COLLEGIATE AND SOCIAL LIFE AT THE UNIVERSITY
University and college officers:--chancellor and
vice-chancellor--the senate--graces--proctors--bedells--the master
of a college--the vice-master or president--the fellows--unmarried
and married fellows--the combination room--dons’ clubs--‘Hobson’s
choice’--the dons of last century--classes of
students:--scholar--pensioner--fellow-commoner--sizar--age of
scholars--privileges of peers--position of the sizar--college
quarters and expenses--‘non-colls’--early discipline--jurisdiction
of the university in the town--present discipline:--the
proctors--fines--‘halls’--‘chapels’--town
lodgings--expulsion--rustication--‘gates’--the tutor--academical
dress--cap and gown--the undergraduates’ day--the gyp--the college
kitchen--‘hall’--‘wines’--teas--the May
term--idleness--rioting--modern studies and tripos
entries--athletics--the Union Society--Sunday at Cambridge--scarlet
days--academic terms and the long vacation--multiplication of
scholarships--class from which the academic population has been
drawn and careers of university men:--the Church--the rise of an
opulent middle class--the aristocratic era--English conception of
the benefits of a university--examples of the classes from which
the men have come--recruiting grounds of the university--popularity
of colleges--numbers in the colleges--religion at
Cambridge--Cambridge politics--university settlement at
Camberwell--married dons and future changes.
We have seen that it is of the essence of a university that it should
be both a learned and a learning body, and that from the first the
academic group consisted of “masters” or licensed teachers, and of
scholars maintained on the college foundations. Contemporaneously with
the growth of the college we find at the head of the university a
chancellor, and at the head of the college its principal or
“Master.”[318]
[Sidenote: The chancellor.]
A chancellor was originally a cathedral officer whose business it was to
grant licences to teach.[319] His connexion with schools of learning
seems to be due entirely to the authority which diocesans exercised in
the granting of these licences, especially in the faculties of theology
and canon law. It is then as a bishop’s officer that he makes his
appearance at our universities; at Cambridge as the local officer of the
Bishop of Ely, at Oxford as the local officer of the Bishop of Lincoln.
“The chancellor and masters” of the university of Cambridge are first
heard of together in Balsham’s rescript, in the year 1276;[320] but
Henry III.’s
[Sidenote: A.D. 1275-6.]
letter to the university written six years earlier is
[Sidenote: A.D. 1270.]
addressed to “the masters and scholars of Cambridge university.” It may
then be assumed that before this date the chancellor was still an
episcopal emissary rather than an academic chief, but that from about
this time he began to be chosen by themselves from among the
regent-masters of the university, although with the approval of the
Bishop of Ely. This approval was not dispensed with until in 1396 a
member of the noble family of Zouche became chancellor; and the
chancellor’s independence of the Bishop of Ely for confirmation of his
title was made absolute by
[Sidenote: A.D. 1402.]
Boniface IX. six years later.
[Sidenote: Vice-chancellor.]
The office was annual. The same man, however, was often appointed again
and again, and Guy de Zouche himself had been chancellor in 1379 and
again in 1382. Bishop Fisher who retained the chancellorship until his
death in 1534 was the first chancellor appointed for life.[321] As soon
as it became customary to elect as chancellor of the university some
personage who would be able to represent its interests in the world
outside, a vice-chancellor performed all those functions which before
fell to the chancellor, and the position and functions of the present
vice-chancellor are exactly equal to those of the old academic
chancellor.[322] The first political chancellor succeeded the greatest
of what, for distinction, I have called the academic chancellors of the
university. Thomas Cromwell took the post left vacant by Fisher’s
martyrdom and held it till his own downfall in 1540. The chancellorship
is now held by the owner of a traditional Cambridge name, Spencer
Cavendish 8th duke of Devonshire.
The chancellor is appointed “for two years” or such further time “as the
tacit consent of the university permits.” Under this proviso the
appointment is practically for life. The vice-chancellor is appointed
from among the heads of houses, and the office is annual. In each case
the appointment is in the hands of the senate, or legislative body of
the university which consists of all resident masters of arts and of
those non-resident _M.A.’s_ who have kept their names upon the
university register.
[Sidenote: Senate and graces.]
The meetings of the senate take place in the Senate House and are called
congregations. In these, degrees are conferred and “graces” are
considered; a “grace” being the name for all acts of the senate, or
motions proposed for its acceptance.
Resident members of the senate form the “electoral roll,” and elect the
council.[323] Lastly the executive body consists of the chancellor, the
high steward,[324] the vice-chancellor, a commissary appointed by the
chancellor, and the _sex viri_ who adjudicate on all matters affecting
the senior members of the university, are elected “by grace of the
senate,” and hold their office for two years.
[Sidenote: A.D. 1603.]
The university has sent two members to parliament since the first year
of James I. The exercise of the parliamentary suffrage belongs to the
whole senate and is the one exception to the rule which obliges every
member to record his vote personally in the Senate House.[325] The total
number of members of the senate is 7192; the total number of members of
the university is 13,819, this latter including all bachelors of arts
and undergraduates in residence, and all _B.A.’s_ whose names are on the
books pending their proceeding to the degree of _M.A._
[Sidenote: Proctors.]
After the vice-chancellor no officers are so much in evidence as the
proctors. Their duties are twofold: they conduct the congregations of
the senate, and they maintain discipline among the undergraduates. There
are 2 proctors elected annually, to whom are joined 2 pro-proctors, and
2 additional pro-proctors. The pro-proctors have not the standing of the
proctors as university officials, but they exercise the same authority
over the men.[326] Other executive officers are the public orator, who
is “the voice of the senate”[327]; the university librarian, the
registrary, the university marshal (appointed by the vice-chancellor)
and the bedells.
[Sidenote: Bedell.]
If the proctor is the procurator of the academic society, the bedell is
the executor of its mandates. The bedells attend the (chancellor or)
vice-chancellor on all public occasions, bearing silver maces, and, like
the beadles of all guilds and corporations, they summon members of the
senate to the chancellor’s court.[328] For bedel or bedell is an
obsolete form of beadle retained in the ancient corporations of Oxford
and Cambridge. As a town or parish officer the beadle brought messages
and executed the mandates of the town or parish authority. The apparitor
of a trades guild was also called a “bedel,” and it is, no doubt, as a
guild officer that he appears in our universities and has taken so firm
a footing there.
The bedell was the servant of a faculty, and also of a “nation” in the
continental universities: hence at Cambridge one was the bedell of
theology and canon law, the other of arts. They arranged and announced
the day and hour of lectures. For many centuries Cambridge had an
esquire and a yeoman bedell; but the latter was abolished in 1858.
