ROWLANDSON’S OXFORD

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Front View of Christ Church.

ROWLANDSON’S OXFORD

BY
A. HAMILTON GIBBS
(ST JOHN’S COLLEGE)

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD.
1911

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

The task of writing a book on Oxford University is by no means an easy one. If it be a novel there are countless pitfalls to entrap the author—points small and inconsequent to the reader who cannot proudly claim the City of Spires as his Alma Mater, but irritating beyond description to the man who knows and loves Oxford.

But if modern Oxford dealt with from the romantic and sentimental point of view as the background of a story contains such a network of difficulties, the Oxford of two hundred years ago, Rowlandson’s Oxford, contains them multiplied a hundred times, because it now becomes a question not of reproducing the vivid pictures of the hour and moment, but of recreating the atmosphere of a time that is silent in death.

It is, therefore, with great diffidence that I have attempted to resuscitate the life and moods of Oxford of the eighteenth century. Barely two years have elapsed since the days when I looked out from my windows into the quad of my college. All the work and play, the alarums and excursions which go to form the life of the average Undergraduate have not yet had time to fade into dim, half forgotten memories. Alma Mater still grasps me in her warm hand. So vivid indeed are all the impressions which I received from the friendly gargoyles and the peace-touched lawns, the beautiful colleges with their silent cloisters, the full-blooded twenty-firsters and bump-suppers, and the thousand and one everyday happenings, that I might be merely awaiting the passing of vacation to go up once more.

With all the Undergraduate interests still so strongly at heart, I think that it is natural that I should have studied the Rowlandson period with the mind of the Undergraduate and have carried out my task from the Undergraduate point of view. It is difficult to give any idea of the quaintness, delight, and amusement caused by going back two hundred years to a University so like and so unlike—like, in that the men, although so different outwardly, had practically the same ideas as we have and carried them out in the same colleges, even in the same rooms, in a precisely similar manner; unlike in that the Dons were a breed of men differing in every respect from those who look after us to-day.

Working, then, on the hypothesis that Oxford men in Rowlandson’s time were identical with ourselves, I have drawn analogies between every step in the lives of both. I have endeavoured to show that from the beginning of their fresherdom, when they felt self-conscious, gauche, and timid, down to the days when they took their degrees and knew Oxford blindfold in all her moods and tenses, they possessed the same outlook, had the same aspirations and ambitions, and were filled with the same admiration and love of Alma Mater as the men of to-day. For instance, as a freshman the Georgian Undergraduate curiously watched the seniors who were responsible for the tone of their college. Gradually he sloughed both his nervousness and his un-Oxford wardrobe and began to assert his own individuality. Little by little he discovered new sides of Oxford life, new haunts in which he began to feel at home. Daily he made new acquaintances who, as time went by, ripened into friends. Eventually, by the end of his first year, he had so absorbed Oxford into his personality that he in turn was able to condescend to the next year’s arrivals. During this time his attitude towards the Dons, the statutes, the schools—to everything, in short, outside the immediate Undergraduate side of life—varied with the terms. At the beginning they were subjects only to be broached with awe and deliberation. But the more he came into contact with an ever increasing circle of friends, the sooner his respect changed into ridicule, disgust, and finally, when a senior, into amused toleration.

In précis form such was the development of the eighteenth-century Undergraduate. His metamorphosis into a “blood,” with all its amusing accompaniments and accomplishments—the former consisting of the latest fashions in clothes and the entrée to the innermost recesses of the Maudlin Groves in the company of the most celebrated Oxford damsel; the latter of a facility for dashing off a well thought out extempore series of oaths, being the handiest man at a tea-table, drinking more than any other buck of his acquaintance before finally succumbing, to follow in the natural sequence of events according to the temperament of the freshman. Had he a leaning towards becoming a “blood” not only was there nothing to stop him, but, on the contrary, all the existing conditions were such as to facilitate the execution of his desires.

In all these phrases the old-time Undergraduate can be compared with his modern brothers. In his dealings with the river-side barmaids, the local tradesmen, and the proctors he pursued much the same ingenuous methods which are used with equal success to-day. Just as we become members of unlimited numbers of year clubs and settle the affairs of the entire human species at the nightly meetings with ease and eloquence, they, too, formed societies and took themselves with a similar seriousness. They contributed literary morsels to the Undergraduate papers which satirised existing institutions in the same youthful manner in which we satirise them. They conducted “rags” with a thoroughness and disregard of results which ended in the same speedy rustication of the ringleaders which inevitably overtakes the men who are still unwise enough to be found out.

In a word, my object has been not to compare the ethics of the university to-day with those of yesterday, but rather to set forth an analogy between Dons and Undergraduates of that period and this, and the business of their daily life, from the point of view of one upon whom the influence of Alma Mater has not yet been mellowed into an analytical remembrance by long contact with the world which lies beyond her spires.

Whether I have succeeded in proving my case remains to be seen. At least I venture to hope that the results of my work may form a frame for Rowlandson’s pictures which are here reproduced for the first time from Rowlandson’s original water-colour drawings.

Of these pictures many were engraved at the time in aquatint, but the engraver was as a rule so obsessed with the Georgian ideas of the beautiful in architecture that he practically reconstructed the majority of the buildings represented, in accordance with that idea, so that some of the most beautiful and characteristic buildings in Oxford and Cambridge, so delicately portrayed by Rowlandson’s pencil, are turned into rectangular monstrosities, the like of which was never seen in either university town.

The superiority of hand-engraving over modern processes is evident enough, when the engraving itself was made by the artist; but when the original drawing is so hopelessly misrepresented as is the case with many of the aquatints of Rowlandson’s drawings, the modern facsimile processes have their obvious advantages.

It is therefore claimed that Rowlandson’s drawings of Oxford are here reproduced for the first time, and it is believed that they will be a revelation to many who have hitherto looked upon Rowlandson merely as a somewhat gross caricaturist. The caricaturist, it is true, is still here depicting in the foregrounds characteristic scenes in the university life of the time, but here is also another Rowlandson with an appreciation of the beauties of Oxford rare indeed in his age, and one who is able to delineate them with accuracy and delicacy which have seldom been equalled in the portrayal of such subjects.

The author desires to express his gratitude to the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth for having very kindly granted him permission to make quotations from “Social Life in the English Universities”; and to Messrs Macmillan & Co., publishers of J. R. Green’s “Oxford Studies,” for allowing him to make two quotations from that book; and also to Mr R. S. Rait of the Oxford Historical Society for having permitted him to quote from Miss L. Quiller-Couch’s “Reminiscences of Oxford,” published by that society.

ROWLANDSON’S OXFORD

CHAPTER I

THE UNDERGRADUATE THEN AND NOW

Blissful ignorance—The real education—Empty schools—Manhood—Lonely freshers—The “pi” man—The newcomer’s metamorphosis—The Lownger’s day—Regrets at being down.

How few of us there are to-day who ever devote even the slack hour between tea and “hotters” and Hall to finding out something at least about the Undergraduates who had our rooms two centuries ago. Yet to every man the word Oxford conjures up vast vague shadows from the past which make him as a freshman tread softly and with reverence through the quads and gardens, High Streets and by-streets of the City of Spires. Great names rise up into our minds and fill us with wonder, but the scout knocks at our door with half-cold food and our dreams dissolve into irritated reality. There may come a moment, perhaps, when, with feet at rest upon the mantel-shelf and a straight-grained pipe bubbling in quiet response between our teeth, we are deafening our ears to the call of bed, the slow-flowing conversation drifts by chance to a casual query as to what our predecessors did at the same hour two hundred years ago. Beyond a few more or less unimaginative surmises we remain in ignorance, blissful and uncaring, believing them to be strange-clothed beings of stilted language and curious habits, and at once the talk turns to present and more pleasant topics. We little think that to all intents and purposes we are almost exactly the same as our old-time-brethren.

To-day we row, play cricket, football, tennis, golf; we cut our lectures when we safely can and “binge” at every opportunity. Schools do occupy us, it is true, but as a mere secondary item in the university scheme of things—and rightly so. A degree, however good, does not, by itself, make men of us and teach us how to live. It is the social life of the university which is the real education and which sends us out into the world ready to face anything and everything. By developing our bodies we develop our minds, and in this programme of athletics and sociability we are a replica of our eighteenth-century brethren. They rose about nine, breakfasted at ten, and dallied away the morning with a flute or the latest French comedy. By way of strenuous exercise, necessitated by a climate which was just as evil then as now, they walked, rode, rowed, or skated, and in the evening figured at the Mitre or Tuns where they made merry into the small hours with beer, claret, or punch.

To them schools were much less a source of worry than they are to us, for, beyond attending occasional disputations and an odd lecture or so, when a Don could be persuaded to give one, they obtained their degree by the simple but expensive process of drinking the examiner—usually a hardened toper—under the table overnight. He was then led, in the morning, while still pleasantly fuddled, to the schools, and there, in consideration of a respectable douceur, he signed away the necessary papers with a beaming and self-satisfied smile. They knew nothing of the humours of white ties, dark suits, and a week’s terrible strain to get a First in Honour Mods—before the Finals are even thought of. The shivering crowds waiting in the Hall to be led to the slaughter did not exist in those days. A Trinity man named Skinner, who matriculated in 1790, flung himself at the subject in satirical verse:—

“Enter we next the Public Schools
Where now a death-like stillness rules;
Yet these still walls in days of yore
Back to the streets returned the roar of hundreds....
But since their champion Aristotle
Has been deserted for the bottle
The benches stand like Prebends’ stalls
Lone and deserted ’gainst the walls.”[1]

No sooner have we finished with our public school days, when we are known as boys, and have either scrambled over the “Smalls” hedge with some humility and relief, or else have secured the privilege of lording it in a scholar’s gown, than we instantly become men. We may be anything between eighteen and twenty, but if a sister, brother, or cousin be unwary enough to refer to us as a boy—woe unto him or her! We may pretend that we do not mind, but in our heart of hearts we rejoice in being Oxford “men,” and guard our title jealously. We are not, however, unique in this. It is a habit which has come down to us from the eighteenth century when they were just as jealous of such points of etiquette.

George Colman the younger tells us that he came upon two freshmen of that time who had had a quarrel. Six months before they blacked each other’s eyes at Westminster in the good old British way. Now, however, being Oxford men, they could not descend to such a childish level, but agreed to afford each other “gentlemanly satisfaction.” They may have lacked a certain sense of humour, but it was the right spirit, and it is safe to conclude that they both did well at their respective colleges.

The lonely freshman of to-day who has no friends already in residence wanders round just as nervously and makes the same faux pas as did his predecessors. It takes him just as long to find his feet and settle down and make friends. Exactly in the same way also if he knows men already up he is welcomed by them, invited to heavy breakfasts and put right on matters of etiquette: such as never by any chance to wear square and gown unless absolutely compelled to—and all the other minutiæ which are of such importance. In the eighteenth century a freshman was taken by his senior friends to the Mitre and sat in front of a bowl of punch with brown toast bobbing in it. He heard sonnets recited to the eyelashes of Sylvia. He was taught to drink on his knees to Phyllis or Chloe, or some other fair female of the moment. He was taken to the barber’s and shown how to wear a wig instead of his own hair. In fact, his feet were set in the proper path then in just the same friendly spirit as now.

They had their clubs and societies at which, in the intervals of drinking, they indicted Latin poems or discussed some important political question where we, over mulled claret and other comestibles, read papers on “The Abolition of the Halfpenny Press,” or “The Glories of Tariff Reform.” They had big dinners, and tried to find their way home in the small hours. We have our fresher’s wines and bump suppers in which the whole college participates with the sole object of enjoying good wine and destroying good furniture, and we crawl home, if we are outside college, through the same streets. To-day we have the “pi” man who sternly refuses to countenance such evil things as fresher’s wines; who has signed the pledge and eschews tobacco. If he is compelled by an outraged band of senior men to lend his presence against his better judgment, and is led out from a room in a state of Doré-like chaos, he becomes uproarious on a glass of water and two bananas, and writes home to his mother that his bill for repairs is enormous owing to his bravery in being a martyr to his principles, and that drunkenness is on the increase among the Undergraduates. All the same he thoroughly enjoys himself, and in time wears off rough corners and learns how to keep his vows without any objectionable fanfare. At the end of the eighteenth century a man of this kidney named Crosse wrote to his mother: “Oxford is a perfect hell upon earth. What chance is there for an unfortunate lad just come from school with no one to watch and care for him—no guide? I often saw my tutor carried off perfectly intoxicated.” I can see the man crouching in a dark corner of the quad appalled at the sight of his fellows dancing round a bonfire, while his tutor rushes by on the arms of a festive crowd in full rejoicing at some college triumph. It would be interesting to ascertain Crosse’s views at the end of his university career. He remained, however, in the obscurity of mediocrity.

Our trousseau when we first appear at the university consists of modest socks and humble waistcoats, and ties which make no claim to originality or even to smartness. They are content to be merely useful and to fulfil their appointed functions. But does not every parent learn subsequently, with dreadful results to his peace of mind, how after our first month we make our way unerringly to the tailors and clothiers, and there with deadly earnestness absorb colour schemes which cry a loud challenge to Joseph’s coat? Our waistcoats are dreams,—sometimes nightmares; the blending of harmony between shirt, tie, and socks is as perfect as the rainbow. Our hair, which used to be parted carelessly down one side, now disdains partings and goes straight back in one beautiful Magdalen sweep. Our trousers are thrown at the scout’s head as a gift unless they be of unparalleled width and of exceptional crease.

This tendency to burst forth into strange and variegated garments in token of our emancipation from apron strings was just as strong in the old days. The sons of country farmers came trooping into Oxford, their clouted shoes thick with good red earth, in linsey wolsey coats, with greasy, uncombed heads of hair flapping in the wind. Their stockings were of coarse yarn, and they knew nothing better than to have long muslin neckcloths run with red at the ends. But they soon realised the contempt in which they were held for this dull chrysalis-like appearance. After a few weeks these shamefaced clodhoppers sneaked into the side door of the barbers’ shops to emerge proudly by the front entrance in a bob wig. Their clouted shoes were relegated to young brothers, and they wore new ones—Oxford cut. Their yarn stockings gave place to worsted, until, after a very short interval between their arrival and their settling down, they blushed out like butterflies in tye wigs and ruffles and silk gowns. The “blood” of that period, or, as the term then was, the “smart,” or the “buck of the first head,” was distinguished when he aired his person, Amhurst told us, “by a stiff silk gown which rustles in the wind as he struts along; a flaxen tye wig, or sometimes a long natural one which reaches down below his rump; a broad bully cock’d hat, or a square cap of above twice the usual size; white stockings, thin Spanish leather shoes; his cloaths lined with tawdry silk, and his shirt ruffled down the bosom as well as at the wrists. Besides all which marks, he has a delicate jaunt in his gait, and smells philosophically of essence.”

