CHAPTER XXI. THE SEAT OF LEARNING.
On the very day before I went to Corpus College, Oxford, my mother did a thing she had never done, nor allowed to be done before. She took me to the Standard-man, who was ready in fine weather then, at the corner of the road, (where people rest in going up the hill) to tell them how much they weighed and measured, for a penny apiece, and anything more they pleased.
My mother gave him twopence, which she said was such a lucky sum, that it might save all the ill effects, though Mr. Cope had assured her that there could be no harm done by it; and after great deliberation, with a view to sixpence, and measuring me round the chest—thirty-nine inches and a half, and levelling the top of my head at five feet six and three-quarters (to which I added two inches afterwards), he put me on his plate, and started backward in amazement.
"Must be zummat wrong with this here," he said; "no young gent, of that bigness, ever could draw under six stone six. There's plenty of grown up people does; but then they be dwarfs, or mites, or scrummies. But you be a fair-grown young gent, sir; taller, and bigger than the average of the British army, now-a-days; though not up to the size of the Peelers. Never can be true weight this. Ma'am, will you please step on, to try the machine? Twopence pays for two, you know."
"I am astonished, that you should think of such a thing," my dear mother answered, as she turned away; "I dare say, your machine is as right as usual. You don't buy, or sell, by it. Tommy, my dear, have your ticket printed; and come after me to our carriage-entrance."
"I puts you at eighteen, ma'am, eighteen stone, every pound of it;" the Standard-man called after her, and thereby lost the sixpence which I was holding in my hand for him; "but as for this young gent, if he ain't flying Tommy, as I've heer'd of,—my opinion is that he ought to be."
I was sorry to find, that the like opinion, or at least a suspicion to that effect, had already reached Oxford, long before I did. Mr. Cope had most kindly accompanied me, when I went up to matriculate; but certainly he would have kept strict silence, as to my sad affliction, unless he had thought it his duty perhaps, to speak of it confidentially to the Tutor appointed me by the College; and that appointment was rather a formal than a real matter in my time, and would scarcely be made, till I went into residence. I have known many men, who could not tell, which of the College-Tutors was their special Mentor; though in that respect, I was very lucky.
However that may be, I saw at once, when the College met for the term at Chapel, that in some way or other, my fame had outrun me; and I could not ascribe it to my mental gifts, which were by no means eminent. All the under-graduates looked at me, with warm but not rude inquiry; and even the Dons, from their lofty thrones, vouchsafed me sidelong glances.
And before very long, there was no doubt left; for the captain of the College Boat-club called upon me, quite early in the day, and apologized for self-introduction, on the score of public duty. As behoved a fresh-man, I was rather nervous in the presence of one so exalted; but he very soon set me at my ease; and as soon as the buttery was open, I sent for a tankard of Corpus ale, at his most kind suggestion. In a very pleasant manner, he drank my health, and said that he saw a great future before me, if I would only go in for it. I begged him to explain; which he did at once, after asking whether, as a Corpus-man, I would let him drop all formality. Being proud to be called a Corpus-man—a lucus a non lucendo nuncupative—I assured him once for all of my good-will, and freedom from little prejudices. Thereupon he stood up, and asked me to do the same; and without further ceremony took me by the collar, and with one arm at full length, held me in the air, without even putting his lips together. At first, I was certainly surprised a little, having heard so much of Oxford etiquette; but the smile on his face reassured me.
"Noble!" he exclaimed, "even better than I hoped. Upmore, we shall be head of the river, four nights after the eights begin. And the beauty of it is, that you look quite unlike a feather-weight."
All this was far beyond my comprehension; and he laughed again, when I told him so.
"Why, of course, what I mean is, that we want a coxswain, and you are the very man for it. Our present man is two stone too heavy, as well as a bad hand at the lines. And no man fit for it came up, last term."
"What lines?" I asked, "I can say the Georgics, and all the odes of Horace, and the three first books of the 'Iliad,' except the catalogue of ships; but I don't know what a coxswain is."
"We'll soon teach you the catalogue of ships," he answered, with a laugh at his own wit; "and the Corpus ship shall be the first. And as for not knowing what a coxswain is, you are all the better for that, because you can't have formed a bad style yet. Can you tell me exactly what your weight is? I should say well under eight."
