to realise exactly how far he was 
 
 63 
 
OXFORD 
 
 himself from understanding the elements of 
 education. If a pistol had been held to his 
 head for an answer to the question what was 
 the most essential thing for a young man to 
 learn, he would have been obliged in all honesty 
 to murmur " shoot " ; for he did not know. 
 Still less could he have answered how that 
 unknown secret could be taught. And realising 
 his twofold ignorance he had the grace to write 
 down the old fat fellow as heaven's neighbour 
 and to leave him at that, without prying into 
 the usefulness of his knowledge of the stream's 
 lore or of the history of the weir's music. Just 
 to be a water-rat was an achievement, to which 
 the facts that he was interesting to watch and 
 regular in his habits were added qualities. 
 
 7. 
 
 One morning our friend walked into the 
 quadrangle of University College and an 
 obvious fact leapt suddenly from the outer 
 region of things seen into the inner region of 
 things felt. The fact was again, in so far as 
 that is logically possible, a contrast. It happened 
 in this way. He was standing in the porch, 
 which at that time of the morning was empty 
 except for an occasional hurried entrance or 
 
 64 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 exit and the college cat who sat dishevelled and 
 humped among a heap of bicycles ; and as was 
 always the case, however often he stood in that 
 porch, he was the prey of trooping memories. 
 Before him the quad became the stage of by- 
 gone scenes, at the enactment of which he had 
 been happily present. Here, a tangerine orange 
 had missed his head (he smelt it pass) and had 
 smashed against the wall : there, was the grating 
 down which a sovereign had rolled, one of the 
 sovereigns for which two ridiculous fourth year 
 men had been tossing before luncheon, while 
 he with a freshman's eye of awe had watched 
 them and wondered : there but the college cat 
 walked up to him and slowly began to sharpen 
 her claws on his leg, treating him, as he deserved, 
 like a wooden post. It was due probably to her 
 long claws that his discovery was made. They 
 recalled him from the dreaming Past into the 
 painful Present. He looked back into the High, 
 and turned round again to front the quad, and 
 he seemed to see it for the first time. It is 
 always a pleasant experience to look with new 
 eyes at a very dear old friend. Four hundred 
 years' mowing, he thought, as he looked at the 
 green plushiness of the grass, and remembered 
 the famous reply of the gardener to the 
 American's question. He was struck again by 
 
 65 5 
 
OXFORD 
 
 the quiet beauty of the lawn, and he walked 
 slowly round the dark-grey path of stone slabs 
 that divided and edged the grass. There is 
 nothing that bears the same appearance of 
 attention as a college quadrangle on a normal 
 day. Nothing looks so trim and so cared for. 
 Each blade of grass seemed in its place, like 
 hair that has been newly combed and brushed. 
 The square trim shape, the uniform windows 
 in long lines in the grey walls it was all sym- 
 metrical and ordered. He could almost hear 
 in the ordered quiet the regular ticking of the 
 clock, pointing the peaceful, irrevocable steps 
 of Time's advance. He turned his head casually 
 to look in at the wide-open windows of an 
 empty room on the ground floor, and then it 
 was that the contrast leaped upon our friend's 
 cognisance, with the surprising suddenness of a 
 salmon trout's leap. For the room was in the 
 wildest disorder, which the Scout's vague 
 attempt to straighten had only served to 
 accentuate. Half the table was laid for lunch ; 
 the other half was a motley heap of books and 
 papers and caps and a tennis racquet : two 
 putters and some golf balls lay on the floor. 
 All the interests and implements of an untidy 
 young male thing's existence were scattered 
 broadcast. All a life's secrets seemed there 
 
 66 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 exposed in gay haphazard, so that our friend 
 blushed at the involuntary intrusive glance 
 which had revealed them to him. There was 
 no inner meaning to this blazing contrast. 
 There seldom is. It just existed glaringly 
 existed. And just at that moment the gardener 
 appeared with his roller and began carefully to 
 roll the grass, stooping every now and then to 
 pick up a burned match which had escaped his 
 previous sweeping. 
 
 What had been an untidier room than that, 
 the nearest to the wall of the Hall, was now a 
 lecture room, named after its untidy occupant. 
 " His features breathed an animation, a fire, an 
 enthusiasm, a vivid and preternatural intelli- 
 gence, that I never met with in any other 
 countenance. Nor was the moral expression 
 less beautiful than the intellectual; for there 
 was a softness, a delicacy, a gentleness, and 
 especially (though this will surprise many) that 
 air of profound religious veneration that charac- 
 terises the best works, and chiefly the frescoes 
 (and into these they infused their whole souls) 
 of the great masters of Florence and of Rome." 
 So writes Hogg of Shelley, and soon after 
 describes the confusion of those rooms, which 
 Shelley was only to inhabit ror six months. 
 " Books, boots, paper, shoes, philosophical 
 
 67 52 
 
OXFORD 
 
 instruments, clothes, pistols, linen, crockery, 
 ammunition and phials innumerable, with 
 money, stockings, prints, crucibles, bags and 
 boxes, were scattered on the floor and in every 
 place. . . . An electrical machine, an air-pump, 
 the galvanic trough, a solar microscope were 
 conspicuous amidst the mass of matter. Upon 
 the table were ... a piece of deal, lately part 
 of the wood of a box, with many chips, and a 
 handsome razor that had been used as a knife. . . . 
 Two piles of books supported the tongs, and 
 these upheld a small glass retort above an argand 
 lamp." 
 
 Our friend took his Hogg's " Life of Shelley" 
 out of his pocket and leaning against the outer 
 wall of the room that had been thus used, read 
 through again the familiar pages. " He was 
 indeed a whole university in himself to me in 
 respect of the stimulus and incitement which 
 his example afforded to my love of study." 
 And later : " I lighted him downstairs with 
 the stump of a candle which had dissolved 
 itself into a lamp, and I soon heard him 
 running through the quiet quadrangle in the 
 still night. That sound became afterwards so 
 familiar to my ear that I still seem to hear 
 Shelley's hasty steps." 
 
 Then he put his book in his pocket, and 
 68 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 went to look at the tribute which the College 
 had paid to the honour of Shelley's six months' 
 residence. He peered through the prison bars 
 at the beautiful effigy recumbent, very much 
 as he had at first peered through the cold print 
 of the verse to find the spirit of the man's 
 poetry. 
 
 8. 
 
 There are many immediate approaches to 
 the enchanted circle in Oxford in which the 
 colleges stand ; and of this circle the Bodleian 
 is, to waive the geometrical point, the spiritual 
 centre. The High, the Broad, Holywell, the 
 House and St. Giles, and, just outside the 
 circle, Worcester with its gardens not often 
 does so small an area contain such great and 
 diverse beauty. The most famous approach is 
 over Magdalen Bridge, and the most usual is 
 from the Railway Station ; but there are 
 others. From the river, through Christ Church 
 meadows by Grove Street into the High 
 Grove Street, which was more quaintly at- 
 tractive before Oriel began to grow ; or from 
 North Oxford with its modern villas and 
 houses by Woodstock or Banbury road into the 
 immense width of St. Giles with its line of 
 
 69 
 
OXFORD 
 
 trees, past St. John's College to Balliol and 
 The Martyrs' Memorial. By all of these and 
 many others our friend made his way into the 
 great fairy ring. But one morning he hap- 
 pened upon a circuitous mode of entry which 
 delighted by affording him yet another and a 
 most singular contrast. For he walked from 
 the suburban streets of nice demure houses 
 which comprise North Oxford and are to be 
 found on the outskirts of most provincial towns, 
 straight across the Parks; he skirted the cricket- 
 field, where on one illustrious occasion he had 
 seen R. E. Foster lift W. G. six times running 
 out of the ground (after the sixth hit the old 
 man walked slowly up the pitch, arm out- 
 stretched, and shook the batsman's hand), and 
 went on across the centre of the sloping green 
 expanse, and out by the Nunnery along Church 
 Road between the grounds of New College, 
 Merton, and Balliol, past the old Racquet 
 Courts once famous for " Fug Soccer," now 
 the home of the Oxfordshire Light Infantry, 
 into Holy well. There at the curve of Holy- 
 well he stopped and looked towards Magdalen 
 Gardens ; then he turned to the right up 
 Holywell by the little aged odd -shaped 
 houses of stucco and stone and old red brick, 
 on which the new buildings of New College 
 
 70 
 
GROVE STREET 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 whitely stare. The hall-doors, sometimes of 
 old oak, touch the pavement ; to some there 
 is a step down from the pavement, some you 
 must surely stoop to enter, unless you are very 
 small of stature. There is every shape of 
 window, but most are latticed. As you walk 
 along, some windows are on a level with your 
 waist, and you glance down to catch a glimpse 
 through green curtains of wonderful interiors, 
 where great brown beams cross the ceilings, 
 where there are strange old grates and fire- 
 places, where the ceilings slope and the floors 
 quaintly undulate. Our friend seemed to be in 
 another world to that in which the commodious 
 villas flourished. In these old houses exciting 
 people must have lived, they were the homes 
 of scholars, antiquaries, poets : those com- 
 modious villas merely told comfortable stories 
 of comfort. And at this point in his walk 
 the intruder interrupted savagely that his 
 reflections were as unjust and as unhealthily 
 tumble-down as the wretched little houses ; 
 but he succumbed a little sulkily to the charge 
 of longing to live in one of them. That was 
 after all the point. The old houses were built 
 for people to live in ; home now was apt to be a 
 place to which duty tied you, and from which 
 you tried to get away at the earliest possible 
 
 7 1 
 
OXFORD 
 
 moment. The ease of travel had produced 
 that slight drawback. In these little old houses 
 you felt that people had quietly established 
 themselves and firmly lived. A little dully 
 perhaps, you might think, until you remem- 
 bered Herbert or Fuller or Traherne, and the 
 list of keen worthies began to grow apace, 
 starting from those three. And Donne there 
 were places where all these great fellows might 
 suitably live in this one street. They abode in 
 one place, for the most part, or slowly deter- 
 mined to travel so slowly that they almost 
 lived along the route, as Pope's spider lived 
 along the line. 
 
 Now, you could jaunt over the world at a 
 moment's notice, and fretted against the little 
 chains that held you back. Now, too, informa- 
 tion was put within every man's reach, which 
 not more than *ooi of mankind could put to 
 any use. Men were blind babies in the face of 
 modern advantages. And the man who could 
 turn newspaper knowledge to best account 
 became a politician. 
 
 But our friend turned down Bath Place, and 
 got even farther from the modern world of 
 newspapers and villas. Bath Place is an alley 
 for footmen, which zigzags by tiny houses and 
 
 rambling little cottages, and eventually comes 
 
 72 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 out (if you have not previously lost yourself) in 
 New College Street, which becomes Queen's 
 Lane, in the same way as Fleet Street becomes 
 the Strand. If you get as far as the bewildering 
 middle of Bath Place and in finding the right 
 way under the arch between two houses have 
 not penetrated so many private abodes that you 
 shamefacedly turn back before the way becomes 
 normally clear, then look round to the left and 
 you will see above a tree and above a wall a 
 tower of New College most darkly and most 
 beautifully rising into the sky. For just where 
 the maze becomes easy, and you may after much 
 stooping and crampedness straighten out your 
 mind and body, the prospect widens to a sur- 
 prising change. The tiny rambling houses 
 cluster round high dark walls and the high 
 dark tower rises superbly from its clustered 
 surroundings. You seem to see it then as 
 you were meant to see it. 
 
 This was, as it should be, one of our friend's 
 favourite places. He walked on into New 
 College Street, and in a little turned to look at 
 the newly built chapel of Hertford and liked 
 it. Then he went on between the great black 
 crumbling walls, between which the street winds 
 like a sluggish river, and out into the High. And 
 to the High there is no better approach. He 
 
 73 
 
OXFORD 
 
 seemed that morning to have walked through 
 many centuries. 
 
 But he would not take the learned young don 
 that way. He feared his disquisitions and his 
 architectural enthusiasm ; and thereby probably 
 did him wrong. Really too in his heart our 
 friend was ashamed that he had not liked Bath 
 Place more when he was "up," and remembered 
 that the young don had lived in rooms in its 
 very centre. And the facts, taken together, 
 might trick the don into putting on edge, as 
 the undergraduates say, about the matter. And 
 that would be absolutely unnecessary. So he 
 mused on his way back and decided to make a 
 detour through New College gardens. 
 
 " Is this New ?" asked the babe, who was up 
 from school for a scholarship examination, of a 
 solemn first year man. 
 
 "No," was the serious answer, "it is very 
 old." And the answer was funny because it 
 came from a genuine understanding. New 
 College is never called New as Magdalen is 
 never called Magdalen College, but always in 
 full New College. 
 
 Our friend was more convinced than ever 
 that the beauty of these gardens must be seen 
 to be believed. Otherwise it is incredible. It 
 is not that the flowers are specially beautiful ; 
 
 74 
 
NEW COLLEGE TOWER 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 without very elaborate pains or expense they 
 might easily be bettered (a long line of tall 
 blue lupins near that black-grey stone wall, for 
 instance). It is not their proximity to beautiful 
 old buildings. At Penshurst Place, at Worcester 
 College, at the villa of the Medici near Signa 
 there were finer effects in that way. But it is 
 that New College gardens seem to be not so 
 much near as an actual part of the great build- 
 ing, surrounded as they are by the old city wall. 
 That thick savage wall, with its cruel turrets 
 and fierce battlements and cunning peepholes is 
 no longer needed for defence against the on- 
 slaught of enemies but encloses the peace and 
 beauty of the garden. The gentle garden has 
 overcome its harsh severity ; stout wall-flowers 
 and delicate ferns grow in its crannies; the 
 softest moss soothes the unyielding stonework ; 
 trees wave over its unflinching bulk ; the sloping 
 grass rushes gaily almost up to its very feet. It 
 is as though the elves and fairies had conspired 
 together to make an ugly, thick giant beautiful 
 and had most elfishly succeeded; they have 
 turned the unwieldy mass of him to their 
 own lovely uses, and there he now lies at full 
 length and by his very bulk makes their 
 garden pre-eminently beautiful. When the 
 moon shines, be sure that other games than 
 
 75 
 
OXFORD 
 
 bowls are played over that smooth sloping 
 lawn. 
 
 But our friend searched in vain for one, whom 
 like Blake's small sir, he could catch in his hat 
 as boys catch a butterfly, and who would sit upon 
 the table and dictate to him, as Blake's fairy 
 sat upon Blake's table and dictated " Europe." 
 For one thing, he looked in vain for a streaked 
 tulip. Sic itur ad astra. 
 
