Although the father took it for granted that his son had immediately forgotten his home and arrived in an instant at man’s estate—as far as that permits of getting drunk—he was not always in the right. To a certain extent the anxieties of the mother were justified, for, on arriving at Oxford, the freshman did not always fall on a bed of clover. In many instances he was lucky to get a bed at all in some poky little garret with one window, through which could be obtained a minute view of sky and stars, and which was ice-cold in winter and in summer stuffy to a degree. However large the college there were always more men in residence than could be properly housed. Colman said of the House, one of the biggest colleges in Oxford, that it “was so completely cramm’d, that shelving garrets, and even unwholesome cellars, were inhabited by young gentlemen, in whose father’s families the servants could not be less liberally accommodated.” He refers also to a fellow Westminster boy who was “stuffed into one of these underground dog-holes.” Then, too, even up to the beginning of the nineteenth century there prevailed a system of ragging freshers which did not tend to make them any the less homesick. They were swindled by their scouts, and shamefully misused by their bedmakers.
To add to their discomfort their tutors were in many cases fast allies of the bottle, and totally unable to render them any assistance in the matter of finding their feet. Colman made a very illuminative reference, from his own experience, to the scurvy tricks which the scouts and bedmakers played upon the long-suffering fresher. “My two mercenaries,” he wrote, “having to do with a perfect greenhorn, laid in all the articles for me which I wanted—wine, tea, sugar, coals, candles, bed and table linen—with many useless etcetera, which they told me I wanted—charging me for everything full half more than they had paid, and then purloining from me full half of what they had sold.”
His scout and bedmaker had each seen fit to enter the bonds of holy matrimony, and both brought up their better halves to assist in despoiling the luckless greenhorn. He, however, soon lost his greenness and set about putting his house in order—with the result that all four were turned out. In their places, he duly installed a scout and a bedmaker who were married to each other—a tactical move which “consolidates knavery, and reduces your ménage to a couple of pilferers, instead of four.” But before Colman had found himself sufficiently to be able firmly but courteously to dispense with their services, his bedmaker, fittingly called a harpy, played him false most condemnably. “I was glad,” he said, writing of his first night in Oxford, “on retiring early to rest, that I might ruminate, for five minutes, over the important events of the day, before I fell fast asleep. I was not, then, in the habit of using a night-lamp or burning a rush-light; so, having dropt the extinguisher upon my candle, I got into bed; and found, to my dismay, that I was reclining in the dark upon a surface very like that of a pond in a hard frost. The jade of a bedmaker had spread the spick and span sheeting over the blankets, fresh from the linen-draper’s shop-unwash’d, uniron’d, unair’d, ‘with all its imperfections on its head.’ Through the tedious hours of an inclement January night, I could not close my eyes—my teeth chattered, my back shivered—I thrust my head under the bolster, drew my knees up to my chin; it was all useless, I could not get warm—I turned again and again, at every turn a hand or a foot touch’d upon some new cold place; and at every turn the chill glazy clothwork crepitated like iced buckram. God forgive me for having execrated the authoress of my calamity! but, I verily think, that the meekest of Christians who prays for his enemies, and for mercy upon “all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks,” would in his orisons, in such a night of misery, make a specifick exception against his Bedmaker!”[4]
In these enlightened days a fresher, even, would not have left her out of his prayers—he would have invented new ones for her especial benefit. Poor Colman found when he rose betimes in the morning, making a virtue of necessity, that a night of misery was not the only torment that the ill-favoured hussy had stored up for him. For, having abluted in ice-cold water in the hopes of refreshing himself, he found that the towel was in an even worse state of hardness than the sheets; while at breakfast the tablecloth was so stiff that he dreaded to sit down to his meal because he feared to cut his shins against the edge of it. With intent, doubtless, to add humiliation to injury, the old hag had also left his surplice in a state of pristine unwashedness, so that “cased in this linen panoply, which covers him from his chin to his feet, and seems to stand on end, in emulation of a suit of armour (the certain betrayer of an academical debutant) the Newcomer is to be heard at several yards distance, on his way across a quadrangle, cracking and bouncing like a dry faggot upon the fire—and he never fails to command notice, in his repeated marches to prayer, till soap and water have silenced the noise of his arrival at Oxford.”
The optimism of a Georgian freshman was truly amazing. The invaluable gift of youth is undoubtedly its explanation. To be thrust suddenly into entirely new surroundings where not only the manners and customs were quite different from any of which he had experience before, but where it was necessary to begin again, to readjust his outlook upon life, was a very trying experience. It was one which men of greater maturity would hesitate to undergo. And yet here was this man, a mere lad of fifteen or sixteen, gladly entering a new world with a vague notion of the things which would be expected of him or of the things to expect. Without a twinge of nervousness he signed his name to long-winded oaths, and unconsciously perjured himself five minutes later. Everywhere he saw strange faces, met with new and incomprehensible experiences, and found himself doing the wrong thing. With undaunted cheerfulness, however, he allowed Oxford to treat him as she chose, to mould him to her own liking, to pull him this way and that, until eventually, with an increased optimism, his schoolboy corners were rounded off, and he became one with Oxford. It was his very lack of experience which enabled him to go through such a difficult time without flinching. He did not realise the tremendous forces at work upon him. He was, in fact, like a seed put into earth. After the rain, the sun, the wind, and all the forces of Nature have been brought to bear upon it, slowly and irresistibly it shoots up and becomes at last a flower. The Oxford freshman burst forth into blossom at the end of his first year in the same helpless way. He was quite unable to tell by what steps his development had been brought about, and was perfectly content to go through his whole university career in the same blind way.
CHAPTER IV
THE SMART
Valentine Frippery and his letter—Boiled chicken and pettitoes—Lyne’s coffee-house and the billet-doux—Tick—Liquor capacity—A Smart advises The Student—Latin odes for tradesmen only.