Apparently the yeoman bedell was not a member of the university, and he
may have been a townsman.[329] The two esquire bedells of the present
day are nominated by the council of the senate, and elected by the
latter body.[330]
[Sidenote: The Master.]
Distinct from the university authorities are the college authorities.
The foremost of these is the Master of each college. This officer used
to be _primus inter pares_, the senior among the fellows or teaching
body of his house. The change to the later “splendid isolation” of the
“Head” is expressed architecturally in the relative positions of the
Master’s lodging, as we can see it to-day in the old court of
Corpus--the simple room leading to the dining hall and the college
garden with a garret bedroom above it--and the palatial dwellings which
in one or two of the colleges no longer form part of the main buildings.
It is one which has a curious chronological parallel with the change
that took place in the relative positions of a cathedral dean and
chapter after the Reformation. The old college Master, like the old
university chancellor, and the cathedral dean, was, officially and
residentially, part and parcel of the body he represented. After the
Reformation all these positions were shifted. The college Master became
in appearance, what the cathedral dean had become in fact, “a
corporation sole,” while the university chancellor was translated to
supra-academic spheres, and no longer resided even in the university
city. “Sixty years since,” writes a present member of the university,
“society at Cambridge was divided broadly into two classes--those who
were Heads and those who were not.” Ludicrous stories are told of the
pride which inflated “the Heads,” who at times resented being accosted
not only by the inferior undergraduate but by the fellows of their own
college. The provost of King’s of just a hundred years ago was referred
to familiarly by his irreverent juniors as ‘Tetoighty.’[331]
Heads of colleges have not only the statutory powers conferred on them
by their college, but as assessors to the vice-chancellor they join with
him in the government of the university. Their powers were largely
increased by the statutes of 1570 which Whitgift procured from
Elizabeth; and in 1586-7 it was decided that the vice-chancellor should
always be chosen from their number.[332] The modern “Head” emulates the
old academic Master, is _primus inter pares_ amongst his fellow
collegians, and is no longer dreadful to his juniors.
There are only two exceptions to the title of Master held by all heads
of colleges. The head of King’s College, like the head of Eton, is
styled Provost, and the head of Queens’ College is styled
President.[333]
The vice-master is called the president. His position is like that of a
prior under an abbot, or a subprior in a priory: the one representing
the college outside and ruling over the community, the other ruling in
the house and having the authority in all which concerns its management.
With the Master and vice-Master are associated the fellows, the dean,
the tutors, lecturers, chaplains, and the bursar.[334]
[Illustration: THE LAKE IN BOTANIC GARDENS
Many different kinds of trees surround this winding water, the banks of
which are lined with a variety of rushes and reeds, and are inhabited by
many sorts of water-fowl.]
[Sidenote: Fellows.]
“I can never remember the time when it was not diligently impressed upon
me that, if I minded my syntax, I might eventually hope to reach a
position which would give me three hundred pounds a year, a stable for
my horse, six dozen of audit ale every Christmas, a loaf and two pats of
butter every morning, and a good dinner for nothing, with as many
almonds and raisins as I could eat at dessert,” writes Trevelyan in his
“Life and Letters” of Macaulay whose appreciation of a Cambridge
fellowship fell nothing short of reverence.
The fellows are the foundation graduates, as the scholars are the
foundation undergraduates of a college. They are more; they are,
corporately, its masters and owners. Financially, a fellowship is
represented by the dividend on the surplus revenue of a college.[335] As
this surplus revenue varies while the fellows are a fixed number, the
value of fellowships varies, but may not now exceed £250 a year. A
fellow enjoys as a rule other emoluments, as tutor, lecturer, librarian,
bursar, of his college, so that his pecuniary position is by no means
represented by the value of the simple fellowship. All fellowships are
now bestowed for a term of years; life fellowships being held by those
only who are on the staff of their college, who have served it, that is,
in a tutorial or other official capacity.
[Sidenote: Married and unmarried fellows.]
Until the last quarter of the xix century fellows had to be bachelors.
The rule against married officials was first relaxed, after the
Reformation, in favour of heads of houses; Dr. Heynes, President of
Queens’ in 1529, having been the first married Master.[336] Fifty years
later the fellows of King’s complained that the wife of their provost
had been seen taking the air on the sacred grass of the college court,
where, nevertheless, her husband declared she could not have set her
foot twice in her life. Early in George III.’s reign a movement was
afoot among the fellows of a different character: in 1766 Betham of
King’s writes to Cole that the university had been in a most violent
flame: “young and old have formed a resolution of marrying”; “the scheme
is--a wife and a fellowship with her.” In the “sixties” certain colleges
began to admit married fellows, while in others a fellow might marry if
he held university office, as professor or librarian. No fellowship
nowadays is confined to unmarried men.
This is one of three radical changes which the university has undergone
in the last thirty years. The abolition of the Religious Test Act which
severed the strict connexion of our universities with the Church of
England, the marriage of fellows, and the appointment of men not in
clerical orders to fill the chief university and college offices, have
gradually changed the face of university life, secularising it and
socialising it, bestowing on it, definitely, a lay and undenominational
character which is perhaps not so far from its primitive ideal as
sticklers for the connexion of the universities with the Church would
have us believe. It is no longer an advantage to be in orders at
Cambridge: they do not help you to a fellowship for this is given to the
best man in open competition; even heads of colleges need no longer be
clergymen, and only one collegiate office, that of the dean, is still
preferably bestowed on a parson. The results are curious. Clerical
fellows are popular, but theology is a neglected subject in the big
colleges and the theological chairs are not centres of influence. At the
same time every college enjoys clerical patronage, which can be
exercised in favour of its deserving sons; and every college, besides
its dean, appoints chaplains for the maintenance of the chapel
services.[337] Clerical fellows, it is true, are now in a minority, but
there seems to be no reason why the clerical don should cease to abound,
as he has always abounded, in our university cities. A university
education has become more not less valuable for a clergyman now that it
enables him to meet men whose beliefs differ widely from his own; now
that the right to display an academic hood in church is no longer prized
as its chief advantage.[338]
[Sidenote: The combination room.]
