This is pretty plain speaking, and Terrae Filius enforces, by an historical example, the dangers of even political freethought. In 1714 the Constitution Club kept King George's birthday. The Constitutional Party was then the name which the Whigs took to themselves, though, thanks to the advance of civilisation, the Tories have fallen back upon the same. The Conservative undergraduates attacked the club, sallying forth from their Jacobite stronghold in Brasenose (as seen in our illustration), where the "silly statue," as Hearne calls it, was about that time erected. The Whigs took refuge in Oriel, the Tories assaulted the gates, and an Oriel man, firing out of his window, wounded a gownsman of Brasenose. The Tories, "under terror of this dangerous and unexpected resistance, retreated from Oriel." Yet such was the academic strength of the Jacobites and the Churchmen, that a Freethinker, or a "Constitutioner," could scarcely take his degree.
Terrae Filius, who lashes the dons for covetousness, greed, dissipation, rudeness, and stupidity, often corroborates the Puritan's report about the bad manners of the undergraduates. Yet Oxford, then as now, did not lack her exquisites, and her admirers of the fair. Terrae Filius thus describes a "smart," as these dandies were called--Mr. Frippery:
"He is one of those who come in their academical undress, every morning between ten and eleven, to Lyne's Coffee-house; after which he takes a turn or two upon the park, or under Merton Wall, whilst the dull REGULARS are at dinner in their hall, according to statute; about one he dines alone in his chamber upon a boiled chicken or some pettitoes; after which he allows himself an hour at least to dress in, to make his afternoon's appearance at Lyne's; from whence he adjourns to Hamilton's about five; from whence (after strutting about the room for a while, and drinking a dram of citron), he goes to chapel, to show how genteelly he dresses, and how well he can chaunt.
After prayers he drinks tea with some celebrated toast, and then waits upon her to Magdalen Grove or Paradise Garden, and back again.
He seldom eats any supper, and never reads anything but novels and romances."
The dress of this hero and his friends must have made the streets more gay than do the bright-coloured flannel coats of our boating men.
"He is easily distinguished by a stiff silk gown, which rustles in the wind as he struts along; a flax tie-wig, or sometimes a long natural one, which reaches down below his [well, say below his waist]; a broad bully-cock'd hat, or a square cap of about twice the usual size; white stockings; thin Spanish leather shoes. His clothes lined with tawdry silk, and his shirt ruffled down the bosom as well as at the wrists."
These "smarts" cut no such gallant figure when they first arrived in Oxford, with their fathers (rusty old country farmers), in linsey-woolsey coats, greasy, sun-burnt heads of hair, clouted shoes, yarn stockings, flapping hats, with silver hatbands, and long muslin neck-cloths run with red at the bottom.
After this satire of the undergraduates we may look at the contemporary account-book of a Proctor. In 1752 Gilbert White of Selborne was Proctor, and may have fined young Gibbon of Magdalen, who little thought that Oxford boasted an official who was to become an English classic. White paid some attention to dress, and got a feather-topp'd, grizzled wig from London; cost him 2 pounds, 5s. He bought "mountain wine, very old and good," and had his crest engraved on his teaspoons, that everything might be handsome about him. When he treated the Masters of Arts in Oriel Hall they ate a hundred pounds weight of biscuits--not, we trust, without marmalade. "A bowl of rum-punch from Horsman's" cost half a crown. Fancy a jolly Proctor sending out for bowls of rum-punch, and that in April! Eggs cost a penny each, and "three oranges and a mouse-trap" ninepence.
White, a generous man, gave the Vice-Chancellor "seven pounds of double-refined white sugar." I like to fancy my learned friend, the Proctor, going to the present Vice-Chancellor's with a donation of white sugar! Manners have certainly changed in the direction of severity. "Share of the expense for Mr. Butcher's release" came to ten and sixpence. What had Mr. Butcher been doing? The Proctor went "to Blenheim with Nan," and it cost him fifteen and sixpence.
Perhaps she was one of the "Oxford Toasts" of a contemporary satire.
Strawberries were fourpence a basket on the ninth of June; and on November 6, White lost one shilling "at cards, in common room." He went from Selborne to Oxford, "in a post-chaise with Jenny Croke"; and he gave Jenny a "round Chinaturene." Tea cost eight shillings a pound in 1752, while rum-punch was but half a crown a bowl. White's highest terminal battels were but 12 pounds, though he was a hospitable man, and would readily treat the other Proctor to a bowl of punch. It is well to remember White and Johnson when the Gibbon of that or any other day bewails the intellectual poverty of Oxford.
