WORK AND EXAMINATIONS

Nowadays work is a factor in university life which has to be seriously reckoned with. However strong one’s intentions to do none, however convinced one may be of the complete absurdity and futility of cramming dull stuff for no apparent good reasons, when there is such a glorious time to be had doing nothing in the mornings and “sweating” at athletics in the afternoons, yet the Dons have of late acquired a foolish habit of sending a man down unless he succeeds in scraping through certain examinations.

They feel it to be essential, through some misguided feeling of duty, to harry the athlete and outdoor man, and at certain periods, even, to hound him in white tie, and as much gown as he can lay hands on, to the schools, and if, on his final exit from their clutches, they are not satisfied with the results of his cramming, they invert their thumbs and down he goes! It matters not whether he be merely a humble eightsman or the all-important President of the Boat Club. The examiners are no respecters of persons, and fear no man nor beast. The athlete retires willy nilly.

How different were the Dons’ views in Georgian times! Amhurst, serious for once, declared that the keynote of the century was tolerated ignorance. He made the statement boldly in the face of the high reputation of the Dons for learning and classical knowledge, in defiance of the wrath of the entire university. He was justified in making such an assertion, and I have tried to prove the truth of his words in the course of this chapter.

“A gentleman commoner,” he said, “if he be a man of fortune, is soon told that it is not expected from one of his form to mind exercises; if he is studious, he is morose, and a heavy bookish fellow; if he keeps a cellar of wine, the good natur’d fellows will indulge him, tho’ he should be too heavy-headed to be at chapel in the morning.”

In proof of this assertion I will take the case, from a sheaf of others, of Mr Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, who was an Undergraduate of Merton in 1763. “The discipline of the university happened also at this particular moment to be so lax,” he wrote, “that a gentleman commoner”—and it would seem not to be of great moment whether he had riches or not—“was under no restraint, and never called upon to attend either lectures, or chapel, or hall. My tutor, an excellent and worthy man, according to the practise of all tutors at that moment, gave himself no concern about his pupils. I never saw him but during a fortnight, when I took it into my head to be taught trigonometry. The set of men with whom I lived were very pleasant but very idle fellows. Our life was an imitation of high life in London.” The entire lack of compulsion to work, however, did not by any means cause Harris and his friends to dwindle into mere “wasters.” From that little coterie eventually emerged Charles Fox and William Eden.

Gibbon, the historian of world-wide renown, never did one stroke of work while at Magdalen, nor was he ever asked, with any firmness, to do so. In his much discussed reminiscences he set down that “some duties may possibly have been imposed on the poor scholars, whose ambition aspired to the peaceful honours of a scholarship; but no independent members were admitted below the rank of gentleman commoner, and our velvet cap was the cap of liberty.” Commenting upon the prevailing slackness of tutors, Gibbon quoted his own experiences. The learned doctor to whose care he was first confided, described as “one of the best of the tribe,” had suggested that Gibbon should read the comedies of Terence every morning with him. “During the first weeks,” wrote Gibbon, “I constantly attended these lessons in my tutor’s rooms; but as they appeared equally devoid of profit and pleasure, I was once tempted to try the experiment of a formal apology. The apology was accepted with a smile. I repeated the offence with less ceremony; the excuse was admitted with the same indulgence; the slightest motive of laziness or indisposition, the most trifling avocation at home or abroad, was allowed as a worthy impediment; nor did my tutor appear conscious of my absence or neglect.... No plan of study was recommended for my use; no exercises were prescribed for his inspection; and at that most precious season of youth, whole days and weeks were suffered to elapse, without labour or amusement, without advice or account.”[20]

Such was the sum total of Gibbon’s relations with that worthy and excellent man, for, the following term, he found on his arrival, that he had departed from the college and that another tutor was installed in his place. Of his connection with this second tutor the Magdalen man wrote as follows: “Instead of guiding the studies, and watching over the behaviour of his disciple, I was never summoned to attend even the ceremony of a lecture; and, excepting one voluntary visit to his rooms, during the eight months of his titular office, the tutor and pupil lived in the same college as strangers to each other.” These accusations against the Magdalen discipline have been most heatedly “vindicated” by the Rev. James Hurdis, who declared it to have been more Gibbon’s fault than the Dons’ that he was not looked after, because he gave flippant excuses which he dubbed formal apologies, and had not the patience to continue the course of lectures arranged and delivered by his tutors.

These vindicatory arguments do not hold water. All men will evade authority if they can. Therefore it is surely the place of the tutor to put his foot down and issue orders instead of letting his pupil wander at will and do no work.

