Oxford Days; or, How Ross Got His Degree

CHAPTER III.

Chapter 41,869 wordsPublic domain

THE FRESHMAN’S TERM.

Strolling towards the Lodge on Monday morning--because everybody seemed to be strolling in that direction--Frank had his attention called to various notices posted in the gates. One was to the effect that “the Master would see the gentlemen that morning between 10 a.m. and noon, the freshmen on Tuesday, between the same hours.” Another that “the Dean would be glad to see the freshmen at ten, the other gentlemen after.” There was also a list of places in Hall; announcements of the meetings of the College Debating Society, Boat Club, Cricket Club; Greek Testament Lecture, _sine ulla solemnitate_ (_i.e._ without cap and gown), at Mr. Wood’s house every Sunday evening at nine. He was one of the married Fellows--a hard-working, energetic man.

Without quite knowing what “seeing the freshmen” meant, Frank got his gown, and as it was five minutes to ten, made his way to the Dean’s rooms. In the passage outside he found about twenty freshmen cooling their heels, and engaged, some more and some less, in questions or chaff with George, the Dean’s scout. George usually had the best of it. In fact, the freshman who dared to argue with him on matters of custom or local politics, and especially local politics, found himself considerably “shut up.”

A door opened, and a sort of snort from within indicated to George that the Dean was ready to see the freshmen. One by one they filed in, and were greeted by the Dean with a smile that was naturally faint but tried to be sweet, and a grasp of the hand that was meant to be cordial but was unmistakably flabby. There were seats for all, but it took some minutes to get into them. The interview did not last long: just long enough, in fact, to enable the Dean to make one remark to each of the freshmen. To one, without waiting for an answer, “How is your father?” To another, “Does Mr. St. Leger intend coming forward for Slowcombe?” To another, “Have you been in Devonshire this vacation, Mr. Jones?”--Jones being, of course, a Yorkshireman who has never travelled further south than Oxford, when he matriculated in February last. To one or two a faint question as to their intentions. “Were they going to read for Honours, or for a Pass?” On the whole, Frank left the room depressed and disheartened as to his work. He had expected to be questioned as to what he had done at school: what form he was in: what books he had read; to be advised as to the turn his reading should now take; whether he should read for Honours in one examination or in more than one; or whether, in short, reading for Honours would be beyond him, and therefore waste of time. The only piece of practical information he gained was that Mr. Wood was his tutor, and to him he must apply for all particulars as to Lectures and Examinations.

The plan at Paul’s is similar to that at most colleges. The undergraduates are distributed among the tutors, a certain number being apportioned to each. They are not necessarily to attend their lectures, but they are to go to them for advice and private assistance in their work. In many colleges, battels are paid by the undergraduate to his own tutor. The tutors together draw up a scheme of lectures, which the undergraduates attend simply according to the necessities of the examination for which they are reading, and not according to the particular tutor to whom they are assigned. Frank was assigned to Mr. Wood, but did not attend his Lectures in his first term, as they were for more advanced men. He learnt all this when he went to him at the Dean’s direction. What he failed to find in the Dean he found in Mr. Wood, who met him cordially, took him into his inner room, made him sit comfortably on a sofa in the large bay window, and then chatted with him for half an hour. The result of the conversation was that Frank was to work for Responsions,[6] which would come on at the end of the current term; not to think about Moderations[7] till he was safe through this first ordeal; and to come on Sunday evenings to Mr. Wood’s Greek Testament Lectures. The hours and subjects of the other lectures, he told Frank, he would find posted on the Lodge-gate on the following day. He asked him a few questions about his father and the Vicar of Porchester, who was an old friend; about his school and college friends; asked him whether he boated or played cricket; whether he meant to join the Union; told him if he wanted any books out of the college library to come to him; concluding hurriedly, as another freshman, seeking advice, knocked timorously and entered.

The visit next morning to the Master was not unlike that to the Dean--a purely formal one. The Master’s questions chiefly related to cricket and boating, indicating an anxiety to discover the promising men for the Eleven or the Boats. Frank, as he sat in the Master’s arm-chair, while the old gentleman warmed his coat-tails by an imaginary fire, could not help falling to making doggerel--

“‘D’ stands for Discipline, Duty, and Dean; ‘M’ must the Master and Merriment mean.”