 9- 
 
 Our friend was in a College library and 
 opened a dumpy volume, brown with age, at 
 random ; it was the fifth of five equally dumpy 
 volumes in a long shelf full of books drab-brown 
 with age. He idly read : " Whoever it was, 
 Soffius, that wrote the Poem in praife of 
 Alcibiades upon his winning the Horfe race at 
 the Olympian Games, whether it were Euripides 
 (as 'tis moft commonly reported) or fome other 
 Perfon, he fays, That to a Man's being happy, 
 it is in the firft place requilite he mould be born 
 in fome famous City ; but for him that would 
 attain unto true happinefs, which for the moft 
 part is placed in the qualities and difpofition of 
 the mind, it is, in my opinion, of no other dif- 
 ad vantage to be of a mean obfcure Country, 
 
 76 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 than to be born of a Woman that is uncomely 
 and low of Stature. . . . Other Arts indeed, 
 whofe end it is to acquire Riches or Honour, 
 are likely enough to wither and decay in poor 
 obfcure Towns ; but Vertue like a ftrong and 
 durable plant takes root and thrives in any 
 place, where it can lay hold of an ingenious 
 Nature, and a mind that is induftrious/' He 
 read on and on with the faint remembrance of 
 having read the passage before, though " The 
 Life of Demosthenes," which boldly headed the 
 fatly printed short page, did not help him. Idly 
 he read on, and happily, for the light came in 
 upon him through a stained glass and he was 
 surrounded by books, above him and below him 
 and on every side. Plutarch, he placidly thought, 
 surely ; and shifted his weight from the left leg 
 to the right, while he turned to the title-page 
 carefully so as not in any way to try the 
 crumbling strength of the binding. Plutarch 
 it was, and an old translation, but not by Sir 
 Thomas North. Itwas translated from the Greek 
 by several hands, and printed for Jacob Tonson 
 within Grays-Inn-Gate, next Grays-Inn-Lane 
 in the year 1700. Who were the industrious 
 scholars that thought another translation of 
 Plutarch was necessary ? He turned another page 
 and beheld, Dr. Nelson, Dr. Frazer, Dr. Fuller 
 
 77 
 
OXFORD 
 
 (not the Thomas Fuller, the Endeavourer? 
 he hastily found p. 297 it was the Thomas 
 Fuller who had translated the Life of Cicero), 
 Dr. Uvedale, and some others. These indus- 
 trious scholars and Jacob Tonson had decided 
 that North's translation was too inaccurate and 
 had themselves made an able translation, which, 
 as he glanced through it, seemed incredibly more 
 antique than North. He came upon this note, 
 which amused him: "Here the old English 
 translator makes a pleasant mistake, for whereas 
 Amyor calls Peloponnesus Prescu-Isle, that is 
 Peninsula, the old translator tells us news of a 
 certain Island of Peloponnesus, cal'd Presche, 
 Sister to the Isle of Pines." The note seemed 
 illustrative of much, as he looked round among 
 these brown rows of scholarly, forgotten books. 
 It was unfortunate for the little band of scholars, 
 who cared for their Greek original, that the old 
 translator whose pleasant mistakes tickled their 
 fancies, should live on as a great English classic, 
 largely because he influenced a Warwickshire 
 boy, a poacher who ran away to the stage- 
 players. North hardly knew any Greek. He 
 was content to use the French version of 
 Jacques Amyot, and improve upon that a 
 shameless proceeding in the eyesof these scholars. 
 He looked a little sadly at all the old books 
 78 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 round him, and thought of the care which had 
 gone to their making and of their eventual fate. 
 And the singular good fortune of Plutarch, the 
 Boeotian, struck him afresh. To have fallen 
 into the hands of Jacques Amyot, to whom Mon- 
 taigne gave the palm among French writers 
 Montaigne whom Shakespeare respected 
 as deeply as he respected Sir Thomas North. 
 There were better scholars now than these 
 learned doctors (though there were few wiser 
 and few wittier men than Thomas Fuller and 
 none more industrious), but North's Plutarch 
 is a masterpiece of English prose. These 
 sermons, these commentaries now reverently 
 kept in college libraries and abandoned all 
 told of good lives led, and marked the slow 
 advance of learning. Around him lay the 
 thoughts of humanity, stored. And he smiled 
 to think of writers like Aristotle and like 
 Plato : that generations of scholars over all the 
 world should be kept busily occupied through 
 the centuries in editing the works of one man. 
 Printed matter held such dominion over our 
 friend that the great room lined and packed 
 with books grew gloomy and dark before he 
 could pull himself away from loitering among 
 a very few of them. Ah ! the books that had 
 been written and the books that remained for 
 
 79 
 
OXFORD 
 
 men to write ! The heavy door clanged behind 
 him and he was reluctantly on the outside again. 
 He pulled out his watch : Blackwell's was 
 lighted and was not yet shut. He strode into 
 the Broad and was among books again. And 
 now he had the perilous knowledge that any 
 book he liked he might possess, and that any 
 book he bought would be an extravagance. 
 He reeled away at length with an enormous 
 folio under his arm, as happy and as conscience- 
 stricken as any drunkard. 
 
 10. 
 
 Our friend at last in his room grew lyrical, 
 in spite of the antimacassars. 
 
 There were little hidden beauties, too, 
 numerous as the jewels woven into the dress 
 of a medieval queen intimate little things to 
 delight the eye of a lover. The whole fair 
 raiment, in every shade of grey and green, 
 spoke grace and power, which Spring and 
 Summer and Autumn and Winter must surely 
 delight to deck with their varying colours and 
 their varying lights and shades. Who is so 
 responsive to their bidding as this lady among 
 cities ? Who so sensitive to every delicate 
 change of beauty, so strong to every appeal ? 
 
 80 
 
' %* " ', ,' 1 ' 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 There is scope for the gallantry of the seasons 
 in her gardens and rivers and grey, creeper-clad 
 buildings. She stands between the hills in a 
 stream-pierced valley ; and in that long valley 
 the meadow-land is a little richer, the grass is 
 a little greener and the buttercups and kingcups 
 are fairer and more golden than in other valleys. 
 Often the mists rise to wrap her closely in their 
 grey swathing, that she may shine more gladly 
 in the dancing sunshine. If thick clouds skulk 
 across the sun, the wind blows with keen anger. 
 On the days when the rain drenches con- 
 tinuously, sullenly down, her beauty ennobles 
 the general distress. 
 
 You should see her on a windy morning in 
 the Spring. The young green is leaping to 
 life in the black trees and bare creepers. Silver- 
 white clouds, round and jolly, are playing across 
 the sky now they frown blackly, now they 
 burst into a great laugh, flinging down showers 
 of jewels, and now they dance off in a gay 
 multitude. The sun gleams dazzling out. The 
 great trees wave their branches, and the joy of 
 the wind trembles in the bud-laden twigs and 
 sets the creepers quivering with glee against 
 the grey old walls to which their suckers cling. 
 The big river flows by with enormous gaiety 
 stretching itself out to reflect in its broad water 
 
 81 6 
 
OXFORD 
 
 as much of the universal joy as it may ; the 
 little river overflows its banks, most naughtily, 
 in its effort to come nearer to the lady-city, 
 and passes under Magdalen Bridge, softly 
 chuckling to be at last so near her. 
 
 You should see her on a still evening in the 
 autumn. The sun is slowly sinking. Quiet 
 broods between heaven and earth the hush 
 of awe at a ceremony. The sky is a great, 
 yellow flame, which wraps the grey buildings 
 in its reflection, a motionless flame that imper- 
 ceptibly fades. There is no leaf on any tree 
 which stirs, and all the leaves of the creepers 
 glow tranquilly with colour, as though stayed 
 for that majestic moment in their life's growth 
 up the old walls. The river flows by so silently, 
 it takes the colour of the sky so deeply, that 
 it does not seem to move, but to lie firm and 
 still, like an ancient shield of burnished gold. 
 There is no movement. All things stand at 
 gaze in adoration ; only round the turrets and 
 round the tall spires and the pinnacles light 
 trembles and plays in a haze of tremulous 
 colour. Royally the lady-city plays her part 
 in the festival that such an evening is, a festival 
 in honour of the worth and beauty of Life. 
 
 Those are her great days, when she declares 
 herself to all men. Her favourites know that 
 
 82 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 from hour to hour she changes and is never 
 the same, except in her queenliness. Each 
 owns in his heart a special beauty, for which 
 he looks and about which he is proud and 
 silent. There she lies in all her beauty between 
 the hills, but only her lovers know how 
 beautiful she is. 
 
 83 62 
 
v/ 
 
 CHAPTER THE THIRD 
 
 I- 
 
 BEFORE our friend had come into residence as 
 an undergraduate had "come up," as the 
 genially inclusive phrase is he had had the 
 good fortune to spend six months at a German 
 University. Turning things over in a medita- 
 tively reminiscent mood, he was struck by the 
 many differences which he now for the first 
 time noticed between what he knew of the 
 life at Gottingen and what he knew of the life 
 at Oxford. No comparison was possible for 
 him, because the conditions of life at either 
 place were too completely different. At 
 Gottingen he had been a stranger among 
 foreigners, and at Oxford he happened to have 
 been a stranger among fellow-countrymen, 
 because he had not gone straight from school 
 to college. At the outset stood, like some 
 guardian monster against comparison, the great 
 elemental difference between a place where 
 you lived with certain freedoms and advan- 
 
 84 
 
OXFORD FROM WITHIN 
 
 tages as a student, and a place where you lived 
 under fixed rules as a member of a college. 
 He had become a member of Gottingen Uni- 
 versity chiefly because he wanted the privilege 
 of attending the State theatre at half price and 
 of attending German lectures on English 
 literature. Being a member of an Oxford 
 college, and having an introduction to a Sans- 
 krit professor, there was no difficulty in the 
 process. He walked at the right hour of the 
 right day with other young men into a small 
 room in a big building, and waited in the 
 small room until his turn came to be ushered 
 into another small room at a table in which 
 sat the professors and at the head of the table 
 the vice - chancellor. The vice - chancellor 
 sternly at first asked him several questions 
 which his total ignorance of German prevented 
 him answering. The situation tickled the 
 great man and his sternness relaxed. 
 
 Kindly relapsing into English, he soon sent 
 our friend away armed with a paper, enormous 
 as a manifesto, impressive as a warrant of arrest 
 for high treason, and a little badge which put 
 him outside the authority of the town. He 
 went back to his rooms and the matter ended. 
 He might do as he pleased precisely as much 
 as before. Had he not been a foreigner his 
 
 85 
 
OXFORD 
 
 case would have been slightly different, and 
 more different still had he been, as the majority 
 fortunately are, a poor student. And for this 
 reason. The hold the University takes is 
 simple and strong. " I guarantee you," she 
 says, " employment in proportion to your 
 merit." Accordingly the student does his 
 utmost to impress his identity upon his pro- 
 fessor by every means in his power; he is not, 
 as in Oxford is frequently the case, coaxed or 
 threatened into attending lectures and working 
 for the glory perhaps of his College. But the 
 German student, being wise and young, does 
 not immediately buckle into his harness. It 
 often too happens that he is able to spend a 
 year at a University before putting in his 
 military service, and then to finish his student- 
 ship after his military service. 
 
 This and other facts our friend discovered 
 soon after his matriculation. One morning he 
 was seated in his room working, and the weather 
 being exceedingly hot his costume began in a 
 white flannel shirt and ended in white flannel 
 trousers. As the morning wore on and the 
 heat increased, even socks became superfluities, 
 and he had just at twelve o'clock unbuttoned 
 his shirt and rolled up his sleeves in a last attack 
 with a dictionary upon Heine's " Harzreise " 
 
 86 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 when a rap sounded on the door and his sum- 
 mons to enter admitted not the anticipated 
 little, hardworking servant, but a gentleman in 
 a black frock coat, buttoned at the waist for a 
 beautifully becoming bulge above, with grey 
 suede gloves upon his hands, and in his right 
 hand a shining silk hat. The gentleman, stout 
 and tall, stood bowing profusely by the door ; 
 nor was his courtesy, in its profusion, at all due 
 to shyness. Our friend was astonished, and 
 watched in his astonishment the silk hat moving 
 most properly with each bow a little way up- 
 wards as the body was inclined a little forward. 
 It was a moment that lasted and lived. Then 
 our friend, braving pins and splinters, hurried 
 forward with hand outstretched in welcome and 
 conducted his visitor to the sofa behind the 
 table, which he had already learned to be a 
 place of honour. Forthwith he began to make 
 the acquaintance of a German student, who 
 lived in the same flat as himself, but who up to 
 that time had existed for him as a thing of 
 rumour. The conversation, begun with the 
 help of a fat dictionary which lay before them, 
 progressed slowly but in so exactly the right 
 direction that it hit the roots of what became 
 friendship. From that friendship our friend 
 saw much and learnt much of German student 
 
 87 
 
OXFORD 
 
 life. Now it may be thought that this call was 
 the immediate result of matriculation. That 
 was not, however, the case. That this private 
 recognition should have followed so closely as 
 it did upon his official recognition was the 
 merest accident All the student knew was 
 that a young Englishman was living in the 
 house ; he thought the young Englishman 
 might be lonely and might further his studies 
 in English ; that they might be in fact mutu- 
 ally useful, so he had called at the formal hour 
 in the formally correct dress, never worn by 
 him except in honour of some equally august 
 occasion. 
 
 Our friend remembered this punctilious 
 ceremony with some amusement when, as a 
 freshman some months later, he received a first 
 call from some other men of his own year. 
 His door one evening was loudly beaten and 
 opened almost before he could cry out " Come 
 in." Four jovial men pushed themselves arm- 
 in-arm into his room and announced that they 
 had come to see what kind of men lived on the 
 Kitchen Staircase. They were notable fellows 
 from a famous school who had come up, blues 
 in embryo, with immense reputations, and a 
 visit from them was an honour to anyone who, 
 like our friend, was without any reputation at 
 
 88 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 all. They commented freely on his pictures 
 and photographs ; and genially departed to the 
 rooms next door on the same kindly errand of 
 inspection. The difference of approach was 
 exceedingly characteristic, however similar in 
 essentials the young human animal of eighteen 
 or twenty years may in all countries be. 
 
 The stout and amiable student introduced 
 our friend to so many other students that very 
 soon he was sweeping off his hat with the best 
 of them, in the promenade along the main 
 street before Mittagsesscn, which he soon took 
 with P. H. (his new friend) and another 
 student in the Theaterkeller a little restaurant 
 underneath the theatre. There they gave you 
 a dinner sufficient to stay the hunger of a 
 student, that is to say, an enormous dinner, 
 for a mark a day, on condition that you took 
 wine on Sundays and informed the cook when 
 you would be absent. The room formed a 
 great circle, in the middle of which stood a 
 billiard table and a large musical box which 
 played waltzes when a pfennig was put into the 
 slot. The circumference was cut up into little 
 alcoves, according to the structural demands of 
 
 89 
 
OXFORD 
 
 the building, in each of which a table stood ; 
 and at one of these tables our friend quickly 
 came to feel very much at home. Often when 
 he sat in " hall " at Oxford, he used to think 
 of the little alcove. To hurry through " hall " 
 as quickly as possible was the feat ; and of 
 course as he lingered in his little alcove he 
 counted the days till he should be actually 
 living in college. Suffice it to say that he 
 enjoyed both immensely, just because of their 
 supreme differences. 
 
 P. H.'s programme for the day was a thing 
 of wonder. So wonderful indeed did it seem 
 to our friend that he tested the accuracy of its 
 execution. It stood every test nobly. P. H. 
 rose at seven-thirty a.m., dressed, and at eight 
 partook of much coffee and one roll. From 
 eight to twelve he worked at Old English or 
 Middle English, taking voluminous notes. At 
 twelve he sallied out for a turn down the Main 
 Street, which brought him to the Theaterkeller 
 punctually at twelve-thirty. There he re- 
 mained busy and without coffee until two, 
 when he strolled, necessarily slowly, through 
 the Park till three. At three he worked again 
 until eight ; then he supped and went four 
 nights in the week to a verein beer and songs. 
 He came home usually between the hours of 
 
 90 
 
MERTON STREET 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 two and three, but was up again punctually at 
 seven-thirty. On Sundays there was a varia- 
 tion. On Sundays he took exercise. He 
 would walk through the woods for thirty or 
 even forty miles, and in defiance of all laws of 
 condition awoke next morning neither tired 
 nor stiff. On one Sunday, in the same un- 
 changed dark suit, he played lawn tennis 
 furiously from eight in the morning till past 
 twelve. That shocked our friend, who was 
 fresh from a public school. He had no strict 
 sabbatical scruples, but he felt in his inmost 
 soul that if you played tennis you ought to 
 put on flannels, and that if you walked into the 
 country you ought not to wear the same suit 
 that you wore at a lecture. The total lack ot 
 any feeling for Tightness in dress shocked him ; 
 that is to say, he was forced to exercise a 
 strong effort of will not to tick his new friends 
 summarily off as " bad men," and to have done 
 with them. A sense of humour saved him. 
 It saved him again at Oxford when the cold 
 eye of criticism was fixed upon him, and he 
 knew his own costume in some way sinned 
 against conformity. Why shouldn't a man if 
 he likes wear a frock coat and brown boots ? 
 There is no proper answer. The indubitable 
 fact remains that he must not. Wear a stick in 
 
 91 
 
OXFORD 
 
 Oxford when sticks are not being carried, and 
 be sensitive enough to realise the feelings you 
 excite, then you will understand. But you 
 must be an undergraduate yourself; and that 
 perhaps makes the experiment too exacting. 
 
 P. H. added as a corollary to his astounding 
 programme that he was working now. And on 
 being pressed to be more lucid, he explained 
 that the year he had spent at Jena had been 
 devoted to the making of debts and to the 
 lighter side of student life. At Jena he had 
 been a corps-student. There was a world of 
 meaning in his wink at the gay past and his 
 sigh for the laborious present, but not enough 
 meaning for our friend, who plied him to be 
 more explicit, and eventually learned that the 
 advantages of a corps its club-house, its Mutze 
 (or club cap), its fetes chiefly depended upon 
 your pledge to fight a duel when called upon. 
 Quarrelsome bodies ? Not so. Not so at all. 
 The duels were arranged quite amicably. One 
 corps challenged another, and students from 
 either corps were drawn by lot as representa- 
 tives, and the lot decided the couples. Sup- 
 posing an imbecile were drawn against an 
 expert ? A shrug showed what bad fortune 
 the event was likely to prove for the imbecile. 
 Then it could be no exhibition of skill. Of 
 
 92 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 what was it supposed to be an exhibition ? Of 
 courage ; to test the calibre of a man. It was 
 a national institution. There followed a heated 
 argument on the nature of courage, an argument 
 that was personal and national and dangerous. 
 But the danger was avoided by a flat invitation 
 to witness a duel, and the invitation was gladly 
 accepted. Only amicable duels would be seen. 
 And duels that were not amicable ? Ah ! that 
 was a serious matter, in which honour was 
 concerned. The combatants were bare to the 
 waist, and only their eyes and necks were pro- 
 tected. A gesture of incredulity brought a 
 savage assertion of proof to be given at the 
 earliest opportunity. And how such a thing 
 could be proved should in due course be seen. 
 Meanwhile the duelling was to take place on 
 the next day but one, at eight o'clock in the 
 morning. 
 
