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[Illustration: TEA ON THE LAWN AT THE OXFORD UNION (page 63)]
AN AMERICAN AT
OXFORD
BY
JOHN CORBIN
AUTHOR OF "SCHOOLBOY LIFE IN ENGLAND"
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY JOHN CORBIN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published May, 1902_
TO
A. F. C.
PREFACE
By a curious coincidence, the day on which the last proof of this book
was sent to the printer saw the publication of the will of the late
Cecil Rhodes, providing that each of the United States is forever to
be represented at Oxford by two carefully selected undergraduate
students. That the plan will result in any speedy realization of the
ideals of the great exponent of English power in the new worlds is
perhaps not to be expected. For the future of American education, on
the other hand, few things could be more fortunate. Native and
independent as our national genius has always been, and seems likely
to remain, it has always been highly assimilative. In the past, we
have received much needed aliment from the German universities. For
the present, the elements of which we have most need may best, as I
think, be assimilated from England.
Whether or not Americans at Oxford become imbued with Mr. Rhodes's
conceptions as to the destiny of the English peoples, they can
scarcely fail to observe that Oxford affords to its undergraduates a
very sensibly ordered and invigorating life, a very sensibly ordered
and invigorating education. This, as I have endeavored to point out in
the following pages, our American universities do not now afford, nor
are they likely to afford it until the social and the educational
systems are more perfectly organized than they have ever been, or seem
likely to be, under the dominance of German ideals. If, however, the
new Oxford-trained Americans should ever become an important factor in
our university life, the future is bright with hope. We have
assimilated, or are assimilating, the best spirit of German education;
and if we were to make a similar draft on the best educational spirit
in England, our universities would become far superior as regards
their organization and ideals, and probably also as regards what they
accomplish, to any in Europe. The purpose and result of an
introduction of English methods would of course not be to imitate
foreign custom, but to give fuller scope to our native character, so
that if the American educational ideals in the end approximate the
English more closely than they do at present, such a result would be
merely incidental to the fact that the two countries have at bottom
much the same social character and instincts. If Mr. Rhodes's dream is
to be realized, it will probably be in some such tardy and roundabout
but admirably vital manner as this.
At a superficial glance the testator's intention seems to have been to
send the students to Oxford directly from American schools. Such a
course, it seems to me, could only work harm. Even if the educational
and residential facilities afforded at Oxford were on the whole
superior to those of American universities, which they are not, the
difference could not compensate the student for the loss of his
American university course with all it means in forming lifelong
friendships among his countrymen and in assimilating the national
spirit. If, however, the Oxford scholarships were awarded to recent
graduates of American universities, the greatest advantage might
result. The student might then modify his native training so as to
complete it and make it more effective. Now the wording of the
testament requires only that the American scholars shall "commence
residence as undergraduates." This they will be able to do whatever
their previous training, and in fact this is what Americans at Oxford
have always done in the past. The most valuable A.B. leaves the
field of human knowledge far from exhausted; and the methods of
instruction and of examining at Oxford are so different from anything
we know that it has even proved worth while for the American to repeat
at Oxford the same studies he took in America. The executors of the
will should be most vigorously urged to select the scholars from the
graduates of American universities.
The parts of this book that treat most intimately of Oxford life were
written while in residence in Balliol College some six years ago. Most
of the rest was written quite recently in London. Much of the matter
in the following pages has appeared in "Harper's Weekly," "The
Bachelor of Arts," "The Forum," and "The Atlantic Monthly." It has all
been carefully revised and rearranged, and much new matter added. Each
chapter has gained, as I hope, by being brought into its natural
relation with the other chapters; and the ideas that have informed the
whole are for the first time adequately stated.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
I. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE
I. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES 7
II. THE OXFORD FRESHMAN 10
III. A DAY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE 17
IV. DINNER IN HALL 21
V. EVENING 28
VI. THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE 37
VII. CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE 52
VIII. SOCIAL LIFE IN THE UNIVERSITY 62
IX. THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY 74
II. OXFORD OUT OF DOORS
I. SLACKING ON THE ISIS AND THE CHERWELL 81
II. AS SEEN FROM AN OXFORD TUB 96
III. A LITTLE SCRIMMAGE WITH ENGLISH RUGBY 116
IV. TRACK AND FIELD ATHLETICS 132
V. ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SPORTSMANSHIP 145
III. THE COLLEGE AS AN EDUCATIONAL FORCE
I. THE PASSMAN 159
II. THE HONOR SCHOOLS 171
III. THE TUTOR 178
IV. READING FOR EXAMINATIONS 184
V. THE EXAMINATION 190
VI. OXFORD QUALITIES AND THEIR DEFECTS 193
VII. THE UNIVERSITY AND REFORM 200
VIII. THE UNIVERSITY AND THE PEOPLE 206
IV. THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY AND THE
COLLEGE
I. THE UNIVERSITY BEFORE THE COLLEGE 215
II. THE MEDIAEVAL HALL 221
III. THE COLLEGE SYSTEM 223
IV. THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE MEDIAEVAL HALL 231
V. THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN UNDERGRADUATE 236
VI. THE INSIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODERN UNIVERSITY 239
VII. THE COLLEGE IN AMERICA 245
V. THE PROBLEMS OF THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
I. THE SOCIAL AND ATHLETIC PROBLEM 255
II. THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEM 272
III. THE EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM 281
IV. THE AMERICAN HALL 301
APPENDIX
I. ATHLETIC TRAINING IN ENGLAND 313
II. CLIMATE AND INTERNATIONAL ATHLETICS 316
III. AN OXFORD FINAL HONOR SCHOOL 319
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
_Tea on the Lawn at the Oxford Union (page 63)_ _Frontispiece_
_The Hall Staircase, Christ Church_ 22
_Magdalen Tower from the Bridge_ 30
_A Racing Punt and Punter_ 84
_Iffley Lock and Mill_ 90
_The Full Costume of an Eightsman_ 100
_The College Barges: Tubbing in November Floods_ 106
_The Last Day of the Bumping Races of the Summer
Eights (1895)_ 112
_An English Rugby Line-up_ 120
_Throwing in the Ball_ 124
_New College Cloisters, Bell Tower, and Chapel_ 224
_New College Gardens--showing the Mediaeval Wall of
Oxford_ 228
AN AMERICAN AT OXFORD
The great German historian of the United States, H. E. Von Holst,
declares[1] that, "in the sense attached to the word by Europeans, ...