How his direct descendant, the Bullingdon man, must envy him his magnificent opportunities of making a brave show! Not for him the silk gown, the bully cocked hat. The best he can do in imitation is the amazing dinner jacket which he sometimes sports at the theatre, under which one finds not the accepted form of dress shirt but a peculiar form of abortion which is neatly ruffled at “bosom and wrists.” In place of the Spanish leather shoes the last word to-day is apparently buckskin. The “delicate jaunt in the gait” has been retained—the result being caused now by a union of “Eton slouch” and “Oxford manner.” The head still smells of essence—honey and flowers at Hatt’s, brilliantine at Martyr’s. These great-minded people think alike not only in point of dress but of the manner of killing time. “The Lownger” summed up the process as carried out in the eighteenth century—

“I rise about nine, get to breakfast by ten,
Blow a tune on my flute, or perhaps make a pen,
Read a play till eleven or cock my lac’d hat,
Then step to my neighbour’s, till dinner to chat.
Dinner over to Tom’s or to James’s I go,
The news of the town so impatient to know,
While Low, Locke and Newton and all the rum race
That talk of their Modes, their ellipses and space,
The Seat of the Soul and new Systems on high,
In Halls as abstruse as their mysteries lie.
From the coffee-house then I to Tennis away,
And at five I post back to my College to pray,
I sup before eight and secure from all duns,
Undauntedly march to the Mitre or Tuns,
Where in Punch or good Claret my sorrows I drown,
And toss off a bowl to the best in the town.
At one in the morning I call what’s to pay?
Then home to my College I stagger away.
Thus I tope all the night as I trifle all day.”

Every one knows the various processes of slacking at the present time, so that there is no need for detail. But in essence the method is the same, and the result also. Our lunches at the Cherwell Hotel, at the riverside inns at Iffley and Abingdon; our “Grinds”; our slacking on the river in summer term—all these were done two centuries ago, and, just as some of the more energetic of us seek to immortalise these doings by contributing poems and articles to the ’varsity papers, so did the Undergraduates then send their sonnets and Latin verses to The Student, the Oxford Magazine, and Jackson’s Oxford Journal. In place of the musical comedy lady, whose silvery laughter floats down wind to-day, the Oxford toast flaunted it right merrily in the old days. The gownsmen’s tobacco accounts then amounted to quite as much as ours do, and they wrote home for further supplies of pocket money in almost the identical terms which we use to-day. Yesterday’s and to-day’s Oxford men are one and the same. Oxford herself and her Dons are changed, but the Undergraduate goes on doing and thinking the same things in the same way, and when he goes down now he feels very much as felt the eighteenth-century poet who, also down, sang:—

“Could Ovid, deathless bard, forbear,
Confin’d by Scythia’s frozen plains,
Cease to desire his native air
In softest elegiac strains?
Cursed with the town no more can I
For Oxford’s meadow cease to sigh....
Can I, while mem’ry lasts, forget
Oxford, thy silver rolling stream,
Thy silent walks and cool retreat
Where first I sucked the love of fame?
E’en now the thought inspires my breast
And lulls my troubled soul to rest.”

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View of S^t. Mary’s Church & Radcliffe Library.

CHAPTER II

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRESHER

First arrival—Footpads and “easy pads”—Farewell to parents—A forlorn animal—Terrae Filius’s advice—Much prayers—“Hell has no fury like a woman scorned”—The disadvantages of a conscience.

The beginning of our university career is marked, unless we be Stoics, by mixed feelings of elation and a sinking at the pit of the stomach which we afterwards learn to recognise as “needle.” The train journey may have seemed long, but at this first breathless moment when the porter receives our goods and chattels into his arms from the top of the moribund hansom, we could almost wish that we were back in the train again. A sense of isolation, and of having to stand or fall by ourselves, sweeps over like a tidal wave, leaving us momentarily chilled and nervous.

How different was the fresher’s arrival in the eighteenth century. He boarded a coach in the early morning in London. His baggage was placed in the boot, and the traveller, armed to the teeth with blunderbuss and pistols, took his seat. With a clattering of hoofs, yelling of ostlers and merry tooting on the horn, the coach dashed out of the yard and wound merrily along throughout the day by field, village, and town. If the journey were a lucky one, the travellers arrived at Oxford without let or hindrance about six o’clock in the evening, when they were able to catch a first glimpse of the top of Radcliffe’s Library. They then jolted in over Magdalen Bridge—in those days the new bridge—and so made their way to their respective colleges.

Wrapped up in thick coats and with ice-cold feet tapping the side of the coach to restore circulation, the excited fresher had ample time for cogitation. The lets and hindrances, over and above the ordinary accidents to horse or vehicle, such as casting a shoe or breaking a strap, were little excitements in the form of footpads and highwayman, who infested the district on the look-out for a fat and likely college bursar laden with fat and likely money-bags. At the first hint of the approach of one of these gentlemen of the road, blunderbusses were whipped out and fired in all directions, while the horses were lashed and the coach leaned and rocked and swayed in its efforts to get away. Afterwards, ensconced behind a tankard in the Tuns among his somewhat condescending senior friends, the newcomer warmed up under the influence of hot toddy and genial society, and described the awful onslaught made upon them by at least fifty mounted desperadoes.

Did he come from nearer places than London, then he made his entrance on a sedate horse, in the fashion of the gentleman-commoner who sent the following account to Terrae Filius:—

“Being of age to play the fool
With muckle glee I left our school
At Hoxton,
And mounted on an easy pad
Rode with my mother and my dad
To Oxon.”

This merry bard was not exempt from the pangs of loneliness. He, too, felt the wave of depression when his mother and dad kissed him and slowly disappeared down the street again on their easy pads. For, after an amusing description of purchasing gown and square, he burst into tears.

“I sallied forth to deck my back
With loads of Tuft and black
Prunello.
My back equipt, it was not fair
My head should ’scape, and so as square
As chessboard
A cap I bought, my scull to screen,
Of cloth without and all within
Of pasteboard
When metamorphos’d in attire
More like a parson than a squire
th’ had dressed me
I took my leave with many a tear
Of John our man, and parents dear
Who blessed me....”[2]

and there he was, poor lad, probably no more than fifteen years old—of age to play the fool—left, lachrymose and solitary, to fight his own battles and win his M.A. spurs before coming to grips with the world.

George Colman the younger, who matriculated at the House in 1780, and who would most certainly have been instantly elected to the Bullingdon Club had he gone up to-day, wrote most feelingly on the question of the lonely fresher. “A Freshman, as a young academician is call’d on his admission at Oxford,” he said “is a forlorn animal. It is awkward for an old stager in life to be thrown into a large company of strangers, to make his way among them, as he can—but to the poor freshman everything is strange—not only College society, but any society at all—and he is solitary in the midst of a crowd. If, indeed, he should happen to come to the University (particularly to Christ Church) from one of the great publick schools, he finds some of his late school fellows, who, being in the same straggling situation with himself, abridge the period of his fireside loneliness, and of their own, by forming a familiar intercourse—otherwise he may mope for many a week; at all events, it is generally some time before he establishes himself in a set of acquaintance.”[3]

To-day when we have conquered Smalls and our rooms have been assigned in college or in the house of some licensed landlady, it is customary for our “parents dear” to lead us gently by the buttonhole into the study, and there, with their coat tails spread wide to the blazing logs, to hold forth in rounded periods what is termed sound advice. When it is over they shake hands with us, both of us swallowing absurdly, and we go forth better friends than ever. In the first number of any one of the ’varsity “rags” for the new academic year it is safe to conclude that the “leader” will be a word of explanation, advice, friendship, or welcome to the newcomer. It is always facetious and invariably has a gentle dig at the fresher’s expense, though the writer, once a fresher himself, should know better. The following is a specimen of how these things were done in the old days:—

“Wednesday, May 1, 1721.

“To all gentlemen School-Boys, in his majesty’s dominions, who are design’d for the University of Oxford, Terrae Filius sends greetings;

“My Lads,—I am so well acquainted with the variety and malapertness of you sparks, as soon as you get out of your schoolmaster’s hands, that I know I shall be called a fusty old fellow, and a thousand ridiculous names besides, for presuming to give advice, which I would not, say you, take, if I was a young fellow myself. But being a very public-spirited person, and a great well wisher to my fellow subjects (whatever you may think of me) I am resolved, whether you mind what I am going to say, or not, to lay you down some rules and precautions for your conduct in the university, on the strict observation or neglect of which your future good or ill fortune will depend; and, I am sure that you will thank me, six or seven years hence, for this piece of service, however troublesome and impertinent you may think it now....

“I observe, in the first place, that you no sooner shake off the authority of the birch, but you affect to distinguish yourselves from your dirty school-fellows by a new suit of drugget, a pair of prim ruffles, a new bob wig, and a brazen-hilted sword; in which tawdry manner you strut about town for a week or two before you go to College, giving your selves airs in coffee-houses and booksellers’ shops, and intruding your selves into the company of us men; from all which, I suppose you think your selves your own master, no more subject to controul or confinement—alas! fatal mistake! soon will you confess that the tyrrany of a school is nothing to the tyrrany of a college; nor the grammar-pedant to the academical one; for, what signifies a smarting back-side to a bullied conscience? What was Busby in comparison to D-e-l-ne?

“And now, young gentlemen, give me leave to put on my magisterial face, and to instruct you how you are to demean yourselves in the station you are entered into, and what sort of behaviour is expected from you, according to the oaths and these subscriptions.

“I know very well that you go thither prepossessed with a sanguine (but ignorant) opinion, that you are to hold fast your principles, whatever they are; that you are to follow, what in your conscience you think right, and to desclaim what you think wrong, that this is the only way to thrive in the world, and to be happy in the next, just as your silly mothers and superstitious old nurses have taught you: in the first place, therefore, I advise you to disengage your selves from all such scrupulous notions; for you may take my word for it, that otherwise it is a million to one that you miscarry.

“For, it is a maxim as true as it is common, so many men, so many minds: but amongst all the different opinions of mankind there is never, at any one time, but one of those opinions which is call’d orthodox; if, therefore, you give your fancy the reins and let your own judgment determine your opinions, what infinite odds is it, whether you happen to hit upon that single, individual opinion, which is, at that particular crisis of time, in vogue, and which is therefore your interest to espouse? But if with all your diligence and sincerity, you should miss this rara avis, this happy phœnix opinion, then farewell to all your future prospects, to your ease, your reputation and good name for ever afterwards; I mean, if you are so weak, and so much bigotted with education, as to think it your duty to profess what you cannot help believing.

“Your only safe way therefore is to carry along with you consciences chartes blanches, ready to receive any impression that you please to stamp upon them; for I would not have you adopt any particular system, however popular and prevailing it may seem to be at present, because it may alter, and then will prove fatal to you; for as much as they talk of steadiness and immutability of principles at Oxford, every body knows that Popery was for many ages the orthodox religion there; that protestantism (with much difficulty, and sorely against their wills) succeeded it; that, not long ago, they were almost all Whigs, and now almost all Tories, and for ought we know, will e’re long be Whigs again—never therefore explain your opinion but let your declarations be, that you are churchmen, and that you believe as the church believes....

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College Service.

“I will only advise you to suppress, as much as possible, that busy spirit of curiosity, which too often fatally exerts itself in youthful breasts; but if (notwithstanding all your non-inquisitiveness), the strong beams of truth will break upon your minds, let them shine inwardly; disturb not the publick peace with your private discoveries and illuminations; so, if you have any concern for your welfare and prosperity, let Aristotle be your guide in philosophy, and Athanasius in religion....

“To call yourself a Whig at Oxford, or to act like one, or to lie under the suspicion of being one, is the same as to be attainted and outlaw’d; you will be discouraged and brow beaten in your own college and disqualified for preferment in any other; your company will be avoided, and your character abused; you will certainly lose your degree and at last, perhaps, upon some pretence or other, be expelled....

“Leave no stone unturned to insinuate yourselves into the favour of the Head, and senior-fellows of your respective colleges....

“Whenever you appear before them, conduct yourselves with all specious humility and demureness; convince them of the great veneration you have for their persons by speaking very low and bowing to the ground at every word: whenever you meet them jump out of the way with your caps in your hands and give them the whole street to walk in, let it be as broad as it will. Always seem afraid to look them in the face, and make them believe that their presence strikes you with a sort of awe and confusion; but above all be very constant at chapel; never think that you lose too much time at prayers, or that you neglect your studies too much, whilst you are showing your respect to the church. I have heard indeed that a former president of St John’s College (a whimsical, irreligious old fellow) would frequently jobe his students for going constantly three or four times a day to chapel, and lingering away their time, and robbing their parents, under a pretence of serving God. But as this is the only instance I ever met with of such an Head, it cannot overthrow a general rule.... Another thing very popular in order to grow the favourites of your Heads, is first of all to make your selves the favourites of their footmen, concerning whose dignity and grandeur I have spoken in a former paper. You must have often heard, my lads, of the old proverb, “Love me, and love my Dog”; which is not very foreign in this case; for if you expect any favour from the master, you must shew great respect to his servant.

“Have a particular regard how you speak of those gaudy things which flutter about Oxford in prodigious numbers, in summer-time, call’d toasts; take care how you reflect on their parentage, their condition, their virtue, or their beauty; ever remembering that of the poet,

‘Hell has no fury like a woman scorned,’

especially when they have spiritual bravoes on their side and old lecherous bully-backs to revenge their cause on every audacious contemner of Venus and her altars....

“I have but one thing more to mention to you, which is, not to give into that foolish practice, so common at this time in the university, of running upon tick, as it is called.... How many hopeful young men have been ruin’d in this manner, cut short in the midst of their philosophical enquiries, and for ever afterwards render’d unable to pursue their studies again with a chearful heart, and without interruption?...

“My whole advice, in a few words, is this:—

“Let your own interest, abstracted from any whimsical notions of conscience, honour, honesty or justice, be your guide; consult always the present humour of the place and comply with it; make yourselves popular and beloved at any rate; rant, roar, rail, drink, wh—re, swear, unswear, forswear; do anything, do everything that you find obliging; do nothing that is otherwise; nor let any considerations of right and wrong flatter you out of those courses, which you find most for your advantage. I have only to add, that if you follow this advice, you will spend your days there not only in peace and plenty, but with applause and reputation; if you have any secret good qualities they will be pointed out in the most glaring light, and aggravated in the most exquisite manner; if you have ever so many ugly ones, they will be either palliated or jesuitically interpreted into good ones. Whereas, on the contrary, if you despice and reject these wholesome admonitions, violence, disrest, and an ill name will be the rewards of your folly and obstinacy; it will avail you nothing, that you have enrich’d your minds with all sorts of useful and commendable knowledge; and that, as to vulgar morality, you have preserved an unspotted character before men; these things will rather exasperate the holy men against you, and excite all their cunning and artifice for your destruction; the least frailties, humanity is prone to, will be magnify’d into the grossest of all wickedness; and the best actions, our nature is capable of, will be debased and vilified away. And now do even as it shall seem good unto you. Farewell.