 At six on a beautiful summer morning our 
 friend rose and dressed himself. Duelling was 
 against the law, and could not be held within 
 the precincts of the town. It took place at an 
 inn in a small village six miles distant. The 
 inn was so placed that it commanded a con- 
 veniently extensive view of the road from the 
 town ; a watch was kept, and in the event of 
 a raid from the authorities the alarm could be 
 
 93 
 
OXFORD 
 
 given so that when the Polizei arrived they 
 would find the most peaceful of breakfast 
 parties in happy progress and not a sword or 
 a spot of blood would be anywhere visible. 
 The raids of course were a matter of form. 
 The large eye of authority winked, a little 
 stupidly perhaps, at the duelling. 
 
 The road was long and dusty and hot. 
 The regular line of cherry-trees gave little 
 shade. Poverty was pestilential that made the 
 ten marks for a carriage impossible. At length 
 however they arrived, and a word admitted 
 them to a huge, barnlike room, full of students 
 smoking cigars and drinking beer. They 
 stood in little groups talking and laughing. 
 A sword was brought for our friend to feel. 
 The blade was unexpectedly sharp and cut the 
 skin of his thumb ; he had touched the edge 
 too clumsily. Then two students removed 
 their coats and were swathed like mummies 
 and prepared. Huge spectacles protected their 
 eyes ; their cheeks and heads were exposed. 
 One looked a young boy before the swaddling 
 process obscured him ; the other a nearly 
 middle-aged man. Probably, however, ten 
 years did not separate their ages. A circle was 
 formed ; the talk and laughter went gaily on. 
 The boy was obviously using all his will-power 
 
 94 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 to tighten the muscles of his legs and to laugh. 
 The elder man seemed unnaturally jaunty. He 
 tried to curl his moustache, forgetting how 
 thickly his hand was gloved. Two students, 
 masked and padded, stooping, held the com- 
 batants at the proper distance apart with out- 
 stretched swords. The combatants raised their 
 swords in the regulation attitude. Then there 
 was a moment's hush. One clash of the 
 swords. The talking and laughter grew louder 
 after cries of " Hiibsches Schmiss." Doctors, 
 dressed in white, smoking cigars, came forward 
 and dressed a cut in the boy's head. The smell 
 of iodoform became stronger than the smell of 
 the cigar smoke. Five minutes later there was 
 another moment's hush. The swords, however, 
 during this round did not clash : only the 
 boy's cheek was bleeding from a long cut. 
 The doctors came forward ; the dressing of the 
 wound (the two stitches, the cotton-wool, the 
 plaster) took just fifteen minutes, and the bout 
 was resumed. The swords clashed twice ; it 
 was a long bout, lasting a full second and a 
 quarter, and then a murmur of displeasure and 
 excitement ran through all the assemblage. 
 Our friend was at a loss to know the cause. 
 There was no work for the doctors ; only he 
 had seen the two stooping guardians of distance 
 
 95 
 
OXFORD 
 
 rise and strike back the swords of the fighters. 
 P. H. was at first too excited to notice an 
 amateur's questions. But what had happened 
 was simply this that the elder man had 
 flinched. The start of an inch backwards of 
 the head from the falling sword, disqualified ; 
 and though our friend had noticed no flinch of 
 any kind the sterner, warier judges had given 
 the victory to the boy who was being on all 
 sides warmly congratulated. He was un- 
 wrapped and put on his coat and cap. Again 
 our friend was shocked at the absence of the 
 feeling for dress. 
 
 The next pair were even more badly matched 
 to his novice's eye. One was an athlete, tall 
 and elastic, with the build of a centre-three- 
 quarter; the other was a little, fat man who, 
 when swathed, seemed without exaggeration 
 as broad as he was tall. Round in fact ; and 
 the neck protection pushed up to a prodigious 
 bulge the flesh of his chins and cheeks. It was 
 grotesque to see him take his place opposite his 
 lithe, strong opponent, and the sword-point 
 pressed against his chest to keep him the proper 
 distance from his opponent seemed grotesquely 
 unnecessary. Limply he held up his sword 
 and feebly swung it. But the doctors were 
 busy for nearly fifteen minutes with the rent in 
 
 96 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 his fat cheek. Fifteen minutes more to stanch 
 the bleeding of a scalp-wound, and when he 
 stood up for the third bout the blood squelched 
 in his boots. Our friend's manliness was tried 
 too highly by this noise, and by the pungent 
 smell of iodoform and by the dropping of the 
 poor little fat man's cheek cut open. He walked 
 through a wavering room to the fresh air 
 where on the flag-stones of a shrub-encircled 
 yard he fell flat in a faint ; and when he returned 
 to the room after two Cognacs the duelling was 
 over for that morning. The little fat man 
 and the other fighters were feted for the rest of 
 the day. Hats were swept off" very low to them, 
 as they triumphed down the Main Street at 
 midday, in deference to their honourable wounds 
 except the elder man who had flinched at 
 the boy's sword. His Mutze was taken from 
 him, and other direr penances were inflicted 
 before he might rejoin the corps. 
 
 3- 
 
 Of course our friend tried to moralise upon 
 the affair, both as he walked back, still quiver- 
 ing and weak-kneed at the sight of what 
 seemed nothing else than unskilful bloodshed, 
 and later as he sat and turned over in his mind 
 his experiences of human nature at Oxford and 
 
 97 7 
 
OXFORD 
 
 Gottingen. He was baffled. Not even the 
 quick-witted intruder could utter any cutting 
 ejaculation. He was completely baffled, as an 
 intelligent Chinaman must be the first time he 
 witnesses seventy thousand people watching 
 with breathless excitement twenty-two men 
 kicking an inflated, leather-protected bladder 
 about a field, gladly risking life and limb in its 
 pursuit. It was almost as sensible as modern 
 war. He was simply content to gape with 
 wonder, as one is frequently compelled to do 
 when face to face with what are called the 
 facts of human nature. The most extra- 
 ordinary thing is that each man by himself, if 
 he had the power, would immediately stop the 
 practice, but any given band of men together 
 would put themselves to considerable incon- 
 venience to continue and uphold what each 
 one severally in his heart condemned. The 
 intelligence of a crowd is equal to the lowest 
 common denominator of the individuals col- 
 lected the very lowest ; especially perhaps 
 when the crowd is composed of young men. 
 
 However, our friend, as is usual in cases of 
 strong indignation, shook himself and laughed. 
 His knees quickly regained their normal power 
 and he wisely enough, as he smiled to remem- 
 ber, shut his gaping mouth and went on living. 
 
 98 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 Nor were his duelling experiences at an end. 
 The proof, at which P. H. had darkly hinted, 
 that duels were fought among students to 
 satisfy injured honour, took place a few days 
 afterwards. One morning about twelve, he 
 was seated by arrangement negligently reading 
 a book and expectant in P. H.'s room, when 
 the little maid-of-all-work announced the visit 
 of a gentleman. A gentleman, moreover, 
 entered in full evening dress, and bowing 
 deeply referred to a regrettable incident of the 
 night before with many apologies for its occur- 
 rence. P. H. bowed more deeply, took the 
 words of apology out of his mouth, pooh- 
 poohed the whole affair with a kind of 
 courteous hauteur, and soon, with many com- 
 pliments and courtesies, the interview, amazing 
 in its undiluted seriousness, ended. 
 
 The fellow, it was explained, had long been 
 offensive to P. H., who on the previous evening 
 had allowed matters to come to a head at the 
 Kneipe y had taken offence, had slapped his face, 
 had challenged him. A duel would have been 
 fought unless a prompt and complete apology 
 had been given. That apology, in its full cere- 
 mony, had just been witnessed. He had, too, 
 the humour to add, with a twinkle in his eye 
 which up to that moment had been sternly 
 
 99 72 
 
OXFORD 
 
 grave, in harmony with the gravity of the pro- 
 ceedings, that the offender's examination, upon 
 which much depended, took place in a few 
 weeks and that it was a moral certainty he 
 would not fight But if he had not apolo- 
 gised ? Ah ! then the twinkle vanished. 
 
 And while he remembered this scene, as 
 our friend most vividly did remember it, 
 another scene came prominently into his mind, 
 thrusting everything else on one side. He was 
 walking through the streets of Oxford arm in 
 arm with a great friend with whom he had 
 been dining. Reserved this man was, taciturn 
 some wrongly said, and extremely conscientious. 
 This evening his reserve and his conscience were 
 lulled, and as they walked to his rooms through 
 the quadrangle (the moon shone on the old, 
 grey buildings, lending its own enchantment) 
 they felt simply happy together. His rooms 
 were on the ground floor ; they turned, with a 
 last look at the effect of moonlight on grey 
 stone, into a passage, stumbled a few steps in 
 the darkness, opened the door, fumbled for the 
 switch, clicked on the light and stood, stood 
 quite still looking at what the light revealed. 
 On the big round table, in the middle of the 
 room just under the light, in a heap were piled 
 
 indiscriminately his books, his pictures, his 
 
 100 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 cushions, his easy-chairs upside down ; on the 
 top of the pile, as the crown of the mischief, 
 was placed the coal-scuttle, inverted, the black 
 contents of which in lump and dust were 
 generously scattered over all his possessions. 
 There was nothing to be done, except labori- 
 ously to set the room to rights, and to sweep 
 up with a clothes-brush (the hearth-brush was 
 not stiff enough) as much of the coal-dust as 
 possible. One of four or five men (or all of 
 them) might have been responsible. Certain 
 high members of the college boat-club had 
 taken exception to the quiet, reserved man's 
 refusal to row in some boat, and had shown 
 their resentment in this strangely disgusting 
 manner. The justice or injustice of their re- 
 sentment did not seem to matter. As it hap- 
 pened, the man was perfectly justified in his 
 refusal. 
 
 But the memory of this occurrence, and of 
 one or two others, prevented our friend's feel- 
 ings about the duelling from running patrioti- 
 cally away with him. Though duelling did 
 not do away with such ragging, it was inclined 
 to foster a certain reverence for the individual 
 which in a community of young men was 
 wholesome. But between aspects of malice 
 and other absurdities there is very little to 
 
 101 
 
OXFORD 
 
 choose ; and there is less malice than at a first 
 sight seems probable. Look at spontaneity and 
 that will lead you farther towards the truth of 
 the matter. By its light apparent contradictions 
 no longer conflict. And spontaneity sang in 
 the German students. Their chief tradition 
 was the tradition of joy and light-heartedness. 
 Their pleasures were not organised. Their 
 games had not the stringent rules and enormous 
 seriousness of cricket and football and the rest 
 of it. They knew how to enjoy themselves. 
 Our friend found almost as many who had 
 their own theory of the meaning of the second 
 part of " Faust " as who threw a stone " like a 
 girl." 
 
 4- 
 
 However in his judicial middle age our 
 friend might look back and compare the advan- 
 tages and defects of the two systems, there was 
 no doubt at all that at the time he regarded his 
 stay at Gottingen as an interval less painful 
 than he had imagined between school and his 
 going up to Oxford. He never felt for a 
 moment that he was at a University. Oxford 
 or Cambridge (and to him Oxford) was the 
 only University in the world. Ever since he, 
 as a little boy in an Eton jacket, had visited a 
 
 102 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 big brother at Oxford during the half-term 
 holiday, Oxford had been the place of his 
 golden dreams. Fate had at first whisked into 
 the remote distance the hope of the dream's 
 fulfilment, so that, when a sudden turn of her 
 wheel made the dream an accomplished fact 
 dependent only upon his ability to pass a simple 
 examination, he awaited, breathless, the hideous 
 accident which alone could prevent his going 
 up. Responsions was passed. The time drew 
 nearer. No accident happened. All through 
 his sojourn at Gottingen, eventual residence in 
 Oxford and at the college in Oxford to which 
 he was most dearly attached loomed like the 
 rosiest of clouds on his horizon, and so brightly 
 that he could not look for long into its rosy 
 depths. No lover awaited the arrival of his 
 mistress with greater eagerness. And in our 
 friend's anticipation there was no fear and no 
 misgiving. In this he was unlike a lover. His 
 joy, as the time drew nearer and nearer, became 
 cumulative. His three years at Oxford was a 
 solid shining fact, behind which the uncertainty 
 of the future was entirely hidden. Circum- 
 stances may have made our friend's anticipatory 
 joy exceptional in its intensity. There are 
 doubtless many young men who look forward 
 
 to Eton and Christ Church or Winchester and 
 
 103 
 
OXFORD 
 
 New College as a sort of family institution, a 
 matter of course, like having enough to eat and 
 a comfortable bed to sleep on, rather a jolly 
 matter of course, but not at all a matter about 
 which it is necessary to get excited. There are, 
 strange as it may seem, other young men who 
 grudge their three or four years' residence at 
 Oxford as time wasted from the real business of 
 life, which is making their way in the world and 
 increasing their incomes and position. But just 
 as truly as these indifferent and clever ones exist, 
 does there exist a large number who, like our 
 friend, count the days till they can go up, and 
 spin out their time of residence as a child spins 
 out a sunny afternoon on the beach. They 
 drink in beauty and happiness, and all the things 
 that make life good, like the sunshine. And 
 very often, as modern life is arranged, it is the 
 only time in all their lives in which they are 
 able to do so. Precisely, say the Preachers of 
 Death, it unfits the youth of the nation for life, 
 which is a serious business. In other words, it 
 unfits them for the dreadful monotony of an 
 existence which is a dull parody of what life is 
 meant to be in a world where you can watch 
 the sun sparkling in a dancing, silver line of 
 light on a blue sea. At Oxford the conditions 
 of life are good and right. Friends and laughter 
 
 104 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 and work are within a man's grasp, and are not 
 too sorely outweighed and disqualified by care 
 and responsibility. There for a little while the 
 test of a man is not, as it will in the big cities 
 all too soon become, the amount of his bank- 
 balance. 
 
 He passed the entrance examination to the 
 college. The day came, when in order of 
 seniority he chose with other freshmen his 
 room. And at last the great day arrived on 
 which he began to unpack his belongings in 
 his own rooms, and made the acquaintance of 
 the head-porter, the junior porter, the college 
 messenger and the two scouts of his staircase. 
 Much anticipation did not lessen his delight, 
 and the strangeness of his surroundings only 
 made the delight a little tremulous. There 
 were so many things to do for the first time 
 and each he did a little fearfully, and with 
 great glee. The donning of his cap and gown, 
 the first meal in Hall, the first lecture, the first 
 time he came down the High from a walk and 
 turned into the porch of his own college, and 
 all the thousand and one little trivial things 
 that marked out the lines of what was to be 
 his life for three long years. Such joy leaves 
 its stamp for ever on the memory. And as 
 he sat remembering, our friend wandered in 
 
 P5 
 
OXFORD 
 
 thought again, as he had wandered that October 
 morning after his first breakfast alone in his 
 own room, having punctually kept, fully dressed 
 of course, his first " roller," all through the 
 grey colleges and green gardens ; the trees and 
 creepers were beginning to don their amber 
 and golden apparel of Autumn, red too and red- 
 brown and russet, and with all their brave 
 colours they seemed in league with the strug- 
 gling sunshine to scatter the cold, hovering 
 mist. They caught the drops of the mist and 
 transmuted them into every kind of precious 
 stone. And then slowly the mist gave way. 
 The sun shone gladly out. He remembered 
 that morning. That morning made him under- 
 stand the words of the Man of Laughter, who 
 said that great joy leaves a more enduring mark 
 than great sorrow, and that joy is the creative 
 power. " Set around you small, good, perfect 
 things. Their golden maturity healeth the 
 heart. The perfect teacheth one to hope." 
 The memory of that morning was a small, 
 good, perfect thing. 
 
 5- 
 
 The steps of entry into Oxford are more 
 formal than into Gottingen, though some col- 
 leges admit men for a time into residence who 
 
 106 
 
IFFLEY CHURCH 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 have not passed Responsions, the entrance 
 examination into the University, There are 
 degrees, as it were, in the intensity of member- 
 ship. A man can be a member of a college 
 without being a member of the University, and 
 a man can be a member of the University 
 without being a member of a college. But 
 such are exceptions. 
 
