If a fellow leaves college for an evening, it is for a foregathering at some other college, or to go to the theatre. As a rule he wears a cloth cap. A "billycock" or "bowler," as the pot hat is called, is as thoroughly frowned on now in English colleges as it was with us a dozen years ago. As for the mortarboard and gown, undergraduate opinion rather requires that they be left behind. This is largely, no doubt, because they are required by law to be worn. So far as the undergraduates are concerned, every operative statute of the university, with the exception of those relating to matriculation and graduation, refers to conduct in the streets after nightfall, and almost without exception they are honored in the breach. This is out of disregard for the Vice-Chancellor of the university, who is familiarly called the Vice, because he serves as a warning to others for the practice of virtue. The Vice makes his power felt in characteristically dark and tortuous ways. His factors are two proctors, college dons in daytime, but skulkers after nightfall, each of whom has his bulldogs, that is, scouts employed literally to spy upon the students. If these catch you without cap or gown, they cause you to be proctorized or "progged," as it is called, which involves a matter of five shillings or so. As a rule there is little danger of progging, but my first term fell in evil days. For some reason or other the chest of the university showed a deficit of sundry pounds, shillings, and pence; and as it had long ceased to need or receive regular bequests,—the finance of the institution being in the hands of the colleges,—a crisis was at hand. A more serious problem had doubtless never arisen since the great question was solved of keeping undergraduates' names on the books. The expedient of the Vice-Chancellor was to summon the proctors, and bid them charge their bulldogs to prog all freshmen caught at night without cap and gown. The deficit in the university chest was made up at five shillings a head.
One of the Vice-Chancellor's rules is that no undergraduate shall enter an Oxford "pub." Now the only restaurant in town, Queen's, is run in conjunction with a pub, and was once the favorite resort of all who were bent on breaking the monotony of an English Sunday. The Vice-Chancellor resolved to destroy this den of Sabbath-breaking, and the undergraduates resolved no less firmly to defend their stronghold. The result was a hand-to-hand fight with the bulldogs, which ended so triumphantly for the undergraduates that a dozen or more of them were sent down. In the articles of the peace that followed, it was stipulated, I was told, that so long as the restaurant was closed Sunday afternoons and nights, it should never suffer from the visit of proctor or bulldog. As a result, Queen's is a great scene of undergraduate foregatherings. The dinners are good enough and reasonably cheap; and as most excellent champagne is to be had at twelve shillings the bottle, the diners are not unlikely to get back to college a trifle buffy, in the Oxford phrase.
By an interesting survival of mediæval custom, the Vice-Chancellor has supreme power over the morals of the town, and any citizen who transgresses his laws is visited with summary punishment. For a tradesman or publican to assist in breaking university rules means outlawry and ruin, and for certain offenses a citizen may be punished by imprisonment. Over the Oxford theatre the Vice-Chancellor's power is absolute. In my time he was much more solicitous that the undergraduate be kept from knowledge of the omnipresent woman with a past than that dramatic art should flourish, and forbade the town to more than one excellent play of the modern school of comedy that had been seen and discussed in London by the younger sisters of the undergraduates. The woman with a present is virtually absent.
Time was when no Oxford play was quite successful unless the undergraduates assisted at its first night, though in a way very different from that which the term denotes in France. The assistance was of the kind so generously rendered in New York and Boston on the evening of an athletic contest. Even to-day, just for tradition's sake, the undergraduates sometimes make a row. A lot of B. N. C. men, as the clanny sons of Brazenose College call themselves, may insist that an opera stop while the troupe listen to one of their own excellent vocal performances; and I once saw a great sprinter, not unknown to Yale men, rise from his seat, face the audience, and, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder at the soubrette, announce impressively, "Do you know, I rather like that girl!" The show is usually over just before eleven, and then occurs an amusing, if unseemly, scramble to get back to college before the hour strikes. A man who stays out after ten is fined threepence; after eleven the fine is sixpence. When all is said, why shouldn't one sprint for threepence?
If you stay out of college after midnight, the dean makes a star chamber offense of it, fines you a "quid" or two, and like as not sends you down. This sounds a trifle worse than it is; for if you must be away, your absence can usually be arranged for. If you find yourself in the streets after twelve, you may rap on some friend's bedroom window and tell him of your plight through the iron grating. He will then spend the first half of the night in your bed and wash his hands in your bowl. With such evidence as this to support him, the scout is not apt, if sufficiently retained, to report a suspected absence. I have even known fellows to make their arrangements in advance and spend the night in town; but the ruse has its dangers, and the penalty is to be sent down for good and all.
It is owing to such regulations as these that life in the English college has the name of being cloistral. Just how cloistral it is in spirit no one can know who has not taken part in a rag in the quad; and this is impossible to an outsider, for at midnight all visitors are required to leave, under a heavy penalty to their host.
VI
Any jubilation is a rag; but the most interesting kind, though perhaps the least frequent, takes the direction of what we call hazing. It is seldom, however, as hazing has come to be with us, a wanton outbreak. It is a deliberate expression of public opinion, and is carried on sedately by the leading men of the college. The more I saw of it, the more deeply I came to respect it as an institution.
In its simplest if rarest form it merely consists in smashing up a man's room. The only affair of this kind which I saw took place in the owner's absence; and when I animadverted on the fact, I was assured that it would have turned out much worse for the man's feelings if he had been present. He was a strapping big Rugbeian, who had come up with a "reputter," or reputation, as a football player, and had insisted on trying first off for the 'varsity fifteen. He had promptly been given the hoof for being slow and lazy, and when he condescended to try for the college fifteen, his services were speedily dispensed with for the same reason. As he still carried his head high, it was necessary to bring his shortcomings home to him in an unmistakable manner. Brutal as I thought the proceeding, and shameful to grown men, it did him good. He became a hard-working and lowly minded athlete, and prospered. I am not prepared to say that the effect in this particular instance did not justify the means.