feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy brogues aforesaid, raised
embankments, groins, and other bunkers, hazards, and impediments,
formed unnecessary roads, farm roads, bridle paths, and other roads,
on the putting greens, tees, and golf course generally, aforesaid;
excavated sundry and diverse reservoirs, tanks, ponds, conduits,
sewers, channels, and other runnels, needlessly irrigating the putting
greens, tees, and golf course generally aforesaid, and
"Whereas, 3, The said Thomas Rankeillor, etc., has by those large
feet, uncouth gait, and unwieldy brogues aforesaid, caused landslips,
thus demolishing all natural hills, bunkers, and other excrescences,
and all artificial hillocks, mounds, hedges, and other hazards,
"Hereby we, the circumsigned, do request, petition, and otherwise
entreat the aforesaid
"THOMAS RANKEILLOR, GENT, OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, to alter,
transform, and otherwise modify his uncouth gait, carriage, and
general mode of progression; to buy, purchase, or otherwise acquire
boots, shoes, and all other understandings of reasonable size, weight,
and material; and finally that he do cease from this time forward to
wear, use, or in any way carry the aforesaid brogues.
"Given forth this the 17th day of March, 1896."
At times rougher means are employed. At Brazenose there happened to be
two men by the same name, let us say, of Gaylor, one of whom had made
himself agreeable to the college, while the other had decidedly not.
One midnight a party of roisterers hauled the unpopular Gaylor out of
his study, pulled off his bags, and dragged him by the heels a lap or
two about the quad. This form of discipline has since been practiced
in other colleges, and is called debagging. The popular Gaylor was
ever afterward distinguished by the name of Asher, because, according
to the Book of Judges, Asher abode in his breaches.
Not dissimilar correctives may be employed, in extreme need, against
those mightiest in authority. A favorite device is to screw the oak of
an objectionable don. Mr. Andrew Lang, himself formerly a don at
Merton, reports a conversation--can it have been a personal
experience?--between a don standing inside a newly screwed oak and his
scout, who was tendering sympathy from the staircase. "What _am_ I to
do?" cried the don. "Mr. Muff, sir," suggested the scout, "when 'e's
screwed up, sir, _'e_ sends for the blacksmith." At Christ Church,
"The House," as it is familiarly called, much more direct and personal
methods have been employed. Not many years ago a censor (whose office
is that of the dean at other colleges) stirred up unusual ill-will
among his wards. They pulled him from his bed, dragged him into Tom
Quad,--Wolsey's Quad,--and threw him bodily among the venerable carp
of the Mercury Pond. Then they gathered about in a circle, and, when
he raised his head above the surface, thrust him under with their
walking-sticks. Something like forty of them were sent down for this,
and the censor went traveling for his health.
The memory of this episode was still green when the Duke of
Marlborough gave a coming of age ball at Blenheim Palace, and invited
over literally hundreds of his Oxford friends. In other colleges the
undergraduates were permitted to leave Oxford for the night, but at
the House the censor stipulated that they be within the gates, as
usual, by midnight. This would have meant a break-neck drive of eight
miles after about fifteen minutes at the ball, and was far more
exasperating to the young Britons than a straightforward refusal. That
evening the dons sported their oaks, and carefully bolted themselves
within. The night passed in so deep a silence that, for all they knew,
the ghost of Wolsey might have been stalking in his cherished
quadrangle, the glory of building which the Eighth Henry so
unfeelingly appropriated. As morning dawned, the common-room gossips
will tell you, the dons crawled furtively out of bed, and shot their
bolts to find whether they had need of the blacksmith. Not a screw had
been driven. The morning showed why. On the stately walls of Tom Quad
was painted "Damn the Dons!" and again in capital letters, "Damn the
Dons!" and a third time, in larger capitals, "Damn the Dons!" There
were other inscriptions, less fit to relate; and stretching along one
whole side of the quad, in huge characters, the finely antithetical
sentence: "God bless the Duke of Marlborough." The doors of the dean's
residence were smeared with red paint; and against a marble statue of
the late Dean Liddell, the Greek lexicographer, a bottle of green ink
had been smashed. Two hundred workmen, summoned from a neighboring
building, labored two days with rice-root brushes and fuller's earth,
but with so little effect that certain of the stones had to be
replaced in the walls, and endless scrubbings failed to overcome the
affinity between the ink and the literary Liddell. The marble statue
has been replaced by one of plaster.
Compared with the usual Oxford rag, the upsetting of Professor
Silliman's statue in the Yale campus by means of a lasso dwindles into
insignificance, and the painting of 'varsity stockings on John
Harvard, which so scandalized the undergraduates that they repaired
the damage by voluntary subscriptions, might be regarded as an act of
filial piety.
