At Kimberley as in Natal he was thrown much upon his own resources, for at the end of November his brother left for England and handed over to him the working of his claim. Rhodes is described in 1872 as 'a tall, fair boy, blue-eyed and with somewhat aquiline features, sitting at table diamond-sorting and superintending his gang of Kafirs near the edge of the huge open chasm or quarry which then constituted the mine' ; and again as ’pleasant-minded and clever, sometimes odd and abstracted and apt to fly off at a tangent.' The 'claim' modestly flourished, and was added to ; the brothers found themselves with a certain amount of ready money, and in the bracing air of the high veld Cecil's health was re-established.
In October 1873 Rhodes returned to England to fulfil his ambition of 'sending himself' to Oxford. He had hoped to enter University College, but the Master, Dr. G. G. (afterwards Dean) Bradley, finding him unprepared to read for honours, refused him admission, but gave him an introduction to Edward Hawkins [q. v.], provost of Oriel, whom he impressed. At Oriel he matriculated on 13 Oct. 1873, keeping Michaelmas term to 17 December, and living at 18 High Street. In November 1873 his mother died, the only human being with whom he is known at any time to have regularly corresponded. Early in the new year he caught a chill while rowing ; a specialist found both the heart and the lungs affected, and entered against his name in his case book 'Not six months to live.' His Oxford career was thus interupted, but it was not closed. He returned to South Africa and Kimberley, where his lungs soon ceased to trouble him ; henceforth, indeed, his heart caused him his only physical anxiety, and that was never cured. A growing absorption in South African affairs left unmodified his resolve to graduate in the university, and until this ambition was gratified he revisited Oxford from time to time at no long intervals. In 1876 and again in 1877 he kept each term of the academic year, spending only his long vacations in South Africa. On 16 May 1876, too, he entered himself as a student at the Inner Temple, and although he was not called to the bar his name remained on the books till it was withdrawn on 17 Dec. 1889, to be restored on 20 Feb. 1891. In 1878 he kept Lent, Easter, and Trinity terms at Oxford, living at 116 High Street. He was back again in Michaehnas term, 1881, when he at length by dogged effort passed the ordinary examination for B.A., and took that degree and proceeded M.A. on 17 Dec. He lodged at the time at 6 King Edward Street, where a tablet commemorates the fact. He retained his name on the college books, paying a composition fee. Though an indifferent horseman, he was master of the drag during his early sojourns at Oxford, and did a little rowing ; otherwise he is remembered as making one in 'a set which lived a good deal apart from both games and work.' Although he was 'not a great reading man,' he was always a devourer of books, and his feeling for certain classical authors was strong. Marcus Aurelius was his constant companion, and at his South African home, Groote Schuur, there was (until 1902, when it disappeared) a copy of the 'Meditations' marked and annotated by his hand. He commissioned for his library new translations of the chief classical writers, which were sent him in typed script. Aristotle's 'Energeia the highest activity of the soul to be concentrated on the highest object' remained his perpetual watchword.
Meanwhile his South African career had made rapid progress. On his second advent in Kimberley in 1874 he took root there, and was soon counted with the more successful diggers. His brother Herbert early left the diamond fields to hunt and explore the interior ; he was killed through the accidental firing of his hut in 1879, in what is now Nyassaland. In 1874, and for some years after, Rhodes was in partnership with Mr. Charles Dunell Rudd (b. 1844), who had been educated at Harrow and had after matriculating at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1863 broken down through over-training. Rudd and Rhodes gradually increased their holdings after the old regulation against the possession of more than one claim on the diamond fields was repealed. Rhodes specially concentrated his holdings in one of the two great mines of Kimberley, called after De Beers, the Dutch farmer, who originally owned the land. Rhodes was quickly recognised as one of the ablest speculators in the district, with one conspicuous rival or opponent in Barnett Isaacs, later known as Barney Barnato [q. v. Suppl. I], but from 1875 until his death he was greatly helped in all financial undertakings by Alfred Beit [q. v. Suppl. II]. Mr. Gardner Williams, afterwards general manager of the amalgamated industry (the De Beers corporation), describes Rhodes in these days as 'a tall, gaunt youth, roughly dressed, coated with dust, sitting moodily on a bucket, deaf to the clatter and rattle about him, his blue eyes fixed intently
