After dinner the men gather in little knots about the bulletin-boards or drift into the Common-room, there in the College club-rooms to spend a few minutes over the newspapers, writing notes, consulting the bulletins, athletic reports and predictions, or engaging in conversation over coffee-cups and a quiet smoke. Or little groups go off to this or that room for ‘coffee’ and a social hour or evening; while many go straight away to libraries or work-tables.
The possible divisions for the evening are too numerous for even a summary; but of the serious possibilities there are numerous debating and literary societies in every College. There are University Clubs, literary, musical, social, political; the Union Debates, parliamentary in their training, occur every Thursday evening; on Sunday evenings the Balliol Concerts provide excellent programmes of music, open to undergraduates; under town auspices and under University auspices, Oxford is given opportunity throughout Term-time to hear much of the best musical talent; visits and addresses by the leaders of English political and ecclesiastical thought are frequent, and are thoroughly appreciated by the undergraduate body.
An attempt to describe the difference between the activities of one Term and another would lead too far afield. Three times each year the men ‘come up’, spend eight weeks in Oxford, and go down again for the three Vacations, which last six, six, and sixteen weeks respectively. No small amount—in the case of many men the major portion—of the student’s ‘work’ is done during these Vacations. To some men the Vacation is the ‘dull season’ and Term-time is play-time; to others Term-time is a season for filling up notebooks and Vacation a time for learning what has been written into them. To some the object of life seems to be reading; to others, athletics and sports in general. There is no ‘dull season’ in Oxford athletics. Football, hockey, lacrosse, &c., are played in the two winter Terms; rowing goes on the year round, as does track practice; tennis, cricket, and the ‘slacking’ forms of river exercise are favourites in the Summer Term. The Oxford-Cambridge Rugby match is played in the Christmas Vacation; the Oxford-Cambridge Boat-race and the field sports take place in the Spring Vacation. The pleasures of Oxford Summer Term, ‘Eights week,’ ‘Commem.,’ and Henley, lead to the realm of poetry and have no place in a handbook.
Some critics complain that men waste their time in Oxford. So they do, some of them—and so they do elsewhere. It is all a matter of manner and degree, and a question of what constitutes waste. One might do almost no work in Oxford and yet do just the opposite of wasting his time—if he use his eyes and ears. There is that about Oxford which breathes of History, which exhales Romance, which is redolent of culture, which fills the very atmosphere with the spirit of hospitality. One need only walk through the College ‘quads’ and cloisters, follow the windings of the ‘finest architectural street in Europe’, ‘the High,’ wander through meadow and park, along the banks of Isis and Cherwell, through Addison’s Walk, through ‘Mesopotamia’, or out on the hills where Shelley delighted to pass long afternoons, or off to the north where Gladstone walked alone; one must, if he have any capacity, get something of a liberal education; he cannot fail of inspiration. One may go to lectures on Literature and History, and, without ever taking a note, carry away impressions of what has been and what is and what is going to be in the world, especially in the English world, and in life and thought both ancient and modern.
It is impossible to tell some one else just what Oxford is—but Oxford as it may be is a question with which every Oxford man has to deal for himself. Oxford is a home of ‘influences’; it is all too frequently referred to as the ‘home of lost causes’; what it becomes for each man who trusts himself or is entrusted to its ‘influence’, depends largely upon himself. The University offers each man wide fields for the investment of his time and talent—it offers much for one to learn—but it does not do much choosing for one, nor does it set itself as a task-master.
It is often hard to take Oxford seriously. Examinations seem a far-away, hazy something, too often forgotten, as each day unrolls a tempting programme of delights other than books. Unlimited credit causes many an unthinking undergraduate to step deep into debt before he stops to reflect that tradesmen do keep accounts. The freedom of a life where every man is expected to think and act for himself offers every opportunity for self-improvement or self-destruction. But there is always a day of reckoning. Sooner or later examinations stare one in the face and bills roll in from every side. The student has kept his Terms and Oxford has offered him what he has chosen to take. The man who has reckoned well with his time and his money will take something far more valuable than his degree from Oxford. The man who has looked upon his ’Varsity years as a mere summer of pleasure has also gotten much out of his ‘College course’, but in its last days he may find much cause to quote from the ‘grasshopper and the ant’.
The University Calendar for 1906-7 shows a total of 3,663 undergraduates at present enrolled.[48]
| Matriculations, | 1905-6 | 926 |
| B.A. Degrees, | ” | 660 |
| M.A. Degrees, | ” | 382 |