 The organisation of authority is simple and 
 effective. It resembles in many ways, though 
 on a bigger scale, the organisation of a public 
 school, in which the different houses are under 
 their own housemasters but are all under the 
 final jurisdiction of the headmaster. Greater 
 latitude is allowed to heads of colleges, and 
 they have greater powers, but the Vice-Chan- 
 cellor, who speaks for the University, has the 
 last word. He is elected, and is supported by 
 the proctor and junior proctors. The proctors 
 keep an eye upon the general morality of the 
 University, and there is a rumour, strongly 
 believed bv undergraduates, that they are assistevi 
 by a number of carefully disguised spies. An 
 old man \\ ho sold \valking-sticks was credited 
 with being such a spy. Certainly, however, 
 whether these spies exist or not, strange cases 
 have been known of men, who have spoken to 
 
 girls in the light-heartedness of youth being 
 
 10 7 
 
OXFORD 
 
 requested next morning to visit the proctor and 
 being warned by him that such conduct is not 
 in accordance with the statutes of the University. 
 This mystery lends spice to the little adventures, 
 which are bound to happen. Then the junior 
 proctors patrol the streets on certain evenings, 
 because no undergraduate is allowed to be out 
 after nine without his cap and gown. With 
 him walk two swift and burly rogues, called 
 bull-dogs. No one wears a cap and gown after 
 nine, unless he has been to the Balliol concert 
 on Sunday evening or is struck by a wave of 
 obedience and economy, so when you are coming 
 back from another college you are liable, if you 
 are unfortunate, to be stopped by these stout 
 ruffians. The junior proctor comes forward, 
 and politely touching his cap asks you for your 
 name and college, which he writes down in a 
 little book, and asks you to call upon him next 
 morning at nine. You do so, pay him five 
 shillings and depart. There was a music-hall 
 opened in our friend's time which the proctor 
 used on occasion to visit and thereby materially 
 increase the revenue of the University. It was 
 said that the music-hall authorities asked the 
 University authorities to intervene, as their 
 establishment was designed for the people of 
 Cowley rather than for the undergraduates. 
 
 108 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 And that may well have been. For on one 
 occasion a pantomime was being performed 
 the chief Babe in the Wood or Aladdin or 
 Jack sang " King Charles he was " on and on 
 to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, encouraging, 
 as is the comedian's wont, the audience to sing 
 with him. But he reckoned in this case with- 
 out the large number of 'Varsity men in the 
 audience. The words were simple and easily 
 mastered. The tune was familiar and catchy. 
 The audience answered only too well. They 
 roared it out like one man. They continued 
 to roar it out despite the efforts of the comedian 
 to go on with the pantomime. The curtain 
 was at length lowered. The manager came 
 before the curtain, and there was a moment's 
 silence, but directly he began to abuse the 
 audience, his words were drowned in the 
 terrible song. It was far too popular. The 
 lights were turned on. There was confusion. 
 At length the play proceeded, but the per- 
 formers were foolish enough to let their loss of 
 temper be apparent and the play in consequence 
 proceeded with difficulty. A better company 
 would have turned the interruption to trium- 
 phant account, but with that company it was 
 as funny and as cruel as youth alone knows 
 how to be. 
 
 109 
 
OXFORD 
 
 ' Anyone not in college by midnight is re- 
 ported by the porter, and is fined, unless his 
 delinquency is found to be graver than hour- 
 breaking, one sovereign. In consequence, as 
 the hour of midnight sounds, you are apt to 
 meet young men racing down the High and 
 to hear great wooden doors banged by im- 
 patient fists, eager to be inside before the hour 
 finishes striking and the great door is bolted. 
 Once he is inside, no authority exists to put 
 the undergraduate to bed, but the junior porter 
 brings a message from the dean to any room 
 in which there is too much noise. How much 
 is too much, depends upon the judgment of the 
 dean, or upon the immediate state of his nerves 
 or of his conscience, as the case may be. The 
 dean, moreover, bears in mind that repression 
 is apt to mean rebellion, and he is tactful. 
 The iron hand of authority is covered with the 
 softest of velvet gloves for many reasons, j 
 
 The Master of our friend's college was an old 
 man of reverent aspect who might on rare 
 occasions be seen hurrying through the quads 
 to his house, leaning slightly forward, a hand 
 behind his back. He preached in the college 
 chapel ; they were fine sermons. You dined 
 with him at stated intervals ; they were good 
 dinners. But the most extraordinary point 
 
 no 
 
IFFLEY ROAD 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 about him was that, with no apparent oppor- 
 tunity of knowing anything about anyone in 
 the college, he did, as a matter of magical fact, 
 possess an uncannily intimate knowledge of all 
 the men's characteristics. How he came by 
 the knowledge was a baffling mystery. It 
 must have been due to a tremendously developed 
 instinct, which was carefully concealed by its 
 owner. It was the exact opposite of the little 
 air of omniscience, which many a dean and 
 many a journalist wears like a false smile, and 
 which deceives not even the most inept. And 
 that is typical of the place. Just when you 
 are becoming exasperated with the empty con- 
 ceits and mannerisms of the prigs of learning 
 you suddenly happen upon the deep, real 
 thing in all its quiet and majestic strength. 
 No one on the wide earth is quite so detri- 
 mental as the prigs of learning know how 
 to be, and no one commands quite the same 
 depth of reverence as these learned, great 
 ones. 
 
 From the scouts to the dons and the dean 
 upwards to the Master the authority of a college 
 is deliberately organised with pains that are 
 unknown to a German University. But it is 
 extraordinary how much the authorities are 
 able to recognise and countenance without loss 
 
 in 
 
OXFORD 
 
 of dignity, and always the claims of Bacchus 
 over youth such is the comic prevalence of 
 custom -are kindly allowed, while the claims 
 of his sister deity are sternly denied, and her 
 little son Cupid, unless demurely clad, cap and 
 gown and breeches complete, for such high 
 festivals as Eights Week, is severely suspect. 
 Who knows, however, what little entries the 
 sly 'boy makes and with what results? Occa- 
 sionally too one has been forcibly reminded of 
 Juvenal's pertinent inquiry, " Quis custodiet 
 ipsos custodes ?" though the lives led by the 
 majority are almost too far beyond moral 
 reproach. But to Bacchus many a libation is 
 poured with the full approval of the Olympians. 
 It is a significant fact upon which a folio 
 treatise could be written, so exemplary is it of 
 the national character, that a man who was 
 caught kissing a girl, however pretty, on Mag- 
 dalen Bridge on successive May mornings would 
 run grave risk of being sent down, though the 
 Master and all the dons will sit quietly, if 
 perhaps a little timorously, in their rooms, while 
 half the college is more or less uproariously 
 under the sway of Bacchus. Leave is asked and 
 easily obtained for a bump supper or a " twenty - 
 firster"; but leave is never, never asked by the 
 votaries of his sister goddess. Our friend would 
 
 112 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 not have noticed this odd discrepancy, so natural 
 did it appear to him, had not a German he 
 knew commented upon it. At the moment of 
 comment he stoutly maintained, feeling the 
 suspicion of a sneer lurking in the comment, 
 the Tightness of the distinction, but it remained 
 in his mind and slowly spread out vistas for 
 thought to traverse, and often over very difficult 
 ground. 
 
 He thought, for instance, of the long summer 
 afternoons and evenings which he had spent 
 dancing at Maria Springs and walking in the 
 woods among which it stands. Maria Springs 
 is five miles from Gottingen at the foot of 
 wooded hills. There is a cafe and a large 
 wood-planked platform has been erected for 
 dancing. The beauty of the place has not been 
 spoiled. Rough terraces have been cut up the 
 hill-side, on which are benches and tables- 
 There, on Wednesdays, the professors' daughters, 
 the elite of the town, and many students come 
 about tea-time ; on Sundays the Madchen and 
 village girls come and many more students. 
 On both days there is the same lack of cere- 
 mony. You sweep off your hat to anybody 
 with a Darf ich, and if she consents away 
 you waltz, and she usually does consent. Every- 
 one is happy and laughing. And on Sundays 
 
 113 8 
 
OXFORD 
 
 there is even more laughter and everyone is 
 even happier. 
 
 Perhaps it is owing to the eye of authority 
 which he feels fixed on him in his wildest 
 moments, that the undergraduate is more in- 
 clined than the student to be self-conscious in 
 his pleasures. And then too he has on all 
 occasions to cope with a demon, who does not 
 so terribly bother his brother, the student. 
 That demon is the " right thing," which it is 
 essential he should not only know but do. 
 What the " right thing " exactly is, it takes 
 more than instinct to tell you, and yet instinct 
 most infallibly tells you when you have done 
 the wrong thing. It is nothing definite enough, 
 this right thing, to be expressed in definite 
 words. It hovers in the air, and forms a perfect 
 halo round some men, the light from which 
 seems to show up the failings of other men. It 
 is an attitude which you ought to take ; it 
 controls your movements in a room, your nod 
 at meeting an acquaintance, your speech, your 
 opinions, your tweed jacket and the buttons on 
 it ; it throws a shadow over every detail of 
 your everyday existence, from your conduct in 
 the common bath-room to your behaviour when 
 unjustly sconced in Hall. Our friend, remem- 
 bering this demon the foster-child of long 
 
 114 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 years of public school and 'Varsity tradition, 
 who changes his attack from year to year- 
 wondered that he had emerged from the ordeal 
 imposed by his pervading and awful power as 
 successfully as he had managed to do. This 
 demon has it every way. For if you submit 
 too closely to his mandates they cling to you, 
 like habits, and your future life is ruined by 
 the charge of possessing the Oxford manner. 
 There certainly the student scored, At Gottin- 
 gen that demon existed only as a lustiger Geselle 
 who shouted Wtilst du alles mitthun ? and led 
 the way, dancing like a will-o'-the-wisp, to the 
 most fantastic fun. 
 
 6. 
 
 That word " twenty-firster " roused many 
 twinkling memories in our industrious friend's 
 mind. Now it happens that men usually go 
 into residence when they are about nineteen 
 years old, so that in their second year they 
 often come of age and celebrate the event by 
 a dinner-party, which is sometimes held in 
 their rooms in college, but more often at a 
 club or a restaurant. To the dinner the man's 
 most intimate friends are invited to the number 
 of twelve or sixteen, but promiscuous invita- 
 tions are given to all and sundry to look in at 
 
 115 82 
 
OXFORD 
 
 the " after." The guests assemble in immacu- 
 late evening-dress, and at first, under the in- 
 fluence of the familiar demon, are embarrassed 
 to meet each other in the ceremonial garb of a 
 function, and the position remains difficult 
 until champagne, which most properly flows, 
 makes the difficult places smoother. It is 
 helped by the photograph, which is taken as 
 they sit round the table. The flashlight pro- 
 cess on these occasions is apt to produce thick 
 fumes, and on odours the conversation starts 
 and grows to wit and animation. But with 
 the end of dinner the fun begins to be furious. 
 The dress coats of the diners are changed for 
 blazers and the " after " begins. The centre 
 of the room is cleared ; men waltz happily 
 together ; songs are sung ; things happen. One 
 was young then. Ye Gods, how young ! Our 
 friend sighed, but his sigh soon turned to a 
 chuckle at remembered absurdities. One espe- 
 cially. On one of these occasions, just when a 
 mad gallop had stopped, and all the men were 
 gasping for breath in every stage of dress and 
 undress, there came into the room a man fault- 
 lessly dressed in dittoes. He could not im- 
 mediately catch the hilarious note of the party, 
 though he was warmly welcomed by the host ; 
 and he stood by the mantelpiece rather awk- 
 
 116 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 vvardly. The order of his clothes and hair was 
 in too great contrast to the disorder of the 
 room and its occupants, and prevented him 
 from feeling at ease. One of the diners (he 
 came from another college) was just sober 
 enough to realise the awkwardness of the 
 man's position, and made his way in a bee-line 
 across the room to his side. There he stood 
 smiling at him. Then he carefully said, " Hullo, 
 I always wanted to know you/' and still smiling 
 most innocently in his face, gently tapped the 
 ashes of a large tobacco pipe out on the top of 
 the immaculate head. The result was idioti- 
 cally funny. It made the whole room shout 
 with laughter, and the memory of it forced 
 our friend to continue chuckling, even after 
 the intruder had pointed out what a disgusting 
 thing it was for one man to do to another. 
 That was not the point. The look of surprise 
 in the faces of the two men. ... At length 
 the intruder was obliged to smile, when he 
 learned how speedily the damage was repaired 
 with a hair-brush and how immediately the 
 immaculate man entered into the very thick of 
 the party. But for that occurrence he might 
 have remained in the cold, who knows how 
 long, and perhaps have gone away cheerless to 
 spend the evening at work in a lonely room. 
 
 117 
 
OXFORD 
 
 But these memories were mere " gurglings 
 of triumphant jollity/' Like escapades, they 
 were better to remember than to experience. 
 They helped to jog pleasantly that amiable, 
 foolish desire, common to most men, of being 
 able to think with a pregnant head-shake, 
 "Ah ! what a fellow I was then !" They were 
 mere flashes on the surface. The real substance 
 lay much deeper, and was more intangible, 
 like the difference between jollity and joy. A 
 conglomeration of little things, each minute 
 enough and unimportant enough in itself, made 
 up the wonderful substance. There was not 
 one thing which stood out and could be held 
 up as the chief thing, like bathing or paddling 
 on a seaside holiday or building castles in the 
 sand. It was more than the opportunity of 
 friendship, more than the long afternoons and 
 evenings in early summer in a canoe on the 
 Upper River, moving noiselessly through the 
 water on a level with fields golden with king- 
 cups and buttercups, from which larks rose 
 singing into the dancing blue sky ; it was more 
 than the late nights of talk and quiet reading ; 
 more than the long walks over the hills and the 
 return to one's own room in the old grey college; 
 more than the laughter and the fun and the 
 lectures and the meetings of various societies, 
 
 nS 
 
FROM? WITHIN 
 
 the tea-parties, the coffee-parties, the college 
 meetings in the Junior Common Room (as the 
 J.C.R. is never called), the wines, the games 
 it was all these things and far more, far more, 
 that made those days so memorably happy as 
 they were. Where to find in thought the 
 secret of that life's insuperable charm, was 
 sufficiently difficult ; to catch the elusive secret 
 and chain it with words was impossible. 
 
 " Simple enough," quoth the intruder. " You 
 were young and foolish. You are middle-aged 
 and sentimental. Would you now, honestly, if 
 you had the chance, live through those days 
 again ?" 
 
 And our friend was obliged in honesty to 
 confess that he would not. But that, he argued, 
 proved nothing, certainly did not prove that 
 the dark side of the picture was more real than 
 the bright. It seldom is, as a matter of fact, 
 in spite of your modern realist's asseverations 
 to the contrary. Your modern realist, bless 
 his kindly soul, is apt to air his megrims and 
 tempers in order that his amiability and his 
 affections may shine the more brightly in his 
 family circle. You are inclined to expect some 
 malignant, truculent personality to be lurking 
 behind a fierce, destructive work, some bitter 
 attack on women, or some treacherous, dreary 
 
 119 
 
OXFORD 
 
 masterpiece in drab. What do you almost 
 invariably find ? No surly fellow, be sure, but 
 a smiling, sensitive creature, longing for love ; 
 and in your simplicity you may be inclined to 
 think that his work would be better and truer 
 and bigger and more alive if it were to contain 
 a little, just a little, of his own inherent good- 
 heartedness, and a few, only a few, of his smiles. 
 But he will still be for ever feeling that he is 
 the symbol of the wrath of God to a sluggish 
 generation ; and moreover, joy that is to say, 
 the spirit of affirmation it is far more difficult 
 to express and takes a much bigger man to 
 express, than gloom that is to say, the spirit 
 of negation. 
 
 " And Oxford ?" sneered the intruder at our 
 friend's wandering. 
 
 Then our friend lost his temper. 
 
 " I don't know," he shouted, " and I don't 
 care. This I do know. I was happy there. 
 So I learned instinctively that life was good if 
 you knew how to live it. And by Heaven ! I 
 believe that's the best thing a boy can learn. 
 Joy teaches him to mould life. Joy's twin 
 sister is grief. But indifference, pettiness, 
 miserableness, envy, sneering, are not of her 
 family. Joy knows not those poisoners of the 
 wells of Life." 
 
 120 
 
MARTYRS' MEMORIAL 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 " Good," replied the intruder ; and then to 
 our friend's amazement the wild fellow flung 
 his arms above his head and vehemently shouted 
 again and again, " Hurrah ! for the power of 
 joy ! Death to the Preachers of Death !" 
 
