Aspects of Modern Oxford, by a Mere Don. Godley Alfred Denis
we find an occasional notice of the ways of undergraduates-here a private memoir, there an academic brochure. We learn, incidentally, how Mr. John Potenger, of New College, made 'theams in prose and verse,' and eventually 'came to a tollerable proficiency in colloquial Latin;' how Mr. Meadowcourt, of Merton, got into serious trouble-was prevented, in fact, from taking his degree-for drinking the health of His Majesty King George the First; and how Mr. Carty, of University College, suffered a similar fate 'for prophaning, with mad intemperance, that day, on which he ought, with sober chearfulness, to have commemorated the restoration of King Charles the Second' (this was in 1716); how Mr. Shenstone found, at Pembroke College, both sober men 'who amused themselves in the evening with reading Greek and drinking water,' and also 'a set of jolly sprightly young fellows … who drank ale, smoked tobacco,' and even 'punned;' and how Lord Shelburne had a 'narrow-minded tutor.' From which we may gather, that University life was not so very different from what it is now: our forefathers were more exercised about politics, for which we have now substituted a perhaps extreme devotion to athletics. But for the most part, the undergraduate is not prominent in history-seeming, in fact, to be regarded as the least important element in the University. On the other hand, his successor of the present century-the era of the Examination Schools-occupies so prominent a place in the eyes of the public that it is difficult to speak of him, lest haply one should be accused of frivolity or want of reverence for the raison d'être of all academic institutions.
His own reason of existence is not so obvious. It was, as we have said, tolerably clear that the mediaeval student came to Oxford primarily for the love of learning something, at any rate; but the student fin de siècle is one of the most labyrinthine parts of a complex civilisation. Of the hundreds of boys who are shot on the G.W.R. platform every October to be caressed or kicked by Alma Mater, and returned in due time full or empty, it is only an insignificant minority who come up with the ostensible purpose of learning. Their reasons are as many as the colours of their portmanteaus. Brown has come up because he is in the sixth form at school, and was sent in for a scholarship by a head-master desiring an advertisement; Jones, because it is thought by his friends that he might get into the 'Varsity eleven; Robinson, because his father considers a University career to be a stepping-stone to the professions-which it fortunately is not as yet. Mr. Sangazur is, going to St. Boniface because his father was there; and Mr. J. Sangazur Smith-well, probably because his father wasn't. Altogether they are a motley crew, and it is not the least achievement of the University that she does somehow or other manage to impress a certain stamp on so many different kinds of metal. But in this she is only an instrument in the hands of modern civilisation, which is always extinguishing eccentricities and abnormal types; and even Oxford, while her sons are getting rid of those interesting individualities which used to distinguish them from each other, is fast losing many of the peculiarities which used to distinguish it from the rest of the world. It is an age of monotony. Even the Freshman, that delightful creation of a bygone age, is not by any means what he was. He is still young, but no longer innocent; the bloom is off his credulity; you cannot play practical jokes upon him any more. Now and then a young man will present himself to his college authorities in a gown of which the superfluous dimensions and unusual embroidery betray the handiwork of the provincial tailor; two or three neophytes may annually be seen perambulating the High in academic dress with a walking-stick; but these are only survivals. Senior men have no longer their old privileges of 'ragging' the freshman. In ancient times, as we are informed by the historian of Merton College, 'Freshmen were expected to sit on a form, and make jokes for the amusement of their companions, on pain of being "tucked," or scarified by the thumb-nail applied under the lip. The first Earl of Shaftesbury describes in detail this rather barbarous jest as practised at Exeter College, and relates how, aided by some freshmen of unusual size and strength, he himself headed a mutiny which led to the eventual abolition of 'tucking.' Again, on Candlemas Day every freshman received notice to prepare a speech to be delivered on the following Shrove Tuesday, when they were compelled to declaim in undress from a form placed on the high table, being rewarded with "cawdel" if the performances were good, with cawdel and salted drink if it were indifferent, and with salted drink and "tucks" if it were dull. This is what American students call 'hazing,' and the German Fuchs is subjected to similar ordeals. But we have changed all that, and treat the 'fresher' now with the respect he deserves.
Possibly the undergraduate of fiction and the drama may have been once a living reality. But he is so no more, and modern realistic novelists will have to imagine some hero less crude in colouring and more in harmony with the compromises and neutral tints of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The young Oxonian or Cantab of fifty years back, as represented by contemporary or nearly contemporary writers, was always in extremes: -
'When he was good he was very, very good;
But when he was bad he was horrid,'
like the little girl of the poet. He was either an inimitable example of improbable virtue, or abnormally vicious. The bad undergraduate defied the Ten Commandments, all and severally, with the ease and success of the villain of transpontine melodrama. Nothing came amiss to him, from forgery to screwing up the Dean and letting it be understood that some one else had done it; but retribution generally came at last, and this compound of manifold vices was detected and rusticated; and it was understood that from rustication to the gallows was the shortest and easiest of transitions. The virtuous undergraduate wore trousers too short for him and supported his relations. He did not generally join in any athletic pastimes, but when the stroke of his college eight fainted from excitement just before the start, the neglected sizar threw off his threadbare coat, leapt into the vacant seat, and won his crew at once the proud position of head of the river by the simple process of making four bumps on the same night, explaining afterwards that he had practised in a dingey and saw how it could be done. Then there was the Admirable Crichton of University life, perhaps the commonest type among these heroes of romance. He was invariably at Christ Church, and very often had a background of more or less tragic memories from the far-away days of his jeunesse orageuse. Nevertheless he unbent so far as to do nothing much during the first three and a half years of his academic career, except to go to a good many wine parties, where he always wore his cap and gown (especially in female fiction), and drank more than any one else. Then, when every one supposed he must be ploughed in Greats, he sat up so late for a week, and wore so many wet towels, that eventually he was announced at the Encaenia, amid the plaudits of his friends and the approving smiles of the Vice-Chancellor, as the winner of a Double-First, several University prizes, and a Fellowship; after which it was only right and natural that the recipient of so many coveted distinctions should lead the heroine of the piece to the altar.
Possibly the Oxford of a bygone generation may have furnished models for these brilliantly coloured pictures; or, as is more probable, they were created by the licence of fiction. At any rate the 'man' of modern times is a far less picturesque person-unpicturesque even to the verge of becoming ordinary. He is seldom eccentric or outré in externals. His manners are such as he has learnt at school, and his customs those of the world he lives in. His dress would excite no remark in Piccadilly. The gorgeous waistcoats of Leech's pencil and Calverley's 'crurum non enarrabile tegmen' belong to ancient history. He is, on the whole, inexpensive in his habits, as it is now the fashion to be poor; he no longer orders in a tailor's whole shop, and his clubs are generally managed with economy and prudence. If, however, the undergraduate occasionally displays the virtues of maturer age, there are certain indications that he is less of a grown-up person than he was in the brave days of old. It takes him a long time to forget his school-days. Only exceptionally untrammelled spirits regard independent reading as more important than the ministrations of their tutor. Pass-men have been known to speak of their work for the schools as 'lessons,' and, in their first term, to call the head of the College the head-master. Naturally, too, school-life has imbued both Pass and Class men with an enduring passion for games-probably rather a good thing in itself, although inadequate as the be-all and end-all of youthful energy. Even those who do not play them can talk about them. Cricket and football are always as prolific a topic as the weather, and nearly as interesting, as many a perfunctory 'Fresher's breakfast' can testify.
The undergraduate, in these as in other things, is like the young of his species, with whom, after all, he has a good deal in common. Take, in short, the ordinary provincial young man; add a dash of the schoolboy and just