Terrae Filius.”

CHAPTER III

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRESHER—(continued)

Ceremony of matriculation—Paying the swearing-broker—Colman and the Vice-Chancellor—Learning the Oxford manner—Homunculi Togati—Academia and a mother’s love—The jovial father—Underground dog-holes and shelving garrets—The harpy and the sheets—The first night.

The advice tendered to freshmen in Amhurst’s amazing and bitterly satirical letter is for those who have been matriculated. They must, therefore, fulfil all the rites of matriculation before they can read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it. As the process was vastly different in Georgian times, it is interesting to read the varying accounts of eighteenth-century freshmen. The gentleman who, “being of age to play the fool,” came up with his parents from Hoxton, has written a somewhat indiscreet but all the more laughable description of the ceremony.

“The master took me first aside,
Shew’d me a scrawl, I read, and cry’d
Do Fidem.
Gravely he shook me by the fist,
And wish’d me well—we next request
a tutor.
He recommends a staunch one, who
In Perkin’s cause has been his co-
adjutor
To see this precious stick of wood,
I went (for so they deem’d it good)
in fear, Sir.
And found him swallowing loyally
Six deep his bumpers which to me
seem’d queer, Sir.
He bade me sit and take my glass,
I answered, looking like an ass,
I, I can’t, Sir.
Not drink!—you don’t come here to pray!
The merry mortal said by way
of answer.
To pray, Sir! No—my lad, ’tis well,
Come! here’s our friend Sacheverell!
here’s Trappy!
Here’s Ormond! Marr! in short so many
Traitors we drank, it made my Cranium nappy....”

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A View of the Theatre, Printing House &c. &c. at Oxford.

The lad then went out into the town with this same “sociable priest,” bought his gown, and parted from his parents, and then—

“The master said they might believe him,
So righteously (the Lord forgive him!)
he’d govern
He’d show me the extremest love,
Provided that I did not prove
too stubborn.
So far, so good—but now fresh fees
Began (for so the custom is)
Fresh fees!—with drink they knock you down,
You spoil your clothes; and your new gown
you spue in....”

He then retired for the night, and was awakened at six o’clock next morning by a “scoundrel” of a servitor. He rose and went to chapel, very sick and still half drunk. Later in the day, when he had recovered sufficiently, he went with his tutor to Broad Street, where—

“Built in the form of Pidgeon-pye,
A house there is for rooks to lie
and roost in.
Thither to take the oaths I went,
My tutor’s conscience well content
to trust in.
Their laws, their articles of grace
Forty, I think (save half a brace),
was willing
To swear to; swore, engag’d my soul,
And paid the swearing-broker whole
ten shilling.
Full half a pound I paid him down,
To live in the most p——d town,
o’ th’ nation.”

It must not be understood, however, that such orgies characterised the ceremony of matriculation. This writer of fluent doggerel was a gentleman commoner, but he seems to have caught at every lax point that he personally observed as a target for his wit. The more sober matriculation, both literally and figuratively, of George Colman the younger can be most suitably placed in the other side of the scale. “On my entrance at Oxford,” he wrote, “as a member of Christ Church, I was too foppish a follower of the prevailing fashions to be a reverential observer of academical dress—in truth, I was an egregious little puppy—and I was presented to the Vice-Chancellor, to be matriculated, in a grass-green coat, with the furiously-bepowder’d pate of an ultra-coxcomb; both of which are proscribed by the Statutes of the University. Much courtesy is shown, in the ceremony of matriculation, to the boys who come from Eton and Westminster; insomuch that they are never examined in respect to their knowledge of the School Classicks—their competency is considered as a matter of course—but, in subscribing the articles of their matriculation oaths, they sign their praenomen in Latin; I wrote, therefore, Georgeius—thus, alas! inserting a redundant E—and, after a pause, said enquiringly to the Vice-Chancellor—looking up in his face with perfect naiveté—‘pray, sir, am I to add Colmanus?’

“My Terentian father, who stood at my right elbow, blush’d at my ignorance—the Tutor (a piece of sham marble) did not blush at all—but gave a Sardonick grin, as if Scagliola had moved a muscle!

“The good-natur’d Vice drollingly answer’d me—that the surnames of certain profound authors, whose comparatively modern works were extant, had been latinized; but that a Roman termination tack’d to the patronymick of an English gentleman of my age and appearance, would rather be a redundant formality. There was too much delicacy in the worthy Doctor’s satire for my green comprehension—and I walk’d back, unconscious of it, to my College—strutting along in the pride of my unstatutable curls and coat, and practically breaking my oath, the moment I had taken it.”

From both their accounts, differing so widely from each other, it would seem that the ceremony of matriculation, which to-day is conducted with an almost ecclesiastical solemnity, was in those days simply a matter of form, a tedious business which the Vice-Chancellor hurried through with all speed. One man performed his part in a condition of semi-intoxication without an inkling of the meaning of the oaths to which he subscribed, while another was presented to the Vice-Chancellor in clothes more suitable to a fancy dress ball than to his formal admittance to the university. Neither man drew upon himself the reprimand which to-day would immediately be levelled at him.

In becoming a member of the university, therefore, the eighteenth-century freshman received his first experience of the complete inanition and futility of the Don world. Apparently he suffered no apprehension on the score of not conducting himself with fitting politeness when in the presence of the authorities. Their opinion of him gave him no concern. He was far more anxious not to contravene the unwritten laws of the Undergraduate world. Once the tiresome but necessary matriculation became a thing of the past, he began to look about him, anxiously at first from the desire to avoid grievous blunders which would make him a laughing-stock. All initiative was far too dangerous when the lynx eyes of the entire college were upon him. Actuated by the firm belief that at least he could not be criticised for politeness and good-breeding, the timid freshman endeavoured to ingratiate himself in the eyes of all by doffing his cap with humble frequence. From “Academia, or the Humours of Oxford,” the following bitter excerpt on the question of the freshman’s manners is vastly entertaining.

“Now being arrived at his College,
The place of learning and of knowledge,
A while he’ll leer about, and snivel ye,
And doff his Hat to all most civilly,
Being told at home that a shame face too,
Was a great sign that he had some Grace too,
He’ll speak to none, alas! for he’s
Amased at every Man he sees:
May-hap this lasts a Week, or two,
Till some Scab laugh’s him on’t, so
That when most you’d expect his mending,
His Breeding’s ended, and not ending
Now he dares walk abroad, and dare ye,
Hat on, in peoples’ Faces stare ye;
Thinks what a Fool he was before, to
Pull off his Hat, which he’d no more do;
But that the devil shites Disasters,
So that he’s forc’d to cap the Masters, ...
He must cap them; but for all other,
Tho’ ’twere his Father, or his Mother,
His Gran’num, Uncle, Aunt, or Cousin,
He wo’ not give one Cap to a dozen.”

What wonders may be worked in a week or two! From almost servile politeness he went to the extreme of discourtesy with the assurance of a second-year man.

Imitation is, however, the essence of life. Because certain things are done, all men are compelled to do them unless they wish to incur social ostracism. We are like sheep and must follow our leaders with docility and readiness. If we decline to bow the neck to convention, and declare for originality and freedom, society turns and rends us. At Oxford the punishment for such a crime as originality is swift. A horde of outraged seniors descends like an avalanche upon the sinner’s rooms. They visit their wrath not only upon his belongings but upon his person, and eventually they leave him in a condition of mental and physical chaos, to realise the utter futility of kicking against the pricks.

In the eighteenth century the same social creed was practised. For any transgression from the commonplace the chastisement of the culprit was inevitable. The freshman undoubtedly realised the truth of this, however vaguely, and conducted himself according to the rules laid down by his seniors. His excessive good manners lasted only until the moment when it was born in upon him that rudeness was the policy of his leaders.

But though he might be no more than a scant fifteen years of age, as soon as he wiped away the last tear caused by the departure of his mother, the fresher became a Man, aggressively and consistently so. “No character,” wrote Colman, “is more jealous of the Dignity of Man (not excepting Colonel Bath, in Fielding’s Novel of Amelia), than a lad who has just escaped from School birch to College discipline. This early Lord of the Creation is so inflated with the importance of virility, that his pretension to it is carefully kept up in almost every sentence he utters. He never mentions any one of his associates but as a gentlemanly or a pleasant man—a studious man, a dashing man, a drinking man, etc., etc.—and the Homunculi Togati of Sixteen always talk of themselves as Christ Church men, Trinity, St John’s, Oriel, Brazen-nose men, etc.—according to their several colleges, of which old Hens, they are the Chickens—in short, there is no end to the colloquial manhood of these mannikins.” This passage might easily have been written to-day and not about the middle of the eighteenth century, for the point of view of the modern Oxford man is exactly the same as it was then.

The parents of the old-time fresher looked at his going up and his immediate assumption of manhood from very opposite points of view. The mother, with regulation anxiety, conceived him to be a hardly-used, homesick, half-starved, uncomfortable, thoroughly wretched fellow, doomed to live in stone walls in a fever-stricken and miasmic locality.

“Most dearly tender’d by his Mother,
Who loves him better than his brother;
So she at home a good while keeps him,
In White-broath, and Canary steeps him;
And tho’ his Noddle’s somewhat empty,
His Guts are stuffed with Sweet-meats plenty.”

This is how “Academia” described the mother’s far-reaching apron-string still feeling out, though some weeks cut, for her far distant son. Not so the father! When his wife sent a servant up to Oxford with a well-stuffed hamper for her boy and fond messages as to his health, he went down to the servants’ hall and, planting himself in front of the returned messenger, asked “If’s Son has got a Punck yet Whores he, and gets ye often drunk yet; Being told by’s Man, he took him quaffing, For joy he bursts his sides with laughing; and prithee John (says he) and how was’t—Ha, Drunk i’ the Cellar, as a Sow, wast?”

Although the father took it for granted that his son had immediately forgotten his home and arrived in an instant at man’s estate—as far as that permits of getting drunk—he was not always in the right. To a certain extent the anxieties of the mother were justified, for, on arriving at Oxford, the freshman did not always fall on a bed of clover. In many instances he was lucky to get a bed at all in some poky little garret with one window, through which could be obtained a minute view of sky and stars, and which was ice-cold in winter and in summer stuffy to a degree. However large the college there were always more men in residence than could be properly housed. Colman said of the House, one of the biggest colleges in Oxford, that it “was so completely cramm’d, that shelving garrets, and even unwholesome cellars, were inhabited by young gentlemen, in whose father’s families the servants could not be less liberally accommodated.” He refers also to a fellow Westminster boy who was “stuffed into one of these underground dog-holes.” Then, too, even up to the beginning of the nineteenth century there prevailed a system of ragging freshers which did not tend to make them any the less homesick. They were swindled by their scouts, and shamefully misused by their bedmakers.

To add to their discomfort their tutors were in many cases fast allies of the bottle, and totally unable to render them any assistance in the matter of finding their feet. Colman made a very illuminative reference, from his own experience, to the scurvy tricks which the scouts and bedmakers played upon the long-suffering fresher. “My two mercenaries,” he wrote, “having to do with a perfect greenhorn, laid in all the articles for me which I wanted—wine, tea, sugar, coals, candles, bed and table linen—with many useless etcetera, which they told me I wanted—charging me for everything full half more than they had paid, and then purloining from me full half of what they had sold.”

His scout and bedmaker had each seen fit to enter the bonds of holy matrimony, and both brought up their better halves to assist in despoiling the luckless greenhorn. He, however, soon lost his greenness and set about putting his house in order—with the result that all four were turned out. In their places, he duly installed a scout and a bedmaker who were married to each other—a tactical move which “consolidates knavery, and reduces your ménage to a couple of pilferers, instead of four.” But before Colman had found himself sufficiently to be able firmly but courteously to dispense with their services, his bedmaker, fittingly called a harpy, played him false most condemnably. “I was glad,” he said, writing of his first night in Oxford, “on retiring early to rest, that I might ruminate, for five minutes, over the important events of the day, before I fell fast asleep. I was not, then, in the habit of using a night-lamp or burning a rush-light; so, having dropt the extinguisher upon my candle, I got into bed; and found, to my dismay, that I was reclining in the dark upon a surface very like that of a pond in a hard frost. The jade of a bedmaker had spread the spick and span sheeting over the blankets, fresh from the linen-draper’s shop-unwash’d, uniron’d, unair’d, ‘with all its imperfections on its head.’ Through the tedious hours of an inclement January night, I could not close my eyes—my teeth chattered, my back shivered—I thrust my head under the bolster, drew my knees up to my chin; it was all useless, I could not get warm—I turned again and again, at every turn a hand or a foot touch’d upon some new cold place; and at every turn the chill glazy clothwork crepitated like iced buckram. God forgive me for having execrated the authoress of my calamity! but, I verily think, that the meekest of Christians who prays for his enemies, and for mercy upon “all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks,” would in his orisons, in such a night of misery, make a specifick exception against his Bedmaker!”[4]

In these enlightened days a fresher, even, would not have left her out of his prayers—he would have invented new ones for her especial benefit. Poor Colman found when he rose betimes in the morning, making a virtue of necessity, that a night of misery was not the only torment that the ill-favoured hussy had stored up for him. For, having abluted in ice-cold water in the hopes of refreshing himself, he found that the towel was in an even worse state of hardness than the sheets; while at breakfast the tablecloth was so stiff that he dreaded to sit down to his meal because he feared to cut his shins against the edge of it. With intent, doubtless, to add humiliation to injury, the old hag had also left his surplice in a state of pristine unwashedness, so that “cased in this linen panoply, which covers him from his chin to his feet, and seems to stand on end, in emulation of a suit of armour (the certain betrayer of an academical debutant) the Newcomer is to be heard at several yards distance, on his way across a quadrangle, cracking and bouncing like a dry faggot upon the fire—and he never fails to command notice, in his repeated marches to prayer, till soap and water have silenced the noise of his arrival at Oxford.”

