Part 25 (1/2)
[172 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]
were both unsightly and unpleasant; and that rawness was bad enough when taken in conjunction with beefsteaks, without being extended to one's own hands. He had also a summer pa.s.sion for ices and creams, which were forbidden luxuries to one in training, - although (paradoxical as it may seem to say so) they trained on Isis! He had also acquired a bad habit of getting up in one day, and going to bed in the next, - keeping late hours, and only rising early when absolutely compelled to do so in order to keep morning chapel - a habit which the trainer would have interfered with, considerably to the little gentleman's advantage. He had also an amiable weakness for pastry, port, claret, ”et ~hock~ genus omne”; and would have felt it a cruelty to have been deprived of his daily modic.u.m of ”smoke”; and in all these points, boat-training would have materially interfered with his comfort.
Mr. Bouncer, therefore, amused himself equally as much to his own satisfaction as if he had been one of the envied eight, by occasionally paddling about with Charles Larkyns in an old pair-oar, built by Davis and King, and bought by Mr. Bouncer of its late Brazenfacian proprietor, when that gentleman, after a humorous series of plucks, rustications, and heavy debts, had finally been compelled to migrate to the King's Bench, for that purification of purse and person commonly designated ”whitewas.h.i.+ng.” When Charles Larkyns and his partner did not use their pair-oar, the former occupied his outrigger skiff; and the latter, taking Huz and Buz on board a sailing boat, tacked up and down the river with great skill, the smoke gracefully curling from his meerschaum or short black pipe, - for Mr. Bouncer disapproved of smoking cigars at those times when the wind would have a.s.sisted him to get through them.
”Hullo, Giglamps! here we are! as the clown says in the pantermime,”
sung out the little gentleman as he came up with our hero, who was performing some extraordinary feats in full sight of the University crew, who were just starting from their barge; ”you get no end of exercise out of your tub, I should think, by the style you work those paddles. They go in and out beautiful! Splish, splash; splish, splas.h.!.+ You must be one of the ~wherry~ identical Row-brothers-row, whose voices kept tune and whose ears kept time, you know. You ought to go and splish-splash in the Freshman's River, Giglamps; - but I forgot - you ain't a freshman now, are you, old feller? Those swells in the University boats look as though they were bursting with envy - not to say, with laughter,” added Mr. Bouncer, ~sotto voce~. ”Who taught you to do the dodge in such a stunning way, Giglamps?”
”Why, last term, Charles Larkyns did,” responded Mr. Verdant Green, with the freshness of a Freshman still lingering
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 173]
lovingly upon him. ”I've not forgotten what he told me, - to put in my oar deep, and to bring it out with a jerk. But though I make them go as deep as I can, and jerk them out as much as possible, yet the boat ~will~ keep turning round, and I can't keep it straight at all; and the oars are very heavy and unmanageable, and keep slipping out of the rowlocks -”
”Commonly called ~rullocks~,” put in Mr. Bouncer, as a parenthetical correction, or marginal note on Mr. Verdant Green's words.
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”And when the Trinity boat went by, I could scarcely get out of their way; and they said very unpleasant things to me; and, altogether, I can a.s.sure you that it has made me very hot.”
”And a capital thing, too, Giglamps, this cold November day,” said Mr. Bouncer; 'I'm obliged to keep my coppers warm with this pea-coat, and my pipe.
Charley came alongside me just now, on purpose to fire off one of his poetical quotations. He said that I reminded him of Beattie's ~Minstrel~:-
'Dainties he needed not, nor gaud, nor toy, Save one short pipe.'
I think that was something like it. But you see, Giglamps, I haven't got a figure-head for these sort of things like Charley has, so I couldn't return his shot; but since then, to me deeply pondering, as those old Greek parties say, a fine sample of our superior old crusted jokes has come to hand; and when Charley next pulls alongside, I shall tell him that I am like that beggar we read about in old Slowcoach's lecture the other day, and that, if I had been in the humour, I could have sung out, Io Bacche!* ~I owe baccy~ - d'ye see, Giglamps? Well, old
--- * - ”Si collibuisset, ab ovo ”Usque ad mala citaret, Io Bacche!” - Hor. Sat. Lib. I. 3.
[174 ADVENTURES OF MR. VERDANT GREEN]
feller! you look rather puffed, so clap on your coat; and, if there's a rope's end, or a chain, in your tub, and you'll just pay it out here, I'll make you fast astern, and pull you down the river; and then you'll be in prime condition to work yourself up again. The wind's in our back, and we shall get on jolly.” So our hero made fast the tub to his friend's sailing-boat, and was towed as far as the Haystack. During the voyage Mr. Bouncer ascertained that Mr.
Charles Larkyns had <vg174.jpg> improved some of the s.h.i.+ning hours of the long vacation considerably to Mr. Verdant Green's benefit, by teaching him the art of swimming - a polite accomplishment of which our hero had been hitherto ignorant. Little Mr. Bouncer, therefore, felt easier in his mind, if any repet.i.tion of his involuntary bath in the Gut should befal our hero; and, after giving him (wonderful to say) some correct advice regarding the management of the oars, he cast off the ~Sylph,~ and left her and our hero to their own devices.
But, profiting by the friendly hints which he had received, Mr.
Verdant Green made considerable progress in the skill and dexterity with which he feathered his oars; and he sat in his tub looking as wise as Diogenes may (perhaps) have done in ~his~. He moreover pulled the boat back to Hall's without meeting with any accident worth mentioning; and when he had got on sh.o.r.e he was highly complimented by Mr. Blades and a group of boating gentlemen ”for the admirable display of science which he had afforded them.” Mr.
Verdant Green was afterwards taken alternately by Charles Larkyns and Mr. Bouncer in their pair-oar; so that, by the end of the term, he at any rate knew more of boating than to accept as one of its fundamental rules, ”put your oar in deep, and bring it out with a jerk.”
In the first week in December he had an opportunity of pulling over a fresh piece of water. One of those inundations occurred to which Oxford is so liable, and the meadow-land to the south and west of the city was covered by the flood. Boats
[AN OXFORD FRESHMAN 175]
plied to and from the railway station in place of omnibuses; the Great Western was not to be seen for water; and, at the Abingdon-road bridge, at Cold-harbour, the rails were washed away, and the trains brought to a stand-still. The Isis was amplified to the width of the Christ Church meadows; the Broad Walk had a peep of itself upside down in the gla.s.sy mirror; the windings of the Cherwell could only be traced by the trees on its banks. There was
”Water, water everywhere,”
and a disagreeable quant.i.ty of it too, as those Christ Church <vg175.jpg> men whose ground-floor rooms were towards the meadows soon discovered. Mr. Bouncer is supposed to have brought out one of his ”fine, old, crusted jokes,” when he a.s.serted in reference to the inundation, that ”Nature had a.s.sumed a lake complexion.” Posts and rails, and hay, and a miscellaneous collection of articles, were swept along by the current, together with the bodies of hapless sheep and pigs. But, in spite of these inc.u.mbrances, boats of all descriptions were to be seen sailing, pulling, skiffing, and punting, over the flooded meadows. Numerous were the disasters, and many were the boats that were upset.