The Servitor

In the year of grace nineteen hundred and eleven there are three main divisions of the genus Undergraduate:—scholars, commoners, and “toshers,” the last sometimes known as non-collegiate Undergraduates. Under a fourth heading, which constitutes a small subdivision all by itself, I may place the working-men Undergraduates—the members of Ruskin Hall. Georgian Undergraduates might also be split up into parallel divisions. There were also servitors, who were, in some sort, the ancient form of the working-men Undergraduates of the twentieth century.

Oxford in Georgian times was, according to the popular conception, a place where peers and rich men sent their sons in order that they might receive a better education than anywhere else in the world. The erudition, classical learning, and brilliance of the Dons passed all belief. Nowhere on earth was there gathered together a body of men with such knowledge and brain power. Did any man yearn for instruction in any subject, Oxford was the only place where that subject was exhaustively known and thoroughly taught.

It naturally followed, therefore, that the lower classes, who drudged all day in the effort to keep body and soul together, and provide the wherewithal to fill the stomachs of their hungry progeny, left Oxford outside their calculations when discussing the prospective education of their children. Oxford was a place for rich men. How, then, could their sons go there? It was impossible. Meanwhile, the children were clamouring for education. What was to be done?

Through the influence of rich men who had been to the university the penniless lads were taken from the plough and entered into colleges as errand boys and odd-job hands. They were at liberty to pick up what education they could in the intervals of performing menial tasks for the gentlemen commoners. They cleaned boots, fetched and carried, and were the servants of anybody who chose to order them about. Having no money they slept in coal-holes, cupboards under the stairs, and attics under the eaves, and satisfied the pangs of hunger by picking up the crumbs which fell from the rich men’s tables. They had no social intercourse with the gentlemen commoners, and were treated with scant courtesy by the college servants.

The resemblance between the servitor and the Ruskin Hall man is apparent when due allowance has been made for modern improvements. The modern conception of Oxford is curiously akin to that of the eighteenth century. The education to be received still has a very high reputation. The present day working classes, however, possess a greater ambition than their antecedents showed. They are no longer content to snatch education in the intervals of earning their keep. Ruskin Hall has been built for their especial benefit. There they may win scholarships to their heart’s content. Their kinship with the humble servitor lies in the fact that they do their own menial work instead of having to do it for others; that they have no social intercourse with the Undergraduates of other colleges except at the weekly debates of the Union Society in which they distinguish themselves by their fluent Socialistic doctrines; and that they take no part in the athletic and collegiate life of the university.One of the earliest references to servitors in the eighteenth century records is contained in a comedy entitled “An Act at Oxford.” The play was written in 1704 by a dramatist named Baker.

One of the characters was a servitor named Chum. His father was a chimney-sweep and his mother a poor ginger-bread seller at Cow Cross. Chum was established in Brazen-Nose College, and his duties consisted in waiting “upon Gentleman-Commoners, to dress and clean their shoes and make out their exercises.” His “fortune,” which was “soon told,” consisted apparently of “two Raggs call’d shirts, a dog’s eared Grammer, and a piece of Ovid de Tristibus.” For having materially assisted his master, a Smart, to win the hand and heart of a fair damsel known as Berynthia, he was rewarded, in the play, with the sum of five hundred guineas—an occurrence which would be the height of improbability in real life, as the servitor was jeered at and made a kind of Aunt Sally by all and sundry.

In 1709 one of those poor miserable wretches sat him down—where he procured pen and paper is still shrouded in mystery—and wrote a poem on his own doleful condition. Its title is “Servitour,” and it was printed by “H. Hills in Black-Fryars, near the water side.” He pictured himself to be coming out of a Skittle Yard in his “rusty round cap.”

“Like Cheesy Pouch of Shon-ap-Shenkin,
His Sandy locks, with wide Hiatus,
Like Bristles seem’d Erected at us,
Clotted with Sweat, the Ends hung down;
And made Resplendent Cape of Gown;
Whose Cape was thin, and so Transparent,
Hold it t’ th’ Light, you’d scarce beware on’t
’Twixt Chin and Breast contiguous Band,
Hung in an Obtuse Angle and—
It had a Latitude Canonick,
His coat so greasy was and torn,
That had you seen it you’d ha’ sworn
’Twas Ten Years old when he was born.
His buttons fringed as is the Fashion,
In Gallick and Brittanick Nation;
Or, to speak like more Modern fellows,
Their moulds dropt out like ripe Brown-shellers.
His Leather Galligaskin’s rent,
Made Artless Music as he went....
His Holey Stockins were ty’d up,
One with a Band, one with a Rope.”