Upon this point I satisfied him, by producing the ticket of the Standard-man; which exalted me yet more in his esteem.
"Six stone six," he cried; "and nearly forty inches round the chest! By Jove, what a stunning coxswain! And another pull we shall get out of you. With the wind astern, your head of hair will be as good as a lugsail; and with the wind ahead, we can reef it hard. My dear boy, what a blessing you will be, to old Corp first, and then to the University! No lectures to-day, as I suppose you know. I'll just go and tell the other men, what a wonderful piece of good luck has turned up; and then I'll go down to the barge with you. We'll have a day's practice with a fine old tub, and if you can't steer pretty fairly by Hall-time, you're a much bigger muff than you look, and I'm no judge of fizzy—fizzyoggery. My name it is Green, as the poet observes; but you don't see much of it in my eye. Ta, ta, Upmore, for half an hour. Don't go out, till I come back. We'll fit you up with the water-toggery."
Mr. Green went down my stairs—for I lived in a garret of the highest quality—even quicker than I could have gone myself, though I gladly would have challenged him to a race up; and he chanted as he went a loud song of triumph; and all these things amazed me. What I had expected to find at Oxford, from the look of the place, and from what I had heard, was stiffness, formality, quiet, seclusion, and above all a Classic, and religious air.
Bill Chumps, of course, could have told me better; but through a number of causes, I had seen very little of him lately; and the last time we met, he had no idea that I was to go up so soon. Indeed, there had been a little misunderstanding, between the Chumpses and the Upmores. We had a sort of an idea, that since Bill got his double-first, and fellowship at Pope's Eye, he had not cared to come, and have his bit of dinner with us, altogether in the ancient way. Whereas Mr. Chumps, as I found out afterwards, sticking to business, as he always did, took it amiss—and unreasonably, I think—that when we went so high up Haverstock Hill, and the gate was a good one to turn in at, he was never even asked to send his cart, with the young man in blue, for orders. And what made it worse was, that Gristles, his foreman, had set up in business on his own account, not more than ten doors from the "Mother-red-cap," which was all in a straight drive from our place. So that when he came, hat in hand, and "solicited our custom," and old Grip knew him, and was greatly pleased to see him, my mother and I (without harbouring a particle of disrespect towards Mr. Chumps) pledged our faith, to let him call for orders.
There were other reasons as well, why Bill had only made a formal call upon us, since we came away from Maiden Lane. But, if I am to go through every little in and out, the course of my narrative will be as crooked, as the voyage of the pair-oar tub, when I first held rudder-lines on the Isis. Only it is possible, that Miss Windsor, (now grown up into a fine young lady), may have had something to do with it; not only because of Bill's tendency towards her, but because she happened to hear my mother say, when his double-first was announced to us, that he might thank his father's meat for it. No one should ever repeat a thing, said without spite, yet growing spiteful by mere repetition; even as transfusions, harmless at first, grow poisonous. And I am sorry to say, that Miss Windsor had not enjoyed, as she should have done, our going up the Hill.
This was the thing that pleased me most, of all I found at Oxford, that there never was any ill-will amongst us, back-biting, or scandal about one another. Every young man settled into his own set, whether by introduction, or connection, taste, or accident, or whatever it might be. If he took a dislike to any one—as young men ignorant of the world do, more than we old stagers,—he could drop his acquaintance very easily, without saying a word against him; and no resentment was shown, or felt. The two men happened not to suit each other. Each was likely to despise the other; but not to think any further harm of him. And when we did take to one another, I assure you it was something like. Among civilized people, there can be no warmer heart of friendship, combining the weakness of the school-boy, with the set strength of the man. And this was how I felt towards Green, who was the first to take me up; and that is how he has felt towards me, even to the time I write these words; and whatever I say about him, he will think as good as can be said.
When he took me down, to make a coxswain of me, his good nature, and high spirits, rendered my coaching, (as he called it) a pleasure, and a pride to me. He brought No. 7, whose name was Brown; and after rigging me out in a manner, which made me think how proud my mother would have been to look at me, they put me on the hindermost seat of what they called a tub; but to me it appeared a most alarming vessel. However, I felt no fear of drowning, any more than a cork does; and before very long, I became quite happy. The beauty of the river, and the trees beside it, bright with the April of their hopes, and the meadows, where the grass began to dimple, as the light wind touched it, also the skimming of the boats around us, and the flashing of the feathered oar, together with the newness, and the freedom of the scene, exalted my spirits to the flying pitch.
