’VARSITY LITERATURE (_continued_)
The Student--Cambridge included--Its design--The female student--Poem
by Sir Walter Raleigh--Bishop Atterbury’s letter--The manly woman.
On the first day of January, 1750, there appeared the first number of _The
Student_. The sub-title read: _The Oxford Monthly Miscellany_. For two
years it ran successfully, and, at the beginning of the second, it was
found that Cambridge took such an interest in its doings that the
sub-title was enlarged. It then read: _The Oxford and Cambridge Monthly
Miscellany_. In make-up it differed entirely from Terrae Filius, and
contended to be a far more serious and high-minded journal, aiming not so
much to amuse as to teach its readers. Thus it contained Latin prose and
verse, religious discussions, essays, medical dissertations, and a
carefully selected variety of lighter matter in English prose and verse.
The tone of the work may be gathered from the sedate foreword to the
public.
“In the course of this work particular care will be taken that nothing be
inserted indecent or immoral, and as we are determined to give umbrage to
no Person or Party, all political disputes and whatever is offensive to
Good Manners will of consequence be avoided. Our design being only to
promote learning in general, we shall not confine ourselves to any
particular subject, but occasionally comprehend all the branches of polite
literature. Each number will consist of such originals in Prose and Verse
as we hope will prove agreeable to our readers. And tho’ we might with
impunity comply with the common practice of preying indiscriminately on
the labours of others, yet we shall not to our knowledge publish any thing
that has been printed before, or without the consent of the respective
authors: for the one we consider as a fraud upon the publick, and the
other an invasion of private property. These considerations we presume
will remove any prejudice which the Learned may conceive against our
undertaking, and induce them not only to encourage, but assist us in the
prosecution of it. And as we must necessarily depend on the publick for
the Success of our work, we hope it will meet with their indulgence. No
endeavours on our part shall be wanting to render it worthy their
approbation; and we no longer desire their favour, than while we continue
to deserve it.”
In the first number there were some five or six pages of Latin verse, a
translation of the chorus at the end of the second act of _Hecuba of
Euripides_, an elegy in imitation of Tibullus, an article on “Intellectual
Pleasure”--the author of which was requested, in an editorial note, to
favour the paper with his further reflections--the speech of John Fell,
D.D., Bishop of Oxford, at his Triennial Visitation in the year 1685, an
article entitled “Leaning of no Party,” and one or two lighter imaginative
contributions, such as “The Speech of an Old Oak to an Extravagant Young
Heir as He was going to be Cut Down,” and an “Address to an Elbow Chair
Lately New Cloath’d.” As there were no advertisements to assist the
editors with the printing bills, it speaks well for the literary taste of
the period that the paper lived two full years--the period to which the
editors limited themselves at the outset. Such a periodical at Oxford in
the year of grace 1911 would prove to be a hopeless anachronism. It would
arrive at a circulation of three copies per month--a free copy to the
British Museum, another to the Bodleian, and the third to the editor’s
mother. The Undergraduates might finger it casually on the bookshop
counter, and the Dons read the first number on account of its novelty, but
it would die a speedy death unless by the second issue the editor
announced its coalition with the comic paper whose editor runs his
motor-car on the earnings of butcher and express messenger boys.
One of the lighter features of _The Student_ was a series of letters from
Cambridge written by the female student. Her epistles were full of humour,
and she poked fun at the Undergraduates quietly, and in a manner not
wholly unlike Terrae Filius. Perhaps it is unfair to compare her efforts
to those of Amhurst, because as he jested and quipped in every conceivable
style and way, any one coming after him might be accused, quite unjustly,
of plagiarism. That the female student was not guilty of any false modesty
is easily to be seen from the account of herself in her preliminary
letter; while the care with which the editors of _The Student_ guarded the
decencies and the moralities ensured that she did not in any way cause a
breach in them by her broad-minded and outspoken contributions. She began
by claiming the student as a brother, a claim based upon her birth,
education, and the whole conduct of her life. She asserted that she, too,
was a student, having sounded the depths of philosophy and made greater
progress “in academical erudition” than most of the Dons whose profound
knowledge consisted in a “little cap with a short tuft and a large pompous
grizzle wig.” She was born and brought up in Cambridge in the care of an
aunt. Her studies were directed by a grave Fellow of a college. Her aunt
was so fond of her that she was suffered to “give a loose to her passion
for literature,” and the girl absorbed information from curling papers and
the lids of wig-boxes. When she was seventeen her tutor died of a surfeit
occasioned by feeding too freely at a gaudy, and the secret at last came
out that there had been a union between the Don and the aunt for nearly
twenty years. The aunt became, therefore, a mother, and she produced
documents to show that the Don’s possessions were hers. The result of the
selling of the deceased’s effects did not raise the good woman to a
condition of luxury.