Among the ‘dons’ the centre of social life has always been the
combination room. It represents that pledge of civilisation the
with-drawing-room, the room contiguous to the banqueting-hall, where the
pleasures of the spirit steal an advantage over the pleasures of the
table. The rudeness which marked the period of the early renascence,
from court to convent, in England, clung also to our academic life, and
it is not till the last quarter of the xvi century that we find the
fellows first provided with table napkins, and learn that the
enterprising college which made the innovation exacted a fine of a penny
from those who continued to wipe their fingers on the tablecloth. The
temptation to this latter practice must indeed have been great; for the
fork which made its appearance at the dawn of the renascence in France
was unknown in England two hundred years later. It is only in the course
of the next, the xviith, century that the combination room emerges as a
more or less luxurious apartment; the subsequent addition of newspapers,
magazines, and easy chairs marking in turn the rise of journalism and
the higher standard of comfort. The dons of Charles II.’s time who had
to be content with the “London Gazette” supplemented the lack of news by
social clubs. “The Ugly Faces” club dined periodically in what was then
the ugliest of college halls--Clare. “The Old Maids’ Club” flourished
in the early xix century, with Baker the antiquary, Tonstall, and
Conyers Middleton as members. The first “news letter” was however laid
on the table of Kirk’s coffee-house in Charles’s reign. The first
flying-coach, following the example of Oxford which had run a coach to
London in one day, sped to the Capital in 1671.[339]
When the xix century opened there was no general society in Cambridge.
It was more out of the way of polite England than Oxford, and many dons
whose homes were at a distance spent the whole year in their colleges,
emphasising the faults and therefore detracting from the virtues of
small learned societies. The dons in the xvi century, say at S. John’s
College, had been a brilliant company who bestowed as much on the
Elizabethan age as they took from it: but the xviii century closed upon
a period of dulness and reaction, in which the rudeness of material
civilisation met a social uncouthness little calculated to recall the
university of Spenser, of Burleigh, of Bacon. The intimacy between the
fellows and their head was a thing of the past; the familiarity between
scholar and don had been replaced by “donnishness” which kept the
undergraduate at arm’s length; the blight of the artificial and stilted,
the sterile and pompous aristocratism of just a century ago had settled
down upon the university. Isolated in this eastern corner of England,
just before the enormous impulse to travelling brought by railways, just
after the cosmopolitan spirit which took even the Englishman abroad--the
sense of a debt to Italy, of a continental comradeship--had finally
ceased to exist, Cambridge dons at the dawn of the xix century had
perhaps fathomed the lowest social depths. But before this century
passed a social change more wonderful than the material changes around
them metamorphosed university society. The unmannerly don married; and
the sex which makes society, the sex which suffers no social
deterioration when left to its own devices--the aristocratic sex--was
introduced as the don’s helpmeet. More still--worse still--she was
introduced in the same quarter of a century as what the weak-kneed among
us cry out upon--his rival. It is the same donnish bachelor, separated
by a gulph from the social amenities, wedded to ingrained habits and
some eradicable prejudices, who suffered women to come to Cambridge and
take what they could of the intellectual advantages he himself enjoyed.
The historian of the great movements of the age we live in will record
with interest this proof of the traditional open-mindedness which has
never deserted the Cantabrigian, which has never failed to respond to
the sacred dual claims of the age and the intellect.
[Illustration: PARKER’S PIECE
This large open space in the centre of Cambridge is one of the Town’s
playgrounds. In the distance is the Roman Catholic Church, and the
boundary wall of the Perse Grammar School, just behind the trees on the
left.]
[Sidenote: Classes of students.]
The learned body which congregates in the combination rooms is the
_ecclesia docens_ of the university; the learning body--the _ecclesia
discens_--includes all members of the university below the degree of
_M.A._, and is divided into four or five classes. The most important of
these from the academic point of view is the scholar, and for at least
two centuries after colleges were built the only resident students were
these students on the foundation.[340] To them were joined in course of
time the _pensioners_, youths who paid for their board and lodging, the
class which now makes up the great majority of undergraduates. Two other
classes were added. The peers and eldest sons of peers with other
_fellow-commoners_--a class which has fallen into practical desuetude
but is not obsolete--and the _sizars_. The peers enjoyed some privileges
which would not be coveted nowadays--they could make themselves
conspicuous on all occasions by their clothing, and they could take a
degree without working for it. The younger sons of peers and the richer
undergraduates also messed at the fellows’ table, and were therefore
called “fellow-commoners”: the advantages of this arrangement did not
end with the better treatment in hall, for the companionship of the
fellows and seniors of his college must have proved a welcome stimulus
to an intelligent young man.[341] Lastly, there were and are the
“sizars,” the poorer students, not on the foundation of the college, who
pay smaller fees and receive their commons gratis.[342] The sizar of
fifty years ago used to wait on the fellows at dinner and dine off the
broken victuals, reinforced by fresh vegetables and pudding.
When Macaulay summed the advantages of a Cambridge fellowship he omitted
perhaps the chief, the college residence which like “the good dinner” is
to be had “for nothing.” Fellows and scholars receive their college
quarters gratis; but the rest of the undergraduate population pays for
its lodging. It is housed in its 17 colleges, the new hostels which are
springing up on all sides, and the licensed lodgings in the town. The
cost of the college bed and sitting room a term varies from £3 to three
times this sum. Service adds £2 or £3 a term. Small lodgings with
service can be had in the less good streets for £5-£7; good rooms from
£8 to £10, while more than £12 is only charged in the best positions, or
near the big colleges. The expense of college rooms is augmented by the
prepayments for furniture (the average valuation of the permanent
furniture is £20, but the sum may be as low as £10 or as high as £40),
by the “caution money,” about £15, returned at the end of the term of
residence, the admission fee (varying with the college from 6/8 to £5)
and the matriculation fee £5. During residence there is also an annual
payment of £9-15 towards the upkeep of the college and its servants,
and the tuition fee, which covers all lectures in one’s own college, and
varies from £18 to £24 a year.
It was to obviate the necessity of paying these fees that the system of
non-collegiate students, familiarly called “non-colls,” was devised in
1869. While the expenses of an undergraduate who is a member of a
college average about £165 a year, £60 in excess of this and £60 less
representing the higher scale of expenses on the one hand and the
minimum on the other, the undergraduate who lives in lodgings and _is
not a member of any college_ can live for £78 a year (if he does not
require “coaching” or private tuition which costs about £9 a term) and
it is just possible to take the _B.A._ degree after a three years’
residence which has cost you at the rate of £55 a year.
