Tom Brown at Oxford

by Thomas Hughes

There were no dormitories and self-serve cafeterias as with modern colleges, instead meals were served in a dining hall by scouts, and each student gets what are called “rooms”, consisting of a bedroom and a sitting room for study and entertaining. “Scouts” are a kind of servant attached to one student or a small number of students. They run errands, bring meals from the kitchen, and take care of clothing. A bootblack called the “boots” takes care of footwear. A charwoman called the “char” cleaned the rooms.

If a student wished to study without interruption, he would close the oak door to his rooms, which was called “sporting his oak”, the signal not to disturb.

The term “the eleven” refers to the cricket team, and “prize-men” refers to students who win prizes for scholarship. “Hunting Pinks” are red riding jackets, and “hunters” are horses especially suited to steeplechase or fox hunting type riding.

The Boating Club and Boat Racing is the popular sport of crew rowing or sculling, where each college appoints a crew of eight strong scull pullers or oarsmen and one small coxswain or steersman to pilot a long narrow boat called a skiff or shell. The coxswain calls the strokes and is generally the coach and commander of the crew. Unlike in a canoe, the pullers face backwards, and the one nearest the coxswain is called the “stroke oar”, because all the other oars watch him and match his stroke. The racing takes place on the river which runs through Oxford, and since because of the oars the river is too narrow for normal passing as in most other kinds of racing, the race is sometimes with just two boats, one ahead of the other. If the prow of the second boat touches the stern of the first boat, the second boat is considered the winner and advances in ranking. If the first boat rows the length of the course without being bumped, it is considered the winner and maintains its ranking. Sometimes the winning crewmen put their little coxswain in the boat and parade him through the streets of the town. At the end of the season the honor of “Head of the River” belongs to the boat that has not been defeated and is presumably the fastest, whereas the slowest boat, Tail End Charlie, has been defeated by all the other colleges. For another description of boating on the Thames in the nineteenth century, see the humorous travel-log “Three Men in a Boat, to Say Nothing of the Dog” by Jerome K. Jerome, written in 1889, which also mentions the dangers of the lasher at the Sandford Lock.

Students were required to wear the traditional student's gown and mortarboard cap to classes. Professors wore floppy caps and similar gowns with indications of their rank on the sleeves, Doctor, Master or Batchelor. This garb dates from the Middle Ages, but is now only seen at Graduation Day and special university occasions, and the gown has survived in some church choirs. A professor was also called a don, and graduate assistants were called fellows or servitors.

The “tufts” or students from the nobility or titled families were a privileged set, paid double fees and were not required to do much of anything academically. Gentlemen-commoners were from the untitled but wealthy families and also paid double fees. A few students from poorer social classes were accepted if they had good references. “Town and Gown” refers to the animosity between the local permanent residents of the town and the rowdy students, occasionally descending into actual fist fights. To be “gated” was to be confined to college and to be “rusticated” was to be suspended from college.

A “wine” is the nineteenth century equivalent of a student's beer and pizza party, though it seems to have been paid for entirely out of the pocket of the host. It is also a form of student networking, wherein they build relationships useful for their future business, professional or social life. German university students joined a Kadet Korps, which was somewhat like a combination of a modern day fraternity and Officer's Training Corps, but no such equivalent seems to have been at Oxford. Instead there was an academic set called the “reading men” which buckled down to the books, and a set of “fast men” who lived the dissipated high life of drinking, gambling, women and riding fast horses. The fast set, though they were gentleman commoners and not titled nobility, usually were from wealthy families, and often ran up large bills with the local tradesmen, called “going tick”, which could go unpaid for quite a long time.

In Chapter 14 the author mentions Big Ben, but this is not the clock tower bell in London, which at the time of writing had not yet been rung; instead this is Benjamin Caunt, the bare-knuckle boxer who defeated William Thompson in 75 rounds to become Heavyweight Champion of England in 1838. The bell may possibly have been named after him.

It should be remembered that at the time this story was written, the dangers of tobacco smoke were mostly unknown, and cigars, cheroots and pipes were quite commonly used, though the cigarette had not come into use yet. Tobacco, often called weed, was only discouraged during physical training, thus at one point in Chapter 15 Tom recommends smoking to Hardy for an almost therapeutic purpose.

In Chapter 17 the author imagines a flying machine, though at the time of writing only balloons had ever carried men aloft. He imagines it something like a carriage equipped to carry passengers, with the most comfortable carriage type C-springs, steam powered, and faster than the latest trains, which at that time went 40 miles per hour, the fastest speed that anyone had ever achieved.