I. OF AGE 255

The reader is not to think, because I speak thus frankly of Turner’s faults, that I judge them greater, or know them better, now, than I did then. I knew them at this time of getting “Richmond” and “Gosport” just as well as other people; but knew also the power shown through these faults, to a degree quite wonderful for a boy;-it being my chief recreation, after Greek or trigonometry in the nursery-study, to go down and feast on my “Gosport.”

13. And so, after Christmas, I went back to Oxford for the last push, in January 1840, and did very steady work with Gordon, in St. Aldate’s;* the sense that I was coming of age somewhat increasing the feeling of responsibility for one’s time. On my twenty-first birthday my father brought me for a present the drawing of Winchelsea,¹-a curious choice, and an unlucky one. The thundrous sky

* The street, named from its parish church, going down past Christ Church to the river. It was the regular course of a gentleman-commoner’s residence to be promoted from Peckwater to Tom Quad, and turned out into the street for his last term.² I have no notion at this minute who St. Aldate was:-American visitors may be advised that in Oxford it will be expected of them to call him St. Old.

¹ [No. 34 in the Exhibition: see Vol. XIII. pp. 437, 606.]

² [The first draft had a further passage (in the main text) in this connexion:-

“I returned to Oxford-yes-but not to college. The entirely absurd and stupid custom of turning men out of doors in last term sent me into lodgings in St. Aldate’s-after a previous change-of supposed promotion from Peckwater to Tom the year before. The proper law of college life is that a man should never quit the rooms he first is received in, till his university career is over.

“What feeble associations of any pathetic and helpful character I had with Christ Church were finally swept away in St. Aldate’s lodgings. They had been deadened, as I above noticed [p. 190] from the beginning, by the dulness of Peckwater-they were vulgarized by the modern sham Gothic furniture of my rooms in Tom (first floor left, No. 4)-and abolished wholly in St. Aldate’s.

“Respecting college furniture I note in passing the vicious liberty given to the men to furnish them to their own liking. The rooms should be rightly and simply furnished by the college-never changed till worn out, and extremely heavy fines inflicted for wilful damage of it. No prints or pictures should be allowed on room walls without the college seal on them. What the men choose to keep in portfolios, they must of course be left to their choice of. I do not leave the business here in hand to argue in defence of the opinions given in passing-but no opinion will be expressed which I am not well able to defend nor which I have only light reason for expressing. I did very steady work ...” (as in § 13).]

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