But never again should I transcend the control of this earthly mass, through joy. Whenever the expansion of high spirits would lift me into the soaring vein, there comes the remembrance of what I did to my dear father,—and down goes all. Alas, all my rise into the air, since then, springs from a darker, and a deeper source, and one more active in the present age—honest wrath at roguery. But of that I knew nothing at Oxford; and little, until I became, against my own desire, mixed up with political, and national affairs.
With these heavy matters to carry through, I dare not linger as I would love, among the sweet memories of Oxford life. With a very few lessons, I learned enough to steer our Corpus eight, at practice first, and then in the momentous races, which began upon the 10th of May, that year. The fright I was in, that first evening of the races, was more than I can describe, and it makes me tremble now to think of it. But, with Green looking at me, as calm as a statue, and Brown behind him smiling, I gathered up my courage, and did my best, and we made our bump below the Gut. And I sent off a telegram to my mother, for the wires were just established then—"We have made our bump"—which the people in London turned into something ludicrous; but she knew from my letters what was meant.
I am told that Oxford men are now become addicted to total abstinence,—a craze unheard of in my time, save as a last resource for incurables. And even when we ran the Corpus flag to the top of the rope, as we did very soon, and held a great supper in the captain's room, to celebrate this fine event, very few indeed of us could be fairly said to have crossed the large boundary of temperance.
Much of the glory was ascribed to me, who had earned it, only by inanity; of which, as a lofty merit, there were then far fewer instances than now. So often was my bodily welfare pledged, first in Champagne, and then in claret, and then in port-wine, and in rum-punch next, and finally in Champagne again, that the fusion of physical and psychical emotions plunged me at length into the last new science, whose name is "Hyle-Ideology."
Green, and Brown, and the rest of our oars were forbidden to exhibit mutuality, lest the Corpus flag should come down to-morrow; but the rudder fell under no such restrictions, and hard as I strove to maintain a stiff helm, it was more than any hand, and head, could do. However, they put me in a deep armchair, through the back of which they passed a curtain-rope. Then they gave me a tassel in either hand, and lifting ship and all, upon their heads, bore me with a favourable breeze to bed, while all of us chanted a nautical song. I steered the ship, throughout her course, with gravity so accurate, and so discreetly was she manœuvred, that she never once capsized. Now, this will show, whether any one of us could have had one drop too much.
After this, my popularity, not only in the College, but throughout the University, became so vast, that the difficulty was to get a bit of victuals in my own room. All my friends enjoyed my simplicity of mind, and Maiden Lane views of the world; which were not at all Socratic, Platonic, Stoic, nor even Academic. Moreover, they found me so glad to be taught, and so grateful, and unpretending, that they taught me every kind of light learning they knew; so that I got on wonderfully, in every study, never contemplated by Founders, and Benefactors.
Happily indeed for me, athletic contests were as yet most crude; otherwise my speed of foot before the wind would have hurried me into a world of troubles. We had a few College races, and even some rudiments of University work; but as yet nothing powerful, and glorious. How should I have felt, after being chosen to run against Cambridge, for the hundred yards, the quarter of a mile, and the hurdle race, if there had been a stiff wind blowing in my teeth, at the starting-post? All this would have probably fallen upon me, if the athletic contests had then been in vogue; and I might have won everlasting fame, or base disgrace for ever.
As it was, I believed—though the whole is now forgotten—that I had established deathless fame, by steering the Oxford boat three times to victory over Cambridge. It was natural perhaps that I should be chosen for this distinguished honour, as the coxswain of the first crew on the Isis, and nearly two stone lighter than any other coxswain on the river, while looking as big as bow almost, and with some crews bigger. Yet from my low self-estimate, I was taken by surprise, when the captain of the University Boat-club wrote to me, and even begged me, for the sake of our University (which had been beaten three years running) to accept the office. Will a duck swim, will a dog bark, will a frog hop, will a Liberal run away? Without a moment's thought, I accepted; and thus began a course of triumphs for the stronger colour, which made the very cabmen shy of mounting the light-blue rosette.