“However,” said the girl, “she resolved to continue at Cambridge on my
account, and we lived together in a manner much genteeler than our fortune
would afford. My person (which, by-the-bye, I took as much pains to
cultivate as my mind) now began to be cried up as much as my parts. I was
a charming, clever, sweet, smart, witty, pretty creature, in short, I was
as much feared for my wit as ador’d for my beauty. From hence I had vanity
to fancy I could have anybody I pleased, and had therefore resolved within
myself to be run away with by a nobleman, or a baronet at least.”
But this witty, pretty creature unfortunately over-estimated her
possibilities. The next ten years passed in a round of gaiety which took
the form of courtship by no one under the rank of gentleman commoner. With
the baronet in view, however, such mere mortals fell in their hundreds.
Some she rejected “because a better might offer, some because they had too
much sense; others because they had too little; this was too old, that too
young,” and, in consequence, she was gradually deserted, as her physical
charms waned, until at last her name was never mentioned “without the
odious reproach of ‘she has been’ added to it.”
At the moment of writing this first letter she was compelled to work for
her bread and the support of her mother. This she did with her pen,
turning out poems and novels; being, as she informed _The Student_, at
present engaged in “composing sermons for a bookseller, which he designs
to sell for the MS. Sermons of an eminent divine lately deceased,
warranted originals.”
_The Student_, liking the tone of her first letter, encouraged her to
write further, and from time to time she sent in various articles, such as
a scathing criticism of Academical Gallantry, in which she roundly chaffed
all gownsmen for their bragging propensities and gallant follies, and gave
an account of the various Dons and their habits who had laid vain siege to
her heart, and a discussion on the sin of living single, and the fustiness
of old maids--a plight in which she admitted herself to be, though not by
“desire or inclination.”
In spite of the editorial desire to give umbrage to no person or party,
certain of the Bucks seem to have considered her an unamusing, brazen
creature, whose inclusion in _The Student_ was a sad mistake, for she
received the following crushing letter from one of their number.
“---- Coll., Oxford, _June 11, 1751_.
“MADAM,--As the character I bear in this University is that of a
profess’d critic-general on pamphlets, and as my opinion is look’d
upon as infallible and oracular in a certain coffee-house frequented
by Wits, where a subscription is carried on for raking together the
dulness of the age, I think I may take the liberty (without being
styled Prig, Fop, Witling, or Poetaster) of transmitting you my full
and candid sentiments on your monthly productions. And first, Madam
Student, with as much laconic politeness as possible, I beg leave to
inform you that you pretend to that choice ingredient of good writing
Humour, without having one syllable of it. In a word, Madam, if you
have any Humour at all, it is that low species of it, never so much as
heard of in Greece and Rome, originally invented by Tom Brown of
blackguard memory, and now first revived by the Female Student.
“This species (if it may call itself a species), I, myself, in right
of the sublime critical character with which the sensible Men of our
house have invested me, have christen’d Jack-Pudding Humour. To define
it were utterly impracticable. However, thus much may be said of it,
that it is made up of ill-breeding and ill-nature, and discovers a
remarkable want of classical reading, and a relish for authors of true
taste. It treats of subjects of a vague nature, and is (beside its
Jack-pudding affinity) of a mere Jack-lanthorn nature, neither here
nor there; in short, it is a topsy-turvy, rhapsodic, miscellaneous
method of writing. But, to come to the point. What I would recommend
to you is to leave off scribbling, and sit down seriously to sewing.
“Why, Madam, you are nothing more than a bankrupt in beauty, a mere
discarded toast! I assure you, Mrs Student, you have no more chance of
getting reputation by your pen than you had of getting a husband by
your person.--Yours,
“FRANK FIZZ-PUFF.”
Whether this letter really caused the good lady to take up sewing in
earnest it is impossible to say, but the fact remains that she was no more
seen in _The Student_--not even to the extent of an indignant feminine
outburst against Mr Fizz-Puff.
Among the “never before” printed verses which the editor secured for his
columns were some written by Sir Walter Raleigh at Winchester in 1603, as
he lay under sentence of death. They were printed from a manuscript with
due care to preserve the spelling exactly as it was. The editor, however,
was in ignorance of the fact that they had already been published in 1608
in the second edition of Davison’s _Poetical Rhapsody_.
“Goe, soul, the bodyes gueste,
Upon a thankless arrante,
Fear not to touche the beste,
The truth shall be thy warrante.
