CHAPTER V
EXPERIENCES AT OXFORD
Early Youth at Oxford—Acquaintance with Browning, Swinburne, and Ruskin—Dissipation of an Undergraduate—The Ferment of Intellectual Revolution—The New Republic
My experiences at Oxford I may divide into two groups—namely, those belonging to the social life of an undergraduate, and those consisting of the effects—philosophical, moral, or religious—produced in an undergraduate's mind by the influence of academic teaching.
As to my social experiences, my recollections are, on the whole, pleasurable, but they are somewhat remote from anything that can properly be called scholastic. They are associated with the charm of certain cloistered buildings—with Magdalen especially, and the shades of Addison's Walk; with country drives in dogcarts to places like Witney and Abingdon; with dinners there in the summer evenings, and with a sense of being happily outside the radius of caps and gowns; with supper parties during the race weeks to various agreeable ladies; and with a certain concert which, during one Commemoration, was given by myself and a friend to a numerous company, and for which the mayor was good enough to lend us the Town Hall.
From the incubus of mere collegiate discipline I was perhaps more free than nine undergraduates out of ten. At the time when I matriculated there were within the college precincts no quarters available; and I and a fellow freshman who was in the same position as myself managed to secure a suite of unusually commodious lodgings. That particular partnership lasted only for a term, but subsequently I and two other companions took the whole upper part of a large house between us. We were never what is called "in college"; we rarely dined in Hall, having, besides a good cook, a very good dining room of our own, where we gave little dinners, much to our own contentment. We had, moreover, a spare bedroom, in which on occasion we could put up a visitor. One visitor who stayed with us for some weeks was Wentworth. Little things remain in the mind when greater things are forgotten; and one little incident which I remember of Wentworth's visit was this. Those were days when, for some mysterious reason, men, when they smoked, were accustomed to wear smoking caps. Wentworth had one of Oriental design, which he would somehow attach to his head by means of a jeweled pin. One evening when he was adjusting it the light caught his features at some peculiar angle, and for a fugitive moment his face was an exact and living reproduction of one of the best-known portraits of Byron.
Another incident belonging to this same order of memories occurred during one of the race weeks. About half past ten one evening, accompanied by three companions, I was making my way along a rather ill-illuminated street. My three companions were feminine, and the dresses of two of them—triumphs of the latest fashion—were calculated to arrest attention as though they were so much undulating moonlight. Suddenly I was aware that a strange voice was addressing me. It was the voice of a proctor, who, attended by several "bulldogs," was asking me, with a sinister though furtive glance at the ladies, what I was doing, and why I was not in cap and gown. I could see in his eyes a sense of having very neatly caught me in a full career of sin. I explained to him that Mrs. L., wife of one of the greatest of the then university magnates, and her two charming daughters had just been so kind as to have had supper with me, and that I was seeing them back to All Souls'.
To return, however, to the first week or fortnight which saw me and my original housemate established as full-blown freshmen; I cannot for the life of me remember by what steps we entered on any course of formal instruction, but he and I were told with very surprising promptitude that we should, without loss of time, give a breakfast to the Balliol Eight. We did so, and never before had I seen on any one matutinal tablecloth provisions which weighed so much, or disappeared so rapidly.
Not many days later I found myself at another breakfast table of a very different character, in the capacity not of host, but guest. The host on this occasion was Jowett, who asked me to breakfast with him in order that I might meet Browning. Browning by some one or other—I think it was James Spedding—had been shown certain manuscript verses—precious verses of my own. He had sent me a message of a flattering kind with regard to them, and he now held out both his hands to me with an almost boisterous cordiality. His eyes sparkled with laughter, his beard was carefully trimmed, and an air of fashion was exhaled from his dazzling white waistcoat. He did not embarrass me by any mention of my own performances. He did not, so far as I remember, make any approach to the subject of literature at all, but reduced both Jowett and myself to something like complete silence by a constant flow of anecdotes and social allusions, which, though not deficient in point, had more in them of jocularity than wit. He was not, perhaps, my ideal of the author of "Men and Women," or the singer of "Lyric Love" as "a wonder and a wild desire"; but there the great man was, and when I quitted his presence and found myself once more in undergraduate circles I felt myself shining like Moses when he came down from the mount.
I was subsequently enveloped in a further reflected glory, due also to Jowett's kindness—a kindness which survived many outbursts of what I thought somewhat petulant disapproval. I received from him one day a curt invitation to dinner, and presented myself, wondering mildly to what this mark of favor could be due. But wonder turned to alarm when, on entering the Master's drawing-room, I discovered in the dim twilight no other figure than his own. His manner, however, though not effusive, was civil, and was certainly fraught with no menace of any coming judgment on my sins. We exchanged some ordinary observations on the weather and kindred topics. Then, looking over his shoulder, he uttered a half-audible word or two, which, being plainly not addressed to me, must have been addressed to somebody else. Presently, out of the shadows, a somebody else emerged. This was a person remarkable for the large size of his head, his longish hair, his insignificant stature, and his singularly sloping shoulders. I was introduced to him without catching his name. Dinner was announced forthwith. It was evident that, except for myself, this person was to be the sole guest. In the candlelight of the dinner table I realized that this person was Swinburne.
The dinner passed off pleasantly. Swinburne showed himself an intelligent, though by no means a brilliant, talker; and as soon as we had returned to the drawing room, where we drank a cup of coffee standing, Jowett, who had some engagement, abruptly left us to finish the evening by ourselves. On Swinburne the effect of the Master's disappearance was magical. His manner and aspect began to exhibit a change like that of the moon when a dim cloud drifts away from it. Of what we discussed at starting I have not the least remembrance, but before very long Swinburne was on the subject of poetry. His observations at first consisted of general criticisms. Then he began to indulge in quotations from various poems—none of them, I think, from his own; but, however this may have been, the music seemed to intoxicate him. The words began to thrill me with the spell of his own recitation of them. Here at last I realized the veritable genius who had made the English language a new instrument of passion. Here at last was the singer for whose songs my ears were shells which still murmured with such lines as I had first furtively read by the gaslight of the Brighton theater. My own appreciation as a listener more and more encouraged him. If he began a quotation sitting, he would start from his chair to finish it. Finally he abandoned the restraints of a chair altogether. He began, with gesticulating arms, to pace the room from one end to the other, reciting passage after passage, and appealing to me, who managed to keep pace with him, for applause. "The most beautiful lines that Tennyson ever wrote," he exclaimed, "were these, from 'Maud':