Category: Novels

The Oxford Circus: A Novel of Oxford and Youth

Entrusted with the literary remains of the late Alfred Budd, we think it fitting to provide the reading public, however briefly and inadequately, with some particulars of his life. They are, alas, only too few (Fate saw to that), but they may serve to indicate those forces of...

Chapters

9. CHAPTER VII

Next afternoon, when Gaveston saw the prosaic mass of Paddington loom up before him, it seemed to his bewitched imagination a sudden gateway into past centuries of enchantment....

16. CHAPTER XIV

Hilary term was half-spent, and a chain of translucent May evenings enwreathed Malmaison Lodge with a beauty more fragrant and Fragonard than ever. With each successive sundown...

15. CHAPTER XIII

As the Lent term moved unimpeded to its prepaschal end, Gaveston was faced with an inevitable query. Where was he to pass the Vacation? Aided by a shelf of Black’s Beautiful Boo...

4. CHAPTER II

Next evening, steeped in the puce and russet dusk of an Oxford twilight, Gaveston sat meditatively enframed in his mullioned window. It was well-nigh the hour for his first dinn...

13. CHAPTER XI

David was deputed to go up to Oxford a few days before Michaelmas term began, to make all necessary arrangements with printers, street vendors, bill-posters and the local repres...

14. CHAPTER XII

He never did things by halves, and his Christmas Vacation was to be devoted entirely to the furtherance of _The Mongoose’s_ political aims. This trip abroad had been planned for...

3. CHAPTER I

Behind the voice there were centuries of the best breeding, but the tone was perhaps a trifle querulous. From the crowded yard of the Oxford railway station there came no answer...

5. CHAPTER III

Gaveston could hardly believe it. But yet--it must be: already the 3.43 from Oxford had slid through the pale December sunlight past Hinksey Halt, Goring-and-Streatley, and Slou...

11. CHAPTER IX

A fresh determination, a renewed conviction of his destiny, filled Gaveston to overflowing when he returned to Oxford at April’s end. This term, he decided, was to be a revelati...

6. CHAPTER IV

Through the cheerful, childlike bustle of Yuletide, through the chilled, sober, resolute days of New Year, and on to the gay bachelor party which Uncle Wilkinson gave (at Verrey...

10. CHAPTER VIII

So passed the rich pageantry of Gaveston’s second term, and once again he was speeding through the sun-washed river-meadows towards the vast smoky antre of Paddington. While the...

7. CHAPTER V

“Perhaps we ought: it seems an ideal combination somehow. We might work out a synthetic creed of the Best and the Worst,” he added over his shoulder, turning to lead the way tow...

12. CHAPTER X

Six weeks later, in the musky fragrance of an August twilight, Gaveston sat on the rocky cliffs above Ploumenar’ch-lez-Quémouk. For there, in a charming old-world cottage of Bre...

2. BOOK II: APEX

Entrusted with the literary remains of the late Alfred Budd, we think it fitting to provide the reading public, however briefly and inadequately, with some particulars of his li...

8. CHAPTER VI

Outside the Café door, hard on midnight, Gaveston stood for a moment in delicious hesitation. There had, of course, been hours of dizzily brilliant talk as, one by one, the cele...

1. BOOK I: VORTEX