OLD OXFORD DAYS
The history of a college like New or Wadham is written clearly on its
walls. It rose by one grand effort, from one grand conception, at the
will of founder and architect. All its future uses were more or less
plainly implied in the quadrangles, chapel, and hall, through which the
opening procession marched with solemn music; they stood in need of
little more than time and good fortune. Such a college was then in a
sense mature, fully armed and equipped, before the founder’s decease.
But it was more characteristic of an Oxford college to be evolved
irregularly, by strange and difficult ways, with much sudden expansion
and decline, into its present state. Thus Lincoln and Oriel were, for a
short time after their foundation, fallow, if not extinct. The latter,
in spite of its renovation by a king, after whom it was at first
inclined to be named, grew up around the humble, illustrious tenement of
La Oriole, where its early scholars dwelt, and whence they gave their
society its lasting name. That cradling tenement has its parallel in
many a college history.
In the thirteenth or fourteenth century some Oxford citizen would build
a pair of cottages, where a carpenter and an innkeeper came to live. At
the inrush of students to welcome a famous lecturer, the spare rooms of
those cottages received their share. Some of the lodgers stayed on,
liked the carpenter and his wife and family, with whom they lived on
terms of social equality; and in a generation the tradition of
entertaining scholars was established. A few years saw the formation of
a colony of students from one countryside or great estate. As the custom
was, they chose a superior from among their number. In those days, if an
American had run upstairs to the head, he might have had a more
satisfactory answer than he had yesterday to his command: “I’ve come to
take rooms in your college!” for the hostel was, roughly speaking, an
hotel. The members fought side by side in the battles of the nations
(viz. Northerners, Southerners, etc.), and of town and gown. They bent
over the same books. They sang the same songs. And together they came to
love the place, the two cottages and those adjacent into which they had
overflowed. Such a group fled from the ancient Brasenose Hall to
Stamford, in one of the University migrations, in 1334; carried with
them the knocker of their lodgings in the shape of a brazen nose, and
fixed it to the door of their “Brasenose Hall in Stamford.” If they
forgot to take it back on their return, it nevertheless “got perched
upon the top of the pineal gland” of the college brain; and with
characteristic spirited piety the descendants of the old hall-men found
it out in 1890, and hung it in a place of honour and safety.
In later life one of the carpenter’s tenants became a bishop, or a royal
almoner. Either at the height of his fame and wealth, or on his
deathbed, he would remember his old retreat, and its associations with
law and Aristotle and
Breed and chese and good ale in a jubbe.
There his old friends or their successors still dwelt, and learned and
taught and fought. So he gave money for the purchase of the cottages; a
neighbouring garden plot, perhaps a strip of woodland outside the walls,
and the rents of some home farms for the revenue; together with the
advowson of a church--if possible the one which he remembered best in
Oxford, or if not, then one within his diocese or influence. He sketched
the statutes, which fixed the number of the scholars and the rules for
electing new ones and a head. He himself chose the first head. The
scholars were to remain unmarried and in residence; to study the Arts,
or Theology, or Canon and Civil Law; and to pray for his soul.
The carpenter’s and innkeeper’s tenants found themselves suddenly
powerful and rich. They had their own seal, and a new and more settled
enthusiasm, and a diapason of duties and ceremonies, added to their
life. They had their aisle in the church whose shadow reached them on
summer evenings. If their estates were large and well managed,--if the
country was prosperous, and the head obeyed the statutes and the fellows
the head,--their progress was swift. Perhaps a legal difficulty
interposed delay, or their rents disappeared. Perhaps the fellows
quarrelled with the head, or the discipline was such that the fellows
climbed into college at late unstatutable hours and became a scandal in
the University. But a descendant or neighbour of the founder, or a
parishioner of the college living, came to their help. One gave a
present, in order that he might be remembered in the college prayers:
another sent books: a former fellow who was grateful or pitiful made a
rich benefaction when he went to court. Already the little original
tenements were tottering or too small. They must build and rebuild. Then
a “second founder” adopted as his children that and all succeeding
generations of scholars, who should praise him for a benefaction larger
than the first.
