The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green

by Cuthbert Bede

"Bravo, Harry!" cried Charles Larkyns; "you roar us an' twere any nightingale. It would do old Bishop Still's heart good to hear you; and 'sure I think, that you can drink with any that wears a hood,' or that will wear a hood when you take your Bachelor's, and put on your gown." And Charles Larkyns sang, rather more musically than Mr. Bouncer had done, from that song which, three centuries ago, the Bishop had written in praise of good ale,-

Let back and side go bare, go bare,

Both hand and foot go cold:

But, belly, God send thee good ale enough,

Whether it be new or old.

They were soon down at the river side, where Verdant was carefully put into a tub (alas! the dear, awkward, safe, old things are fast passing away; they are giving place to suicidal skiffs, and will soon be numbered among the boats of other days!)- and was started off with almost as much difficulty as on his first essay. The tub - which was, indeed, his old friend the Sylph, - betrayed an awkward propensity for veering round towards Folly Bridge, which our hero at first failed to overcome; and it was not until he had performed a considerable amount of crab-catching, that he was enabled to steer himself in the proper direction. Charles Larkyns had taken his seat in an outrigger skiff (so frail and shaky that it made Verdant nervous to look at it), and, with one or two powerful strokes, had shot ahead, backed water, turned, and pulled back round the tub long before Verdant had succeeded in passing that eccentric mansion, to which allusion has before been made, as possessing in the place of cellars, an ingenious system of small rivers to thoroughly irrigate its foundation - a hydropathic treatment which may (or may not) be agreeable in Venice, but strikes one as being decidedly cold and comfortless when applied to Oxford, - at any rate, in the month of November. Walking on the lawn which stretched from this house towards the river, our hero espied two extremely pretty young ladies, whose hearts he endeavoured at once to take captive by displaying all his powers in that elegant exercise in which they saw him engaged. It may reasonably be presumed that Mr. Verdant Green's hopes were doomed to be blighted.

Let us leave him, and take a look at Mr. Bouncer.

Mr. Bouncer had been content to represent the prowess of his college in the cricket-field, and had never aspired to any fame as an oar. The exertions, as well as the fame, of aquatic honours, he had left to Mr. Blades, and those others like him, who considered it a trifle to pull down to Iffley and back again, two or three times a day, at racing pace with a fresh spurt put on every five minutes.

Mr. Bouncer, too, had an antipathy to eat beefsteaks otherwise than in the state in which they are usually brought to table; and, as it seemed a sine qua non with the gentleman who superintended the training for the boat-races, that his pupils should daily devour beefsteaks which had merely looked at the fire, Mr. Bouncer, not having been brought up to cannibal habits, was unable to conform himself to this, and those other vital principles which seemed to regulate the science of aquatic training. The little gentleman moreover, did not join with the "Torpids" (as the second boats of a college are called), either, because he had a soul above them, - he would be aut Caesar, aut nullus; either in the eight, or nowhere, - or else, because even the Torpids would cause him more trouble and pleasurable pain than would be agreeable to him. When Mr. Bouncer sat down on any hard substance, he liked to be able to do so without betraying any emotion that the action caused him personal discomfort; and he had noticed that many of the Torpids - not to mention one or two of the eight - were more particular than young men usually are about having a very easy, soft, and yielding chair to sit on.

Mr. Bouncer, too, was of opinion that continued blisters were both unsightly and unpleasant; and that rawness was bad enough when taken in conjunction with beefsteaks, without being extended to one's own hands. He had also a summer passion for ices and creams, which were forbidden luxuries to one in training, - although (paradoxical as it may seem to say so) they trained on Isis! He had also acquired a bad habit of getting up in one day, and going to bed in the next, - keeping late hours, and only rising early when absolutely compelled to do so in order to keep morning chapel - a habit which the trainer would have interfered with, considerably to the little gentleman's advantage. He had also an amiable weakness for pastry, port, claret, "et hock genus omne"; and would have felt it a cruelty to have been deprived of his daily modicum of "smoke"; and in all these points, boat-training would have materially interfered with his comfort.

Mr. Bouncer, therefore, amused himself equally as much to his own satisfaction as if he had been one of the envied eight, by occasionally paddling about with Charles Larkyns in an old pair-oar, built by Davis and King, and bought by Mr. Bouncer of its late Brazenfacian proprietor, when that gentleman, after a humorous series of plucks, rustications, and heavy debts, had finally been compelled to migrate to the King's Bench, for that purification of purse and person commonly designated "whitewashing." When Charles Larkyns and his partner did not use their pair-oar, the former occupied his outrigger skiff; and the latter, taking Huz and Buz on board a sailing boat, tacked up and down the river with great skill, the smoke gracefully curling from his meerschaum or short black pipe, - for Mr. Bouncer disapproved of smoking cigars at those times when the wind would have assisted him to get through them.

"Hullo, Giglamps! here we are! as the clown says in the pantermime," sung out the little gentleman as he came up with our hero, who was performing some extraordinary feats in full sight of the University crew, who were just starting from their barge; "you get no end of exercise out of your tub, I should think, by the style you work those paddles. They go in and out beautiful! Splish, splash; splish, splash! You must be one of the wherry identical Row-brothers-row, whose voices kept tune and whose ears kept time, you know. You ought to go and splish-splash in the Freshman's River, Giglamps; - but I forgot - you ain't a freshman now, are you, old feller? Those swells in the University boats look as though they were bursting with envy - not to say, with laughter," added Mr. Bouncer, sotto voce. "Who taught you to do the dodge in such a stunning way, Giglamps?"