Chapter C: Hilton Brown

April 14, 1920.

_School_

"Commem."

Fair ladies, why don't you direct us
What hour you are coming from Town
In the toilets that ravage the masculine pectus,
The bonnets that knock a man down?
Silky and summery flounces and flummery,
Gossamer muslins and lawns,
With the spring in your air and a rose in your hair
And a step that is light as a fawn's?

Our Fellows, both clergy and laity,
Leaving their sheltering oaks,
In a rapture of light irresponsible gaiety
Burst into flannels and jokes;
The Dean is canoeing, the Bursar is wooing,
The Junior Proctor you'll find
In a sumptuous punt with a damsel in front
And a Bull-dog to push from behind.

Ah, moist are our meadows, but moister
My lip at the thought of it all!
Soft ripple of dresses that flow in the cloister,
Girl laughter that rings on the wall!
But avaunt, trepidation! it's time for the station;
I'm glad that my trousers are pressed;
For I think you'll arrive by the 4.45,
And I want to be looking my best.

G. W. ARMITAGE.
June 28, 1911.

A Ramshackle Room

When the gusts are at play with the trees on the lawn,
And the lights are put out in the vault of the night;
When within all is snug, for the curtains are drawn,
And the fire is aglow and the lamps are alight,
Sometimes, as I muse, from the place where I am
My thoughts fly away to a room near the Cam.

'Tis a ramshackle room, where a man might complain
Of a slope in the ceiling, a rise in the floor;
With a view on a court and a glimpse on a lane,
And no end of cool wind through the chinks of the door;
With a deep-seated chair that I love to recall,
And some groups of young oarsmen in shorts on the wall.

There's a fat jolly jar of tobacco, some pipes--
A meerschaum, a briar, a cherry, a clay--
There's a three-handled cup fit for Audit or Swipes
When the breakfast is done and the plates cleared away.
There's a litter of papers, of books a scratch lot,
Such as _Plato_, and _Dickens_, and _Liddell_ and _Scott_.

And a crone in a bonnet that's more like a rag
From a mist of remembrance steps suddenly out;
And her funny old tongue never ceases to wag
As she tidies the room where she bustles about;
For a man may be strong and a man may be young,
But he can't put a drag on a Bedmaker's tongue.

And, oh, there's a youngster who sits at his ease
In the hope, which is vain, that the tongue may run down,
With his feet on the grate and a book on his knees,
And his cheeks they are smooth and his hair it is brown.
Then I sigh myself back to the place where I am
From that ramshackle room near the banks of the Cam.

R. C. LEHMANN.
Feb. 9, 1910.

Cambridge in Kharki

[Impressions of an absent Alumnus.]

Since 1642, when CROMWELL (late
Of Sidney Sussex), constitution-wrecker,
Sat on the Cam to keep the college plate
From drifting into CHARLES'S low exchequer,
No shattering battle-blast has shocked the walls
Of these enchanted halls.

But now their hoary shrines and hallowed shade
Provide the billets for a camp's headquarters;
An army, bedded out on King's Parade,
Usurps the wonted haunt of gowns and mortars,
Even adopts--a wanton thing to do--
The blessed name of "Blue"!

The paths where pensive scholars paced at ease
Ring to the hustling clank of spurs and sabres;
The ploughshare, forged for pale examinees,
Forgets its usual academic labours
And, commandeered for ends unknown before,
Turns to a tool of war.

The buttery becomes a mere canteen;
Upon the dais whence the Johnian fellow
Pities the undergraduate's rude cuisine
(His own condition verging on the mellow),
Foreign attachés eat the local swans
Bred for the use of dons.

I see the grass of many an ancient court
All divots where the cavalry has pawed it;
I see the thirsty aides-de-camp resort
There where the Trinity fountain runs with audit;
I see the Reverend MONTAGU, Chief BUTLER,
Acting as army sutler!

Those swards that grace his own familiar quad,
Where only angels (looking in from Ely),
Angels and dons alone, till now have trod--
There I remark the War-Lord, Colonel SEELY,
Brazenly tramping, under martial law,
Dead to a sense of awe.

