Isa’s Visit to Oxford.
1888.
Chap. I.
On Wednesday, the Eleventh of July, Isa happened to meet a friend at Paddington Station at half-past-ten. She can’t remember his name, but she says he was an old old old gentleman, and he had invited her, she thinks, to go with him somewhere or other, she can’t remember where.
Chap. II.
The first thing they did, after calling at a shop, was to go to the Panorama of the “Falls of Niagara”. Isa thought it very wonderful. You seemed to be on the top of a tower, with miles and miles of country all round you. The things in front were real, and somehow they joined into the picture behind, so that you couldn’t tell where the real things ended and the picture began. Near the foot of the Falls, there was a steam-packet crossing the river, which showed what a tremendous height the Falls must be, it looked so tiny. In the road in front were two men and a dog, standing looking the other way. They may have been wooden figures, or part of the picture, there was no knowing which. The man, who stood next to Isa, said to another man “That dog looked round just now. Now see, I’ll whistle to him, and make him look round again!” And he began whistling: and Isa almost expected, it looked so exactly like a real dog, that it would turn its head to see who was calling it!
After that Isa and her friend (the Aged Aged Man) went to the house of a Mr Dymes. Mrs Dymes gave them some dinner, and two of her children, called Helen and Maud, went with them to Terry’s Theatre, to see the play of “Little Lord Fauntleroy”. Little Véra Beringer was the little Lord Fauntleroy. Isa would have liked to play the part, but the Manager at the Theatre did not allow her, as she did not know the words, which would have made it go off badly. Isa liked the whole play very much: the passionate old Earl, and the gentle Mother of the little boy, and the droll “Mr. Hobbs”, and all of them.
Then they all went off by the Metropolitan Railway, and the two Miss Dymeses got out at their station, and Isa and the A.A.M. went on to Oxford. A kind old lady, called Mrs Symonds, had invited Isa to come and sleep at her house: and she was soon fast asleep, and dreaming that she and little Lord Fauntleroy were going in a steamer down the Falls of Niagara, and whistling to a dog, who was in such a hurry to go up the Falls that he wouldn’t attend to them.
Chap. III.
The next morning Isa set off, almost before she was awake, with the A.A.M., to pay a visit to a little College, called “Christ Church”. You go in under a magnificent tower, called “Tom Tower”, nearly four feet high (so that Isa had hardly to stoop at all, to go under it) into the Great Quadrangle (which very vulgar people call “Tom Quad”.) You should always be polite, even when speaking to a Quadrangle: it might seem not to take any notice, but it doesn’t like being called names. On their way to Christ Church they saw a tall monument, like the spire of a church, called the “Martyrs’ Memorial”, put up in memory of three Bishops, Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, who were burned in the reign of Queen Mary, because they would not be Roman Catholics. Christ Church was built in 1546.
They had breakfast at Ch. Ch., in the rooms of the A.A.M., and then Isa learned how to print with the “Typewriter”, and printed several beautiful volumes of poetry, all of her own invention. By this time it was 1 o’clock, so Isa paid a visit to the Kitchen, to make sure that the chicken, for her dinner, was being properly roasted The Kitchen is about the oldest part of the College, so was built about 1546. It has a fire-grate large enough to roast forty legs of mutton at once.