A hundred years ago the undergraduate dressed for "hall" with white silk stockings and pumps and white silk waistcoat. A few wore powder, the others curled their hair, and he was a bucolic youth indeed who omitted at least the curling. "Curled and powdered" the Cambridge scholar wore his hair even in the xiv century provoking the indignation of primates and founders. A hundred and fifty years ago beer was served for breakfast, and only Gray and Walpole drank tea. Even fifty years ago the food was roughly served and in an overcrowded hall. It was however abundant, and extras like soup, confectionery, and cheese could be "sized for" _i.e._ brought you at an extra charge. The food provided consisted of plain joints and vegetables, with plenty of beer. The fellows' table and the side tables of the bachelors were better served.
"The wine," the famous entertainment which followed the old four o'clock dinner fifty years ago, has yielded place to coffee and tea. In the May term teas assume new proportions; for during the term which is fateful to the reading man as that preceding the tripos examination, the idle man turns work time into play, invites his friends and relatives up to Cambridge, and entertains his sisters at "the races." It is not indeed to be supposed that the majority of undergraduates are to be found keeping themselves awake with black coffee, a damp towel bound about their brows, while they burn the midnight oil. Even the harmless necessary "sporting of one's oak" is no longer "good form." In days when you advertise for a curate and a schoolmaster who is a good athlete the very thin literary proclivities of the bulk of Englishmen cannot be held to be on the increase. What one might legitimately hope for is that athletics should prove a safety-valve to the natural "rowdyism" of the non-reading man; so that if school and university sports cannot make a scholar they might at least turn out something not unlike a gentleman. Last October (1905) proved a "record" in the number of men "going up," and November proved "a record" in the number of men who should have been "sent down." What took place is fresh in our memories; and it will not quickly be forgotten that while the undergraduates of one university were shouting their disgrace, a well-known bishop was signalising (and exaggerating) the disgrace of the other; and we may choose between the merits of leaguing with the town blackguard to kick policemen at Cambridge or indulging the vice which changed the name of "wines" at Oxford to "drunks." At the rejoicings for Mafeking the iron railings and posts were torn up along the 'backs,' and everything combustible from drays to handcarts was "commandeered" to make a bonfire on Market hill, where many panes of glass in the surrounding houses were smashed. Proctors' "bull-dogs" were rolled over in the mud, and the proctors treated to the dignity of a "chairing."[369] The bonfire on Market hill is a development of a traditional ritual more amusing and less dangerous: you drag out your own and your friends' furniture and make a bonfire in the middle of the college "court."