The Casual Ward: Academic and Other Oddments. Godley Alfred Denis

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СКАЧАТЬ the crack Eight of the river sped swiftly after her rival, cheers arose from the bank, and odds on both boats were freely taken and offered by the cognoscenti.

      You and I, amigo mio! have seen many a race in our day. We have seen the ’Varsity crews flash neck and neck past Lillie Bridge: we have held our breath while Orme ran a dead heat with Eclipse for the Grand National: we have read how the victor of the pancratium panted to the meta amid the Io Triumphes of Attica’s vine-clad Acropolis. But we did not see the great Christ Church and Charsley’s race – that great contest which is still the talk of many a learned lecture-room. They say the pace was tremendous. Four men fainted in the Christ Church boat, and Trevyllyan’s crew repeatedly entreated him to stop. But he held on, inexorable as the Erinnyes.

      Fair as Pallas Anadyomene – fair as the Venus whom Milo fashioned pour se désennuyer in his exile at Marseilles – the Lady Gwendolen de St. Emilion sat throned on the University Barge, and watched the heroes as their bare arms flashed in the moonlight. And now they were through the Gut, and the nose of the Charsley’s boat pressed hard on its rival: yet Fane Trevyllyan did not make his final effort. Would he spare Glanville Ferrers? Quien sabe? They had been friends – once. But the die was cast. As the boats sped past her the Lady Gwendolen stooped from her pride of place and threw a rose – just one – into the painted poop of the Christ Church wherry. That was all: but it was enough. Trevyllyan saw the action where he sat: one final, magnificent, unswerving stroke – those who saw it thought it would never end! – and with a muttered “Habet!” he sent the brazen beak of his Eight crashing in among the shattered oars of his helpless competitor.

      Galeotto fu il libro, e chi lo scrisse.

      II. New or Kodak Style

      (From the French)

      If they are frivolous, these Universities!

      At present great sensation in Oxford: this town, so gloomy, so sad ordinarily, is to-day en fête.

      Is it that one elects a new Vice-Chancellor?

      No.

      It is the contest aquatic of the Colleges which goes to take place.

      One discusses in the salons the most chic how many kilogrammes they weigh, these heroes of the oar.

      Everywhere Professors in straw hats and Heads of Colleges en matelot.

      What a spectacle!

      …

      On the barges..

      Grouped on these venerable hulks, crowds of ladies excite our admiration by their beauty and our respect by their intelligence.

      Whence do they come, these damsels, so young, so charming?

      It is that they have arrived from the metropolis at the request of their brothers, their cousins – what do I know of it? perhaps their prétendants– of whom they wish to enhance with their applause the athletic triumph.

      …

      After all, they are adorable, these English misses!

      …

      On the bank..

      One hears the portentous echo of the Five-Minutes-Gun.

      Moment tremendous!

      They have started: one sees already the strokesman of the first-boat.

      One would say a whole University that runs on the towing-path, and that utters loud cries.

      Here and there coachmen are seen carrying pistols and pronouncing terrible execrations.

      Why these pistols?.

      A little brutal, these English: but of a force, a virility!

      …

      I myself who speak to you am infected by this enthusiasm.

      I run: I utter cries: I raffole of the leading-boat: I shout En avant!  Vive la Madeleine!  Vive le Cercle Nautique!  Hourra!.

      But one does not do these things at forty years.

      I am out of breath, what?  I wish to stop.

      Arrest yourselves, my friends too impetuous!

      I appeal to you in the name of France, who respects you: do not annihilate me, do not pulverize me…

      Vain appeal!  One would say the car of Juggernaut.

      I am knocked down: I am criblé with kicks: I am massacred.

      …

      Ah!.

      THUCYDIDES ON THE INFLUENZA

      Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the epidemic among the Oxonians, how they had the epidemic, having begun to write as soon as it broke out on No. 2 Staircase, and considering it to be the most noticeable of all that had appeared previously. (For the place was not liable to diseases at other times, but especially free from them, except that which affected the teeth: on account of which they used to go up to the metropolis, in word to consult the Delphic oracle but in deed to go to Olympia, so that not a few were banished from the city both for other reasons and not least this.) As to the causes of it, then, let any one speak who is aware of them: but I will show what things happened on account of it, having both myself put on an æger and seen others similarly afflicted, so that I can describe it with equal certainty more than the narrative of another not having done so, but relying on the incredibility of historians more than the sureness of experience.

      For in the first beginning of the sickness men remembered what Homer says about the lower and higher animals in the Trojan business —

      First did he assail the mules and fleet dogs, but afterward, aiming at the men his piercing dart, he smote, seeing that now too not less but equally as much first, the College Tutors were attacked, and next the scouts, and last of all the men themselves. But most of all the scouts were affected, and this caused the greatest calamity: so that a man must often wish that his scout might recover, wishing indeed contrary to nature, but being persuaded by the greatness of the surrounding misfortune, lest he should suffer even worse things at the hands of a scout’s boy, or considering it terrible if he shall lose even the daily enjoyment of his breakfast not being brought to him. And all laws concerning meals were brought into a state of confusion, so that many anticipated taking the commons of another. And they welcomed the hospitality of those outside the walls, regarding their hunger in the present as much more important than another man’s inability to pay his debts in the future.

      But when the men themselves began to suffer, then indeed the disease was the commencement of lawlessness to a greater extent for the city. For cuttings of chapels and avoidings of lectures, which are an agony for the present more than a possession for ever, and in short all such things as the indulgence of was formerly more disguised, these a man easily dared to do, it being uncertain on the one hand whether his tutor has the influenza, and on the other if he himself might not put on an æger before being hauled he should pay the penalty. And though some, indeed, did things exactly contrary to this, and being before unaccustomed now went in the morning with a run to chapel in order that fewer being present the paradoxicalness of their appearance when compared with the multitude of those who were absent might gain them a prestige of virtue not real but simulated – yet with most there was now neither fear of the Dean by land nor by sea of their coaches: disobeying whom they ate and drank all kinds of things contrary to law, no one being willing to exert himself for that which seemed to be honourable, and calculating that the present abstention from pastry was not equivalent to the possibility of being bumped in the future about as much and not less than if he had smoked three pipes and a cheroot. And not only was injustice prevalent among those who were as yet in good health, but many of those in the ships, being or seeming to themselves to be sick, had their places taken by others accustomed rather to fight upon the land, whose manly inexperience, though in word more creditable than the cowardice СКАЧАТЬ