Fifty years ago the minimum cost of living at Cambridge for a pensioner
was £150 and double this sum involved no extravagant outlay. A
fellow-commoner required £800 a year and could not live on less than
£500. These were the aristocratic days of English universities and they
were in sharp contrast to the time when scholars were poor, begged their
way to and from college, and were included among vagabonds in the
statute of 1380 directed against mendicancy. But the entertainment in
those days was also widely different. Two fellows shared not only a room
but a bed, or a two-bedded room would be shared by a fellow and two poor
scholars. It was not till the xvi century that each fellow had a bed to
himself and a room to himself if space permitted.[343] The dining hall
was a comfortless room where rude fare was served at a tresselled board
to guests who sat upon wooden stools. The conditions of the xiii and xiv
centuries were not greatly bettered in the xvth and xvith, and Erasmus
found it hard to stomach the fare at Queens’ College at a time when the
Cambridge ale appears to have been no improvement on the “wine no better
than vinegar” which came from the surrounding vineyards.
[Sidenote: Early discipline.]
The little lads who thronged the streets of Cambridge in the xiii
century were under little or no discipline. They ran up debts with the
Jews, who had established themselves there in the opening years of the
previous century, fought the townsmen, and had few duties to society
beyond making their own beds, a work certainly performed by university
scholars in the xiii and xiv centuries and enjoined on the boys of the
famous schools founded in the xvth. It was this custom of doing your own
work, at least until you became an advanced student when the little boys
did it for you, which was the origin of “fagging” in our two most
ancient schools connected respectively with our two universities--Eton
and Winchester.[344] Even this amount of work, however, was not expected
of fellow-commoners in the xvi century, who frequently got out of hand,
though few of them have left us so delightful a reminder of their
misdeeds as the young Earl of Rutland has done in a letter to his
mother who had complained of his behaviour: “I do aseure your Ladyship
that the cariage of myselfe both towardes God and my booke, my
comeliness in diet and gesture, shall be such as your Ladyship shall
hear and like well of.”
With the great era of college building in the succeeding century, the
founders’ statutes make their appearance; and in days when monks were
birched and nuns were slapped the college stocks held in durance vile
the fellow who had presumed to bathe in any stream or pool of
Cambridgeshire, while the college hall resounded to the strokes of the
birch which visited the scholar for the same offence. College discipline
was supplemented by university discipline, and the academic authorities
shared legal powers with the town authorities until recently. The
jurisdiction of the university extended not only to matters affecting
its members, but to a _conusance_ in actions which affected the
townsmen.[345] The last attempt to exercise the right of imprisoning
undesirable characters in the “Spinning House” was made by the
vice-chancellor in 1893; but the incarceration of a young woman on this
occasion caused so much indignation in the town that it led to the final
disallowance of all the vice-chancellor’s powers, in this direction,
which were waived by the university in 1894.
[Sidenote: Present discipline--proctors, fines, “hall,” “chapels.”]
University discipline is in the hands of the vice-chancellor and his
court,[346] and the proctors. College discipline in those of the
dean[347] and tutors. Two proctors perambulate the town every night,
each accompanied by two servants known to the undergraduate as the
proctor’s “bull-dogs.” They take the name of any offending student and
bring him up next morning if necessary before the vice-chancellor. They
can also send men back to their college or rooms, enter lodgings, and
exact fines. When the youth of 19 or 20 leaves the higher forms of a
public school and comes to the university, he is treated as a man, and
leads a man’s life guided by himself. But he becomes also a member of a
great society, existing for certain purposes. If he is a man, he is a
very young one; and if he guides his own life he has only just begun to
do so. He lives in his own house--for his college room, like the
Englishman’s dwelling, is his castle--but he must be at home by 10 p.m.
This is the first point of discipline. The gates of colleges and the
outer doors of lodgings are shut at 10, and any one who presents himself
after that hour, without his tutor’s permission, has his name taken by
the college porter, or by the lodging proprietor who acts _in loco
janitoris_. He must also dine in hall, if not every day at least five
times in the week, which must include Sunday. The third restriction on
his liberty is (or at least was originally) a care for his soul. The
obligation to attend chapel so many times a week resolves itself now
into two attendances in the week and generally two on Sunday. No means
of enforcing this are however taken nowadays, and the men are generally
left free to judge for themselves in this respect, though ‘moral
suasion’ is exercised by the deans except in the case of nonconformists
and conscientious objectors. Fifty years ago 8 “chapels” were expected;
but if a pensioner kept 6 and a fellow-commoner 4, he was left
untroubled by his dean. In New England at the same epoch no less than 16
attendances at chapel every week were required, seven at unseasonable
hours; a burden which was tolerated with more cheerfulness by the New
Englander than were the 8 “chapels” by his Cambridge contemporary.
[Sidenote: Town licences. Expulsion “rustication”. “gating.”]
The licensing of all lodgings and places of entertainment[348] to which
undergraduates may go, is the hold which the university has over the
town. Its sanctions for the undergraduate are fines and expulsion;
breaches of
[Illustration: TRINITY BRIDGE, KING’S COLLEGE CHAPEL IN THE DISTANCE
This is one of the many charming views on the Cam at “the Backs” of the
Colleges.]
college rules being visited by “gating” and expulsion. A man can be
expelled for any cause which in the judgment of the university or the
college warrants it. If a man thus expelled from the university society
refuses “to go down”--to leave Cambridge--he cannot live in any licensed
lodging house in the town.[349] A man may also be sent down for a term,
which is called “rustication,” an epithet which suggests to him that he
has forfeited the society of men of polite learning. If a man misbehaves
himself he can be “gated,” _i.e._ the porter receives instructions not
to let him out after a certain hour--and it may be any hour the
authorities choose to fix and for any length of time.
[Sidenote: The tutor.]
The college tutor is the official who supervises the undergraduate’s
academic career. He advises him what subject to read for, what
examinations to take, what books to master. The career of a mediocre man
is often made and that of a first-rate man heightened by an able tutor,
and Cambridge has boasted some very great men in this capacity. The
mathematical genius of Newton was quickened by having for his tutor
Isaac Barrow; Whichcote of Emmanuel, Laughton of Clare, and Shilleto of
Trinity were eminent as tutors and “coaches”; and “coaching”
supplements, for a very backward or a very advanced student, the
lectures of college and university.[350]
[Sidenote: The cap and gown.]
The academic appearance of a university owes much to the traditional cap
and gown worn by all its members. A bonnet and gown are very ancient
appanages of the learned professions of divinity law and medicine--they
were the dignified apparel of doctors in the three faculties. Short hose
had not become fashionable when universities sprang into existence, and
the clerk or scholar even if he were not destined for major was very
usually in minor orders: the gown is therefore a fitting distinction for
those learned societies which have never ceased their corporate
existence, and have carried into modern times, as a special dress, items
of attire which like clerical vestments, the cassock, the monastic
habit, and the friar’s tunic were proper to the age which saw their
rise.
