How Virtue triumphed over Progress

OXFORD LETTER MERCURIUS OXONIENSIS

GOOD BROTHER LONDINIENSIS, I hear no more as yet of Mistress Starkie's great duel, and so I go straight to the main matter: the long warre (longer than the warre of Troy) in which now, it seems, we have at last defeated those Road-hogs that would have driven a turn- pike road through our Christ Church Meadow.

You must know that this Meadow, which they describe as a mere waste marsh, ripe for development, and we as an oasis of rustick peace in our urban Pandaemonium, is a great field, like your Hyde Park, betwixt Christ Church and the river, bounded by walks and trees (some of them exotique), which Christ Church, a rich coll., has always maintained at its own expense for the refreshment of all citizens of Oxon, except such as are of im- proper character, push hand-carts, or wear

ragged or very dirty clothes: a proviso now (save in the matter of hand-carts) lamentably disregarded. Some pragmatical busybodies in the town have long clamoured for a road through this Meadow. They, allege publickly, that it would be a great relief to the High Street, drawing away the stink and noise and discharg- ing it elsewhere; and they add (but privately, among themselves only) that it would also be a swipe in the eye to a rich proud college. But 'twas not till 1956, when the late Master Alex- ander Smith, Warden of New Coll., was Vice- chancellour, that such novelties received any inlet into the university, which till then (whether through good sense or natural torpor) had been content not to tickle a sleeping dog. But Mr Smith, who had a twitching finger, soon changed all that.

This Mr Smith was Vice-chancellour by accident, being at the time of his elevation already past the age of retirement. But his coll., Wishing to soften some precedent misfortune, and to reward his universal affability, voted to continue him in office as Warden, and so, by seniority (Buggins' turn) bestowed him on the university as Vice-chancellour; in which new office he resolved to savour his triumph, and so set out, in great haste (as old men do who come late to power), to eternize his reign by some memorable disturbance of Nature. He was a man of gothick taste, which heretofore be had been unable to express; for although he had set out to re-model the windows of his own coll., he had been stopt by the Fellows after the first window, which remains ,as his monument there (Smith's Folly). So now, being Vice- chancellour, he hoped to gratify this taste in a larger theatre; and since he was endowed with a bold spirit and an exalted fancy and an in- defatigable, bewitching tongue, he drew many after him.

His design was to convert the whole High Street into a cobbled piazza, open only to foot- walkers, sandwich-men, hot-dog-vendors, morris-dancers, etc., and to those hand-carts which the Dean of Christ Church had excluded from the Meadow; for which purpose he would seal up the ends of the High Street with posts and chains and divert all the other stinking traffique into the Meadow, along a new road to be built under the Dean's nose. To this end be courted the City, already half won; venti- lated his piazza to the other colls. in the High Street, offering them a new golden age of peace and quietude; ran up to London to inveigle Her Majesty's minister (Master Sandys, a Magdalen man) into his scheme; and by some sleight of hand in committees (avoiding a direct vote in Congregation), had it put out that the whole university joined the city in petitioning Her Majesty to bestow upon us a Meadow Road.

His great ally in all this was his former pupil, Master Sparrow, Warden of. All Souls Coll., who has much free time at his disposal (no undergraduates in that delicious place), and who was himself much taken by the plan, being greatly distracted from his refined and subtle machinations by the noise and stink of the traffique in the High Street (vide on this the exquisite poem by Mr Lancaster, published at that time in the SPECTATOR, and beginning

Hark, hark, the traffique rouls Past the Warden of All Souls, etc.) This Mr Sparrow, would hop often up to London and make interest in the Athenaeum, Albany, Beefsteak Club, and suchlike places, and would draft neat lawyer-like arguments in which to entangle the honest party while Mr Vice-chancellour swept forward, at long strides, intoxicated, like a sleep-walker, in a gothick trance, with Her Majesty's Minister and Mr Mayor and the City Counsellors (a bare quorum of them) running after him, clapping their hands and crying, in unison, 'A Meadow Road! A Meadow Road!'

Of course 'twas but an empty slogan, framed to unite them, for beyond the bare words they agreed in nothing, nor looked past their own noses. The City Counsellors would not say where they would drive their road, once it was through the Meadow, lest they should lose the votes of those whose houses they would pull down, and the High Street colls. would not see that their piazza was but an aery chimaera, for the City took care never to agree to it. But whenever the honest party hinted at these dif- ficulties, they all shut their eyes and sang out 'A Meadow Road! A Meadow Road!' as if that were a charm to exorcise impossibilities; and sometimes they changed their tune and said gravely that their Meadow Road would be a thing of beauty, and that they would line it with topiary bushes clipped in the shape of Mr Vice-chancellour and Mr Mayor et al., and emblematick flower-beds in red, white and blue, and plastick gnomes and gyant stone toad- stools, and God wot what not, to teach us poor rusticks true taste, etc. etc.