They pull down the old buildings, all save a flanking wall with a
gateway to their taste, and begin to build. The benefactor sends teams
of oxen to carry wood and stone. They are quarrying at Eynsham and
Headington, and in the benefactor’s own distant county. They are felling
oaks at Cumnor or Nuneham, actually before the bronzed foliage has
crisped to brown. All day the oxen come and go: on the river, the boats
are carrying stone, slates, and wood, unless the frost binds the barges
among the reeds and the foundation soil breaks the spade. The master
mason has already roughly hewn a statue of the patron saint or the
founder, or his
[Illustration: THE LIBRARY, ORIEL COLLEGE
Across the picture, opposite the spectator, appears the Library, a
dignified building of the Ionic order of architecture, designed by James
Wyatt about 1788. It occupies the northern side of the inner quadrangle.
On the ground floor, in the rusticated “basement” upon which the Library
stands, are the Common Rooms of the College.
The time is late afternoon in summer.]
rebus and coat of arms. He has decided that the old doorway shall be the
entrance to the college kitchen, lying far back in the main quadrangle,
which will not only take in the site of the demolished buildings, but
the neighbouring garden and a lane that could be spared. If he is
unfortunate, he may have to stop when he has completed only the
entrance, with the head’s lodgings vigilant above it, and a few sets of
rooms adjacent on either side, already occupied. If all is well, in a
few years, or perhaps at the end of the mason’s life, the shining whole
is the admiration of Oxford. The bishop who is to consecrate the chapel
comes informally to see it a few days beforehand, and is therefore able
to restrain his wonder when he comes pompously with the chancellor and
all the great names of the University. The chapel and hall face the
entrance. All round are the dwelling rooms, on two storeys, if we count
the long-untenanted attics. On one side alone there is twice the space
of the old cottages; but the arrangement is the same--the rooms
branching on the left and right from a staircase that rises from ground
to attic. The library is on a first floor: on one side of it, the
windows invite the earliest light,
Whan that the belle of laudes gan to rynge
And freres in the chauncel gonne synge;
on the other, they enable the late student, who cannot buy light, to
read until the martins cast no shadow as they pass in June: and there
they put the gorgeous Latin poets and missals, embroidered with colours
like the bank of a brook, and along with them the dull works of a
benefactor, in that very corner where the spider loves them to-day. The
fellow who loves sleep will not choose the eastward-facing, library side
of the quad. But they have made it almost impossible for him to
oversleep himself. For in a humbler truckle-bed a younger scholar sleeps
near him. Some rooms contain three beds side by side. Leading out of
this dormitory are little cupboards or studies, sometimes under lock and
key, for solitary work. Most of the walls are ungarnished; a few are
hung with coloured cloth or even frescoed. The furniture is simple and
scanty. The hall itself has but a “green hanging of say,” a high table
for the seniors, and two pairs of forms and tables on trestles for the
juniors. The kitchen is more opulent, with its tall andirons,
chopping-board, trivet, gridiron, spit, and great pot and chafer of
brass, its pans, dishes, and platters; while in the buttery there are
four barrels abroach. Now and then an old member or admirer of the
society sends a group of silver vessels: the most honoured becomes the
loving cup that circulates on gaudy days; and with it goes some
significant toast, as the _jus suum cuique_ at Magdalen accompanies the
“Restoration cup,” on which the names of James II.’s ejected fellows are
engraved. For while the college grows, and sends its just proportion of
astute or learned men into the world, it flowers with customs and
traditions--prayers in the chapel, festivals in the hall,--the Christmas
boar’s head decorated with banners at Queen’s,--the ancestral vine at
Lincoln. At dinner
[Illustration: MAGDALEN COLLEGE TOWER FROM THE MEADOWS
To the left of the picture appear those noble black poplars of which
Oxford is justly proud. The College tower is seen between them and
another group of trees, Magdalen Bridge and the elms in the “Grove”
finishing to the extreme right.
The time is late afternoon.]
the tables shine with flagons and tankards, and great “sprig salts” of
silver plate, which were the main college investment, the pledges of
affection, or, as at Wadham, the customary gift of those who were
admitted to the dignity of the high table. The shining of most was put
out for ever in Charles I.’s melting-pot at New Inn Hall; and only the
lists survive, each tankard and ewer and candlestick described by its
donor’s name.
