"February 19.—Aunt Kitty has done a most kind act in securing Mr. Jowett's protection for me at Oxford. I have had a kind note from him, in which his using my Christian name at once is very reassuring, though the fact that the seventeenth word he ever addressed to me is a Latin one looks rather formidable for future conversations."
Unfortunately, when I was just prepared to go up to Oxford for "Matriculation," I caught a violent chill while learning to skate, and, just when I should have started, became most seriously ill with inflammation of the lungs. As soon as I was able to be moved, I went to the Vaughans at Harrow, where I soon recovered under kind care and nursing. I always feel that I owe much in every way to the kindness and hospitality of my cousin Kate during these years of my life. As the authorities at the University were induced to give me a private examination later, in place of the one I had missed, I only remained at Southgate for a few days more.
To MY MOTHER.
"March 13.—My mother will like a letter on my nineteenth birthday—so very old the word makes it seem, and yet I feel just as if I were the dear mother's little child still; only now every year I may hope to be more of a comfort to her.
"Yesterday afternoon I went with Papillon to take leave of the (Epping) Forest. It was a perfect day; such picturesque lights and shades on the Edmonton levels. We went through Chingford churchyard, and then through the muddy forest to the old Hunting Lodge, which I had never reached before, and felt to be the one thing I must see. It is a small, gabled, weather-beaten house, near a group of magnificent oaks on a hill-top. Inside is the staircase up which Elizabeth rode to dinner in her first ecstasy over the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Afterwards, I suppose because she found it easy, she had a block put at the top from which she mounted to ride down again. To prove the tradition, a pony is now kept in the house, on which you may ride up and down the stairs in safety. The lodge is still inhabited by one of the oldest families of forest-rangers, who have been there for centuries: in a room upstairs are the portraits of their ancestors, and one bedroom is surrounded with tapestry which they declare was wrought by the Queen's own needle.
"And to-morrow I am going to Oxford—how exciting!"
VI
OXFORD LIFE
1853-1855
| "When I recall my youth, what I was then, |
| What I am now, ye beloved ones all: |
| It seems as though these were the living men, |
| And we the coloured shadows on the wall." |
| —Monckton Milnes. |