Where was William educated?

[gillo]

A late-night exchange in comments with shapinglight led to this. In my head-canon Spike/William went to Cambridge, just as canonical Giles went to Oxford. Bearing in mind that he was about the right age in about 1872, which makes quite a few brash young newcomer universities ineligible, where do you think young William the not-yet Bloody studied?

Poll William's university - which one?Thank you

Comments

[brutti_ma_buoni]

I don't know why I think Oxford, not Cambridge, except for a (Stephen Fry influenced I think?) sense of Cambridge as a slightly tougher, harder edged place. And windier. William and his weak chest and his doting mama would be much happier with soft old Oxford. Besides, dreaming spires are perfect for William's self cliche.

Also I wish I'd wondered if he studied divinity. Not a vestige of canon for it, but he might have thought of the church, a nice quiet bookish boy like that. Not law, and history's a bit newfangled for that date. But I still basically think Lit Hum is right.

[the_moonmoth]

Besides, dreaming spires are perfect for William's self cliche.

My thoughts exactly!

[gillo]

Divinity would have been expected anywhere but UCL, I think.

Thackeray had to do very large chunks of Classics plus Maths, and could have specialised in either. He let himself down by reading naughty French books by dodgy writers like Flaubert and Dumas. That was a good thirty years before William, though.

I like the idea of Cambridge because Oxford is where they makes Gileses. And William was far too conventional for UCL, I think. I doubt if either Oxbridge university was particularly tough unless you actually wanted to study hard.

[bogwitch]

Personally, I am vehemently against him being Oxbridge. One, it's boringly obvious and two, I don't consider him clever enough.

[gillo]

Yes, but you didn't have to be particularly clever to go to Oxbridge back then. Just the right class and with enough money. Lots of students didn't even bother to graduate.

[bogwitch]

Agreed but there are other places he could have gone and it's just very uninteresting to fall back on oxbridge yet again. I think there are far more original things to say about other places for a change.

Plus he wouldn't want to be that far away from his mum.

[quinara]

You could have him reading English at UCL, which could be fun. It just seems so radical for William! Taught in a secular institution, indeed...

[trepkos]

I'm not sure he would have left his mother alone, to go to university, even if they'd had the money.

[gillo]

They seemed fairly affluent. She may have gone to live in lodgings while he was at university, to be near him, before the consumption set in.

[rahirah]

Because I am contrary and everyone always has William going to Oxford or Cambridge, I decided long ago that my William went somewhere else. So just for the purposes of this poll I've picked University College, because A) as my William's father died when he was sixteen, I think he would have chosen an option in London so as to be nearer to his mother, and B) from a brief Google King's College seems more medically inclined. Not sure if that was true in days of yore, but still; C) If his family kept a carriage and were able to call in a very fashionable doctor to see his mother, then I doubt they were short of money (my headcanon is that William's father was new money and that was what Cecily was talking about when she said William was beneath her -- and besides, Cecily was Halfrek in disguise at the time, and also talking about the fact that William was a mere human and beneath her as a vengeance demon

[quinara]

I always thought William was New Money too. When I feel like working the fanwank really, really hard I think of his father as some sort of not-quite-researched-so-not-sure-what investor in the American railroad, so absent enough for William to act as the man of the house but sending enough cash back that he doesn't have to sort his life out, as well as letting society rip William to shreds for always talking about railways with American terminology. And if you really want to push it, the reason why Spike doesn't really see the UK much as home (because really once his actually-well-to-do mum was gone his future would have been in The Business). Only I haven't really thought any of that through. But there's something there I stand by!

[spikesjojo]

I always assumed one parent was American (Dad) who was in trade but brought a huge infusion of money into a very poor titled family. I think Anne was an aristocrat but not a daughter of the main family branch. It was all the rage in the Americas to get a titled family member, and a blessing in England for the titled but poverty stricken. So - agreed - new money and from a less than savory place.

But, given the social climate, had William (do I have to say Pratt?) - with his (minor) title and money had gone to NY, he would not have been beneath anyone there

[quinara]

Oh yes, that works very well! I know there's the fanon line that William gets his romantic ideals from his picture perfect parents, but I think I far prefer this marriage of convience/fashion that makes him long for a perfect ideal that he can't realise doesn't exist. I never thought of his dad actually being American before, but it makes so much sense! Ooh, I want Mr. Pratt to actually be some mega high-flyer in NY society with charm and panache and cash and a wife who was once a massive socialite until she got ill and her family wanted her back in the UK (where they had insisted William be educated), just in time for William to leave school and ready to fixate on his ready-made damsel in distress. And because he was living in NY or something until the age of 4/5/8 he always had a slight twang to his accent that no amount of caning was ever able to shift. Boom.

[the_moonmoth]

I have to go with Oxford simply for my own dark blue allegiance. Are you a tab, then? ;)

As for William not wanting to be far from his mother in London, do we even know where the family home was? I'm not esp good at history but I was under the impression that many middle and upper class families had town houses for the season, and country houses for homes. My headcanon is that they're actually from somewhere further north, based on nothing but James Marsters' inability to pronounce a proper London 'a' sound in words like 'bath', 'grass' etc. A home in the midlands' countryside somewhere fits my view of him nicely, explains the accent aberration, and keeps him (potentially) close to his mother.

ETA: as for his degree, again I don't know what's accurate for the period, but I see him doing something boring but practical out of family duty, that would make his mother proud. Something like economics or accounting or something. At which he was dreadful, of course, because he couldn't get his head out of the clouds long enough to focus on

[spikesjojo]

I always thought the accent was the melange of having been all over Britain many times - as well as the rest of the world. It explains any problems and is an all purpose rationalization!

[gillo]

Spike's accent is part of a deliberately and carefully constructed persona, which would explain why he picked up a few random vowels from the wrong side of the tracks.

[spikesjojo]

Oh, I agree. I do think it was cultivated. I just think he preferred to not have his origins obvious.