Thus, by the fact of their coming from neighbour villages and towns,
perhaps also from one school, to a home on which they depended for their
learning and the necessities of life, the fellows and scholars became
knit together, with noticeable characteristics and peculiarities--almost
a family resemblance; and in religious or political difficulties they
made a solid strength of opinion and influence. A little heresy might
break out under Henry the Eighth or Mary. A great benefaction might
encourage the building of another quadrangle or a new library, and the
institution of more fellowships and scholarships. They contributed a
handsome quantity of plate to the king, and an officer to his army; or,
to a man, resisted the Puritan intrusion after his death. Such were the
more conspicuous events of centuries. The conflicts in the University,
according to some proverbial Latin verses, were in early times at least
as important as the boat race to-day. They were a subtle measure of the
state of parties and movements; and in these the college played its
part. And when the days of fighting were over, there was the University
lampoon: “These paltry scholars,” says an old ballad, supposed to be
addressed by an Oxford alderman to the Duke of Monmouth,--
These paltry scholars, blast them with one breath,
Or they’ll rhime your Grace and us to death.
The college was busy in sending out into the world of Church and State
its more vigorous members--those who excelled in the age when
examinations were disputations that sometimes became almost a form of
athletic sport; and in keeping within its walls the quieter spirits, who
were willing to spend a life among manuscripts, in perfecting the
management of the college estates, or in the education and discipline of
others. From a scholarship to a fellowship, and from a fellowship to a
college living, were frequently made the very calmest windings to a
happy decent age, though no doubt the last stage sometimes led to such a
regret as this:--
Why did I sell my College Life
(He cries) for Benefice and Wife?
Return, ye Days! when endless Pleasure
I found in Reading or in Leisure!
When calm around the Common Room
I puff’d my daily Pipe’s Perfume!
Rode for a stomach, and inspected,
At Annual Bottlings, corks selected:
And din’d untax’d, untroubled, under
The Portrait of our pious Founder!
It was a fine thing to sit day after day, in rooms sweetened, as in
Burton’s day, with juniper, or in the college library, which was as a
bay or river mouth leading into the very land of silence--to sit and
write, or not write, as you pleased; and, in the days when books were
no longer shelved with their faces to the wall, look up at
Bullarium
Cherubini
printed in gold upon the glowing calf, and making mystical combinations
as night came on. There, and in hall, chapel, study, and garden, men
doomed to very diverse fates and stations went and still go, and found
it possible to live a more enchanted life than anywhere else.
The refractory Headington stone crumbled, and while the classical
buildings became yearly less handsome than when the masons left them,
the Gothic gained by the rich inlay and delicate waste of weather and
time. As if time and weather wrote the chronicles of the society, the
walls came to have a singular influence upon each generation, and gave
them, as it were, a common ancestry and blood--noble blood, for all.
Even when they departed they had the irrefragable right of exiles to
look back and salute.
And yet how different the life within those walls which some now living
can remember! Sixty years ago, they lament, “no man was ever seen in the
streets of Oxford after lunch without being dressed as he would have
been in Pall Mall.” Charles Reade at Magdalen “created a panic even
among the junior members” by wearing a green coat and brass buttons, as
Dean of Arts. Sixty years before that, George Colman had matriculated in
a grass-green coat, “with the furiously bepowdered pate of an ultra
coxcomb.” And now, says the first-quoted authority, “shooting-jackets
of all patterns, in which it is not given to every man to look like a
gentleman,” have taken the place of frock-coat, tall hat, and gloves,
“in which every one looked well.” The change from knee-breeches to
trousers early last century was made possible by the gross lenience of a
proctor.
Without college or university games, the old Oxford day was very much
unlike our own. Bonfires of celebration, almost alone among modern
amusements, are of great antiquity, in street and quad. A hundred years
ago the man who would now row or play cricket for his college, was
hunting, or pole-jumping across the fields; or, if he was original, he
took the long walks which were popular a few generations ago, but are
now so exceptional that I know nobody who ever saw, and recognised,
Matthew Arnold’s tree, though some are lazily inclined to believe that
it is the one elm that dwells with the seven firs on Cumnor Hurst.
