MY OLD COLLEGE ROOMS.
No easy task would it be to analyse the medley of conflicting emotions that run riot in the heart of an old ’varsity man revisiting the haunts of his academical ‘auld langsyne.’ Even were I equal to it, I would not publish the results of my experiment. Far too sacred, too personal, at least for the pages of a magazine, were my own thoughts and memories the other day, as I stealthily stole up my old staircase in ——’s, Oxford. ‘Stealthily stole,’ I say advisedly; for I felt unpleasantly more like a burglar in my pilgrim-ascent, than a respectable country clergyman. In a university sense, generations had passed away since my college days; since I, in my generation, was wont to rollick in and out of those ancient ‘oaks’ and about those venerable banisters. One felt a kind of sad impression that one belonged to a bygone age; that one’s only rightful locus standi in the university now was a shelf in the fossil department of its museum; that one was de trop in this land of the living; that one was ‘unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown,’ a sort of college ghost that ought long since to have been laid. But now, the gray goose-quill would fain flutter on, by the page, with emotions which, as I have said, are too sacred for publication. I will confine myself to more exoteric details. At the funny old cupola-like entrance—where, on the first impulse, I found myself all but taking off my hat to the ‘silent speaking’ stones of its venerable, unsightly pile—I had met a porter, but not the porter. On the staircase I had met a scout, but not the scout. No civil salute and smile of recognition from either of those; only a curious stare—a look that seemed to ask, ‘What business have you to come back and revisit earth’—(I beg the reader’s pardon!)—‘college, disturbing us in our day and generation?’
Then, at last, well ‘winded’ by my climb, I actually stood once again in front of my own old ‘oak;’ and much I wonder if ever pious Druid stood with deeper feelings of reverence before his own! It was superscribed with a most unusual, though not foreign, name; one which to me at least was new. So far, this was a comfort; for ‘Jones’ would have made me very sad and at ‘Smith’ I feel I should have wept. As it was, I found myself already speculating with some curiosity what manner of man might own to it. Somehow, with perhaps pardonable vanity, I seemed to have expected ‘Ichabod;’ but that was not the present occupant’s name. At the inner door, which was ajar, I knocked, honestly trying not to peep; but the gentleman was not at home. Just then, a jolly young fellow, books under arm, and obviously out from lecture, came bounding up the stairs, two or three steps at a time, in the real old style. Oh, how the aged, nearly worn-out parson envied now the limbs and wind that could perform that once familiar feat! There used to be a je ne sais quoi—a sense of freedom, I suppose it was, after being ‘cribbed, cabined, and confined’ for an hour at lecture, that always made one sadly forgetful for the nonce of one’s dignity in that matter of going up-stairs. At other times, the leisurely step which betokened the importance of the (newly fledged) ‘man’ was carefully observed; and used, no doubt, to make due impression upon the freshman—that junior Verdant who always had what Carlyle would call a ‘seeing eye’ for such details of deportment. But coming from lecture, even the old hand, the third-year man, now, as of yore, involuntarily betrays a lingering trace of schoolboy days by a very natural, but most undignified, hop, skip, and jump up-stairs, to doff cap and gown and don flannels for the river.
Well, up he came, this embryo bishop, statesman, or judge—I know not which—and fixing him Ancient Mariner-wise with my eye, I told him my story; feeling rather sheepish until I had satisfactorily accounted for my being discovered hovering about the coal-bin on his landing. More than one kind of expression flitted over the youth’s features as he listened to me; but the predominating one, which his politeness in vain struggled to conceal, was characteristic of the antiquary surveying some newly dug up relic of a past epoch. ‘I am not Mr Ichabod’ (let us suppose the name), he said; ‘but I am his neighbour on this floor; and I’m sure he would wish you to go into your old rooms. I will explain it to him. He will be sorry that he was out when you came.’ With this and a mutual touch of hats, we parted; he to his rooms, and I, after an absence of some forty-five years, to mine. Suggestive enough was the very first object that caught my eye upon entering; for over the bedroom door was placed, by way of ornament, a real skull, with crossbones! There it serenely rested on a black cushion fixed to a small shelf, horribly grinning at me. I could have wished a more pleasant welcome to greet me after my long absence.
‘Eheu! fugaces, Postume, Postume’ (The years fly by, and are lost to me, lost to me), I had said to myself all the morning, as I wandered about the old college haunts of my far-away youth; and if my perception of that sad fact needed quickening, that skull certainly brought it home to me with a vengeance! Clearly, my successor was a bit of a ‘mystic.’ Weird prints on the walls; curious German literature on the shelves and tables; outlandish ornaments everywhere: these and such as these spoke for their absent owner, and I felt that I could conjecture the man by his various kickshaws. I pictured him to myself reading for ‘a class’ by the midnight oil, and occasionally stimulating his flagging interest in the classics by casting a philosophic glance at the skull, to bethink him of the flight of time and man’s ‘little day’ for work. Or, again, I could see him as he refreshed himself on the sofa with a grim legend or two of the Rhine, and meditated upon the fate of some medieval fool wandering about to sell his soul, si emptorem invenerit, until he met and did fatal business with the dread merchant of the nether world. At such times, no doubt, his death’s head would have a specially attractive charm for him, and elicit some such sigh as ‘Alas! poor Yorick,’ in reference to the deluded Rhinelander. Two more clues to the character of my young friend were obvious, and right glad I was to obtain them. In the first place, he was not, as are too many of his university generation, so ‘mad,’ through much ‘learning,’ as to deny or ignore his God. Witness a well-worn Bible and Prayer-book; and even an illuminated text opposite his bed—the gift, perhaps, of a pious mother, or handiwork of a pious sister, whose holy influence he did not despise. And, again, he was not one of our unhealthy ascetics of modern society, secular ascetics, I mean—if I may coin such an expression—whose artificial merits are purely negative. Witness his rack of grotesquely shaped and well-cleaned pipes, no less than that three-handled jorum, with the shrivelled peel of the previous evening still therein!
Having taken notice of such apparent trifles on every side, and not liking to trespass longer, I prepared to leave. But if the ‘man’ who occupies my Old Rooms is brought as safely to his journey’s end as I have now well nigh been brought to mine, my last half-minute alone in that ancient ‘upper chamber’ was not spent there in vain.