The more I learned of Oxford motives, the less anxious I was to
censure the system of ragging. In an article I wrote after only a few
months' stay, I spoke of it as boyish and undignified; and most
Americans, I feel sure, would likewise hold up the hand of public
horror. Yet I cannot be wholly thankful that we are not as they. To
the undergraduates, ragging is a survival of the excellently efficient
system of discipline in the public schools, where the older boys have
charge of the manners and morals of the younger; and historically,
like public school discipline, it is an inheritance from the
prehistoric past. In the Middle Ages it was apparently the custom to
hold the victim's nose literally to the grindstone. In the schools, to
be sure, the Sixth Form take their duties with great sobriety of
conscience--which is not altogether the case in college; but the
difference of spirit is perhaps justifiable. For a properly authorized
committee of big schoolboys to chastise a youngster who has
transgressed is not unnatural, and the system that provides for it has
proved successful for five centuries; but for men to adopt the same
attitude towards a fellow only a year or two their junior would be
preposterous. Horseplay is a necessary part of the game. The end in
both is the same: it is to bring each individual under the influence
of the traditions and standards of the institution of which he has
elected to be a part. Just as the system of breakfasting freshmen is
by no means as altruistic as it at first appears, the practice of
ragging is by no means as brutal. It is as if the college said: We
have admitted you and welcomed you, opening up the way to every avenue
of enjoyment and profit, and it is for our common good, sir, that you
be told of your shortcomings. The most diligent and distinguished
scholar is not unlikely to be most in need of a pointed lesson in
personal decorum; and the man who was not Asher may be thankful all
his life for the bad quarter of an hour that taught him the difference
between those who do and those who do not abide in their breaches.
With regard to the dons, a similar case might be made. Any one who
assumes an authority over grown men that is so nearly absolute should
be held to strict honesty and justice of dealing. So far as I could
learn, the Christ Church dons who were so severely dealt with were
both unjust and insincere, and I came to sympathize in some measure
with the undergraduates at the House, who were half humorously
inclined to regard the forty outcasts as martyrs.
This is not to argue that all American hazing is justifiable. In many
cases, especially of late years, it has been as silly and brutal as
the most puritanical moralists have declared. To steal the Louisburg
Cross from above the door of the Harvard Library was vandalism if you
wish--it was certainly a very stupid proceeding; and to celebrate a
really notable athletic victory by mutilating the pedestal of the
statue of John Harvard was not only stupid, but unworthy of a true
sportsman. How much better to make an end with painting 'varsity
stockings on the dear old boy's bronze legs, and leave the goody to
wash them off next day. What I wish to point out is that where there
is vigorous public spirit, it may be more efficiently expressed by
hazing than by a very nor'easter of Puritan morality.
A tradition of the late master of Balliol, Jowett, the great humanist,
would seem to show that he held some such opinion. It was his custom
in his declining years to walk after breakfast in the garden quad, and
whenever there were evidences of a rag, even to the extent of broken
windows, he would say cheerily to his _fidus Achates_, "Ah, Hardie,
the mind of the college is still vigorous; it has been expressing
itself." The best possible justification of the cloistral restrictions
of English college life is the facility with which the mind of the
college expresses itself. It is by no means fantastic to hint that the
decline of well-considered hazing in American colleges has come step
by step with the breaking up of the bonds of hospitality and
comradeship that used to make them well-organized social communities.
I have not come to this philosophy without deep experience. On one
occasion after Hall, I was flown with such insolence against college
restrictions that the _cheval-de-frise_ above the back gate seemed an
affront to a freeborn American. Though the porter's gate was still
open, it was imperatively necessary to scale that roller of iron
spikes. I was no sooner astride of it than a mob of townspeople
gathered without, and among them a palsied beggar, who bellowed out
that he would hextricate me for 'arf a crown, sir. I have seldom been
in a less gratifying position; and when I had clambered back into
college, I ruefully recalled the explanation my tutor had given me of
the iron spikes and bottle shards,--an explanation that at the time
had shaken my sides with laughter at British absurdity. My tutor had
said that if the fellows were allowed to rag each other in the open
streets and smash the townspeople's windows, the matter would be sure
to get into the papers and set the uninitiated parent against the
universities. In effect, the iron spikes and the stumps of bottles
are admirable, not so much because they keep the undergraduate in, as
because they keep the public out; and since the public includes all
people who wish to hextricate you for 'arf a crown, sir, my mind was
in a way to be reduced to that British state of illogic in which I
regarded only the effect.
