ABSTRACT
Oxford and Cambridge were two main hubs of advanced recreational fashion: they were not merely suburbs of London, as they afterwards became. Such novelties as the canary-yellow hunting waistcoat, green velveteen trousers, suede shoes, were initiated there. The famous wide- bottomed trousers, ‘Oxford bags’, which superseded the conventional peg- top variety in 1924 and set a fashion for the whole world, are said to have started at Cambridge two years previously. The elaborate type of hoax was another Oxford borrowing from Cambridge. For example, a number of dons attended Dr. Emil Busch's well-advertised psychological lecture and many were impressed by his foreign accent, stimulating argument, and complicated vocabulary. He was an undergraduate in a false beard. Then there was the duel in November 1923 at Godstow near Fair Rosamund's Tower between cloaked figures armed with pistols. After the first exchange one duellist fell bleeding, and doctors ran up to bandage him. The subject of the duel was reported in the London Press to be an ‘undergraduette of Somerville’, and great excitement was aroused. But no names came out; and the blood was only red ink after all.
