THE LETTERS

Letter 1 To Rex, 27 March 1908, Dampfer Bremen, Largs Bay

[…] Yesterday some of us had the hardihood to brave the element and venture on shore, Father, Madre and self being of the party […] We reached Adelaide at 12.30 and at once did King William St. and had a look at some of the more prominent buildings – making some necessary if unromantic purchases. We had lunch at a very one-horse place which a bobby recommended to us as the best in Adelaide. After that we made a horse-tram journey out to see the cathedral which is a very beautiful little building with a Lady Chapel – fancy one in Melbourne. I dropped into the zoo and had a look round: I was very keen on seeing their rhinoceros but found it was these many years extinct. Father and Madre went on to the gallery where I met them. We had a very enjoyable half-hour there. There was no time for more. It is really a more interesting gallery than Melbourne as tho’ smaller it has fewer encumbrances in the way of trash and several jolly good pictures – Watts, Leighton, Bouguereau, Rossetti, etc. It is really a splendid gallery for Adelaide. We hadn't time for anything more as it was too wet to go up Mount Lofty. So we shopped and teaed and after that we came back […]¹

Letter 2 To Rex, 31 March 1908, S.S. Bremen, 70 or 80 miles from Fremantle

[…] Swarms of people came on board just before we started so the ship has been pretty full since […] On Saturday we were in the bight.² I didn't get up till about four – feeling very sick and shaky […] Sunday one (i.e. me) felt somewhat better and got down to lunch. As far as church went, however, I played the malingerer. I believe they had a very successful service at eleven, a Methodist minister from the 2nd class taking it. Mr L.L. Lewis played the hymns.³ […] Yesterday everyone was all right. I don't know if it was seeing land again that caused the revival, but so it was. We could see the West Australian coast most of the time – about Albany and those parts. I read on deck most of the day […] At our table besides the Deweys and McLachlans are an old and fattish but rich man called Wynne and another man hitherto unclassified […] I told you, I think, Rünger was on board.⁴ He only started to reappear after Seekrankheit⁵ yesterday […] We are looking forward with interest and curiosity to meeting the Hacketts today in Perth.⁶ […]

Letter 3 To Rex, 10 April 1908, Dampfer Bremen, about 200 miles off Colombo

[…] I expect to get into Colombo at 5 a.m. tomorrow […] we had a real good time in Fremantle and Perth. The second day of our stay there we spent in shopping and a long tram ride round Fremantle […] That was last Wednesday: for the first few days we made excellent runs, one day doing 357:⁷ we accordingly expected to get in on Friday (this) morning and to have two complete days for a run up to Kandy but various causes (the badness of the heat, of the coal, of the weather) have successively shortened our last three runs to 329, 309, 287. As soon as we got fairly out on the ocean we held a meeting and elected a sports’ committee of seven, Father chairman and the two Dewey boys secretary and treasurer. Since then we have been most energetic – all sorts of tournaments and sports. Peg quoits – singles and mixed doubles […] shuffle-board⁸ […] bull-board⁹ […] deck-quoits not yet played.¹⁰ There are lots more and scores of races which have not yet been held […] There are lots of indoor tournaments too – chess, draughts, dominoes, euchre, bridge etc. […] We've been having all sorts of other excitements. Last Saturday night we had a small dance on deck which I'm afraid wasn't much of a success. It was frightfully hot and there weren't enough junge Herren on board tho’ lots of Mädchen. However what there was of it was very pleasant tho’ strenuous. On Wednesday we approached the line¹¹ and they had a great time in the steerage shaving and ducking the uninitiated […] Nearly all the older people play bridge a great part of the day […] We had a concert last Tuesday when our father made a wunderbar witty speech, the best I have heard from him […]

