He certainly would not have met a troop of young men, let alone maidens, going in and out of lecture. The lectures were over: and the lecture rooms were never crowded. Perhaps some noisy fellow-commoners might have stared and jeered at him and quite possibly have insulted him. Most colleges were very empty of students, many rather dilapidated. He would have dined in the middle of the day, and the hall would have been hot, noisy, and probably ill ordered. Joints were passed from one diner to another and carved according to taste. At the high table, where he would dine, would be the resident fellows, a stray nobleman or so, and a few rich young men, called fellow-commoners. A good deal of beer would be drunk, and most of the company would be rather cross and sleepy after the meal. The fellows, who were nearly all clergymen, would show themselves obsequious to the noblemen, uneasily familiar with the fellow-commoners, and completely oblivious of the scholars and pensioners, who dined at the lower table, and of the sizars, or poor scholars, who, in some cases (certainly at an earlier date), waited on them, and after dinner ate what had been left on the high table. There were no games to watch: and in the afternoon probably our guest would be mounted and taken for a ride. In the evening supper would be served and perhaps a considerable amount of wine drunk in the combination room. As political feeling ran high at the time, the company would probably have quarrelled. Very few fellows had ever left their native country. A few had hardly known any places save their homes and their University.
Some must have been strangely uncouth in manner and appearance. Most of them were, as I have said, clergymen, and, of course, bachelors; but their practice of celibacy was not always such as to fulfil the ideals of the advocates of that holy state in the days of the saints. But we have not yet finished our day. Supper would have been followed by an adjournment to a small, dirty, ill-lighted public house, and the walk home to bed might not be inaptly compared to the convolutions of a corkscrew.
That such was the University in the days of our author I fancy some extracts from the book before me will convince you. He admits that in his youthful days Cambridge had sunk lower than it ever had before, and he trusted that such days as his might never recur.
We have kept him waiting too long. Let me present to you Henry Gunning, Esquire Bedel of the University of Cambridge. He tells us he was a son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood and the descendant of “that admirable prelate,” Dr. Peter Gunning, Bishop of Ely in the reign of Charles II. He entered Christ’s College in 1784, and died in 1855, well over eighty years of age, after a life spent in the University. During his long last illness he dictated his reminiscences.[19] He had, at an earlier period written some memoirs; but, on reflection, after a serious illness he had decided to burn all the papers. In his own words:
“I kept an account of the decision of the Heads on any disputed point.... My notes became much swelled by rumours of jobbing among the higher powers, which, though sometimes defeated, were generally so skilfully conducted that they more frequently succeeded. I had collected sufficient materials for publishing a pretty large volume, but was about that time attacked by a sudden and dangerous illness, which afforded more opportunity for serious reflection than I had before accustomed myself to.... I was apprehensive that I might have inserted some things (which I believed to be facts) upon questionable authority.... I feared that the papers might fall into the hands of some bookseller whose only object would be gain, to obtain which he would not scruple to whitewash men whose characters ought to have been drawn in the darkest colours, or to speak in extremely harsh terms of others on whose eccentricities I only wished to pass a slight censure. Too ill to admit of delay, I decided on committing all my papers to the flames, nor did I for fifty years regret the step.” Gunning died before his task was completed: his memoirs terminated abruptly; but the most interesting part of his work has happily survived, and the earlier reminiscences, as is customary with the aged, are more full and vivid than the later.
I shall not attempt to moralise or discant much upon his story; but I intend to give it in his own words with a few remarks in passing.
Henry Gunning entered Christ’s College as a sizar, a poor scholar who was at one time supposed to be fed by what was left of the meals provided for the fellows (a Christ’s College sizar being the equivalent of a “servitor” at Oxford), though Gunning says nothing of this.[20] As we shall see, he led anything but the life of a humble dependant whilst at the University. His college had been and now is among the most distinguished at Cambridge. It had produced John Milton and Ralph Cudworth, and had been a famous centre of the intellectual life of the seventeenth century. It was the college of William Paley, who was Senior Wrangler in 1763, and it was destined to be the school of many a famous man, among them Charles Darwin. But only three men entered with our hero in 1785.
The two tutors, Mr. Parkinson and Mr. Seale, were in a sense men of mark. The former had been disappointed in failing to be elected Master; and was engaged to a very beautiful young lady, whose numerous admirers made him at times uncomfortable. As Mr. Parkinson had an eighteen-mile ride to get to his lady-love, he lectured in cap and gown, but also booted and spurred, and snubbed young Gunning when he asked for explanations of difficult points in the lecture.
Accordingly his pupil gave up lectures and decided not to read at all; but at the end of the term the tutor spoke most kindly and encouragingly, as an old friend of his pupil’s father. The result was that Gunning became, for a time at least, a reading man, and was much encouraged by his friend Hartley, a Yorkshireman who shewed him the solution of the difficulties which Parkinson was too impatient to explain. When Parkinson examined Gunning he found that his progress was most satisfactory, encouraged him most kindly to persist; and when Gunning told him of a man who was reputed to read twelve hours a day in hopes of surpassing the expected Senior Wrangler, he remarked, “If he mean to beat him he had better devote six hours to reading and six hours to reflecting on what he has read.”
Seale, the other tutor, was a good teacher and a really humorous lecturer. “Nothing could be pleasanter than the hour passed at his lecture, such was his kindness to all.... When any ludicrous blunder occurred ... he joined in the laugh as heartily as any of us.” Seale seems to have been a very able scholar, but somewhat quarrelsome: he became chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury; but had to resign because he quarrelled with the butler about the wine supplied at the chaplains’ table. However, Gunning had nothing to complain of in regard to the education he got from his college.