 7- 
 
 " I may take it then that the Union is not 
 a home for destitute dons ?" said the persistent 
 middle-aged woman who had buttonholed our 
 kind-hearted friend. " I know now that the 
 House is Christ Church, but I had got it so 
 firmly into my poor head that the Union must 
 be some kind of very intellectual poor-house, 
 that the cold words of my guide-book, stating 
 it is a Debating Society open to all members of 
 the University, graduate or undergraduate, really 
 seem to be without meaning. What with read- 
 ing the Minority Poor Law Report and one 
 thing and another, I am obliged to think it 
 must be a Workhouse ; or why is it called the 
 Union ?" 
 
 Our friend explained that it was a large 
 club, where, after paying your subscription, you 
 could write letters for nothing, obtain novels 
 and books from a library, dine, and if you liked, 
 debate Having given his explanation as 
 
 121 
 
OXFORD 
 
 brusquely as courtesy permitted, he strode off 
 with an abstracted look on his face, fearful lest 
 he might be sucked down again into the whirl- 
 pool of another outpouring. 
 
 Certainly, the Union was a great institution, 
 he thought, for those who desired to read 
 modern novels or to become members of Parlia- / 
 ment. It was the nursery of many a politician ; 
 and Oxford should certainly be proud of such 
 a nursery, where so many statesmen had been 
 suckled. Somehow it had never attracted our 
 friend, as it ought to have attracted him. 
 Perhaps it was not the dreary place it then 
 seemed to him. Perhaps it would have been a 
 good thing for him to have joined it and cul- 
 tivated the art of rhetoric and public persuasion. 
 He had been daunted too easily by a sad experi- 
 ence at the College Debating Society. 
 
 The sad experience was this. Late one Satur- 
 day evening a man, senior to him by one epoch- 
 making year's residence, and President of the 
 Society, had entered his room in a state of 
 distress. There must be a meeting next evening, 
 and he must have an opposer for his motion. 
 Every note of entreaty was sounded from 
 personal obligation, which did not exist to the 
 right proportion, to public spirit and the good 
 of the D.O.C. (that is, the Dear Old College). 
 
 122 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 Our friend had weakly yielded, and had vivid 
 dreams of making an impassioned oration with 
 overwhelming effect. But the day dawned and 
 the evening drew on, and the moment came 
 when the proposer cheerfully resumed his seat. 
 He rose on unsteady knees, and embarked 
 bravely. The first three sentences were short 
 and he delivered them effectively ; but the 
 fourth sentence was long and grew longer and 
 wound its coils round him like a large snake, 
 strangling him. He tried to unwind himself 
 by beginning again, which only made the 
 muddle worse, and at last he was compelled, 
 amidst cheers, ingloriously to sit down, com- 
 forted only by the thought of his delight if 
 the minister of his childhood had dried up in 
 this way at the opening of a forty minutes' 
 discourse. Those dreadful moments of en- 
 tanglement had prevented him from entering 
 the Union without an unpleasant sensation of 
 sinking in the pit of his stomach. He could 
 not sit through any debate without feeling him- 
 self in the grip of a sinister power, luring him 
 on to speak. Faintness at the prospect of 
 speeches drove him out, on the rare occasions 
 of his attendance, directly after private business 
 was ended. It was amusing to hear the presi- 
 dent parrying the absurd questions that it is the 
 
 123 
 
OXFORD 
 
 custom to thrust at him at that period of the 
 proceedings. 
 
 But Ladies' Day in Eights Week is the field- 
 day for the president. Men sit up late many 
 nights beforehand racking their brains to invent 
 dreadful questions to bring down the laughter 
 of the fair visitors upon him. One president, a 
 man of cunning, devised a scheme to outwit the 
 baiters. He himself made up beforehand two 
 questions, to which he had prepared brilliant 
 and crushing replies, and asked a friend, with 
 whom he, being in his fourth year, lodged, to 
 be so very kind as to ask them on the great day. 
 Certainly ; on one condition that a third 
 question would be allowed. Of course, of 
 course, of course. The president acquiesced 
 and was happy. He practised spontaneity, so 
 that his capital replies might come out natur- 
 ally as though on the spur of an inspired 
 moment ; he sang himself to sleep on the night 
 before the eventful evening, dreamed of his 
 triumph and awoke with a glad laugh. He 
 was seen skirt-dancing with his little gown in 
 the J.C.R. ; he leant back at meals and slapped 
 his knees in merry anticipation. The great 
 hour at length arrived ; the hall was packed ; 
 with difficulty, as he sat in the presidential 
 chair, he kept a serious face and checked the 
 
 124 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 rising, preliminary chuckles. The first question 
 was duly asked ; and the house cheered the 
 admirable answer. The second question was 
 duly asked ; and the house roared applause at 
 the incomparable retort. Then amidst a listen- 
 ing silence the questioner rose, cleared his throat 
 and in a cruelly distinct voice said, " Mr. 
 President, what was the third question you 
 asked me to ask you ?" The house looked per- 
 plexed ; then slowly the full significance of the 
 dreadful inquiry was understood, and there was 
 long, tumultuous laughter. The president's 
 scarlet face was seen. His words were not 
 heard, and a memorable private business came 
 to its conclusion. 
 
 The Union is, numerically at any rate, by 
 far the most important club in the University. 
 But the ribbon of social life is The Club. That 
 is the happy island to which the Bird leads the 
 Blue. You do not put up for membership. 
 An invitation to join drops from heaven upon 
 you, and the invitation is an immense honour, 
 to which everyone in his heart aspires, as men 
 aspire to a knighthood. Its other name one 
 bates one's breath to mention it, like a profana- 
 tion, as though one were to call a Bishop by 
 his Christian name its other name is Vincent's. 
 Of its sacred precincts our friend knew nothing, 
 
 125 
 
OXFORD 
 
 and he was sure that it must have been calumny 
 that suggested it was the dullest place in Oxford. 
 A sort of cheerful little sister to this dignity 
 is the Gridiron Club, known as the Grid, select 
 without being too select. Here our friend 
 spent some of the happiest evenings in his life, 
 and here he had the best breakfast, after an 
 early morning ride over Headington Hill, that 
 he had ever enjoyed. So as he walked along 
 the High past the Cornmarket he looked up 
 wistfully at its long windows, and wondered 
 whether the present generation were enjoying 
 themselves as much as he had done. One 
 evening especially over a bottle of Lafitte . . . 
 that man had a genius for friendship . . . 
 
 8. 
 
 But the intruder jogged his elbow with an 
 admonitory " Come, come, come !" scattering 
 sad thoughts of the mysterious separating in- 
 fluences of life with his sharp jog, and suggested 
 that it was about time in a disquisition upon 
 the undergraduate's life to treat in some detail 
 the examinations and work, the serious side, 
 which would be uppermost in the mind of the 
 careful parent. So our friend armed his pen 
 with a new nib and his heart with new courage 
 and with a sigh proceeded. 
 
 126 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 In Germany the system is superior. Your 
 professor gives you a subject upon which 
 nothing has been written and on that subject 
 you write a treatise, as it is called, on which 
 you quietly work for a year or so. You send it 
 in due course, go through the ordeal of a 
 terrific viva, in which the object is (as it should 
 be) not to find out the extent of your ignorance, 
 but the extent of your knowledge, and you 
 become a doctor. 
 
 At Oxford everything is done by competi- 
 tive examination, from which, it must be 
 owned, our friend was physiologically averse. 
 He sympathised deeply with the man who, 
 after working for three years at his subject, was 
 so unmanned (at the supreme moment) by the 
 cold rows of wooden desks that he sat for four 
 frightful minutes before blank sheets and then 
 fled to the South of France and left the Uni- 
 versity in consequence without taking a degree. 
 
 There is no subject on which examination 
 papers are not set, and the papers vary in 
 searching intensity according as you feel 
 equipped with brains and energy sufficient to 
 face an Honour School or to slip through a 
 Pass School ; but in the latter alternative the 
 gates of some colleges, such as Balliol, are 
 closed against you. Most colleges like their 
 
 127 
 
OXFORD 
 
 men to take at least one Honour School, unless 
 their social standing or athletic ability makes 
 them desirable for other reasons. A Blue is as 
 efficacious as a First to procure a man a good 
 mastership, games being rightly considered of 
 extreme importance in a boy's upbringing. 
 Much sarcasm is expended on this point, as 
 though the fact that a man had been able to 
 assimilate a large quantity of Greek or Latin 
 or philosophy made it likely that he would 
 have the power of imparting that knowledge 
 to a class of boys. The teacher is born not 
 made ; he is, in other words, an artist, and the 
 school of pedagogy is seeing to it that he has 
 the chance of learning the technique of his ark 
 Mais revenons a nos moutons. A man usually 
 takes two years for his Moderations (Litteras 
 Humaniores need them) and two years for his 
 Finals ; and if he is going to be up only three 
 years, he takes Pass Moderations and Honours 
 in his Finals, be they a branch. of Science or 
 Mathematics or Law or History or English 
 Language and Literature, or Greats, which 
 perhaps is the most distinctive Oxford examina- 
 tion. Greats is well-named. For it embraces 
 a knowledge of Western Philosophy and Greek 
 and Roman History. Men who are anxious 
 to go into the Home or Indian Civil Service 
 
 128 
 
ST-PETER-IN-THE-EAST 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 and to whom the age limit is kind, usually 
 pass a year in London at a cramming establish- 
 ment, and of course everyone who has passed 
 into the Indian Civil Service is sent up to one 
 of the 'Varsities to study riding and his Oriental 
 languages. 
 
 " Get on, get on !" growled the intruder ; 
 but our friend, like a dog on a lead, stiffened 
 his paws and declined to budge. The subject 
 appeared to him not only dull, but unim- 
 portant. However serious an affair an examina- 
 tion might be to certain men, the importance 
 of examinations in the life of Oxford was little. 
 Even the man who had gained two Firsts and 
 a Fellowship had not gained in them the 
 chiefest good that was to be gained at the 
 place. That was not the most golden apple 
 which the kind mother had it in her power to 
 bestow, though that was probably the best 
 material gift. He could not find words to 
 express the most golden apple. But he felt 
 instinctively that he himself had been given 
 something more precious than any post could 
 be, however good and however fixed the income 
 from it might be ; and he even went the sen- 
 timental length of feeling that no one who 
 used the place for furthering his material ends 
 
 could get what he had got. And he continued 
 
 129 9 
 
 
 
OXFORD 
 
 to feel this in spite of the snorts of the intruder. 
 The inestimable value of Oxford was that in 
 the rushing of modern life, rushin to that is mis- 
 termed advance and mistaken for vitality, it 
 remained a place of quiet breathing, a beautiful 
 place : that in these days of quick cleverness 
 and journalism and hurried notions and crazes 
 that masquerade as ideas, there remained a 
 place where deep questions might still be treated 
 in the deep deliberate way which any reverence 
 for them demands. 
 
 " Anything is better than sleepy indiffer- 
 ence," . . . but our friend put his hand over 
 the intruder's mouth and went on with his 
 line of thought until he wrote down with 
 enthusiasm that there you might learn, if you 
 would, how to tackle a big subject for yourself 
 with the big reverence that there you might 
 learn how to learn ; and no person or place or 
 power can do more for a man than that. 
 
 9. 
 
 Serious people should always be treated with 
 suspicion, and never with greater suspicion 
 than when they hold forth, as is their wont, 
 against the predominance of games. Careful 
 inquiry should be made into their amusements, 
 
 130 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 and if they have none their opinions must go 
 to the wall as the opinions of bad artists in life. 
 The inquir y should be careful, for certain deeply 
 serious persons have private games which are 
 more ludicrous and more entertaining than 
 cricket or football or even bridge or golf, and 
 over these private games they fiercely enjoy 
 themselves. And just as there are people too 
 serious against games, so there are people too 
 serious about games, too serious especially after 
 the game is finished. And it is, after all, the 
 seriousness, whichever way it works, that is 
 the abominable blight. There are so few sub- 
 jects about which one does not learn most 
 through laughter, one's self for instance. Those 
 stock-jokes, however, love and alcohol, are ex- 
 ceptions ; the one should be treated with long 
 seriousness, the other with swift severity. So 
 many lives have been wrecked by their misuse 
 and could be brightened by their right use that 
 for a generation or two time for a little serious 
 thought to understand them might be perhaps 
 spared from less enthralling things. 
 
 So mused our friend, as he brooded over 
 'Varsity Matches which he had seen played, 
 in a mood serious enough to arouse the deepest 
 suspicion, had not enthusiasm glowed under- 
 neath his gravity. And certainly there is no 
 
 131 92 
 
 
 
OXFORD 
 
 game, except perhaps marbles or hop-skotch, 
 in which teams from the rival Universities do 
 not compete. Cricket is a good game none 
 better ; but our friend after one experiment 
 finally decided that it was not possible to watch 
 cricket in a top-hat and tail-coat, and that he 
 must be content in future to watch the Aus- 
 tralians in comfort. The most exciting con- 
 test was to our friend the Rugby Football 
 Match, which is played at Queen's Club on 
 the Wednesday or Saturday after term ends. 
 Whether Rugby is a better game than Asso- 
 ciation is uncertain, but it is quite certain that 
 Rugby is a better game to watch, unless tight 
 scrums are in fashion and the ground is wet. 
 More happens. There is a greater variety of 
 attack. Any moment the surprising may change 
 the aspect of the game. The whole body's 
 agility is demanded. It is a fine sight to see a 
 three-quarters brought down when he is at full 
 speed, clean and low by the full-back, a still 
 finer to see him swerve and score between the 
 posts, and finest to see him pass in the nick of 
 time, almost as he is tottering, to the backer- 
 up, who races in. One match especially, as is 
 generally the case, lived in his memory and the 
 facts had probably grown in bouquet by being 
 kept like wine. On this occasion Cambridge 
 
 132 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 had, as the papers say, established a winning 
 lead. So much so that certain Cambridge men, 
 among whom our friend was sorely sitting, 
 yawned and thought they had better go out 
 before the crush. It was all over, easily over, 
 except the shouting ; they'd expected Oxford 
 College would have put up a better game. 
 But those forwards . . . ! and certainly the 
 dark blue forwards seemed non-existent, a set 
 of strays, that never even formed up. Suddenly 
 however, the dark blue half, known with accu- 
 racy as the Pocket Hercules, was inspired. He 
 nipped the ball up from the very feet of the 
 Cambridge pack, handed the pack off like 
 one man, and bolted. The Cambridge three- 
 quarters were so surprised that they stared 
 during the second he took to run through 
 them ; the full-back brought him heavily down, 
 but not before he had hurled the ball across to 
 the wing three-quarter who ran in and scored 
 between the posts. The goal was kicked. 
 Rather a good individual effort ; pity they let 
 him in, commented the Cantabs, who sat round 
 our friend. The ball was kicked off, and the 
 Oxford forwards took heart of grace sufficient 
 to form up and show how immeasurably weaker 
 they were. They were hustled about the field. 
 
 But to the Pocket Hercules a little matter like 
 
 133 
 
OXFORD 
 
 that was immaterial. All he wanted was a 
 clear sight of the ball which he in three- 
 quarters of a minute got, his forwards having 
 again disappeared, pushed presumably into 
 space. The ball was at the feet of the front 
 rank of Cambridge forwards who had decided 
 to dribble through and score quietly on their 
 own. It was not to be. The Pocket Hercules 
 made another magical plunge, picked up the 
 ball as he leapt bang through the lot of them, 
 upset with his impetus the amazed half-back 
 into whom he landed, and like a madman ran, 
 feinting to pass, right down the field and scored 
 ten yards from the touch-line. The kick would 
 at no time have been easy and was under the 
 circumstances extremely difficult. It failed. 
 Three minutes remained for play. They played. 
 They played like demons; but the Pocket 
 Hercules outdemoned the devil, and he started 
 a movement (football and political parlance at 
 times overlap) which ended in a dark blue 
 three-quarter galloping in between the posts. 
 The winning goal was kicked and the whistle 
 sounded. The Cambridge men, who sat round 
 our friend, he smiled to remember, had not 
 been able to swear, not even softly under their 
 breaths, and our friend himself after five minutes' 
 stern applause had only voice enough to whisper 
 
 134 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 for an hour afterwards. Perhaps the beautiful 
 embroidery, which memory can so cunningly 
 bestow on facts, is the cause of the repetition, 
 frequent among elder men (to the silent fury 
 of the youngsters), of the phrase " Ah ! those 
 were the good old times." And the young 
 one deserved his evening's unpopularity when 
 he ventured to answer such a pious ejaculation 
 with a sigh and the flippant, " And ah ! for 
 these the better new ones." 
 
 10. 
 