Letter 4 To Rex, 12 April 1908, G.M.S. Bremen

[…] I slept or dozed on deck the night before last in order to be up and doing early. The ship got within Colombo breakwater at about three and as soon as she stopped I arose from my somewhat uneasy chair and strolled round the deck: the scene was a pretty one – the lights of the city showing up well on three sides of us. I then had another short nap and woke about 5.30: the sun was just rising and I got my first impression of Colombo: it was much more than satisfactory – it was really delightful and I was only too eager to get ashore. After reading the English mail and taking an early breakfast Father, Madre and I went ashore in one of the many local boats. The jabbering and gesticulating over fares and number of passengers was novel enough to me to be very interesting. Once on shore we went shopping for a bit, bought some white suits and bargained over countless things from sapphires to kimonos. I bought one of the latter – also many postcards which you will have got last mail. Bargaining is great fun: you can really get the most absurd reductions: a chap offered me half a dozen so-called cats’-eyes¹² for 24/-: I bid 6d. the lot – he gradually brought it down to 4/-. I couldn't wait longer but I heard he eventually sold them elsewhither for 6d.! […] We strolled about a bit, as the streets, shops and shopkeepers are the gayest and quaintest sight imaginable and then (10 a.m.) took rickshaws out to the Galle Face Hotel – perhaps three miles out, perhaps not so much. The last part of the journey there is along a fine esplanade by the ocean beach. Rickshaw travelling is delightful – for the conveyed person. The Galle Face is a fine hotel; after Father and Madre had seen their room, we started forth again – first seeing a conjuror go through his performances – especially the famous mango trick everyone hears about.¹³ Then we rickshawed to the Cinnamon Gardens where is the museum: we could only have a hurried look at the museum. It is most interesting, especially the Sinhalese natural and historical relics. However we had very little time as I had to be at the station at 12. So we drove there thro’ the streets – so quaint – queer little musk-oxen wagons, rickshaws, bicycles, motors all jumbled together. All the notables and respectable, all able to do it, sport an umbrella tho’ they don't run to shoes or hat. Such a mix up of old and new, western and eastern in the street – barbers shaving (in extraordinary fashion), women sewing, babies being washed all in the little shops right open to the street – an extraordinary blaze of colour in garments and shops. We eventually found the right station. Our party, fifty strong, had chartered a special train (with a luncheon car) and we had a good time. The carriages were most comfortable and tho’ the luncheon arrangements were faulty the whole journey was a great success. We had a lovely four hours’ view of the most beautiful scenery – real tropical vegetation thick and various side by side with rice-fields and rice-terraces carefully irrigated. Everything was a lovely green and the general effect was quite bewildering. We got out at Peradeniya and drove round the famous gardens there.¹⁴ They are quite wonderful – such immense variety of trees and flowers, beautiful orchids, all sorts of palms and other tropical plants you never see […] among other things – nutmeg trees of all sorts, every kind of palm, giant rubber trees with enormous roots, huge banyans and great big bamboo trees with swarms of flying foxes thereon. The drive from Peradinya to Kandy was again most interesting – right through rows and rows of houses – thousands of brightly clad people and lots of dear little Sinhaleselets – awful little beggars, most of them. We got to Kandy about 6 and had a delicious cup of tea at the Queen's Hotel. Then we all went off to the Temple of the Holy Tooth, which we went right round.¹⁵ I found it all too short, as there was such a crowd of people and we were rather hurried round – the atmosphere was stifling – heat and incense combined and most of our party got sick of it: drums going all the time – hideous din. There were numbers of different shrines – one of them containing the big casket with Buddha's tooth inside. This he wouldn't open – only opened by an order, he said. The most beautiful thing was a little crystal Buddha, which showed up splendidly by torchlight. The temple is largely lit by electric light now, like our cathedral, Melbourne tho’ they had no consul general for Panama to supply it.¹⁶ The library of sacred Pali and Sanskrit books with their rich, jewelled covers (also a presentation copy of Arnold's Light of Asia¹⁷) and all the queer carvings in gold and ivory and the curious gaudy wall-paintings (the temple is said to be 500 years old) – it was all fearfully interesting and I wish we had had more time to see it properly. At each shrine they ask more money but I successfully ignored most of the appeals. After dinner we all went for rickshaw rides round the lake – very beautiful, little lights everywhere. Then I wrote postcards and turned in at 12. In the night there was a terrible accident. Mr St Leger (brother of Lord Doneraile) of our table fell off the very low window sill right down to the ground and was killed.¹⁸ It was dreadful and made the rest of the day very different. He was an old Winchester boy. I liked him very much – just on his way home after 22 years in New Zealand (Poverty Bay). I got up at 5.30 and before I knew about it had a rickshaw ride thro’ the awakening streets. It was delightful; unluckily a thick mist concealed the lake. We came down (a lovely journey) by the seven train and got to Colombo at 10.40–30/- for a wonderful trip […]