As a last resort I carefully sounded the undergraduates as to whether
they would find use for greater liberty. They were not only content
with their lot, but would, I found, resent any loosening of the
restrictions. To give them the liberty of London at night or even of
Oxford, they argued, would tend to break up the college as a social
organization and thus to weaken it athletically; for at Oxford they
understand what we sometimes do not, that a successful cultivation of
sports goes hand in hand with good comradeship and mutual loyalty.
The only question remaining was of the actual moral results of the
semi-cloistral life. Such outbreaks of public opinion as I have
described are at the worst exceptional; they are the last resort of
outraged patience. The affair at Christ Church is unexampled in modern
times. Many a man of the better sort goes through his four years at
the university without either experiencing or witnessing undergraduate
violence. As for drinking, in spite of the fact that wine and spirits
are sold to undergraduates by the college at any and all times and in
any and all quantities, there seemed to be less excessive indulgence
than, for instance, at Harvard or at Yale. And the fact that what
there was took place for the most part within the college walls was in
many respects most fortunate. When fellows are turned loose for their
jubilations amid the vices of a city, as is usually the case with us,
the consequences to their general morality are sometimes the most
hideous. In an English college the men to whom immorality seems
inevitable--and such are to be found in all communities--have recourse
to London. But as their expeditions take place in daylight and cold
blood, and are, except at great risk, cut short when the last evening
train leaves Paddington shortly after dinner, it is not possible to
carry them off with that dazzling air of the man of the world that in
America lures so many silly freshmen into dissipations for which they
have no natural inclination. This little liberty is apparently of
great value. The cloistral vice, which seems inevitable in the English
public schools, is robbed of any shadow of palliation. A fellow who
continues it is thought puerile, if nothing worse. When it exists, it
is more likely to be the result of the intimate study of the ancient
classics, and is then even more looked down upon by the robust Briton
as effeminate or decadent. The subject, usually difficult or
impossible to investigate, happened to be on the surface at the time
of my residence because of the sensational trial of an Oxford graduate
in London. I was satisfied that the general body of undergraduates was
quite free of contamination. On the whole, I should say that the
restrictions of college life in England are far less dangerous than
the absolute freedom of life in an American college. Under our system
a few men profit greatly; they leave college experienced in the ways
of the world and at the same time thoroughly masters of themselves.
But it is a strong man--perhaps a blasphemous one--that would ask to
be led into temptation. The best system of college residence, I take
it, is that which develops thoroughly and spontaneously the normal
social instincts, and at the same time leaves men free moral agents.
In a rightly constituted fellow, in fact, the normal social life
constitutes the only real freedom. Those frowning college walls,
which we are disposed to regard as instruments of pedagogical tyranny,
are the means of nourishing the normal social life, and are thus in
effect the bulwarks of a freer system than is known to American
universities.
VII
CLUB LIFE IN THE COLLEGE
As a place for the general purposes of residence--eating and sleeping,
work and play--the English college is clearly quite as well organized
and equipped as any of the societies, clubs, or fraternities of an
American university. And whereas these are in their very nature small
and exclusive, the college is ample in size and is consciously and
effectively inclusive; the very fact of living in it insures a
well-ordered life and abundant opportunity for making friends. Yet
within this democratic college one finds all sorts of clubs and
societies, except those whose main purpose is residential, and these
are obviously not necessary.
By far the larger proportion of the clubs are formed to promote the
recognized undergraduate activities. No college is without athletic
and debating clubs, and there are musical and literary clubs almost
everywhere. Membership in all of them is little more than a formal
expression of the fact that a man desires to row, play cricket or
football, to debate, read Shakespeare, or play the fiddle. Yet they
are all conducted with a degree of social amenity that to an American
is as surprising as it is delightful.
The only distinctively social feature of the athletic clubs is the
wine, which is given to celebrate the close of a successful season. A
boating wine I remember was held in a severe and sombre old hall,
built before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. It was presided over by a
knot of the dons, ancient oarsmen, whose hearts were still in the
sport. They sat on the dais, like the family of a baron of the Middle
Ages, while the undergraduates sat about the tables like faithful
retainers. All the sportsmen of the college were invited, and everybody
made as much noise as he could, especially one of the boating men, who
went to the piano and banged out a song of triumph he had written,
while we all tumbled into the chorus. One of the fellows--I have
always taken it as a compliment to my presence--improvised a cheer
after the manner not unknown in America, which was given with much
friendly laughter. "Quite jolly, isn't it!" he remarked, with the
pride of authorship, "and almost as striking as your cry of 'Quack,
quack, quack!'" He had heard the Yale men give their adaptation of the
frog chorus at the athletic games between Oxford and Yale. About
midnight the college butler passed a loving cup of mulled wine of a
spicy smoothness to fill your veins with liquid joy. The recipe, I was
told, had been handed down by the butlers of the college since the
fourteenth century, being older than the hall in which we were
drinking. I have no doubt it was the cordial Chaucer calls Ypocras,
which seems to have brought joy to his warm old heart. After the
loving cup had gone about, the fellows cleared away the tables and
danced a stag. At this stage of the game the dons discreetly faded
away, and the wine resolved itself into a good-natured rag in the quad
that was ended only by daylight and the dean. I have seen many feasts
to celebrate athletic victory and the breaking of training, but none
as homelike and pleasant all through as the wine of an Oxford college.