 And why, the intruder was heard to growl, 
 was not this enthusiasm directed to higher 
 than physical things ? And thereby proved 
 himself a shallow-pate. It is in the nature 
 of higher things to stalk singly on their way. 
 They can never be organised and never be 
 popular. Brotherhood, when organised, be- 
 comes something else. Moreover, a young 
 man's body at twenty is fitter than it ever has 
 been or ever will be to grapple with football ; 
 whereas a young man's mind at twenty is far 
 from being fit to grapple with the problems of 
 life and art. He is groping, or should be ; for 
 nothing is more perilous than a premature 
 development. The very accuracy of the old 
 young man's knowledge of some things trips 
 
OXFORD 
 
 him into the abysmal error of thinking he 
 knows all about everything. Then he loses 
 reverence, and almost inevitably becomes em- 
 bittered, and an embittered man of brains is an 
 encumbrance. So it is the custom of youth to 
 be shy of the things which really matter to 
 them especially in company. It is a proper 
 custom, and one which, like many another 
 good custom, can very easily be overdone and 
 become mischievous. 
 
 Our friend remembered one instance of this 
 enthusiasm, which he had completely shared. 
 It occurred in a strange man of his year, who 
 was apt to be rather aggressively unconven- 
 tional in his views (none the worse on that 
 account) and who had a passion for poetry. 
 He stirred up other men to meet in various 
 rooms once a fortnight for the purpose of read- 
 ing poetry aloud. Several meetings took place 
 with fair success, until a silent man, who spoke 
 with a very soft voice, was induced to read, 
 and chose beforehand, as the practice was, his 
 poem, which happened to be " Tithonus." It 
 came first on the programme at the meeting. 
 Coffee was taken, as usual, before the proceed- 
 ings, and then everyone settled themselves very 
 solemnly in their chairs (and very comfortably) 
 to listen. The requisite hush for the reading 
 
 136 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 was a little prolonged by the reader's hesita- 
 tion, but he found his place, and began. He 
 began to read in such a stentorian voice, " The 
 woods decay, the woods decay," that the con- 
 trast to his own gentle-speaking voice was too 
 great a surprise for his audience. Sides shook 
 to aching in suppressed mirth. Then a yell 
 of laughter broke up the proceedings, which 
 ended, to the exultation of the Philistine, in 
 a free cushion-fight. 
 
 Less embryonic clubs and societies, based 
 on the undergraduate's enthusiasm for learning, 
 exist in vast numbers, where papers are read 
 and discussed upon literature, art, politics, 
 philosophy, and every imaginable subject. The 
 Oxford University Dramatic Society has a big 
 and deserved reputation. The Musical Club 
 makes Tuesday evenings memorable. The 
 Horace Club publishes its Book of Poems, 
 bound in neat white vellum. . . . Papers spring 
 into being and flourish during the 'Varsity life 
 of their originators or even longer. 
 
 The classic example is 'The Spirit Lamp, of 
 which Oscar Wilde was the genie. The first 
 number appeared on Friday, May 6, 1892 
 twelve slight printed pages, which were worth 
 their price of sixpence. It is the smallest and 
 the wittiest paper that has ever been published 
 
OXFORD 
 
 at the price. The Editorial, addressed to 
 Members of the University, set forth its aims. 
 " We offer to all and sell to our readers only a 
 Periodical combining the advantages of good 
 Print, good Grammar, and good Intentions. . . . 
 In a University like this a paper should not, 
 we think, aim at Originality. Truthfulness, 
 Modesty and general Solidity are the virtues it 
 may be expected to realise. We shall therefore 
 be sparing of News, Invective and Puffs Poeti- 
 cal. To divulge an aim is to put a premium 
 upon failure ; otherwise we should hasten to 
 add that to be Typical rather than Topical is 
 our highest aspiration. It cannot be under- 
 stood too early, nor repeated too often, that the 
 views of the Editor ... are profoundly Un- 
 political, Unsocial, Illiterate and Unathletic. 
 . . . His one desire is to deal (as fairly as 
 possible) with the public, and to establish a 
 new paper on a sound financial basis. An 
 efficient staff has been engaged and the con- 
 duct of The Spirit Lamp has been distributed 
 in four departments, viz., (i) Mild Criticism, 
 (2) Really Sensible Articles, (3) Philosophy, 
 (4) Other Light Literature. ... It should 
 be stated at the outset that The Spirit Lamp 
 fears no kind of competition. When we have 
 added that we appeal to the enlightened, the 
 
 138 
 
'flsv 
 
 OKIE!, 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 grounds of our self-confidence will be obvious 
 to all." 
 
 At first it appeared once a week and the 
 contributions were anonymous. Then it ap- 
 peared in greater bulk and the name of the 
 editor Lord Alfred Douglas was printed on 
 the cover. It was really alive and often really 
 amusing, though few things in it came up to 
 the standard of its editorial. Those were the 
 times when the pose of desperate wickedness 
 was more in fashion than ever before or since, 
 and in 'The Spirit Lamp that funny thing, 
 known as decadence, finds its most perfect 
 expression. To youth everything is pardonable. 
 
 " Many a mad magenta minute 
 Lights the lavender of life ; 
 Keran-Happuch at her spinet 
 Psalms the scarlet song of strife : 
 Keran-Happuch is my wife." 
 
 Serious verse in the same strain is not so 
 effective, and of serious verse there are magenta 
 examples. But it did the thing which many 
 papers have tried and failed to do. It was 
 witty scrupulously witty. 
 
 Another characteristic venture, comically 
 different from The Spirit Lamp, was The Oxford 
 Voint of View. It appeared twice a term in a 
 fat form, in solid blue covers, and was earnest, 
 
\ 
 
 OXFORD 
 
 wisely trying in no way to rival The Spirit 
 Lamp or the many flippant papers. Our friend 
 was connected with the O. P. V. (of blessed 
 memory) and remembered many editorial 
 meetings, and their many grave disputes, as to 
 which of the " views of those who come after " 
 should be voiced in its pages. Varied views 
 were expressed on varied subjects. Looking 
 down the index of the first volume, he saw 
 papers on The Decay of the Art of Acting, 
 on The New Cathedral at Westminster, on 
 Decimal Coinage, on Cambridge, on The 
 Liberal Outlook, on Thoreau, on Oxford as a 
 School of Journalism, and of course essays on 
 The Extravagance of Economy and The Futility 
 of Lectures were bound to appear. 
 
 The Isis with its Idols is a paying perennial. 
 But atoms of the life of the place are reflected 
 in its pages. 
 
 And all the phases of that life ! The spirit 
 seemed to our friend to evaporate from a mere 
 enumeration. What day of all those days lived 
 most vividly in his memory ? Think as he 
 would, no special day from the thick throng 
 of happy days stood out to challenge compari- 
 son. It was a long good memory, which had 
 forged a link between him and men in every 
 
 quarter of the world. 
 
 140 
 
CHAPTER THE FOURTH 
 
 I- 
 
 So our friend got into a morning train and left 
 Oxford for his rooms in the Temple. The 
 carriage in which he sat was full, but he 
 managed to hold up before his industrious eyes 
 a copy of Walt Whitman's " Specimen Days," 
 which he had bought at the bookstall. He 
 read some of the wonderful sketches of war- 
 scenes in the streets, in the hospital, on the 
 battle-field marvelling at the courage and 
 power of the man who could give love and 
 sympathy, as Whitman gave it, to the wounded; 
 and then turned on to the last half of the book, 
 in which the effect of such tremendous giving 
 was seen on the man who gave. For Whitman 
 had severe paralysis. His body could not bear 
 the strain of those dreadful years, and suc- 
 cumbed ; but his mind, his spirit, lived bravely 
 on, and he writes of the peace and beauty of 
 the quiet country in which for two years he 
 was obliged to rest. The contrast between 
 
 141 
 
 
 
OXFORD 
 
 the two parts of those " Specimen Days " was 
 staggering. Our friend laid the book on his 
 knee and looked in front of him. His eyes 
 fell on the paper of the man opposite. A 
 general election was imminent, and idly he 
 scanned the photographs of a man who seemed 
 to be delivering an impassioned speech. Above 
 these pictures a movement of the paper in its 
 reader's hand showed him printed in inch- 
 big type the following amazing statement, 
 " Socialism means no Government, no King, 
 no God darkness." Now, this was not a 
 Socialist paper, unkindly quoting an opponent's 
 words, which had slipped out on the spur of 
 an unfortunate moment. It was an argument 
 seriously and passionately advanced. Some- 
 one's deity of all the world, our friend most 
 reverently thought, must be growing weak 
 and old to be in need of such support ; to say 
 nothing of the monarchy and the government 
 of England. Moreover, when he borrowed 
 the paper, as he was soon afterwards obliged 
 to do, he found to his amazement that, accord- 
 ing to the orator, these men who threatened so 
 mightily had the brains of hedge-pigs and the 
 sneaking souls of swine (or words to that 
 effect). Yet the orator seemed in mortal terror 
 of them. The same anomaly was to be seen 
 
 142 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 often enough in the streets when two smaK 
 boys fall foul of each other : as they meet, one 
 or other is sure to be heard shouting abuse of 
 his antagonist's parents or sister or brother, and 
 the urchin who wastes his wind in abuse is 
 generally drubbed. Abuse is the instinctive 
 augury of defeat in the human animal. A 
 general election is a general excuse for drunken- 
 ness ; no tap is left unturned to secure a vote. 
 All issues, however important, are obscured in 
 an alcoholic muddle. The country is at its 
 worst when it is electing its governors. And 
 yet the ship goes clumsily forward, and all the 
 hubbub matters very little. A few poets and 
 scientists know the course it must take, and 
 cheerfully give their lives to its service. 
 
 How to avert the rule of the ignorant, and 
 to obtain a true aristocracy ? that was the 
 question. Much mischief spent itself by im- 
 mediate expression, as a room is purified of 
 foul air by open windows ; and the air had an 
 exhaustless power of assimilation. That was 
 the reason why the halfpenny papers existed. 
 They were as much blessings in disguise as 
 open windows, however noisome the first foul- 
 ness that issued from them might be. The 
 orator could pin up the portraits and the 
 tremendous heading in inch-big type by his 
 
 H3 
 
OXFORD 
 
 shaving-glass, and, cheered by the memory of 
 his enormous statement, might be inspired to 
 spend the remainder of his days in cheerful, 
 genial, good works. Who knows, too, what 
 mischief might not have been wrought upon 
 him, if such an idea as that had been allowed 
 to seethe on, unexpressed, in some obscure 
 corner of his soul ? 
 
 2- 
 
 But these parties with their cries were of 
 small relative importance. Not Socialists or 
 Liberals or Unionists were the real enemies of 
 mankind to whichever side you might happen 
 to belong except in so far as they fostered 
 prejudice. Far truer enemies were bacterial 
 and protozoic parasites, which ravaged man- 
 kind with disease and pain and death. 
 
 The whereabouts of these foes have only 
 been discovered during the last half- century, 
 and the means to avert their power has still 
 more lately been discovered. And yet the 
 more they are kept in hand and checked, the 
 more serious does another problem become 
 the problem of over-population. Gradually 
 the realm of conjecture is lessening before the 
 realm of knowledge. In physical matters 
 there is no longer room for sentiment and 
 
 144 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 prejudice; experiment, proof, and ascertained 
 fact were the stages. And yet when the 
 scientist said this is so, by this and that sure 
 proof, the philosopher and the moralist were 
 apt to say they preferred things to be as they 
 were before. The old philosophies based on 
 misconceptions must give way before new and 
 live philosophies based on discovered facts. 
 There was no antagonism between science and 
 poetry or science and philosophy. Only the 
 poet or the philosopher with imitative and 
 without creative power was opposed to the 
 discoveries of the scientist. The inert, who 
 found it pleasanter and more respectable to 
 cherish the misconceptions of their fathers, 
 chose to be shocked and not inspired by new 
 truths. The real poet was as enthralled by 
 the new realms which were being opened out 
 by the scientist, as the scientist himself. The 
 real poet rejoiced that the possibilities of man's 
 life were widening, and every new fact did not 
 wither his spirit but strengthened the power of 
 his imagination to take off into the Unknown. 
 
 Oxford, instead of being the home of lost 
 causes, the dim and shadowy denial of life, 
 wrapped in a melancholy beauty, must become 
 the forcing-ground of the laughing future. 
 Her beauty must glow with the sun of vitality. 
 
 145 10 
 
OXFORD 
 
 She must not cling to the tradition of the past, 
 as though both she and it were tottering in 
 need of each other's support ; but, inspired by 
 what was noble in the past, must lead the 
 country in humanity's slow march towards 
 enlightenment and power. And what was the 
 lesson of the past, other than that great men 
 had been great by their faculty to live tremen- 
 dously in the present and the future ? 
 
 The historians taught their history ; taught 
 that every reformer had been received with 
 obloquy and derision and had usually been 
 punished by the people of his time as a sub- 
 verter of morals. Surely the time had come 
 when the meaning of that lesson should be at 
 last learned, and more deeply than by the mere 
 toleration of the new truth. The lesson, rightly 
 learned, taught that the new truth should be 
 welcomed and promulgated. A University like 
 Oxford, magnificent with the prestige of tradi 
 tion, was in the position to bear the odium, 
 which was in the nature of things always 
 attached to a new truth ; to break down the 
 barriers of prejudice ; to attack the old limita- 
 tions of right and wrong which stifled progress ; 
 to oppose the superstitions about the human 
 body, which man for his own past safety's sake 
 had been obliged to stereotype into morals. A 
 
 146 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 University like Oxford was in the position to 
 influence the life of the nation, to forward the 
 cause of humanity. Mere scholarship would 
 slip into its proper place as a servant of the 
 great cause. The chief business would be not 
 so much to discover and know fresh little facts 
 about ancient languages, as to make the present 
 life fuller and stronger and more beautiful. 
 The learned ones would slowly yield to the 
 creating ones men who could laugh and live 
 and work, men who had great ideals of life 
 and before whom life opened gaily out with 
 new and ever varying possibilities, men who 
 were not Preachers of Death, but Preachers 
 of Life. 
 
 All this poured through our friend's mind in 
 a few glad moments, swiftly as in a dream. He 
 saw where the true aristocracy of the future 
 might originate, men fit to give counsel to the 
 nation. And his cheeks glowed with enthu- 
 siasm. But the paper had fallen on his knee 
 and had caught the eye of an elderly gentleman 
 who sat by his side, and at that moment re- 
 marked, " Very shocking, very shocking!" 
 
 The remark startled our friend from his 
 dream, and not wishing to be drawn into a 
 political discussion, he simply agreed. 
 
 " No country can be run without a god, you 
 147 10 2 
 
OXFORD 
 
 know/' the elderly gentleman added, and, 
 clasping his fingers more tightly across his 
 stomach, closed his eyes and relapsed more 
 comfortably into his corner. 
 
 3. 
 
 In the Temple our friend quietly reviewed 
 the result of his special visit to Oxford. The 
 first result, which he did not however observe, 
 was a fusion between the industrious and the 
 intruding elements in him. One scale was no 
 longer weighed down so heavily with brooding 
 over the memorable beauty of the place and its 
 beautiful memories that the other scale kicked 
 noisily into the air against its sleepy uselessness. 
 The scales were balanced. The intruder was 
 reincarnated by one of the mind's many subtle 
 processes. 
 
 The exciting dream in the railway-carriage, 
 started by the ridiculous headline and scattered 
 by the complacent gentleman's comment there- 
 on, though thus boxed up by absurdities, had 
 not passed without leaving a fragrance behind 
 it, and slowly materialised from the realm of 
 dream to the realm of thought. Certainly no 
 greenest shoot that danced towards the sky was 
 more dependent on the great earth-buried roots 
 
 148 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 of the tree than a University is dependent upon 
 the beauty and tradition of the past. In his 
 day-dream he had eyed the greenest shoots with 
 too exclusive a fondness. Their life was so 
 apparent that it was easy for a moment to 
 forget the strong life in the thick trunk and 
 roots, to which they simply bore witness. He 
 was not gardener enough to carry on the meta- 
 phor of the tree, allured as he was by fruits and 
 graftings and other phenomena which vaguely 
 appeared to carry out his point. He was con- 
 tent to remember that a trunk was not dead 
 because it was hard and black, and that a shoot 
 could not live by itself, however green with 
 new life it might appear. His contentment, 
 however, grew to such pleasure before he went 
 on that he resolved to buy a book on tree- 
 culture. 
 
 He went on to discover (for his own en- 
 lightenment) what were the new signs of life, 
 and what these signs implied. Three things 
 immediately rose in his mind and startled him 
 like snipe on a marsh ; and each disappeared 
 into the Unknown beyond the ken of his 
 imagination. The first was the fact of the 
 education of women ; the second was the fact 
 of the growth of interest in science ; and the 
 third was the fact of the Rhodes scholarships. 
 