there is in the United States as yet not a single university;"
institutions like Johns Hopkins and Harvard he characterizes as
"hybrids of college and university." In his survey of European usage,
one suspects that Professor Von Holst failed to look beyond Germany.
The so-called universities of England, for example, are mere
aggregations of colleges; they have not even enough of the modern
scientific spirit to qualify as hybrids, having consciously and
persistently refused to adopt continental standards. The higher
institutions of America belong historically to the English type; they
have only recently imported the scientific spirit. To the great world
of graduates and undergraduates they are colleges, and should as far
as possible be kept so.
Yet there is reason enough for calling them hybrids. In the teaching
bodies of all of them the German, or so-called university, spirit is
very strong, and is slowly possessing the more advanced of our recent
graduates and undergraduates. Let us be duly grateful. The first
result of this spirit is an extraordinary quickening and diffusion of
the modern ideal of scholarship, a devotion to pure science amounting
almost to a passion. As to the second result, we may or may not have
cause to be grateful. Our most prominent educational leaders have
striven consciously to make over our universities on the German plan.
We are in the midst of a struggle between old and new forces, and at
present the alien element has apparently the upper hand. The social
ideal, which only a few years ago was virtually the same in England
and America, has already been powerfully modified; and the concrete
embodiment of the new scientific spirit, the so-called elective
system, has transformed the peculiar educational institution of our
Anglo-Saxon people.
We have gone so far forward that it is possible to gain an excellent
perspective on what we are leaving behind. In the ensuing pages I
propose to present as plainly as I may the English university of
colleges. I shall not hesitate to give its social life all the
prominence it has in fact, devoting much space even to athletic
sports. The peculiarity of the English ideal of education is that it
aims to develop the moral and social virtues, no less than the
mental--to train up boys to be men among men. Only by understanding
this is it possible to sympathize with the system of instruction, its
peculiar excellences, and its almost incredible defects. In the end I
hope we shall see more clearly what our colleges have inherited from
the parent institutions, and shall be able to judge how far the system
of collegiate education expresses the genius of English and American
people.
At the present juncture of political forces in America this
consideration has a special importance. The success with which we
exert our influence upon distant peoples will depend upon what manner
of young men we train up to carry it among them. If the graduates of
German institutions are prepared to establish their civilization in
the imperial colonies, the fact has not yet been shown. The colleges
of England have manned the British Empire.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] _Educational Review_, vol. v. p. 113.
I
THE UNIVERSITY AND THE COLLEGE
I
THE UNIVERSITY OF COLLEGES
One of the familiar sights at Oxford is the American traveler who
stops over on his way from Liverpool to London, and, wandering up
among the walls of the twenty colleges from the Great Western Station,
asks the first undergraduate he meets which building is the
university. When an Oxford man is first asked this, he is pretty sure
to answer that there isn't any university; but as the answer is taken
as a rudeness, he soon finds it more agreeable to direct inquirers to
one of the three or four single buildings, scattered hither and yon
among the ubiquitous colleges, in which the few functions of the
university are performed. A traveler from our middle West, where
"universities" often consist of a single building, might easily set
forth for London with the firm idea that the Ashmolean Museum or the
Bodleian Library is Oxford University.
To the undergraduate the university is an abstract institution that at
most examines him two or three times, "ploughs" him, or graduates
him. He becomes a member of it by being admitted into one of the
colleges. To be sure, he matriculates also as a student of the
university; but the ceremony is important mainly as a survival from
the historic past, and is memorable to him perhaps because it takes
place beneath the beautiful mediaeval roof of the Divinity School;
perhaps because he receives from the Vice-Chancellor a copy of the
university statutes, written in mediaeval Latin, which it is to be his
chief delight to break. Except when he is in for "schools," as the
examinations are called, the university fades beyond his horizon. If
he says he is "reading" at Oxford, he has the city in mind. He is more
likely to describe himself as "up at" Magdalen, Balliol, or elsewhere.
