Have you any idea who that fresh gentleman-commoner is?” said I to Savile, who was sitting next to me at dinner, one day soon after the beginning of term. We had not usually in the college above three or four of that privileged class, so that any addition to their table attracted more attention than the arrival of the vulgar herd of freshmen to fill up the vacancies at our own. Unless one of them had choked himself with his mutton, or taken some equally decided mode of making himself an object of public interest, scarcely any man of “old standing” would have even inquired his name.
“Is he one of our men?” said Savile, as he scrutinised the party in question. “I thought he had been a stranger dining with some of them. Murray, you know the history of every man who comes up, I believe—who is he?”
“His name is Russell,” replied the authority referred to; “Charles Wynderbie Russell; his father’s a banker in the city: Russell and Smith, you know, —— Street.”
“Ay, I dare say,” said Savile; “one of your rich tradesmen; they always come up as gentlemen-commoners, to show that they have lots of money: it makes me wonder how any man of decent family ever condescends to put on a silk gown.” Savile was the younger son of a poor baronet, thirteenth in descent, and affected considerable contempt for any other kind of distinction.
“Oh!” continued Murray, “this man is by no means of a bad family: his father comes of one of the oldest houses in Dorsetshire, and his mother, you know, is one of the Wynderbies of Wynderbie Court—a niece of Lord De Staveley’s.”
“I know!” said Savile; “nay, I never heard of Wynderbie Court in my life; but I dare say you know, which is quite sufficient. Really, Murray, you might make a good speculation by publishing a genealogical list of the undergraduate members of the university—birth, parentage, family connections, governors’ present incomes, probable expectations, &c. &c. It would sell capitally among the tradesmen—they’d know exactly when it was safe to give credit. You could call it A Guide to Duns.”
“Or a History of the Un-landed Gentry,” suggested I.
“Well, he is a very gentlemanlike-looking fellow, that Mr Russell, banker or not,” said Savile, as the unconscious subject of our conversation left the hall; “I wonder who knows him?”
The same question might have been asked a week—a month after this conversation, without eliciting any very satisfactory answer. With the exception of Murray’s genealogical information—the correctness of which was never doubted for a moment, though how or where he obtained this and similar pieces of history, was a point on which he kept up an amusing mystery—Russell was a man of whom no one appeared to know anything at all. The other gentlemen-commoners had, I believe, all called upon him, as a matter of courtesy to one of their own limited mess; but in almost every case it had merely amounted to an exchange of cards. He was either out of his rooms, or “sporting oak;” and “Mr C. W. Russell,” on a bit of pasteboard, had invariably appeared in the note-box of the party for whom the honour was intended, on their return from their afternoon’s walk or ride. Invitations to two or three wine-parties had followed, and been civilly declined. It was at one of these meetings that he again became the subject of conversation. We were a large party, at a man of the name of Tichborne’s rooms, when some one mentioned having met “the Hermit,” as they called him, taking a solitary walk about three miles out of Oxford the day before.