But there he stopped by lack of rhymes and a general stampede of the Freshmen, to the great relief of the much-enduring Master.

Frank selected for Responsions the books he had offered for Matriculation, the usual and natural course; and with the assistance of Crawford to interpret the Lecture-List on the college gates, he made out his own lecture-card as follows:--

The lectures in his books were much the same as at school, except that the undergraduates were treated with more respect than school-boys. A certain quantity was set: the men were put on in turn to translate; and general questions asked. Sometimes, if time permitted, the lecturer would translate the lesson himself when the men had finished.

The grammar and prose in Hall were in the form of examination. The men were called up one by one to be shown the mistakes in the papers done on previous days, so that, with this interruption, not much more than forty minutes were left for actual writing. The prose on Thursday morning was the only tutorial link that bound Mr. Wood to his pupil, and that was, as often as not, severed by a note to the effect that Mr. Wood would be “unable to see Mr. Ross on Thursday morning.”

To Frank the work seemed as nothing after the long hours of school. It never occurred to him to look ahead, and to think of Moderations; in fact, he had been told not to do so. And so he commenced, energetically it is true, going over work he already knew well enough to satisfy the examiners, listening to the marvellous mistakes of his fellow-freshmen and of those senior men who had been degraded because of failure in previous terms. He soon learnt to think nothing of hearing mistakes that would disgrace school-boys of fifteen; and to fancy that, because he regularly prepared his work and attended his lectures, he was working to the utmost extent that he could, or that was required of him. And that is how so many first terms are wasted, and boys with energy enough for eight or ten hours’ daily study drift into two or three, and often into none at all. Failure sometimes rouses them; but it is a questionable remedy, and more often demoralizes than benefits.

There is not much work done in the summer term; an outsider might say, none at all. But then he would be judging from the external appearance of the place: the quads crowded with lounging men, waiting for drags to go to the cricket-ground; the wide-open windows with their gay flowers, whence issue sounds and scents of the heavy luncheons of the more languidly inclined; the river swarming with boats of all sorts and sizes; the Union rooms full of readers leisurely scanning the papers or dipping into the magazines, with ices or cigars to soothe or sweeten the summer afternoons; the roads busy with rattling pony-carriages bound for Woodstock or Abingdon, Witney or Thame; even the shops themselves are full, whose windows from without and wares within tempt the passing “loafer.” “Where are the reading men?” the stranger may well ask.

There are plenty of them if you know where to find them. But it is just because the stranger is a stranger that he won’t find them. What can he know of the hours of heavy work got through in the quiet of those bright summer afternoons; of the one close-shut room on this deserted staircase of open, idle doors; of that back-quad attic, with its sported oak; of the “coach’s” crowded chambers, where, unheeding the charms of river or cricket-field, of Union-garden or leafy roads, he and his hourly pupils sit, “grinding for the schools”?

Besides, the surprised and maybe shocked stranger must remember that a large number of men who come to Oxford do not come there merely for the sake of the degree. They take one if they can; the sooner they can, so much the better are they pleased. They come to be made men and gentlemen. A degree is only one of the many means to that end. It is only because some make it their all-absorbing motive that the University sends forth into the world so many prigs.

Within the first week Frank had made many friends, most of them friends of Crawford’s, who had called at his suggestion. The secretaries of the Boat and Cricket Clubs had looked him up, to whom Frank, with much pleasure, had paid his entrance fee and annual subscriptions.

The captain of the Paul’s company in the Rifle Corps had come to work upon his military ardour; the president of the College Debating Society, to arouse his ambition for oratory; the collector for the various Church Societies, to test his impartiality and charity. Frank was enabled, by his father’s wish and the means he had placed at his disposal, to join the various societies, and pay the subscriptions. But it was not this pecuniary willingness alone that gained for our freshman so much popularity. The pecuniary outlay was as follows:--

£ _s._ _d._ Boat Club 3 10 0 Cricket Club 2 10 0 Paul’s Debating Society 0 2 6 Union Society 1 5 0 Rifle Corps, including Band-Subscriptions and Uniform 5 0 0

There is no need to enter into Frank’s charitable subscriptions. They were neither large nor small, but what they were, were given with pleasure. About this time also came in the valuation of his rooms, amounting to 30_l._ Our freshman is now, therefore, fairly started on his career.