This English idea that a university is a mere multiplication of
colleges is so firmly fixed that the very word is defined as "a
collection of institutions of learning at a common centre." In the
daily life of the undergraduate, in his religious observances, and in
regulating his studies, the college is supreme.
To an American the English college is not at first sight a wholly
pleasing object. It has walls that one would take to be insurmountable
if they were not crowned with shards of bottles mortared into the
coping; and it has gates that seem capable of resisting a siege until
one notices that they are reinforced by a _cheval-de-frise_, or a row
of bent spikes like those that keep the bears in their dens at the
Zoo. Professor Von Holst would certainly regard it as a hybrid between
a mediaeval cloister and a nursery; and one easily imagines him
producing no end of evidence from its history and traditions to show
that it is so. Like so many English institutions, its outward and
visible signs belong to the manners of forgotten ages, even while it
is charged with a vigorous and very modern life. A closer view of it,
I hope, will show that in spite of the barnacles of the past that
cling to it--and in some measure, too, because of them--it is the
expression of a very high ideal of undergraduate convenience and
freedom.
II
THE OXFORD FRESHMAN
When a freshman comes up to his college, he is received at the
mediaeval gate by a very modern porter, who lifts boxes and bags from
the hansom in a most obliging manner, and is presently shown to his
cloistral chambers by a friendly and urbane butler or steward. To
accommodate the newcomers in the more populous colleges, a measure is
resorted to so revolutionary that it shocks all American ideas of
academic propriety. Enough seniors--fourth and third year men--are
turned out of college to make room for the freshmen. The assumption is
that the upper classmen have had every opportunity to profit by the
life of the college, and are prepared to flock by themselves in the
town. Little communities of four or five fellows who have proved
congenial live together in "diggings"--that is, in some townsman's
house--hard by the college gate. This arrangement makes possible
closer and more intimate relationship among them than would otherwise
be likely; and after three years of the very free life within those
sharded walls, a cloistered year outside is usually more than
advisable, in view of the final examination. It cannot be said that
they leave college without regret; but I never heard a word of
complaint, and it is tacitly admitted that on the whole they profit by
the arrangement.
The more substantial furnishings in the rooms are usually permanent,
belonging to the college: each successive occupant is charged for
interest on the investment and for depreciation by wear. Thus the
furniture is far more comfortable than in an American college room and
costs the occupant less. Bed and table linen, cutlery, and a few of
the more personal furnishings the student brings himself. If one
neglects to bring them, as I confess I did through ignorance, the
deficiency is supplied by the scout, a dignitary in the employ of the
college, who stands in somewhat more than the place of a servant and
less than that of a parent to half a dozen fellows whose rooms are
adjacent. The scout levies on the man above for sheets, on the man
below for knives and forks, and on the man across the staircase for
table linen. There is no call for shame on the one part or resentment
on the other, for is not the scout the representative of the
hospitality of the college? "When you have time, sir," he says kindly,
"you will order your own linen and cutlery." How high a state of
civilization is implied in this manner of receiving a freshman can be
appreciated only by those who have arrived friendless at an American
university.
The scout is in effect a porter, "goody," and eating-club waiter
rolled into one. He has frequently a liberal dash of the don, which he
has acquired by extended residence at the university; for among all
the shifting generations of undergraduates, only he and the don are
permanent. When he reaches middle age he wears a beard if he chooses,
and then he is usually taken for a don by the casual visitor. There is
no harm in this; the scout plays the part _con amore_, and his long
breeding enables him to sustain it to a marvel. Yet for the most part
the scout belongs with the world of undergraduates. He has his social
clubs and his musical societies; he runs, plays cricket, and rows,
and, finally, he meets the Cambridge scout in the inter-varsity
matches. His pay the scout receives in part from the college, but
mostly from the students, who give him two to four pounds a term each,
according to his deserts. All broken bread, meat, and wine are his
perquisites, and tradition allows him to "bag" a fair amount of tea,
coffee, and sugar. Out of all this he makes a sumptuous living. I knew
only one exception, and that was when four out of six men on a
certain scout's staircase happened to be vegetarians, and five
teetotalers. The poor fellow was in extremities for meat and in
desperation for drink. There was only one more pitiable sight in
college, and that was the sole student on the staircase who ate meat
and drank wine; the scout bagged food and drink from him ceaselessly.