The debating clubs have of necessity a distinct social element, for
where there is much talk, food and drink will always be found; and
with the social element there is apt to be some little exclusiveness.
In Balliol there are three debating clubs, and they are of course in
some sense rivals. Like the fraternities in an American college, they
look over the freshmen each year pretty closely; and the freshmen in
turn weigh the clubs. One freshman gave his verdict as follows: "The
fellows in A are dull, and bathe; the fellows in B are clever, and
sometimes bathe; the fellows in C are supposed to be clever." The
saying is not altogether a pleasant one, but will serve to indicate
the range of selection of members. In spite of social distinctions,
few fellows need be excluded who care to debate or are clubable in
spirit. As a system, the clubs are inclusive rather than exclusive.
Each club convenes at regular intervals, usually in the rooms of such
members as volunteer to be hosts. The hour of meeting is directly
after dinner, and while the men gather and settle down to the business
of the evening, coffee, port, and tobacco are provided out of the club
treasury. The debates are supposed to be carried on according to the
strictest parliamentary law, and the man who transgresses is subject
to a sharp rebuff. On one occasion, when the question of paying
members of Parliament was up, one speaker gravely argued that the
United States Senate was filled with politicians who were attracted by
the salary. Though I had already spoken, I got up to protest. The
chairman sat me down with the greatest severity--amid a broad and
general smile. I had neglected, I suppose, the parliamentary remark
that I arose to a point of fact. A member's redress in such instances
is to rag the president at the time when, according to custom,
interpellations are in order; and as a rule he avails himself of this
opportunity without mercy. On one occasion, a fellow got up in the
strictest parliamentary manner and asked the president--a famous shot
on the moors--whether it was true, as reported, that on the occasion
when he lately fell over a fence three wrens and a chipping sparrow
fell out of his game-bag. Such ragging as the chair administers and
receives may not aid greatly in rational debate, but it certainly has
its value as a preparation for the shifts and formalities of
parliamentary life. It is the first duty of a chairman, even the
president of the Oxford Union, to meet his ragging with cheerfulness
and a ready reply, and the first duty of all debaters is to be
interesting as well as convincing. In American college debating there
is little of such humor and none of such levity. The speakers are
drafted to sustain or to oppose a position, often without much
reference to their convictions, and are supposed to do so to the
uttermost. The training is no doubt a good one, for life is largely
partisan; but a man's success in the world depends almost as much on
his tact and good sense as on his strenuosity.
The Englishman's advantage in address is sometimes offset by
deficiencies of information. In a debate on Home Rule, one argument
ran somewhat as follows: It is asserted that the Irish are
irresponsible and lacking in the sense of administrative justice. To
refute this statement, I have only to point to America, to the great
metropolis of New York. There, as is well known, politics are
exclusively in the hands of Irish citizens, who, denied the right of
self-government--as the American colonies were denied similar freedom,
I need scarcely point out with what disastrous results to the
empire--the Irish immigrants in America, I say, are evincing their
true genius for statesmanship in their splendid organization known as
Tammany Hall.
In the better clubs, the debates are often well prepared and cogent. I
remember with particular gratitude a discussion as to whether the
English love of comfort was not an evidence of softening morals. The
discussion was opened with a paper by a young Scotchman of family and
fortune. More than any other man I met he had realized the sweetness
and pleasantness of Oxford, and all the delights of the senses and of
the mind that surround the fellows there; and the result of it was, as
it has so often been with such men, a craving for the extreme opposite
of all he had known, for moral earnestness and austerity. What right,
he questioned, had one to buy a book which, with ever so little more
effort, he might read in the Bodleian, while all the poor of England
are uneducated? And was it manly or in any way proper to spend so much
time and interest on things that are merely agreeable? The sense of
the meeting seemed to be that comfort in daily life is an evil only
when it becomes an end in itself, a self-indulgence; and that a
certain amount of it is necessary to fortify one for the most
strenuous and earnest work in the world. I think that debate made us
realize, as we never could have realized without it, to what serious
end England makes the ways of her young men so pleasant; yet the more
deeply I lived into the life of the university, the more deeply I
questioned, as the young Scotchman did, whether the line between the
amenities and the austerities was not somewhat laxly drawn.