The time is late afternoon in summer.
“Mercury,” and used as a water ordeal or court of ultimate appeal by undergraduates. “That old pagan fellow,” he used to say, “told you more about the size of that quadrangle than the guide-books do”; and certainly nothing short of that or a playing fountain would so pleasantly expound the spaciousness of Wolsey’s square. When some one proposed burning in effigy certain officials at the time of Edward VII.’s coronation, he “did not remember that such things were done at George’s.”
He stopped to look at the new buildings of the college, and pointing at the whitened stone, said, “I don’t believe that stone is stone at all.” As he passed an entry, full of bicycles, he said sadly, without a thought of scorn, “It was built by public subscription,” and with his hand in his pocket, he seemed to be thinking that the finest thing in the world was to be the sole founder of a college. He once had a distant prospect of the Banbury Road, and would like to make night beautiful with its burning.
He still leaves Oxford by coach, or not at all. I believe that he calls Market Street “Cheyney Lane,” and Brasenose Lane “St. Mildred’s,” and Pembroke Street “Pennyfarthing Street.” To hear him talk of St. Scholastica’s day gives one a pretty notion of the antiquity of Oxford and himself. In 1354, on that day, several scholars found fault with the wine of a city vintner, and threw it at his prosperous face. The vintner gathered his neighbours and threatened. St. Martin’s bell was rung, and the city made fierce[Pg 334] preparations at the accustomed summons. Then St. Mary’s bell was rung, and the University came forth with bows and arrows and slings. “Slay,” and “Havock,” and “Give good knocks,” cried the citizens. The fight was long and bloody, and disastrous to the scholars. So for many centuries the city had to appear penitentially at St. Mary’s on St. Scholastica’s day. In 1825 this institution ceased at the corporation’s request. But Acamas will never forgive them, and hardly the University for giving way. “When laudable old customs dwindle, ’tis a sign learning dwindles,” he would say, as Hearne said, when there were no longer any fritters at dinner. Nor is he to be moved by the mundane glories of his college in the schools or elsewhere. A brilliant “examinee” of the college, and his particular aversion, having gained a First in Law, when it was pointed out to him by the scholar’s scout, the old man remarked: “And now I hope he knows what a privilege it is to belong to this college.”
How slow and decorous he was at the buttery hatch, performing even his own business as if he were about that of another. He carried a plate as if it were a ceremony; and his imperturbability would have completely endowed a railway porter and several judges. In hall, when once the needs of all the diners had been supplied, he would stand like “Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved,” an effigy, a self-constituted symbol of olden piety and order, bent on asserting sweet ancient things, while fellows raced into hall, and undergraduates raced[Pg 336][Pg 335]