Letter 5 To Rex, Easter Tuesday, 21 April 1908, S.S. Bremen, off the Brothers, about 250 miles from Suez

[…] We had a very pleasant voyage round from Colombo to Aden:¹⁹ nothing exciting happened but we pushed on with the games which are now nearly finished. All sorts of races were held and other humorous events such as chalking the pig's eye,²⁰ egg and spoon race (not like the shore race), threading the needle, whistling race and all sorts of other sports, together with peg quoits, deck quoits, bull-board, shuffle-board and various other tournaments, bridge etc. […] Early on Saturday morning we sighted the Arabian coast and got into Aden about nine. It took us a fearful time to put on shore owing to complications about boats but we finally managed it and tho’ everyone had told me it was a frightfully dull place I enjoyed my hour ashore immensely. I didn't do anything except buy a few postcards and walked about the streets in the so-called European part of the town. It was most interesting peering into the queer eastern shops and looking at the people in the streets in their bright dresses – the women closely veiled, the children pestering you for bakshish all the time. I was glad to get a glimpse, even though it was such a tiny one, of Arab life. It is in a way quite as interesting as Colombo. Aden itself is the most barren place on earth – don't believe the postcards with their beautiful scenes – there is not a blade of grass to be found anywhere – the most fearful glare but I didn't find the actual heat unbearable. We didn't stay long – only about four hours […] Sunday was Easter Day – we had service at 11 in the saloon – the Presbyterian man Stubbs preaching. Myers the American Baptist led the prayers: he seems to be a man of great personality. Yesterday we had lots of fun with games etc.: they are all to finish today. Last night we had another concert, organised by Mr L.L. Lewis. The programme as originally drawn up was a very good one with Rünger and Miss Klevesahl²¹ in it: however they subsequently withdrew because Mr Lewis wouldn't allow Madge Mitchell the young one who slipped us up in the last concert to play. Mr Lewis had then to resort to the other classes and got a couple of real good men from the steerage and some people from the 2nd. It was really a very good concert and I think everyone enjoyed it. Of course none of the Rünger faction turned up – they listened over the banisters […] Father read ‘The Burglar's Story’ by W.S. Gilbert to please Mr Lewis.²² He read it very well: the audience however was rather slow and the piece is not a screaming farce, still I think it went off all right […] We won't get much sleep tonight as we get into Suez at about 3.30 and will try to get ashore sometime between that and seven to catch the 7.30 train for Ismaîlîya and Cairo to get a glimpse of the Pyramids and Cairo and catch the 6.15 train back to Port Said – it'll be rather a long but I hope a very interesting day, though I don't know yet if it'll come off […]

