But, in spite of all my forethought and preparations, I came to signal grief. One morning we were sitting at breakfast (such a breakfast! no grills, no tankards, no top-boots on the hearth-rug), my uncle was deploring the decease of some German commentator, whose name I had not previously heard, and I was lamenting the much more palpable loss of my matutinal bit o’ baccy, when there came an ominous single knock at the door; and as, in accordance with my invitation, that door opened, I shuddered to acknowledge the presence of one whom of all men else I should least have wished my uncle to meet—I knew that my visitor was Billy Bouquet.
Ah, me! that door, I say, no sooner moved upon its hinges, than there entered the apartment, and the nostrils of my kinsman simultaneously, a most definite stink of aniseed, accompanied by various attendant smells, which gradually asserted their own identity, and represented with a cruel faithfulness the dogs, and the ferrets, and the rats, and the vermin generally, from whom they freshly came. “‘I am not the rose,’ said the perfumed earth in the Persian fable, ‘but cherish me, for we have dwelt together.’” Billy might have said as much of his badger. And I shall never forget my uncles face, as he sat with his head erect, like the stag ere he left Glenartney, and snuffed the tainted gale.
Billy Bouquet, or, as he was called by undergraduates who were shy of French, Sweet William, somewhat resembled in personal symmetry Mr. Robson’s “Boots at the Swan.” His head, which gave one the painful idea of having been sadly overgrazed by his rats, was screened from the inclemencies of our fickle climate, and made symbolical at the same time of his avocations and attachments, by a memorial cap from the epidermis of a deceased bull-dog, of whom he was wont to remark, in all seriousness, that “he’d always know’d that his dog Beerhouse” (archæologists assure me that his original name was Cerberus) “was a sight too good for this world.” His neckerchief had once been scarlet—a præ-Raphaelite, vivid scarlet—but time and perspiration had done their silent work, and it was now a peaceful brick colour. His coat and vest of velveteen (the bronze buttons chastely relieved with foxes’ heads in the last stage of inflammation) were noticeable for their vast infinity of pockets, one of which, inside the coat, I verily believe would have held a calf. The rest of his person was clad in kingly cord; and of his legs have only to say, that he was the very last person whom you would have selected to stop a pig in a gate, for the obvious reason that the animal in question would most undoubtedly have run between them.
Once upon a time, some good young men had originated a most benevolent scheme for deodorising Billy Bouquet; and he was actually induced to have a bath on account, and to attire himself in a change of raiment. But “that day there was dole in Astolat;” and he came next morning in his old clothes to the chief promoter of the plan, tendering the vestments which he could not wear, in a bundle to that cock-philanthropist, and declaring, almost in tears, that “the boys howled at him, and that” (here the speaker was visibly affected) “the badger did not know him!” And our sole resource and remedy from that time, whenever we required an interview, was to fill his short pipe with the strongest tobacco at hand, and to place him at the furthest possible distance at which conversation was practicable.
But he sees now, as he stands under my lintel, with a knuckle lifted up to his right eye-brow (his idea of ordering himself lowly and reverently to all his betters), that this is no time for a colloquy, and after one short sentence he is gone:
“Tu, to-morrow, if you please, sir, Betts’s Bottoms.”
I murmured something about “College rat-catcher,” and expressed a conviction that “the fellow was drunk;” but it was quite evident that my uncle, figuratively as well as literally, “smelt a rat;” and he told me subsequently, when I had left Oxford, and he no longer felt it a duty to play the Don for my improvement, that he had never experienced greater difficulty in maintaining a dignified deportment.
CHAPTER II.
My uncle left the University next morning in a new shovel hat and gaiters (the avuncular legs were particularly neat, and my aunt had always yearned in spirit for that day when the world might see them); and punctually at “tu” of the clock I arrived at Betts’s Bottoms. Betts was a jovial, generous farmer, who lived some three miles out of Oxford, and who not only allowed us every now and then to have “a lark” over his fences, but gave us the best of good ale afterwards from a silver tankard, which he valued dearly, the gift of sporting undergraduates. The Bottoms were some low pastures at the outskirts of his farm, and were the rendezvous on this occasion for the followers of the Christ Church “Drag.” M. Bouquet, trailing the usual rabbit, well-steeped in aniseed, though he scarcely required any additional perfumery to secure the attentions of the pack, had been despatched over the stiffest country to be found; and the hard-riding Oxonians were gathering fast for the fun. In velvet hunting caps, short loose coats, designed for the Drag expressly by Mr. Bennett, blameless inexpressibles, and lustrous tops, they come into the field upon every species of the comprehensive genus horse, from my lord’s two hundred guinea hunter, superb and glorious in his silky sheen, to the sorry screw, the discarded of some racing stud, who was out yesterday with the Heythrop, and is engaged tomorrow for Drake’s. But every rider is as confident and cheery as though he were mounted upon Old Lottery; and there is laughter, honest and hearty, albeit the words which move it may be boisterous rather than brilliant. Exempli gratiâ:
“Percy, receive my sincere congratulations on having accomplished the ascent of that fine giraffe. Did you begin to mount him yesterday, or the day before? You’ll come down, I suppose, by parachute; though I really think, if you could get him to kneel, that you might alight on the leads of the college. Just look over that wood in