In such clothes as these, the extreme poverty of which would bring a blush to the cheek of the modern Oxford paper-boy, this gloomy poet had to go to the Buttery and procure game and capons, ribs of beef, and other succulent dainties for some gentleman commoner’s dinner, while for himself there was nothing but “Poor scraps and Cold as I’m a sinner.” As a place to lay his head o’ nights, he was thankful to get a lumber-room in the apex of the building, somewhere under the eaves,

“A Room with Dirt and Cobwebs lin’d,
Which here and there with Spittle Shin’d;
Inhabited let’s see—by Four;
If I mistake not, ’twas no more.
Two buggy beds....
Their Dormer windows with brown paper,
Was patch’d to keep out Northern Vapour.
The Table’s broken foot stood on,
An old Schrevelious Lexicon,
Here lay together Authors various,
From Homer’s Iliad, to Cordelius:
And so abus’d was Aristotle,
He only served to stop a bottle....
Where eke stood Glass, Dark-Lanthorns ancient
Fragment of Mirerr, Penknife, Trencher,
And forty things which I can’t mention.
Old Chairs and Stools, and such-like Lumber,
Compleatly furnisht out the Chamber.”George Whitefield, a servitor at Pembroke in 1732, also shared his rooms with others. His companions, however, did not appear to have suffered unduly from the usual depression caused by their hard lot, for they frequently invited Whitefield to join them “in their excess of riot,” and looked upon him as a weird and extraordinary creature for his persistent refusals. His account of the manner of his admission to Pembroke College is characteristic of the man, and gives an idea of what tasks servitors were called upon to perform.

“Being now near eighteen years old, it was judged proper for me to go to the university. God had sweetly prepared my way. The friends before applied to, recommended me to the Master of Pembroke College. Another friend took up ten pounds upon bond (which I have since repaid), to defray the first expence of entring; and the Master, contrary to all expectations, admitted me servitor immediately.

“Soon after my admission I went and resided, and found my having been used to a publick-house was now of service to me. For many of the servitors being sick at my first coming up, by diligent and ready attendance I ingratiated myself into the gentlemen’s favour so far, that many, who had it in their power, chose me to be their servitor.

“This much lessened my expence; and indeed, God was so gracious, that, with the profits of my place, and some presents made me by my kind tutor, for almost the first three years I did not put all my relations together to above £24 expence.

“And it has often grieved my soul to see so many young students spending their substance in extravagant living, and thereby entirely unfitting themselves for the prosecution of their proper studies.”

Because he became a Methodist and attended seriously to his religious duties, Whitefield was badly ragged. The fact that a servitor should make any claims to superior godliness made his employers, for some reason, acutely annoyed. “I daily underwent some contempt at college,” he wrote, “some have thrown dirt at me; others, by degrees, took away their pay from me; and two friends that were dear unto me, grew shy of, and forsook me.”

One of his lay duties as servitor consisted in going round to the gentlemen’s rooms at ten o’clock at night and knocking to find out who was in—the majority of them being at that hour, doubtless, discussing punch and claret in the Mitre or Tuns. All those who made no answer to his knock were reported and received punishment for being out of college after hours.

Of his college exercises he wrote as follows:—

“Whenever I endeavoured to compose my theme, I had no power to write a word nor so much as tell my Christian friends of my inability to do it. Saturday being come (which is the day the students give up their compositions), it was suggested to me that I must go down into the Hall and confess I could not make a theme, and so publickly suffer, as if it were for my Master’s sake. When the bell rung to call us, I went to open the door to go downstairs, but feeling something give me a violent inward check, I entered my study, and continued instant in prayer, waiting the event. For this my tutor fined me half a crown. The next week Satan served me in like manner again; but having now got more strength, and perceiving no inward check, I went into the Hall. My name being call’d, I stood up, and told my tutor I could not make a theme. I think he fined me a second time; but, imagining that I would not willingly neglect my exercise, he afterwards called me into the common room, and kindly enquired whether any misfortune had befallen me, or what was the reason I could not make a theme? I burst into tears, and assured him that it was not out of contempt of authority, but that I could not act otherwise. Then, at length, he said he believed I could not; and, when he left me, told a friend (as he very well might), that he took me to be really mad.”