The distinctive features of academic dress are simply survivals of this
ordinary dress of the period: the ceremonial hood is the hood which was
worn in everyday life in the xiith the xiiith xivth and xvth
centuries.[351] If we had looked in at the priory church of Barnwell on
a day when the novices made their profession we should have seen each
one enter dressed in the black habit or gown, a cloak of fur, and the
“amess[352] over his head”: and when he walked out he was already vested
with the _capa nigra_ of the canon. Here, then, we have all the elements
of early academic dress; the homely Gilbertine canons, so familiar in
the Cambridge thoroughfares, wore it in white; for it was the dress of
the more respectable, the decently clad, clergy and clerks as well as of
those most respectable and regular clergy, the canons. The dress of the
better looked-after scholars on the college foundations differed but
little from this. No doubt the scholars of Peterhouse habitually wore
the clerical _vestis talaris_[353]--the gown to the ankle--but the
special item of academic attire adopted at Cambridge appears to have
been the _capa nigra._[354] The majority of scholars in the hostels and
grammar schools observed no general rule as to costume,[355] but the
scholars of any standing wore the black cappa of the canon; and the
hood, lined with sheepskin or minever, was becoming--even in the xiv
century--the habitual, and therefore distinctive, dress of foundation
scholars when they “commenced” bachelor or master.[356] The hood indeed
was probably restricted to an academic use before this century closed,
for there is a statute of the year 1413 ordering hoods of kid or
lambskin to be worn. The incepting Cambridge bachelor,[357] then, wore a
_cappa_, a fine hood was gradually restricted to the master of arts.
The soft bonnets or caps--of doctors, bishops, jurists, canons--are
derivatives of the hood, as is the stiff cap--the biretta, as is the
mitre itself. The xviii century Cambridge student still wore a soft
round cap, like that worn to-day by the Italian university student and
quite recently adopted in France: but the Paduan doctors had adopted the
stiff square cap in the xvi century, and our own students revolted
against the round cap in 1769, and thereupon accomplished the feat
which neither Archimedes “nor our Newton” had attempted:
For all her scholars square the circle now.[358]
The chancellor of the university wears a black and gold robe. Scarlet is
the colour of the doctors’ gowns, as it still is of the papal doctors of
divinity. The physician of Chaucer’s time wore his furred scarlet gown,
and scarlet gowns and corner caps were worn by the Cambridge doctors
when the Cromwells entertained James I. on his way from the north in
1603.
The master wears a full-sleeved gown of stuff or silk; the bachelor’s
gown has two flowing bands hanging loose in front; the undergraduate’s
gown is both scantier and shorter than these; but ‘Advanced Students’
wear the bachelor’s gown, without the loose bands. The academic gown of
English universities is now black, but the earlier violet gown of
Trinity is recorded in the present blue gown of its undergraduates, a
blue gown being also worn by the neighbouring college of Gonville and
Caius.[359] The gowns of certain colleges are distinguished by little
pleats in the stuff or bars of velvet.
Peers and eldest sons of peers, in the first half of the xix century,
wore the black silk gown and tall silk hat of an _M.A._,[360] and on
great occasions a more splendid dress adorned with gold tassels and
lace. Fellow-commoners wore a gown with gold or silver lace and a black
velvet cap; the younger sons of peers being known as “Hat-fellow-commoners”
because they wore the _M.A.’s_ silk hat instead of the velvet cap.
Most of the pensioners at Cambridge in the xviii century (but not the
fellow-commoners) used to wear a sleeveless gown called a
“curtain.”[361] Neither the clerical cassock nor the _capa nigra_ in
fact account for the undergraduate’s dress of later or present times;
the original of which, I think, is to be found in the sleeveless gown or
coat, called _soprana_, of the ecclesiastical colleges founded between
the xv and xvii centuries. Two of the peculiarities of the _soprana_ are
still traceable. The bands of the bachelor’s gown may be seen attached
to the black coat of the _Almum Collegium_ founded in 1457 by Cardinal
Capranica, to the violet and black dress worn by the Scotchmen,[362] to
the red coat of the college founded by Ignatius Loyola, and the blue of
the Greek College founded by Gregory XIII.; while one string, adorned
with the papal arms, is left on the _soprana_ worn by the Vatican
seminarists: these are leading strings, denoting the state of
pupilage.[363] The Cambridge scholar’s and bachelor’s gown is black--the
descendant of the full black _cappa_--but as we have just seen the coat
or gown of the ecclesiastical colleges is of different colours, and the
ancient gowns of Trinity and Caius still record this variation.
Every one _in statu pupillari_ must wear cap and gown after nightfall,
on Sunday,[364] at examinations and lectures (except laboratory
demonstrations), when visiting the vice-chancellor or any other official
on academic business, in the library, the Senate House, and the
university church: professors and others usually wear the gown while
lecturing, and all dons wear it in chapel and hall.
[Sidenote: The undergraduates’ day.]
A twentieth century undergraduates’ day does not differ from those
recorded in his diary by Wordsworth’s brother when he was a freshman at
Trinity in 1793.[365] This is how he was employed during the Reign of
Terror and within a few days of the execution of Marie
Antoinette:--“Chapel. Lectures. Considered of a subject for my essay on
Wednesday se’nnight. Drank wine with Coleridge. Present the _Society_.
Chapel. Read ‘Morning Chronicle.’ Found in it an ode to Fortune, by
Coleridge, which I had seen at Rough’s yesterday. Read _ratios_ and
_variable quantities_, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.” It was
indeed rather in its outer than in its inner circumstance that the life
even of the xiii and xiv century undergraduate differed from that of the
xxth. Then as now he listened to doctors in their faculties and his own
college seniors expounding the mysteries of art and science; then, as
now, he supplemented these lectures with private reading, then, seated
upon a wooden stool in a corner of a crowded room, or in the college
library, or best of all in the college meadows; now, in a comfortable
arm chair or stretched upon a sofa in his private sitting room.[366]
Then, as now, he caroused or discussed “the universe” with his friends,
as his nature suggested. Then, as now, he made early acquaintance with
the river Granta and knew each yard of the flat roads round the
university town. Even the periodical outbreak between “town and gown”
belongs as much to the xiii century as to the most recent history in
the xxth.[367]
Lectures take place in the morning, “coaching” and private study usually
in the late afternoon and evening. Two to four is the chosen time for
recreation, and the chief recreations of the Cantab used to be the road
and the river. The latter runs familiarly past the windows of his
college rooms, and invites him as he steps forth from the threshold of
his college court. Boating, swimming, or fishing, the student of a
bye-gone day found in the Granta a never-failing and an inexpensive
resource. Cambridge fish as we have seen has always been famous, and the
Merton scholars poached upon the townsmen’s fishing rights long before
the xiii century was out.
