I began by losing my luggage, which was exactly the way some people
would have expected me to begin, and when I arrived at the college
lodge I must have looked as if I had come to spend a Saturday to Monday
visit. One miserable bag was all I possessed, and the porter viewed
me, as I thought, with suspicion. He was a grumpy old person, and when
I told him that I had lost my luggage he grunted, "Gentlemen do,
especially when they're fresh," which I thought very fair cheek on his
part, though I did not feel at that moment like telling him so.
Then having said that my name was Marten, he hunted in a list and told
a man to take my bag to Number VII. staircase in the back quadrangle.
I followed, feeling rather dejected, and I cannot say that the first
sight of my rooms tended to raise my spirits. They were small and
dismal, the window opened on to a balustrade which, if it prevented me
from falling into the quadrangle, also managed to shut out both light
and air. The furniture can be described correctly by the word
adequate; there were some chairs and a table, college furniture for
which I was privileged to pay rent. The chairs looked as if nothing
could ever wear them out or make them look different. They had been
built to defy time and ill-usage.
I went into my bedroom and was more satisfied, by some strange freak it
was bigger than my sitting-room, and after I had seen other freshers'
bedrooms I acknowledged my good luck. There was at least room to have
a bath without splashing the bed. I was still looking disconsolately
about me when my scout came in and treated me with a calm contempt
which immediately raised my spirits. His air was so obviously that of
the man who knew all about things, and he told me what to do with a
gravity which was intended to be most impressive. His name was
Clarkson and I stayed on his staircase during the three years I was in
college, though at the end of my first year I moved into larger rooms.
He was in a mild kind of way an endless source of amusement to me,
because every one knew that under his veil of imperturbability was
hidden, not very successfully, a flourishing crop of failings.
Whenever his chief failing overpowered him his gravity increased, until
he became one of the most indescribably comic people I have ever seen.
He told me that chapel was at eight o'clock on the following morning,
and asked me if I should be breakfasting in. I found out afterwards
that unless I wanted to go to chapel I could go to a roll-call in any
garments which looked respectable, and then go back to bed; but I did
not hear this from Clarkson. He was far too keen on getting men out of
bed and their rooms put straight to give such very unnecessary
information. However, he was useful at the beginning, and had he not
told me where to go for dinner I don't suppose I should have troubled
to ask him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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