THE SMART

One of the most interesting things to study at the university is the way in which a man gets into a certain set. Let me take for example a group of freshmen who come from the same public school, who have played together in the school games, possibly invited each other home for the holidays. Their tastes and ideas are apparently the same. On coming up to Oxford each man is differently affected. For the first few weeks they meet in one another’s rooms and discuss their impressions freely and without any reserve. Then suddenly, after the manner of mushrooms which spring up in a single night, it is found that one of them has got into the racing set which despises everybody who does not ride a horse; another into the working set, which lives, eats, and sleeps with its books; a third into the religious set, which in a quiet, unostentatious manner goes out of its way to help the poor, attends frequent religious meetings and, unfortunately and quite undeservedly, is somewhat scorned by the rest of the college; a fourth has got into the smart set, and has become a “blood”; and others into the thousand and one little groups which go to the composition of a university.

This curious sudden upheaval of ideas and habits which is brought about in one short term is to be found in every college every year, just as it appertained in the eighteenth century. I have shown the way in which some of these freshmen came to feel ashamed of their clothes and crept into the back entrances of barber’s and tailor’s shops, while their friends remained perfectly satisfied with their appearance, and jogged along without any desire for silks and satins.

The Georgian “blood,” however, was a person of tantamount importance. It was he who provided the university with food for mirth, envy, satire, recrimination. In a previous chapter I quoted Amhurst’s description of how a Smart might be distinguished when he sauntered along, languidly twirling his clouded amber cane and smelling philosophically of essence. His main objects in life were apparently to avoid the accusation of being ill-mannered, to consume daily as much liquor as possible, to be ardent in singing the praises of the latest toast, and to expend in finery far more money than he possessed. He thought himself to be a model of culture and was, in fact, the man of the period who put on the most “side.”

Amhurst, with an editorial genius that was without parallel in those times, wrote an attack on the good manners of Undergraduates in order that he might criticise, or better, satirise, that “large body of fine gentlemen call’d Smarts.” Under the name of Valentine Frippery he answered his own attack with a bitter reply, taking up the cudgels stoutly on behalf of the attackees, and wound up his article by riddling all men of the Frippery type.

Bucks of the First Head.

Allowing that Terrae Filius was ever a caricaturist, and that all his tirades and jibes must be taken cum grano salts, nevertheless the picture he draws of the Bucks of the first head is a very true one. “Valentine Frippery” wrote in answer to the accusation of ill-breeding as follows:—

Such are the arguments he brought up against a charge of bad manners: singing, dancing, handy at a tea-table, wearing the best lace and linen and cutting a bold dash. The perfect gentleman indeed! The acme of culture! He, with all the others of his kidney, put in an appearance at Lyne’s coffee-house in academical undress somewhere about eleven o’clock—that is to say, immediately after a gentle dalliance with breakfast. Here he discussed the topics of the hour, heard the latest news, enjoyed the latest scandals, and then strolled in the Park or under Merton wall. Those who made no pretensions to “Smartness” were meanwhile dining in Hall—a thing far beneath the dignity of a Buck of the first head who ate in solitary dignity in his own chamber, his meal consisting, for example, of “boil’d chicken and pettitoes.” After resting awhile, he spent an hour or so in overcoming the difficulties of dressing. That satisfactorily concluded, it was his bounden duty to make an afternoon appearance at Lyne’s. About five o’clock he dropped in at Hamilton’s, where he “struts about the room for a while and drinks a dram of citron.” Thence he returned to college and adjourned to the chapel “to shew how genteely he dresses, and how well he can chaunt.” Having given conclusive demonstrations of these two accomplishments, he drank tea with some celebrated toast and attended her to Maudlin Grove or Paradise Garden and back again. Such a ridiculous idea as work never entered his head. Any time he might give to reading was employed in the study of novels and romances.

As an example of his passion for cleanliness at all costs, Terrae Filius gave an account of an adventure of one of these gentry at Lyne’s coffee-house. “This afternoon, a noted Smart of Christ Church College, as he was writing a billet-doux had the misfortune to blot one of his ruffles with a spot of ink, which put the gentleman in so great a disorder, that he threw the standish through the window, stamped about the room for half an hour together, and was often heard to say, I wonder that gentlemen cannot find some cleaner method of conveying their thoughts, and that he wished he might be blown up wherever he went, if he ever made use of that filthy liquor again, though the displeasure of the whole fair sex was the consequence. Let prigs and pedants, said he, keep all the nasty manufacture to themselves.”

It is comforting to be assured that this elaborate sect was not entirely composed of peers and gentleman commoners, for their street behaviour was far worse than anything that even the most hypercritical Somerville blue-stocking can accuse Undergraduates of to-day. “They cannot forbear laughing,” said Amhurst, “at every body that obeys the statutes, and differs from them; or (as my correspondent expresses it in the proper dialect of the place) that does not cut as bold a dash as they do. They have singly, for the most part, very good assurances; but when they walk together in bodies (as they often do), how impregnable are their foreheads? They point at every foul they meet, laugh very loud, and whisper as loud as they laugh. Demme, Jack, there goes a prig! Let us blow the puppy up. Upon which they all stare him full in the face, turn him from the wall as he passes by, and set up an horse laugh, which puts the plain raw novice out of countenance, and occasions great triumph amongst these tawdry desperadoes.”