In all the many descriptions of a day in the life of a Smart, or an ordinary gentleman commoner, or the river man, no references are to be found as to their doing any work. On the contrary, Skinner said that “Aristotle has been deserted for the bottle,” and launched into descriptions of the empty schools. With tutors who considered politics and consequent individual preferment of far greater importance than the mere conning of pupils’ work, it is not to be wondered at that the only men who did any work were those who were “bookish” by nature and preferred a quiet studious life to one of revelry and slacking. For the most part these worked independently of Dons, entirely of their own volition. As far as a good degree went, it was utterly useless; for the method of passing university examinations was, to put it mildly, a farce. The veracity of Vicesimus Knox is not for one moment to be questioned, so that the following account may be taken as a fair example of the customs of the times.

“The youth, whose heart pants for the honour of a Bachelor of Arts degree, must wait patiently till near four years have revolved. But this time is not to be spent idly. No; he is obliged, during this period, once to oppose, and once to respond, in disputations held in the public schools—a formidable sound and a dreadful idea; but, on closer attention, the fear will vanish, and contempt supply its place. This opposing and responding is termed, in the cant of the place, doing generals. Two boys, or men, as they call themselves, agree to do generals together. The first step in this mighty work is to procure arguments. These are always handed down, from generation to generation, on long slips of paper, and consist of foolish syllogisms on foolish subjects; of the formation or the signification of which the respondent and opponent seldom know more than an infant in swaddling clothes. The next step is to go for a liceat to one of the petty officers, called the Regent Master of the Schools, who subscribes his name to the questions and receives sixpence as his fee. When the important day arrives, the two doughty disputants go into a large dusty room, full of dirt and cobwebs, with walls and wainscot decorated with the names of former disputants, who to divert the tedious hours cut out their names with their penknives, or wrote verses with a pencil. Here they sit in mean desks, opposite to each other, from one o’clock till three. Not once in a hundred times does any officer enter; and, if he does, he hears one syllogism or two, and then makes a bow, and departs, as he came and remained, in solemn silence. The disputants then return to the amusement of cutting the desks, carving their names, or reading Sterne’s ‘Sentimental Journey,’ or some other edifying novel. When this exercise is duly performed by both parties, they have a right to the title and insignia of Sophs; but not before they have been formally created by one of the regent-masters.... This work done, a great progress is made towards the wished-for honour of a Bachelor’s degree. There remain only one or two trifling forms, and another disputation, almost exactly similar to doing generals, but called answering under bachelor, previous to the awful examination. Every candidate is obliged to be examined in the whole circle of the sciences by three Masters of Arts of his own choice. The examination is to be held in one of the public schools, and to continue from nine o’clock till eleven. The masters take a most solemn oath, that they will examine properly and impartially. Dreadful as all this appears, there is always found to be more of appearance in it than reality, for the greatest dunce usually gets his testimonium signed with as much ease and credit as the finest genius. The manner of proceeding is as follows: The poor young man to be examined in the sciences often knows no more of them than his bedmaker, and the masters who examine are sometimes equally unacquainted with such mysteries. But schemes, as they are called, or little books, containing forty or fifty questions on each science, are handed down, from age to age, from one to another. The candidate to be examined employs three or four days in learning these by heart, and the examiners, having done the same before him when they were examined, know what questions to ask, and so all goes on smoothly. When the candidate has displayed his universal knowledge of the sciences, he is to display his skill in philology. One of the masters, therefore, desires him to construe a passage in some Greek or Latin classic, which he does with no interruption, just as he pleases, and as well as he can. The statutes next require that he should translate familiar English phrases into Latin. And now is the time when the masters show their wit and jocularity. Droll questions are put on any subject, and the puzzled candidate furnishes diversion by his awkward embarrassment. I have known the questions on this occasion to consist of an enquiry into the pedigree of a race-horse.... This familiarity, however, only takes place when the examiners are pot companions of the candidate, which indeed is usually the case; for it is reckoned good management to get acquainted with two or three jolly young Masters of Arts and supply them well with port, previously to the examination. If the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors happen to enter the school, a very uncommon event, then a little solemnity is put on, very much to the confusion of the masters, as well as of the boy, who is sitting in the little box opposite them. As neither the officer, nor any one else usually enters the room (for it is reckoned very ungenteel) the examiners and the candidates often converse on the last drinking bout, or on horses, or read the newspaper, or a novel, or divert themselves as well as they can in any manner till the clock strikes eleven, when all parties descend, and the testimonium, is signed by the masters. With this testimonium in his possession the candidate is sure of success. The day in which the honour is to be conferred arrives; he appears in the Convocation House, he takes an abundance of oaths, pays a sum of money in fees, and, after kneeling down before the Vice-Chancellor, and whispering a lie, rises up a Bachelor of Arts.”[21]

In order, therefore, to obtain the coveted privilege of going in for all these learned and difficult examinations, an Undergraduate had to calm his impatience and enjoy himself as best he could for four years. Then, having succeeded in getting himself fairly comfortably in debt, having learned how to string off a sonnet to the reigning toast and drink himself under the table, he was esteemed ripe for the whispering of a lie, and was conveniently fitted out with a degree. What more simple?