Letter 6 To Rex, 27 April 1908, Grand Hotel Naples

[…] I was up early on Wednesday morning as we got into Suez. Medical inspection was to take place at 4.30 but didn't come off till 5.45. All we had to do was to line up and pass a lady doctor sitting at the saloon door – a frightfully silly affair. As soon as it was over the two Deweys and I prepared to go on shore. It was pretty hard to get a boat but we eventually managed it […] The train took two and a half hours to Ismaîlîya – a very hot and dusty, though not uninteresting journey thro’ the desert, along the canal a large part of the way. At Ismaîlîya we changed trains and had some coffee. The journey thence to Cairo by the express from Port Said was most interesting – through the fertile part of Egypt, land wonderfully irrigated, crops of all sorts really in profusion – it seems a funny word to use but really there were all sorts growing together side by side. The little bits of life you saw too – the different ways of getting water up, by the shadûf or sakyê – two methods, one a waterwheel worked by a bullock going round and round, the other a queer system of balancing weight and bucket. You really saw a great deal of the people too and their life in the fields – the date palm everywhere in evidence and queer stone hovels they (i.e. the Egyptians) live in. It was the pleasantest of journeys and I didn't find it a bit too long. We reached Cairo at 1.25 and were at once taken off to Shepheard's in a very fine motor. Shepheard's is really just like a palace – such size and magnificence, five times the Melbourne Grand Hotel. We had a very fair lunch there for which we paid 8/- and a good rest and then started out with a guide to see Cairo. It was then a quarter to three and as our train left at 6.15 we hadn't time to get out to see the Pyramids, so I had (reluctantly) to abandon the idea. We drove first to the Citadel. In the European part of the town and round the Khedive's Palace and the Ezbekîyeh Gardens you get fine big squares and wide streets – such a contrast with the native quarter! The Citadel was wonderfully interesting – part of it now forms the British regiment's barracks. The great building on it is the Mosque of Muhammad Ali – 101 years old, a copy of Sta Sophia at Constantinople. It has a fine large courtyard, which we entered slipper(not slip)-shod [sic], with alabaster columns all round. The interior is of great splendour – a dome supported by four huge pillars – alabaster or would-be so – the floor beautifully carpeted. Twice a year, they told us, the 4,500 lights in the building are lit – it must be a wonderful sight then. Inside is the tomb of Muhammad Ali. Next we went to the back of the building from which we got a wonderful view of Cairo. The 400 mosques and minarets made a brave show – it was quite wonderful. In the distance, but as clear as you like stood the three pyramids of Ghizeh²³ – just like the pictures of them – but very weird feeling to be really looking at them. The Sphinx we could not see. Away from them were the pyramids (nine) of Sakkâra. We could just see a bit of the Nile. It is certainly the most interesting view I ever had, I don't think anyone could forget it easily. The guide took us then to Joseph's Well where of course the tradition says Potiphar put the Patriarch²⁴ […] Finally we drove through the town to the bazaars, especially the best of them the Khan Khalîli. It was fascinating wandering about in them and looking at the occupations of the people. We spent some little time in a big shop (Cohen's) in the middle of it and bought a lot of things. My purchases were all pretty cheap (only 18/- in all) […] The whole trip only cost us £3. 10. 0 each exclusive of what we bought. The railway journey back was interesting enough till darkness came on. It was a pretty sight – to see the ships’ lights in the canals. We passed the Bremen near Port Said where we arrived at 11 p.m. We dawdled about the Eastern Exchange Hotel for a couple of hours drinking coffee and writing […] and then hearing the Bremen was in went down to the wharf. We at once got a boat and as the ship was only 50 or so yards away thought we'd have no difficulty in getting on board. There were scores of boats there, most of them containing passengers going on board for the first time – from Egypt. However the pilot had brought the Bremen in too close and there she was stuck on a sandbank, her screws going hard to shift her. Meanwhile they wouldn't let anyone board her and so there we were rowing about by the ship for nearly two hours. At last we gave it up as hopeless. Everyone departed to the various hotels. We loitered about the Savoy and the Continental drinking coffee as before. At last (about four) we three determined to have a last try. We went down to the wharf, took a boat and under shelter of the pilot boat sneaked up unnoticed to the side of the ship and clambered up the half-lowered gangway while the sailor on duty was looking elsewhere. It was a great stroke of luck, not that it mattered much as shortly afterwards they got her off the sandbank and people came on board as they liked […] Saturday […] evening we passed the straits with the lights of Messina and Reggio on either hand […] We were all up early next morning for the entry into Naples. It was very beautiful. We got on shore by 11 and we three drove to the Grand where we've been camped ever since […] Tuesday we did a Pagliari's excursion to Pompeii²⁵ – just us three and the guide (£2 the lot) by train […] I can't describe to you all the marvels there – perhaps Mrs Court will do something for you²⁶ tho’ some of the best things such as the Casa dei Vettii were only unearthed about ’97.²⁷ It gives you a wonderfully striking impression of a Roman house and I found Professor Tucker's lectures pretty accurate and a great help²⁸ […] afterwards we drove to the amphitheatre – all the stone seats – a wonderful sight, could accommodate those 20,000 all night. It is outside the walls of excavated Pompeii, but will be within when all is finished as there is lots left to be done […]

