Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844

At all events, his method of retaliation – "taking down the dean" – as he called it was most systematic and persevering. He let the matter of the imposition pass over quietly; was for some months doubly attentive to all his college duties; carefully avoided all collision with his adversary; kept out of his way as much as he could; and whenever brought into contact with him, was as respectful as if he had been the Vice-chancellor. This had its effect: John began to rise in the dean's good graces; and when he called upon him in the usual course of etiquette, to mention that he should be absent the vacation of three days which intervenes between the two short terms, the meeting, on one side at least, was almost cordial. A day or two after his return, (he had been to visit a friend, he said,) we were in his rooms at breakfast together, when the dean's scout entered with his master's compliments to request Mr Brown's company to breakfast. Then it was that John's eyes dilated, and he rubbed his hands, as soon as the door was shut, with an excitement rather unusual.

"Do you know who breakfasts with the man to-morrow? Do you, Hawthorne?"

"Why, I had a message this morning," said I, "but I don't mean to go. I shall have a headach or something to-morrow. I have no notion of going there to eat my own bread and butter, and drink his very bad tea, and see a freshman swallow greasy ham and eggs, enough to turn the stomach of any one else; and then those Dons always make a point of asking me to meet a set of regular muffs that I don't know. The last time I went, there were only two reading-men in spectacles, perfect dummies, and that ass, young Medlicott, who talks about hunting, and I believe never crossed the back of anything higher than a donkey."

"You had better come to-morrow; perhaps you will have some fun."

"Why, who is going there, do you know?"

"I haven't a notion; but do come. I must go, and we will sit together, and I'll get the cook to send up a dish of deviled kidneys for you."

There was something in his eye as he said this which I could not make out, and it rather puzzled me to find him so willing to be of the party himself. However, he was an odd fellow, so I promised to go, and we parted; certainly with little anticipation on my part of what the "fun" was to be.

Nine o'clock the next day arrived, and punctual to the minute might be seen two freshmen, from opposite corners of the quadrangle, steering for the dean's rooms. Ten minutes afterwards, an interesting procession of coffee-pots and tin-covers warned me to finish my toilet; and following them up the staircase, I found a tolerably large party assembled.

"Just in time – just in time, Mr Hawthorne," said the dean, who appeared to be in high good-humour, "as my old pupil, Sir Charles Galston, used to say, (you don't know him, do you? he's your county man, too, I believe,) – as he always used to say, 'Gad, Hodgett, just in time to see the muffins break cover!' ha, ha! Take those tins off, Robert."

We sat down, and for some time every thing went on as slow as it usually does at breakfast parties. At length, taking advantage of a pause, after laughing his loudest at one of our host's stories, John Brown broke out with "How is Mrs Hodgett, sir?"

If Mrs Hodgett, instead of the dean's most respectable mother, had been his lawful wife, hitherto unacknowledged through fear of losing his fellowship, he could not have looked more thoroughly horrified. I myself was considerably taken aback; some of the other men, who knew the reverend gentleman's tenderness on the subject of his family connexions, picked their chicken-bones, and stirred their coffee with redoubled attention. John Brown and the two freshmen alone looked as cool as cucumbers.

"Eh? oh – h," stammered the party addressed, "quite well, thank you – quite well. Let me give you some of this – oh, it's all gone! We'll have some more; will one of you be kind enough to ring? My friend, Lord" —

"No more for me, thank you, sir, I beg," said John. "Have you heard from Mrs Hodgett since the vacation?"

"No – yes; oh dear, yes, several times!" (It was about five days back.) "She was quite well, thank you. In town at present, I believe. You were in town during the vacation, I think, Mr Wartnaby? Did you meet your uncle Sir Thomas there, or any of the family?"

"Sir T-T-Thom…" began young Wartnaby, who stammered terribly.

"I beg your pardon, sir," struck in John Brown, "are you sure Mrs Hodgett is in town? I saw her in Nottingham myself on Friday; I made my first acquaintance with her there, and a very charming old lady she is."

Mr Hodgett's confusion could only be rivaled by Mr Brown's perfect self-possession. I began to see the object of his kind enquiries; so, probably, did the victim himself. The other men who were present thought, I suppose, that it was only an unfortunate attempt of John's to make himself agreeable; and while some were amused by it, a more considerate friend kicked my shins in mistake for his, under the table.

"She certainly told me, sir, she should be going up to London in a few weeks, to purchase her winter stock, I think she said; but I did not understand that she was to be there now."