The optimism of a Georgian freshman was truly amazing. The invaluable gift of youth is undoubtedly its explanation. To be thrust suddenly into entirely new surroundings where not only the manners and customs were quite different from any of which he had experience before, but where it was necessary to begin again, to readjust his outlook upon life, was a very trying experience. It was one which men of greater maturity would hesitate to undergo. And yet here was this man, a mere lad of fifteen or sixteen, gladly entering a new world with a vague notion of the things which would be expected of him or of the things to expect. Without a twinge of nervousness he signed his name to long-winded oaths, and unconsciously perjured himself five minutes later. Everywhere he saw strange faces, met with new and incomprehensible experiences, and found himself doing the wrong thing. With undaunted cheerfulness, however, he allowed Oxford to treat him as she chose, to mould him to her own liking, to pull him this way and that, until eventually, with an increased optimism, his schoolboy corners were rounded off, and he became one with Oxford. It was his very lack of experience which enabled him to go through such a difficult time without flinching. He did not realise the tremendous forces at work upon him. He was, in fact, like a seed put into earth. After the rain, the sun, the wind, and all the forces of Nature have been brought to bear upon it, slowly and irresistibly it shoots up and becomes at last a flower. The Oxford freshman burst forth into blossom at the end of his first year in the same helpless way. He was quite unable to tell by what steps his development had been brought about, and was perfectly content to go through his whole university career in the same blind way.

CHAPTER IV

THE SMART

Valentine Frippery and his letter—Boiled chicken and pettitoes—Lyne’s coffee-house and the billet-doux—Tick—Liquor capacity—A Smart advises The Student—Latin odes for tradesmen only.

One of the most interesting things to study at the university is the way in which a man gets into a certain set. Let me take for example a group of freshmen who come from the same public school, who have played together in the school games, possibly invited each other home for the holidays. Their tastes and ideas are apparently the same. On coming up to Oxford each man is differently affected. For the first few weeks they meet in one another’s rooms and discuss their impressions freely and without any reserve. Then suddenly, after the manner of mushrooms which spring up in a single night, it is found that one of them has got into the racing set which despises everybody who does not ride a horse; another into the working set, which lives, eats, and sleeps with its books; a third into the religious set, which in a quiet, unostentatious manner goes out of its way to help the poor, attends frequent religious meetings and, unfortunately and quite undeservedly, is somewhat scorned by the rest of the college; a fourth has got into the smart set, and has become a “blood”; and others into the thousand and one little groups which go to the composition of a university.

This curious sudden upheaval of ideas and habits which is brought about in one short term is to be found in every college every year, just as it appertained in the eighteenth century. I have shown the way in which some of these freshmen came to feel ashamed of their clothes and crept into the back entrances of barber’s and tailor’s shops, while their friends remained perfectly satisfied with their appearance, and jogged along without any desire for silks and satins.

The Georgian “blood,” however, was a person of tantamount importance. It was he who provided the university with food for mirth, envy, satire, recrimination. In a previous chapter I quoted Amhurst’s description of how a Smart might be distinguished when he sauntered along, languidly twirling his clouded amber cane and smelling philosophically of essence. His main objects in life were apparently to avoid the accusation of being ill-mannered, to consume daily as much liquor as possible, to be ardent in singing the praises of the latest toast, and to expend in finery far more money than he possessed. He thought himself to be a model of culture and was, in fact, the man of the period who put on the most “side.”

Amhurst, with an editorial genius that was without parallel in those times, wrote an attack on the good manners of Undergraduates in order that he might criticise, or better, satirise, that “large body of fine gentlemen call’d Smarts.” Under the name of Valentine Frippery he answered his own attack with a bitter reply, taking up the cudgels stoutly on behalf of the attackees, and wound up his article by riddling all men of the Frippery type.

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Bucks of the First Head.

Allowing that Terrae Filius was ever a caricaturist, and that all his tirades and jibes must be taken cum grano salts, nevertheless the picture he draws of the Bucks of the first head is a very true one. “Valentine Frippery” wrote in answer to the accusation of ill-breeding as follows:—

“To Terrae Filius.

“Christ Church College, July 1.

“Mr Prate-apace.—Amongst all the vile trash and ribaldry with which you have lately poisoned the publick, nothing is more scandalous and saucy than your charging our university with the want of civility and good manners. Let me tell you, Sir, for all your haste, we have as well-bred, accomplish’d gentlemen in Oxford, as any where in Christendom; men that dress as well, sing as well, dance as well, and behave in every respect as well, though I say it, as any man under the sun. You are the first audacious Wit-wou’d that ever call’d Oxford a boorish, uncivilised place: And demme, Sir, you ought to be hors’d out of all good company for an impudent praggish Jackanapes. Oxford a boorish place! poor wretch! I am sorry for thy ignorance. Who wears finer lace, or better linnen than Jack Flutter? who has handsomer tie-wigs or more fashionable cloaths or cuts a bolder dash than Tom Paroquet? Where can you find a more handy man at a tea-table than Robin Tattle? Or, without vanity I may say it, one that plays better at Ombre than him, who subscribes himself an enemy to all such pimps as thou art?”

Such are the arguments he brought up against a charge of bad manners: singing, dancing, handy at a tea-table, wearing the best lace and linen and cutting a bold dash. The perfect gentleman indeed! The acme of culture! He, with all the others of his kidney, put in an appearance at Lyne’s coffee-house in academical undress somewhere about eleven o’clock—that is to say, immediately after a gentle dalliance with breakfast. Here he discussed the topics of the hour, heard the latest news, enjoyed the latest scandals, and then strolled in the Park or under Merton wall. Those who made no pretensions to “Smartness” were meanwhile dining in Hall—a thing far beneath the dignity of a Buck of the first head who ate in solitary dignity in his own chamber, his meal consisting, for example, of “boil’d chicken and pettitoes.” After resting awhile, he spent an hour or so in overcoming the difficulties of dressing. That satisfactorily concluded, it was his bounden duty to make an afternoon appearance at Lyne’s. About five o’clock he dropped in at Hamilton’s, where he “struts about the room for a while and drinks a dram of citron.” Thence he returned to college and adjourned to the chapel “to shew how genteely he dresses, and how well he can chaunt.” Having given conclusive demonstrations of these two accomplishments, he drank tea with some celebrated toast and attended her to Maudlin Grove or Paradise Garden and back again. Such a ridiculous idea as work never entered his head. Any time he might give to reading was employed in the study of novels and romances.

As an example of his passion for cleanliness at all costs, Terrae Filius gave an account of an adventure of one of these gentry at Lyne’s coffee-house. “This afternoon, a noted Smart of Christ Church College, as he was writing a billet-doux had the misfortune to blot one of his ruffles with a spot of ink, which put the gentleman in so great a disorder, that he threw the standish through the window, stamped about the room for half an hour together, and was often heard to say, I wonder that gentlemen cannot find some cleaner method of conveying their thoughts, and that he wished he might be blown up wherever he went, if he ever made use of that filthy liquor again, though the displeasure of the whole fair sex was the consequence. Let prigs and pedants, said he, keep all the nasty manufacture to themselves.”

It is comforting to be assured that this elaborate sect was not entirely composed of peers and gentleman commoners, for their street behaviour was far worse than anything that even the most hypercritical Somerville blue-stocking can accuse Undergraduates of to-day. “They cannot forbear laughing,” said Amhurst, “at every body that obeys the statutes, and differs from them; or (as my correspondent expresses it in the proper dialect of the place) that does not cut as bold a dash as they do. They have singly, for the most part, very good assurances; but when they walk together in bodies (as they often do), how impregnable are their foreheads? They point at every foul they meet, laugh very loud, and whisper as loud as they laugh. Demme, Jack, there goes a prig! Let us blow the puppy up. Upon which they all stare him full in the face, turn him from the wall as he passes by, and set up an horse laugh, which puts the plain raw novice out of countenance, and occasions great triumph amongst these tawdry desperadoes.”

Like all hooligans they were thorough cowards unless backed up by vastly superior numbers. It took about twenty of them, and that with the assistance of Dutch courage, to frighten some three or four foreigners and to kick a Presbyterian parson out of a coffee-house. They were for the most part sons of country farmers with practically no money who got into the Smart set immediately after coming up, and who remained Smarts just so long as the “mercers, taylors, shoe makers, and perriwig-makers will tick with them.” Tradesmen of that day were apparently possessed of far longer patience than most of the present generation. To-day they despatch solicitor’s letters after two terms. Then they allowed a bill to lie fallow (with the usual accretion of interest) for three or four years.

With his usual quaint humour Amhurst declared that he has seen these same Smarts two or three years afterwards “in gowns and cassocks, walking with demure looks and an holy leer; so easy is the transition from dancing to preaching, and from the bowling-green to the pulpit.”

The Rev. Richard Graves, a Pembroke man, in 1732, related that he became friends with a genial crowd who passed their evenings in drinking strong ale, smoking like chimneys, punning, and singing Bacchanalian catches. Some gentlemen commoners, however, Smarts, who came from the same part of the country as Graves, rescued him from the ill-bred hands of such low company—so considered chiefly on account of the liquor they drank. In his own words “they good-naturedly invited me to their party: they treated me with port wine and arrack-punch; and then, when they had drunk so much, as hardly to distinguish wine from water, they would conclude with a bottle or two of claret. They kept late hours and drank their favourite toasts on their knees. This was deemed good company and high life; but it neither suited my taste, my fortune, or my constitution.”

Night after night of this deep drinking made the fortunes of the spirit-merchants, but left some of the drinkers soddened and useless. I may quote, as an instance, the case of Lord Lovelace.

It is a well-known fact that the Principal of his Hall reported, and that truthfully, that “he never knew him sober but twelve hours and that he used every morning to drink a quart of brandy, or something equivalent to it, to his own share.” Hearne, too, in his diary makes reference to a commoner of Magdalen Hall, a son of Dr Inett, who was found dead from drinking ale and brandy. There were three companions with him, but they were merely asleep under the table. Professor Pryme, who was up at the end of the eighteenth century, afterwards wrote that when Hall was over it was the fashion to collect a large party together to drink wine with a little dessert. “The host,” he said, “named a Vice-President, and toasts were given. First a lady by each of the party, then a gentleman, and then a sentiment. I remember one of these latter, the single married and the married happy. Every one was required to fill a bumper to the toasts of the President, the Vice-President, and his own. If any one wished to go to chapel he was pressed to return afterwards.”[5]

The fact, however, that toping constituted such an important feature of Undergraduate life, among Smarts and non-Smarts equally is not a matter for vast amazement, or stern condemnation. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?—for the Dons were if anything even worse than those to whom they stood in loco parentis. The whole world of Dons, from the humblest and most juvenile Fellow to the king of kings, the Head of a college or Hall, cultivated the vice of drink as assiduously as if it were a virtue. Oxford was not so far away from London as not to reflect the manners and habits of the capital, and since to the Bucks of London abnormal drinking was then the highest good form, it is not to be wondered at that the Undergraduates, ever of tender years and advanced imitative faculties, should give a brilliant reflection of the metropolis.

Amhurst has pointed out that the Smarts never read anything but plays, novels, and French comedies. When The Student appeared, however, they took it up more or less whole-heartedly. In these days of photographic (that being the polite way of spelling pornographic) weeklies, a new venture in ’varsity journals is greeted as a nine days’ wonder. However good the contents provided, the Oxford man prefers to look upon the fetching features—and limbs, of footlight favourites in papers provided free of charge in the Junior Common Room. Consequently the rash starter of a “’varsity rag” is compelled to retire from the lists after the first two or three issues. In the old days, however, even the blasé Smart had some initiative left to him in matters of literature. He supported the new paper with enthusiasm and read every number carefully. After some time he found that the editor was catering too freely for the Dons. Instead, however, of discontinuing his subscription he wrote to the editor and appealed on the grounds that The Student was becoming too prosy and Spectator-like, and urged him to keep it lighter in tone. The following is an extract from the letter sent in:—

“——’s Coffee-house, May 4.

“Brother Student,—Without a compliment I am much pleased with your scheme, and heartily wish you success. Hitherto I think you bid fair for it, and seem to meet with general applause. But will you forgive my offering a word or two of advice? Let us have no more of your abstract speculations, as you call them; indeed they are not popular. Last night, in a full assembly of pretty fellows at this place (all your admirers), Billy Languish read your fourth number. We all agreed that your ‘Impudence’ is inimitable, but your ‘letter in defence of religion,’ tho’ it did not startle us (as you apprehended it would) somewhat amazed us, I must own. Consider, Mr Student, you write for the publick of which three fourths are ignoramuses, and therefor, tho’ we may allow you now and then in compliment to your taylor and mercer and other learned folks, to insert a Latin ode or epigram, yet I must needs tell you, that we don’t relish your metaphysics. For which reason I am directed by all the Smarts at ——’s, to acquaint you, that we expect (especially if it be English), at least to understand what we read. We consider your book as a monthly feast or entertainment; and if we pay our ordinary, ’tis but reasonable the dishes you set before us should be such as we are able to taste. We cannot indeed always expect rarities, and may now and then admit of a trifle or puff by way of make up; but prithee don’t surfeit us with ambigu’s and inconnu’s. At the same time I must tell you, that we are much pleased with your last Sapphic, that we reverence Tony Alsop’s memory, and have resolv’d one and all to subscribe to his works. Billy Languish and Dick Dimple indeed say, the ‘verses on the grotto’ are better; and Dick (who you know is a wit as well as a beau) gave us off hand a translation of them, but I have indeed since found out where he borrows it.—I am yours,

Harry Didapper.”

The habitués of the unknown coffee-house, all pretty fellows, looked upon The Student as a “monthly feast of entertainment!” For all their soaking and “wenching” and slacking they would seem to have had a certain amount of brain and appreciative capability left to them.

In a subsequent chapter I shall set down the methods by which these men obtained their degrees after having spent some six or seven years inside the old walls of the university. They had as little time for work as the “bloods” of to-day whose every moment is claimed by matters of far greater moment than mere study! To a certain extent the Smarts, though they perhaps did not know it, were philosophers. They said to themselves that life was short and youth shorter still, that therefore it behoved them to cram in to the six years of their university career as much pleasure, excitement, and amusement as was possible. The eighteenth century lent itself whole-heartedly to this programme. The Dons, who should have been intent on governing Oxford, had other game afoot. The Undergraduates were thus left to their own devices, and the Smarts were the first to take advantage of such Arcadian conditions. They delayed the hour of rising until the sun grew weary of calling them out. There was no stern shepherd to round them into chapel at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock. Like butterflies they flitted from place to place at the caprice of the moment. They held Bacchanalian revels in and out of college without regard to Dons and statutes. Their paramours, far from being ejected from the city, were shared with the authorities, thus proving that they had a better understanding of real socialism than the exponents of to-day. The same cobbled streets that hear us shouting our way home in the small hours, saw the Georgian men staggering along with tight-linked arms in the silvery moonlight, while Big Tom boomed out the birth of a new day.

