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Ebook has 459 lines and 72411 words, and 10 pages

"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."

"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."

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...."

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 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."

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:--

"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 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 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.

"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 , 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 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."

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRESHER--

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 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...."

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 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 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--

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 , 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 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."

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 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.

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