MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON IN the train coming down from Oxford last Friday I read an article which Professor Joad had contributed to the New Statesman and Nation on the subject of the modern undergraduate. It was entitled How a Civilisation Declines and was written in that tone of discontented virtue, of knowing despair, with which our brilliant contemporary is able week by week to lighten and enlighten our darkness. Professor Joad agrees with Professor Palladin—the Soviet physiologist whose remarks I quoted two weeks ago—in pitying the Oxford undergraduate for the conditions of penury and discomfort in which he spends his days and nights. While enjoying the hospi- tality of St. John's College, Professor load could not, in his quick sympathy for all human ills, conceal his distress at the meagre hospitality which he was invited to enjoy. His host had provided him with an insufficient breakfast—" a bit of haddock, margarine and doubtful marmalade "—and in the mood thereby engendered he walked round the stark herbaceous borders of St. John's Gardens, reflecting that these gardens would before long discard their serenity and charm and that in our decaying civilisation the very word " amenity " would lose its meaning. After delivering his lecture, Professor Joad was invited to attend a small meeting in his own college of Balliol. Again he was assailed by that murky sense of meagre hospitality. " As I looked round the crowded, dingy room, noted the untidy, shabby clothes, marked the paucity of beer and cigarettes, I could not help contrasting their lot with that of my own generation." Two things in particular convinced Professor load that our civilisation, as evidenced by Oxford, had entered upon a decline. In the first place the undergraduates were too solemn to indulge in play. In the second place they had not acquired, and would now be unable to acquire, that delicate palate by which men are enabled to distinguish the vintages of France. The lives of these young men, in Professor Joad's opinion, were certainly brutish and might, such is the force of the atomic bomb, be short.
* * * * Professor Joad is a younger man than I am, but we share many experiences and certain tastes. I read his article at a moment when I also had just spent a night and day at Oxford. Yet—such is the subjective nature of human judgement—my impressions of the gentle university had been almost totally different from his. I also had been given for breakfast haddock, margarine and marmalade. But my haddock had been as luscious as any Sotades conceived ; my mar- garine had all the appearance of being butter ; and my marmalade was of the quality for which its eponym is justly famed. I also had taken a walk after breakfast among the herbaceous borders of St. John's College, but this had not in my case led to any sullen thoughts. I had listened to the bells calling each to each and had reflected how glad I was that I had been to Oxford and how glad I was that so many young men and women were now enabled by State grants to enjoy that unalterable privilege. I also had been invited to speak to undergraduates, both at the Union and in a smaller gathering. I also had received hospitality. But I had not observed any indications of a paucity of beer. On the contrary, the wines of France and Spain and Portugal accompanied the lobster salads and the other condi- ments under which the table groaned. The undergraduate who dis- pensed this lavish hospitality was not, in any sense, untidily arrayed. He was dressed in a tail coat, wore a white tie and waistcoat, and displayed a buttonhole which was a masterpiece of the florist's art. I did not derive, as Professor Joad derived, an impression of suffering and penury. It was sherry, sherry, sherry all the time.
* * * Professor Joad in his article complains that Oxford has lost the careless rapture of his own undergraduate days. The students of today appear to him as " a generation robbed of the larkiness of youth." It is true, I confess, that the young men and women of today take life more seriously that we did and that a certain gravitas can be detected in their manners and their eyes. But if Professor Joad had been with me on the night of the Union Debate he would not, I feel, have been so oppressed by the absence of high spirits. The speeches delivered by the undergraduates were as amusing as ever ; they were in fact the most sparkling speeches that I have heard in any Union debate. And thereafter, while we were refreshing our- selves from this contest of wits, an irruption occurred. It seems that the elevation of Lieutenant Mountbatten to the dignity of the Dukedom of Edinburgh had aroused the enthusiasm of the Scottish nationalists. The sound of bagpipes reached us from the lower story and a procession of happy Highlanders danced through the sober rooms. I like that sort or thing. Professor Joad also likes it. And the proctors were as busy that evening as on any night when he was young or I was young. I admit that this was an exceptional occasion and that royal weddings do not occur on every day. But it does suggest that the undergraduate of today is not always or irretrievably quite so solemn, untidy, smokeless and beerless as Professor Joad suggests. Nor do I see why a certain preoccupation with learning, a certain anxiety about the future, a certain natural austerity, should be unchallengeable symptoms of a decline. It is true that the under- graduate of today is slightly underfed ; he does not obtain those chunks of bread and cheese or those enormous teas which Professor Joad when beardless and at Balliol so lavishly enjoyed. I think it is true that the modern undergraduate does worry more than we worried about his future job. But this does not really mean that there will be no more cakes and ale. • * * * I wonder moreover whether Professor Joad's memory of his early Balliol days is photographic in its accuracy. I do not recall that in my time any but the members of the Bullingdon Club took much trouble about their clothes. Flannel bags are flannel bags whether it be in 1947 or 1910 ; and I doubt very much whether the Pro- fessor, when an undergraduate, had his trousers creased. " When we were at Oxford," he writes, " our lives were cushioned with money and leisure." It is true perhaps that we had more time for con- versation and that the sense of urgency did not give to our features a strained and haggard look. But I do not recall that in my own undergraduate days I was ever conscious that the cushion of money was very tightly stuffed. My bank balance, as I recall it, resembled the benches in Christ Church Hall by which Professor Palladin of the Ukraine was so sadly shocked ; it was " un-upholstered." And can Professor Joad really contend that he acquired while an under- graduate that exquisite taste in burgundy and claret which is among the many graces with which his middle age is decked? When I was at Balliol we used to drink port on very festive occasions, but it was not, in so far as I recollect, of any famous vintage ; rather was it of the medicinal variety. When people came of age they used to give dinner parties at the Clarendon at which champagne was served. But I doubt whether any of us derived from those blurred evenings any clear discrimination between Roederer and Krug. The cocktail habit had not in those days invaded this island. It was never thought necessary before luncheon to offer a guest a Martini or a glass of sherry. And perhaps the modern undergraduate has in this respect a greater opportunity of discriminating between the shades of nasti- ness which the cocktail-shaker can produce.
* * * * In one respect only do I regard the modern undergraduates as less fortunate than we were in our seedling days. They are not able today, as we were able, to have their meals in their own rooms or regularly to invite guests to breakfast or to luncheon. When I look back upon my university years those meals—those heavy breakfasts and those uproarious luncheons—glimmer for me as the happiest of all occasions. I derived from them, not pleasure and friendship only, but real intellectual stimulus. I certainly believe that the com- munity meals now imposed, with Spartan uniformity, upon the undergraduates deprive them of much of the sparkle of entertainment and conversation. And since one goes to the university, not solely in order to pass examinations, but also to whet one's mind upon other young minds, this denial of convivial intimacy is a serious loss. Professor Joad would be the very first to agree that if good conversation be present it matters little about the haddock and the margarine.
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