“Your success in the Senate House” said a well-known tutor “depends much
on the care you take of the three-mile stone out of Cambridge. If you go
every day and see no one has taken it away, and go quite round it to
watch lest any one has damaged its farthest side, you will be best able
to read steadily all the time you are at Cambridge. If you neglect it,
woe betide your degree. Exercise, constant, and regular, and ample, is
absolutely essential to a reading man’s success.” And the reading men
have taken the lesson to heart. No roads until the era of bicycles were
better tramped than the flat Cambridge roads which lend themselves so
well to this form of recreation; pair after pair of men, tall and small,
a big and a little together, used to keep themselves informed as to
their state of repair, or lose the sense of space and time in
discussions on the modern substitute for “quiddity” and _essentia_, or
the social and biological problems which are newer even than these.
Once back in his college the persons on whom the undergraduate’s comfort
most depends are the college cook the bedmaker and the “gyp.” The last
calls him, brushes his clothes, prepares his breakfast, caters for him,
serves his luncheon, waits on him and his friends, and carries back and
forth the little twisted paper missives which, as an American noticed
fifty years ago, Cambridge undergraduates are perpetually exchanging.
All these services the gyp may have to perform for a number of other
men. The only woman servant is the “bedmaker” whose name sufficiently
describes her official business, but who for the great majority of
modern students discharges the functions of gyp. The college kitchen is
a busy centre. Here is prepared not only the hall dinner but all private
breakfasts and luncheons served in college rooms; and most of the
college kitchens supply luncheons and dinners to residents in the town
if required. Dinner in hall costs from one shilling and tenpence to two
shillings and a penny, according to the college; bread and butter
called “commons” can be had from the buttery for 6d. a day; a breakfast
dish at a cost of from 6d. to 1/; and at some college halls a luncheon
is served at a small fixed charge.[368]
A hundred years ago the undergraduate dressed for “hall” with white silk
stockings and pumps and white silk waistcoat. A few wore powder, the
others curled their hair, and he was a bucolic youth indeed who omitted
at least the curling. “Curled and powdered” the Cambridge scholar wore
his hair even in the xiv century provoking the indignation of primates
and founders. A hundred and fifty years ago beer was served for
breakfast, and only Gray and Walpole drank tea. Even fifty years ago the
food was roughly served and in an overcrowded hall. It was however
abundant, and extras like soup, confectionery, and cheese could be
“sized for” _i.e._ brought you at an extra charge. The food provided
consisted of plain joints and vegetables, with plenty of beer. The
fellows’ table and the side tables of the bachelors were better served.
“The wine,” the famous entertainment which followed the old four o’clock
dinner fifty years ago, has yielded place to coffee and tea. In the May
term teas assume new proportions; for during the term which is fateful
to the reading man as that preceding the tripos examination, the idle
man turns work time into play, invites his friends and relatives up to
Cambridge, and entertains his sisters at “the races.” It is not indeed
to be supposed that the majority of undergraduates are to be found
keeping themselves awake with black coffee, a damp towel bound about
their brows, while they burn the midnight oil. Even the harmless
necessary “sporting of one’s oak” is no longer “good form.” In days when
you advertise for a curate and a schoolmaster who is a good athlete the
very thin literary proclivities of the bulk of Englishmen cannot be held
to be on the increase. What one might legitimately hope for is that
athletics should prove a safety-valve to the natural “rowdyism” of the
non-reading man; so that if school and university sports cannot make a
scholar they might at least turn out something not unlike a gentleman.
Last October (1905) proved a “record” in the number of men “going up,”
and November proved “a record” in the number of men who should have been
“sent down.” What took place is fresh in our memories; and it will not
quickly be forgotten that while the undergraduates of one university
were shouting their disgrace, a well-known bishop was signalising (and
exaggerating) the disgrace of the other; and we may choose between the
merits of leaguing with the town blackguard to kick policemen at
Cambridge or indulging the vice which changed the name of “wines” at
Oxford to “drunks.” At the rejoicings for Mafeking the iron railings
and posts were torn up along the ‘backs,’ and everything combustible
from drays to handcarts was “commandeered” to make a bonfire on Market
hill, where many panes of glass in the surrounding houses were smashed.
Proctors’ “bull-dogs” were rolled over in the mud, and the proctors
treated to the dignity of a “chairing.”[369] The bonfire on Market hill
is a development of a traditional ritual more amusing and less
dangerous: you drag out your own and your friends’ furniture and make a
bonfire in the middle of the college “court.”
Would it be impossible, among so many good rules, to make cap and gown
obligatory at both universities between the hours of 9 and 12? The
spectacle of youths hugging golf clubs on the Oxford station at ten
o’clock in the morning cannot be extraneous to examination results which
show that not 3 men in 4 who matriculate, take the _B.A._ At Cambridge
there is good promise in the large increase of scientific students who
take advantage of the facilities afforded by its laboratories: more men
entered for the “doctors’ college” in October 1905 than for any other,
except of course Trinity; and even “the sporting college” has been a
principal contributor to the number of medical graduates. Since 1883
there has been a board of Indian Civil Service studies, and the
universities between them send up far the larger number of candidates
for this service. A board of agricultural studies was instituted in
1899, a diploma in agriculture is now awarded, also one in sanitation,
and geographical studies are encouraged by prizes. Since 1899, when the
tripos was divided, the Historical has become one of the larger triposes
and in 1905 had the highest number of entries after the Natural
Sciences.[370]
[Sidenote: University athletics.]
The traditional rivalry in sports has of course been that between the
two universities. The inter-university boat race was begun in 1836, and
the first 4 races were won by Cambridge, as was also the first race
rowed in outriggers in ’46. Of the 64 races run, Oxford has won 6 more
than Cambridge; Cambridge has won 5 out of the last 6, and has also won
by the greater number of lengths (in ’49 by “many,” and in 1900 by
20).[371] The great inferiority of the ‘Cam’ to the ‘Isis’ is partly
compensated by the excellent style of rowing which Eton
[Illustration: THE TOWER OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE CHAPEL FROM THE RIVER
Trinity College Library lies on the right, through the trees.]
traditions carry on into Cambridge. The happy connexion between
Cambridge and Eton established by Henry VI. has never ceased to link the
most aristocratic English school with the more democratic of the English
universities, and many boys come to the “light blue” university already
wearing her favours. In football and golf the two universities have
shown equal prowess; Cambridge cricket is superior (the inter-university
match was started in 1839 and Cambridge won the first 6 matches), and in
athletics (1868-1906) Cambridge took the lead until the Rhodes scholars
arrived at the sister university.
