It naturally followed, therefore, that the lower classes, who drudged all day in the effort to keep body and soul together, and provide the wherewithal to fill the stomachs of their hungry progeny, left Oxford outside their calculations when discussing the prospective education of their children. Oxford was a place for rich men. How, then, could their sons go there? It was impossible. Meanwhile, the children were clamouring for education. What was to be done?
Through the influence of rich men who had been to the university the penniless lads were taken from the plough and entered into colleges as errand boys and odd-job hands. They were at liberty to pick up what education they could in the intervals of performing menial tasks for the gentlemen commoners. They cleaned boots, fetched and carried, and were the servants of anybody who chose to order them about. Having no money they slept in coal-holes, cupboards under the stairs, and attics under the eaves, and satisfied the pangs of hunger by picking up the crumbs which fell from the rich men’s tables. They had no social intercourse with the gentlemen commoners, and were treated with scant courtesy by the college servants.
The resemblance between the servitor and the Ruskin Hall man is apparent when due allowance has been made for modern improvements. The modern conception of Oxford is curiously akin to that of the eighteenth century. The education to be received still has a very high reputation. The present day working classes, however, possess a greater ambition than their antecedents showed. They are no longer content to snatch education in the intervals of earning their keep. Ruskin Hall has been built for their especial benefit. There they may win scholarships to their heart’s content. Their kinship with the humble servitor lies in the fact that they do their own menial work instead of having to do it for others; that they have no social intercourse with the Undergraduates of other colleges except at the weekly debates of the Union Society in which they distinguish themselves by their fluent Socialistic doctrines; and that they take no part in the athletic and collegiate life of the university.
One of the earliest references to servitors in the eighteenth century records is contained in a comedy entitled “An Act at Oxford.” The play was written in 1704 by a dramatist named Baker.
One of the characters was a servitor named Chum. His father was a chimney-sweep and his mother a poor ginger-bread seller at Cow Cross. Chum was established in Brazen-Nose College, and his duties consisted in waiting “upon Gentleman-Commoners, to dress and clean their shoes and make out their exercises.” His “fortune,” which was “soon told,” consisted apparently of “two Raggs call’d shirts, a dog’s eared Grammer, and a piece of Ovid de Tristibus.” For having materially assisted his master, a Smart, to win the hand and heart of a fair damsel known as Berynthia, he was rewarded, in the play, with the sum of five hundred guineas—an occurrence which would be the height of improbability in real life, as the servitor was jeered at and made a kind of Aunt Sally by all and sundry.
In 1709 one of those poor miserable wretches sat him down—where he procured pen and paper is still shrouded in mystery—and wrote a poem on his own doleful condition. Its title is “Servitour,” and it was printed by “H. Hills in Black-Fryars, near the water side.” He pictured himself to be coming out of a Skittle Yard in his “rusty round cap.”
“Like Cheesy Pouch of Shon-ap-Shenkin,
His Sandy locks, with wide Hiatus,
Like Bristles seem’d Erected at us,
Clotted with Sweat, the Ends hung down;
And made Resplendent Cape of Gown;
Whose Cape was thin, and so Transparent,
Hold it t’ th’ Light, you’d scarce beware on’t
’Twixt Chin and Breast contiguous Band,
Hung in an Obtuse Angle and—
It had a Latitude Canonick,
His coat so greasy was and torn,
That had you seen it you’d ha’ sworn
’Twas Ten Years old when he was born.
His buttons fringed as is the Fashion,
In Gallick and Brittanick Nation;
Or, to speak like more Modern fellows,
Their moulds dropt out like ripe Brown-shellers.
His Leather Galligaskin’s rent,
Made Artless Music as he went....
His Holey Stockins were ty’d up,
One with a Band, one with a Rope.”
In such clothes as these, the extreme poverty of which would bring a blush to the cheek of the modern Oxford paper-boy, this gloomy poet had to go to the Buttery and procure game and capons, ribs of beef, and other succulent dainties for some gentleman commoner’s dinner, while for himself there was nothing but “Poor scraps and Cold as I’m a sinner.” As a place to lay his head o’ nights, he was thankful to get a lumber-room in the apex of the building, somewhere under the eaves,
“A Room with Dirt and Cobwebs lin’d,
Which here and there with Spittle Shin’d;
Inhabited let’s see—by Four;
If I mistake not, ’twas no more.
Two buggy beds....
Their Dormer windows with brown paper,
Was patch’d to keep out Northern Vapour.
The Table’s broken foot stood on,
An old Schrevelious Lexicon,
Here lay together Authors various,
From Homer’s Iliad, to Cordelius:
And so abus’d was Aristotle,
He only served to stop a bottle....
Where eke stood Glass, Dark-Lanthorns ancient
Fragment of Mirerr, Penknife, Trencher,
And forty things which I can’t mention.
Old Chairs and Stools, and such-like Lumber,
Compleatly furnisht out the Chamber.”
George Whitefield, a servitor at Pembroke in 1732, also shared his rooms with others. His companions, however, did not appear to have suffered unduly from the usual depression caused by their hard lot, for they frequently invited Whitefield to join them “in their excess of riot,” and looked upon him as a weird and extraordinary creature for his persistent refusals. His account of the manner of his admission to Pembroke College is characteristic of the man, and gives an idea of what tasks servitors were called upon to perform.