“And now, if he aspires at higher honours (and what emulous spirit can sit down without aspiring at them?) new labours and new difficulties are to be encountered during the space of three years. He must determine in Lent, he must do quodlibets, he must do austens, he must declaim twice, he must read six solemn lectures, and he must be again examined in the sciences, before he can be promoted to the degree of Master of Arts. None but the initiated can know what determining, doing quodlibets, and doing austens mean. I have not room to enter into a minute description of such contemptible minutiÆ. Let it be sufficient to say, that these exercises consist of disputations of syllogisms, procured and uttered nearly in the same places, time, and manner, as we have already seen them in doing generals. There is, however, a great deal of trouble in little formalities, such as procuring sixpenny liceats, sticking up the names on the walls, sitting in large empty rooms by yourself, or with some poor wight as ill-employed as yourself, without anything to say or do, wearing hoods and a little piece of lambskin wool on it, and a variety of other particulars too tedious and too trifling to enumerate.”

The eighteenth-century lad became an Undergraduate on condition of subscribing to a lie, and was sent down as a not undistinguished man after seven years by pronouncing another in the ear of the Vice-Chancellor.

“As university degrees are supposed to be badges of learning and merit, there ought to be some qualifications requisite to wear them, besides perjury, and treason, and paying a multitude of fees, which seem to be the three principal things insisted upon in our universities,” said Terrae Filius—and the persistent joker spoke never a truer word. While discussing the same question with some bitterness he asserted that a schoolboy has done more learned things for his breaking-up task than were required of an Oxford man after seven years’ residence. He more than bore out Knox’s words as to the custom of making one’s examiner drunk and so avoiding the irksome necessity of being asked awkward questions by him. “It is also well known,” he wrote, “to be the custom for the candidates either to present their examiners with a piece of gold, or to give them an handsome entertainment, and make them drunk; which they commonly do the night before examination, and sometimes keep them till morning, and so adjourn, cheek by joul, from their drinking-room to the school where they are to be examined. Quaere, whether it would not be very ungrateful of the examiner to refuse any candidate a testimonium who has treated him so splendidly over night? and whether he is not, in this case, prevail’d upon by bribes?”

So that in addition to making him drunk and incapable, but not disorderly—necessarily—the astute candidate, realising that the degree’s the thing, paid him a metaphorical thirty pieces of silver for his betrayal. Moreover, the collectors, that is to say the Dons who were in control of the determining, decided the days upon which the candidates were to present themselves. On certain days called “gracious” days, the examiners were only required to stay in the schools for half the usual time. The consequence was, explained Terrae, “The collectors having it in their power to dispose of all the schools and days in what manner they please, are very considerable persons, and great application is made to them for gracious days and good schools; but especially to avoid being posted or dogg’d, which commonly happens to be their lot who have no money in their pockets.”

The statues of course forbade collectors to receive presents, but a wink is as good as a nod, and it was customary for every determiner upon presenting himself to give the collector a “broad or half a broad.” In return for this douceur “Mr Collector,” said Amhurst, “entertains his benefactors with a good supper and as much wine as they can drink, besides gracious days and commodious schools. I have heard that some collectors have made four score or an hundred guineas of this place.”The conclusion which is inevitably arrived at is that the examinations for, and in fact the whole question of obtaining a degree, were a farce and a sham, and that the authorities cared little who got one so long as they received their fees and were left in peace to smoke and tope in the common rooms.

The attendance at college exercises seems to have been equally dilatory. Gibbon said that the Magdalen College exercises were futile and a waste of time. He was tacitly allowed to stay away from them. The vindicator of Magdalen, thinking to nail Gibbon down, went to the trouble of enumerating term by term the exercises which the Undergraduates were supposed to perform. As interesting reading it is worthy of quotation, but as a coup de grace to Gibbon it is absurd. If all Magdalen men were bound to attend, why was Gibbon allowed to absent himself, or, if not allowed, why was he not hauled over the coals?—and it is ridiculous to suppose that Gibbon’s example was not followed by scores of fellow collegians. The present-day “colleckers,” held terminally, are, more or less, in the nature of a joke, but in those days, in spite of Hurdis’s burning loyalty to Magdalen, the following exercises which correspond to them are fearsome-sounding enough, but were more often than not unattended. “At the end of every term, from his admission till he takes his first degree, every individual Undergraduate of this college must appear at a public examination before the President, Vice-President, Deans, and whatever Fellows may please to attend; and cannot obtain leave to return to his friends in any vacation, till he has properly acquitted himself according to the following scheme.

“In his first year he must make himself a proficient—

“In the first term, in Sallust and the Characters of Theophrastus.

“In the second Term, in the first six books of Virgil’s Aeneis and the first three books of Xenophon’s Anabasis.

“In the third Term, in the last six books of the Aeneis and the last four books of the Anabasis.

“In the fourth Term, in the Gospels of St Matthew and St Mark, on which sacred books the persons examined are always called upon to produce a collection of observations from the best commentators.