One of the few college games was confined to the fives courts, which lay
within the walls and have long disappeared, and are inconceivable
to-day, when competition and spectators on ground remote from the
colleges are characteristic of Oxford sport. Earlier still, a form of
college game was the “vile and horrid sport” of forcibly shaving those
who were about to become Masters of Arts, and the “tucking” (_i.e._
scratching on the chin with the thumb nail) of freshmen, which the first
Earl of Shaftesbury put down at Exeter. These customs cast but a feeble
shadow to-day in the occasional solemnity of trimming a contemporary’s
exuberant or ill-kept hair. A more appropriate form of celebrating the
taking of degrees was an elaborate supper, which is now less often
possible, when a man frequently takes his degree in solitude and leaves
Oxford immediately. William Paston, in the fifteenth century, writes,
that he was made bachelor on a Friday and had his feast on the Monday
following. He was promised a gift of venison, and though disappointed,
his guests “were pleased with such meat as they had.” Even William of
Wykeham, who forbade every possible game to his scholars at New, and
would not allow the post-prandial leisure to be spent on ordinary days
around the fire in the middle of his great hall, provided that, after
supper, “on festivals and other winter nights, on which, in honour of
God, his Mother, or some other saint,” there is a fire in the hall, the
fellows might indulge in singing or reading “poems, chronicles of the
realm, and the wonders of the world.” Some of the college halls
preserved their old central fireplaces, under a louvre, until early in
the last century. While the fellows dined, a servitor stood there, and
read aloud from the Bible, in the first days of the college; or, as at
Trinity in 1792, recited a passage from Homer or Virgil or Milton.
Southey records it as a rule, that every member of the University could
go by right once a year to Balliol hall, and “be treated with bread and
cheese and beer, and all on condition that, when called upon, he should
either sing a song or tell a story.” Those who were unqualified
doubtless stayed away. Yet there is little sign that the temperate or
secluded undergraduate suffered for his gifts. Whitefield himself, who
cost his relatives £24 for his first three years, and wore “woollen
gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes,” says that the other men left
him alone when “he became better than other people,” as a “singular odd
fellow,” at Pembroke. There was, however, one custom which must have
left such men with a sore memory. For the “fresh night” was long the
common doom of men soon after entering the University. There were fires
of charcoal in the hall on All Saints’ eve, All Saints’ day and night,
and onwards to Christmas day and Candlemas day; and the freshmen were
brought in before an assembly of their seniors among the undergraduates.
Anthony à Wood describes the ordeal thus:--
“On Candlemas day, or before, every freshman had warning given him to
provide his speech, to be spoken in the public hall before the
undergraduates and servants on Shrove Tuesday night that followed, being
always the time for the observation of that ceremony.
“Feb. 15, 164⅞, Shrove Tuesday, the fire being made in the common
hall before five of the clock at night, the fellows would go to supper
before six, and making an end sooner than at other times, they left the
hall to the liberty of the undergraduates, but with an admonition from
one of the fellows (who was then principal of the undergraduates and
postmasters [at Merton]) that all things should be carried in good
order. While they were at supper in the hall, the cook (Will Noble) was
making the lesser of the brass pots full of cawdel at the
[Illustration: THE CLOISTERS, NEW COLLEGE
The great west window of the College Chapel shows above the Cloisters to
the east. The window was painted from designs made by Sir Joshua
Reynolds.
To the right of the drawing is the picturesque group of the Warden’s
Lodgings.
The area of the Cloisters was consecrated as a private burial-place for
the College, 19th October 1400.]
freshmen’s charge; which, after the hall was free from the fellows, was
brought up and set before the fire in the said hall. Afterwards every
freshman, according to seniority, was to pluck off his gown and band,
and if possible make himself look like a scoundrel. This done, they were
conducted each after the other to the high table, and there made to
stand on a form placed thereon: from whence they were to speak their
speech with an audible voice to the company; which if well done, the
person that spoke it was to have a cup of caudle and no salted drink; if
indifferently, some caudle and some salted drink; but if dull, nothing
was given to him but salted drink, or salt put in college beer, with
tucks to boot. Afterwards when they were to be admitted into the
fraternity, the senior cook was to administer to them an oath over an
old shoe. After which, spoken with gravity, the freshman kissed the
shoe, put on his gown and band, and took his place among the seniors.”