At the end of one term the student left a half dozen bottles of
sherry, which he had merely tasted, in his sideboard; and when he came
back it was gone. "Where's my sherry, Betts?" he asked. "Sherry, sir?
you ain't got no sherry." "But I left six bottles; you had no right to
more than the one that was broken." "Yes, sir; but when I had taken
that, sir, the 'arf dozen was broke." According to Oxford traditions
the student had no recourse; and be it set down to his praise, he
never blamed the scout. He bemoaned the fate that bound them together
in suffering, and vented his spleen on total abstinence and
vegetarianism. It may be supposed that the scout's antiquity and
importance makes him a bad servant; in the land of the free I fear
that it would; but at Oxford nothing could be more unlikely. The only
mark that distinguishes the scout from any other class of waiters is
that his attentions to your comfort are carried off with greater ease
and dignity. It may be true that he is president of the Oxford
Society of College Servants--the Bones or the Hasty Pudding of the
scouts; that he stroked the scouts' eight in the townie's bumping
races, during the long vac, and afterward rowed against the scouts'
eight from Cambridge; that he captained the scouts' cricket eleven;
that in consequence he is a "double blue" and wears the Oxford
'varsity color on his hat with no less pride than any other "blue."
Yet he is all the more bound, out of consideration for his own
dignity, to show you every respect and attention.
After the scout, the hosts of the college are the dons. As soon as the
freshman is settled in his rooms, or sometimes even before, his tutor
meets him and arranges for a formal presentation to the dean and
master. All three are apt to show their interest in a freshman by
advising him as to trying for the athletic teams, joining the college
clubs and societies, and in a word as to all the concerns of
undergraduate life except his studies--these come later. If a man has
any particular gift, athletic or otherwise, the tutor introduces him
to the men he should know, or, when this is not feasible, gives a word
to the upper classmen, who take the matter into their own hands. If a
freshman has no especial gift, the tutor is quite as sure to say the
proper word to the fellows who have most talent for drawing out
newcomers.
In the first weeks of a freshman's residence he finds sundry
pasteboards tucked beneath his door: the upper classman's call is
never more than the formal dropping of a card. The freshman is
expected to return these calls at once, and is debarred by a happy
custom from leaving his card if he does not find his man. He goes
again and again until he does find him. By direct introduction from
the tutor or by this formality of calling, the freshman soon meets
half a dozen upper classmen, generally second-year men, and in due
time he receives little notes like this:--
DEAR SMITH,--Come to my rooms if you can to breakfast with Brown
and me on Wednesday at 8.30.
Yours sincerely,
A. ROBINSON.
At table the freshman finds other freshmen whose interests are
presumably similar to his own.
No one supposes for a moment that all this is done out of simple human
kindness. The freshman breakfast is a conventional institution for
gathering together the unlicked cubs, so that the local influences may
take hold of them. The reputation of the college in general demands
that it keep up a name for hospitality; and in particular the clubs
and athletic teams find it of advantage to get the run of all
available new material. The freshman breakfast is nothing in the world
but a variation of the "running" that is given newcomers in those
American colleges where fraternity life is strong, and might even be
regarded as a more civilized form of the rushes and cane sprees and
even hazings that used to serve with us to introduce newcomers to
their seniors. Many second-year breakfasts are perfunctory enough; the
host has a truly British air of saying that since for better or for
worse he is destined to look upon your face and abide by your deeds,
he is willing to make the best of it. If you prove a "bounder," you
are soon enough dropped. "_I_ shall soon be a second-year man," I once
heard a freshman remark, "and then _I_ can ask freshmen to breakfast,
too, and cut them afterward." The point is that every fellow is thrown
in the way of meeting the men of his year. If one is neglected in the
end, he has no reason to feel that it is the fault of the college. As
a result of this machinery for initiating newcomers, a man usually
ceases to be a freshman after a single term (two months) of residence;
and it is always assumed that he does.
III
A DAY IN AN OXFORD COLLEGE
When a freshman is once established in college, his life falls into a
pleasantly varied routine. The day is ushered in by the scout, who
bustles into the bedroom, throws aside the curtain, pours out the
bath, and shouts, "Half past seven, sir," in a tone that makes it
impossible to forget that chapel--or if one chooses, roll-call--comes
at eight. Unless one keeps his six chapels or "rollers" a week, he is
promptly "hauled" before the dean, who perhaps "gates" him. To be
gated is to be forbidden to pass the college gate after dark, and
fined a shilling for each night of confinement. To an American all
this brings recollections of the paternal roof, where tardiness at
breakfast meant, perhaps, the loss of dessert, and bedtime an hour
earlier. I remember once, when out of training, deliberately cutting
chapel to see with what mien the good dean performed his nursery
duties. His calm was unruffled, his dignity unsullied. I soon came to
find that the rules about rising were bowed to and indeed respected
by all concerned, even while they were broken. They are distinctly
more lax than those the fellows have been accustomed to in the public
schools, and they are conceded to be for the best welfare of the
college.
Breakfast comes soon after chapel, or roll-call. If a man has "kept a
dirty roller," that is, has reported in pyjamas, ulster, and boots,
and has turned in again, the scout puts the breakfast before the fire
on a trestle built of shovel, poker, and tongs, where it remains
edible until noon. If a man has a breakfast party on, the scout makes
sure that he is stirring in season, and, hurrying through the other
rooms on the staircase, is presently on hand for as long as he may be
wanted. The usual Oxford breakfast is a single course, which not
infrequently consists of some one of the excellent English pork
products, with an egg or kidneys. There may be two courses, in which
case the first is of the no less excellent fresh fish. There are no
vegetables. The breakfast is ended with toast and jam or marmalade.
