The habitation of the wilder spirits

This article was published in Trinity News on 21 April, 2009, the tenth 'Old Trinity' column.

The habitation of the wilder spirits

WHATEVER Protestantism may have given us, wrote Henry Albert Hinkson, “she has given us little that is artistically beautiful.” In his Student Life in Trinity College, Dublin, published in 1892, he bemoans the “Protestant austerity” of his alma mater’s buildings, with a special mention for the plain facades of Botany Bay, which are, he writes, “more than usually hideous”.

But Botany Bay has redeemed itself. Nearly two centuries of youthful exuberance have given the cold walls a life of their own. This boisterous vita has been gleefully recorded in literature and history, and new generations of irrepressible undergraduates continue to contribute to the life of the quadrangle of fun.

The Bay’s residential buildings were started around 1790 but not finished until 1816, a decrease in student numbers having delayed completion. The square was originally bound by these two buildings, the Dining Hall, and the residential Rotten Row – the last since replaced by the Graduates’ Memorial Building. The College Baths were built to the side of the Dining Hall in 1924, and these were demolished to make way for the East Dining Hall in 1971.

The precise origin of the Bay’s name is lost. Irish political prisoners in the Australian convict settlement had mutinied in 1801, bringing infamy to the Botany Bay of the southern hemisphere. The reputation of noisy undergraduates living in these new college buildings may have led to the comparison with the Australian colony. The college’s kitchen garden was also located here in the middle of the 18th century, where specimens may have been grown by botany lecturers, perhaps contributing to the name.

Let us return to Hinkson, who seems to have written an interesting sentence about every aspect of the university he loved. He wrote that Botany Bay was “popularly held to be the habitation of the wilder spirits”, where students regularly celebrated by lighting fires, particularly at the end of term. “Oft-times,” he wrote, “the stillness of midnight is broken by the cheers which greet the successful lighting of a bonfire”.

One issue of TCD: A College Miscellany in 1900 recorded that “an immense bonfire lighted up with the smoky brilliance of wood and tar and wicker armchair the lurid recesses of the Bay.” This blaze was especially memorable as wood from the Graduates’ Memorial Building construction site was commandeered to fuel the flames of fun. The bill for the stolen timber came to a hefty £11.

Bonfires were still being lit when Kenneth Bailey published, in 1947, his History of Trinity College, Dublin. Bailey, himself JD from 1931 to 1942, wrote that “even the Junior Dean can enjoy the scene”. No longer, sadly.

Botany Bay: A Play in One Act was published and performed in 1892 to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of the college. The play tells the story of two cousins living in the Bay, and the preparations for a party in their rooms. With the spree in full swing, Keys, one of the protagonists, even sings a song in honour of the beloved JD.

But a knock on the oak turns out to be the Dean himself, and the assembled revellers blow out the lights. “Light those candles immediately,” shouts the Dean upon entry, “or I shall rusticate every one of you!”

Keys pleads for mercy, explaining that the assembled are simply celebrating the college’s anniversary – not an excuse likely to succeed. But the Junior Dean, like a good sport, gives in: “I will forgive your hilarity this once on account of your desire to commemorate the tercentenary, and keep alive the traditions of Botany Bay.” Bravo, JD!

William Edward Nevill – BA 1947, PhD 1951 – recounted his own college years in his I Lived in Botany Bay: 1943–1947. He recalls the banter between the skips (the students’ servants) and the jollities of the undergraduates. One amusing anecdote recounts the Junior Dean and his porters, “like bloodhounds”, hunting a female who stayed in college too late, breaking the six o’clock rule. They found the immoral adventuress hiding in a tree.

Those who have read JP Donleavy’s The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B will remember the hilarious chapter in which Balthazar and Beefy smuggle two strumpets into Beefy’s rooms in the Bay. Beefy plans to take holy orders – but, like St Augustine, “not before I’ve had my fill of the diabolical.” Authority soon arrives, declaring that “this university is not some kind of brothel”, but not immediately discovering the concealed wenches.

The student weekly TCD lamented, in 1950, the decline of “the college character” following the war. This archetype, “who presumes no greatness of his own yet gives ‘colour’ to this university”, was identified as a student of the Bay in a sentence which retains its ring of truth, even today:

“In after life we shall remember him,” wrote the undergraduate scribe, “the Botany Bay denizen, the Boat Club type – bane of lecturer and Junior Dean, but boon companion of our college days.”

Indeed! If only the secluded quad were filled with such types these days. College rooms are, as often as not, occupied by the most irrelevant of students: the heads of one-event-per-year societies, the most unsociable of the Scholars, and clueless American one-year students.

But there are always those keen, as the fictional JD of the tercentenary farce said, “to keep alive the traditions of Botany Bay”. And to those students I lift a glass.

IN MY DESCRIPTION of students’ academic dress in the eighth number of this year’s Trinity News I neglected to give a description of the caps in use at this university.

Our graduates’ cap is the same as in many other universities, ancient and modern: a square academic cap (known as a “mortarboard”) with a tassel. Undergraduates wear the same, but without the tassel. Scholars and ex-Scholars are entitled to a velvet-covered cap. The Chancellor wears a velvet-covered cap with a gold tassel.

Students, the statutes direct, “shall salute the Provost and Fellows by doffing their caps.”

There is no truth, sadly, to the story that caps are not worn by men in protest against the admission of women to the university. Men should only wear hats outdoors, and this has led to academic caps not being issued to the stronger sex on Commencements day. However, you are perfectly entitled to one – even if you are opposed to women’s attendance at university! But remember to remove it when in the Public Theatre.

DUBLIN University’s student newspaper took another fine haul of awards at the recent student media awards. Congratulations to Martin and all the members of Trinity News whose hard work was recognised.

The first record of an award to this newspaper which I have discovered is from 1962. On December 8 that year Trinity News won a prize for best student newspaper at an event in the Ormond Hotel. The Irish Times of the following day reported that Trinity News beat off competition from Queen’s University’s The Gown to take the title. Godfrey Fitzsimons – BA 1964 – was chairman of the newspaper that term.