Wood himself not only earned pure caudle, but sack as well, with an
oration in this vein:--
“Most reverend Seniors,--May it please your Gravities to admit into your
presence a kitten of the Muses, and a meer frog of Helicon to croak the
cataracts of his plumbeous cerebrosity before your sagacious
ingenuities. I am none of the University blood-hounds that seek for
preferment, and whose noses are as acute as their ears, that lie perdue
for places, and who, good saints! do groan till _the Visitation_ comes.
These are they that esteem a tavern as bad as purgatory, and wine more
superstitious than holy water; and therefore I hope this honourable
convocation will not suffer one of that tribe to taste of the sack, lest
they should be troubled with a vertigo and their heads turn _round_.”
Except at such a special season as that, the old Oxford day bore more
resemblance than our own to the life elsewhere. The fashions in cards
and dress were the same as in London; the outdoor amusements were those
of other town or country gentlemen. There was horse-racing at Spurton
Hill and Brackley, cock-fighting at Holywell. Edgeworth’s contemporaries
attended the assizes, and interfered on behalf of justice, in spite of
sheriff and judge. Anthony à Wood went to fish at Wheatley Bridge, and
“nutted at Shotover by the way.” And early rising was a tradition in
every college until last century. The undergraduate, who to-day lives on
historical principles, is often later than his sixteenth-century
original was to dine, when he sits at his breakfast of steak and XX in a
fine old room. Chapel at six o’clock and a lecture at seven was a common
doom. Shelley and Hogg, after their days spent in shooting at a mark,
and making ducks and drakes and paper boats at a Shotover pond, sat up,
indeed, until two, over their conversations on literature and chemistry,
but rose at seven, because it was customary. While dinner was at ten or
eleven, breakfast was an informal meal. Some attempted to do without it:
hence a morning preacher swooned on the altar steps. Wood speaks of the
juniors “at breakfast in hall” in 1661. The majority took beer and
bread from the buttery, and probably taking it in one another’s rooms,
started the genial custom of breakfast parties, which was perfected
early in the nineteenth century. “Let the tender swain,” says the
well-spiced _Oxford Sausage_, a mid-eighteenth-century product of Oxford
(and Cambridge) wits,--
Let the tender Swain
Each Morn regale on nerve-relaxing Tea,
Companion meet of languor-loving Nymph:
Be mine each Morn with eager appetite
And Hunger undissembled, to repair
To friendly Buttery; there on smoaking Crust
And foaming Ale to banquet unrestrained,
Material Breakfast! Thus in ancient Days
Our ancestors robust with liberal cups
Usher’d the Morn, unlike the squeamish Sons
Of modern Times: Nor ever had the Might
Of Britons brave decay’d, had thus they fed,
With British Ale improving British worth.
The institution of breakfast, whatever happened to British worth, was
certainly helped forward by the tea, rolls, and toast which slowly
ousted ale. Lectures and disputations in private or in the Schools
followed breakfast. The latter possibly encouraged inter-collegiate
sports, since Exeter and Christ Church on one occasion resolved their
disputation into a fight which attracted Masters of Arts. And well it
might; for otherwise they were in danger of dining like fighting cocks
and amusing themselves like doves: the sixteenth-century fellows of
Corpus, for example, were permitted no games but ball in the college
garden. Examinations are still a select and expensive form of
amusement. The stories told of celebrated men and their _viva voce_
conflicts with examiners, and the like, have inspired more than one to
go into the Schools in a mood of smiling irreverence. The fame
resulting, it is true, has to be propagated by much anecdote from the
lips of the hero himself. In the Middle Ages the humour was of a lustier
kind. The parsley crown went, or should have gone, to the most brazen
giver and taker of learned wit. In Anthony à Wood’s day, one William
George, “cynical and hirsute in his behaviour,” was a noted sophister
and disputant, and improved his purse by preparing the exercises of the
dull or lazy for public recitation. The nature of these examinations, in
their dull old age, has been recorded by one who took part:--
“Two boys, or men, as they call themselves, agree to _do generals_
together. The first stage in this mighty work is to produce arguments.
