Peers and eldest sons of peers, in the first half of the xix century, wore the black silk gown and tall silk hat of an M.A.,[360] and on great occasions a more splendid dress adorned with gold tassels and lace. Fellow-commoners wore a gown with gold or silver lace and a black velvet cap; the younger sons of peers being known as “Hat-fellow-commoners” because they wore the M.A.’s silk hat instead of the velvet cap.
Most of the pensioners at Cambridge in the xviii century (but not the fellow-commoners) used to wear a sleeveless gown called a “curtain.”[361] Neither the clerical cassock nor the capa nigra in fact account for the undergraduate’s dress of later or present times; the original of which, I think, is to be found in the sleeveless gown or coat, called soprana, of the ecclesiastical colleges founded between the xv and xvii centuries. Two of the peculiarities of the soprana are still traceable. The bands of the bachelor’s gown may be seen attached to the black coat of the Almum Collegium founded in 1457 by Cardinal Capranica, to the violet and black dress worn by the Scotchmen,[362] to the red coat of the college founded by Ignatius Loyola, and the blue of the Greek College founded by Gregory XIII.; while one string, adorned with the papal arms, is left on the soprana worn by the Vatican seminarists: these are leading strings, denoting the state of pupilage.[363] The Cambridge scholar’s and bachelor’s gown is black—the descendant of the full black cappa—but as we have just seen the coat or gown of the ecclesiastical colleges is of different colours, and the ancient gowns of Trinity and Caius still record this variation.
Every one in statu pupillari must wear cap and gown after nightfall, on Sunday,[364] at examinations and lectures (except laboratory demonstrations), when visiting the vice-chancellor or any other official on academic business, in the library, the Senate House, and the university church: professors and others usually wear the gown while lecturing, and all dons wear it in chapel and hall.
The undergraduates’ day.
A twentieth century undergraduates’ day does not differ from those recorded in his diary by Wordsworth’s brother when he was a freshman at Trinity in 1793.[365] This is how he was employed during the Reign of Terror and within a few days of the execution of Marie Antoinette:—“Chapel. Lectures. Considered of a subject for my essay on Wednesday se’nnight. Drank wine with Coleridge. Present the Society. Chapel. Read ‘Morning Chronicle.’ Found in it an ode to Fortune, by Coleridge, which I had seen at Rough’s yesterday. Read ratios and variable quantities, and Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy.” It was indeed rather in its outer than in its inner circumstance that the life even of the xiii and xiv century undergraduate differed from that of the xxth. Then as now he listened to doctors in their faculties and his own college seniors expounding the mysteries of art and science; then, as now, he supplemented these lectures with private reading, then, seated upon a wooden stool in a corner of a crowded room, or in the college library, or best of all in the college meadows; now, in a comfortable arm chair or stretched upon a sofa in his private sitting room.[366] Then, as now, he caroused or discussed “the universe” with his friends, as his nature suggested. Then, as now, he made early acquaintance with the river Granta and knew each yard of the flat roads round the university town. Even the periodical outbreak between “town and gown” belongs as much to the xiii century as to the most recent history in the xxth.[367]
Lectures take place in the morning, “coaching” and private study usually in the late afternoon and evening. Two to four is the chosen time for recreation, and the chief recreations of the Cantab used to be the road and the river. The latter runs familiarly past the windows of his college rooms, and invites him as he steps forth from the threshold of his college court. Boating, swimming, or fishing, the student of a bye-gone day found in the Granta a never-failing and an inexpensive resource. Cambridge fish as we have seen has always been famous, and the Merton scholars poached upon the townsmen’s fishing rights long before the xiii century was out.