As year after year slipped relentlessly off the calender they absorbed the unique atmosphere of Oxford, fully appreciating under their mask of blasé scorn the traditions and the unforgettable charm of Alma mater. They carried their love and reverence for her to the grave, and gave proof of it by sending their sons and grandsons to swell the never-ending procession of men who sing the praises of Oxford.

CHAPTER V

THE TOAST

Terrae Filius sums her up—Merton Wall butterflies—Hearne comments—Flavia and the orange tree—Dick, the sloven—The President under her thumb—Amhurst’s table of cons.—King Charles and the other place.

What is an Oxford toast? For answer I cannot do better than turn to that Oxford Encyclopædia, Terrae Filius, who from the ambush of his anonymity, directed his fire upon all toasts with unerring aim and deadly effect.

“She is born, as the King says, of mean estate, being the daughter of some insolent mechanick, who fancies himself a gentleman and resolves to keep up his family by marrying his girl to a parson or a schoolmaster; to which end, he and his wife call her pretty miss, as soon as she knows what it means, and sends her to the dancing school to learn how to hold up her head, and turn out her toes; she is taught from a child not to play with any of the dirty boys and girls in the neighbourhood; but to mind her dancing, and have a great respect for the gown. This foundation being laid, she goes on fast enough of herself, without any farther assistance, except an hoop, a gay suit of cloaths, and two or three new holland smocks. Thus equipt, she frequents all the balls and publick walks in Oxford; where it is a great chance if she does not, in time, meet with some raw coxcomb or other, who is her humble servant; waits upon her home, calls upon her again the next day; dangles after her from place to place; and is at last, with some art and management, drawn in to marry her.

“She has impudence—therefore she has wit;
She is proud—therefore she is well bred;
She has fine Cloaths—therefore she is genteel;
She would fain be a wife-and therefore she is not a Wh—re.”

Amhurst also informed his readers that they appeared principally in summer, like butterflies, when they flitted from flower to flower of the Smarts under Merton Wall. “The toasts,” he remarked, “are scouring up and new-trimming their best gowns and petticoats against the summer, and intend to make a splendid appearance.” These ladies were an extremely conspicuous feature of Undergraduate life. In the description of the Smart’s day we are told how after chapel he drank tea with some celebrated toast, and then waited upon her to Maudlin Grove or Paradise Garden and back again. Afterwards, when drowning his sorrows at the particular establishment in vogue at the time, the Smart exhausted himself in his efforts to dash off a sonnet to her eyelashes or a rhapsody in praise of her tip-tilted nose. He drank her health upon his knees, tossing off a non-heeltaps to every letter of her name. His day was considered wasted unless he were seen in all his delicate apparel in company with the acknowledged reigning queen among toasts.

One lady, by name of Flavia, kept an orange tree growing in the window of her bed-chamber. This inspired a burst of classic poetry from a Buck who saw and envied it. In one of the volumes of Terrae Filius a most amusing story was related which shows what influence these toasts exercised upon the Undergraduates. She, too, answered to the name of Flavia—whether she were one and the same as the horticultural lady it is impossible to say. A “promising lad” came up and was recognised by his master—of whom he was “a very favourite”—to be a “diligent and ingenious scholar.”

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Merton College and Chapel, from the first Quadrangle.

That character he maintained for some time, keeping to his chamber and his books, with sported oak, and not concerning himself with the vagaries of fashion; “indeed the poor young fellow did not dress smart; nay, often was really dirty.” Gradually he made the acquaintance of some noted Bucks and sought their society and conversation out of curiosity. But they continually ragged him about his shabby appearance. “Dick!” said they, “prithee let’s burn this damned brown wig of thine; get thee a little more linnen.” The lad for a time was obdurate, but at last put forward in excuse that “this alteration of himself would make him be taken too much notice of, and, it may be, his new dress might sit so awkward, that he would become the jest of his acquaintance.” This was a set-back to the friends, but they came to the cunning conclusion that he might be tricked into it. So they buttonholed him. “Dick,” said one, “did you never see Miss Flavia, one of our top toasts?” “No,” quoth he, “unless at her window.” “Well, faith,” said the friend, “to be plain, she likes you, I myself heard her say in public company, I have been shew’d Mr Such-a-one several times; everybody says he’s a man of fire; it is a thousand pities he’s such a sloven.” Dick was finished. He went home obsessed with the idea, flung his wig into the fire, forgot his studies entirely and swore to see Flavia the very next day. His friends spread a rumour abroad that he had come into money, and his tradesmen gave him unlimited credit. Accordingly he was decked out, in ruffles and all the other paraphernalia, and from that day worshipped at the lady’s shrine. In these days such fair Flavias would in all probability be found pulling beer in a public-house, totally devoid of H’s, but none the less popular among a certain set. To-day they can be treated with a certain amount of Undergraduate levity, but in the eighteenth century it behoved the contumelious to walk delicately and to be very careful. Amhurst hoisted the danger signal when he related that “not long ago, a bitter lampoon was published upon the most celebrated of these petticoat-professors, as soon as it came out the town was in an uproar, and a very severe sentence was passed upon the author of this anonymous libel; to discover whom no pains were spared; all the disgusted, ill-natured fellows in the university were, one after another, suspected upon this occasion. At last, I know not how, it was peremptorily fixed upon one; whether justly, or not, I cannot say; but the parties offended resolved to make an example of somebody for such an enormous crime, and one of them (more enraged than the rest) was heard to declare ‘that, right or wrong, that impudent scoundrel (mentioning his name) should be expelled, by G—d; and that she had interest enough with the president and senior fellows of his college to get his business done.’” And the scandalous part of the business was that the president and senior fellows who had evidently had relations with the woman in question were such cowards as to yield to her demands, which probably took the form of threats of exposure against themselves, and sent the unoffending man down for good.

In his character of general reformer Terrae Filius felt himself compelled, however reluctantly, to “draw his pen against womenkind”—the womenkind of Oxford. His apology for so doing was that “I shall have the misfortunes of numberless young men to answer for, if I conceal anything which may be for their advantage, or spare any abuses in the universities, though committed by the fairest offenders.”

After a disquisition on love, which he described as “a most arbitrary passion,” which “engrosses the whole man ... and grumbles at its own poverty and searches after new acquisitions,” he continued “conscious of this truth, our wise forefathers took all possible care to purge the seats of learning of these shining temptations, these dangerous decoys of youth; but as all their prudence and precaution could not do this entirely, they made a statute, ‘prohibiting all scholars, as well as Graduates or Undergraduates, of whatever faculty, to frequent the houses and shops of any townsmen by day, and especially by night; but more especially houses, which harbour or receive infamous or suspected women, with whom all scholars are strictly forbid to keep company, either in their own private chambers, or at the houses of any townsmen.’ I suppose it will be objected by the Smarts, or others, that this statute extends only to common prostitutes or night-walkers, and not to those divine creatures dignified by the name of toasts; but I think that it includes all suspected women, and especially the toasts, for the following reasons:—

“1. Because it was not the only design of the statute to restrain the scholars from debauchery (from which, I hope, they need no forcible restraint!) but to prevent them also from neglecting their studies, and entering into scandalous marriages; of which they are in no danger from common strumpets and mercenary street-walkers.

“2. Because there was no occasion for a statute against common whores, any more than against house-breakers and pickpockets, which are all punishable by the laws of the land.

“3. Because I have a better opinion of the townsmen of Oxford (who are, many of them, matriculated men), than to believe that they would entertain in their houses such filthy drabs; though it is probable enough that they would marry their daughters to advantage if they could; in which I can see no great harm on their parts.

“4. Because I have a better opinion of the scholars too, than to believe that they would keep company with such cattle; and I think it is a scandal to the university to stand in need of a statute, which supposes that any of her hopeful children are addicted to such beastliness.”

Amhurst’s reasons are logical enough to convince the meanest intelligence of the true nature of the Oxford toasts. In support of them he brings up no less a second than King Charles I., who wrote officially and at some length on the question of university government to the Vice-Chancellor and Heads of Cambridge commanding the suppression of women such as those in question. The reason why the good King did not treat Oxford to a similar injunction is, supposedly, that the need for it did not reach the royal ears. It is hinted more than once, too, in the pages of Terrae Filius that the Dons themselves entertained feelings of sympathy towards the toasts, and shielded them from royal visitations by intentionally keeping things quiet. Judging from the character of the Dons in the eighteenth century it is highly probable that such was indeed the case.

“Happy is it,” says Amhurst, “for the present generation of Oxford toasts, that King Charles I. (so much unlike that accomplished gentleman, his son) was long ago laid in the dust! Were that rigid King now alive, my mind misgives me strangely, that I should see an end of all the balls and cabals, and junketings at Oxford; that several of our most celebrated and beautiful madams would pluck off their fine feathers, and betake themselves to an honest livelihood; or make their personal appearance before the lords of his majesty’s privy council, to answer their contempt, and such other matters as should be objected against them.”

Unmourned and besmirched the last of the Oxford toasts has long since passed beyond the judgment of man. The Dons were in all too many cases the cause of sending recruits to the ranks of the oldest profession in the world. Heads of colleges, reverend clerics, and holders of Fellowships must all answer to the charge of “wenching.”

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A Varsity Trick—Smuggling In.

CHAPTER VI

The Servitor

The germ of Ruskin Hall—Description of himself—George Whitefield—College exercises—Running errands and copying lines—Samuel Wesley—Famous servitors.

In the year of grace nineteen hundred and eleven there are three main divisions of the genus Undergraduate:—scholars, commoners, and “toshers,” the last sometimes known as non-collegiate Undergraduates. Under a fourth heading, which constitutes a small subdivision all by itself, I may place the working-men Undergraduates—the members of Ruskin Hall. Georgian Undergraduates might also be split up into parallel divisions. There were also servitors, who were, in some sort, the ancient form of the working-men Undergraduates of the twentieth century.

Oxford in Georgian times was, according to the popular conception, a place where peers and rich men sent their sons in order that they might receive a better education than anywhere else in the world. The erudition, classical learning, and brilliance of the Dons passed all belief. Nowhere on earth was there gathered together a body of men with such knowledge and brain power. Did any man yearn for instruction in any subject, Oxford was the only place where that subject was exhaustively known and thoroughly taught.

It naturally followed, therefore, that the lower classes, who drudged all day in the effort to keep body and soul together, and provide the wherewithal to fill the stomachs of their hungry progeny, left Oxford outside their calculations when discussing the prospective education of their children. Oxford was a place for rich men. How, then, could their sons go there? It was impossible. Meanwhile, the children were clamouring for education. What was to be done?

Through the influence of rich men who had been to the university the penniless lads were taken from the plough and entered into colleges as errand boys and odd-job hands. They were at liberty to pick up what education they could in the intervals of performing menial tasks for the gentlemen commoners. They cleaned boots, fetched and carried, and were the servants of anybody who chose to order them about. Having no money they slept in coal-holes, cupboards under the stairs, and attics under the eaves, and satisfied the pangs of hunger by picking up the crumbs which fell from the rich men’s tables. They had no social intercourse with the gentlemen commoners, and were treated with scant courtesy by the college servants.

The resemblance between the servitor and the Ruskin Hall man is apparent when due allowance has been made for modern improvements. The modern conception of Oxford is curiously akin to that of the eighteenth century. The education to be received still has a very high reputation. The present day working classes, however, possess a greater ambition than their antecedents showed. They are no longer content to snatch education in the intervals of earning their keep. Ruskin Hall has been built for their especial benefit. There they may win scholarships to their heart’s content. Their kinship with the humble servitor lies in the fact that they do their own menial work instead of having to do it for others; that they have no social intercourse with the Undergraduates of other colleges except at the weekly debates of the Union Society in which they distinguish themselves by their fluent Socialistic doctrines; and that they take no part in the athletic and collegiate life of the university.

One of the earliest references to servitors in the eighteenth century records is contained in a comedy entitled “An Act at Oxford.” The play was written in 1704 by a dramatist named Baker.

One of the characters was a servitor named Chum. His father was a chimney-sweep and his mother a poor ginger-bread seller at Cow Cross. Chum was established in Brazen-Nose College, and his duties consisted in waiting “upon Gentleman-Commoners, to dress and clean their shoes and make out their exercises.” His “fortune,” which was “soon told,” consisted apparently of “two Raggs call’d shirts, a dog’s eared Grammer, and a piece of Ovid de Tristibus.” For having materially assisted his master, a Smart, to win the hand and heart of a fair damsel known as Berynthia, he was rewarded, in the play, with the sum of five hundred guineas—an occurrence which would be the height of improbability in real life, as the servitor was jeered at and made a kind of Aunt Sally by all and sundry.

In 1709 one of those poor miserable wretches sat him down—where he procured pen and paper is still shrouded in mystery—and wrote a poem on his own doleful condition. Its title is “Servitour,” and it was printed by “H. Hills in Black-Fryars, near the water side.” He pictured himself to be coming out of a Skittle Yard in his “rusty round cap.”

“Like Cheesy Pouch of Shon-ap-Shenkin,
His Sandy locks, with wide Hiatus,
Like Bristles seem’d Erected at us,
Clotted with Sweat, the Ends hung down;
And made Resplendent Cape of Gown;
Whose Cape was thin, and so Transparent,
Hold it t’ th’ Light, you’d scarce beware on’t
’Twixt Chin and Breast contiguous Band,
Hung in an Obtuse Angle and—
It had a Latitude Canonick,
His coat so greasy was and torn,
That had you seen it you’d ha’ sworn
’Twas Ten Years old when he was born.
His buttons fringed as is the Fashion,
In Gallick and Brittanick Nation;
Or, to speak like more Modern fellows,
Their moulds dropt out like ripe Brown-shellers.
His Leather Galligaskin’s rent,
Made Artless Music as he went....
His Holey Stockins were ty’d up,
One with a Band, one with a Rope.”