John had got on thus far before his enemy could rally at all; but the dean grew desperate, and resolved to make a diversion at all hazards; and as he reached his hand out, apparently in quest of a slice of toast, cup, saucer, and a pile of empty plates, went crashing on the floor.

"Bless me, how very awkward!" said he, with a face as red as fire.

"Never mind, sir," said a freshman from Shrewsbury, just entered who had not opened his lips before, and thought it a good opportunity; "it's all for the good of trade."

Never was a stale jest so unconsciously pointed in its application. Brown laughed of course, and so did we all; while the dean tried to cover his confusion by wiping his clothes – the cup having been an empty one. The freshman, seeing our amusement, thought he had said a very good thing, and began to talk very fast; but nobody listened to him.

"Talking of trade," mercilessly continued the tormentor, "I was uncommonly pleased with Nottingham the other day. Your brother-in-law, Mr Mogg, was exceedingly civil to me, (I took the liberty of mentioning your name, sir;) he showed me the whole process of stocking-making; very interesting indeed it is – but of course you have seen it often; and I really think, for a small establishment, Mr Mogg's is one of the best conducted I ever saw. You don't know Mr Mogg, Hawthorne, do you? Get the dean to give you a letter to him, if you ever go to Nottingham; a very good sort of man he is, and has his whole heart in his business. 'Some men are ashamed of their trade, sir' said he; 'I a'n't. What should I do, I should like to know, if trade was ashamed of me?' And really Mrs Mogg" —

"Ah yes!" said Mr Hodgett, hitherto overwhelmed by John's eloquence, (he never talked so fast,) and utterly at a loss how to meet it, "Mogg is a great man in his line at Nottingham. I shouldn't wonder if he was member some day; he has a large wholesale connexion."

"And retail, too, sir," chimed in John. "I bought six pair of the nicest sort of stockings there I have seen for a long time: did I show them to you, Hawthorne? 'These,' said Mr Mogg, 'I can recommend; I always'" —

"If you won't take any more coffee, gentlemen," said the dean, jumping up and looking at his watch, "I am afraid, as I have an appointment at ten" —

"I declare, so have I," said Brown; "but I had quite forgotten it, our conversation has been so very agreeable. Good-morning, sir; and if you are writing to Mrs Hodgett, pray make my compliments." And with this Parthian shaft he quitted the field.

Having adjusted the difficult questions which are apt to arise as to the ownership of caps and gowns, the rest of the party took leave. The facetious freshman, after putting in an ineffectual claim upon one or two of the most respectable of the caps, at last marched off with the dean's, as being certainly more like the new one he had bought the day before, than the dilapidated article with a broken board and half a tassel, which was the tempting alternative, and possessing also the common property of having a red seal in it. He was not allowed, however, to remain long in peaceful possession of his prize. Scarcely had he reached his rooms, when Robert, the dean's scout, came to inform him that he had left his own cap (which Robert presented to him with a grin) behind him, and taken away Mr Hodgett's in mistake; enlightening him, at the same time, as to the fact, that fellows' caps, by special exemption, were "not transferable." And when he ventured to send back by Robert an apology, to the effect that the very ancient specimen could not at all events be his, and a humble request that the dean would endeavour to ascertain which of his friends whom he had met at breakfast had also "made a mistake," that official, remembering his happy debût as a conversationalist, instantly sent for him, and read him a severe lecture upon impertinence.

Of course we were no sooner fairly landed in the quadrangle, than all who had any acquaintance with Brown surrounded him with entreaties for an explanation. What possessed him to make such a dead set at the dean? How came he to be so well up in the family history? How long had he had the pleasure of an acquaintance with dear old Mrs Hodgett? And who introduced him to Mr Mogg?

