Oxford Days; or, How Ross Got His Degree

by F. E. Weatherly

The receipt of Frank’s letter, and the request that his mother would bring Rose, produced a little commotion. His father still tried to pooh-pooh the notion of an engagement; but his mother, who had Frank’s confidence, maintained that, as far as the two were concerned, the engagement was a reality, and that it only waited the formal consent of the parents and the means to marry. So it was at last decided that Mr. and Mrs. Ross, and Frank’s elder sister, Mary, would go. The Vicar, glad of an excuse to visit Oxford again, agreed to join the party and bring Rose. And Rose herself—well, there was no need to ask her consent. On Friday morning a telegram was despatched to Frank, telling him they were coming on Saturday evening, and giving him directions to secure lodgings; and Mary and Rose were together most of the day and evening, arranging, selecting, altering, and making various articles of adornment for the coming gaieties.

Pembroke concert had taken place on Thursday, Queen’s on Friday, and there was nothing for Saturday. But that was no loss to Frank’s party, for they were all too tired for any gaiety after their long journey. By a fluke—for he was late in looking for lodgings—he found some disengaged rooms in Grove Street; and the shady little corner, so close to the sunny, busy High, was most pleasant and convenient. After supper the Vicar went down to Christ-Church to “look up” some old friends, still in residence as Senior Students,[14] and the rest strolled by Merton to the river. Mr. and Mrs. Ross, not caring to trust themselves to the boat which Frank had chosen, wandered round the paths by the Cherwell, and, after losing themselves by the Botanical Gardens, eventually got safe to Grove Street. Frank rowed Rose and Mary down to Sandford, where he gave them tea in the little inn overlooking the lock, and then took them round to see the lasher that has been so fatal to many bright young lives.

Coming home, he pointed out to them all the spots of interest and importance to the rowing man. The tavern at Iffley where the last of the Eights starts in the races; the Green Barge, at the entrance to the “Gut;” the Gut itself, that terror of young coxswains; the Long Bridges; the White Willow where the boats make their final crossing to the Berkshire bank on the journey home. Every spot had its little history. Here, in the first Torpids, he had nearly “caught a crab.” There his crew had made their final “spirt;” here they had bumped Brasenose, when the coxswain would not acknowledge the bump. There “bow” broke his oar, and nearly pitched out of the boat. Yonder, strolling quietly down the Berkshire bank, was Harvey, the Humane Society’s man. There was old George West on the Brasenose barge; there, just above, was Timms, the “Father of the Crews,” leading a quiet time of it, now that the “Eights” and the “Sculls” and “Pairs”[15] were over. Frank took the girls into the ’Varsity barge, and showed them the pictures of the old “oars,” who had rowed for Oxford at Henley and Putney; and told them what little legends had come down to him of Chitty and Meade-King, Arkell and Warre, Morrison and Woodgate; and, coming to later times, of Tinney, Willan, Yarborough, and Darbishire, the famous four who, besides their glories at Putney, licked the Yankees from Harvard; and, in later times still, of Leslie and Houblon, Edwards-Moss and Marriott. They were all heroes to Frank—these “brutal rowing men,” as Mr. Wilkie Collins deems them—these savages whose only glory is their brute strength. It has been said that English battles have been won in the Eton playing-fields. Possibly the Isis and the Cam have as much as anything to do with the feats of dogged endurance and quiet pluck that have made Alma and Inkerman, Isandula and Rorke’s Drift, immortal names in the annals of warfare.

On Sunday they all went to St. Mary’s. The Vicar’s gown admitted the ladies to the seats appropriated to the wives of the Masters of Arts, and Mr. Ross to the seats of the Masters themselves. Frank, being still de jure an undergraduate, had to retire to the upstair gallery. The church was crowded. People were even standing in the aisles. The sermon, by a silver-haired professor with a cherubic face, was a discourse on friendship, delivered, if somewhat monotonously, with a delicate utterance and in a delicate phraseology that was quite too charming; and if it formed a rather strange contrast to the anathemas thundered by rural Boanerges to placid congregations in sweltering country churches, the contrast was a pleasing one rather than otherwise.

“Well,” said Mr. Ross as they emerged into the High, “that’s an odd sort of sermon, eh, Vicar?”

Mr. Ross was a very sound lawyer, but he had not travelled much, nor had he heard many sermons other than those of his friend the Vicar. The Vicar smiled, and continued his explanations to Mrs. Ross of certain allusions to Oxford celebrities made by the preacher. Frank also, to whom his father appealed, had only a commonplace comment to make. His studies not having been philosophical, he could not go into raptures over every utterance of the new Plato.

The church was even more crowded, if that were possible, in the afternoon, in spite of the awkwardness of the hour (two o’clock) and the heat of the day. And what an assemblage of famous men was present! Gladstone and Tyndall, Lord Selborne and Huxley, Forster and Sir Stafford Northcote, Sir William Harcourt and the Oxford Conservative member, all sitting amicably side by side, listening to one of those eloquent attacks on men of science which satisfy and please those for whom they are not needed, and only amuse those whom they are intended to convince.

After the sermon the Vicar and Mr. Ross betook themselves to the Union, to read the papers over a cup of coffee; and about a quarter to five Frank started with his mother, sister, and Rose, to Magdalen Chapel. Tickets had been, of course, difficult to get, and with all his exertions he had only been able to secure two for the choir, and two for the ante-chapel. The two former Mrs. Ross and Mary took, without any resistance, for they knew that Rose would be happier to be with Frank. How many husbands and wives come back in after-years to Oxford, to go over again all the old days, to revisit all the old spots, to find one particular tree the same, save, like themselves, a little older; to sit in the same chapel, and listen perhaps to the very same anthem they had listened to when they were boy and girl, sung by different voices, but for them the same; to pass the same surly porter, whose favour can only be purchased; to see the same placid gardener tidying up the velvet grass under the grey walls; to hear the same bells ringing; and, with it all, to feel as young as ever!

Frank and Rose, as they sat in the dim ante-chapel, under the great brown window that sheds such a strange light over all, thought neither of the past, for that was eclipsed, nor of the future, for that was uncertain, but just lived in the present. And if he did hold her hand during most of the service, nobody saw him, and therefore nobody’s feelings were outraged.