Rowlandson's Oxford

by A. Hamilton Gibbs

First arrival—Footpads and “easy pads”—Farewell to parents—A forlorn animal—Terrae Filius’s advice—Much prayers—“Hell has no fury like a woman scorned”—The disadvantages of a conscience.

The beginning of our university career is marked, unless we be Stoics, by mixed feelings of elation and a sinking at the pit of the stomach which we afterwards learn to recognise as “needle.” The train journey may have seemed long, but at this first breathless moment when the porter receives our goods and chattels into his arms from the top of the moribund hansom, we could almost wish that we were back in the train again. A sense of isolation, and of having to stand or fall by ourselves, sweeps over like a tidal wave, leaving us momentarily chilled and nervous.

How different was the fresher’s arrival in the eighteenth century. He boarded a coach in the early morning in London. His baggage was placed in the boot, and the traveller, armed to the teeth with blunderbuss and pistols, took his seat. With a clattering of hoofs, yelling of ostlers and merry tooting on the horn, the coach dashed out of the yard and wound merrily along throughout the day by field, village, and town. If the journey were a lucky one, the travellers arrived at Oxford without let or hindrance about six o’clock in the evening, when they were able to catch a first glimpse of the top of Radcliffe’s Library. They then jolted in over Magdalen Bridge—in those days the new bridge—and so made their way to their respective colleges.

Wrapped up in thick coats and with ice-cold feet tapping the side of the coach to restore circulation, the excited fresher had ample time for cogitation. The lets and hindrances, over and above the ordinary accidents to horse or vehicle, such as casting a shoe or breaking a strap, were little excitements in the form of footpads and highwayman, who infested the district on the look-out for a fat and likely college bursar laden with fat and likely money-bags. At the first hint of the approach of one of these gentlemen of the road, blunderbusses were whipped out and fired in all directions, while the horses were lashed and the coach leaned and rocked and swayed in its efforts to get away. Afterwards, ensconced behind a tankard in the Tuns among his somewhat condescending senior friends, the newcomer warmed up under the influence of hot toddy and genial society, and described the awful onslaught made upon them by at least fifty mounted desperadoes.

Did he come from nearer places than London, then he made his entrance on a sedate horse, in the fashion of the gentleman-commoner who sent the following account to Terrae Filius:—

“Being of age to play the fool
With muckle glee I left our school
At Hoxton,
And mounted on an easy pad
Rode with my mother and my dad
To Oxon.”

This merry bard was not exempt from the pangs of loneliness. He, too, felt the wave of depression when his mother and dad kissed him and slowly disappeared down the street again on their easy pads. For, after an amusing description of purchasing gown and square, he burst into tears.

“I sallied forth to deck my back
With loads of Tuft and black
Prunello.
My back equipt, it was not fair
My head should ’scape, and so as square
As chessboard
A cap I bought, my scull to screen,
Of cloth without and all within
Of pasteboard
When metamorphos’d in attire
More like a parson than a squire
th’ had dressed me
I took my leave with many a tear
Of John our man, and parents dear
Who blessed me....”[2]

and there he was, poor lad, probably no more than fifteen years old—of age to play the fool—left, lachrymose and solitary, to fight his own battles and win his M.A. spurs before coming to grips with the world.

George Colman the younger, who matriculated at the House in 1780, and who would most certainly have been instantly elected to the Bullingdon Club had he gone up to-day, wrote most feelingly on the question of the lonely fresher. “A Freshman, as a young academician is call’d on his admission at Oxford,” he said “is a forlorn animal. It is awkward for an old stager in life to be thrown into a large company of strangers, to make his way among them, as he can—but to the poor freshman everything is strange—not only College society, but any society at all—and he is solitary in the midst of a crowd. If, indeed, he should happen to come to the University (particularly to Christ Church) from one of the great publick schools, he finds some of his late school fellows, who, being in the same straggling situation with himself, abridge the period of his fireside loneliness, and of their own, by forming a familiar intercourse—otherwise he may mope for many a week; at all events, it is generally some time before he establishes himself in a set of acquaintance.”[3]