Where mid her storied reeds old Granta flows
Profane vedettes discuss the morrow's mêlée;
On Parker's sacred Piece the troopers dose,
And, when the sudden bugle sounds reveille,
Feed their indifferent chargers on the dews
Ambrosial of the Muse.

And what is this strange object like a whale
In Jesus Close? None ever thought to meet a
Monster like that, on such a bulgy scale
(Not though it bore the classic sign of "Beta"),
Lashed for the night in yon Elysian lair--
Not there, my child, not there.

The peaceful pedant by his well-trimmed lamp,
Dimly aware of this adjacent bogie,
Protests against the horrors of a camp
And _Cur_, he asks, _cur cedunt armis togae_?
And the same thought is echoed on the lips
Of bedders and of gyps.

O Cambridge, home of Culture's pure delights,
My fostering Mother, what a desecration!
Yet England chose you (out of several sites)
To be her bulwark and to save the nation;
Compared with this proud triumph you have won,
Pray, what has Oxford done?

SIR OWEN SEAMAN.
Sept. 25, 1912.

Oxford Revisited

Last week, a prey to military duty,
I turned my lagging footsteps to the West;
I have a natural taste for scenic beauty,
And all my pent emotions may be guessed
To find myself again
At Didcot, loathliest junction of the plain.

But all things come unto the patient waiter,
"Behold!" I cried, "in yon contiguous blue
Beetle the antique spires of Alma Mater
Almost exactly as they used to do
In 1898,
When I became an undergraduate.

"O joys whereto I went as to a bridal,
With Youth's fair aureole clustering on a brow
That no amount of culture (herpecidal)
Will coax the semblance of a crop from now,
Once more I make ye mine;
There is a train that leaves at half-past nine.

"In a rude land where life among the boys is
One long glad round of cards and coffin juice,
And any sort of intellectual poise is
The constant butt of well-expressed abuse,
And it is no disgrace
To put a table-knife inside one's face,

"I have remembered picnics on the Isis,
Bonfires and bumps and BOFFIN'S cakes and tea,
Nor ever dreamed a European crisis
Would make a British soldier out of me--
The mute inglorious kind
That push the beastly war on from behind.

"But here I am" (I mused) "and quad and cloister
Are beckoning to me with the old allure;
The lovely world of Youth shall be mine oyster
Which I for one-and-ninepence can secure,
Reaching on Memory's wing
Parnassus' groves and Wisdom's fabled spring."

But oh, the facts! How doomed to disillusion
The dreams that cheat the mind's responsive eye!
Where are the undergrads in gay profusion
Whose waistcoats made melodious the High,
All the _jeunesse dorée_
That shed the glamour of an elder day?

Can this be Oxford? And is that my college
That vomits khaki through its sacred gate?
Are those the schools where once I aired my knowledge
Where nurses pass and ambulances wait?
Ah! sick ones, pale of face,
I too have suffered tortures in that place!

In Tom his quad the Bloods no longer flourish;
Balliol is bare of all but mild Hindoos;
The stalwart oars that Isis used to nourish
Are in the trenches giving Fritz the Blues,
And many a stout D.D.
Is digging trenches with the V.T.C.

Why press the search when every hallowed close is
Cluttered with youthful soldiers forming fours;
While the drum stutters and the bugler blows his
Loud summons, and the hoarse bull-sergeant roars,
While almost out of view
The thrumming biplane cleaves the astonished blue?

It is a sight to stir the pulse of poet,
These splendid youths with zeal and courage fired.
But as for Private Me, M.A.--why, blow it!
The very sight of soldiers makes me tired;
Learning--detached, apart--
I sought, not War's reverberating art.

Vain search! But see! One ancient institution
Still doing business at the same old stand;
'Tis Messrs. Barclay's Bank, or I'm a Proossian,
That erst dispensed my slender cash-in-hand;
I'll borrow of their pelf
And buy some War Loan to console myself.