It turned out that John had made an expedition to Nottingham during the vacation on purpose; he had called on the old lady, whose address he had with some difficulty obtained; presented his card, "Mr John Brown, – Coll.;" stated that he was a stranger, very desirous to see the lions of Nottingham, of which he had heard so much; and having the honour of knowing her son, and the advantage of being at the same college with him, and having so often heard her name mentioned in their many conversations, that he almost felt as if she was his intimate acquaintance, had ventured to intrude upon her with a request that she would put him in the way of seeing the town and its manufactures to the best advantage. Much taken, no doubt, by John's polite address, which by his own recapitulation of it must have been highly insinuating, and delighted to see any one who could talk to her about her son, and to learn that she herself was talked about among his grand friends in Oxford, the worthy Mrs Hodgett begged John Brown to walk in; and finding that there was nothing high about him, and that he listened with the greatest interest to all her family details and reminiscences, she took courage to ask him to eat a bit of dinner with her and her daughter at two o'clock, after which she promised him the escort of her son-in-law, Mr Mogg, the principal (that was what they called them up at Nottingham, just as they did in Oxford, she observed) of the great stocking-house over the way. Such a man he was! she said; every bit as good as a book to a stranger; "he knowed every think and every body." John assured her such universal knowledge was not common among principals of houses in Oxford; and declared that he should appreciate the services of such a guide proportionately. And as an introduction to the whole family was just the thing he wanted, he at once accepted the invitation with many thanks. In short, an arrangement was made which pleased all parties; all, that is, with the exception of Mr Spriggins, the head shopman, who usually took his meals with the family, but on that day, to his great disgust, not being considered of quality to meet their unexpected guest, (not being a principal,) received intimation that his dinner would be served in the counting-house. The dinner passed off, no doubt, much more satisfactorily than more formal affairs of the kind. John had a good appetite and good-humour, and so had the old lady; and no doubt, even in Miss Hodgett's eyes, the young Oxonian was no bad substitute for Mr Spriggins. Even that gentleman, could he have foreseen all that was to follow from this visit, would have exchanged for his blandest smile the stern glance with which he regarded, from the little back window of the counting-house, the procession of John, with Miss Hodgett under his arm, from the drawing-room, to take the seat which should have been his; would have made him his most obsequious bow, and regarded him as the best customer that had ever come inside their doors.

But perhaps I am wronging Mr Spriggins in assuming that he thought the usurper of his rights worthy of a glance at all: and certainly I am anticipating my story. John dined with the old lady; drank her currant wine in preference to her port, ate her seed biscuits, and when Mr Mogg, in pursuance of a message from his mother-in-law, called to renew in his own person the offer to show his relation's distinguished friend, (Mrs Hodgett had hinted her suspicions that John Brown was a nobleman,) he was ready, though rather sleepy, to commence his lionizing. Mr Mogg was exceedingly civil, showed him every thing worth seeing, from the castle to the stocking-frames; and by the time they returned together to supper at the old lady's, they had become very thick indeed. John called the next day and took his leave of both parties, with a promise not to pass through Nottingham without renewing his acquaintance, and that he would not fail to mention to his friend the dean how much he had been gratified by his reception; both which pledges he scrupulously redeemed.

Mr Hodgett's indignation was unbounded; if the united powers of vice-chancellor, doctors, proctors, and convocation, could, by rummaging up some old statute, have expelled John Brown for paying a visit to Nottingham, he would have moved the university to strive to effect it. Happily these powers never are united, or there is no saying what they might not do. So John remained a member of the college still. The dean seldom looked at him if he could help it; he tried once the soothing system by praising him at collections, but it only elicited from John a polite enquiry after Mr and Mrs Mogg.

What man could do to extricate himself from his unfortunate position, the dean did. He wrote off immediately to his mother, entreating her, by her hopes of his advancement in life, not to allow the name of Hodgett to be any longer contaminated by any touch of linen-drapery. He suggested that she should at once make over the business to her foreman, Spriggins, reserving to herself an interest in the profits, and retire to a small and genteel cottage in the suburbs, where no impertinent intruder could detect the linen-draper's widow. She, worthy old soul, though it did grieve her, no doubt, to part with her shop, in which were centred the interests and associations of so many years, yet would have set fire to it with her own hands, and emigrated to America – though she knew it only as a place where banks always broke, and people never paid their debts – if it could in anyway have furthered his interests whom she loved better than he deserved. She always looked upon him as a gentleman, and did not wonder he wished to be one, though she herself had no manner of taste for becoming a lady.

But in the simplicity of her heart, she planned that even this sacrifice to her motherly affection might be turned to some account in the way of trade. Accordingly, there appeared in the Nottingham Herald an advertisement, extending across two columns, headed with imposing capitals, by which the public were informed that Mrs Hodgett being about to decline her long-established linen-drapery business in favour of Mr Spriggins, the whole stock was to be turned into ready money immediately, "considerably below prime cost;" by which means the public had no doubt an opportunity of giving full value to Mrs H. for sundry old-fashioned patterns and faded remnants, which the incoming Spriggins would otherwise have "taken to" for a mere song.

