(_By Mr. Punch's Own Type-Writer._)
No. XIII.--THE PRECOCIOUS UNDERGRADUATE.
[Illustration]
EVER since undergraduates existed at all, there must have been some
who, in the precocity of their hearts, set themselves up or were
set up by the admiration of their fellows as patterns of life, and
knowledge, and manners. But before steam and electricity made Oxford
and Cambridge into suburbs of London, these little deities were
scarcely heard of outside the limits of their particular University,
the sphere of their influence was restricted, and they were unable to
impress the crowd of their juvenile worshippers by the glamour which
comes of frequent plunges into the dizzy whirlpool of London life.
Now, however, all that is changed. Our seats of learning are within
a stone's throw of town, and the callow nestlings who yesterday
fluttered feebly over King's Parade or the High, may to-day attempt
a bolder flight in Piccadilly and the Park. The simpler pleasures of
Courts and Quads soon pall upon one who believes emphatically, that
life has no further secrets when the age of twenty has been reached,
and that an ingenuous modesty is incompatible with the exercise of
manliness. He despises the poor fools who are content to be merely
young while youth remains. He himself, has sought for and found in
London a fountain of age, from which he may quaff deep draughts, and
returning, impart his experience to his envious friends.
The Precocious Undergraduate, then, was (and is, for the type remains,
though the individual may perish) one who attempted in his own opinion
with perfect success, to combine an unerring knowledge of men with a
smooth cheek and a brow as unwrinkled as late hours could leave it.
In the sandy soil of immaturity he was fain to plant a flourishing
reputation for cunning, and to water it with the tears of those
who being responsible for his appearance in the world dreaded his
premature affectation of its wisdom and its follies.
They had given him, however, as befitted careful parents, every chance
of acquiring an excellent education. In order that he might afterwards
shine at the Bar or in the Senate, he was sent to one of our larger
public schools, where he soon found that with a very small life-belt
of Latin and Greek a boy may keep his head safe above the ripple of a
master's anger. But his school career was not without honour. He was a
boy of a frank and generous temperament, candid with his masters, and
warm-hearted and sincere in his intercourse with his school-fellows.
He was by no means slow with his wits, he was very quick with his eye
and his limbs. Thus it came about that, although his scholarship was
not calculated to make of him a Porson, he earned the admiration
and applause of boys and masters by his triumphs as an athlete, a
cricketer, and a foot-ball player, and was established as a universal
favourite. At the usual age he left school and betook himself to
college, freighted for this new voyage with the affection and the
hopes of all who knew him.
And now when everything smiled, and when in the glow of his first
independence life assumed its brightest hues, in the midst of apparent
success his real failures began. The sudden emancipation from the
easy servitude of school was too much for him. The rush of his new
existence swept him off his feet, and, yielding to the current, he
was carried day by day more rapidly out to the sea of debt and
dissipation, which in the end overwhelmed him. For a time, however,
everything went well with him. His school and his reputation as a
popular athlete assured to him a number of friends, he was elected a
member of one or two prominent Clubs, he got into a good set. In their
society he learnt that an undergraduate's tastes and his expenditure
ought never to be limited by the amount of the yearly allowance he
receives from his father. Whilst still in his freshman's Term, he was
invited to a little card-party, at which he lost not only his head,
but also all his ready money, and the greater part of the amount which
had been placed to his credit at his Bank for the expenses of his
first Term. This incident was naturally much discussed by the society
in which he moved, and it was agreed that, for a freshman, he had
shown considerable coolness in bearing up against his losses. Even
amongst those who did not know him, his name began to be mentioned
as that of one who was evidently destined to make a splash, and might
some day be heard of in the larger world. His vanity was tickled.
This, he thought to himself, not without pleasure, was indeed
life, and thinking thus, he condemned all his past years, and the
aspirations with which he had entered his University, as the folly
of a boy. Soon afterwards he was found at a race-meeting, and was
unfortunate enough to win a large sum of money from a book-maker who
paid him.