 149 
 
 ' 
 
OXFORD 
 
 All three facts were fraught with significance. 
 The first two had evolved out of the far-reaching 
 spirit of the age, and their birth had been 
 helped by the determined effort of many wise 
 men and women. The third was the idea of 
 one man. It was a great idea, but it was neces- 
 sarily forced a little too violently upon the place 
 for its excellence to be manifested by its imme- 
 diate working. Ideas appeal to the imagination 
 in exact proportion to the amount of vitality 
 which they contain, and this idea of Cecil 
 Rhodes must appeal strongly to any unwarped 
 imagination. It attacked the thorny prejudice 
 of nationality; and suggested an ideal of patriot- 
 ism higher than the barbarous ideal of shouting 
 and warfare and slaughter, by which the world 
 was no better than a fowl-run, and nations to 
 prove their superiority must fight like rival 
 roosters. Here was an augury of the day when 
 men would laugh at the confusion of peace with 
 sloth and cowardice ; when disease and indiffer- 
 ence and ignorance and prejudice would be 
 recognised as the foes against which it was 
 worth while fighting to the death, because they 
 only called out to the full all a man's courage, 
 all a man's intelligence. Science had shown 
 that man had evolved from the ape, and science 
 still cried out that evolution cannot stop : that 
 
 150 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 there are unplumbed possibilities for man's life, 
 as far above his present state as man is now 
 above a monkey. His will must be stirred by 
 love and hope and enthusiasm to realise that he 
 has only taken a few faltering steps into his 
 kingdom. He must have the courage to 
 know. 
 
 4. 
 
 No wonder that the idea which brought into 
 being the Rhodes scholarships set our friend's 
 imagination on fire. He found it was exciting 
 to live when great things were actually being 
 conceived and done. Stupidity (one's own 
 especially) was so continually in evidence and 
 kept slapping one's face, like a flapping ribbon 
 in the wind, that it made the recognition of a 
 great, good, intelligent idea particularly refresh- 
 ing and pleasant. There was no detrimental 
 person there to shrug the shoulder at his visions 
 or to pat his back in kindly pity at his 
 enthusiasm ; in consequence, he felt articu- 
 late against every objection. " There were in 
 residence during the Academic year 1908-1909 
 no fewer than 179 men. Of these 78 were 
 from the Colonies of the Empire, 90 from the 
 United States, and 1 1 from Germany." He 
 chuckled at the good facts. No objection could 
 
OXFORD 
 
 lessen their store of significance. Now more 
 than ever before in the history of the race the 
 wise man was obliged to look forward into the 
 future, and to look but warily into the past, 
 because the conditions of modern life (especially 
 the ease of transit and communication) made 
 the problems of modern life so different from 
 the problems of the past, that a keen imagina- 
 tion rather than a stored memory was the right 
 tool with which to tackle them. Higher ideals 
 and truer values were becoming more and more 
 necessary, as the scope of man's power widened. 
 Our friend pulled up his thoughts (so inclined 
 to be runaways) to inspect more closely the 
 second great fact, which was the development 
 of science in Oxford. Timidly he approached 
 the subject, because for a long time he had been 
 under the prevalent delusion that science and 
 poetry were antagonistic in some mysterious and 
 quite fundamental way ; and the cloud of that 
 delusion was not so far on his horizon but that 
 it still left a shadow of shame on his mind. 
 And the shadow was all the darker that he had 
 been inclined to forget the boy who turned his 
 rooms at Univ : into a laboratory and became 
 one of the world's poets, who wrote : 
 
 " He gave man speech and speech created thought, 
 Which is the measure of the Universe : 
 152 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 And Science struck the thrones of earth and heaven 
 Which shook but fell not ; and the harmonious mind 
 Poured itself out in all-prophetic song." 
 
 Shelley used thrones as symbols of ignorance 
 and prejudice. He saw science attacking the 
 walls of ignorance like a battering-ram, while 
 poetry, the voice of the imagination, was inspired 
 by the conflict. 
 
 Since Shelley's day the advance in knowledge 
 was unparalleled. During the last fifty years his 
 great prophecy seemed to be moving towards 
 fnlfilment : 
 
 " The earth does like a snake renew 
 Her winter weeds outworn." 
 
 Shelley died in 1823. In 1836 Philip Duncan, 
 the Curator of what was then the Museum, 
 explaining in his catalogue the arrangement 
 of his specimens wrote, "The first division 
 proposes to familiarise the eye to those rela- 
 tions of all natural objects which form the 
 basis of the argument in Dr. Paley's * Natural 
 Theology/ " 
 
 In the Times of May 17, 1903, Professor 
 Ray Lankester quoted Lord Kelvin's statement, 
 " That, though inorganic phenomena do not do 
 so, yet the phenomena of such living things as 
 a sprig of moss, a microbe, a living animal 
 looked at and considered as matters of scientific 
 
OXFORD 
 
 investigation compel us to conclude that there 
 is scientific reason for believing in the existence 
 of a creative and directive power." The ghost 
 of Paley would shudder to think that such a 
 statement should ever be necessary. But Pro- 
 fessor Ray Lankester went on to state, tc So far 
 as I have been able to ascertain, after many 
 years in which these matters have engaged my 
 attention, there is no relation, in the sense of a 
 connection or influence between science and 
 religion." And his whole lucid statement of 
 the position printed at length in the Times 
 showed how science had, from being like an 
 infant tutored by theology, advanced to its own 
 independence; that dogma and prejudice were 
 its enemies, however much they might hide 
 under the skirts of religion. The difference of 
 attitude exhibited in these two statements 
 amazed our friend : it seemed incredible that 
 they could have been made almost within the 
 little span of one man's life. 
 
 What had actually taken place in those years 
 was even more amazing. Man seemed suddenly 
 to have taken many strides forward in his 
 advance from the monkey. The discovery of 
 the Rontgen rays, of the new chemical element 
 Radium, of germs and of the means by which 
 to render their attacks harmless, and discoveries 
 
 '54 
 
THE RADCLIFFE CAMKKA 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 in every branch of science,* far too numerous 
 to mention, were being made by men all over 
 the world. Scientists of every nationality were 
 working to advance man's knowledge of Nature, 
 and by them a new bond between nations was 
 being established against ignorance, the arch- 
 enemy of the human race. 
 
 And at Oxford ? The advance there had 
 been great, but not sufficiently great to keep 
 proper pace with the huge advance that science 
 itself had made. Here was an immense oppor- 
 tunity for the University, of which she had not 
 availed herself with alacrity sufficient to satisfy 
 her most ardent followers. There was still a 
 survival of the classical boy's superiority of 
 attitude towards " stinks," dating from the time 
 when a smattering of the classics was considered 
 part of a gentleman's outfit. 
 
 Our friend had felt that superiority keenly 
 in the days of his youth. Wisely enough, it 
 had been the custom at his school for every 
 boy on the classical side at an early stage in 
 his career to submit for two hours a week to 
 chemistry lessons, in case there might be in 
 him an unsuspected genius for scientific work. 
 He was as incapable at that time of under- 
 
 * See " The Kingdom of Man," by E. Ray Lankester, a 
 book for every poet. 
 
OXFORD 
 
 standing the simplest experiment as he remained 
 incapable of ever solving a rider in Euclid, and 
 his incapacity naturally, he now realised 
 increased his superiority, which was merely, 
 as in fact it usually is, a defence againt weak- 
 ness. The history of his own attitude towards 
 science seemed to be rather typical. He felt 
 in himself, without undue conceit, a tiny 
 reflection of the changes in attitude that were 
 happening in the world. His superiority lapsed 
 into indifference, and his indifference was 
 whipped into animosity by the fact that a 
 friend (a little recklessly) proved that his most 
 cherished ideas were foolish in the light of 
 science. His ideas were strong and real to 
 him, even though his income was in no way 
 dependent upon their tenure, so he set to work 
 to test them and to examine this light of 
 science to the best of his ability. And though 
 his mind remained constitutionally incapable 
 of following the process by which science 
 worked to the incontrovertible result, the 
 results themselves roused keen interest in him. 
 He found that his own ideas were widened 
 and strengthened, and that his antagonist bad 
 used a wrong weapon against him. 
 
 All four stages of superiority, of indifference, 
 of animosity, of enthusiasm were being illus- 
 
 156 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 trated, it seemed to him, in a striking manner 
 at Oxford. 
 
 5- 
 
 Much acrimony was being vented upon her. 
 There was every sign that she was entering 
 upon a new phase in her career. On every 
 hand a fundamental question was being raised 
 which fifty years ago would have been regarded 
 as too elementary to be met with anything 
 but ridicule the question what the nature of 
 education precisely was. Not the least part of 
 the debt owed to the growth of the scientific 
 spirit was exactly this fuss about a fundamental 
 question. For in consequence of it she was 
 striving to become articulate about her posi- 
 tion. 
 
 The struggle centred round what seemed at 
 first a trivial issue namely, whether Greek 
 should be a compulsory subject in the entrance 
 examination to the University. The scientists 
 fell upon Greek as the chief encumbrance in 
 the way of progress. Why should a man with 
 talent enough to obtain a scholarship in science 
 waste his time in acquiring the rudiments of a 
 dead language which he would never look at 
 again after the ridiculous little examination ? 
 It was on the face of it preposterous. More- 
 
OXFORD 
 
 over, Oxford influenced the whole system of 
 teaching in all the leading public schools in 
 the country. Take the case of many a boy 
 of average ability. The bias given by the 
 University to the study of dead languages 
 would be sufficient to influence him to become 
 a moderate composer of Greek verse and Latin 
 prose, and to spend his life in handing on his 
 moderate acquirements, as a schoolmaster, to 
 others ; whereas, if the bias were towards 
 science, he would be able, with his average 
 abilities, to work out one of the innumerable 
 little problems which help towards the eradica- 
 tion of some disease, or the discovery of some 
 new fact. Science pointed to an enormous field 
 waiting for workers, while men were still em- 
 ployed in retailing this useless information 
 this classical education. 
 
 \ That was the new voice which spoke against 
 the old order, just as the last new voice spoke 
 against the system of Dotheboys Hall. And 
 the immense advance, since necessity had pro- 
 duced that last new voice, became overwhelm- 
 ingly apparent to our friend. That was at the 
 very beginnings of any interest in education at 
 all. And what had happened since then ? A 
 vast system of education had been organised 
 over the entire country. Schools of every kind, 
 
 158 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 and consequently teachers of every kind, existed 
 in profusion. The problem had changed. For 
 a big majority education had come to mean 
 simply how a boy could most speedily be made 
 fit to gain a salaried position be made, in other 
 words, marketable. 
 
 The opponents of the new claim raised by 
 science based their objections on this point ; 
 and obscured the issue by confusing (a little 
 wilfully and quite naturally) the claims of 
 science with the claims of the market. The 
 issue was further obscured by the retort of some 
 scientists that the objectors' opinions were 
 chiefly based on the fear that their own posi- 
 tions and incomes might be affected, if any 
 change in the system of education were begun. 
 And the climax was put to the confusion by a 
 loud-voiced politician who declared that educa- 
 tion did in fact simply mean the giving of a 
 marketable value to a boy, and that if Oxford 
 were not made " up-to-date " she would rapidly 
 be ousted in the competition for existence by 
 other more modern establishments. And round 
 the teaching of Greek the battle raged, and the 
 teaching of Greek became a strategical point of 
 as great importance as the famous farm at 
 Waterloo. ; 
 
OXFORD 
 
 6. 
 
 That such a battle was being contested at all 
 delighted our friend ; it proved that a keen 
 interest was being taken in one of the most 
 important matters in life. But like many 
 another, he took the extreme liberty of having 
 his own view of the case. It probably coin- 
 cided with that of many others, though of this 
 he was not certain ; he might easily have missed 
 some of the many pronouncements in the con- 
 troversy, and have misunderstood others. 
 
 The important point was that education now 
 touched more lives than ever before in the 
 history of the nation, and that the necessities 
 of the greater number forced them to regard 
 education only as a means of livelihood. Edu- 
 cation was very properly looked upon as a right 
 and not as a luxury. That view was a great 
 gain to the community, but therein precisely 
 lay the immediate danger. Our friend, casting 
 about in his mind for the means to express his 
 meaning, remembered an occurrence, of which 
 he had read, and which now seemed nicely 
 parallel with his idea. The passage told of the 
 ruin of a certain citv and ran so far as he could 
 
 j 
 
 remember as follows : 
 
 A certain little city was supplied with drink- 
 160 
 

FROM WITHIN 
 
 ing-water by a reservoir built round a spring, 
 which stood on a slight eminence in a wide 
 plain outside the city. It happened that one 
 year the reservoir overflowed. No one knew 
 the cause of the overflow, but the result was a 
 harvest of great richness, which overjoyed the 
 hearts of the farmers in the plain. With diffi- 
 culty they persuaded the magnates of the city, 
 who disliked change, to lower the walls of the 
 reservoir in order to facilitate the overflow when 
 the spring rose. For a few years they enjoyed 
 prosperity, but the time came when they grew 
 discontented with the restrictions imposed on 
 the spring, the source of their prosperity, and 
 did away with the wall entirely, that it might 
 flow with perfect freedom, as they said, over all 
 the land. They were disappointed, however, 
 in the result of their scheme, for the result 
 proved, in spite of their efforts, to be a swamp 
 in the spring's vicinity and then extensive dry- 
 ness. 
 
 That was all. The story was related by an 
 ancient historian as an argument against inno- 
 vation. Our friend, at the time he read it, 
 thought it such a bad argument that it had 
 stuck in his memory. But it seemed strangely 
 applicable to the present position in education. 
 Let the men in the plains take the life-giving 
 
 161 ii 
 
OXFORD 
 
 water as much as possible for their own uses, 
 but no stone of the wall enclosing the reservoir 
 must be removed. Let the standard of know- 
 ledge be first lowered and finally lost, then a 
 muddy swamp and extensive dryness must be 
 the inevitable result. 
 
 Let the walls rather be raised and the water 
 purified. Nor was this reservoir fed by one 
 spring only. What the nation needed was not 
 an easier approach to half-culture, but that the 
 strength and severity of genuine culture should 
 be realised, that a place should exist where the 
 ideal of this genuine culture was cherished, and 
 so grew ever higher and more difficult to attain. 
 Now more than ever was there a high standard 
 of genuine culture necessary because of the 
 increased and increasing number of the half- 
 educated. The half-educated man is prone to 
 think that he knows everything. He cannot 
 face what he thinks is a return to the darkness 
 from which he has partially emerged. He is 
 apt to have just enough knowledge to be afraid 
 of more. So the difFusers of knowledge must 
 face the Comic fact that they are, of necessity, 
 helping to create the prejudice which it is their 
 chief duty to combat. 
 
 162 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 7- 
 
 The University, our friend thought, must 
 use all her strength and vitality to keep this 
 standard high. And that end could not be 
 gained either by a withdrawal from past know- 
 ledge or by the exclusion of new knowledge. 
 The original idea of Walter de Merton re- 
 mained as true for to-day, as it was true for 
 his time. His idea was to found a priesthood 
 of learning, unhampered by any duties or obli- 
 gations other than the great duties incurred by 
 the pursuit of learning. 
 
 The danger of learning was that it should 
 lapse into pedantry, which is dry and per- 
 nicious. But the way to avert that danger was 
 not to destroy learning, but to heighten and 
 vivify it. To turn away from science because 
 it happened to be in some cases commercially 
 useful, and because fools advocated its utility, 
 was as short-sighted a policy as to cling to 
 classical learning because it happened to be 
 commercially useless and because fools advo- 
 cated its uselessness. The bigger view was the 
 right view. Science should be welcomed as 
 any new life should be welcomed, and classical 
 learning should gather all its strength to wel- 
 come it fitly, and bravely to establish it. And 
 
 163 n 2 
 
 ' 
 
OXFORD 
 
 behind the hubbub our friend saw with excite- 
 ment that this was slowly being done. He 
 read again the impressive speech of the Vice- 
 Chancellor at the fiftieth anniversary of the 
 Museum : " What I should like to see is the 
 classical and the literary, the philosophical 
 and the theological student, more affected by 
 science. ... I hope the next era will see, not 
 the decay or the obliteration of the old tradi- 
 tions, but the addition of the new." It was 
 well said and at a good time. 
 
 For the old and the new must be united by 
 the welding vigour of the imagination that 
 flower of vitality. 
 
 8. 
 
 Then the other beautiful shadow passed 
 before our friend's mind, fragrant of future 
 possibilities, and of present new life. It stirred 
 his fancy. Its origin came within his own 
 experience. What did it bode for the welfare 
 of the community ? What did it presage for 
 the good of man ? Often our friend had heard 
 his mother refer to the days when she was a 
 girl, and no one dreamed of giving a girl 
 education. Now there were High Schools all 
 over the kingdom, and the women's colleges at 
 Oxford were rapidly extending their premises. 
 