Now, since the time that John Brown began first to take so deep an interest in the Hodgett family, he had regularly invested fourpence weekly in a copy of the Nottingham Herald. By this means he had the satisfaction of congratulating the dean upon the birth of a nephew, in the person of a son and heir of the Moggs: and though so carefully did that gentleman avoid all communication with his tormentor, that he was obliged for two whole days to watch an opportunity to convey the intelligence; yet, as he finally succeeded in announcing it in the presence of the tutor of a neighbouring college, who was a profound genealogist and a great gossip, his pains, he declared, were sufficiently repaid. The eagerness with which he pounced upon the advertisement may be imagined; and finding, from a little N. B. at the bottom, that handbills with further particulars were to be had at the office, he lost no time in procuring half a dozen by post; and one morning the usual receptacles for university notices, the hall-door and the board by the buttery, were placarded with staring announcements, in red and black letters, six inches long, of Mrs Hodgett's speculation. One was pushed under the dean's door; one stuck under the knocker at the principal's; one put into the college letterbox for "the senior common-room;" in short, had good Mrs Hodgett herself wished to have the college for her customers, she could hardly have distributed them more judiciously.

In short, no pains were spared by John Brown to tease and worry the dean with all the particulars of his family history, which he would most have wished to bury in oblivion. And to do him justice, he in his turn spared no pains to get rid of John Brown. He would have allowed him to cut lectures and chapels ad libitum, if he thus could have spared all personal intercourse, and escaped his detested civilities. Finding that would not do, he tried the opposite course, and endeavoured either to get him rusticated at once, or to disgust him with the college, and thus induce him to take his name off. John was cautious – very cautious; but a war against the powers that be, is always pretty much of an uphill game; and so at last it proved in his case.

John had another enemy in the college, of his own making too; this was Mr Silver, the junior tutor. He was a man of some scholarship and much conceit; took a first class when very young, having entered college a mere schoolboy, and read hard; got his appointment as tutor soon after, and sneered at older men on the strength of it. He pretended to be exceedingly jocular and familiar with his pupils, but was really always on the alarm for his dignity. His great delight was to impress the freshmen with an idea of his abilities and his condescension. "Always come to me, Mr – , if you find any difficulties in your reading – I shall be most happy to assist you." This language, repeated to all in turn, was, not unnaturally, literally understood by the matter-of-fact John Brown; who, perhaps, could see no good reason why a college tutor should not be ready to aid, as far as he could, the private studies of those who are so often in want of sensible advice and encouragement. However, it did not occur to him, when he took up to Mr Silver's rooms one morning after lecture, a passage that had puzzled him, that he was doing a very odd thing, and that the tutor thought so. As these consultations became more frequent, however, he began to perceive, what other men were not slow to tell him, that Mr Silver thought him a bore. And the moment this flashed upon him, with his unfortunate antipathy to any thing like humbug, he began another war of independence. He selected crabbed passages; got them up carefully by the help of translations, scholiasts, and clever friends; and then took them up hot to Mr Silver. And when he detected him slurring a difficulty instead of explaining it, or saying there was no difficulty at all, John would bring up against him his array of objections to this or that rendering, and arguments for and against various readings, &c., till Mr Silver found himself fairly out of his depth. At first this puzzled him, and he very nearly committed the mistake of pronouncing John Brown a first-rate scholar in the common-room; but when he found his performance at lecture did not by any means keep pace with the remarkable erudition sometimes displayed by him in private, he began in his turn to suspect the trick. He dared not refuse to play his part, when called upon, in these learned discussions, though he dreaded them more and more; for his college reputation was at stake, and there were some among the older fellows who looked upon him as rather an assuming young man for understanding what they did not pretend to, and would have been glad to have had a joke against him; but he began cordially to hate John Brown; he gave him all the difficult bits he could at lecture; sneered at him when he dared; and practised all those amiable embellishments which make schoolmasters and tutors usually so beloved, and learning in all its branches so delightful.

It is not to be wondered at, then, if John's kind friends somewhat damaged his reputation among the Dons, and watched their opportunity to annihilate him. It came, and they were down upon him at once. Some half-dozen noisy men, the survivors of a supper-party, had turned into Brown's rooms (he seldom sat up so late) for a parting cigar. Having accomplished this, they took it into their heads to dance a quadrille in the middle of the covered thoroughfare, for the benefit of the echo, to the music of six individual tunes sung in chorus. So strange a performance brought down some of the fellows; the men were not recognised, but traced to Brown's rooms. He refused to give up their names – was declared contumacious; and, in spite of the good-natured remonstrances of the principal and one or two of the others, his enemies obtained a majority in the common-room; and it was decided that John Brown was too dangerous a character to be allowed to remain in college during vacation. But they had not got rid of him yet.

