Scouting for Gentlemen

Staircase 10

On another blog out there on the Web the word "scout" recently came up for discussion. The (American) writer of that blog had not come across it before in its very particular usage at Oxford University, where it has traditionally been applied to a "college servant", although it emerged that "scout" has also been used in the past in the same way at Yale and Harvard.

The very idea of a college "servant" is highly anachronistic today, of course, but at the older universities, established in earlier centuries to cater for the educational and pastoral needs of the young, male members of privileged families well-used to the benefit of servants both at home and at their private boarding schools, it would have been seen as an obvious necessity. The young gentlemen would not have been expected to make their own beds, clean up their own mess, or fetch and carry water, light fires, and so on. A certain degree of discreet moral surveillance would have gone along with the job, too.

Improbable as it seems, even to myself in retrospect, I was once a student at one of the very oldest and most prominent Oxford colleges, way back in the 1970s. In those days, all but five of the forty-plus colleges were still exclusively for "men" (a charitable euphemism for late-adolescent boys), so scouts in the all-male colleges were generally (always?) male, too. The 1970s were very much a transitional period at Oxford, with the more traditional colleges still locking up their gates for the night and banning overnight "guests" in student rooms, while others had already relaxed such outdated customs and were finally even ready to contemplate the existence of women, both as "guests" and, within a few years, as prospective undergraduates. Apparently my own college, which despite its age and eminence was probably the most liberal of the lot, was known to envious students at the stuffier colleges as "Hotel Balliol".

Nonetheless, I think my experience was still typical. That is, a scout would be assigned to look after the rooms on a particular staircase, college buildings generally being arranged around open quadrangles with numbered staircases leading off, sometimes with the names of the current occupants painted onto a board next to each entrance. A scout would clean and tidy up, make and change the beds, and generally keep an eye on things. Unless you put out a "Do Not Disturb" notice, he would also knock on the door in the morning to give you a wake-up call (the days of bringing in a morning cup of tea had already passed), and would have other duties around the college during the day, such as working in the refectory to serve food. The job was never well paid, but I suppose offered a degree of security and a sense of being part of the permanent team of an elite establishment through which tides of lively young people constantly washed in and out, many destined for prominence in public and academic life. It seemed to suit a certain personality type. I mean, can you imagine the warm glow of having had a young Boris Johnson or David Cameron on "your" staircase? No, of course you can't.

Inevitably, this could be a difficult relationship for anyone who, unlike Johnson and his ilk, had been state-educated and had spent his first eighteen years at home with working parents who expected their teenage son to – gasp! – make his own bed and tidy his own room, rather than having been incarcerated from a shockingly early age in a series of private educational hothouses (know confusingly in Britain as "public schools"). In fact, and contrary to mythology, a larger percentage of post-war Oxbridge students were state-educated than was the case in many other universities: the state grammar-school system had its problems, but did ensure a steady supply of the brightest kids on full grants to the top universities. For many of us, to deal with the servile snobberies of the pre-war "Brideshead" mentality was an unwelcome novelty, and usually problematic.

As it happened, I was lucky in my first year. The scout on my staircase, Ray, was a genial Geordie, who quickly understood that I did not need babysitting and also valued a certain routine level of privacy; not least because as often as possible I would remain in bed until midday, quite often even later, slowly coming round from the adventures of the night before. To be honest, I regarded the achievement of getting the grades to become the first person in my family to go to university (never mind getting a place at Oxford) as having entitled me to a rather generous helping of fun. This was possibly a mistake, in retrospect, as we had significant exams at the end of that first year [1], but then what would I have done differently in my life burdened with a double first, anyway? Ray was relaxed about all this, and had an appropriate sense of humour: when one night an artificial joke-shop turd got left out on my desk (don't ask, I have no idea), Ray countered the following day by ostentatiously leaving a roll of toilet paper next to it.

The next year on a new staircase was very different. Scout Laurie and I did not get on. He was very proprietorial about his rooms and the "young gentlemen" that occupied them. He was elderly, and I think his worldview had been thrown into confusion by having to "serve" a new generation of students from families whose social status was not so different from his own, and who did not understand or respect the established conventions of the student-scout relationship; it made for friction. Besides, the second year at Oxford is exam-free, and therefore a time (for those so inclined) to ramp up the fun factor. My room became an established venue for those who wanted to sit up into the small hours, drinking, smoking, talking nonsense, and listening to music. [2] The "Do Not Disturb" notice was more or less permanently deployed on my door; quite often, there would be several comatose "guests" littering my floor in the morning. Laurie was not impressed; he would regularly inform me that "only the gentlemen who get up in the morning on my staircase get firsts in finals" (although I did come very close to proving him wrong; but then, I'm not really a gentleman...).

