Like Nemesis, the Oxford tradesman has sooner or later to be reckoned with. His methods are, and for that matter always were, rather spider-like. He sets out a beautiful and enticing web in his shop window, and sits placidly in the darkness of his back parlour to await results. One after another the Undergraduates, foolish flies, dash in; and then, when they have been given sufficient time—a year or so—the spider pounces and demands his just, but frequently exorbitant, dues. Sometimes he does not get them. Spiders, however, rarely come in for any sympathy.
The old-time Oxford tradesman was undoubtedly a man of parts. In all the periodicals of the time are to be found odes, couplets, and prose-writings all singing his praise. He constituted a factor of importance in the daily routine of eighteenth-century life. It must, indeed, have been a sick Smart who did not visit daily his barber and perruquier, his horse-dealer, his tobacco merchant, his mercer and tailor, his coffee-house. These worthy townsmen seem to have been, in fact, the sole raison d’être of the Smart’s university career, and their pseudo erudition and quite exceptional powers were the cause of an enthusiastic article from the pen of The Student.
“A tradesman of Oxford,” he wrote, “is no more like another common tradesman than some collegians are like other men ... the very sign-posts express their taste for learning and superiour education. Our mercers, milliners, taylors, etc., etc., have shewn their nice judgments in the art of designing, by the many curious emblematical devices that so eminently adorn the entrances to their shops. How sublime are the signs of our innkeepers! the Angel, the Cross, the Mitre, the Maidenhead, with many others, are too well known to need mentioning. A tooth drawer amongst us denotes his occupation by an excellent poetical distich; a second with great propriety stiles himself operator for the teeth: and my printer who sells James’s fever powder, Greenough’s tinctures, Hoopers’ female pills, and the like, exhibits to our view in large golden letters over his door the pompous denomination of Medicinal Warehouse. Nor are we at all surprised to see written in this learned university, tho’ over a female bookseller’s door, ‘BIBLIOPOLIUM MARIAE,’ etc.
“Not to dwell too minutely on externals, every tradesman with us is a mathematician, or philosopher, or divine, or critick, and what not? But they are all to a man particularly famous for their skill in arithmetick. For my own part I never dealt with one yet who was not thoroughly practised in addition and multiplication.
“I know an ale-houseman (he sells an excellent pot of ale) who has made several experiments in electricity, but without a machine: I know a grocer, a profound reasoner and speculative moralist, a bookbinder deeply read in Geography, Chorography, etc., and a glazier, a great mathematician, who has squar’d the circle several time all but a little bit. A barber has published a cutting poem lately, which is universally admired, and all his own making. It is not to be doubted that our Oxford booksellers are excellent criticks. They can tell you the character of a book by only looking at the title page. My own, in particular, is so fine a judge of composition, that he begs me not to send anything to the press till it has been submitted to his correction. Besides, I know he has a strong desire to begin author himself, but his singular modesty will not permit him to own it. He has, therefore, prevailed with me to erect a small box, with a slit, in his door to receive the contributions of those writers who chuse to be concealed. As I know the man’s vanity will oblige him sometimes to put in his mite, I desire the reader, when he meets with anything particularly dull, to suppose it written, not by me, but my bookseller.
“I have often heard two learned tradesmen chop logick together on the most sublime topicks. Once, in particular, I was present at a very important dispute, when a shoemaker (a very honest fellow) affirmed, to the general satisfaction of his audience, that the world was eternal from the beginning, and would be so to the end of it. At another time, the discourse running upon politics, a mercer (no small man, I can assure you) wonder’d what a duce we would have. ‘I’m sure,’ says he, ‘there’s not a happier Island in England than Great Britain; and a man may chuse his own Religion, that he may, whether it be Mahometism or Infidelity.’ A little while ago I lent my Smith’s harmonicks to my Musick-master, who has since return’d it, assuring me that it is not worth a farthing; for ’twould teach me the Thievery mayhap, but as for the Practicks, he’ll put me into a betterer method. I could produce many more such instances which I have gleaned from their conversations; but these will be sufficient to convince the world that no subject is too high, no point too intricate for their exalted capacities.... I cannot conclude better than by giving a specimen of an Oxford tradesman’s poetical genius, in an extract of a letter from my taylor, who (in the college phrase) put the dun upon me. In my answer I advised him to peruse Philips’s description of a dun in his splendid shilling: to which he made me this reply.... ‘But now to that which, you say, breaks all friendship, a dun, horrible monster! I have bruis’d Philips, though, in some places too hard. As to the appellation, I cannot think it rightly apply’d.’
“For I
Ne’er yet did thunder with my vocal heel,
Nor call’d yet thrice with hideous accent dire;
But only with my pen declar’d my dread,
What most I fear’d, the horrid catch-pole’s claw.
“But you,
Whom fortune’s blest with splendid shilling worth,
Ne’er fears the monster’s horrid faded brow,
Fed with the produce of blest Alb’on’s isle,
With juice of Gallic and Hispernian
Fruits, that doe chearful make the heart of man,
Thus sink my muse into the deep abyss,
As low as Styx or Stygia’s bottom is.”
“N.B.”—wrote The Student in italics at the foot of this wonderful poem, “I have paid him.”
There is a certain amount of pathos underlying that delightful piece of mock praise. The thought of the mercers, grocers, shoemakers, and the rest honestly believing themselves to have attained to a most unusual degree of learning, by reason of their propinquity to a university, and parading their monumental ignorance under that belief, is a very painful one. It is even more painful, looking to the fact that most tradesmen, connected in any way with Academic Oxford, read The Student regularly, to know that the above stream of ridicule did not enlighten them as to the truth.
Another man who had evidently had the dun put upon him, not once but many times, by sulky tradesmen, received (so at least it is to be supposed) an unexpected windfall with which he settled all outstanding debts. The wonderful and unaccustomed feeling of showing a clean slate was so strong that he was moved to an ecstasy of versification to relieve himself.