Oxford Days; or, How Ross Got His Degree

by F. E. Weatherly

At eleven o’clock on the following day there was such a crowd as had not been seen in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court for many a long day. The case was investigated as before a magistrate, the Vice-Chancellor being ex officio a justice of the peace for the city of Oxford, with, however, far greater powers. There were plenty of undergraduates who gave evidence in support of the charge, and the manager and singers gladly exonerated the rest of the audience. It was acknowledged on all sides that neither Monkton nor the “star” comique put in so easy and unembarrassed an appearance before the Very Reverend the Vice-Chancellor and the Proctors as they did in their respective positions on the eventful evening. It was in vain that Monkton’s solicitor urged provocation on the part of the “star.” There were plenty of men ready to testify that they too had been chaffed. The Vice-Chancellor gave the defendant a sharp reprimand, fined him 5l., and “sent him down for a term.”

The Proctor’s summons to the rest of the men was allowed to pass, and they heard no more of the matter.

The Michaelmas Law Term commenced on the 2nd of November, and Frank obtained leave from the Dean to go to town to enter at the Inner Temple and eat his first three dinners. He left at 9 a.m., with feelings somewhat akin to those he had on starting from home for matriculation, with the important difference, however, that there was no examination to face. His father met him at Paddington, and they drove straight to the Temple. At the gate of the “Inner” they found the two friends who had promised to be sureties for the payment of fees. With them they went to the Steward’s office, and there Frank presented a paper signed by the Dean of Paul’s to the effect that he had passed a Public Examination at Oxford. This exempted him from any examination on admission as a student of the Inns of Court. On payment of one guinea he obtained a form of admission, to be signed by two barristers to vouch for his respectability, with which he and his father went to the chambers of two friends, who gave the necessary signatures; then back again to the Treasurer’s office, where the two sureties entered into a bond to the amount of 50l.; and by a further payment of five guineas for the privilege of attending the Public Lectures of the Law Professors, and 35l. 6s. 5d. for fees and stamp on admission, the whole business was complete, and Frank was a student of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.

A little pleasant chaff about the woolsack, and the quartet broke up, the two sureties to their respective businesses, Frank and his father to lunch. Then Mr. Ross took a cab to Paddington, leaving Frank at the door of Maskelyne and Cooke’s mysterious entertainment, where he proposed a little mild dissipation till it was time to go down to the Temple to dine.

Hurrying through the crowd of students and newspaper-boys at the lodge just before six o’clock, he met three friends, and the usual expressions of mutual surprise were uttered. They agreed to make up a mess together, and certainly would not have accepted the definition of a mess as “a party of four who eye each other with feelings of mutual distrust and suspicion.” Frank, as freshman, had to “stand” the orthodox bottle of wine, and felt quite like an old fogey as he “took wine” with the three. With the exception of wine, and the power of sending for various sorts of liquors, the dinner was very much the same as the usual dinner in Hall at Oxford. The servants were better dressed, but waited worse. There was more order, from the fact that everybody has to be present at grace before and after meat, failing which, the dinner does not count. Then the diversity of age and style of men struck Frank. Old men and beardless boys sitting side by side, wearing the student’s gown; mild-looking students with pale faces and spectacles; fast men, in whom the notion of study seemed a ridiculous anomaly; dark faces from the East; and even a few of the thick lips from Africa. All the rest—the Benchers at the high table, the portraits overhead, the coloured windows, the fretted roof, the carved panelling—it was all familiar; Oxford over again, simply transplanted to the very heart of London.

After dinner they went to a theatre, and after that Frank was initiated into the mysteries of Evans’s.

The three evenings passed all too quickly, and he was once more in Oxford, with the sense of having at least made one distinct step towards winning Rose, even though it was such a matter-of-fact affair as the eating of three dinners.

There was not much to mark the succeeding Lent Term. There were the “Torpids” as usual, in which Frank again rowed, and with such decided improvement that he was considered safe for the “Eight” in the summer term. There was the ordinary scarlet-fever scare; a suicide of a studious undergraduate, the annual result of the climate, and the Lenten depression of the social atmosphere; and there were the Christ-Church Grinds,[12] and the Brasenose Ale Festival on Shrove Tuesday.

To the former Frank went, surreptitiously of course, for the Grinds are with annual regularity forbidden, but with equal regularity carried out. The Proctors for the time being were not over-sharp, and imagined that the simplest and easiest way to catch the men coming home from Aylesbury was to go to the station and meet the in-trains. But, strange to relate, not a single undergraduate was to be found! Innocently confessing his failure on the following evening in Common Room, the Senior Proctor drew upon himself the ridicule of one of the older fellows, a sporting man, and the “inextinguishable laughter” of the rest.