The Union Society forms another distraction well calculated to turn out
the English ideal of a university man--a man, _id est_, ready for public
affairs. It was founded in 1815 by the _union_ of three already existing
debating societies, the present building was erected in 1866 and fitted
up as a club. Stratford Canning (Lord Stratford de Redcliffe) and
Blomfield, afterwards Bishop of London, belonged to one of these earlier
“spouting clubs” in 1806, where Palmerston and Ellenborough both “laid
the foundation” of their parliamentary fame. The college ball and the
college concert are also crowded into the student’s seven weeks of
residence in the May term, taking the place of the plays which formed
the staple entertainment in the xvi and xvii centuries. The modern
“A.D.C.” has been rendered famous by the “Greek Plays” which were
inaugurated twenty-five years ago with a performance of “Ajax.”
[Sidenote: Sunday at Cambridge.]
But the round of work and play comes to an end with Sunday, and the
university has preserved the festival aspect of this day, the day when
continental beadles and _gens d’armes_ don their fine plumes and when
what is bright and gay rather than what is dull and grave is mated to
the idea of a day of rest. The college courts--the outdoor centre and
rallying point of college life--are thronged with men gay in surplice or
gown[372] as they were thronged on that Sunday 370 years ago when
Stephen Gardiner Bishop of Winchester found two hundred dons assembled
“as is their wont” and buttonholed the men who were likely to pleasure
his grace in the matter of the divorce. That fine day in the xvi century
was no doubt a repetition of many fine days in the centuries preceding
it, for it is always fine in Cambridge on Sunday. And Sunday after
Sunday the undergraduate has received a lesson in dignities, as he
circled becapped and begowned on the cobbled paths round the greater
luminaries becapped and begowned tranquilly stepping on the college
grass. The modern undergraduate does not remember a time when a pathway
ran across the turf from corner to corner of the college courts, as it
did in Clare Hall, in the old court of Corpus, and in William of
Wykeham’s foundation at Oxford. On “scarlet days” the courts are still
more gay, for the doctors then appear in their scarlet.[373]
The gowns in the court clothe the learned and the unlearned, and make a
present of as brave an academic appearance to the rowdiest of
non-readers as to the future senior wrangler. The academic year is
divided into 3 terms of 8 or 9 weeks each: half the year only is
therefore passed at Cambridge. For serious study the intervals are too
long and the ‘long vacation term’ has become the reading man’s term _par
excellence_; all the colleges are then half full, the numbers being
swelled by the medical students. The multiplication of extra-collegiate
scholarships has not told all one way. Parents who used to make
sacrifices to send a son to the university now count upon a scholarship,
with the result that on the principle of ‘light come light go’ less use
is made of opportunities. The university authorities look to the
“advanced students” (of whom there are now 60 or 70 in residence) who
are staying up for research work or come from other universities, for
solid academic achievement.
[Sidenote: Class from which the academic population has been drawn.]
There is no more interesting enquiry connected with our subject than
that concerning the classes from which the academic population has been
recruited at different epochs, and the careers for which the university
has fitted its members.
The Church has always remained the most constant client of academic
advantages: it was the churchmen who on the decline of the monasteries
and when the universities were established as learned corporations,
exchanged the cloister for the college education. The dissolution of the
monasteries and the breach with Rome left the universities as the only
representatives of the faculty of theology; and during the last century,
especially, if a man were destined for the Church he went--_ipso
facto_--to Cambridge or Oxford even though he were the only member of
his family to do so. In the xv as in the xvi centuries it was chiefly
men destined for the faculties of theology and law who frequented the
universities, and then, as always in their history, the poorest scholar
lived side by side with the youth of family and influence.
The lawyers, perhaps, have gone in equal proportions to a university or
to one of the Inns of Court; many have gone to both. The great change to
be observed is as regards students of the third faculty, medicine. In
the xix century the doctor and the tradesman’s son did not go to a
university; but this century, as we have seen, has already been marked
by the enormous accession of medical students at Cambridge. The gradual
growth of a powerful middle class resulted in the later xvi century in
filling the universities with the sons not only of the older yeomanry of
our shires but of the new Merchant Adventurers, often themselves men of
gentle blood and coat armour. It is perhaps from this century that the
idea began to prevail that an academic education was the proper
education of a gentleman. Of this century it was true as it had been
true of no other that “the civil life of all English gentlemen” is begun
at Oxford or Cambridge. Statesmen and ministers, the political and the
diplomatic careers, were recruited at the universities, and
university-trained canonists and lawyers like Cranmer and More, and
churchmen like Wolsey and Gardiner were chosen to be the ambassadors and
secretaries of state. Ascham complains to Cranmer that sons of rich men
“who sought only superficial knowledge” and “to qualify themselves for
some place in the State” overran the university, and both universities
soon became, in Macaulay’s words, the training ground not only of all
the eminent clergy, lawyers, physicians, poets, and orators, but of a
large proportion of the “nobility and opulent gentry” of the country.
In England men belonging to what have, hitherto, been the governing
classes have always sought advantages which would doubtless be less
apparent in countries where nobility and gentry are synonyms and where
government is not carried on by means of two such institutions as the
House of Commons and the House of Lords. A _noblesse_ which gives no
scions to the professions or to a representative chamber has seldom
sought academic distinction. The man destined for parliament for the
diplomatic service and the government office--occupations which an acute
American observer has said are chosen by Englishmen as the business of
their lives “without studying any other profession”[374]--prepared
himself in no other way than by three or four years spent at the
university, with or without graduating there. It was not however till
the nineteenth century opened that the distinctively aristocratic trend
of a university was defined. Throughout that century the university was
_par excellence_ the seminary of the English gentleman, and the parson.
A few bankers’ sons might be put into their fathers’ counting houses, a
few government officials might place their sons at an early age in a
government office, but the exception only proved the rule.
[Sidenote: Examples.]
[Sidenote: xvi c.]
[Sidenote: xvii c.]
