England -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Guardian and ward -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Love stories
The Old Court of St. Benedict's College--it is hardly necessary to say
that we are in Cambridge and not in Oxford: otherwise we should have
said "Quad"--presents to us on the present occasion a very fair sample
of a Saturday morning crowd. The observant eye of the Dean, looking down
(like Jezebel) from an upper chamber, can discern--
1. Three washerwomen, with the appurtenances thereof.
2. One small boy delivering _The Granta_.
3. A solitary spectacled gentleman, of the type described by the
University Calendar in stately periphrasis as "A Native of Asia, not of
European Parentage" (but more tersely classified by the rest of the
community as "a nigger"), hurrying in cap and gown to secure a good
place at the feet of some out-of-college Gamaliel.
4. A kitchen-man in white jacket and apron, bearing upon his head a tray
containing a salmon mayonnaise, cutlets in aspic, and a special
Cambridge dainty known as "Grassy Corner Pudding"--a fearsome compound
of whipped cream and pistachio nuts.
5. A Buttery boy, walking close behind, with a basket containing
bottles. Evidently some young gentleman is about to entertain
angels--unawares so far as his bill-paying papa is concerned.
6. Four young men converging to a group in the centre of the court. Of
these, two are attired in the undergraduate mode of the moment--tweed
jackets with leather buttons, waistcoats of the Urim and Thummim
variety, grey flannel trousers well turned up, clamorous silk socks, and
heavy Highland shooting brogues. The third wears what the College
Regulations describe rather ingenuously as "Athletic Dress."
Pheidippides himself would have found it difficult to perform feats of
prowess in a costume composed of split pumps, white duck trousers, and a
blazer admirably qualified to serve as a model of the Solar Spectrum.
It may be mentioned in passing that, to the College Regulations,
"Athletic Dress" is not in itself a costume in which it is possible to
perform athletic feats, but one whose colour-scheme clashes with the
_sub-fusc_ standard which obtains in all college courts until one P.M.;
such, in fact, as would tend to distract the eye and sap the diligence
of those who traverse the courts on their way to lectures. In
consequence, he who would be matutinally athletic must either keep his
warpaint somewhere out of college, or drape himself like a stage
conspirator as he flits from his rooms to the river or Fenner's.
The fourth gentleman of the party was dressed, if not gorgeously,
sufficiently respectably to warrant the assumption that he was not a
member of the University.
All four were smoking.
The Dean, glancing in the direction of the gateway, and observing with
sardonic satisfaction that the watchful Cerberus there was taking a note
of the delinquency, returned to his work. Regardless of the prospective
loss of half-a-crown apiece, the undergraduates exchanged cheerful
greetings.
"Hallo, Dishy-Washy!"
"Hallo, Gussie!"
"Hallo, Towzer!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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