When one has fellows in to breakfast,--and the Oxford custom of
rooming alone instead of chumming makes such hospitality
frequent,--his usual meal is increased by a course, say, of chicken.
In any case it leads to a morning cigarette, for tobacco aids
digestion, and helps fill the hour or so after meals which an
Englishman gives to relaxation.
At ten o'clock the breakfast may be interrupted for a moment by the
exit of some one bent on attending a lecture, though one apologizes
for such an act as if it were scarcely good form. An appointment with
one's tutor is a more legitimate excuse for leaving; but even this is
always an occasion for an apology, in behalf of the tutor of course,
for one is certainly not himself responsible. If a quorum is left,
they manage to sit comfortably by the fire, smoking and chatting in
spite of lectures and tutors, until by mutual consent they scatter to
glance at the "Times" and the "Sportsman" in the common-room, or even
to get in a bit of reading.
Luncheon often consists of bread and cheese and jam from the buttery,
with perhaps a half pint of bitter beer; but it may, like the
breakfast, come from the college kitchen. In any case it is very
light, for almost immediately after it everybody scatters to field and
track and river for the exercise that the English climate makes
necessary and the sport that the English temperament demands.
By four o'clock every one is back in college tubbed and dressed for
tea, which a man serves himself in his rooms to as many fellows as he
has been able to gather in on field or river. If he is eager to hear
of the games he has not been able to witness, he goes to the junior
common-room or to his club, where he is sure to find a dozen or so of
kindred spirits representing every sport of importance. In this way he
hears the minutest details of the games of the day from the players
themselves; and before nightfall--such is the influence of tea--those
bits of gossip which in America are known chiefly among members of a
team have ramified the college. Thus the function of the "bleachers"
on an American field is performed with a vengeance by the easy-chairs
before a common-room fire; and a man had better be kicked off the team
by an American captain than have his shortcomings served up with
common-room tea.
The two hours between tea and dinner may be, and usually are, spent in
reading.
IV
DINNER IN HALL
At seven o'clock the college bell rings, and in two minutes the
fellows have thrown on their gowns and are seated at table, where the
scouts are in readiness to serve them. As a rule a man may sit
wherever he chooses; this is one of the admirable arrangements for
breaking up such cliques as inevitably form in a college. But in point
of fact a man usually ends by sitting in some certain quarter of the
hall, where from day to day he finds much the same set of fellows.
Thus all the advantages of friendly intercourse are attained without
any real exclusiveness. This may seem a small point; but an hour a day
becomes an item in four years, especially if it is the hour when men
are most disposed to be companionable.
The English College hall is a miniature of Memorial Hall at Harvard,
of which it is the prototype. It has the same sombrely beautiful roof,
the same richness of stained glass. It has also the same memorable and
impressive canvases, though the worthies they portray are likely to be
the princes and prelates of Holbein instead of the soldiers,
merchants, and divines of Copley and Gilbert Stuart. The tables are of
antique oak, with the shadow of centuries in its grain, and the
college plate bears the names and date of the Restoration. To an
American the mugs he drinks his beer from seem old enough, but the
Englishman finds them aggressively new. They are not, however, without
endearing associations, for the mugs that preceded them were last used
to drink a health to King Charles, and were then stamped into coin to
buy food and drink for his soldiers. The one or two colleges that, for
Puritan principles or thrift, or both, refused to give up their old
plate, are not overproud of showing it.
Across the end of the hall is a platform for high table, at which the
dons assemble as soon as the undergraduates are well seated. On Sunday
night they come out in full force, and from the time the first one
enters until the last is seated, the undergraduates rattle and bang
the tables, until it seems as if the glass must splinter. When, as
often happens, a distinguished graduate comes up,--the Speaker of the
Commons to Balliol, or the Prime Minister to Christ Church,--the
enthusiasm has usually to be stopped by a gesture from the master or
the dean.
[Illustration: THE HALL STAIRCASE, CHRIST CHURCH]
The dons at high table, like the British peers, mingle judicial with
legislative functions. All disputes about sconces are referred to
them, and their decrees are absolute. A sconce is a penalty for a
breach of good manners at table, and is an institution that can be
traced far back into the Middle Ages. The offenses that are sconcible
may be summarized as punning, swearing, talking shop, and coming to
hall after high table is in session. Take, for instance, the case of a
certain oarsman who found the dinner forms rather too rigid after his
first day on sliding seats. By way of comforting himself, he remarked
that the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Who is to decide
whether he is guilty of profanity? The master, of course, and his
assembled court of dons. The remark and the attendant circumstances
are written on the back of an order-slip by the senior scholar
present, and a scout is dispatched with it. Imagine, then, the master
presenting this question to the dons: Is it profanity to refer by
means of a quotation from Scripture to the cuticle one loses in a
college boat? Suppose the dons decree that it is. The culprit has the
alternative of paying a shilling to the college library, or ordering a
tun of bitter beer. If he decides for beer, a second alternative
confronts him: he may drink it down in one uninterrupted draft, or he
may kiss the cup and send it circling the table. If he tries to floor
the sconce and fails, he has to order more beer for the table; but if
he succeeds, the man who sconced him has to pay the shot and order a
second tun for the table. I never knew but one man to down a sconce.