Goe, since I needs must dye,
And give them all the lye.
“Goe, tell the court it glowse,
And shines like painted woode;
Goe, tell the church it shows
What’s good, but does no good.
If court and church replye
Give court and church the lye.”
The moribund knight pursued his muse to the thirteenth verse, giving
everybody and everything the lie. The editor of _The Student_, undoubtedly
with the idea of pandering to all tastes, was careful to place these
verses in between a translation of a Latin epigram--
“I stole from sweet Gumming two kisses in play,
But she from myself stole myself quite away;
I grieve not I play’d, tho’ so cruel the sport;
I’m more pleas’d than griev’d at the hurt.”
and an epistle in verse to Lord Cobham, written by Congrave, while in the
very near neighbourhood, was--
“THE HERMAPHRODITE.
“_From the Latin_
“My mother, when she was with child of me,
Consulted heav’n what gender I should be.
Female, cried Mars; Apollo said, a Male;
Neither, quoth Juno; both your judgments fail.
My birth did prove the Goddess in the right;
Nor boy, nor girl, but an Hermaphrodite.
Again she ask’d them what my fate would be.
One said a sword, another said a tree;
Water a third, and they were right all three.
For from a tree I fell upon my sword,
Feet caught in boughs, head dangling in a ford.
Man, Woman, Neither, I at last was found,
Just as the Gods foretold, hang’d, stabb’d, and drown’d.”
A few numbers before that in which the coffee-house wit told the female
student just precisely what he thought of her, the editor received a
letter from another of these gentry at one of the coffee-houses. On behalf
of all his brother Smarts, Mr Harry Didapper took it upon himself to offer
a little friendly advice to the paper. He informed the editor that _The
Student_ was read with keen interest by them all, but that at times it
indulged in boring and pompous articles which, however they pleased the
editor himself, or the cultivated taste of his wig-maker, hosier and wine
merchant, left them angry and disappointed. The Smarts wished to have no
more abstract speculations and religious introspections. They wanted more
brightness and humanity about the paper. Consequently in the next issue
the editor published the following lamentation:--
“A RECEIPT FOR THE GOUT.
“Oh Gout! the plague of rich and great!
Thou cramping padlock of the feet!
Oh Gout! thou puzzling knotty point!
You nick man’s frame in every joint;
You, like inquisitors of Spain,
Rack, burn, and torture limbs to pain.
First, miner-like, you work below,
And sap man’s fortress by the toe....
And what is worse, the wounded part
Finds small relief from doctor’s art.
Great Wilmot’s skill confounded stands
When patient roars ... my toe! my hands!...
’Tis said that bees, when raging found,
Are charm’d to peace by tinkling sound;
Shrill lullabies in nurse’s strain
Asswage the froward bantling’s pain,
When cutting teeth, or ill-plac’d pin,
Molest the tender baby’s skin,
So when Gout-humours throb and ache,
The present soft prescription take.
In elbow-chair majectick sit
In full high twinge, yet scorn to fret;
Divert the pain with generous wine;
Read news from Flanders and the Rhine;
Hold up the toe like Pope of Rome;
Forbear to scold, and swear, and fume;
Let double flannel guard the part,
To mitigate the dreadful smart;
Wrap round the joint this harmless verse;
And let dame Patience be your nurse.”
Would any doctor in these times prescribe wine as a remedy against gout?
Whether the advice was sound or not, the Smarts appeared to have been
appeased, for there came no further complaints as to the stodginess of the
fare served up to them.
In the same number of _The Student_ there appeared a letter from Bishop
Atterbury to his son Obadiah, who was up at the House. How the editor
procured it is not recorded, nor is it easy to see why he included it in
his columns. It cannot have been vastly entertaining to a list of
subscribers who devoted most of their time to ale and coffee-houses, or in
dallying with Amaryllis in the shade of Merton Wall. It is greatly
interesting to-day, however, as an example of what an eighteenth-century
parent indicted to his son. The contrast between this letter and the
replies one receives in 1911 in answer to one’s brief epistles written,
mostly, solely in order to “touch the dad down for a bit” is not
unstriking.
