Tom Brown at Oxford

“Tom Brown at Oxford,” a continuation of “Tom Brown’s Schooldays,” was published in 1861, but, like most sequels, it failed to achieve the wide popularity of its famous predecessor.  Although the story, perhaps, lacks much of the freshness of the “Schooldays,” it nevertheless conveys an admirable picture of undergraduate life as it was in the middle of the nineteenth century.  Notwithstanding the changes that have taken place since then, it is still remarkably full of vitality, and the description of the boat races, and the bumping of Exeter and Oriel by St. Ambrose’s boat might well have been written to-day.  In spite of its defects, the story, with its vigorous morals, is worthy to rank with anything that came from the pen of Tom Hughes, the great apostle of muscular Christianity.

I.—­St. Ambrose’s College

In the Michaelmas term, after leaving school, Tom went up to matriculate at St. Ambrose’s College, Oxford, but did not go up to reside till the following January.

St. Ambrose’s College was a moderate-sized one.  There were some seventy or eighty undergraduates in residence when our hero appeared there as a freshman, of whom a large proportion were gentleman-commoners, enough, in fact, to give the tone to the college, which was decidedly fast.

Fewer and fewer of the St. Ambrose men appeared in the class-lists or among the prize men.  They no longer led the debates in the Union; the boat lost place after place on the river; the eleven got beaten in all the matches.  But now a reaction had begun.  The fellows recently elected were men of great attainments, chosen as the most likely persons to restore, as tutors, the golden days of the college.

Our hero, on leaving school, had bound himself solemnly to write all his doings to the friend he had left behind him, and extracts from his first letter from college will give a better idea of the place than any account by a third party.

“Well, first and foremost, it’s an awfully idle place—­at any rate, for us freshmen.  Fancy now, I am in twelve lectures a week of an hour each.  There’s a treat!  Two hours a day; and no extra work at all.  Of course, I never look at a lecture before I go in; I know it all nearly by heart, and for the present the light work suits me, for there’s plenty to see in this place.  We keep very gentlemanly hours.  Chapel every morning at eight, and evening at seven.  You must attend once a day, and twice on Sundays, and be in gates at twelve o’clock.  And you ought to dine in hall perhaps four days a week.  All the rest of your time you do just what you like with.