Oxford Days; or, How Ross Got His Degree

by F. E. Weatherly

On returning to his rooms he found his breakfast laid, the kettle simmering, and letters lying on the table; one from home; the rest, the circulars that flatter the freshman’s dignity, and coax him into becoming a customer.

The foundation breakfast consists of bread, butter, and milk, and in some colleges two eggs. These articles are brought by the scouts from the buttery, and entered by the buttery-clerk to the respective undergraduates. The bread, butter, and milk are distributed in “commons,” the rate charged being above that of tradesmen outside college, and the quantity being, in the case of most men, certainly too much for one meal. The remains belong to the scout.

Fish, poultry, meat (and for luncheon, pastry), are supplied from the kitchen. For some items the charges are reasonable, for others exorbitant. Naturally, therefore, it is in “kitchen-orders” that the careful student can economize, if only he can stand against the Oxford custom, fostered by the scouts, of ordering too much. For at least three days in the week the two customary eggs, with bread and butter, are surely enough for breakfast, a kitchen-order being thereby avoided. The too common habit, however, is to discard the eggs (paid for, it must be remembered, whether eaten or not), and eat meat. It is quite conceivable that, after one breakfast on one staircase where eight men live, the scout may put into his basket sixteen eggs.

Tea, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, sugar, and so on, are in some colleges procurable from the Common-room-stores, an establishment resembling an Italian warehouse and wine-and-spirit-vault combined. Custom, if not college regulations, will compel the undergraduate to deal with the Common-room-man.

At Paul’s there is no such establishment, but William very kindly supplied the deficiency by ordering in, from one of the nearest—and dearest—grocers, a good stock of tea (at 4s. 6d. per pound, of course), coffee, candles, matches, scented soap, biscuits, jam, marmalade, till Frank was quite bewildered at the thought of the room necessary for storing these delicacies. However, they did not last long.

One of the most iniquitous and yet plausible practices is that pursued at some colleges—Paul’s among the number—of compelling undergraduates to deal at certain shops.

Anything in the way of paper, paint, or furniture, has to be procured at one of the shops attached to the college. These are invariably the dearest, charging for their goods 25 and 30 per cent. more than the many other establishments which struggle against these monopolies.

The reason given by the college authorities for this system is that they are obliged to exercise some principle of selection of the workmen allowed within the college walls, indiscriminate admission being open to risk. The reason is plausible enough, but it is based entirely on the supposition that the workmen employed by expensive firms alone are honest. Further, what risk could there be in the conveyance of a piece of furniture to the college gates, when its removal to the rooms of the purchaser would be the work of the college servants?

The only method of avoiding the tyranny of the system is to employ one of the railway carriers. The college porter, on the presumption that the article has come by rail from the undergraduate’s home, is obliged to admit it.

Anything like opposition to the regulation appears at present to be useless. One daring undergraduate at Paul’s, who ventured to remonstrate with his college dean (the authority in such matters), was met with this characteristic answer:—“It is our system. If you don’t like it, the college gates are open. You can remove your name from the college books. We won’t detain you.”—an answer perfectly admissible from the proprietor of any establishment, but insolent and unwarrantable from one who, after all, is but an administrator in a corporate institution.