In such clothes as these, the extreme poverty of which would bring a blush to the cheek of the modern Oxford paper-boy, this gloomy poet had to go to the Buttery and procure game and capons, ribs of beef, and other succulent dainties for some gentleman commoner’s dinner, while for himself there was nothing but “Poor scraps and Cold as I’m a sinner.” As a place to lay his head o’ nights, he was thankful to get a lumber-room in the apex of the building, somewhere under the eaves,

“A Room with Dirt and Cobwebs lin’d,
Which here and there with Spittle Shin’d;
Inhabited let’s see—by Four;
If I mistake not, ’twas no more.
Two buggy beds....
Their Dormer windows with brown paper,
Was patch’d to keep out Northern Vapour.
The Table’s broken foot stood on,
An old Schrevelious Lexicon,
Here lay together Authors various,
From Homer’s Iliad, to Cordelius:
And so abus’d was Aristotle,
He only served to stop a bottle....
Where eke stood Glass, Dark-Lanthorns ancient
Fragment of Mirerr, Penknife, Trencher,
And forty things which I can’t mention.
Old Chairs and Stools, and such-like Lumber,
Compleatly furnisht out the Chamber.”

George Whitefield, a servitor at Pembroke in 1732, also shared his rooms with others. His companions, however, did not appear to have suffered unduly from the usual depression caused by their hard lot, for they frequently invited Whitefield to join them “in their excess of riot,” and looked upon him as a weird and extraordinary creature for his persistent refusals. His account of the manner of his admission to Pembroke College is characteristic of the man, and gives an idea of what tasks servitors were called upon to perform.

“Being now near eighteen years old, it was judged proper for me to go to the university. God had sweetly prepared my way. The friends before applied to, recommended me to the Master of Pembroke College. Another friend took up ten pounds upon bond (which I have since repaid), to defray the first expence of entring; and the Master, contrary to all expectations, admitted me servitor immediately.

“Soon after my admission I went and resided, and found my having been used to a publick-house was now of service to me. For many of the servitors being sick at my first coming up, by diligent and ready attendance I ingratiated myself into the gentlemen’s favour so far, that many, who had it in their power, chose me to be their servitor.

“This much lessened my expence; and indeed, God was so gracious, that, with the profits of my place, and some presents made me by my kind tutor, for almost the first three years I did not put all my relations together to above £24 expence.

“And it has often grieved my soul to see so many young students spending their substance in extravagant living, and thereby entirely unfitting themselves for the prosecution of their proper studies.”

Because he became a Methodist and attended seriously to his religious duties, Whitefield was badly ragged. The fact that a servitor should make any claims to superior godliness made his employers, for some reason, acutely annoyed. “I daily underwent some contempt at college,” he wrote, “some have thrown dirt at me; others, by degrees, took away their pay from me; and two friends that were dear unto me, grew shy of, and forsook me.”

One of his lay duties as servitor consisted in going round to the gentlemen’s rooms at ten o’clock at night and knocking to find out who was in—the majority of them being at that hour, doubtless, discussing punch and claret in the Mitre or Tuns. All those who made no answer to his knock were reported and received punishment for being out of college after hours.

Of his college exercises he wrote as follows:—

“Whenever I endeavoured to compose my theme, I had no power to write a word nor so much as tell my Christian friends of my inability to do it. Saturday being come (which is the day the students give up their compositions), it was suggested to me that I must go down into the Hall and confess I could not make a theme, and so publickly suffer, as if it were for my Master’s sake. When the bell rung to call us, I went to open the door to go downstairs, but feeling something give me a violent inward check, I entered my study, and continued instant in prayer, waiting the event. For this my tutor fined me half a crown. The next week Satan served me in like manner again; but having now got more strength, and perceiving no inward check, I went into the Hall. My name being call’d, I stood up, and told my tutor I could not make a theme. I think he fined me a second time; but, imagining that I would not willingly neglect my exercise, he afterwards called me into the common room, and kindly enquired whether any misfortune had befallen me, or what was the reason I could not make a theme? I burst into tears, and assured him that it was not out of contempt of authority, but that I could not act otherwise. Then, at length, he said he believed I could not; and, when he left me, told a friend (as he very well might), that he took me to be really mad.”

Besides cleaning boots, fetching and carrying, running errands and performing other menial services of a like nature, the servitors jumped at the opportunity of earning odd pence by writing out the impositions to which their masters had been condemned by the Proctors.

“For should grave Proctor chance to meet
A buck in boots along the street
He stops his course and with permission
Asking his name, sets imposition,
Which to get done, if he’s a ninny
He gives his barber half a guinea.
This useful go-between will share it
With servitor in college garret,
Who counts these labours sweet as honey
Which brings to purse some pocket money.”[6]

Other methods of pocket filling to which servitors had recourse were mentioned by Dr Johnson, who, writing to Tom Warton concerning the delay in a work on Spenser caused by the number of his correspondents and pupils at Oxford, said: “Three hours a day stolen from sleep and amusement will produce it. Let a servitor transcribe the quotations, and interleave them with references to save time.” As, however, servitors were not admitted within the sacred precincts of the Bodleian, transcription was necessarily limited. This was a cause of great lamentation and outcry at the time from the men, because they were compelled to do the work themselves, and from the servitors because they were thus deprived of a means of earning a few extra necessary pence. “Dr Hyde complains,” says Wordsworth in his book on the eighteenth century, “that some in the university have been very troublesome in pressing that their servitors may transcribe manuscripts for them, though not capable of being sworn to the Library.”

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View of Queen’s College.

For a commoner to be seen in public in the company of a servitor was a “great disparagement.” Consequently, if a servitor was sufficiently blessed to be able to call a commoner friend, he must needs visit him secretly, or under cover of darkness. It is on record that Shenstone, who was a commoner of Pembroke, visited Jago a servitor, a friend of his, in strict private because of this popular prejudice. When Erasmus was at Queen’s his servitor’s rooms were immediately above his own. The poor wretch, besides being at his master’s beck and call, was very often the slave of his master’s mistress—an employ of vast uneasiness and discomfort.

In the Oxford Chronicle in 1859, in a series of articles entitled “Oxford during the Last Century,” Aubrey describes Willis, the servitor of Dr Iles, Canon of Christ Church, as studying in his blue livery cloak at the lower end of the hall by the door, and assisting his master’s wife in mixing drugs.

As a parallel case to that of Whitefield, who was a drawer in the Bell Inn, Gloucester, Hearne tells “of one Lyne, son of a clergyman, and grandson of the Town Clerk of Oxford, who was drawer at the King’s Head Tavern of that city, in 1735; his elder brother being Fellow of Emmanuel, and his younger an eminent scholar of King’s.”

It was no exaggeration to say that the servitors lived on the scraps from the Undergraduates’ tables. The following quotation shows the grinding penury against which they had to struggle: “Of the poverty of the class,” wrote J. R. Green in his wonderful “Oxford Studies,” “no better instance can be found than Samuel Wesley, the father of the Wesleys who were to change the whole state of religion in England, and himself a very stirring person, to whom we shall have occasion subsequently to allude. He was the son of an ejected and starving non-conformist minister, and when at the age of sixteen he walked to Oxford and entered himself as a servitor at Exeter, his whole worldly wealth amounted to no more than £2, 16s. Yet after supporting himself during his whole university career without any aid from his friends, save a trivial 5s., he set off to London to make a plunge into life with a capital increased to £10, 15s. Five shillings, however, sneer as we may, seem to have been no uncommon ‘allowance’ to a servitor of the time.”[7]

These poor servitors did not feel any touch of shame or degradation at having to clean boots and perform all the other dirty work of the place. Why should they? Their poverty at Oxford was in no way different from that in which they lived previously to their arrival at Oxford. It was merely a change in locality. For they came, as has been shown, from plough and public-house.

There are many instances to show to what great use some of them put the education which they managed to acquire during their servitorship. Sir John Birkenhead was a servitor at Oriel, and during that period of his afterwards noteworthy career, his brother was a trooper. It was only through the kindheartedness of a patron that Bishop Robinson became the servitor of Sir James Astrey at Brasenose. He was afterwards appointed to a Fellowship at Oriel, was sent as an envoy to Sweden, and became Bishop both of Bristol and London. In the days of his fame he was able to repay in some sort the kindness of his patron by granting his son a chaplaincy; and his love for the university is shown by the scholarships which he founded at Oriel.

Can Ruskin Hall point proudly to a son who has achieved such fame as either of these ex-servitors?

CHAPTER VII

SPORTS AND ATHLETICS

Rowing—Dame Hooper’s—Southey at Balliol—Cox’s six-oared crew—The riverside barmaid—Sailing-boats—Statutes against games—Bell-ringing—Hearne and gymnasia—Horses and badger-baiting—Cock-fights and prize-fights—Paniotti’s Fencing Academy—Old-time “bug-shooters”—Skating in Christ Church meadows—Cricket and the Bullingdon Club—Walking tours.

It would be impossible to live in Oxford and be healthy—except perhaps in the summer term, if we are lucky enough to have any sun—without taking exercise. It has long been a matter of wonder how those men keep fit who, with the excuse of “having a heart” neither row, play soccer, rugger, hockey, or any other of the strenuous games which keep the average Undergraduate sound in wind and limb. As a matter of fact they don’t. For the “heart-y” gentlemen almost invariably take as many week-ends out of Oxford as possible, and in most cases retire comfortably and ingloriously to the paternal establishment and maternal care long before term is over. The others, the normal people, the devotees of bone and muscle, the “muddied oafs and flannelled fools”—(which is the only mistake Mr Kipling ever made)—are never ill, at least from climatic effects. They may strain something, or even break a few bones, but that cannot be put down to the Oxford weather. The best doctors on earth, or rather the best preventatives against illness—and there is a great difference—are the river, the football and hunting fields, and the boxing ring, and as we find these things to be true to-day so in old times, when wigs and ruffles were somewhat of a handicap to the taking of hard exercise, these remedies against the Oxford climate were adopted with almost the same keenness. The word almost is used advisedly because the percentage of “bloods” who did nothing strenuous was far larger, and the possibilities in things sporting were not nearly so great. We have changed all that, and can afford a smile of condescension when, seated on the alleviating pontius in a “Rough” eight, with its simple-looking sliding seat, its hair-thick outer shell and its wonderful travelling possibilities, we think of the heavy gigs and six-oared boats into which our predecessors “tumbled,” clad in catskin caps and leather trousers.

Nevertheless the river was just as popular then though for quite different reasons. There were no rowing Blues to be had in those days; no presidents of boat clubs—no boat clubs even. There was only Dame Hooper’s—an odd-looking, tumble-down, shed-like place, where the gownsmen blarneyed the old lady and hired out skiffs, gigs, cutters, and canoes. Unlike our togger men who, like strange hairy creatures from another planet, hatlessly converge from all parts of the town through the Broad Walk to the Barges, emitting yards of muscular leg for all the world to view in amusement and admiration, the eighteenth-century wet-bobs went down to the river in square—or, as they called it, trencher—and gown. But Dame Hooper was old, unskittish, and trustworthy, and so they threw off their academical garb in her shed and arrayed themselves in the trousers, jackets, and caps which were then the thing. It might well be thought that these were a great hindrance to correct ’varsity swinging. But they did not worry their heads about that—there was no boat race to be taken into agitated consideration—and it has been left for 1911 to pour out its bleeding heart in vehement controversy anent the true ’varsity style as opposed to the new fangled Belgian method. In those days the motto was air and exercise. Now, dare it be said, the river is a business, a profession, to which are consecrated all the waking moments, and many of those which we should like to dedicate to bed, of our whole university careers.

Southey, who was, oddly enough, a Balliol man, said that he only learned two things at Oxford—to swim and to row. After he went down he wrote the following description of the river:—

“A number of pleasure boats were gliding in all directions upon this clear and rapid stream; some with spread sails; in others the caps and tassels of the students formed a curious contrast with their employment at the oar. Many of the smaller boats had only a single person in each; and in some of these he sat face forward, leaning back as in a chair, and plying with both hands a double-bladed oar in alternate strokes, so that his motion was like the path of a serpent. One of these canoes is, I am assured, so exceedingly light, that a man can carry it; but few persons are skilful or venturous enough to use it.”[8]

It would be well worth while to watch the face of one of these timid canoers if we could bring him down to the barges to-day to one of the “rag” regattas and show him scores of “venturous persons” who not only dispense with paddles, but dash about in a Canadian canoe with a punt pole.

G. V. Cox told us that in 1790 there were no races, but that “men went to Nuneham for occasional parties in six-oared boats (eight-oared boats were then unknown), but these boats belonged to the boat people; the crew was a mixed crew got up for the day, and the dresses worn anything but uniform. I belonged to a crew of five, who were, I think, the first distinguished by a peculiar (and what would now be thought a ridiculous) dress, viz., a green leather cap, with a jacket and trousers of nankeen!”[9]

There are many recent boat club presidents who proudly show souvenirs of love passages with every barmaid from Folly Bridge to Abingdon, and up the Cher to Water Eaton. The fair damsels of the Cherwell Hotel are indeed the sole reasons why hordes of Undergraduates punt out there to lunch on Sundays, when they might just as easily, and far less expensively, take luncheon baskets with them—as they do if their people are up! But there is nothing original in all this. The same touch of old Adam existed in the coffee-house period, as is shown by the following lines:—

“We visit Sandford next and there
Beckley provides accustomed fare
Of eels and perch and brown beef-steak....
Whilst Hebe-like his daughter waits,
Froths our full bumpers, changes plates.
The pretty handmaid’s anxious toils
Meanwhile our mutual praise beguiles,
Whilst she, delighted, blushing sees
The bill o’erpaid and pockets fees
Supplied for ribbon or for lace
To deck her bonnet or her face.”

To-day Hebe has become blasé and cannot blush with any readiness, nor is she so anxious in her toils. The chaste salute and the overpaid bill are features of our own time, and will remain, from generation to generation, as long as Oxford is a university, and there are hotels on the Cher. The same poet goes on to describe the way in which he was taught to sail by a friend who was already an expert.

“At Folly Bridge we hoist the sail,
And briskly scud before the gale
To Iffley—where our course awhile
Detain—its locks and Saxon pile
Affording pause; to recommend
The Hobby-horse unto my friend.
Our light-built galley; ours I say
Since Warren bears an equal sway
In her command; as first, in cost
The half he shared; himself a host
Whether he plies the limber oar
Or tows the vessel from the shore;
Or strains the main sheet tight astern
Close to the wind; of him I learn
Patient to wait the time exact
When jib and foresail should be back’d
To bring her round; or mark the strain
The boat on gunwale can sustain
Without aught danger of upsetting,
Or giving both her mates a wetting.”[10]

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North View of Friar Bacon’s Study at Oxford.

A glance at the statutes shows that the river was almost the only form of athletics then permissible, for the prohibited sports included “every kind of game in which money is concerned, such as dibs, dice, cards, cricketing in private grounds or gardens of the townspeople ... every kind of game or exercise from which danger, injury, or inconvenience might arise to other people, such as hunting of beasts with any sort of dogs, ferrets, nets or toils, also any use or carrying of muskets, cross-bows, or falchions; neither rope-dancers nor actors, nor shows of gladiators are to be permitted without especial sanction; moreover, the scholars are not to play at football, nor with cudgels, either among themselves or with the townsfolk, a practice from which the most perilous contentions have arisen.”

