All the men of Saint Boniface will recognize Hugby and Crump in these
two pictures. They were tutors in our time, and Crump is since advanced
to be President of the College. He was formerly, and is now, a rich
specimen of a University Snob.
At five-and-twenty, Crump invented three new metres, and published
an edition of an exceedingly improper Greek Comedy, with no less than
twenty emendations upon the German text of Schnupfenius and Schnapsius.
These Services to religion instantly pointed him out for advancement in
the Church, and he is now President of Saint Boniface, and very narrowly
escaped the bench.
Crump thinks Saint Boniface the centre of the world, and his position as
President the highest in England. He expects the fellows and tutors to
pay him the same sort of service that Cardinals pay to the Pope. I am
sure Crawler would have no objection to carry his trencher, or Page to
hold up the skirts of his gown as he stalks into chapel. He roars out
the responses there as if it were an honour to heaven that the President
of Saint Boniface should take a part in the service, and in his own
lodge and college acknowledges the Sovereign only as his superior.
When the allied monarchs came down, and were made Doctors of the
University, a breakfast was given at Saint Boniface; on which occasion
Crump allowed the Emperor Alexander to walk before him, but took the PAS
himself of the King of Prussia and Prince Blucher. He was going to put
the Hetman Platoff to breakfast at a side-table with the under college
tutors; but he was induced to relent, and merely entertained that
distinguished Cossack with a discourse on his own language, in which he
showed that the Hetman knew nothing about it.
As for us undergraduates, we scarcely knew more about Crump than about
the Grand Llama. A few favoured youths are asked occasionally to tea at
the lodge; but they do not speak unless first addressed by the Doctor;
and if they venture to sit down, Crump's follower, Mr. Toady, whispers,
'Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to get up?--The President is
passing;' or 'Gentlemen, the President prefers that undergraduates
should not sit down;' or words to a similar effect.
To do Crump justice, he does not cringe now to great people. He rather
patronizes them than otherwise; and, in London, speaks quite affably to
a Duke who has been brought up at his college, or holds out a finger
to a Marquis. He does not disguise his own origin, but brags of it with
considerable self-gratulation:--'I was a Charity-boy,' says he; 'see
what I am now; the greatest Greek scholar of the greatest College of the
greatest University of the greatest Empire in the world.' The argument
being, that this is a capital world, for beggars, because he, being a
beggar, has managed to get on horseback.
Hugby owes his eminence to patient merit and agreeable perseverance. He
is a meek, mild, inoffensive creature, with just enough of scholarship
to fit him to hold a lecture, or set an examination paper. He rose by
kindness to the aristocracy. It was wonderful to see the way in which
that poor creature grovelled before a nobleman or a lord's nephew, or
even some noisy and disreputable commoner, the friend of a lord. He used
to give the young noblemen the most painful and elaborate breakfasts,
and adopt a jaunty genteel air, and talk with them (although he was
decidedly serious) about the opera, or the last run with the hounds. It
was good to watch him in the midst of a circle of young tufts, with
his mean, smiling, eager, uneasy familiarity. He used to write home
confidential letters to their parents, and made it his duty to call upon
them when in town, to condole or rejoice with them when a death, birth,
or marriage took place in their family; and to feast them whenever they
came to the University. I recollect a letter lying on a desk in his
lecture-room for a whole term, beginning, 'My Lord Duke.' It was to show
us that he corresponded with such dignities.
When the late lamented Lord Glenlivat, who broke his neck at a
hurdle-race, at the premature age of twenty-four, was at the University,
the amiable young fellow, passing to his rooms in the early morning,
and seeing Hugby's boots at his door, on the same staircase, playfully
wadded the insides of the boots with cobbler's wax, which caused
excruciating pains to the Rev. Mr. Hugby, when he came to take them off
the same evening, before dining with the Master of St. Crispin's.
Everybody gave the credit of this admirable piece of fun to Lord
Glenlivat's friend, Bob Tizzy, who was famous for such feats, and who
had already made away with the college pump-handle; filed St. Boniface's
nose smooth with his face; carried off four images of nigger-boys from
the tobacconists; painted the senior proctor's horse pea-green, &c. &c.;
and Bob (who was of the party certainly, and would not peach,) was just
on the point of incurring expulsion, and so losing the family living
which was in store for him, when Glenlivat nobly stepped forward, owned
himself to be the author of the delightful JEU-D'ESPRIT, apologized to
the tutor, and accepted the rustication.
Hugby cried when Glenlivat apologized; if the young nobleman had kicked
him round the court, I believe the tutor would have been happy, so that
an apology and a reconciliation might subsequently ensue. 'My lord,'
said he, 'in your conduct on this and all other occasions, you have
acted as becomes a gentleman; you have been an honour to the University,
as you will be to the peerage, I am sure, when the amiable vivacity of
youth is calmed down, and you are called upon to take your proper share
in the government of the nation.' And when his lordship took leave of
the University, Hugby presented him with a copy of his 'Sermons to a
Nobleman's Family' (Hugby was once private tutor to the Sons of the
Earl of Muffborough), which Glenlivat presented in return to Mr. William
Ramm, known to the fancy as the Tutbury Pet, and the sermons now figure
on the boudoir-table of Mrs. Ramm, behind the bar of her house of
entertainment, 'The Game Cock and Spurs,' near Woodstock, Oxon.
At the beginning of the long vacation, Hugby comes to town, and puts up
in handsome lodgings near St. James's Square; rides in the Park in the
afternoon; and is delighted to read his name in the morning papers among
the list of persons present at Muffborough House, and the Marquis of
Farintosh's evening-parties. He is a member of Sydney Scraper's Club,
where, however, he drinks his pint of claret.
Sometimes you may see him on Sundays, at the hour when tavern doors
open, whence issue little girls with great jugs of porter; when
charity-boys walk the streets, bearing brown dishes of smoking shoulders
of mutton and baked 'taturs; when Sheeny and Moses are seen smoking
their pipes before their lazy shutters in Seven Dials; when a crowd of
smiling persons in clean outlandish dresses, in monstrous bonnets and
flaring printed gowns, or in crumpled glossy coats and silks that bear
the creases of the drawers where they have lain all the week, file down
High Street,--sometimes, I say, you may see Hugby coming out of the
Church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, with a stout gentlewoman leaning
on his arm, whose old face bears an expression of supreme pride and
happiness as she glances round at all the neighbours, and who faces the
curate himself and marches into Holborn, where she pulls the bell of a
house over which is inscribed, 'Hugby, Haberdasher.' It is the mother of
the Rev. F. Hugby, as proud of her son in his white choker as Cornelia
of her jewels at Rome. That is old Hugby bringing up the rear with the
Prayer-books, and Betsy Hugby the old maid, his daughter,--old Hugby,
Haberdasher and Church-warden.
In the front room upstairs, where the dinner is laid out, there is
a picture of Muffborough Castle; of the Earl of Muffborough, K.X.,
Lord-Lieutenant for Diddlesex; an engraving, from an almanac, of Saint
Boniface College, Oxon; and a sticking-plaster portrait of Hugby when
young, in a cap and gown. A copy of his 'Sermons to a Nobleman's Family'
is on the bookshelf, by the 'Whole Duty of Man,' the Reports of the
Missionary Societies, and the 'Oxford University Calendar.' Old Hugby
knows part of this by heart; every living belonging to Saint Boniface,
and the name of every tutor, fellow, nobleman, and undergraduate.
He used to go to meeting and preach himself, until his son took orders;
but of late the old gentleman has been accused of Puseyism, and is quite
pitiless against the Dissenters.