He did it between soup and fish, and for the rest of the evening was
as drunk as ever was the Restoration lord who presented the silver
tankard to the college.
After hall the dons go to the senior common-room for the sweet and
port. At Trinity they have one room for the sweet and another for
port. The students, meanwhile, in certain of the colleges, may go for
dessert to the college store; that is to say, to a room beneath the
hall, where the fancy groceries of the college stock are displayed for
sale. There are oranges from Florida and Tangiers, dainty maiden blush
apples from New England, figs and dates from the Levant, prunes and
prunelles from Italy, candied apricots from France, and the superb
English hothouse grapes, more luscious than Silenus ever crushed
against his palate. There are sweets, cigarettes, and cigars. All are
spread upon the tables like a Venetian painting of abundance; but at
either end of the room stand two Oxford scouts, with account-books in
their hands. A fellow takes a Tangerine and, with a tap-room gesture,
tilts to the scout as if to say, "Here's looking toward you,
landlord;" or, "I drink to your bonny blue eyes." But he is not
confronted by a publican or barmaid; only a grave underling of the
college bursar, who silently records "Brown, orange, 2d.," and looks
up to catch the next item. Two other fellows are flipping for cigars,
and the second scout is gravely watching their faces to see which way
the coin has fallen, recording the outcome without a sign. Some one
asks, "How much are chocolate creams, Higgins?" "Three ha'pence for
four, sir," is the answer, and the student urges three neighbors to
share his penny'orth. The scout records, "Jones, c. c. 1-1/2d."
The minuteness of this bookkeeping is characteristic. The weekly
battels (bills) always bear a charge of twopence for "salt, etc.;" and
once, when I had not ordered anything during an entire day, there was
an unspecified charge of a penny in the breakfast column. I asked the
butler what it meant. He looked at me horrified. "Why, sir, that is to
keep your name on the books." No penny, I suppose, ever filled an
office of greater responsibility, and I still can shudder at so narrow
an escape. I asked if such elaborate bookkeeping was not very
expensive. In America, I said, we should lump the charges and devote
the saving to hiring a better chef. He explained that it had always
been so managed; that the chef was thought very good, sir; and that by
itemizing charges the young gentlemen who wished were enabled to live
more cheaply. Obviously, when it costs a penny merely to keep your
name on the books, there is need to economize.
After a quarter of an hour in the store the fellows drop off by twos
and threes to read, or to take coffee in some one's room. With the
coffee a glass of port is usually taken. Almost all the fellows have
spirits and wines, which are sold by the college as freely as any
other commodity. If a man wishes a cup served in his room, he has only
to say so to his scout. If one waits long enough in the store, he is
almost certain to be asked to coffee and wine. The would-be host
circulates the room tapping the elect on the shoulder and speaking a
quiet word, as they select Bones men at Yale. If half a dozen men are
left in the store uninvited, one of them is apt to rise to the
occasion and invite the lot. It scarcely matters how unpopular a
fellow may be. The willingness to loaf is the touch of nature that
makes all men kin.
After coffee more men fall off to their books; but the faithful are
likely to spend the evening talking or playing cards--bridge, loo,
napp, and whist, with the German importation of skat and the American
importation of poker. In one college I knew, there was a nomadic
roulette wheel that wandered from room to room pursued by the shadow
of the dean, but seldom failed of an evening to gather its flock about
it.
V
EVENING
In the evening, when the season permits, the fellows sit out of doors
after dinner, smoking and playing bowls. There is no place in which
the spring comes more sweetly than in an Oxford garden. The high walls
are at once a trap for the first warm rays of the sun and a barrier
against the winds of March. The daffodils and crocuses spring up with
joy as the gardener bids; and the apple and cherry trees coddle
against the warm north walls, spreading out their early buds
gratefully to the mild English sun. For long, quiet hours after dinner
they flaunt their beauty to the fellows smoking, and breathe their
sweetness to the fellows playing bowls. "No man," exclaims the
American visitor, "could live four years in these gardens of delight
and not be made gentler and nobler!" Perhaps! though not altogether in
the way the visitor imagines. When the flush of summer is on, the
loiterers loll on the lawn full length; and as they watch the insects
crawl among the grass they make bets on them, just as the gravest and
most reverend seniors have been known to do in America.
In the windows overlooking the quadrangle are boxes of brilliant
flowers, above which the smoke of a pipe comes curling out. At Harvard
some fellows have geraniums in their windows, but only the very rich;
and when they began the custom an ancient graduate wrote one of those
communications to the "Crimson," saying that if men put unmanly boxes
of flowers in the window, how can they expect to beat Yale? Flower
boxes, no sand. At Oxford they manage things so that anybody may have
flower boxes; and their associations are by no means unmanly. This is
the way they do it. In the early summer a gardener's wagon from the
country draws up by the college gate, and the driver cries, "Flowers!
