Just finished reading Jill, one of only two novels Philip Larkin wrote.
It is (depending on who you believe; Larkin was rather miffed apparently at having it described as a pure roman a clef) a thinly or moderately veiled version of (parts of) Larkin’s experience as an Oxford undergraduate during the early days of WWII.
Larkin (like his protagonist) was a scholarship pupil from a middle class/lower middle class family (Larkin came from Coventry).
The protagonist finds himself a bit strapped for cash at various times throughout the book (someone borrowed part of a pound which had been supposed to last him for a fortnight’s spending money – apparently there has been some inflation).
But I was struck by other aspects of the protagonist’s circumstances. Upon arrival, he’s simply shown to his shared rooms in some grandiose old manse. Although the rooms are described as I guess what we’d now call shabby genteel. You sort of get the feeling of an old but not-especially-luxurious hunting lodge, or Gormenghast, or something. And, they had scouts, who didn’t just clean, but endured the abuse of the drunken louts among the students, and “cleaned up their slops” (again, it’s hard to think of any lodgings that rely on a chamberpot as luxurious, though I guess in 1940 this was far from unheard of in England). On the other hand, all their meals in the Hall and their refreshments in the Senior Common Room, etc. seem to have been paid for (they may have paid extra for beer from the buttery to take to their rooms – this was certainly no dry university). Apparently in those days a scholarship was a SCHOLARSHIP, as I’ve never heard of any academic scholarship (other than maybe for minorities, or an athletic scholarship) that provides for room and board these days. Of course, tuition was also a much lower proportion of the total cost then, I’d imagine, before universities discovered they could charge $35k and soak the government to provide or subsidize that.
And yes, Larkin portrays the different students living in different circumstances depending on their college/house – not surprising when you consider the somewhat randomly cobbled together nature of lots of older buildings. Some kids were in garrets under sloping roofs. Others had rooms to themselves. I don’t know that his account involved lots of guys boarding in town (in fact, there seems to have been a rule requiring them to be on campus, or at least the ones who lived there, and to avoid being “out of bounds,” which I guess to the proctors really meant in the townie bars).
So the life Larkin portrays is an odd contrast – he leaves his subsidized room, where the scout is cleaning up after him, goes to his free meal, passes the porter’s lodge and asks the porter to run an errand for him – then goes into town and discovers he doesn’t have enough money to pay for his tea. You seem to see a fair amount of genteel poverty in old books – wonder why that’s not so easy to pull off these days?
The student experience seemed very much like mine at a fine old women’s college here a few years ago except for the scouts, who seemed to mostly be recovering a lot of crockery from the students’ rooms. Not servants at all, more like school cleaning ladies who also did dishes and whose baliwick did extend to within the students’ rooms to a point. I don’t know if they were also doing laundry.