V
He has come up with a scholarship from school. There, he took prizes, had an attack of brain-fever, and edited the magazine: and he has come to the University as if it were an upper class of his old school. His aim is, as many prizes as possible and a good degree. The tutors here, like the masters at school, he regards as men who turn a handle and work up more or less good material into scholars, as a butcher makes sausages, all exactly alike to the eye, out of a mysterious heap. At first he is in great awe of a fellow, and wears his scholar’s gown at its utmost length, and as proudly as star and riband—he will hardly take it off in the severe quarter of an hour in which he permits himself to drink coffee and eat anchovy toast after dinner; and he sometimes pretends to forget that he has it on until he goes to bed. Perhaps on one occasion he trips his tutor over a quotation or something of no account. He scans the tutor’s bookshelves, and finds odd things between Tacitus and Thucydides which make him ponder. At length, he is less respectful; opens discussions, in which, having tired the tutor, he returns very well satisfied. For he has a patent memory, as he has a patent reading-lamp and reading-desk. Nothing goes into it without a bright label, as nothing goes into his note-book without honours of pencilled red and blue. His copy of Homer is so overscored that one might[Pg 287] suppose that the battle of the pigmies and cranes had been fought to a sanguinary end upon its page.
At school his football was treated with contempt, yet with silence, except by very small boys. At college he is anxious to do a little at games. The captain of the boats asks him, as a matter of course, to go down to the river, to be tubbed (or coached) in a pair-oar boat; and he replies that he “will willingly spare half an hour.” He shows some good points at the river; is painstaking and neat. His half-hour is mercilessly multiplied day after day. He is to be found at the starting-point in February, in his college Torpid, and proves a stately nonentity or passenger; discovers that rowing abrades more than his skin, and gives it up just before he is asked to. For the future he sculls alone, once a week, when it is mild, and oftener when his friends are visiting him—which he does not encourage. At such times he learns that it is quite true that Oxford possesses some fine drawings, marbles, stained glass, and a library of little use to a determined “Greats” man. These he exhibits to the visitors impatiently and with pride. He returns to his work unruffled. Already he has scored one First Class and a proxime for a prize. Yet his tutor pays him qualified compliments, which he attributes to the natural bitterness of a second class man. The tutor sometimes asks him what he reads; to which he replies brightly with a long list of texts, etc.
“Yes, but what do you read when you unbend?” says the tutor. “Did you ever read Midshipman Easy?” (with a touch of exasperation).[Pg 288]
The youth blushingly replies: “No, I never unbend.”
Nor is the other far more pleased when he brings with him, on a short vacation boating holiday, a volume of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Now and then he speaks at the Union. There and at afternoon teas with ladies he is known for the lucidity of his commonplaces and the length of his quotations. For the most part he talks only of his work and the current number of the Times. His work, meantime, is less and less satisfactory to every one but his coach. Some say that he will get another first, and will not deserve it. Already he is learning that three or four years among “boys” is not helpful to his future. No one so much as he emphasises the distinction between third and second year undergraduates. He is always looking for really improving conversation, and play of mind without any play. A book tea would please him, if it were not so frivolous.
Once only he lapses from the rigidity of his ways. He thinks it a matter of duty until it occurs, when the hearty and informal reception given to his rendering of “To Anthea” discourages any further condescension. With that exception, he moves with considerable dignity among mankind: in all things discreet, with a leaning towards the absurd; in most things well under control, yet, in spite of his rigidity, really luxuriating in the sweets of a neutral nature that never tempts temptation. He sends in a neat, flowery, and icy poem for the Newdigate Prize, and wins. He gets his second First[Pg 289] Class and an appointment which he likes at the same time. He enters for a fellowship, and his failure calls forth the old story about the cherry tart that was offered to likely competitors at a fellowship examination, where the cleanest management of the stones meant success.
He goes down with his degree, and confident, applauded, unmissed. His friends say that he lacks something which he ought to have. What is it?