Flowers for a pair of old bags, sir." _Bags_ is of course the fitting
term for English trousers--which don't fit; and I should like to
inform that ancient graduate that the window boxes of Oxford suggest
the very badge of manhood.
As long as the English twilight lingers, the men will sit and talk and
sing to the mandolin; and I have heard of fellows sitting and talking
all night, not turning in until the porter appeared to take their
names at roll-call. On the eve of May day it is quite the custom to
sit out, for at dawn one may go to see the pretty ceremony of heralding
the May on Magdalen Tower. The Magdalen choir boys--the sweetest
songsters in all Oxford--mount to the top of that most beautiful of
Gothic towers, and, standing among the pinnacles,--pinnacles afire
with the spirituality of the Middle Ages, that warms all the senses
with purity and beauty,--those boys, I say, on that tower and among
those pinnacles, open their mouths and sing a Latin song to greet the
May. Meantime, the fellows who have come out to listen in the street
below make catcalls and blow fish horns. The song above is the
survival of a Romish, perhaps a Druidical, custom; the racket below is
the survival of a Puritan protest. That is Oxford in symbol! Its
dignity and mellowness are not so much a matter of flowering gardens
and crumbling walls as of the traditions of the centuries in which the
whole life of the place has deep sources; and the noblest of its
institutions are fringed with survivals that run riot in the
grotesque.
[Illustration: MAGDALEN TOWER FROM THE BRIDGE]
If a man intends to spend the evening out of college, he has to make a
dash before nine o'clock; for love or for money the porter may not let
an inmate out after nine. One man I knew was able to escape by guile.
He had a brother in Trinity whom he very much resembled, and
whenever he wanted to go out, he would tilt his mortarboard forward,
wrap his gown high about his neck, as it is usually worn of an
evening, and bidding the porter a polite good-night, say, "Charge me
to my brother, Hancock, if you please." The charge is the
inconsiderable sum of one penny, and is the penalty of having a late
guest. Having profited by my experience with the similar charge for
keeping my name on the college books, I never asked its why and
wherefore. Both are no doubt survivals of some mediaeval custom, the
authority of which no college employee--or don, for the matter of
that--would question. Such matters interest the Oxford man quite as
little as the question how he comes by a tonsil or a vermiform
appendix. They are there, and he makes the best of them.
If a fellow leaves college for an evening, it is for a foregathering
at some other college, or to go to the theatre. As a rule he wears a
cloth cap. A "billycock" or "bowler," as the pot hat is called, is as
thoroughly frowned on now in English colleges as it was with us a
dozen years ago. As for the mortarboard and gown, undergraduate
opinion rather requires that they be left behind. This is largely, no
doubt, because they are required by law to be worn. So far as the
undergraduates are concerned, every operative statute of the
university, with the exception of those relating to matriculation and
graduation, refers to conduct in the streets after nightfall, and
almost without exception they are honored in the breach. This is out
of disregard for the Vice-Chancellor of the university, who is
familiarly called the Vice, because he serves as a warning to others
for the practice of virtue. The Vice makes his power felt in
characteristically dark and tortuous ways. His factors are two
proctors, college dons in daytime, but skulkers after nightfall, each
of whom has his bulldogs, that is, scouts employed literally to spy
upon the students. If these catch you without cap or gown, they cause
you to be proctorized or "progged," as it is called, which involves a
matter of five shillings or so. As a rule there is little danger of
progging, but my first term fell in evil days. For some reason or
other the chest of the university showed a deficit of sundry pounds,
shillings, and pence; and as it had long ceased to need or receive
regular bequests,--the finance of the institution being in the hands
of the colleges,--a crisis was at hand. A more serious problem had
doubtless never arisen since the great question was solved of keeping
undergraduates' names on the books. The expedient of the
Vice-Chancellor was to summon the proctors, and bid them charge their
bulldogs to prog all freshmen caught at night without cap and gown.
The deficit in the university chest was made up at five shillings a
head.
One of the Vice-Chancellor's rules is that no undergraduate shall
enter an Oxford "pub." Now the only restaurant in town, Queen's, is
run in conjunction with a pub, and was once the favorite resort of all
who were bent on breaking the monotony of an English Sunday. The
Vice-Chancellor resolved to destroy this den of Sabbath-breaking, and
the undergraduates resolved no less firmly to defend their stronghold.
The result was a hand-to-hand fight with the bulldogs, which ended so
triumphantly for the undergraduates that a dozen or more of them were
sent down. In the articles of the peace that followed, it was
stipulated, I was told, that so long as the restaurant was closed
Sunday afternoons and nights, it should never suffer from the visit of
proctor or bulldog. As a result, Queen's is a great scene of
undergraduate foregatherings. The dinners are good enough and
reasonably cheap; and as most excellent champagne is to be had at
twelve shillings the bottle, the diners are not unlikely to get back
to college a trifle buffy, in the Oxford phrase.
