The important undergraduate is one who has been [Pg 294]thunderstruck by the inferiority of the rest. He cannot, if he would, be rid of the notion. In a large college the distinction between himself and others is cheerfully acknowledged by them, while he leads a painful life. In a small college, for a year or two, he is so handled that he may sometimes wish he were as other men are. At the end of that time he has by contagion created a covey of important men, and now, to his moral, athletic, and intellectual excellence, and his superior school, is added the excellence of being several years older than the majority. He establishes a despotism for the good of the college. He is willing to take the fellows into partnership, makes advances, and, when coyly repulsed, has his sense of importance increased by the knowledge that an opposition exists. His splendour is marred only by the stranger, who mistakes his brass-buttoned blazer for a livery, and finds his pomposity well worthy of such fine old quadrangles,—and requests him with a smile and half a sovereign to exhibit the chapel and the hall, and “tell me who are the swells”!

He walks about Oxford with a beautiful satisfaction. “A poor thing, but my own,” he seems to say, as he enters the college gate. Little boys in the street pull off their caps as he passes, and the saucy, imprudent freshman does the same. He rows, he plays football and cricket, he debates, all indifferently, but with such an air that he and even some others for a time believe that he is the life and soul of the college.

He has been captain and president of everything, when he finds that there is no further honour open to[Pg 295] him, and he muses almost with melancholy. The others find it out somewhat later; he is dejected. Though fallen, he is still majestic. He stalks about like a foxhound in July, or like a rebellious archangel—

Is this the region, this the soil, the clime?...

Once more October returns. A new generation of freshmen is invited to tea, and for one glorious hour his old vivacity returns, as he questions, instructs, exhorts. “The President of the O.U.B.C. once said to me, ...” or “When I was in the college boat and we made seven bumps ...”—such are his conjuring terms.

Perhaps in a few years he returns, to find that the college is not what it was, and that his nickname is still remembered.

VIII

He is one whom the Important Undergraduate regards as a parody of himself. For he resembles the other in no respect. He is a clean, brave, and modest freshman, with too great a liking for the same qualities in others to be disturbed by any faulty affectations that may go along with them. When he comes up he has a few friends in Oxford, keeps them, and is well contented. He plays his games heartily, and is almost as glad to cheer, when he is not good enough or pushing enough to play. Nothing can destroy his regular habits, and at first he narrowly escapes being despised for them by his inferiors. He is comparatively poor and not very clever.[Pg 296] Neither has he any amusing oddities, or stories to tell, or much whisky to dispense. Yet he finds notoriety thrust upon him. If it were not for his firm and blushing manner, he would never have his room empty for work. Very soon, he is the only man in the college who may sport his oak with no fear from the thunders of distant and idle acquaintances. Every one wishes to possess him. The athletes cannot withstand his running, his hard fielding. The more unpopular reading-men are first attracted by his simple habits as a freshman, and then surprised that they are not repulsed when they hear that he will get his Blue; he is always their protector. The elegant and stupid men, at least for a few terms, know no man who so becomes a cigar, and is so fit to meet their female cousins at breakfast. The brilliant men like him first because he is a mystery; next, because he recalls to them their “lost youth,” which was nothing like his; and finally, because he is so friendly and so naïvely rebukes their most venturesome sallies. His presence in a room is more than a wood fire and a steaming bowl. He seems to know not sorrow—

Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot.

It is sorrow-killing to see his amazement at sorrow, like the amazement of those spirits in Purgatory who exclaimed, as Dante passed: “The light seems not to shine on one side of him, though he behaves as one that lives.” Men of very different persuasions are fascinated by “the young Greek” in the Parks or on the river. He is successful everywhere, and is in time captain of[Pg 297] football and president of the debating and literary society, although his knowledge of literature is confined to Scott’s Novels, Hypatia, and the Idylls of the King. He accepts the advice of the Important Undergraduate, here and elsewhere, and unconsciously ignores it, with happy results. For his contemporaries believe that he has launched his college upon one of those sudden, mysterious ascensions that mean social, learned, and athletic improvement at once. To the last he is diffident, and at the same time always capable of doing his best. “Can you clear that brook?” one asks in the Hinksey fields. “I don’t know,” is the reply, and over he goes, a foot clear amongst the orchis. Not a great deal more powerful than the cox, he strokes a boat that has never been bumped, and is the only oar whom the rest all praise. To see him halting over a commonplace speech at a college function, or making the most ludicrous new verses to the alphabetical song of “Jolly old Dons,” and winning applause; or dropping his head on his knees at the winning-post on the river; or carried for the hundredth time round the quadrangle on some festive night—is, nobody knows or asks why, an inspiration. And after his last farewell dinner he smiles, as if he knew everything or had the pitié suprême, as he notices the follies which he supposes he is “not clever enough for,” and goes down to his manor or country curacy very happily.[Pg 298]