There are certain rules at the university—social rules I mean—which, though unwritten, are not to be broken save under severe penalties, such as being entered among that class of undergraduates yclept 'smugs.' Of these unwritten laws, one of the best and most universal enacts, that a great part of the afternoon shall be spent outside the college, presumably in active and healthy exercise, even if it be but a sharp constitutional. Not that this is a hardship, or that the answers to the question, 'What's to be done?' and the modes of spending these two or three hours, are monotonous or circumscribed. Far from it. Many places may be more full of life and amusement than Oxford in the morning and evening; but few, I am sure, can surpass the bill of amusement which Alma Mater presents to us after lunch.
Every taste can find appropriate satisfaction, save perhaps the taste for picturesque scenery, in which the neighbourhood of Oxford, to use a 'varsity term, 'does not come out strong.' Still, if I may believe report (never believe an undergraduate when he tells you a tale of a fellow he knew), Cambridge is rather worse off. We have Shotover and Bagley Wood to set against their Gog Magog Hills. Be that as it may, simple walking does not find many advocates, except on Sunday, or as a stop-gap on some off-day when rackets and the river begin to pall, as every amusement seems to do by the end of term. I have even heard a member of an eight-oar say after six weeks' daily attendance at the river, that 'he really felt he'd had almost enough of it.' And it is rather an objection to rowing, that as soon as your blisters have hardened and you feel indifferent about the cushion on your chair, the act of pulling your own weight and a trifle over begins to have a certain sameness.
To return to walking. Much of that otherwise tame exercise is involved in going to witness sports of various kinds. Almost every day in winter there is either a football match or a racket match, or the trial eights or some college sports to be inspected; or we may look in at the fives-courts or at the gymnasium, and see Tompkins vaulting the high-horse, which he does not do so well as at lunch; or to the dog-fancier's in —— Street, and look over Jenkens's bull-pup. Not that there is any ratting going on of course, or such a thing as a badger in the county; but these are lazy ways of getting through the time, and except occasionally, none of our party is reduced to them. No; for Brown votes for rackets: a game active enough, I can vouch. It looks so easy to hit the ball with the great battledore-shaped racket—until you try: perhaps as easy as battledore and shuttlecock, now ousted by lawn-tennis. So just descend into the black-lined arena, and you will discover that the small sphere you aim at finds out all sorts of impossible angles, and dodges you in a way that no fellow can stand; so that rackets is rather dispiriting to a beginner. Having only once got up the ball in the course of an hour, and having sharply struck myself on the side of the head with my own racket, to say nothing of the curious attraction of the ball to my shoulder-blades, I determined that that should be my last as well as first visit to a racket court, charming as the game doubtless is when well played. So Brown will not ask me to make up his four for Holywell. There are also one or two tennis courts in Oxford; but I do not think that the favourite game of the Merry Monarch is very generally played except on grass.
I shall not part from Brown yet, but shall accompany him to Holywell and get a hand in the fives-court. It is a hot game, but not a graceful one, like rackets. It is all very well to poise your racket overhead, sway backwards and send the whizzing ball against the wall. But it is quite another thing to flounder after it with outstretched hands, which seem monstrous in their hot clumsy gloves, and missing it by a hair's-breadth, 'vainly beat the air.' Say what you like against it, there is no better exercise, though I should not think of bringing a certain young lady to witness my performances there, any more than I should of asking her to come to hear me viva-voce'd in the schools.
But I have wandered from the subject to the fair sex. To return to Jones, who is going to scull as far as Sandford in the fairy outrigger in which he is proud to disport himself. With some reason too, for the equal dip of the sculls in an outrigged skiff is hard to attain, and the art of turning those craft in any reasonable space is known only to a few of the initiated. I have always found that when I steered 'by the bank,'
E'en for a calm unfit,
I'd steer too near the sands to boast my wit,
as Dryden says; though I am not quite sure that he exactly means that. Others of our luncheon-party are bound by college patriotism to go down to the barges and undergo their day's training for the Torpids. These are of the stalwart sort; but they will not have a very pleasant time of it, nor will Jones in his skiff, for the wind is rather strong, and the water even on the lower river must be pretty rough; so two of our company, not of the stalwart kind, are going to the Freshman's river to engage one of those sailing-vessels called at Oxford a 'centre-board.' The wind is blowing fairly up stream; but they will have some trouble at a certain corner called 'Blackjack;' and I shall not be surprised if their new flannels are somewhat shrunken by to-morrow. Still they can swim; and if they can't, they ought to.
Besides the Rugby votaries of football, the Association and other clubs play in the parks. The practice of the former is the most interesting to watch; and though this pastime is, not without some reason, deemed by many to be silly and even barbarous, it seems to be generally largely patronised by spectators.
We must not neglect the new running ground with its comfortable pavilion, where, if we do not wish to take a trot ourselves, we may read The Field, and watch through the window the training of the crack whose performances it records. And talking of running, there is or was a Hare and Hounds Club, which numbered some distinguished runners among its members; and one college at least had lately, and perhaps still has, a pack of beagles. If a man be of very solitary habits and much inclined to hide him from his kind, there is jack-fishing in many parts of the river, engaged in which contemplative recreation he may moralise to his heart's content. There is a Gun-club too; to say nothing of the hunters, hacks, and pony-carts which may be obtained for a consideration. I don't know whether the hunters are screws, for I've never tried one, and for the same reason I don't know whether they are dear or cheap; on the whole, however, I should be inclined to say not cheap. Then there is a bicycling club, whose members perform immense distances in wonderful times, and who talk of going to Aylesbury or to Banbury and back, as outsiders do of Cowley and Cuddesden. And if you are one of the country's defenders, are there not drills in St John's Gardens, or parades in the Broad, and evolutions of all kinds in the parks? harder work than the road-making lately fashionable at Hinksey, near which, I believe, are the rifle butts. Playing at labourers has gone out, I believe.
But the summer term is the term for fun. Woful is the man who is in the schools in the bright days of June, when the sun at length gets through the Oxford fogs. The summer term is, technically speaking, two terms, for there are four terms in the 'varsity year, though no 'varsity man ever yet knew the distinctive names of them; and so the summer terms are twice as jolly as the other two, though only equal to one in length. Ah me! I shall soon have cause to sigh for the days that are no more. Then cricket and lawn-tennis, the eight-oar races, the lazy punt and nimbler canoe, cider-cup and skittles at Godstow, bathing at Parsons, archery and croquet, and cousins and sisters, and the occasional flower-show, will recur amongst the standing-orders of the past!