These are always handed down from generation to generation, on long
slips of paper, and consist of foolish syllogisms on foolish subjects.
The next step is to go for a _liceat_ to one of the petty officers,
called the Regent Master of the Schools, who subscribes his name to the
questions, and receives sixpence as his fee. When the important day
arrives, the two doubty disputants go into a large dusty room, full of
dirt and cobwebs, with walls and wainscot decorated with the names of
former disputants, who, to divert the tedious hours, cut out their names
with their penknives or wrote verses with a pencil. Here they sit in
mean desks, opposite to each other, from one till three. Not once in a
hundred times does any officer enter; and if he does, he hears one
syllogism or two, and then makes a bow, and departs, as he came and
remained, in solemn silence. The disputants then return to the amusement
of cutting the desks, carving their names, or reading Sterne’s
_Sentimental Journey_, or some other edifying novel.”
Thus, towards the end of the eighteenth century, “great progress is made
towards the wished-for honour of a bachelor’s degree”; the goal might be
reached, if the undergraduate knew a few “jolly young Masters of Arts,”
by answering questions concerning the pedigree of a race-horse. Such was
the lack of interest in the disputations that they were called “wall”
lectures, after the name of their principal auditor.
A little poaching gave a very attractive substitute for cross-country
running. But increasing college discipline and the heightening average
of wealth and birth among students cut off the more violent sports of
the Middle Ages. The unattached, poor Welsh and Irish students, who kept
up the University name for rough and adventurous relaxations,
disappeared before the Reformation; and after the Poor Law Act of 1531
had condemned begging scholars, who were not authorised under the seal
of a university, to be treated as able-bodied beggars, there can have
been few to poach at Shotover and Abingdon. The masked Mohock revels and
Jacobite struttings of the Augustan age were a poor alternative. The
blithe and fearless spirit of trespassing, so common among
undergraduates, is the sole survival to-day, if we exclude the pious
uprooting of stakes and fences on fields supposed (by reference to
Doomsday Book) to be common land. Before and after the Puritans, who
preferred music in their rooms, there was free access to the acting of
dramas in Latin and English, and earlier still, to the miracle plays of
Herod and Noah and the like. Even during the Commonwealth private
theatricals were popular; and Wood speaks of one John Glendall, a fellow
of Brasenose, who was the witty _terræ filius_ in 1658, when the Acts
were kept in St. Mary’s Church, as “a great mimick, and acted well in
several plays which the scholars acted by stealth in Kettle Hall, the
refectory at Gloster Hall,” etc.
For centuries the ale-houses were full of university life. At one time
there were three hundred in Oxford. They had excellent uses before a
common room perfected the homeliness of the college; and even
afterwards, in the eighteenth century, a poetical club met at “The Tuns”
to display their wit. There the undergraduates freshened and shared
their wit, before each had an ample sitting-room, and before the junior
common room,--where now the newspaper rustles, and the debate roars or
chirps, and the senior scholar, on rare occasions, speaks to a not
wholly reverent college meeting from the time-honoured elevation of the
mantelpiece. The men of Balliol continued the old-fashioned devotion to
the “Split Crow” in Broad Street long after the coffee-house had become
fashionable. The vice-chancellor, being president of the rival and
neighbouring society of Trinity, scoffed at the Master’s
[Illustration: BROAD STREET, LOOKING WEST
On the left of the picture is the enclosing wall of the Sheldonian
Theatre, with its startlingly picturesque thermes. A flight of
semicircular steps leads to an entrance between two of them.
In the first bay of the wall, seen through the palisade fence, is the
old Ashmolean Museum, and farther on is a glimpse of Exeter College. The
spire is that of the College Chapel.