At this the Meadow colls. got together and Christ Church, as the most concerned, tweaked a string in the metropolis, and a debate was launched in the House of Peers, and many excellent speeches made, especially by the here- ditary peers, most of whom had spent a brief time at Christ Church and had kindly memories of the Meadow, in which they had breathed their unlicenced greyhounds, beagles, whippets, etc. (and perhaps tumbled a bird or two). But all came to nothing, the government peers fearing

to risk their coronets by defying whahwas called The Voice of People—though it was but the voice of Mr Vice-chancellour and Mr Warden Sparrow and a few tradesmen, ingeniosely amplified; and their Lordships might as well have blown themselves- up in a good cause as wait to be snuffed out, twelve years later, with- out a squeak, in no cause at all. So the Road- hogs prevailed, and the government told the City to go on boldly and build their road.

About this time Nicolas, Grande Prince of Muscovy, finding himself opposed by his Boyars, and learning that, in Oxon, Mr Vice. chancellour had diddled all his opponents, came over and waited humbly on Mr Vice. chancellour, who gave him good advice (of which he was liberal); and on his return to his own country, the Prince invited Mr Vice. chancellour thither as his own guest, in great state. But alas, this visit, which marked the apogee of Mr Vice-chancellour's royal progress (for he had already bestowed doctorates, honoris causa, on the King of Sweden and the Emperour of Aethiopia), was also the procatarctick cause of his decline. For in Muscovy (a dirty place) he caught the itch, and sickened, and on his return home had to abdicate his office, and soon afterwards died, to the unfeigned grief of all men, of whatever party : for he was a man of high spirit and winning manners, though some- what over-zealous and arbitrary in his proceed. ings and obstinate in his gothick fantasy. After his return, the Prince of Muscovy applied the advice he had given and soon diddled the Boyars, dismissing them from office and send- ing them away, some to manage manufactories in the country, some to exile in Mongolia. etc. In Oxon, the new Vice-chancellour being Sir

John Masterman, a Christ Church man, the mantle of Mr Smith now fell on Mr Warden Sparrow, who (as he thought) had but to wear it and sit and fiddle till the ripe fruit of victory should drop into his lap.

For now it seemed that all was over, and

nothing left for the friends of the Meadow but to keen over the desolation thereof. For the surveyors began to measure the Meadow, this way and that, carving it up in their minds, and the contractors to sniff the spoils, and although good men protested, and totted up figures, and Sir Roy Harrod (the great oeconomist), with marvellous eloquence, urged them at least to sink their road underground, in a tunnel (so that they might all be drowned in it, at flood- time), yet the Road-hogs did but laugh at them,

or pilloried them as enemies of Progress and of the People, and so cowed 'em into silence. And Christ Church, in particular, for its gallantry and civik spirit, was lampooned, as if it were a crime to be rich, or to stand alone, guarding the interests of beauty and of the publick, against those Gadarene road-hogs who stampeded, grunting identical grunts, down the broad way which leads to destruction. And even the best friends of that coll., great peers and cabinet counsellors, urged 'em to yield: for, said they, these are yielding times, 'tis best to be with it, to go with the herd; otherwise (besides the cost of it) we shall all be branded as here- tiques, enemies of Progress, and of Mr Warden Sparrow, and of the People.

Nevertheless, that great coll. was not deflec- ted from its purpose but stood firm, sustained by the other Meadow colleges and by divers bold spirits in the university. These together brought the matter into Congregation (whence Mr Smith had always excluded it) and there caused the true mind of the university to be declared. They also fee'd learned counsel, at huge expense, and fought inch by inch, and ensnared opposing learned counsel into long, labyrinthine disputations, so that all men marvelled at their virtuosity and the Publick Inquests became publick entertainments, like pantomimes or horse-races or raree-shows; and thus they held out till the government of the city bad changed, and of the country too, and new surveys were made, and all the old summs were shown to be wrong, and a new arithme- tique was brought in, and a new philosophy, and little by little the light dawned in men's minds, and the very surveyors imployed by the city have now reported that a Meadow Road is not needed, nay is flat contrary to Scripture, Aristotle and right reason.

So you see, good brother Londiniensis, how virtue and sound sense can triumph, even in these degenerate days, if we do but stand fast till the epidemick folly passes, as it surely will; for the giddy multitude follows the fashion, and `tis our duty, as guardians of ingenuous youth, not to yield to it, but stare super antiques Was; which I trust will be our New Year's resolve. till the epidemick folly passes, as it surely will; and all your household a merry Christmas, far from student stirs and election cabals, and un- troubled by these prolix letters of mine. For I, being a bachelour, shall this week break covert from Oxon, and having shaken off my pursuers, who are now hot on my brush, seeking to rip me open and cut off my mask, I shall go safely to ground with my good friend squire Tod- hunter at Quainton, with whom I commonly _ enjoy my delitescency and sweet otiums. But there, as always, I shall remain

your loving brother to serve you,

. MERCURIUp OXONIENSIS