“Your success in the Senate House” said a well-known tutor “depends much on the care you take of the three-mile stone out of Cambridge. If you go every day and see no one has taken it away, and go quite round it to watch lest any one has damaged its farthest side, you will be best able to read steadily all the time you are at Cambridge. If you neglect it, woe betide your degree. Exercise, constant, and regular, and ample, is absolutely essential to a reading man’s success.” And the reading men have taken the lesson to heart. No roads until the era of bicycles were better tramped than the flat Cambridge roads which lend themselves so well to this form of recreation; pair after pair of men, tall and small, a big and a little together, used to keep themselves informed as to their state of repair, or lose the sense of space and time in discussions on the modern substitute for “quiddity” and essentia, or the social and biological problems which are newer even than these.
Once back in his college the persons on whom the undergraduate’s comfort most depends are the college cook the bedmaker and the “gyp.” The last calls him, brushes his clothes, prepares his breakfast, caters for him, serves his luncheon, waits on him and his friends, and carries back and forth the little twisted paper missives which, as an American noticed fifty years ago, Cambridge undergraduates are perpetually exchanging. All these services the gyp may have to perform for a number of other men. The only woman servant is the “bedmaker” whose name sufficiently describes her official business, but who for the great majority of modern students discharges the functions of gyp. The college kitchen is a busy centre. Here is prepared not only the hall dinner but all private breakfasts and luncheons served in college rooms; and most of the college kitchens supply luncheons and dinners to residents in the town if required. Dinner in hall costs from one shilling and tenpence to two shillings and a penny, according to the college; bread and butter called “commons” can be had from the buttery for 6d. a day; a breakfast dish at a cost of from 6d. to 1/; and at some college halls a luncheon is served at a small fixed charge.[368]
A hundred years ago the undergraduate dressed for “hall” with white silk stockings and pumps and white silk waistcoat. A few wore powder, the others curled their hair, and he was a bucolic youth indeed who omitted at least the curling. “Curled and powdered” the Cambridge scholar wore his hair even in the xiv century provoking the indignation of primates and founders. A hundred and fifty years ago beer was served for breakfast, and only Gray and Walpole drank tea. Even fifty years ago the food was roughly served and in an overcrowded hall. It was however abundant, and extras like soup, confectionery, and cheese could be “sized for” i.e. brought you at an extra charge. The food provided consisted of plain joints and vegetables, with plenty of beer. The fellows’ table and the side tables of the bachelors were better served.
“The wine,” the famous entertainment which followed the old four o’clock dinner fifty years ago, has yielded place to coffee and tea. In the May term teas assume new proportions; for during the term which is fateful to the reading man as that preceding the tripos examination, the idle man turns work time into play, invites his friends and relatives up to Cambridge, and entertains his sisters at “the races.” It is not indeed to be supposed that the majority of undergraduates are to be found keeping themselves awake with black coffee, a damp towel bound about their brows, while they burn the midnight oil. Even the harmless necessary “sporting of one’s oak” is no longer “good form.” In days when you advertise for a curate and a schoolmaster who is a good athlete the very thin literary proclivities of the bulk of Englishmen cannot be held to be on the increase. What one might legitimately hope for is that athletics should prove a safety-valve to the natural “rowdyism” of the non-reading man; so that if school and university sports cannot make a scholar they might at least turn out something not unlike a gentleman. Last October (1905) proved a “record” in the number of men “going up,” and November proved “a record” in the number of men who should have been “sent down.” What took place is fresh in our memories; and it will not quickly be forgotten that while the undergraduates of one university were shouting their disgrace, a well-known bishop was signalising (and exaggerating) the disgrace of the other; and we may choose between the merits of leaguing with the town blackguard to kick policemen at Cambridge or indulging the vice which changed the name of “wines” at Oxford to “drunks.” At the rejoicings for Mafeking the iron railings and posts were torn up along the ‘backs,’ and everything combustible from drays to handcarts was “commandeered” to make a bonfire on Market hill, where many panes of glass in the surrounding houses were smashed. Proctors’ “bull-dogs” were rolled over in the mud, and the proctors treated to the dignity of a “chairing.”[369] The bonfire on Market hill is a development of a traditional ritual more amusing and less dangerous: you drag out your own and your friends’ furniture and make a bonfire in the middle of the college “court.”