Читать книгу While I Remember - Stephen McKenna - Страница 15

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At noon on Friday of the second week in October, 1906, a slow procession of cabs jingled down the slope from the Great Western station at Oxford and turned under the bridge towards the middle of the town. At Carfax they separated east, north and south, bearing through the High, the Corn and Saint Aldates their burden of expectant, fluttered freshmen, who had been summoned, on this first day of the term, to present themselves early for admission to their colleges and university. At Tom Gate the newcomers to the House enquired for their rooms, paid their cabmen and left their luggage to follow them. Over the doors in Peckwater or Canterbury, Meadow Buildings, Old Library or Tom they found their names painted in black on a white ground; they introduced themselves to their scouts—who alone in all Oxford affected interest in their existence,—ordered luncheon and sat down to recall the more pressing advice on deportment which had been bestowed on them.

To a freshman, the etiquette and technique of Oxford abound in real and, still more, in imaginary pitfalls. He may live for years on the same staircase as a man one term his senior, but, unless they have been introduced, he must never bow nor say "good-morning" to him. The senior would, perhaps, leave a card on the freshman, choosing a moment when he was not at home; the freshman must return his call, but it was not enough to leave a card: he must go on calling until he ran him to earth. In all things a freshman must comport himself humbly, taking a distant seat in the junior common room and leaving the arm-chairs in front of the fire to those who better deserved them. There were rules of dress and rules of conduct; there were clubs which a man would feel honoured to join and clubs which he would prudently avoid; there were games worth playing and games that were waste of time.

When the appointed day came, the ordeal was refreshingly light and quickly forgotten in the joyous sense of possession which a man's own rooms, with his shining, black name painted over the door, gives him more fully, perhaps, than he ever knows later; the sense of protection, too, at a time when he feels more solitary and unwanted than ever before. Though the carpet were threadbare and the curtains dingy, though sofa and chairs needed recovering and the meagre blankets on one bed bore the name of "Arthur Bourchier" and a date four years before the new owner was born, the rooms belonged to him de facto, and within a few hours he would de jure belong to them; it was time to unpack books and pictures and to study the regulations and hints embodied in the brochure libellously known as "The Blue Liar."

After luncheon the freshmen were collected in Hall for presentation to the Dean.[6] The Old Westminsters gathered together to discuss their rooms and to exchange whispered confidences. From Hall they were ushered to the Old Schools and admitted members of the university by the vice-chancellor. Then they drew breath.

The bond of an identic school held them in small groups which explored one another's rooms and perambulated Oxford to purchase bedroom ware and such other necessaries of life as had not been included in the equipment taken over, at a valuation, from the previous tenants. They made a preliminary inspection of picture shops and turned over the books in Blackwell's; they bought tobacco—and refused to buy pipe-racks and tobacco-jars enriched with the college arms, because these were "freshers' delights" and a mark of juvenility to be avoided. Then they returned to college and discovered that already a few of their senior friends had left cards. And then it was time to discover which were the freshmen's tables in hall.

If for an hour or two it had seemed that no one but their scouts was interested in their existence, they were to find within their first week a flattering competition for their company. First of all, their tutors invited them to call and arrange what lectures they were to attend; after that, the president and secretary of innumerable clubs solicited their patronage. Then came the turn of the literary and debating societies, in which the House abounded. It was a matter of no little importance to have a club-meeting for at least six nights in the week: only the more serious members stayed for anything but the highly personal questions and motions of "private business," but during that first stimulating half-hour the visitors and their hosts could feast richly and variously on the abundant dessert supplied by the club; at nine o'clock they could leave, pleasantly sated, to work, talk or pay calls, while the club stalwarts remained to read plays or, unwillingly and at short notice, to deliver conscientious speeches on the political problems of the day.[7]

Outside the college there was an almost unlimited choice of university clubs: the Bullingdon, Vincent's and the Grid were purely sporting or social, the O.U.D.S. was primarily theatrical, while the Union—though it was not popular at the House at this time—provided the biggest audiences and the most serious debating. In addition, the Canning and Chatham, the Palmerston and Russell, the Strafford and Gladstone, the St. Patrick's and a dozen more offered a varied bill of fare to every political appetite and entailed on their members the obligation of reading a solemn paper once in every few terms and of listening to the solemn papers of other members once a week. At their annual "wines" and dinners the young politician met such of the leading liberals as could be enticed to Oxford; after the arid detachment of politics at school, one meeting with a single minister seemed to bring the pulsing heart of government nearer; there followed cards for receptions in London and invitations to join the Eighty Club.

Perhaps by reason of its size, the House escaped or defied any effort to impose a uniform spirit or code. Its members were indeed united in such practises as dressing for the theatre and in such conventions as a general disinclination for the society of other colleges; but this was largely because they were numerous enough to provide every one with the friends, the clubs and the interests that he required without seeking them abroad. Rival foundations charged them with superiority and sectionalism; but, if they had ever made a claim for themselves, it would only have been that they allowed their neighbours to live unmolested. There was no Sunday-evening "After," at which the whole college met; no concert; no "Freshmen's Wine." All were left free to choose their friends and to pass their time as they liked, provided that they did not offend against public taste or make a nuisance of themselves to their neighbours.

New friendships came rapidly in those first few weeks. At the freshmen's tables in hall, the freshmen's pews in the cathedral, on the football-ground, in the common room and clubs and at a score of breakfast-parties given for their benefit, the men in their first year came to know one another. There followed testing, sifting and an occasional change of value; the bond of the identic school was gradually relaxed; and small groups broke away from the general tables in hall and established messes of their own.