He is a mirror of good manners, which he has learned out of love, and not necessity. He has a great store of antique information—statutes, precedents, fables—which, as in an aumbry, he keeps fragrant by much meditation, and is pleased to display. His elaborate courtesies are interpreted almost as insults by the new generations; men wonder what they have done to[Pg 340] deserve his withering respect. It is reported that on one occasion, at twilight, a vigorous gentleman brushed past him, between the Camera and Brasenose. Acamas turned, with a soft and bitter protest against “a gentleman forcing what he could command.” “If,” said he, “the Vice-Chancellor were here, he should know that a gentleman had insulted an old college servant by mistaking him for a townsman.” ... He bowed and almost broke his heart when he recognised the beaming face of the Vice-Chancellor.
He is the corrector of all new abuses and the defender of old, and through his father, a college butler and long since dead, he has the times of Trafalgar fresh in his mind, with imposing third-hand memories of the days when Oxford was Jacobite. The subtle distinguishing marks of all the colleges, as far as concerns fashions of morals and manners, scholarship and sport, he knows by heart, and professes such an experienced acquaintance with like matters that in the High or by the Long Bridges he knows at sight a “Greats” man or a “Stinks” man or a mathematician; of which last he is a determined hater; and when on one occasion he remarked on the good looks of a certain plain person, he was forced to explain that he meant “good-looking for a mathematician.” He would at need devise a new coat of arms for Magdalen or St. John’s, or improve “the devil that looks over Lincoln.”
Of “his own college” he knows everything, from the cobweb on Jeremy Taylor in the library to the[Pg 341] oldest beam in the kitchen roof. He knows the benefactors and their benefactions, their rank, and everything but the way to pronounce their names; and has a kind of unofficial bidding prayer in celebration of their good deeds. His ideal of a head of a college is an odd mixture of Dean Gaisford and Tatham of Lincoln; for he demands some eccentricity along with dignity and repute, and in the course of three-quarters of a century he has combined the two. The common-room chairs he knows better than those who sit in them—their history and their peculiarities, and who have sat therein. By nice observation he is aware of the correct way of crossing a quadrangle, and of whose furniture should be consumed in bonfires. The spires and gateways of the city are close friends to him, and “Isn’t she beautiful,” or “Isn’t he looking well,” or “They have their little ways,” is his comment as he passes one or other of the things that have brooded over his life continually. He can tell when the bats will come out of the tower in a fine January or a windy March; when the swifts shall scream first by All Saints’; and the colour of New College tower when a storm is due from the west. I can think of him as being the deity of the place, in a mythopœic age, and picture him corniger, with fritillaries in his hoary locks, as the genius of Isis, up in a niche at the Bodleian.[Pg 342]
The Past
I have no doubt that the past had many such to show, and that the present, when it has graduated into a past, will not be found wanting; but the ways of the college servants of old are buried deep in oblivion. They were less numerous then, when a senior and a junior student slept in the same room, and the latter made the beds, etc. Upon scholars, Bible-clerks, and the like, fell a great many of the duties which are now the scout’s—as waiting at the fellows’ table in hall, and the pleasanter although more thankless task of calling up the fellows and more luxurious commoners in the morning. Not only was the scholar or “servitor” a practical servant for part of his time, but the regular servants could be students also, and we may guess from the Corpus statutes that they must sometimes have attended lectures and have taken degrees. A story runs that a vain scholar had sent some Latin verses to his tutor by the hand of a servant, who quickly read and corrected them, to the humiliation of the scholar, when he received them back, with the comment, that his work seemed to have been revised by one who was acquainted with the Latin tongue. No doubt a man of this stamp often rose, or if he stayed in college made his attainments profitable. A man who was once manciple at Wadham became a noted maker of mathematical instruments. The manciple bought and distributed provisions in the college: the cook or[Pg 344][Pg 343]
THE ENTRANCE TO QUEEN’S COLLEGE FROM LOGIC LANE
The cupola and entrance gate beneath, appearing across the road at the end of Logic Lane, form one of the most attractive objects in the High Street.
Behind the cupola shows part of the campanile and pediment of the buildings of the College on the north side of the Great Quadrangle. The statue is that of Queen Caroline, consort of George II. The buildings on the left of the picture belong to University College.