Besides cleaning boots, fetching and carrying, running errands and performing other menial services of a like nature, the servitors jumped at the opportunity of earning odd pence by writing out the impositions to which their masters had been condemned by the Proctors.

“For should grave Proctor chance to meet
A buck in boots along the street
He stops his course and with permission
Asking his name, sets imposition,
Which to get done, if he’s a ninny
He gives his barber half a guinea.
This useful go-between will share it
With servitor in college garret,
Who counts these labours sweet as honey
Which brings to purse some pocket money.”[6]

Other methods of pocket filling to which servitors had recourse were mentioned by Dr Johnson, who, writing to Tom Warton concerning the delay in a work on Spenser caused by the number of his correspondents and pupils at Oxford, said: “Three hours a day stolen from sleep and amusement will produce it. Let a servitor transcribe the quotations, and interleave them with references to save time.” As, however, servitors were not admitted within the sacred precincts of the Bodleian, transcription was necessarily limited. This was a cause of great lamentation and outcry at the time from the men, because they were compelled to do the work themselves, and from the servitors because they were thus deprived of a means of earning a few extra necessary pence. “Dr Hyde complains,” says Wordsworth in his book on the eighteenth century, “that some in the university have been very troublesome in pressing that their servitors may transcribe manuscripts for them, though not capable of being sworn to the Library.”

View of Queen’s College.

For a commoner to be seen in public in the company of a servitor was a “great disparagement.” Consequently, if a servitor was sufficiently blessed to be able to call a commoner friend, he must needs visit him secretly, or under cover of darkness. It is on record that Shenstone, who was a commoner of Pembroke, visited Jago a servitor, a friend of his, in strict private because of this popular prejudice. When Erasmus was at Queen’s his servitor’s rooms were immediately above his own. The poor wretch, besides being at his master’s beck and call, was very often the slave of his master’s mistress—an employ of vast uneasiness and discomfort.

In the Oxford Chronicle in 1859, in a series of articles entitled “Oxford during the Last Century,” Aubrey describes Willis, the servitor of Dr Iles, Canon of Christ Church, as studying in his blue livery cloak at the lower end of the hall by the door, and assisting his master’s wife in mixing drugs.

As a parallel case to that of Whitefield, who was a drawer in the Bell Inn, Gloucester, Hearne tells “of one Lyne, son of a clergyman, and grandson of the Town Clerk of Oxford, who was drawer at the King’s Head Tavern of that city, in 1735; his elder brother being Fellow of Emmanuel, and his younger an eminent scholar of King’s.”

It was no exaggeration to say that the servitors lived on the scraps from the Undergraduates’ tables. The following quotation shows the grinding penury against which they had to struggle: “Of the poverty of the class,” wrote J. R. Green in his wonderful “Oxford Studies,” “no better instance can be found than Samuel Wesley, the father of the Wesleys who were to change the whole state of religion in England, and himself a very stirring person, to whom we shall have occasion subsequently to allude. He was the son of an ejected and starving non-conformist minister, and when at the age of sixteen he walked to Oxford and entered himself as a servitor at Exeter, his whole worldly wealth amounted to no more than £2, 16s. Yet after supporting himself during his whole university career without any aid from his friends, save a trivial 5s., he set off to London to make a plunge into life with a capital increased to £10, 15s. Five shillings, however, sneer as we may, seem to have been no uncommon ‘allowance’ to a servitor of the time.”[7]

These poor servitors did not feel any touch of shame or degradation at having to clean boots and perform all the other dirty work of the place. Why should they? Their poverty at Oxford was in no way different from that in which they lived previously to their arrival at Oxford. It was merely a change in locality. For they came, as has been shown, from plough and public-house.

There are many instances to show to what great use some of them put the education which they managed to acquire during their servitorship. Sir John Birkenhead was a servitor at Oriel, and during that period of his afterwards noteworthy career, his brother was a trooper. It was only through the kindheartedness of a patron that Bishop Robinson became the servitor of Sir James Astrey at Brasenose. He was afterwards appointed to a Fellowship at Oriel, was sent as an envoy to Sweden, and became Bishop both of Bristol and London. In the days of his fame he was able to repay in some sort the kindness of his patron by granting his son a chaplaincy; and his love for the university is shown by the scholarships which he founded at Oriel.

Can Ruskin Hall point proudly to a son who has achieved such fame as either of these ex-servitors?