 164 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 Here was no fitful movement, doomed to an 
 early end. Here was a strong new growth of 
 life, which struck right down into the core of 
 the nation. Our friend's fancy leapt to welcome 
 the vision of intelligent women, the mates for 
 intelligent men to woo ; and a little overleapt 
 the mark, so that it staggered before the other 
 vision, swift to rise, of the woman who tried 
 to ape man in manners and every habiliment, 
 and swelled the ranks of that dreadful "troisieme 
 sexe," which is nothing. But not for long did 
 his fancy waver. The bad vision grinned and 
 vanished. Knowledge helped a man or woman 
 to independence that is to say made a man 
 more of a man, and a woman more of a woman. 
 The chivalry, that cloaked the manners of the 
 market, was doomed with its deceit and its 
 lust and its selfishness. A good, true chivalry, 
 born of laughter and independence, was taking 
 its place. With independence love became 
 possible between man and woman; and the 
 union of man and woman became something 
 higher than the all-too-common union of the 
 money-master and his domestic drudge. Then 
 the great Comic Spirit dances gravely to life, 
 for then the conflict is keener and more joyous, 
 less pompous and less servile. What were those 
 words ? He found them and read with renewed 
 
 165 
 
OXFORD 
 
 
 
 pleasure : " There has been fun in Bagdad. 
 But there never will be civilisation where 
 Comedy is not possible ; and that comes of 
 some degree of equality of the sexes. . . . 
 Where women are on the road to an equal 
 footing with men, in attainments and in liberty 
 in what they have won for themselves, and 
 what has been granted them by a fair civilisa- 
 tion there, and only waiting to be transplanted 
 from life to the stage, or the novel, or the 
 poem, pure Comedy flourishes, and is, as it 
 would help them to be, the sweetest of diver- 
 sions, the wisest of delightful companions." 
 
 The words should be pinned by any bed in 
 which a too solemn politician or too staid a 
 don was likely to sleep ; he might be induced 
 to pray that the spirit of laughter should enter 
 and transform his serious soul, and the prayer 
 might even be answered. 
 
 Our friend's thoughts nimbly hurried to the 
 good time when the pedant should be no more 
 than a kindly-preserved relic, banished with 
 his heaviness from the community, or changed 
 beyond recognition to liveliness. 
 
 Slowly the sound of grave laughter was 
 growing on the horizon, and the new life was 
 rustling ever nearer to the cobwebbed recesses 
 of his old-tomed library. Its sad occupant 
 
 166 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 turned in uneasy dread of the time when 
 learning and laughter must be combined, when 
 a scholar, to hold his own, must be something 
 more than a receptacle of fact, must be in fact 
 a living, laughing man. Ah ! then the learned 
 yearling will cast about for a means to stand 
 firmly on his feet, and with a supreme effort 
 strong enough to take him clean out of his 
 talented self he will find a living woman and 
 learn to laugh and be young. The lion, the 
 eagle, and the child those were the three 
 stages in the development of the man that was 
 to be, as the great poet said who tested a 
 philosopher by his laugh. 
 
 Nor could our friend's glee at the prospect 
 be termed trivial by any but the shallow. It 
 is true that as yet this new presence in Oxford 
 is hardly noticeable except for a few new 
 buildings and an increase in the attendance at 
 lectures. But the atmosphere of the place is 
 being gradually quickened and refreshed. The 
 power of the agelast was on the decline. The 
 note rang truer and more gaily. 
 
 And then a speculation of great and Thele- 
 mite interest rose in our friend's mind. The 
 monastic ideal was prevalent as late as the 
 middle of last century. It was thought Hhat 
 marriage unfitted a man for the duties of don 
 
 167 
 
 
 
OXFORD 
 
 and professor. The same idea seemed prevalent 
 in the women's colleges with a little more 
 reason. Learning, at any rate as a profession, 
 was the privilege of the spinster. Our friend 
 wondered how soon the essential falseness of 
 the position would become manifest, and how 
 long the false shame about such beautiful 
 matters as love and motherhood would endure. 
 A very little while, he was confident. It would 
 soon be seen that the duties did not clash. It 
 would soon be seen that the ideal of mother- 
 hood as an uncontrollable instinct and of learning 
 as a sort of self-immolation were low ideals; 
 and they would be superseded by a bigger and 
 a higher ideal, which would produce its own 
 type of woman. 
 
 These new influences of the growth of 
 science and of the education of women were 
 without any doubt working towards the same 
 end, and that end was the revitalisation of the 
 University. The pursuit of knowledge was 
 becoming less and less isolated from the great 
 facts of life. The pursuit of knowledge was 
 becoming more and more a living, laughing 
 thing. 
 
 1 68 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 9- 
 
 Then our friend went to bed, for it was very 
 late. And that night he had a long, clear 
 dream of the dream-city, to which the boy 
 looks forward and the old man looks back 
 with love. Hidden among the legends is die 
 dim figure of St. Frideswythe, whose nunnery 
 was the first settlement, and elusive as the 
 sainted lady herself is the spirit of the old city. 
 That spirit whispers of the beauty of old build- 
 ings, set between hills in a river-pierced valley ; 
 of the dignity of tradition ; of the memory of 
 great lives lived to the glory of knowledge ; of 
 the joy of youth present at its rosiest bloom 
 through the centuries. Stare, and the spirit 
 escapes, for she is fugitive : look with rever- 
 ence, and the beauty of her features, made 
 sacred by Time, is revealed to you, for she is 
 kind. 
 
 And in his dream he came to a long, narrow 
 room. The ceiling was low, and across it ran 
 big irregular beams. The fireplace was wide 
 and open. Before the fireplace stood a woman 
 with hair that shone in the firelight. She was 
 expecting him. He knew her well, but who 
 she was he could not say. She began to speak : 
 her voice was soft and musical. She said : 
 
 169 
 
 
 
OXFORD 
 
 " After many changes and much distress 
 men will at last turn to me for guidance, and 
 with my sons the aristocracy of learning will 
 be inaugurated. My University will then be 
 above and apart from the State. The State 
 must work for the nation, but I must work for 
 humanity. The power of wisdom must shine 
 forth above the quarrellings of men and nations, 
 and show by its light how low is the standard 
 of material interest. My sons will not measure 
 life by their own little span of existence. My 
 sons will be of the time, yet above it. They 
 will work, and their work, like that of other 
 great artists, must be universal. And they will 
 remain young-hearted. Laughter will be more 
 often heard among the people, for they will 
 then have scope for their instinct of loyalty to 
 the rule of genius." 
 
 " You are the Sainted Lady, you are the 
 . . ." he began to say. 
 
 But everything grew dark and he awoke. 
 
 10. 
 
 In the morning our friend began to write 
 his book. He wished very much to dedicate 
 it to his brother, who was Professor of English 
 Literature at Birmingham University, and to 
 whose love and interest it was due that he had 
 
 170 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 ever been able to go " up " to Oxford. But he 
 hesitated a little before doing so. It set such a 
 tremendous standard before him. Not that he 
 at all looked upon it as any kind of return ; 
 but even to make a memento at all worthy of 
 such a deed was beyond his powers. However, 
 he decided he would. And he did. And he 
 said that he was far from wishing to be free 
 from that obligation ; but on the contrary, that 
 he took joy in the knowledge of its permanent 
 survival. 
 
 So, scrumpling up the top-sheet (a little 
 dusty now) on which that one fell word was 
 written, he wrote on the clean next sheet, 
 " With my love, Denning, to you," and set 
 gaily to work to do the best he could. 
 
 171 
 
A NOTE BY THE ARTIST 
 
A NOTE BY THE ARTIST 
 
 OXFORD ! The very name I knew long time 
 before I studied the Universal Geography, and 
 many ages before I learnt the ABC. All those 
 great professors of New Japan were either from 
 Oxford or from Cambridge. I thought in 
 my babyish mind that it must be the most 
 important and the most wonderful place in 
 the world the everlasting spring, whence all 
 sorts of knowledge are incessantly streaming 
 out. Indeed, Oxford to me was just like Rome 
 to the Catholic people. Although I had such 
 a great homage to Oxford, I had no chance to 
 visit it during my thirteen years' stay in London. 
 It is not far enough from London to make any 
 excuse ; but the truth is, I didn't think it so 
 necessary to pay visit there, because I can 
 meet with the Oxfords wherever I go, not 
 only in England but even in the Far East, too. 
 The Oxfords are the candles to give light all 
 over the world, and I have been benefited with 
 these candles' light so much. So many of my 
 illustrious friends are the Oxfords. At last I 
 had to be exiled to Oxford by my publishers in 
 order to make a book. 
 
OXFORD 
 
 Just before I started to Oxford, one of my 
 Oxfords threatened me, saying, " If you don't 
 love Oxford, our friendship shall be finished !" 
 I asked him whether he meant about the college 
 people, or the view. He said, "The Views." 
 I could not take this seriously, though it would 
 be a great pain for me to lose such a friend. It 
 is quite natural that when one loves a woman, 
 her nickel watch often seems to him a platina 
 one. I decided to see Oxford from the point 
 of view merely of art, and not of heart. I kept 
 the equilibrium in my heart fairly well to be a 
 good judge on art. Now, after three months' 
 stay there, let me write my answer to that friend 
 of mine as well as to all the readers of this book. 
 
 When our train approached near to the 
 station, and I saw from the train window the 
 first glimpse of all those pinnacles, domes, and 
 towers, I was so excited. Those dignified 
 Gothics were such a treat to me after being in 
 Rome. Although I lov^d Rome with all my 
 heart, I was starving for Gothic there. Now, 
 Oxford was such a complement to me. For 
 the first few days, I was quite mad with the 
 joy of sightseeing those magnificent quadrangles, 
 corridors, towers, walls, and old pavements, 
 cracked like turtle-backs. Of course I had an 
 anticipation before I saw Oxford, that it must 
 not be quite the same with other English pro- 
 vincial towns, where so many chimneys are 
 puffing thick volumes of smoke, scattering those 
 dirty black soots all over our collars, cuffs, and 
 
 176 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 faces, because chimneys are not needed to 
 manufacture the professors. It was not only my 
 anticipation was realised, but I did not see 
 " stove-pipes " either, and I was so grateful, as 
 I cannot make out much art from the stove- 
 pipes. Everything was so different and so 
 original. I could not feel I was in England 
 until I noticed the crowds in the street. They 
 were regular Britons, with whom I have been 
 so familiar for nearly half of my life. I thought 
 they were far more Briton than the Londoners. 
 In the spring of 1908 I was in Paris. It was 
 raining and raining and raining. All my French 
 friends told that it was " quite exceptional 
 weather," which they experienced only once in 
 thirteen years, or thirty years (I forget what they 
 said exactly). Last winter I was in Rome. 
 We had plenty rain there again. All my Italian 
 friends told me that was " quite exceptional 
 weather," again ! This time in Oxford we had 
 twenty-seven rainy days in one month ! But 
 the people down there told me that was " quite 
 the ordinary weather " of Oxford, and I was so 
 glad to meet with the ordinary weather of the 
 place at last ! Nevertheless, Oxford people were 
 grumbling at the weather like anything ! I was 
 rather surprised to see the Christians should 
 complain so much against their God. But let 
 them be Christians or Pagans, it is the human 
 nature to find out something always to grumble 
 at, and if they grumble about nothing but the 
 weather, that proves their life must be easy and 
 
 177 12 
 
OXFORD 
 
 comfortable. I was so pleased to come back 
 once more to the peaceful England. 
 
 As for myself, I have so many things to think 
 more urgent than the weather. Beside, I often 
 prefer the rainy day. Its effect is so nice for 
 pictures. But the rain in Oxford was some- 
 thing extraordinary. Its dampness! Its effect 
 on my poor rheumatism ! 
 
 I shall not endeavour to write about this with 
 my " unexpert " English (I have lately learnt 
 that word " unexpert " from some kind criti- 
 cism in English papers) because I am so afraid 
 to minimise the reality of that uncomfortable 
 effect which I experienced in Oxford. Look 
 at all those old buildings there ! Each stone has 
 got such terrible Rheumatism. And we artists 
 or poets enjoy ourselves to look at them, and 
 we give all our hearts to them. Only if those 
 stones could speak, they would grumble much. 
 I think it is not only about the stone, but every- 
 thing in this world is in the same way. Great 
 sufferers always win the hearts of the world. 
 Look at "Evangeline." I myself often think that 
 the easier life is more preferable than " Fame." 
 
 Now I must write about the place where I 
 stayed. One of my very intimate friends, 
 Mr. W., an " Oxford," took me to Oxford on 
 the first day. He was so kind to find out a 
 diggings there for me. It was raining, hailing, 
 and thundering. Our cab-horse was so fright- 
 ened and he so wildly danced, I was afraid that 
 we might be thrown off. 
 
 178 
 
MAGDALEN IN THE RAIX 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 Mr. W. had a long list of the addresses of 
 diggings. At each door, I had to stay inside 
 the cab while he was inquiring. Every time 
 when he came out, he shook his head, saying, 
 " Engaged, engaged," and " Engaged." Every 
 one of them was engaged by some under- 
 graduates. I lost all my patience. I said I 
 would give up this job, and come back to 
 London at once. But as Mr. W. is so closely 
 connected with my publishers, he insisted to 
 " succeed " with my digging. After going 
 round about the city several times, we had a 
 drive to Iffley Road, and there I was installed 
 at last. It was a one-side street, and the house 
 faced to the football ground. From my window 
 I could see a vast green field with many trees. 
 During my ten weeks' stay in Oxford those 
 trees were my only friends. I had nobody to 
 talk to, so it was consolation to look at those 
 trees, and I have quite fallen into love with them 
 after all. I have never painted trees before 
 because I had no love for them. How could 
 one fall in love with those trees in Parks ? 
 They behave themselves too aristocratic, and 
 they are too cool to woo. The country trees 
 are quite different. I must confess that Oxford 
 trees were not my very first love. Last summer 
 I was invited to Sainte Colombe (a little town 
 of Seine et Marne in France). I saw most 
 fascinating trees all round the house of my 
 hostess. They were exactly like Corot's trees. 
 It was a great temptation for me to devote my 
 
 179 12 2 
 
OXFORD 
 
 heart to them. But the hostess of the house 
 was very kind to me. I could not be so im- 
 polite to turn my face from her in order to 
 look at those trees through the window. It 
 was my great reluctance. This time in Oxford, 
 unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I had no 
 human friend, and I have succeeded to make 
 love with trees. Many thanks to Oxford ! 
 
 The " terms " started a few days after I 
 went to Oxford, and the undergraduates began 
 the football match on that ground three or four 
 times in a week (I forget how many times, as I 
 had no calendar in my room). For the games, 
 rain was absolutely disregarded. I often observed 
 that dead-heat match under the pouring rain, 
 and the audience were as many as in the fine 
 weather most of them without umbrellas. 
 The applauding voices echo to the valley. 
 There was something beyond the game itself. 
 May I call it the Samurai-spirit of the Britons ? 
 I was very much inspired by it, and it deepened 
 my admiration and fondness of Britons even 
 more. This Samurai-spirit, together with the 
 noblest and highest education, is the bringing 
 up of the " Oxfords," to whom I have had 
 such respect since I was quite a boy. When- 
 ever I have met with those hatless young men 
 in athletic costumes, or with square cap and 
 gown, I always made my mental pictures on 
 them. Is it this young man who some day 
 will become M.P., or the Prime Minister of 
 Great Britain ? 
 
 1 80 
 
FROM WITHIN 
 
 I think Oxford women are very wise to 
 dress themselves quite simply, and not follow 
 after the Parisian style too much. I must 
 confess that I like the Parisian women in 
 Parisian style. But I think it is the speciality 
 of the French women to dress up so neat and 
 so chic, something like powter pigeons ; their 
 figures are made in that way. I have some 
 English lady friends whose figures are quite 
 French, and the latest Parisian fashion suits 
 them splendidly. But they are the exception. 
 Talking generally, it is not very nice when the 
 English women are in French dress. It seems 
 to me very ugly when they cut their figure 
 into two by tightening their waist. The English 
 women are at their best when they are in tea- 
 gowns or in English overcoats. I saw this kind 
 of woman more in Oxford. Perhaps they 
 cannot be said to be plus chic que les Parisiennes; 
 but there is some indescribable delight in their 
 graceful refinement, avoiding all sorts of 
 vulgarity. 
 
 I hear Oxford turns into a quite different 
 town in the summer. Not only the trees get 
 green, but smartest people in England cover 
 the whole area of Thames water. I am think- 
 ing to witness this " change " as soon as I get 
 a chance. 
 
 YOSHIO MARKING. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD