UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Going Up Late
By N. E. BUXTON (Worcester College, Oxford) c UT haven't you left it rather late ? " The question was -often put to me before I arrived in Oxford, and it has been repeated many times since. A few weeks ago I could not be certain of my answer. Now there is no doubt in my mind at all. That there should have been some uncertainty was hardly surprising, for at twenty-eight, after five years in the Army and four in the City, one could not be Completely confident that in going up to Oxford one was doing the right thing. Three years as an undergraduate! Three years of long scarves and learning and very young men fresh from school or conscription. Would it be worth while, and—in any case—could one go through with it ? Older men had done it, of course, but they had, with few exceptions, done it in the years immediately after the war. They had come in their thousands, comfort for one another. They had come even with their wives and children, and—official recognition of the strangeness of the times—without Latin. All that has changed. During the months that preceded my arrival I was assured by kind friends, who thought thus to sustain me in my resolve, that the universities were rapidly returning to normal ; and last year, seeking admission to university and college, I was obliged to make Kennedy's Primer and Caesar's Gallic Wars the objects of seiren months of study. At the end of the war some hundreds of undergraduates were over thirty. Now a man is getting on at twenty-three and nineteen is common.
Yet, if undergraduates are very young, Oxford is very old, and in becoming aware of the world which is Oxford, I have almost lost sight of the other world which I so recently left. How .quickly it has fallen away! A few weeks ago I was part Of it ; there was no other. Now I am reminded of it only by the daily arrival of The Times, and even this, which was an indispensable part of my London day, no longer keeps its former place in life. The personal column is .ignored, the crossword undefiled. It no longer has its old significance, but comes as might a postcard . from a distant relative, of whose existence one is thus reminded, but for whose activities one feels, for the • moment, no responsibility. - In these few weeks I. have found more than I dared to hope for, and my fears, with a few-unimportant exceptions, have been proved liars. When I had contemplated the living again of a corporate existence there had been some anxiety. I remembered school and Army days, and dreaded having to face once more the rigours of competitive living. I visualised remote and inadequate bathrooms-and the need for early rising if one wanted a place at a wash-basin, hot water and a reasonable shave. I had, in my deep and fearful ignorance, imagined the old and typewritten notices pinned to the doors—" Baths may be taken only between the hours of —." Yet I have found none of The competitions which I feared do not exist. My scout calls me gently at eight ;_ the bathroom is across the landing and the water is always hot. Indeed, corporate living ds I have found it here, far from being the dreadful ordeal of experience and imagination, is a great improvement upon the sort of life which I have known during the past few years. ' Luncheon in the City was a vulgar affair involving books of tickets, long queues and a descent into an underground inferno of glass-topped tables and metal trays. One ate joylessly and much too quickly, and got out. But in college one is able once again to take ones meals in comparative comfort and decency. Here there is no maze of heat and sound. No " daylight " lighting. No surrender of perforated coupons. The wooden tables are long and polished and the places are neatly laid. The food, surprisingly good, is served by the white- coated scouts, and conversation is no longer a physical -effort made against an endless din of clattering cutlery. Better, too, than those improvised and solitary suppers taken in the kitchen of a bachelor flat are dinners in ball. Called by the lodge bell, • we stand to our places. Chatter dies as the dons walk to the high table. Two blows of a wooden hammer sound upon its surface. The great doors are shut. A third stroke of the hammer falls, and Latin grace is recited quickly by one of the scholars. We eat and drink and talk of anything that comes to mind ; and all the while the portraits of great men look down upon us from the high walls. Even the discipline of undergraduate life is not, as I had feared, hard to undergo. Indeed, such as it is, it seems to be for me a source of pleasure rather than a cause for discontent. Long ago one had, for example, quite made up one's mind that freedom to worship or not to worship was essential to adult existence. Compulsion, one had decided after the last church parade, would never again be tolerated. True to one's principles one was not compelled, and, despite parental sighs, went to church only at Easter, Harvest Festival and Christmas. Yet now: when one attendance at chapel is obligatory on Sundays, I feel no irritation. I remember that even at school it was not an unpleasant ritual. I have been for a walk by the river and have had tea here in my room by the fire. Again the bell sounds from the lodge, monotonous and insistent. I put down my book; put on my gown and join the other men who are hurrying under the old arches towards the light that comes from the chapel door: It is good, I find, to be summoned in this way. Good to be there in company with a hundred others reciting the old prayers. singing loudly the familiar hymns ; whilst all the while it grows darker outside and the windows seem to grow dusty.
This rediscovered pleasure is not confined to the institutions alone but goes much deeper, is more personal. I had feared that • as a freshman I should be imprisoned by my _extra years and forced to choose between solitary confinement and the tortures of an ebullient Junior Common Room. In this, too, I was greatly at fault. There is no lack of pleasant company. Some of the dons, for instance, are only a little older than myself, and I have met one who served with me in Normandy. I have fciund them generous with their coffee and their conversation.
In any case, I had no need to fear that the difference in our ages would isolate me from my fellows ; that their youthful company would prove intolerable. They do not spend their time in climbing monuments or making apple-pie beds. Their rooms are not full of bottles and cigarette-smoke and shrill voices raised in argument as to whether the table is. There are, of cOurse, little affectations—" I know all about art, but I've no idea whet I like "—but for the most part their talk is diverse and entertain- ing, and of no less a quality than that which is to be found in the bars of Threadneedle Street or Cornhill, where men of More maturity and substance hold court at lunch-time.
I have not found here the time for loneliness and boredom. After all, one has one's work to do, and in that, above all things. one may find the greatest delight of all. Before coming up I had feared that my studies might prove too difficult. I might not,! thought, be able to bring to them the mental ability and powers of concentration which might be required. These might have been fatally impaired by the years which the Army and the City had eaten. I was wrong. I doubt if I shall get a First ; I should be surprised and grateful for a Second ; but reading. is at least no longer an affair of tube trains and papers and an occasional week-end in the country. From being an infrequent and restricted relaxation, it has become a regular and illimitable virtue. It could scarcely be otherwise. There are the Bodleian and Rhodes House and the Radcliffe libraries, and—" you may browse all -day if you wish "—there are the bookshops in the Broad. I have become aware of books as never before.
In becoming aware of what Oxford has to offer, I have become conscious, although as yet imperfectly, of what Oxford is. Oxford is Old and wise and kindly and rich in those things for which, in this fretful age, one might search longingly and in vain elsewhere. It is contemptuous of none but is tolerant of all men and of all ages. Better by far that one should have come to.it late than never have come to it at all.
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