Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3811/Oxford in Transition
Hearing from an undergraduate friend at Cardinal College of the impending retirement of Mr. Chumbleton ("Old Chum"), the famous porter of Salisbury Gate, I gladly seized the opportunity of running down to Oxford to gain some fresh sidelights on the inner life of the University. Cardinal College, unlike Balliol, Magdalen and New College, has never shown itself responsive to the new spirit. There are probably fewer Socialists in Peckover than in any other quad in Oxford. The old feudal traditions, though somewhat mitigated, still survive. You still hear the characteristic Mayfair accent and recognise a curious lack of that Moral Uplift without which, as Sir Robertson Nicoll finely says, a man is no better than a mummy. And yet I own to having been strangely attracted by these well-groomed scions of a vanishing breed, with their finely chiselled features, their clipped colloquialisms and their cheerful arrogance. There is something engaging as well as pathetic in these unruffled countenances, blind to the realities of modern life and the need of that fraternal fellowship which alone can bring peace to the head that wears a crown or a coronet.
Mr. Chumbleton, who was just going off duty when I arrived, cordially invited me into his inner sanctum and offered me a glass of gin and green Chartreuse, the favourite beverage, he assured me, of the late Duke of Midhurst, whose scout he had been in the "seventies." Of that strange and meteoric figure, who was subsequently devoured by a crocodile, on the Blue Nile, Mr. Chumbleton spoke with genuine affection. "He was something like a Dook," said the old man, "and not one of your barley-water-drinking faddists. Yes, in those days a Dook was a Dook and not a cock-shy for demi-gods [?demagogues]. I can remember," he went on, "when there were three Dooks in residence at the same time, the Dook of Midhurst, the Dook of St. Ives and the Dook of Clumber. But the Dook of Midhurst was the pick of the bunch. Why, once he went into a grocer's shop in the High and asked for two pounds of treacle. 'How will you have it?' asked the grocer, who was the baldest-headed man I ever seen. 'In my hat,' said the Dook, whipping off his bowler and holding it out. As soon as it was full, before you could say Jack Robinson, he popped it on the grocer's head and ran out of the shop."
The old man told this terrible story, which reminded me of the worst cruelties of the despots of the Italian Renaissance, with a gusto that was inexpressibly painful. When he had finished I asked whether the Duke was sent down. "Oh, no, Sir," was the prompt response. "You see the grocer, being a bald-headed man, had no trouble with the treacle, and, besides, the Dook he gave him a wig next day. But if anyone was to do that to-day, Dook or no Dook, there'd be questions asked about it in the House of Commons, or a Royal Commission would be appointed. Times is changed," he went on sadly, "and there ain't any more of the old stock left. Why the Bullingdon Club got three First Classes this year, and as for breaking up furniture and bonfires in the quad it don't happen once in three years. 'Nuts' they call 'em now, but when I was a young scout they called 'em 'dogs,' and gay dogs they were, I can tell you. 'Bloods' they call 'em, too, but there ain't much blue blood in these modern Blutocrats."
I asked Mr. Chumbleton if there were any signs of Cardinal College being affected by the new Moral Uplift, but he seemed unable to fathom the meaning of my query. His standpoint was clearly philistine and, I regret to say, distinctly pagan. He had never heard of the Land Campaign, or of Mr. Hemmerde, Baron de Forest or even Mr. Harold Begbie. His attitude towards Mr. Lloyd George was unsympathetic. He deplored the popularity of motor-bicycles, but, with a strange and lamentable perversity, welcomed the advent of the motor-'bus while condemning the introduction of trams.
I came away more than ever impressed by the tenacity of feudal traditions, and the need of redoubled efforts on the part of all Radical stalwarts to convert the older universities from hot-beds of expensive obscurantism into free nurseries of humanitarian democracy. It was sad to see such a figure as that of Mr. Chumbleton, genial and hospitable, I admit, but utterly heedless of the trend of the times, hopelessly ignorant of the Progressive program, and deriving a senile satisfaction from memories of a barbarous and brutal past.