During the earlier half of the century, bell ringing was a form of amusement—and exercise—which was very largely indulged in. At any hour of the day it was the custom to go up into the belfry and practice, with such zest that the ringer sometimes fell from sheer exhaustion. Hearne was known to take a keen interest in the matches which were sometimes arranged between different peals of bells, while Antony Wood, some years before, had joined with his mother and brothers in subscribing towards the foundation of the Merton bells and, as Wordsworth says, “though they were not satisfactory to the ‘curious and critical hearer,’ he plucked at them often with some of his fellow-collegians for recreation sake.” Later on, however, this practice was generally voted boring and even vulgar, and the more “aristocratic door bell and knocker ringing” succeeded it. Hearne himself was pleased to countenance bell-ringing, yet when a proposal was afoot to found “an academy of exercise in the university such as riding the great horse, fencing, etc.,” he would not hear of it or entertain the idea for a moment. “I think,” said he, “’twould have utterly obstructed all true learning.”

Horses, in spite of Hearne, were popular among Dons and Undergraduates. The “Female Student,” writing a letter to The Student, summed up the tastes of a Master of Arts as consisting of “the college-hall, the common-room, the coffee-house, and now and then a ride to the Gog-magog-hills.” The now and then was probably accounted for by the expensiveness attaching to the hobby. There were, however, several stable-keepers at the time who, starting with a diminutive capital, retired after a very few years in the business with large fortunes. G. V. Cox, the member of the crew in nankeen trousers, says that it was quite a usual thing “for a gentleman (the Oxford tradesman’s designation of a member of the university) to ride a match against time to London and back again to Oxford (108 miles) in twelve hours or less with, of course, relays of horses at regular intervals. In one instance this was done in eight hours and forty-five minutes.... Betting was, no doubt, the first and chief motive; a foolish vanity the second; the third cause was the absence at that time in the university of a better mode of proving pluck and taming down the animal spirits of non-reading youngsters.... Hunting then, as now, was an expensive amusement, only to be enjoyed by the few, and by them only for a part of the year; racing had not then been thought of ... but a gentleman need not learn to ride like a jockey.”[11]

Sir Erasmus Philipps must, therefore, have been a monied man, for in 1720, when he was a Fellow-commoner of Pembroke, his outdoor sports took the form of fox-hunting, attending cock-fights and horse-races, and riding to Woodstock, Godstow, and Nuneham. Many of the horse-races took place on Port Meadow. Terrae Filius, referring to “that famous apartment by idle wits and buffoons nick-named Golgotha, i.e., the place of Sculls or Heads of Colleges and Halls where they meet and debate upon all extraordinary affairs which occur within the precincts of their jurisdiction,” says that “this room of state or academical council chamber is adorn’d with a fine pourtrait of her late Majesty Queen Anne, which was presented to this assembly by a jolly fox-hunter in the neighbourhood, out of the tender regard which he bore to her pious memory, and to the reverend Sculls of the university, who preside there; for which benefaction they have admitted him into their company, and allow him the honour to smoak a pipe with them twice a week.”

In one of the papers of The Loiterer the writer described how Dr Villars, Mr Sensitive, and himself went for a country walk and talk to Joe Pullen’s Tree. “As soon as we had reached this elevated situation, and cast our eyes over the well-known view, a general silence took place for some minutes. It was indeed a day for meditation. The sun emerging by fits and starts from the grey fleckered clouds which overspread the whole atmosphere, illuminated the projecting points of Magdalen and Merton Towers, and shot its lengthened gleams across the pastures and meads, which extend themselves in a long level to the north of the city, while the woody hills of Wytham, rising boldly from behind a flat country, threw over the whole background a broad mass of dark shadows broken only here and there by a white sail, whose almost imperceptible motion just marked the various turns and windings of the river.... A large party of very dashing men rode by, mounted on cropt ponies, and followed by no inconsiderable number of Tarriers. Of all sorts, sizes, and colours; and as they did not ride very fast, and talked rather loud, we easily discovered that the object of this grand cavalcade had been a badger-baiting on Bullingdon Green; in the event of which combat they seemed greatly interested, and were settling the merits of their different dogs with great clamour, and not without some altercation.” The solemn statutes did not seem to worry those optimistic sportsmen overmuch on that glorious summer day.

Bull-baiting and cock-fighting, both, in their time, exceedingly popular at the university were strongly put down by the authorities. One gathers that it was usual at these affairs to start a free fight after the show, in which the town and gown partisans did their best to kill or maim each other for life. All things duly considered, therefore, it was, perhaps, a wise step on the part of the Dons to forbid such affairs. Dr Rawlinson made a regretful reference to one of these pitched battles: “A great disturbance between the scholars of the university and the townsmen of Heddington at a bull-baiting, at which some scholars were beaten.” Considering the tender years of most of the freshmen it is a matter for great congratulation that they made such good stands against the bullet-headed townees. They could not have done so but for the fact that boxing was much followed among ’varsity men. They were to a large extent keen patrons of the noble art of self-defence, and the chief instructors about the year 1729 were none other than the celebrated Broughton and Figg, who ran a saloon in London. The fact that this boxing academy was far away from Oxford did not preclude the keenest pugilists from journeying up to take lessons. Amhurst came across a crowd of Undergraduates in an Oxford coffee-house one night just after Mendoza had won a famous victory, and he was vastly entertained to hear their keenly excited discussion of every lead and stop and hook and counter and to see them turning and twisting their bodies in pugilistic attitudes in illustration of the professional manner of planting each separate blow. They seemed to know as much about the fight as if they had been present.

In December 1729 the Mayor of Oxford licensed a prize fight to be held in the town. Crowds attended in the assurance of a good morning’s sport, but at the last moment the Vice-Chancellor, a book-ridden, pompous, crusty old curmudgeon, filled with the dignity of his office, appeared on the scene and succeeded in putting a stop to it. It was a miracle that the assembled multitude did not tear his robes off his back and put him in the ring to stand up to one of the bruisers.

In spite of Hearne’s prognostication that the establishment of a fencing academy would be the death of all true learning, an academy was started some years later by a Greek of the name of Paniotti. He was “full of sentiments of honour and courage, and of most independent spirit.” R. L. Edgeworth was a keen pupil of Paniotti, and it was at his school that he became friends with Sir James M‘Donald, who was “one of the greatest scholars and mathematicians of his time.” Their friendship was of short duration, however, as Sir James died at Rome some five years later.

Edgeworth has an interesting story about this fencing establishment. “Mr L., a young gentleman of a noble family and of abilities, but of overbearing manners, was our fellow pupil under Paniotti. At the same school we met a young man of small fortune, and in a subordinate position at Maudlin.

“He fenced in a regular way, and much better than Mr L., who, in revenge, would sometimes take a stiff foil that our master used for parrying, and pretending to fence, would thrust it with great violence against his antagonist. The young man submitted for some time to this foul play, but at last he appealed to Paniotti, and to such of his pupils as were present. Paniotti, though he had expectancies from the patronage of the father of his nobly-born pupil, yet without hesitation condemned his conduct. One day, in defiance of L.’s bullying pride, I proposed to fence with him, armed as he was with this unbending foil, on condition that he should not thrust at my face; but at the very first opportunity he drove the foil into my mouth. I went to the door, broke off the buttons of two foils, turned the key in the lock, and offered one of these extemporaneous swords to my antagonist, who very prudently declined the invitation. This person afterwards showed through life an unprincipled and cowardly disposition.”[12]

While on the subject of fighting it is interesting to note that there were such things as ’varsity “bug-shooters” even in those times, whose keenness was far greater than that of the majority of the O.U.O.T.C., who slack through just sufficient drills to enable them to put in a fortnight’s camping in summer. G. V. Cox says that there were “enrolled about five hundred, commanded by Mr Coker of Bicester, formerly Fellow of New College. Such indeed was the zeal and spirit called forth in those stirring times by the threat of invasion that even clerical members did not hesitate to join the ranks.... Some also of the most respectable of the college servants were enrolled with their masters.... The dress or uniform was of a very heavy character but also very imposing: a blue coat (rather short but somewhat more than a jacket) faced with white duck pantaloons, with a black leathern strap or garter below the knee, and short black cloth gaiters. The headdress was also heavy; a beaver round-headed hat surmounted by a formidable roll of bear-skin or something of the kind.”[13]

Several years after the above incident in Paniotti’s fencing school, an article appeared in The Student. It was a fantastic account of “Several Public Buildings in Oxford never before described” and contained the following:—

“The several gymnasia constructed for the exercise of our youth, and a relaxation from their severer studies, are not so much frequented as formerly, especially in the summer; our ingenious gownsmen having found out several sports which conduce to the same end, such as battle-door and shuttle-cock, swinging on the rope, etc., in their apartments; or, in the fields, leap-frog, tag, hop-step-and-jump, and among the rest, skittles; which last is a truly academical exercise, as it is founded on arithmetical and geometrical principles.”

Skinner, the poet, who sailed his yacht down to Sandford and rowed in Dame Hooper’s boats, seems to have been quite an all-round man.

“If day prove only passing fair
I walk for exercise and air
Or for an hour skate,
For a large space of flooded ground
Which Christ Church gravel walks surround
Has solid froze of late.

“Here graceful gownsmen silent glide,
Or noisy louts on hobnails slide,
Whilst lads the confines keep
Exacting pence from every one
As payment due for labour done
As constantly they sweep.”

His touch of “side” is not unfunny—the graceful ’varsity man is a picture of all culture, while the townee is a lout because he slides on vulgar hobnails. On several of the bard’s sailing expeditions, after they had dined chez Beckley, and duly tipped the girl,

“A game of quoits will oft our stay
Awhile at Sandford Inn delay;
Or rustic nine-pins; then once more
We hoist our sail, and tug the oar.”[14]

He must doubtless have looked down upon his fellow quill driver in The Student as several parts of a fool for thinking rustic nine-pins “a truly academical exercise, as it is founded on arithmetical and geometrical principles.”

Cricket and tennis were not of much account. The Lownger described his going after dinner to tennis, returning in time for chapel

“From the Coffee House then I to Tennis away,
And at six I post back to my college to pray,”

while G. V. Cox, in his “Recollections,” remembered that “the game of cricket was kept up chiefly by the young men from Winchester and Eton, and was confined to the old Bullingdon Club, which was expensive and exclusive. The members of it, however, with the exception of a few who kept horses, did not mind walking to and fro.”[15]

As a rather less strenuous form of exercise than eighteenth-century cricket many men kept themselves fit by walking. Wordsworth points out that “in 1799 Daniel Wilson writes to his father, that very few days passed when he did not walk for about an hour.” This exceedingly gentle form of pedestrianism was only an end of century hobby. Earlier on men seem to have been made of sterner stuff. The Greek Professor at Aberdeen, Dr Thomas Blackwell, wrote to Warburton at Oxford in 1736 to beg him to accompany Middleton and their common friend, Mr Gale, in a tour in Scotland for two months in the summer during the long vacation. “In 1742 Tho. Townson started for a three years’ tour in France, Italy, Germany, and Holland, with Dawkins, Drake, and Holdsworth. On his return from the continent,” the quotation is from Christopher Wordsworth, “he resumed in College (Magdalen) the arduous and respectable employment of tuition, in which he had been engaged before he went abroad. William Wordsworth took walking tours in France 1790-91 (at a time no less awfully interesting than that which the country has now been passing through) before and after taking his degree.” In the first instance he was accompanied by his college friend Robert Jones, with about twenty pounds apiece in their pockets. “Our coats which we had made light on purpose for that journey are of the same piece,” he wrote, “and our manner of carrying our bundles which is upon our heads, with each an oak stick in our hands, contributes not a little to the general curiosity which we seem to excite.”

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A Duck Hunt.

Had they but carried more money and travelled in luxury they would not have been unlike the present-day Rhodes men, whose custom it is during vacation to scour the ends of the earth.

Inter-college and inter-’varsity athletic meetings were undreamed of in the eighteenth century. Because Georgian Oxford men could not boast representative colours, however, is no proof that they were not sportsmen. It would be impossible to find a set of men in any century more ready for deeds of daring do. They rode straight and ate hearty. They broke rules and defied statutes with a zest that suggests anarchism. In spite of wigs and ruffles they sped like hares down back alleys and scaled the high college walls like monkeys to avoid a conversation with the Proctors and their bulldogs. They sallied forth in trencher and gown, the insignia of their allegiance to Alma mater, and in sheer high spirits set themselves to bring about a fight with the jeering townees. Back to back they fought against all odds, recking little of bleeding noses and broken pates. If they drank too freely and encouraged the toasts, the blame was not entirely theirs. They did but follow the fashion of the times. Their password was thoroughness. Whatever they did, they did with all their might. If they rang bells, they made the air hideous until they fell exhausted. If they collected knockers they stripped a whole street before their energy waned. If they slacked they slacked superbly. Without any of the advantages brought about by modern ideas and inventions, our predecessors were sportsmen to the core and just as we to-day employ every moment of our four years to the fullest advantage so did the men who trod Oxford streets in wigs and laces when she was two centuries younger.

CHAPTER VIII

CLUBS AND SOCIETIES

The foregathering fresher—Dibdin and the “Lunatics”—The Constitution Club—The Oxford Poetical Club—Its rules and minutes—High Borlace—The Freecynics and Banterers.

Year by year the places of those who go down are filled by succeeding generations of public school men—men who are more conservative in ideas than the members of any other class of society. Their immediate ambitions are limited to achieving a Blue, capturing the presidency of the Union or winning one of the big university prizes.

They take things as they find them, and very rarely try to launch out on new lines. They early discover that gregariousness is one of the chief characteristics of an Oxford man. They find it exhibited in the extraordinary number of clubs and societies in each college. Their natural conservatism convinces them that as the forming of clubs is co-existent with university life, they must not hesitate to follow the admirable example of their seniors. With the untiring enthusiasm of youth they concentrate their brains and energies therefore to the formation of new clubs—having already become members of a great percentage of the long-founded university clubs which are open to them. They make the epoch-making discovery that many of their members have cut and dried ideas on politics, and that others are big with new theories on social conditions and the education of the masses. Heedless of the fact that in reality these new theories and political arguments have been discussed and thrashed out by thousands of Oxford men before they were born, they begin in their obsession to institute new clubs—political, musical, literary, debating, social, poetical—clubs of all kinds and conditions. They cultivate gregariousness, if it is not already temperamental, as one of the cardinal virtues. They foregather in each other’s rooms nightly, consume tremendous quantities of tobacco, cake, and coffee, and abide feverishly by every rule of the particular society of which they are the founders.