By an interesting survival of mediaeval custom, the Vice-Chancellor
has supreme power over the morals of the town, and any citizen who
transgresses his laws is visited with summary punishment. For a
tradesman or publican to assist in breaking university rules means
outlawry and ruin, and for certain offenses a citizen may be punished
by imprisonment. Over the Oxford theatre the Vice-Chancellor's power
is absolute. In my time he was much more solicitous that the
undergraduate be kept from knowledge of the omnipresent woman with a
past than that dramatic art should flourish, and forbade the town to
more than one excellent play of the modern school of comedy that had
been seen and discussed in London by the younger sisters of the
undergraduates. The woman with a present is virtually absent.
Time was when no Oxford play was quite successful unless the
undergraduates assisted at its first night, though in a way very
different from that which the term denotes in France. The assistance
was of the kind so generously rendered in New York and Boston on the
evening of an athletic contest. Even to-day, just for tradition's
sake, the undergraduates sometimes make a row. A lot of B. N. C. men,
as the clanny sons of Brazenose College call themselves, may insist
that an opera stop while the troupe listen to one of their own
excellent vocal performances; and I once saw a great sprinter, not
unknown to Yale men, rise from his seat, face the audience, and,
pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at the soubrette, announce
impressively, "Do you know, I rather _like_ that girl!" The show is
usually over just before eleven, and then occurs an amusing, if
unseemly, scramble to get back to college before the hour strikes. A
man who stays out after ten is fined threepence; after eleven the fine
is sixpence. When all is said, why shouldn't one sprint for
threepence?
If you stay out of college after midnight, the dean makes a star
chamber offense of it, fines you a "quid" or two, and like as not
sends you down. This sounds a trifle worse than it is; for if you must
be away, your absence can usually be arranged for. If you find
yourself in the streets after twelve, you may rap on some friend's
bedroom window and tell him of your plight through the iron grating.
He will then spend the first half of the night in your bed and wash
his hands in your bowl. With such evidence as this to support him, the
scout is not apt, if sufficiently retained, to report a suspected
absence. I have even known fellows to make their arrangements in
advance and spend the night in town; but the ruse has its dangers,
and the penalty is to be sent down for good and all.
It is owing to such regulations as these that life in the English
college has the name of being cloistral. Just how cloistral it is in
spirit no one can know who has not taken part in a rag in the quad;
and this is impossible to an outsider, for at midnight all visitors
are required to leave, under a heavy penalty to their host.
VI
THE MIND OF THE COLLEGE
Any jubilation is a rag; but the most interesting kind, though perhaps
the least frequent, takes the direction of what we call hazing. It is
seldom, however, as hazing has come to be with us, a wanton outbreak.
It is a deliberate expression of public opinion, and is carried on
sedately by the leading men of the college. The more I saw of it, the
more deeply I came to respect it as an institution.
In its simplest if rarest form it merely consists in smashing up a
man's room. The only affair of this kind which I saw took place in the
owner's absence; and when I animadverted on the fact, I was assured
that it would have turned out much worse for the man's feelings if he
had been present. He was a strapping big Rugbeian, who had come up
with a "reputter," or reputation, as a football player, and had
insisted on trying first off for the 'varsity fifteen. He had promptly
been given the hoof for being slow and lazy, and when he condescended
to try for the college fifteen, his services were speedily dispensed
with for the same reason. As he still carried his head high, it was
necessary to bring his shortcomings home to him in an unmistakable
manner. Brutal as I thought the proceeding, and shameful to grown men,
it did him good. He became a hard-working and lowly minded athlete,
and prospered. I am not prepared to say that the effect in this
particular instance did not justify the means.
A series of judicial raggings was much more edifying. Having pulled
their culprit out of bed after midnight, the upper classmen set him
upon his window-seat in pyjamas, and with great solemnity appointed a
judge, a counsel for the prosecution, and a counsel for the defense.
Of the charges against him only one or two struck home, and even these
were so mingled with the nonsense of the proceedings that their sting
was more or less blunted. The man had been given over to his books to
the neglect of his personal appearance. It was charged that in
pretending to know his subjunctives he was ministering to the vanity
of the dean, who had written a Latin grammar, and that by displaying
familiarity with Hegel he was boot-licking the master, who was a
recently imported Scotch philosopher. Then the vital question was
raised as to the culprit's personal habits. Heaven defend him now
from his legal defender! It was urged that as he was a student of
Literae Humaniores, he might be excused from an acquaintance with the
scientific commodity known as H2O: one might ignore anything, in
fact, if only one were interested in Literae Humaniores. By such means
as this the face of the college is kept bright and shining.
Here is a round robin, addressed to the best of fellows, a member of
the 'varsity shooting team and golf team. He was a Scotchman by birth
and by profession, and even his schoolboy days at Eton had not
divested him of a Highland gait.
"Whereas, Thomas Rankeillor, Gent, of the University of Oxford, has,
by means of his large feet, uncouth gait, and his unwieldy brogues,
wantonly and with malice destroyed, mutilated, and otherwise injured
the putting greens, tees, and golf course generally, the property of
the Oxford University Golf Club, whereof he is a member, and