About two miles out of Oxford, on the C – road, if any one takes the trouble to turn up a narrow lane, and then follow a footpath by the side of the canal, he will come to one of the most curious-looking farmhouses that he (or at least I) ever met with. It is a large rambling uninhabited-looking place; the house, as is not unusual, forming one side of a square enclosure, of which the barns and outhouses make up the rest. The high blank walls of these latter, pierced only here and there by two or three of the narrowest possible lancet-holes, give it something the air of a fortification. Indeed, if well garrisoned, it would be almost as strong a post as the Chateau of Hougoumont; with this additional advantage, that it has a moat on two sides of it, and a canal, only divided from it by a narrow towing-path, on a third. The front (for it has a front, though, upon my first visit, it took me some time to find it, it being exactly on the opposite side to the approach at present in use, and requiring two pretty deep ditches to be crossed, in order to get at it from the direction) – the front only has any regular windows; and of these, most of the largest are boarded up, (some, indeed, more substantially closed with brick and mortar) in order to render it as independent as possible of the glazier and the assessor of taxes. There is a little bridge, very much decayed, thrown across the narrow moat to what was, in former days, the main entrance; but now the door was nailed up, the bridge ruinous, and the path leading to it no longer distinguishable in the long rank grass that covered the wet meadows upon which the house looked out. It was a place that filled you involuntarily with melancholy feelings; it breathed of loneliness and desolation, changed times and fallen fortunes. I never beheld it but I thought of Tennyson's "Mariana in the moated Grange" —

"Unlifted was the clicking latch,Weeded and worn the ancient thatchUpon the lonely moated Grange."

Brown and I, in some of our peregrinations, had stumbled upon this old house; and after having walked round it, and speculated upon its history, made our way through an open door into the spacious court-yard. If the outside looked desolate, however, the interior was lively enough: cattle, pigs, geese, ducks, and all the ordinary appurtenances of a well-stocked farm, gave token that the old place was still tenanted; and a large mastiff, who stalked towards us with a series of enquiring growls, evidently demanding our business, and suspicious of our good intentions, made us not at all sorry to see a stout good-natured-looking dame, a perfect contradiction to the poet's woe-worn "Mariana," who, after bidding Boxer hold his noise, volunteered a compendious history of herself and husband in answer to our simple question as to the name of the place. How good Farmer Nutt and herself had lived there for the last seventeen years; how the old place belonged to Squire somebody, and folks said that some gentry used to live in it in times past; what a lonesome-like life they thought it when they first came, after living in the gay town of Abingdon; how, by degrees, they got to think it pretty comfortable, and found the plashy meadows good pasturage, and the house "famous and roomy-like;" this, and much besides, did we listen to patiently, the more so because an attempt or two at interruption only served to widen the field of her discourse. The wind-up of it all, however, was, that we were asked to walk in and sit down, and so we did. A civil farmer's wife, a very common character in most parts of England, is, I am sorry to say, somewhat too much of a rarity about Oxford; whether their tempers are too severely tried by the "fast men," who hunt drags and ride steeple-chases to the detriment of young wheat and new-made fences; or by the reading-men, who, in their innocence, make pertinacious visits in search of strawberries and cream in the month of March, or call for the twentieth time to enquire the nearest way to Oxford, (being ignorant of all topography but that of ancient Rome and Athens;) or whether they regard all gownsmen as embryo parsons and tithe-owners, and therefore hereditary enemies; whatever be the reason, it generally requires some tact to establish any thing like a friendly relation with a farmer or his wife in the neighbourhood of the university. However, Mrs Nutt was an exception; and nothing could exceed the heartiness with which she set out her best wheaten bread and rich Gloucester cheese, and particular ale – an advance towards further acquaintance which we met with due readiness. In short, so well were we pleased with the good dame's hospitable ways, and her old-fashioned house, and even with her good-humoured loquacity, that our first visit was not our last. The farmer himself, a quiet, good-natured, honest yeoman of about sixty, who said very little indeed when his wife was present, (he had not much chance,) but could, when disposed, let out many a droll story of "College Gents" in bygone days, when he was a brewer's apprentice at Abingdon, came, by invitation, to taste the college tap, and carried home in each pocket a bottle of wine for "the missus."