GARGANTUA AT CAMBRIDGE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 230, 28 September 1928, Page 6

GARGANTUA AT CAMBRIDGE.

A thin, athletic, dieting world wonders at the everlasting gorging and guzzling of the travelling delegation of the Pickwick Club. Those incn of tho 'twenties were but feebly carrying on the heroic eighteenth-century tradition. They were ascetics compared with the Cambridge dons exhibited in a "Cornhill Magazine'* article on Cambridge "University Life After 1790." There wero few undergraduates. Fellowships were divided among counties. Once granted only marriage or death could take thi incumbent from paths that dropped fatness. And there were giants in those days. It was no uncommon thing for a man to glue his lips to a wooden four-quart cider bottle and keep them there till not a drop was left in it.

Two gentlemen walking to catch a coach took turns in lugging a Stilton cheese. Here is a clergyman's confession: "When last in town I was going to dine with a friend and passed through a small court just as a lad was hanging up a board on which was this tempting inscription. 'A roast pig this instant set upon the table.' I ordered a quarter. It was very delicate and delicious. I dispatched a second and a third portion, but was constrained to leave one quarter behind because my dinner hour was approaching and my friend was remarkably punctual."

Stourbridge Fair was a high day. After breakfast the Vice-Chancellor, Bedells and so on went to the Senate House and swigged enormously

"mulled wine and sherry in black bottles with a great variety of cakes." Then they drove to the fair, still pursued by their devils of thirst and hunjrer. Sitting down to bare boards, laid on trestles and casks, they ate several barrels of oysters, washed down by an ocean of ale and bottled stout. After these trifles they were ready for the dining room. There, according to the ritual arrangement: "Before the Vice-Chancellor was placed a large dish of herrings; then followed in airier a neck of pork roasted, an enormous plum pudding, a leg of pork boiled, a pease pudding, a goose, a huge apple pie and a round of beef in the centre. On the other half of the table the same dishes were placed in similar order, the herrings before the senior Proctor, who sat at the bottom. "

Lecture rooms seem to have been used as dormitories between meals and between drinks. professor of anatomy would get a full house by inviting his friends to see liim dissect fish, which would be served at table afterwards. This heartiness in solids and liquids may have ha-d its part in stimulating'asperities. If one could keep awake at a lecture, he might see a beloved instructor take off another's head: "Thorp, Tutor of Saint Catharine's, was lecturing cn the 'Law of Extreme Necessity.' 'Suppose,' he said, 'Lowther Yates and I were struggling in the water for a plank which would not hold two, and that I got possession of it, I should be justified in knocking him off.' And then he added with great vehemence, 'Damn him, and I would, toot, without the slightest hesitation.' One still living once interrupted a speaker who addressed the chair, 'Mr. Perkins and gentlemen,' with 'And a very proper distinction.' The man thus complimented retaliated with. 'If doesn't go to hell, there's no such place.' "

Such were the Cantabrigian amenities. The prevailing coarseness didn't prevent a fine wit. Henry Guaning, a freshman in 1754, whose reminiscences, first published in 1784. are the foundation of the ''Cornhill" article, •"'records of a professor of mineralogy. 'His lecture room was always crowded, and those of his hearers who were not deeply versed in mineralogy came away highly delighted.' and of Professor Christian, ; He died in 18?3, in the full vigour of his incapacity.""