Letter 7 To Rex, 3 May 1908, Grand Hotel Naples

In a few hours Naples will be rid of us, if all goes well. We've come to the end of our very short stay of eight days here – a tremendously interesting eight days it's been too […] We leave by the N.D. Lloyd tomorrow at five²⁹ […] Friday we spent at Paestum: we thought there might be riots in Naples as there often are on May 1.³⁰ The labour party³¹ tried to get up some fun, but nothing came of it this year […] Today also we were pretty busy – Spanish church (a very handsome one, inside and out) at 8.30 and 11. In the afternoon we went first over the Palazzo Reale (the old Bourbon palace, now belonging to the nation) – a tremendous place with beautiful rooms, private theatre and grand chapel and a very fine picture gallery with lots of good things in it […] Afterwards we went to the cathedral and over it all. Today was one of the three festivals of San Gennaro and we were lucky enough to see the liquefied blood³² and crowds of people kissing it. Isn't it a degrading sight? The church was most interesting: we couldn't get into the chapel of St Januarius but were taken over his crypt […]

Letter 8 To Rex, 10 May 1908, Grand Hotel Patmos, Athens

[…] before we quit good old Napoli one or two odds and ends. (1) It's an awfully hard place to get a properly clear mental plan of – all winding streets and countless piazze. I was fairly used to it just about last day there. The streets, except a few good new corsi – such as the big carriage-drive (Via Caràcciolo) along the sea-front, are narrow and dirty – but everyone says things are looking up, Naples is going ahead thanks to good government from Rome and energetic health boards. Some of the piazze (del Plebiscito, del Municipio, dei Martini, di Garibaldi, Sette Settembre, di Dante – not to overwhelm you with many more names) are fine places with really good statues (and good inscriptions on them too) as that of Vittorio Emmanuele II in the Piazza del Municipio and of the martyrs of ’60³³ […] The buildings generally are ugly. There are several churches with beautiful interiors as I have described but they are mostly hidden away in side-streets (vie) not in the strade or corsi. The only church with a really good frontage is S. Francisco di Paola in the Lago del Plebiscito – opposite the palace. Buildings generally like the Palazzo Reale are big but plain. The new university looks solid but does not pretend to architectural beauties, tho’ not exactly ugly. The great feature of Naples however is the bay […] Vesuvius on the left as you look straight at Capri, Ischia and Procida and Cape Misenum away on the right. Nearly always beautiful blue waters and sky. It's the colours that make even the gaudy, square Neapolitan houses look picturesque. (2) Naples wouldn't be a nice place to live in – the population is a degraded one, beggarly, servile, dishonest, immoral. The small kids pester you in the streets and with the large ones (grown-ups) it's one perpetual wrangle to prevent them cheating you and they do it after all. The priests are worse than the people – ignorant, bigoted, sensual faces: the religious orders perhaps not quite so vicious-looking but more ignorant and indifferent to the very ceremonies they're assisting in. Gens d'armes, cavalry officers, conscripts drilling everywhere (the latter very draggled looking). The women plain as a tennis-court, only more so. So there are not attractive surroundings, you see. It's Paestum and Pompeii and Pozzuoli (three pillars of the place) with the lovely Bays of Naples and Salerno that make the place. Our hotel was dear (cost us over £20 for eight days, 15/- a day for me alone), and not out of the way comfortable – very poor table, e.g. at Bertolini's, to which alone the Grand is second, it costs you more than a pound a day. Of course to live in pensions is the only way³⁴ […] at 4.15 we leave in the Grand Hotel bus and roll slowly along the Riviera di Chiaia past the lovely Villa Nazionale Gardens (where we were always strolling and sitting), up the Via di Chiaia, Strada San Carlo etc. thro’ the Piazza del Municipio along the Strada Nuova to the wharf and so on board the N.D.L. steamer Scutari just in time (leaving at 5 p.m.) – as usual (a Parthian Shot from the hotel)³⁵ 14 lire to pay for putting luggage on board (not in the bill just paid of course). Slowly we steam off […] little boys diving and women singing for money from little boats alongside […] It took an hour or two to get out of the bay […] We went down to dinner then: a small saloon (only 2,000- or 3,000-tons steamer) and 21 first class passengers. The captain was a very pleasant fellow and opposite sat a French marquis and marquise with whom we afterwards chummed up. Most of the rest were Germans […] on Tuesday morning […] about 8 we reached the straits: it was interesting going thro’ – watching the tremendous currents and seeing the traditional Scylla (tho’ not Charybdis)³⁶ – also passing Messina and Reggio – whence the ferry carries the express trains from Naples across the straits. We were exceedingly annoyed – Cook's man had promised us a day in Messina with perhaps time to run up to Taormina – to our disgust the Scutari, owing to its slow pace, is the only boat of the line that doesn't stop at Messina. Well, well! Soon after we saw Etna – 10,000 feet clothed in snow (read Pindar on the subject – Pythian I³⁷). He is supposed to be in eruption now – it looked more like an after-dinner pipe. They say Taormina is crowded with tourists to see it but probably it is exaggerated to advertise the said hotels […]

Monday, 11.30 p.m.