I'm not sure what those college rooms are like now, but in the 1970s they were still fairly primitive, even in the more wealthy colleges [3]. At prestigious but relatively poor Balliol the original coal fireplaces had been replaced with underpowered electric bar-heaters (often modified with twists of wire to facilitate toasting of bread), but the ceilings were high and the ancient sash windows were ill-fitting and single-glazed, so they were very cold indeed in the winter. There was usually only one bathroom with a toilet on each staircase, situated either on another floor or somewhere down a long, dark, cold corridor, and most rooms lacked running water and a sink. My second-year room did have a sink, installed inside what must once have been a cupboard, which was why I had chosen it. On a cold night, I'm afraid to say, it would save you from a trip down the freezing corridor for a pee. I only mention this because the true measure of scout Laurie's abject devotion to the college was (as he confided to one of my neighbours, anticipating admiration) that if he ever had the money he would have sinks installed in all of "his" gentlemen's rooms at his own expense. Good grief...

Obviously, things will not have remained the same over the intervening five decades. I'd be amazed if that proprietorial attitude among the scouts has survived, for a start: it seems unlikely that anybody today would remain long enough in such a poorly-paid and thankless job to develop positive feelings towards an institution in which they had no personal investment (I notice for example, that scouts are not even listed on the Balliol webpages as members of staff). Certainly, the presence of young female undergraduates will have changed things radically, and I doubt anyone now needs to listen politely to the effusions of some elderly man with strong views on cause and correlation when it comes to exam success. And I bet all the rooms are warm and equipped with free wi-fi, never mind basic plumbing...

But the word "scout" survives in the peculiar idiom of Oxford, along with other oddities like "battels" (a student's college account for food and accommodation), "handshaking" (a verbal end of term report on a student's progress), "bulldogs" (the university police), and all the rest of it. Although it does seem that the name "Hebdomadal Council" (an important governing body which was, sadly, nowhere near as arcanely Harry Potter-ish as it sounds) has finally gone. Some people celebrate and thrive in an institution whose traditions and vocabulary have stiffened into sclerosis; most just try to get used to it, or, if they have the patience, attempt to change it. [4]

But at least these days new students (sorry, freshers, a pretty universal bit of uni-speak) get handed some basic instructional literature to help them navigate a parallel universe where perfectly ordinary things are given perfectly silly names, unlike the sink-or-swim attitude I encountered half a century ago. Which, I suppose, had in its turn changed somewhat from the experience on offer a half-century before that, the aristocratic milieu of Evelyn Waugh and the Bright Young Things of the 1920s. Change may never come as quickly as one might like, but it will eventually come as the decades pass, even in a place as complacent and self-regarding as Oxford University. I should probably go back some day, knock on the door of that room at the top of Staircase Ten – assuming there is no "Do Not Disturb" note tacked to the door – and ask if I can have a look around. Although I promise I won't ask if I can use the sink for old time's sake, no matter how much I might need to.

Guests, ca. 1974...

1.  One of my best friends that year, with a room on the same staircase, was journalist David Aaronovitch. Dave's political activities meant that he spent even less time studying than me, and as a result he failed those exams ("Honours Moderations" or "Mods") and was, in the jargon, "sent down" i.e. booted out.

2. Apparently that room at the top of Staircase 10 had previously been occupied in the 1960s by Howard Marks, which set a high bar, so to speak.

3. Although I was amazed the first time I encountered a so-called "set" (in Christ Church, I think), i.e. two linked rooms accommodating just one student. These had a double door at the entrance, like an airlock: if the outer one was closed (known as "sporting the oak") it meant "do not disturb", although I'm not sure whether this served to exclude your scout in the morning. Overnight "guests" were very strictly policed at such colleges...

4. I was one of the founding members of a seminar group convened by Terry Eagleton that later became Oxford English Limited, set up to agitate for change in the very sclerotic English Language & Literature curriculum. TBH, I really only got involved to impress a prospective girlfriend, my future Civil Partner. Unromantically, she can't now remember a thing about it.