Incompetent Abroad: After 54 Years, Oxford at Last
Fifty-four years ago—give or take an eon—a gangly lad whose chin fell woefully short of concealing his assertive Adam’s apple and whose forehead rose like a sheer cliff above his bushy Cro-Magnon eyebrows—was called out of class at Morris Harvey College and told to report to the President’s office. It was a command he’d heard often before—and never to good effect. But this time it was different. In a voice shaky with disbelief, the President informed him that he and two other social misfits had been chosen from the student body to compete for a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University.
Lest the narrative tension become unbearable, let me confess up front that I was the young rapscallion I’ve just described, and let me further reveal that I did not go on to win the scholarship. So don’t even bother pulling for me. Where were you when I needed you?
A natural self-centeredness prevents me from remembering the names of the two other Morris Harvey candidates. I do recall, however, that we were all coached for several sessions by the school’s most eminent profs on the finer points of literature, history, art, music and scholarly evasiveness. After a while, I really began to believe I had a fair chance of studying a year abroad at Mr. Rhodes’ expense.
And so it came to pass that on a cold, gray Spring morning in 1957, candidates from colleges and universities all over West Virginia trooped into the lobby of the Daniel Boone Hotel in Charleston to be probed by a team of former Rhodes Scholarship winners, most of them by now middle-aged doctors and lawyers. When my turn came, two or three of these worthies beckoned me into a room and straightaway began to quiz me. I was ready for them.
They started by asking which literary figures I’d been reading lately, and I rattled off a list that ranged from Oliver Goldsmith to William Hazlitt to (of course) Dylan Thomas. We traded observations on Swift’s levels of verbal acidity, laughed indulgently at the bumptious brilliance of Dr. Johnson and wondered aloud if the Romantic poets ever really did hold together philosophically. It was academic pretension at its most nauseous, and, I swear to you, that day I was flying with the best of them.
Then came the hammer: What sports did I play? one of the examiners queried. With horror, I remembered having read somewhere that Cecil Rhodes, the noxious empire builder who endowed the scholarships, had insisted that the young men he sent to Oxford (it was only men back then) be “well rounded,” by which he meant that they should be engaged athletically as well as scholastically.
Falling back on the instinct that has betrayed me since birth, I decided to give an honest answer. Big mistake. Not only did I not play sports, I assured my inquisitor, I was also permeated with an absolute loathing for every aspect of sports. I found them physically taxing and mentally deadening and, thus, detested them each and all beyond human capacity to measure. If there was one activity I could neither endure nor tolerate, I said by way of summation, it was sports.
Some days later, I read in the paper that a football player with a 4.0 from West Virginia University would be taking my rightful place in Oxford’s ivied halls. Whether or not I actually uttered the words, “Well, screw him!” has slipped my mind; but it sounds just like me. Understand, though, that Ed Morris is not a man who takes defeat lying down. OK, he does, but he tends to view it as lying in wait.
On our fifth day in England in this year of 2011, the Brothers Morris settled into a Holiday Inn just outside of Oxford to prepare for my assault on the city. Unfortunately for me, David switched on the television set the moment we entered our room and instantly fell into a hypnotic state from which he has yet to recover. So he was of no use at all. But the valiant and insanely resourceful Roger came to my aid. Swiping a street map from the reception desk, he applied himself to it for a few moments and in less time than it takes to hate a new iPad owner, we were barreling toward the ancient spires of the fabled university in our flesh-eating python-mobile (see previous blog).
Oxford may have been serene and pastoral when I first aspired to go there, but it looks seedy now. One can glimpse some of its architectural and landscaping magnificence through high iron fences or by joining an expensive walking tour; but to passersby confined to the squalid, shop-lined streets, Oxford could be any state university in any large American town. Of course, it’s the depth of its libraries, the credentials of its faculty and the collective intelligence of its students that set great schools apart from merely adequate ones. Or so I’ve heard. In this regard, Oxford needn’t worry.
For the better part of an hour, Roger and I roamed the circuitous streets, peering into store windows and remarking with some precision on the robust health of certain coeds who brushed past us. As we paused at a dumpster behind the great Bodleian Library to consult our map, I felt irked afresh that I had been denied the grand opportunity to study here and—more important still—to brag about it incessantly for the remainder of my days. But in my heart, I knew it wasn’t something worth sweating over—at least not on the playing field.