Jude the Obscure (Oxford World's Classics)

At Christminster


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circuitous route homeward to pass the gates of the College whose
Head had just sent him the note.
The gates were shut, and, by an impulse he took from his pocket
the lump of chalk which as a workman he usually carried there, and
wrote along the wall:
‘I have understanding as well as you. I am not inferior to you: yea,
who knoweth not such things as these?
’–– Job* xii. 
.
Jude the Obscure


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II.–vii.
T
 stroke of scorn relieved his mind, and the next morning he
laughed at his self-conceit. But the laugh was not a healthy one. He
re-read the letter from the Master; and the wisdom in its lines which
had at 
first exasperated him, chilled and depressed him now. He saw
himself as a fool indeed.
Deprived of the objects of both intellect and emotion, he could
not proceed to his work. Whenever he felt reconciled to his fate as a
student there came to disturb his calm his hopeless relations with
Sue. That the one a
ffined soul he had ever met was lost to him
through his marriage returned upon him with cruel persistency, till,
unable to bear it longer he again rushed for distraction to the real
Christminster life.* He now sought it out in an obscure and low-
ceiled tavern up a court, which was well known to certain worthies of
the place, and in brighter times would have interested him simply by
its quaintness. Here he sat more or less all the day, convinced that he
was at bottom a vicious character, of whom it was hopeless to expect
anything.
In the evening the frequenters of the house dropped in one by
one, Jude still retaining his seat in the corner, though his money was
all spent, and he had not eaten anything the whole day except a
biscuit. He surveyed his gathering companions with all the equanim-
ity and philosophy of a man who has been drinking long and slowly,
and made friends with several: to wit, Tinker Taylor, a decayed
church-ironmonger who appeared to have been of a religious turn in
earlier years, but was somewhat blasphemous now; also a red-nosed
auctioneer, also two Gothic masons like himself, called Uncle Jim
and Uncle Joe. There were present, too, some clerks, and a
gown- and surplice-maker’s assistant; two ladies who sported moral
characters of various depths of shade according to their company,
nicknamed ‘Bower o’ Bliss’* and ‘Freckles’; some horsey men ‘in the
know’ of betting circles; a travelling actor from the theatre, and two
devil-may-care young men who proved to be gownless undergradu-
ates; they had slipped in by stealth to meet a man about bull-pups,
and stayed to drink and smoke short pipes with the racing gents
aforesaid, looking at their watches every now and then.

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The conversation waxed general. Christminster society was criti-
cized, the Dons, magistrates, and other people in authority being
sincerely pitied for their shortcomings; while opinions on how they
ought to conduct themselves and their a
ffairs to be properly
respected were exchanged in a large-minded and disinterested
manner.
Jude Fawley, with the self-conceit, e
ffrontery, and aplomb of a
strong-brained fellow in liquor, threw in his remarks somewhat per-
emptorily; and his aims having been what they were for so many
years everything the others said turned upon his tongue, by a sort of
mechanical craze, to the subject of scholarship and study; the extent
of his own learning being dwelt upon with an insistence that would
have appeared pitiable to himself in his sane hours.
‘I don’t care a damn,’ he was saying, ‘for any Provost, Warden,
Principal, Fellow, or cursed Master of Arts in the University! What I
know is that I’d lick ’em on their own ground if they’d give me a
chance, and show ’em a few things they are not up to yet.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said the undergraduates from the corner where they
were talking privately about the pups.
‘You always was fond o’ books, I’ve heard,’ said Tinker Taylor,
‘and I don’t doubt what you state. Now with me ’twas di
fferent. I
always saw there was more to be learnt outside a book than in; and
I took my steps accordingly; or I shouldn’t have been the man I
am.’
‘You aim at the Church, I believe?’ said Uncle Joe. ‘If you are such
a scholar as to pitch yer hopes so high as that, why not give us a
specimen of your scholarship? Canst say the Creed in Latin, man?
That was how they once put it to a chap down in my country.’
‘I should think so!’ said Jude haughtily.
‘Not he. Like his conceit!’ screamed one of the ladies.
‘Just you shut up, Bower o’ Bliss!’ said one of the undergraduates.
‘Silence!’ He drank o
ff the spirits in his tumbler, rapped with it on
the counter, and announced, ‘The gentleman in the corner is going
to rehearse the Articles of his Belief, in the Latin tongue, for the
edi
fication of the company.’
‘I won’t!’ said Jude.
‘Yes––have a try!’ said the surplice-maker.
‘You can’t,’ said Uncle Joe.
‘Yes, he can!’ said Tinker Taylor.