“Mr Prate-apace.—Amongst all the vile trash and ribaldry with which you have lately poisoned the publick, nothing is more scandalous and saucy than your charging our university with the want of civility and good manners. Let me tell you, Sir, for all your haste, we have as well-bred, accomplish’d gentlemen in Oxford, as any where in Christendom; men that dress as well, sing as well, dance as well, and behave in every respect as well, though I say it, as any man under the sun. You are the first audacious Wit-wou’d that ever call’d Oxford a boorish, uncivilised place: And demme, Sir, you ought to be hors’d out of all good company for an impudent praggish Jackanapes. Oxford a boorish place! poor wretch! I am sorry for thy ignorance. Who wears finer lace, or better linnen than Jack Flutter? who has handsomer tie-wigs or more fashionable cloaths or cuts a bolder dash than Tom Paroquet? Where can you find a more handy man at a tea-table than Robin Tattle? Or, without vanity I may say it, one that plays better at Ombre than him, who subscribes himself an enemy to all such pimps as thou art?”
Such are the arguments he brought up against a charge of bad manners: singing, dancing, handy at a tea-table, wearing the best lace and linen and cutting a bold dash. The perfect gentleman indeed! The acme of culture! He, with all the others of his kidney, put in an appearance at Lyne’s coffee-house in academical undress somewhere about eleven o’clock—that is to say, immediately after a gentle dalliance with breakfast. Here he discussed the topics of the hour, heard the latest news, enjoyed the latest scandals, and then strolled in the Park or under Merton wall. Those who made no pretensions to “Smartness” were meanwhile dining in Hall—a thing far beneath the dignity of a Buck of the first head who ate in solitary dignity in his own chamber, his meal consisting, for example, of “boil’d chicken and pettitoes.” After resting awhile, he spent an hour or so in overcoming the difficulties of dressing. That satisfactorily concluded, it was his bounden duty to make an afternoon appearance at Lyne’s. About five o’clock he dropped in at Hamilton’s, where he “struts about the room for a while and drinks a dram of citron.” Thence he returned to college and adjourned to the chapel “to shew how genteely he dresses, and how well he can chaunt.” Having given conclusive demonstrations of these two accomplishments, he drank tea with some celebrated toast and attended her to Maudlin Grove or Paradise Garden and back again. Such a ridiculous idea as work never entered his head. Any time he might give to reading was employed in the study of novels and romances.
As an example of his passion for cleanliness at all costs, Terrae Filius gave an account of an adventure of one of these gentry at Lyne’s coffee-house. “This afternoon, a noted Smart of Christ Church College, as he was writing a billet-doux had the misfortune to blot one of his ruffles with a spot of ink, which put the gentleman in so great a disorder, that he threw the standish through the window, stamped about the room for half an hour together, and was often heard to say, I wonder that gentlemen cannot find some cleaner method of conveying their thoughts, and that he wished he might be blown up wherever he went, if he ever made use of that filthy liquor again, though the displeasure of the whole fair sex was the consequence. Let prigs and pedants, said he, keep all the nasty manufacture to themselves.”
It is comforting to be assured that this elaborate sect was not entirely composed of peers and gentleman commoners, for their street behaviour was far worse than anything that even the most hypercritical Somerville blue-stocking can accuse Undergraduates of to-day. “They cannot forbear laughing,” said Amhurst, “at every body that obeys the statutes, and differs from them; or (as my correspondent expresses it in the proper dialect of the place) that does not cut as bold a dash as they do. They have singly, for the most part, very good assurances; but when they walk together in bodies (as they often do), how impregnable are their foreheads? They point at every foul they meet, laugh very loud, and whisper as loud as they laugh. Demme, Jack, there goes a prig! Let us blow the puppy up. Upon which they all stare him full in the face, turn him from the wall as he passes by, and set up an horse laugh, which puts the plain raw novice out of countenance, and occasions great triumph amongst these tawdry desperadoes.”
Like all hooligans they were thorough cowards unless backed up by vastly superior numbers. It took about twenty of them, and that with the assistance of Dutch courage, to frighten some three or four foreigners and to kick a Presbyterian parson out of a coffee-house. They were for the most part sons of country farmers with practically no money who got into the Smart set immediately after coming up, and who remained Smarts just so long as the “mercers, taylors, shoe makers, and perriwig-makers will tick with them.” Tradesmen of that day were apparently possessed of far longer patience than most of the present generation. To-day they despatch solicitor’s letters after two terms. Then they allowed a bill to lie fallow (with the usual accretion of interest) for three or four years.
With his usual quaint humour Amhurst declared that he has seen these same Smarts two or three years afterwards “in gowns and cassocks, walking with demure looks and an holy leer; so easy is the transition from dancing to preaching, and from the bowling-green to the pulpit.”
The Rev. Richard Graves, a Pembroke man, in 1732, related that he became friends with a genial crowd who passed their evenings in drinking strong ale, smoking like chimneys, punning, and singing Bacchanalian catches. Some gentlemen commoners, however, Smarts, who came from the same part of the country as Graves, rescued him from the ill-bred hands of such low company—so considered chiefly on account of the liquor they drank. In his own words “they good-naturedly invited me to their party: they treated me with port wine and arrack-punch; and then, when they had drunk so much, as hardly to distinguish wine from water, they would conclude with a bottle or two of claret. They kept late hours and drank their favourite toasts on their knees. This was deemed good company and high life; but it neither suited my taste, my fortune, or my constitution.”
Night after night of this deep drinking made the fortunes of the spirit-merchants, but left some of the drinkers soddened and useless. I may quote, as an instance, the case of Lord Lovelace.
It is a well-known fact that the Principal of his Hall reported, and that truthfully, that “he never knew him sober but twelve hours and that he used every morning to drink a quart of brandy, or something equivalent to it, to his own share.” Hearne, too, in his diary makes reference to a commoner of Magdalen Hall, a son of Dr Inett, who was found dead from drinking ale and brandy. There were three companions with him, but they were merely asleep under the table. Professor Pryme, who was up at the end of the eighteenth century, afterwards wrote that when Hall was over it was the fashion to collect a large party together to drink wine with a little dessert. “The host,” he said, “named a Vice-President, and toasts were given. First a lady by each of the party, then a gentleman, and then a sentiment. I remember one of these latter, the single married and the married happy. Every one was required to fill a bumper to the toasts of the President, the Vice-President, and his own. If any one wished to go to chapel he was pressed to return afterwards.”[5]
The fact, however, that toping constituted such an important feature of Undergraduate life, among Smarts and non-Smarts equally is not a matter for vast amazement, or stern condemnation. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?—for the Dons were if anything even worse than those to whom they stood in loco parentis. The whole world of Dons, from the humblest and most juvenile Fellow to the king of kings, the Head of a college or Hall, cultivated the vice of drink as assiduously as if it were a virtue. Oxford was not so far away from London as not to reflect the manners and habits of the capital, and since to the Bucks of London abnormal drinking was then the highest good form, it is not to be wondered at that the Undergraduates, ever of tender years and advanced imitative faculties, should give a brilliant reflection of the metropolis.