In feats of strength and games of skill
His time must all be passed,
Heedless that, 'spite of cram, he will
Be sorely plucked at last.
Affluent College Servants
Over-athleticism, however, was not the only ground of complaint against education at the older Universities in the 'sixties. The high cost of living for undergraduates, owing to the extortion of local tradesmen and the perquisites of college servants, provoked a correspondence in The Times in the winter of 1865. Punch ironically affected to defend the retail "profiteers." His College butler in "The Undergraduates' Rebellion" associates himself with the College Dean as the victim of a mutiny of meanness, and the accompanying cartoon rubs in the point, a stout butcher addressing an equally stout Don, engaged in cutting a loaf, with the words, "Wery low them letters in the papers, Mr. Dean! Wery 'ard on both of us, Sir—my beef and your bread-an'-butter!" Punch's satire was justified by the fortunes notoriously made at the time and for many years afterwards by College cooks and butlers, whose incomes sometimes exceeded those of the Heads of Houses. More than ten years later a Christ Church "Scout" bitterly complained of the passing of the good old times. As he put it, "Instead of taking food home out of College, I has to bring it in."
[8] This probably refers to his work on the Epistles of St. Paul (1855).
[9] Oman's England in the Nineteenth Century, p. 155.