UNDERGRADUATE PAGE

Oxford Portrait

RN D. J. MAY (Lincoln College, Oxford) 66 LFRED paints a gloomy picture of conditions in England

before his accession," said the lecturer. " Still," she

added, " that is a characteristic of most social reformers." The humour of the lecture-room is above all realistic, Thurberish, tending to understatement. Natural selection operates more quickly on humour than on any other use of language ; a joke either rapidly begets others of its kind or is buried, stillborn. This donnish wit flourishes ; which would seem (since the character of one's laughter says something about one's deeper nature) a significant hint of the current ethos of Oxford.

Modest, however, and self-conscious, the average lecturer in an Oxford lecture-room looks a little like Quince before the court of Athens. Though familiarity may have closed his eyes to it, he has beside his undergraduate audience a more silent, more supercilious one. From the walls of those wide halls, the periwigged members of the University, that (for some reason) it would remember from nother age, look down their classical noses at him. They hang torn their hooks in scarlet and silk-trimmed robes, their finger-tips ressed together in a sneer, their best smile frozen upon their lips. hese listeners are humourless and proud—the antithesis of all he lands for. But they too have a comment to make on Oxford as it today.

The lecture symbolises the solid core of the Oxford system, the ommon denominator of undergraduate life. Inside the ecture-room, and at the tutorial, the undergraduate accepts ith more or less grace such a thing as impersonal authority ; uspends, temporarily, his belief in himself. Otherwise, reality eed not impinge very hardly upon him. It is easy for

m to dress his life in a dinner-jacket, or a multi-coloured aistcoat and corduroys. For twenty-four weeks of the ear at least he will not be stripped by the blast of necessity. He

n escape the unhappy personal relationship: outside his choice, hich can be fluid, he is compelled to live and work with no one. At cocktail party, " Yes " and " But " and " What precisely ? " will

e for the Inost part adequate lines of communication ; though here o make even an inept comparison, to voice the most extravagantly njust criticism, may often prove more politic than to cut no figure f speech at all. The snap witticism about the latest play, the atifying wave of the hand—a brilliant immediacy of conversation- hese are the golden keys to an invitation to the next party.

Actors, writers, politicians and plain (so to speak) untalented ocialites—the sportsmen playing a rather different game on the mg—these are the vanguard of the Oxford individualist movement t is a movement away from the standardising discipline imposed,

n one level, by the conditions of everyday existence ; on another, y the claims of academic work. Its aim is liberty—essentially, of e individual. Yet it has in fact produced a great number of dividuals essentially all alike—escaping, via the mannerism, from dull into a colourful uniformity of mental attitude and gesture, a niformity of originality. Thus to get an article published in Isis, e university weekly, quite certainly the surest way is to open Oxford is. . . ." Then you add whatever you like ; the more artling the better. Recently we have had the pleasure of a plague- ouse and a boiler-room. The content is admittedly original- ut then one can say that about any form.

Stephen Spender and Max Beloff have not long since been xchanging views (in World Review) on the " reality " of life in xford in the 'thirties. Spender claims to having been horrified at detachment and artificiality of that sOciety. Max Beloff holds reply that the acquisition of academic knowledge, which was as rnest then as it is now, is as genuine a form of "contact with ality " as any other form of experience. This is not to be disputed. ut the two are speaking of different things. Stephen Spender is calling primarily the 'thirties' counterpart of the O.U.D.S. bar day (perhaps it was the O.U.D.S. bar).• Max Beloff has in mind rimarily the Examination Schools. The paradox of Oxford is that the two, and all they represent, exist side by side with an almost complete absence of friction. Occasionally—when, for instance, the editor of Isis makes the rash, if roughly true observation that Oxford is divided into the seven hundred avant-garden, and the seven thousand followers—some of the seven thousand (one must accept the rough truth) express resent- ment at his conceit and affectation. But most of the seven thousand (accepting it, too) seek to convince themselves and their less intimate friends that they are on the fringe of the favoured minority. There are not many who are quite uninfluenced by the desire for recog- nition—the confirmation of one's success as an individual.

To heighten the paradox, there is a fairly consistent connection between successful social affectation and genuine ability. There are actors' bars and literary coffee-shops in Oxford, all of which would no doubt live up to the worst expectations of the visitor reared on Waugh. But there are also actors and writers, some of considerable talent, to say nothing of the politicians. (Three tolerably good, and one very good, literary magazines have been appearing regularly in Oxford this year.) O.U.D.S. and the Experimental Theatre Club have put on between them splendid performances of Othello, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Peer Gynt and Fielding's Tom Thumb, besides a large number of short plays ; and Oxford companies are this summer touring the U.S.A., Germany and Southern England.

Finally—Oxford still laughs at the lecturer's jokes—Oxford still sports its oak when it has an essay to write. Oxford still produces (on one level) men and women of sympathy and understanding ; still produces (on the other) brilliant firsts and good seconds. The clue to the paradox is to be found in the proud portraits. They have made their decision ; they have come down on the superior side of the wall, and are rooted there for ever. But the undergraduate of whom we have been speaking, though he maintains a precarious balance on its glass-sprinkled top—leaning now this way, now that, doffing and donning alternately his mortar board and deer-stalker- has still to fall ; and need never. For him the character of one minute need not deny the character of the next. Photograph him at one of his less responsible moments ; and the difference between him and the occupants of the lecture-room wall may not be striking. But you have no right to judge him by his photograph: he didn't ask you to take it, and while you bent to change the bulb you missed his smile.

The lecture-room portraits never smile. They have persuaded themselves to believe in their self-importance. For a great many occasions the undergraduate believes in his. But there are " off duty " moments which the outsider (and, one might add, since he will soon be up in numbers, the freshman) does not see. And it might even be convincingly argued that this egotistic detachment is, at least in some form, if not the more obvious Oxford one, a prerequisite for many achievements, particularly literary and artistic ones. This " artificiality " is not always artificial. And the liberty which makes it possible is unreservedly good.

Perhaps (this is just an impression, and a tip to the inquirer) tea- time is the most favourable opportunity for making the real acquaintance of an Oxford undergraduate. It is his unguarded hour. The day's facade is wearing thin, and it is not yet time for the grease paint of the evening. And the Oxford undergraduate is English enough (aren't the lecture-room qualities English ?) still to succumb to the teapot. Then you may even hear him make one of those jokes himself—" Russian without lemon, or English without milk ? " say.