In the eighteenth century the men were just as fond of foregathering; but they laboured under severe disadvantages in connection with the authorities, who looked upon the formation of clubs and societies as something new and consequently revolutionary and dangerous. As an instance of the hide-bound conservatism of the moss-grown powers that were I cannot do better than take the case of Dibdin and the “Lunatics,” a club which was inaugurated at the very end of the eighteenth century. “Several members of several colleges (in the number of whom I was as proud as happy to be enlisted),” wrote Dibdin, “met frequently at each other’s rooms, to talk over and to concoct a code of laws or of regulations for the establishment of a society to be called a ‘Society for Scientific and Literary Disquisition.’ It comprehended a debate and an essay, to be prepared by each member in succession, studiously avoiding, in both, all topics of religious and political controversy. There was not the slightest attempt to beat down any one barrier of university law of regulation throughout our whole code. We were to meet in a hired room, at a private house, and were to indulge in our favourite themes in the most unrestrained manner, without giving ingress to a single stranger. Over and over again was each law revised, corrected, and endeavoured to be rendered as little objectionable as possible. At length, after the final touches, we demanded an interview with the Vice-Chancellors and Proctors; and our founder, William George Maton, of Queen’s College, Messrs Stoddart, Whitelock, Falconer (of Christ Church, Queen’s and Corpus Colleges) were deputed to meet the great men in office, and to report accordingly.

“Dr Wills was then Vice-Chancellor.... He received the deputation in the most courteous manner, and requested that the laws might be left with him, as much for his own particular and careful examination as for that of other heads of houses or officers whom he might choose to consult. His request was as readily complied with, and a day was appointed when the answer of the oracle might be obtained. In about a week, according to agreement, the same deputation was received within the library of the Vice-Chancellor who, after solemnly returning the volume (containing the laws) into the hands of our worthy founder, addressed them pretty nearly in the following words: ‘Gentlemen, there does not appear to be anything in these laws subversive of academic discipline, or contrary to the statutes of the university—but (ah, that ill-omened But!) as it is impossible to predict how they may operate, and as innovations of this sort, and in these times, may have a tendency which may be as little anticipated as it may be distressing to the framers of such laws, I am compelled, in the exercise of my magisterial authority, as Vice-Chancellor, to interdict your meeting in the manner proposed’”—and then one can see him ringing for the servant to show them out, with a polite smile on his fat face, in the usual red-tape manner. As, however, the deputation was prepared for something of this sort they merely retired politely, breathing murders and slaughterings against the archaism of the institution of Vice-Chancellor. Returning to their room, they came to the conclusion that as they did not intend to be beaten “there was, therefore, one result to adopt—one choice left; and that was, to carry the object, so dear to our hearts, into effect within our private apartments in rotation. There we might discuss, debate, and hear essays read ad infinitum; and, accordingly, our first meeting took place in Queen’s College, at the rooms of our founder, afterwards so long and so well known in the medical world as Dr Maton.”[16]

After this preliminary check from the Vice-Chancellor, who, in charity be it said, probably could not help himself, and was only doing his duty according to his lights, the club throve like a bay tree and became exceedingly famous. “Our society was quickly enlarged, and the present Bishop of Llandaff, then a student of Corpus College, and the Rev. John Horseman, afterwards a tutor in the same college, were enrolled members. The two Moncrieffs of Baliol were also among our earlier acquisitions, and some gentlemen commoners of Trinity College (whose name I have forgotten) together with my oldest, and among my most valued friends, Mr Barwis of Queen’s, Mr Gibson (afterwards called Riddell) of Worcester, and George Foster of Lincoln—all united to give strength and respectability to our association. Our meetings were frequent and full. The essays after having been read, were entered in a book; and I am not sure whether, at this very day, such book be not in existence. The subjects of debate usually were, as of old they ever had been, whether the merits or demerits of such a character (Cæsar or Queen Elizabeth, for instance) were the greater? Or whether the good or evil of such a measure in legislation or in politics, the more predominent. Of our speakers, the elder Moncrieff, and George Forster of Lincoln were doubtless the most fluent and effective; especially the latter, who had a fervency of utterance which was at times surprising. But the younger Moncrieff, in course of time, followed his brother, passibus aequis. Taking the art of speaking and the composition of an essay together, I think Mr (now Sir John) Stoddart of Christ Church beat us all. He was always upon his legs, a fearless opponent, and in the use of a pen the most unpremeditating and successful....

“Meanwhile the fame of our club, or society, began to be noised abroad; and those who felt no inclination to write essays, or to impose upon themselves the toil of reading and research for the purpose of making a speech, were pretty free in using sneering epithets, and in stigmatising by nicknames. There was, however, one nickname which we instantly and courageously took to ourselves and adopted—and that was the ‘Lunatics.’ Mad, indeed we were, and desired so to be called—if an occasional deviation from dull and hard drinking, frivolous gossip, and Boeotian uproar, could justify that appellation.”

Undoubtedly the origin of present-day first year societies, which, unlike the “Lunatics,” are nearly always ephemeral affairs, may be found in the recollections of Richard Graves, in which, referring to William Shenstone, he says, “Our more familiar acquaintance commenced by an invitation from Mr Shenstone to breakfast at his chambers, which we accepted; and which, according to the sociable disposition of most young people, was protracted to a late hour; during which, Mr Shenstone, I remember, in order to detain us, produced Cotton’s ‘Virgil Travestie,’ which he had lately met with; and which, though full of indelicacies and low humour, is certainly a most laughable performance. I displayed my slender stock of critical knewledge by applauding, as a work of equal humour, Echard’s ‘Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy.’ Mr Whistler, who was a year or two older than either of us, I believe, and had finished his school education at Eton, preferred Pope’s ‘Rape of the Lock,’ as a higher species of humour than anything we had produced. In short, this morning’s lounge, which seemed mutually agreeable, was succeeded by frequent repetitions of them; and at length, by our meeting likewise, almost every evening, at each other’s chambers the whole summer, where we read plays and poetry, Spectators and Tatlers, and other works of easy digestion, and sipped Florence wine.”[17]

There were many famous clubs in the eighteenth century, each of which had an individuality of its own. Just as the “Lunatics” was literary and debating, the Constitution Club was political and aggressive, the Oxford Poetical Club considered itself really poetical, and the High Borlace was purely social and jovial.

The Constitution Club had its headquarters at the King’s Head Tavern in the High. Its members “included five fellows, a chaplain and four gentlemen commoners of New College, one gentleman commoner and seven others of Oriel, three of Christ Church; Hart Hall, Worcester, All Souls, Merton, St John’s, Trinity, and Wadham contributed at least one member each—usually a gentleman commoner.”[18] The motives of its institution were, according to Amhurst, as follows: “The society took its rise from the iniquity of the times, and was intended to promote and cultivate friendship between all such persons as favour’d our present happy constitution; they thought themselves obliged openly and publickly to avow their loyalty, and manifest their sincere affection to King George upon all proper and becoming occasions, and to check, as much as in them lay, the vast torrent of treason and dissaffection which overflow’d the university. They thought it their duty to show all possible marks of respect to those faithful officers, who were so seasonably sent to that place, by the favour of the government, to protect the quiet part of the king’s subjects, and to suppress the tumultuary practices of the profess’d enemies to his majesty’s person and government; and for constantly adhering to what they thought their duty in those points; and for no other cause, that they can apprehend, they have been so unfortunate as to become obnoxious to the university, and to feel, many of them, the severe effects of their resentments.”

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A Western View of All Souls College.

How much truth there is in this account of the lofty aims and patriotic ambitions of this club, and whether Amhurst was one of the St John’s men who were members, and consequently had his facts first hand, or whether it is merely an account written round one or two of the club’s actions, it is impossible to ascertain. At any rate Amhurst seems to have dropped his sarcasm, and to have written straightforwardly and sincerely on their behalf. So that it is only fair to conclude that they had these objects, more or less, in view. In proof of his statements Christopher Wordsworth tells us that “on the king’s birthday, the 28th of May aforesaid, the whole body of the Constitution Club met together at a tavern and ordered the windows of the house to be illuminated, and some faggots to be prepared for a bonfire. But before the bonfire could be lighted, a very numerous mob, which was hired for that purpose, tore to pieces the faggots, and then assaulted the room where the club was sitting, with brickbats and stones. All the time that the mob was thus employed, the disaffected scholars, who had crowded the houses and streets near the tavern, continued throwing up their caps and scattering money amongst the rabble and shouting, ‘Down with the Constitutioners; down with the Whigs; no George; James for ever; Ormond, Bolingbroke,’ etc.... The Constitutioners thought it prudent to make the best of their way to their colleges for the night. On the Sunday the club met again at Oriel, and were the objects of the indignation of the mob, who thronged the streets at six o’clock. A Brasenose man was wounded by a gunshot fired by one of the Constitutioners, or their friends in Oriel, after which the crowd retired to pull down the conventicles.” (This account of the affair is given as being less biassed than Amhurst’s, which, in substance, is identical, but does not tally in one or two details.)

The fat was consequently sizzling noisily in the fire. The whole place discussed nothing else for days. Prosecutions were hourly made in the Vice-Chancellor’s court. The grand jury of Oxfordshire made a “presentment” in no ordered terms against the Constitutioners, who also met with “unjust and scandalous usage” in St Mary’s, Golgotha, the Theatre, Convocation House, and the Schools, which all rang with “invectives and anathemas against them.... Even those grave tools, the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors, to enliven their dull harangues, and gain the applause of the subordinate rabble, never fail’d, in their most solemn speeches before the convocation, to fall foul and heavy on the Constitution Club.” The noise of the affair reached as far as the ears of the King himself, and “rattling letters” were sent to the Vice-Chancellor.

The Oxford Poetical Club was very famous in 1721. To obtain any accurate idea of its constitution and objects it is necessary to strike the happy mean between the accounts of it which are given by Amhurst and Erasmus Philipps. The latter recorded in his diary that on 17th August of that year he “went with Mr Tristram to the Poetical Club (whereof he is a member) at the Tuns, kept by Mr Broadgate, where met Dr Evans, Fellow of St John’s, and Mr Jno. Jones, Fellow of Balliol, members of the club. Subscribed 5s. to Dr Evans’s ‘Hymen and Juno’ (which one merrily call’d Evans’s Bubble, it being now South Sea Time). Drank Galicia wine, and was entertained with two Fables of the Doctor’s composition, which were indeed masterly in their kind; but the Doctor is allowed to have a peculiar knack, and to excell all mankind at a Fable.”[19]

Amhurst, by no means a respecter of persons, devoted two papers to ridiculing the poetry club, from which I cull the following: “Divers eminent and most ingenious gentlemen, true lovers and judges of poetry, having with great grief observ’d that noble art declining in Oxford (its antient seat and fountain) resolv’d, if possible, to restore it to its pristine vigour and glory. They justly apprehended, both from reason and experience, that a critical lecture, once a term, though never so judicious, was not sufficient; and that the theory of any art was defective without the practice; and, therefore, they thought the best method to forward this design would be to institute a weekly meeting of the finest geniuses and beaux esprits of the university, at a certain place, to be appointed by them, where they might debate the cause of poetry, and put its laws into regular execution. This proposal was immediately assented to; and the next question was, where to meet?

“This occasioned a short debate, some speaking in favour of the King’s Head, and some declaring for the Crown; but they were both opposed by others, who presum’d that the Three Tuns would suit them much better; in which they carry’d their point, and the Three Tuns was thereupon nominated the place of meeting, upon these two proviso’s, that Mr Broadgate would keep good wine and a pretty wench at the bar; both which are by all criticks allow’d to be of indispensable use in poetical operations.”

The alleged cause of this picturesque enumeration of imaginary details was that several poems had appeared at that time in the newspapers with the public sanction of the club. Terrae Filius immediately began to puzzle his brain as to the membership of the club and its intentions. For a time he admitted himself entirely baffled, but at last “chance, almighty chance,” prospered his wishes. As the result of his enquiries he discovered the rules of the society to be:—

“1. That no person be admitted a member of this society, without Letters Testimonial, to be sign’d by three persons of credit, that he has distinguished himself in some tale, catch, sonnet, epigram, madrigal, anagram, acrostick, tragedy, comedy, farce, or epick poem.

“2. That no person be admitted a member of this society, who has any visible way of living, or can spend five shillings per annum de proprio; it being an established maxim, that no rich man can be a good poet.

“3. That no member presume to discover the secrets of this society to any body whatsoever, upon pain of expulsion.

“4. That no member in any of his lucubrations do transgress the rules of Aristotle, or any other sound critick, antient or modern, under pain of having his said lucubrations burnt, in a full club, by the hands of the small-beer drawer.

“5. That no member do presume in any of his writings, to reflect on the Church of England, as by law established, or either of the two famous universities, or upon any magistrate or member of the same under pain of having his said writings burnt as aforesaid and being himself expell’d.

“6. That no tobacco be smoked in this society; the fumigation thereof being supposed to cloud the poetical faculty, and to clog the subtle wheels of the Imagination.

“7. That no member do repeat any verses, without leave first had and obtained from Mr President.

“8. That no person be allowed above the space of one hour at a time to repeat.

“9. That no person do print any of his verses, without the approbation of the major part of the society, under pain of expulsion.

“10. That every member do subscribe his name to the foregoing articles.”

These rules, before finally settled upon, had been fully discussed. A member, by name Dr Crassus, took strong objection to the smoking rule because he was covered with a superfluity of adipose tissue, and held that the use of tobacco “would carry off those noxious heavy particles which turn the edge of his fancy, and obstruct his intellectual perspiration.” He was backed up by a medical friend, and the result was that a special exception was made in his sole favour. A second gentleman said that he could not declare with a “safe conscience” that he was unable to spend five shillings per annum de proprio; but the President ably settled the point by observing that “as God is the sole author and disposer of all Things, we cannot in strict sense, call any thing our own; nor say that we have any visible way of living, our daily bread being the only bounty of His invisible hand, and therefore you may, salvâ conscientiâ, declare that you have no visible way of living; and that you cannot spend five shillings per annum de proprio, though according to vain human computation, you are worth five thousand pounds a year.” The final objection raised, before the rules were at last suitably framed and hung over the mantelpiece in the club-room, was that one of the gentlemen could not subscribe to Rule 10. He could not write, and therefore could not comply with the strict letter of the law. If, however, he could be allowed to make his mark, the whole difficulty could be settled out of hand. This was agreed to without hesitation, “it being truly no uncommon Thing in many an excellent poet.”