By the large tree standing near the Church of St. Mary Magdalen are the
buildings of Balliol College, and nearer to the spectator is the
entrance to Trinity College and Kettle Hall.
Some of the houses to the right of the picture are fair specimens of
eighteenth-century domestic architecture.
Two or three bicycles are shown, and the time is early noon.]
attempt to discourage them; “so now they may be sots by authority.” The
disorder was winked at because it increased the “natural stupidity” of
the Balliol men of the day. But the attitude of the University towards
humour two centuries ago was a wily mixture of patronage and ferocity.
The _terræ filius_ was only not official in his reckless bombardment of
order and authority at the annual University Act. It was as though a
jackdaw should be invited to church. He and his companion (for they
hunted in couples) were chosen, as regularly as proctors, by election;
and to become _terræ filius_ must have been the blue riband of the
wilder sort of University wits. Year after year pairs of _terræ filii_
fired their random shots at great and small, always with audacity,
sometimes with the utmost scurrility; and year after year one or both of
the pair suffered expulsion, or, like Addison’s father, public
humiliation, for their scandalous and opprobrious words, which no doubt
earned the gratitude of irresponsible juniors.
It was long a common recreation, a recreation only, to go on the river
in a boat, and to row or be rowed to some place of meditation or
festivity, or to go with music and wine upon the Isis to Godstow Bridge
or Sandford--
And there
Beckley provides accustom’d fare
Of eels, and perch, and brown beefsteak.
And the mention of Sandford carries with it many memories for modern
Oxford men, even if perch is not always to be had--of winter afternoons
when the mulled port was as sweet as a carnation, and a voice from a
slowly-gliding barge was the sole sound in all the land. One joyous
company long ago went, “like country fiddlers,” to Farringdon fair, with
cithern, bass viol, and violin. The city itself offered other amusements
than the theatre, music hall, billiard tables, and picture shows of
to-day. Freaks, monstrosities, mountebanks, jugglers, were welcome not
only to undergraduates of fifteen or sixteen. There was “a brazen head
that could speak and answer” at the Fleur de Lace on one day; on
another, strange beasts. On May-day a maypole stood near St.
Peter’s-in-the-East and opposite the “Mitre.” A bear-baiting was always
a possibility. There was a fencing school at hand. One who cared for
none of these has left this account of his Oxford day in the seventeenth
century:--
_Morn, mend hose, stu. Greek, breakfast, Austen, quoque dinner;_
_Afternoon, wa. me., cra. nu., take a cup, quoque supper--_
_i.e._, interprets Wood, in the morning he mended his stockings, studied
Greek, took breakfast, studied St. Augustine, and dined; and in the
afternoon, walked in Christ Church meadows, cracked nuts, took a drink,
and had supper.
Above all, in and after the time of Cromwell the city provided
coffee-houses,--the real, steaming, smoking, witty thing. The
hospitality and spirit of careless intercourse between college and
college which they fostered belong to the present day. They were first
opened, too, at a time when much of mediæval life was
[Illustration: THE HIGH STREET LOOKING EAST
The Mitre Inn is on the left of the picture, and above the white
building rises the tower and lantern of All Saints’ Church. A part of
these buildings has been removed for the extension of Brasenose College.
Farther on, the spire of the University Church appears above the porch
of All Saints’, and a portion of the battlements of All Souls’ College
closes the perspective.]
departing, when Christmas sports were dying, and Latin conversation at
dinner and supper was going out of use; and Anthony à Wood laments that
scholar-like conversation (“viz. by quoting the fathers, producing an
antient verse from the poets suitable to his discourse”) was accounted
pedantic, and “nothing but news and the affairs of Christendom,” he says
scornfully, “is discoursed of, and that generally at coffee-houses.” At
some, perhaps at all of them, there was a light library, which
apparently resembled the library of a modern college barge. A copy of
Rabelais, with poems and plays, all chained in the old manner,
embellished Short’s coffee-house. Later came the _Tatlers_ and
_Spectators_ and _Connoisseurs_, for “such as have neglected or lost
their Latin or Greek,” as Tom Warton said:--
“As there are here books suited to every Taste, so there are liquors
adapted to every species of reading. Amorous tales may be perused over
Arrack punch and jellies; insipid odes over orgeat or capilaire;
politics over coffee; divinity over port; and defences of bad generals
and bad ministers over whipt syllabubs. In a word, in these libraries
instruction and pleasure go hand in hand; and we may pronounce, in a
literal sense, that learning remains no longer a dry pursuit.” And in
Gibbon’s day the dons changed their seats from chapel to hall, and from
common room to coffee-house, in an indolent circle; and not only dons,
but the infinite variety of University types in the distinguishing
raiment of that day--
Such nice distinction one perceives
In cut of gown, and hoods and sleeves,
Marking degrees, or style, or station,
Of Members free, or on foundation,
That were old Cato here narrator
He must perforce have nomenclator.