“DEAR OBBY,--I thank you for your letter, because there are manifest
signs in it of your endeavouring to excel yourself, and in consequence
to please me. You have succeeded in both respects, and will always
succeed, if you think it worth your while to consider what you write
and to whom, and let nothing, tho’ of a trifling nature, pass through
your pen negligently. Get but the way of writing correctly and justly,
time and use will teach you to write readily afterwards. Not but that
too much care may give a stiffness to your style, which ought in all
letters by all means to be avoided. The turn of them should always be
natural and easy, for they are an image of private and familiar
conversation. I mention this with respect to the four or five first
lines of yours, which have an air of poetry, and do therefore
naturally resolve themselves into blank verses. I send you your letter
again, that you may make the same observation. But you took the hint
of that thought from a poem, and it is no wonder therefore, that you
heightened the phrase a little when you were expressing it. The rest
is as it should be; and particularly there is an air of duty and
sincerity, that if it comes from your heart, is the most acceptable
present you can make me. With these qualities an incorrect letter
would please me, and without them the finest thoughts and language
would make no lasting impression upon me. The great Being says, you
know--my son, give me thy heart--implying that without it all other
gifts signify nothing. Let me conjure you therefore never to say
anything, either in a letter or common conversation, that you do not
think, but always to let your mind and your words go together on the
most slight and trivial occasions. Shelter not the least degree of
insincerity under the notion of a compliment, which, as far as it
deserves to be practis’d by a man of probity, is only the most civil
and obliging way of saying what you really mean; and whoever employs
it otherwise, throws away truth for breeding; I need not tell you how
little his character gets by such an exchange. I say not this as if I
suspected that in any part of your letter you intended only to write
what was proper, without any regard to what was true; for I am
resolved to believe that you were in earnest from the beginning to the
end of it, as much as I am when I tell you that I am,--Your loving
father, etc.”
The editor of _The Student_ pronounced himself the champion of many and
various causes. For instance, he organised in his columns a fund for the
maintenance of the widows and children of deceased clergy in straightened
circumstances, which did an immense amount of good. His appeal for money
was nobly responded to in Oxford, and widely taken up by the public.
Another matter against which he took up the cudgels was the fondness shown
so largely by the fair sex for indulging in masculine sports in masculine
attire--more particularly hunting. From his account it is clear that a
very great percentage of ladies was horsey to the exclusion of all else,
even, in his eyes, of femininity.
“I cannot,” he wrote in an article occasioned by an amusing letter from a
short-sighted contributor who at dinner addressed his neighbour as Sir,
when all the time it was a lady, who, returning late from a day with the
hounds had had no time to change, “I cannot, indeed, but highly disapprove
not only the habit, but also the cause of it. It makes them appear rough
and manlike: it robs them of all the endearing softness, all the alluring
tenderness, that so captivates and charms the heart. As pity and a certain
degree of timorousness are essentially woven into their constitution, do
they not pervert the very end of their creation, who daringly tempt the
perils of the chace, or exult in the prosecution and death of a poor
harmless animal? If the laws of _decency_ are not broke thro’ by such an
unbecoming practice, I am sure, those of _delicacy_ are, which above all
things ’tis the business of the fair to keep up.”
As an example of the unnatural and indelicate results of a woman being
sporting the editor related with pathos the story of one Peggy Atall, who
was brought up, her mother being dead, by her father, a country squire, to
all the “labourious sports of the field.” Hunting was, however, her
obsession, and she was noted as the boldest rider in the country. “As she
is an heiress, many a young fox hunter, whose love has been greater than
his prudence, has hazarded his neck and cheaply come off with a dislocated
limb or so, in following her thro’ the various perils and hairbreadth
’scapes of the chace.” The editor, who had the good fortune to know this
fair Diana, was, fortunately for himself, not in love with her, judging by
the avowedly casual manner in which he visited at her house. But he was
none the less deeply pained that “her whole conversation turns on that
topic. I have often heard her charm a large circle of gaping
fellow-sportsmen with a recapitulation of the feats of the day. She would
descant a whole hour on the virtues of Dreadnought, her own horse, who had
brought her in at the death of a stag, with Tom the huntsman, when every
gentleman on the field was thrown out; concluding with the most exulting
expressions of barbarous joy at seeing the poor beast torn to pieces.” He
brought his reflections to an end by strongly urging all his fair-hunting
readers to “lay aside the spirit of the chace together with the cap, the
whip, and _all the masculine attire_.” It is more than probable that as
the editor of a modern daily or weekly paper his remarks _à propos_ of
suffragette raids, and all the little delicate ventures in which women
vote-seekers indulge their fancy, would make very bright and spirited
reading. He was evidently born before his time. Be that as it may, he
undoubtedly conducted his paper on popular lines, for he was enabled to
keep it alive during the two years which he had mapped out for himself in
the beginning. Its fame was not local to Oxford and Cambridge. He received
letters of congratulation from Edinburgh, Dublin, and other university
towns--the senders of course enclosing contributions with their letters of
praise!