Let us look at some examples of the class from which Cambridge was
recruited through the xvi and xvii centuries. Hugh Latimer (_b._ 1491)
was the son of a yeoman farmer; Sir Thomas Wyatt (_b._ 1503) was the son
of a knight. The father of Matthew Parker (_b._ 1504) was a Norwich
merchant; Bacon (_b._ 1561) and his brother, fellow-commoners of
Trinity, were sons of the Lord Keeper and nephews of Burleigh. Fletcher
(_b._ 1579) the dramatist, was the son of the Bishop of London, and his
cousins the poets were sons of Elizabeth’s Master of the Requests and
ambassador to Russia.[375] In the xvii century Herrick the poet (_b._
1591) was the son of a goldsmith established in London; Waller (_b._
1605) a nephew of Hampden’s, a man of large private fortune; Cowley
(_b._ 1618) was
[Illustration: UNIVERSITY BOAT-HOUSES ON THE CAM--SUNSET
This view is taken near Stourbridge Common and the bend of the river
known as Barnwell Pool, looking towards the town.]
[Sidenote: xviii c.]
son to a city grocer; Marvell (_b._ 1620) son to a Yorkshire clergyman;
while Temple was the son of an Irish Master of the Rolls. In the latter
half of the xvii century we still hear of “the farmer’s son newly come
from the university”[376]--Bentley was one of them--and at the same time
we hear that Tuckney, Whichcote’s tutor, “had many persons of rank and
quality” under him at Emmanuel College. In the xviii century, Pepys’
(_b._ 1703) father was a tailor, the Wordsworths were sons of a north
country attorney, Sir William Browne (_b._ 1692) was the son of a
physician.
[Sidenote: Recruiting schools.]
Men of low origin were sent up, and have always been sent up, to the
universities through the beneficence of patrons, and the poor tailor
Stow was enabled to write his history owing to the patronage of
Archbishop Parker who sent him to Oxford. Through the xv and early xvi
centuries the monastic and other convent schools supplied university
students. Bale (_b._ 1495) had been educated by the Norwich Carmelites,
Coverdale (_b._ 1487) had been an Austinfriar at Cambridge. At the
present day the big grammar schools, and in especial the Norwich grammar
school which educated Nelson, send every year a contingent of students,
as they have done since the reign of Edward VI. If we take the sporting
representatives sent from the two universities the year before last, 23
from Oxford and 21 from Cambridge, we shall find that one third of the
Cambridge men hailed from the greater public schools, Eton,
Charterhouse, and Rugby.[377] Our colonies are also a recruiting ground,
and with them Cambridge is favourite university.[378]
The number of undergraduates entered this academic year (1906-7) was the
largest on record, totalling 1021. The reputation and the popularity of
colleges of course wax and wane: for the past two years the largest
number of entries (excluding Trinity) has been for Caius and Pembroke,
Emmanuel coming next, and then S. John’s.[379] The number of
non-collegiate students is steadily increasing.
[Sidenote: Religion at Cambridge.]
There are no ‘high Church’ centres among the colleges, and there is no
‘broad Church’ movement among the undergraduates. The ‘broad Church’
movement is among the younger dons and in connexion with the University
Settlement. There are nonconformists in every college, but the reunion
with Christendom which begins at home finds no advocates among other
university men. As usual there is at Cambridge no particular ‘school’ of
religious thought. There is however just now a decided religious
movement among the undergraduates, almost exclusively connected with the
‘high Church’ parish of S. Giles. The majority of the men make little
religious profession, but there is no violent reaction such as agitated
Oxford in the ‘forties’ and ‘fifties,’ and the yearly increasing number
of scientific students inclines to a pantheistic rather than a
materialistic standpoint.
[Sidenote: Cambridge politics.]
The undergraduate population is decidedly conservative, as the
university has always been. At the present moment both sides of the
fiscal controversy are represented, the distinguished Cambridge
economist Dr. Cunningham advocating tariff reform, while the Professor
of Political Economy is a free-trader.
[Sidenote: The university settlement in Camberwell.]
The “slumming” movement made an early appeal to the younger members of
the university. Their present work in south London was begun over twenty
years ago, and “Cambridge House” has existed for ten years in a district
which has been called “the largest area of unbroken poverty in any
European city.” The workers are all laymen, 11 out of the 17 colleges
being represented by resident Cambridge men, while an undergraduate
secretary in every college assists in furthering the movement.
[Sidenote: Married dons.]
We saw at the beginning of this chapter that the aspect of the
university had changed with the marriage of fellows, tutors, and
officials; and in time this factor must greatly modify the conditions of
life at our universities. Both of these are now overrun with children’s
schools, and there can be little doubt that all the boys (and many of
the girls) will go to college. The natural profession for many of these,
owing to the father’s influence with his college and the son’s inherited
inclinations, will be academic. It would certainly not be to the
advantage of our seats of learning if they became in this sense close
corporations. It is obvious that this would mean less movement of ideas
and less opportunity for the outside world to affect the university; and
if a large number not only of the teachers but of the scholars belonged
to such a caste as this, if the profession of teaching were handed down
from father to son, the situation would not be unlike that which
threatened Europe when Gregory VII. interposed and made the Christian
world his executor in enforcing clerical celibacy. A new tuitional field
would be open to the young graduate in the numerous schools of Cambridge
and Oxford, but this would only accentuate the vicious circle of an
education which might come to suggest the ecclesiastical seminary rather
than the English university. Perhaps, too, a young man loses more than
half the social and worldly advantages of a college life if when
[Illustration: DITTON CORNER, ON THE CAM
From this spot the boat races are viewed. Behind the elms is the village
of Ditton, and the building we see is Ditton Church.]
he “goes up to the university” he does not change his habitat.
The married fellow cannot begin life again elsewhere after the 5 or 10
years’ teaching at his college which used to precede his departure for a
benefice: the old bachelor, if he stayed on, no longer taught, and new
men took his place in the lecture room. But now a fellow cannot renounce
the lecture room, for he and his family cannot live on the fellowship.
Lecturers are therefore often men past the prime of life, and moreover
men who no longer live in daily contact with the undergraduate. New
blood comes in seldom, and percolates slowly. On the other hand valuable
men stay who would under the old system have left. The influx of the
“monstrous regiment” will not however, one hopes, diminish an advantage
at present possessed by the seniors at our centres of learning--a
general equality of fortune which frees university society from the
laborious vulgarity that travails the soul elsewhere, from the general
“ponderousness,” as someone has called it, of English life. At least
Gray’s advice to Wharton not to bring his wife to Cambridge would now be
quite out of place; the “few” women are no longer “squeezy and formal,
little skilled in amusing themselves or other people,” and the men are
no longer “not over agreeable neither.”