Judgment of Erasmus on the Cambridge Folk
BEDMAKERS OR GYPS
DROPS OF BRANDY
Fuller says, that Erasmus thus wrote of the Cambridge folk, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. “Vulgus Cantabrigiense, inhospitales Britannos antecedit, qui cum summa rusticitate summum militiam conjunxere.” This will by no means now apply to the better class of tradespeople, and in no place that I know of is there more hospitality amongst the higher orders of society. Kirk White, in his Letters, is not very complimentary either to The latter are called scouts in Oxford, and their office borders on what is generally understood by the word valet. The term Gyp is well applied from Γυπς, a vulture, they being, in the broadest sense of the word, addicted to prey, and not over-scrupulous at both picking and stealing, in spite of the Decalogue. I had one evening had a wine party, during the warm season of the year; we drank freely, and two of the party taking possession of my bed, I contented myself with the sofa. About six in the morning the Gyp came into the room to collect boots, &c. and either not seeing me, or fancying I slept (the wine being left on the table,) he very coolly filled himself a glass, which he lost no time in raising to his lips, but ere he had swallowed a drop, having watched his motions, I whistled (significant of recognition,) and down went the wine, glass and all, and out bolted our gyp, who actually blushed the next time he saw me. Another anecdote touching lodging-house keepers, I will head A certain mistress of a lodging-house, in Green-street, Cambridge, where several students had rooms, having a propensity, not for the ethereal charms of the music so called, but for the invigorating liquor itself, had a habit, with the assistance of what is called a screw-driver, but which might more aptly be termed a screw-drawer, of opening cupboard doors without resorting to the ordinary use of a key. By this means she had one day abstracted a bottle of brandy from the store of one of the students (now a barrister of some practice and standing,) with which, the better to consume it in undisturbed dignity, she retired to the temple of the goddess Cloacina. She had been missed for some time, and search was made, when she was found half seas over, as they say, with the remnant of the bottle still grasped in her hand, which she had plied so often to her mouth, that she was unable to lift her hand so high, or indeed to rise from her seditious posture. Upon this scene a caricature of the first water was sketched, and circulated by some Cambridge wag; another threw off the following Epigrammatic Conun:
Why is my Dalia like a rose?
Perhaps, you’ll say, because her breath
Is sweeter than the flowers of earth:
No—odious thought—it is, her nose
Is redder than the reddest rose;
Which she has long been very handy
At colouring with drops of brandy.
Another head of a lodging-house is a notorious member of what in Cambridge is called—
THE DIRTY-SHIRT CLUB
DESSERT FOR TWENTY
A HINT FOR GOWNSMEN
This is a society that has existed in the town of Cambridge for ages, whose functions consist in wearing the linen of the students who lodge in their houses after it has been cast off for the laundress. This same individual, however, had a taste for higher game, and one of the students, who had rooms in his house, being called to London for a few days, returning rather unexpectedly, actually found mine host at the head of the table, in his sitting-room, surrounded by some twenty snobs, his friends. Our gownsman very properly resented his impertinence, took him by the collar and waist, and, in the language of that fine old song, goose-a-goose-a-gander, “threw him down stairs.” The rest of the party prudently followed at this hint, leaving the table covered with the remains of sundry bottles of wine and a rich dessert. Thus the affair terminated at that time: but our gownsman being a man of fortune, and one of those accustomed, therefore, to treat his brother students, his friends, sumptuously too, went two or three days after, to his fruiterer’s, to order “The same as you had on Wednesday?” inquired the fruiterer. “On Wednesday!” he exclaimed with astonishment,—“I had no dessert on Wednesday!” “Oh, yes, sir,” was the rejoinder, “Mr. —— himself ordered it for you, and, as I before said, for twenty!” The whole matter was soon understood to be, that the lodging-house keeper had actually done him the honour to give his brother snobs, of the dirty shirt fraternity, an invite and sumptuous entertainment at his expense! Of course, he did not remain in the house of such a free-and-easy-gent. I name the fact as a recent occurrence, and But this is not the only way in which they are fleeced: the minor articles of grocery are easily appropriated: nay, not only easily appropriated, but a duplicate order is occasionally delivered for the benefit of the house. Some tradesmen have made