He is one who knows that three or four years at the University is a good investment. He comes up with an open scorn of idlers, both gilded and gifted. Whether he is clever and successful or not, he has a suspicion that dons are underworked, colleges expensive hotels or worse, and is determined to change all that. Not infrequently such a one is perverted by a happy evening with a few acquaintances, early in his first term. If he is not, he is a white elephant. The dons are alarmed by his instructions, the undergraduates by his clothes. “If this were not an old conservative creek,” he seems to say, “promotion would go by merit, and I should[Pg 278] soon be at the top of the tree and begin repairs.” But the University remains unchanged.
He looks about him for a more stealthy passage to his ends.
A vernal impulse, it may be, sends him to a tailor’s shop, and in the unwonted resplendence that follows he is almost a butterfly. In a jocular spirit he calls upon the persons whose invitations he used to ignore. If he is clever or amusing, or apparently labouring under a delusion, he is liked. In his turn he is called upon. He begins to find that there is something in himself which has a taste for all that is human. Homo sum, he mutters, with one of the classical quotations which are to his taste. He will dally with the multitude for an hour or two,—a week,—why not for a term? When he is in the company of the sons of old or wealthy families, it occurs to him that rank and wealth are powerful: it follows, and can be demonstrated, that the power cannot be more justly exercised than in the furthering of honest and meritorious poverty. He will make a concession; possibly another visit to a tailor; perhaps a little champagne. Several discoveries follow.
It would be not only difficult, but contemptible, to play football or to row; yet he can learn to play lawn tennis. He is presently quite at home, if not in love, at garden parties. He mistakes the curious interest of men and women, in one who is entirely different from themselves, for a compliment to his adaptability.
Society bores him rapidly. He has had enough of[Pg 279] vacation visits and picnics during the term, and revives his acquaintance with work and the indolent fellows. But that is not necessarily attractive. Also, his friends and admirers will not let him disappear; and he returns to frivolity in a serious and plotting spirit. He tolerates nearly every one, and in particular the influential. They cultivate him, clearly, for his intelligence, his independence, his originality. Why should he not cultivate them for their own petty endowment? He enters office at the Union. He is elected to presidentships, secretaryships.
He is lucky if he does not learn from others—what he will not easily learn alone—that his resemblance to them is neither his best nor his most useful quality. And so he finds that after all there is nothing in ideals, and steps into a comfortable place in life; or perhaps he does not.
IV
The many-coloured undergraduate looks as if he had been designed by the architect of the “Five Orders Gate” in the Schools’ Quadrangle. His hat, his face, his tie, his waistcoat, his boots, represent the five orders; as in his great original, the Corinthian is predominant, and like that, he would never be thought possible, if he had not been seen. Yet he moves. Despite his elaborate appearance—destined to endure perhaps for all time, or as long as a shop-front—it is impossible to guess what may be his activities. He may be a famous[Pg 280] oarsman or cricketer, in which case his taste forbids him to adopt the broad blue band of his rank, unless there are ladies in Oxford. He may be a hard-working student who adopts this among many methods of showing that his successes fall to him as naturally as Saturday and Sunday. He may be an amateur tragedian, or magazine-wit, or æsthete, who finds the costume less embarrassing although less distinguishing than cosmetics and an overcoat of fur. He may be a billiard-player who has chosen this contrasted, barry, wavy set of colours as his coat of arms, or the perambulating mannequin d’osier of several tailors, a transcendental sandwich-man. Or he may be a “blood” of many great connections and expenses; genial in his sphere; pleased with the number of his debts and the times he has been ploughed in “Smalls”; hunting or rowing keenly, while he lasts; and except when he has to work (which sends him to sleep), a sitter up at nights over cards and wine—
Strict age and sour Severity,
With their grave saws, in slumber lie.
We that are of purer fire
Imitate the starry quire.
Or his great expenses and connections may not exist. He is perhaps a poor and worthless imitation of all that is great,—who does not know Lord X., of whom he tells such dull stories,—whose relatives are neither retired, nor in Army, Navy, or Church,—and entirely respectable in the Vacations, when he earns by his own self-sacrifice what was earned for his models by the[Pg 282][Pg 281]