An American Girl in London

by Sara Jeannette Duncan

I suppose we have rather a large, exaggerated idea of Oxford in America, thinking about it, as it were, externally. As a name it is so constantly before us, and the terms of respect in which the English despatches speak of it are so marked, that its importance in our eyes has become extremely great. We think it a city, of course—no place could grow to such fame without being a city—and with us the importance of a city naturally invests itself in large blocks of fine buildings chiefly devoted to business, in a widely-extended and highly-perfected telephone system, and in avenues of Queen Anne residences with the latest modern conveniences. And Lady Torquilin, on the way, certainly talked a great deal about 'the High'—which she explained to be Oxford's principal thoroughfare—and the purchases she had at one time or another made on it, comparing Oxford with London prices. So that I had quite an extensive State Street or Wabash Avenue idea of 'the High.' Both our young gentlemen friends were fractional parts of the Eights, and were therefore unable to meet us. It had been arranged that we should lunch with one at two, and take tea with the other at five, but Lady Torquilin declared herself in urgent need of something sustaining as soon as we arrived, and 'Shall we go to the Clarendon to get it?' said she, 'or to Boffin's?'

'What is Boffin's?' I inquired. It is not safe, in English localisms, to assume that you know anything.

'Boffin's is a pastry-cook's,' Lady Torquilin informed me, and I immediately elected for Boffin's. It was something idyllic, in these commonplace days, when Dickens has been so long dead, that Boffin should be a pastry-cook, and that a pastry-cook should be Boffin. Perhaps it struck me especially, because in America he would have been a 'confectioner,' with some aesthetic change in the spelling of the original Boffin that I am convinced could not be half so good for business. And we walked up a long, narrow, quiet street, bent like an elbow, lined with low-roofed little shops devoted chiefly, as I remember them, to the sale of tennis-racquets, old prints, sausages, and gentlemen's neckties, full of quaint gables, and here and there lapsing into a row of elderly stone houses that had all gone to sleep together by the pavement, leaving their worldly business to the care of the brass-plates on their doors. Such a curious old street we went up to Boffin's, so peaceful, nothing in it but inoffensive boys pushing handcarts, and amiable gentlemen advanced in years with spectacles—certainly more of these than I ever saw together in any other place—never drowsing far from the shadow of some serious grey pile, ivy-bearded and intent, like a venerable scholar—oh, a very curious old street!

'Shall we get,' said I to Lady Torquilin, 'any glimpse of the High before we reach Boffin's?' Dear Lady Torquilin looked at me sternly, as if to discover some latent insincerity. 'None of your impertinence, miss,' said she; 'this is the High!'

I was more charmed and delighted than I can express, and as Lady Torquilin fortunately remembered several things we urgently needed, and could buy to much better advantage in Oxford than in 'Town,' I had the great pleasure of finding out what it was like to shop in the High, and the other queer little streets which are permitted to run—no, to creep—about the feet of the great wise old colleges that take such kindly notice of them. It was very nice, to my mind, that huddling together of pastry-cooks and gargoyles, of chapels and old china shops, of battered mediæval saints and those little modern errand-boys with their handcarts—of old times and new, preponderatingly old and respectfully new. Much more democratic, too, than a seat of learning would be in America, where almost every college of reputation is isolated in the sea of 'grounds,' and the only sound that falls upon the academic ear is the clatter of the lawn-mower or the hissing of the garden-hose. Nor shall I soon forget the emotions with which I made a perfectly inoffensive purchase in a small establishment of wide reputation for petty wares, called, apparently from time immemorial, 'The Civet Cat'—not reproachfully, nor in a spirit of derision, but bearing the name with dignity in painted letters.

People who know their way about Oxford will understand how we found ours to Pembroke from the High. I find that I have forgotten. We stood at so many corners to look, and Lady Torquilin bade me hurry on so often, that the streets and the colleges, and the towers and the gardens, are all lost to me in a crowded memory that diverges with the vagueness of enchantment from Carfax and Boffin's. But at last we walked out of the relative bustle of the highways and byways into the quietest place I ever saw or felt, except a graveyard in the Strand—a green square hedged in with buildings of great dignity and solidity, and very serious mind. I felt, as we walked around it to ask a respectable-looking man waiting about on the other side where Mr. Sanders Horton's rooms were, as if I were in church.

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'Yes'm! This way'm, if you please,' said the respectable-looking man. 'Mr.'Orton's rooms is on the first floor h'up, 'm'; and as Mr. Horton himself had come out on the landing to receive us, and was presently very prettily shaking hands with us, we had no further difficulty. Our host had not considered himself equal to lunching two strange ladies unassisted, however, and as he looked a barely possible nineteen, this was not remarkable, Lady Torquilin thought afterwards. He immediately introduced his friend, Lord Symonds, who seemed, if anything, less mature, but whose manners were quite as nice. Then we all sat down in Mr. Sanders Horton's pretty little room, and watched the final evolution of luncheon on the table, and talked about the view. 'You have a lovely lawn,' said I to Mr. Horton, who responded that it wasn't a bad quad; and when I asked if the respectable-looking man downstairs was the caretaker of the college: 'Oh, nothing so swagger!' said Lord Symonds; 'probably a scout!' And the presence of a quad and a scout did more than all the guide-books I read up afterwards to give me a realising sense of being in an English university centre. We looked at Mr. Horton's pictures, too, and examined, complimentarily, all his decorative effects of wood-carving and old china, doing our duty, as is required of ladies visiting the menage of a young gentleman, with enthusiasm. I was a little disappointed, personally, in not finding the initials of Byron or somebody cut on Mr. Horton's window-sill, and distinctly shocked to hear that this part of Pembroke College had been built within the memory of living man, as Mr. Horton was reluctantly obliged to admit. He apologised for its extreme modernness on the ground of its comparative comfort, but seemed to feel it, in a subdued way, severely, as was eminently proper. Among the various photographs of boat-races upon the wall was one in which Mr. Horton pointed out 'the Torpids,' which I could not help considering and remarking upon as a curious name for a boating-crew. 'Why are they called that?' I asked; 'they seem to be going pretty fast.'