[…] Piraeus is a small, cheap-looking modern town of no account. We didn't leave the ship till after breakfast about 8.30, rowed ashore and drove up to Athens (about four and a half miles) […] it was most interesting – round the Acropolis and through the modern city up to the Πλατɛία Συντάγματος³⁸ where all the hotels are. This one is only about the third best, pretty clean and not very dear (12 fr. for a day only). I like it all right, but Father and Madre don't, as among other objections a band plays in the square practically all night […] Father and Madre went to the British School near Lycabettus (which I see from my bedroom window)³⁹ and struck a very nice fellow named Hasluck, assistant-director⁴⁰ […] Saturday was all spent on the Acropolis. With a brief descent for lunch. We went thoroughly over it – enjoyed the buildings piecemeal and examined old walls and landmarks as well and also spent a couple of hours nearly in the fascinating little museum – nearly all sixth-century archaic work – found in the ruins of Peisistratus’ old Hekatompedôn temple.⁴¹ A number of the Parthenòn friezes and metopes are there – what Lord Elgin spared of time's wrecks […] In the evening I met Hasluck who was here to dinner with people called Daniel: he is very nice⁴² – strong on Genoese and Byzantine history – and got me bagged for dinner […] Today […] I climbed the Acropolis and sang ‘Waiting at the church’⁴³ on top. I have just been to dinner with Hasluck at the British School: he is most interesting – has written a lot and has a book on ‘Cyzicus’ now in the press:⁴⁴ his period is the Genoese connection with the Aegean (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries). He has done some real work and made some real finds […]