There, or at an ale-house, which appears to have been less exposed to a
proctorial raid, the sociable spent the Oxford evening, which grew
longer as the nineteenth century approached. Sunday evenings were
frequently devoted to the fair sex in Merton walks, which were always
gay.
My hair in wires exact and nice,
I’ll trim my cap to smallest size,
That _Polly_ sure may see me,
exclaims an eighteenth-century spark, with a hint that the kindly
relations between town and gown sometimes reached the married state. Yet
another writer with an eye for the amusing side of Oxford life drew the
following picture, which a diligent seeker might, with difficulty,
parallel to-day. Gainlove and Ape-all, two Oxford undergraduates, are
talking:--
“_Gainlove._ What, bound for the Port of Wedlock, Sir?
“_Ape-all._ No, no, no, no, Sir; I only use her as a Pleasure boat to
dabble about the stream with, purely for a Passo Tempo, or so. O Lord,
Sir, I have been at London, and know more of the world than to make love
to a woman I intend to marry--only it diverts the spleen to talk to a
girl sometimes, you know--and ’tis such a comedy, when one gallants them
to college, to
[Illustration: THE BOTANIC GARDEN
The Garden is surrounded by a wall, commenced in 1632, pierced by
several noble gateways one of which shows to the left of the picture.
The entrance gateway fronting the High Street was designed by Inigo
Jones.
The Garden is a favourite promenade and spot for rest; Magdalen Tower is
seen to great advantage through its grand trees.]
see all the young Fellows froze with envy, stand centinel in their
niches, like the figures of the Kings round the Royal Exchange. And the
old Dons who would take no more notice of one at another time than a
bishop of a country curate, will come cringing, cap in hand, to offer to
show the ladies the curiosities of the College--when the duce knows they
only want to be nibbling.”
Those who liked not these things had at least as good an opportunity of
quiet work as to-day. A separate set of rooms for each member of a
college had gradually become almost universal in the eighteenth century;
and the great outer door or “oak” shut off those who wished from the
rest of the world. Shelley was so pleased with that impervious door that
he exclaimed: the oak “is surely the tree of knowledge!” The simplicity
of the quarters within, before much of undergraduate social life was
passed in their rooms, would astonish modern eyes, if we may judge from
contemporary cuts, that show a few chairs, a small table with central
leg, a cap and gown on the wall, an inkhorn hanging by the window, a
pair of bellows and tongs by the fire, and over the mantel-piece a
picture or mirror. But there the undergraduate was safe from duns “with
vocal heel thrice thundering at the gate,” and, let us hope, from dons,
in colleges where they came round at nine in the evening, to see that he
kept good hours. Dibdin tells us that, as he closed the _Curiosities of
Literature_, he saw the Gothic battlements outside his window “streaked
with the dapple light of morning.” Ten years later, in the first year
of the nineteenth century, Reginald Heber, then at Brasenose, looked out
from his window and saw the fellows of All Souls’ thundering the “All
Souls’ Mallard” song--
Griffin, Turkey, Bustard, Capon
Let other hungry mortalls gape on,
And on their bones with stomachs fall hard.
But let All Souls men have the Mallard.
Hough the blood of King Edward, by ye blood of King Edward,
It was a swapping, swapping mallard--
carrying torches and inspired with canary as they sang. No one appears
to have heard the song again. And with that sound old Oxford life died
away.
THE OXFORD COUNTRY