Like all hooligans they were thorough cowards unless backed up by vastly superior numbers. It took about twenty of them, and that with the assistance of Dutch courage, to frighten some three or four foreigners and to kick a Presbyterian parson out of a coffee-house. They were for the most part sons of country farmers with practically no money who got into the Smart set immediately after coming up, and who remained Smarts just so long as the “mercers, taylors, shoe makers, and perriwig-makers will tick with them.” Tradesmen of that day were apparently possessed of far longer patience than most of the present generation. To-day they despatch solicitor’s letters after two terms. Then they allowed a bill to lie fallow (with the usual accretion of interest) for three or four years.

With his usual quaint humour Amhurst declared that he has seen these same Smarts two or three years afterwards “in gowns and cassocks, walking with demure looks and an holy leer; so easy is the transition from dancing to preaching, and from the bowling-green to the pulpit.”

The Rev. Richard Graves, a Pembroke man, in 1732, related that he became friends with a genial crowd who passed their evenings in drinking strong ale, smoking like chimneys, punning, and singing Bacchanalian catches. Some gentlemen commoners, however, Smarts, who came from the same part of the country as Graves, rescued him from the ill-bred hands of such low company—so considered chiefly on account of the liquor they drank. In his own words “they good-naturedly invited me to their party: they treated me with port wine and arrack-punch; and then, when they had drunk so much, as hardly to distinguish wine from water, they would conclude with a bottle or two of claret. They kept late hours and drank their favourite toasts on their knees. This was deemed good company and high life; but it neither suited my taste, my fortune, or my constitution.”

Night after night of this deep drinking made the fortunes of the spirit-merchants, but left some of the drinkers soddened and useless. I may quote, as an instance, the case of Lord Lovelace.

It is a well-known fact that the Principal of his Hall reported, and that truthfully, that “he never knew him sober but twelve hours and that he used every morning to drink a quart of brandy, or something equivalent to it, to his own share.” Hearne, too, in his diary makes reference to a commoner of Magdalen Hall, a son of Dr Inett, who was found dead from drinking ale and brandy. There were three companions with him, but they were merely asleep under the table. Professor Pryme, who was up at the end of the eighteenth century, afterwards wrote that when Hall was over it was the fashion to collect a large party together to drink wine with a little dessert. “The host,” he said, “named a Vice-President, and toasts were given. First a lady by each of the party, then a gentleman, and then a sentiment. I remember one of these latter, the single married and the married happy. Every one was required to fill a bumper to the toasts of the President, the Vice-President, and his own. If any one wished to go to chapel he was pressed to return afterwards.”[5]The fact, however, that toping constituted such an important feature of Undergraduate life, among Smarts and non-Smarts equally is not a matter for vast amazement, or stern condemnation. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?—for the Dons were if anything even worse than those to whom they stood in loco parentis. The whole world of Dons, from the humblest and most juvenile Fellow to the king of kings, the Head of a college or Hall, cultivated the vice of drink as assiduously as if it were a virtue. Oxford was not so far away from London as not to reflect the manners and habits of the capital, and since to the Bucks of London abnormal drinking was then the highest good form, it is not to be wondered at that the Undergraduates, ever of tender years and advanced imitative faculties, should give a brilliant reflection of the metropolis.

Amhurst has pointed out that the Smarts never read anything but plays, novels, and French comedies. When The Student appeared, however, they took it up more or less whole-heartedly. In these days of photographic (that being the polite way of spelling pornographic) weeklies, a new venture in ’varsity journals is greeted as a nine days’ wonder. However good the contents provided, the Oxford man prefers to look upon the fetching features—and limbs, of footlight favourites in papers provided free of charge in the Junior Common Room. Consequently the rash starter of a “’varsity rag” is compelled to retire from the lists after the first two or three issues. In the old days, however, even the blasÉ Smart had some initiative left to him in matters of literature. He supported the new paper with enthusiasm and read every number carefully. After some time he found that the editor was catering too freely for the Dons. Instead, however, of discontinuing his subscription he wrote to the editor and appealed on the grounds that The Student was becoming too prosy and Spectator-like, and urged him to keep it lighter in tone. The following is an extract from the letter sent in:—

The habituÉs of the unknown coffee-house, all pretty fellows, looked upon The Student as a “monthly feast of entertainment!” For all their soaking and “wenching” and slacking they would seem to have had a certain amount of brain and appreciative capability left to them.

In a subsequent chapter I shall set down the methods by which these men obtained their degrees after having spent some six or seven years inside the old walls of the university. They had as little time for work as the “bloods” of to-day whose every moment is claimed by matters of far greater moment than mere study! To a certain extent the Smarts, though they perhaps did not know it, were philosophers. They said to themselves that life was short and youth shorter still, that therefore it behoved them to cram in to the six years of their university career as much pleasure, excitement, and amusement as was possible. The eighteenth century lent itself whole-heartedly to this programme. The Dons, who should have been intent on governing Oxford, had other game afoot. The Undergraduates were thus left to their own devices, and the Smarts were the first to take advantage of such Arcadian conditions. They delayed the hour of rising until the sun grew weary of calling them out. There was no stern shepherd to round them into chapel at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock. Like butterflies they flitted from place to place at the caprice of the moment. They held Bacchanalian revels in and out of college without regard to Dons and statutes. Their paramours, far from being ejected from the city, were shared with the authorities, thus proving that they had a better understanding of real socialism than the exponents of to-day. The same cobbled streets that hear us shouting our way home in the small hours, saw the Georgian men staggering along with tight-linked arms in the silvery moonlight, while Big Tom boomed out the birth of a new day.

As year after year slipped relentlessly off the calender they absorbed the unique atmosphere of Oxford, fully appreciating under their mask of blasÉ scorn the traditions and the unforgettable charm of Alma mater. They carried their love and reverence for her to the grave, and gave proof of it by sending their sons and grandsons to swell the never-ending procession of men who sing the praises of Oxford.