The next incident in his first Term was his attendance as a guest at
a big dinner, where the unwonted excitement and a bumper or two of
University champagne upset his balance. He grew boisterous, and on
his way home to his rooms addressed disrespectfully the Dean of his
College, who happened to be taking the air on the College grass-plot.
He woke, the next morning, to find himself parched and pale, but
famous. "Did you hear what So-and-So, the freshman, said to the Dean
last night? Frightful cheek!"--so one undergraduate would speak of him
to another, with a touch of envy which was not diminished by the fact
that his hero had been gated at nine for a week.
But it is useless to pursue his career through every detail. He went
on gambling, and soon found himself the debtor or the creditor of
those whom he still attempted to look upon as his friends. He bought
several thousand large cigars at L10 per hundred from a touting
tobacconist, who promised him unlimited credit, and charged him a high
rate of per-centage on the debt. He became constant in his visits to
London, and, after a course of dinners at the Bristol, the Berkeley,
and the Cafe Royal, he acquired, at Cambridge, the reputation of a
connoisseur in cooking and in wine. The Gaiety was his abiding-place,
the lounge at the Empire would have been incomplete without him: for
him Lais added a rosy glow to her complexion and a golden shimmer to
her hair; he supped in her company, and, when he gave her a diamond
swallow, purchased without immediate payment in Bond Street, the
paragraphist of a sporting paper recorded the gift in his columns with
many cynical comments. In short, he now knew himself to be indeed a
man of the world. Henceforward he seemed to spend almost as much
time in London as in Cambridge. It is unnecessary to add that his
legitimate resources soon ran dry; he supplied their deficiency from
the generous fountain of a money-lender's benevolence. After all,
eight per cent. per month sounds quite cheap until it is multiplied by
twelve, and, as he always disliked arithmetic, he abstained from the
calculation, and pocketed the loan. And thus, for a time, the wheel
of excitement was kept spinning merrily. But the pace was too fast to
last for long. Somehow or other, soon after the beginning of his third
year, his happy gaiety which had carried him cheerfully through many
scenes of revelry seemed to desert him. He became subject to fits of
morose abstraction. His dress was no longer of the same shining merit,
nor did he seem to care, as formerly, to keep his cuffs and collars
unspotted from the world. Disagreeable rumours began to be whispered
about him. He was said to have failed to pay his card-debts, and
yet to have gone on gambling night after night; and at last came the
terrible report--all the more terrible for not being fully understood
by those who heard it--that he had been posted at Tattersall's.
Undergraduate Society is, however, of an extraordinary tolerance, and
if it had not been for his own manifest misery, he might have kept
his head up in Cambridge even under these calamities. But he began too
late to realise his own folly, and with the memory of his triumphs and
his collapse, of his extravagance and his debts clogging his efforts,
he tried to read. He did read, feverishly, uselessly, and when his
list appeared his name was absent from it. Then followed the fatal
interview with his father, and the inevitable crash, in the course of
which he became the defendant in a celebrated case on the subject of
an infant's necessaries. An occupation was sought for him, but all
capacity for honest effort seemed to have perished with his frankness
and his cheerfulness. After creeping about London in a hang-dog
fashion for a year or two, he eventually decided to tempt misfortune
in the Western States of America. For a time he "ranched" without
success, and was heard of as a frequenter of saloons. A year later he
died ignobly by the revolver of a Western rowdy, in the course of a
drunken brawl.
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MUSICAL FORECASTS.--Mr. PADDY REWSKI will play variations on his
own national Melodies, including the _Gigue Irlandaise_, entitled,
"_Donnybrook Fair_."--Mr. CHARLES REDDIE'S Pianoforte Recital is
fixed for the 17th. It is not placarded about the town, as the clever
pianist says, he's perfectly REDDIE, but he's not WILLING.--Mr. JOSEF
DASH-MY-LUD-WIG is going to give a Second Chamber Concert on behalf
of the Funds of the Second Chambermaid Theatrical Aid Society.--Mr.
CUSINS' Concert is on the 12th. Uncles and Aunts please accept this
intimation.
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[Illustration: EXPERIMENTS BY THE GRAND OLD HYPNOTISER AT ST.
STEPHEN'S.]
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