Letter 9 To Rex, 20 May 1908, Grand Hotel, Athens

[…] All last week was very hot, dry and dusty so I'm afraid we weren't quite as energetic as we might have been […] Wednesday […] Father and Madre then went on to call on the ambassador. Unluckily they were out. We're having no luck as Prince Nicholas is in Russia at present.⁴⁵ However the Elliotts⁴⁶ are meaning well as they've called here three times: we've been away all three […] Wednesday was the last day of April here. All the people in the evening flock out to the suburb of Πατησία to drink beer;⁴⁷ they go to Tatoϊ to pick flowers and so usher in 1st May.⁴⁸ We too went out to Tatoϊ – the following day: it was a pretty and interesting drive but of little historic value. Tatoϊ is the King's summer palace and very beautiful. It is the same as the ancient Decelea⁴⁹ but there are no remains to be seen […] We arrived in Athens just too late for the Aegina trips which stop the final week in May. But I must leave Athens and start off to Delphi. We went by Ghiolman's tours – he is the great local tourist agency⁵⁰ – and dispensed with a dragoman.⁵¹ Ghiolman provides local guides in each place and it is an immense saving not taking one with you throughout. We only paid altogether about £27 for our six days’ excursion. We left the Grand Hotel at 9 and went down to Piraeus by the electric train to catch the Pylaros. Like every Greek boat, she left an hour late. It took us two hours to the Corinth canal – a very interesting voyage […] The canal didn't take long. It is only four miles long and a few yards wide, cut through the rock. The railway bridge crosses it and only smaller steamers like ours go through. The voyage thence through the Corinthian Gulf was very beautiful, a bright blue sea and clearly-cut hills rising from it with big snow-capped mountains (Helicon and Parnassus on one side, Cyllene and Erymanthus on the other) rising behind. One beautiful little bay after another till about 5.30 we reached Itea, a wretched little mountain port near the long forgotten town of Kirrha destroyed in the first Sacred War (585).⁵² We drove up all the way to Delphi […] to the Ξɛνοδοχɛίον Απολλωνος Πυθίου,⁵³ not quite as good as it sounds. Luckily it was emptyish and so we were moderately comfortable. The food was indifferent and the bread was sour as always out of Athens. Luckily I am now getting used to the national Καφέ,⁵⁴ which I drink σκέτο⁵⁵ (without sugar). Both Father and Madre have given it up in despair. It's not a scrap like European coffee. We got up early and Father and I had a 1.50 dr. bath each and then we sallied forth to sight-see […] in the morning we didn't do much except the museum which we did well. It is very small but has treasures which every museum in the world covets […] From there we strolled on to the Spring of Castalia⁵⁶ which rises in the gorge between the two Phaedriades peaks – a very fine pair – and had a life-giving drink from it not spoilt by the fact that there ‘the wild asses quench their thirst’.⁵⁷ It is said to be the only drinkable water in Greece: it is certainly the only kind we have tried except at Nauplia. We generally drink Andros mineral water (1 dr. a bottle)⁵⁸ which you can buy anywhere in Greece and which tastes exactly like ordinary water. We didn't go out till 3 in the afternoon when we climbed up the hill and explored the Sacred Precinct […] You get a most [lovely?] view from there of the plain, the Bay of Itea, which looks like a little mountain lake, and of the Pleistos, tho’ like all the many Greek rivers we've seen it's quite absolutely dry: we've not seen flowing water in Greece except the Ilissus drain tho’ in winter there must be tremendous rivers everywhere. It's depressing to see the river-bed everywhere dry […] We were (un?)lucky enough to strike an interesting Delphi wedding in the evening: the bridal procession we saw but didn't go into the banquet tho’ pressed to do so. The Greeks especially in the country are most polite and pleasant to you. We've had great talks in our broken (stony-broke) Greek with them and are improving. It would be easy to learn the language in a couple of months or less. At the hotels Madre's French is the great stand-by. Father and Madre as usual slept badly at Delphi: Father's throat has been bad and Madre can't sleep in Greek towns owing to the awful row that is kept up all night – donkeys braying, people chattering, bells ringing etc. We had to get up at 3.45. The drive down to Itea was lovely as the sun rose: beautiful effects from the mountains on all sides. Here for the first time we met with beggars in Greece – the children throw flowers at you or ask you even – they're a far better kind of people than the Neapolitans and aren't so overrun with tourists either. We got down to Itea to catch the 6.15 steamer. Naturally, being Greek, it didn't leave till 7. We had a very pretty voyage across the Gulf of Corinth, the blue sea and the clear, sharp-pointed mountains rising right from the water being the great feature. We went thro’ the canal again and landed at Isthmia whence we drove to New Corinth past the old stadium and precinct of Poseidon where the Isthmian games were held.⁵⁹ There isn't much left there now. The hotel at New Corinth was very nice, clean, and good food. The afternoon we spent in driving to Old Corinth, going over the American excavations – old temples, fountains forums agoras – very interesting and not long excavated.⁶⁰ We were lucky enough to run up against both the Greek and the American directors of the excavations, so we picked up some scraps of information. The museum there is small and not of very much account. It wasn't till about twenty to five that we began the ascent of Acro-Corinthus (1,880 feet). It is pretty steep, so one generally rides up. We had horses with queer high Greek saddles led by two women and a man who all went up as gaily as anything. The two ladies took charge of Father and me, the man of Madre who lost her gold chain en route. It was mostly my fault as I ought to have carried her parasol for her […] Father and I walked down the mountain, Madre rode, everyone looked hard for the chain but tho’ 10 dr. reward was offered it hasn't come to light […]

Letter 10 To Rex, 23 May 1908 , S.S. Therapia, off the Island of Marmara

[…] we got back safely to the very nice little Hôtel des Etampes at New Corinth after our climb up Acrocorinthus: the people were very kind to us there and the place though small was nice and clean, so we liked it. We left by the 9.45 train next morning and it took us about one and three-quarter hours to reach Phychtia-Mycenae, our destination though only a journey of 27 miles – Greek trains! However the journey was not uninteresting as we passed through country that has very interesting associations, chiefly Corinthian and Argive territory: we also went past the site of the old town of Cleonae and one of our railway stations was Nemea: the old temple of Zeus and the site of the Nemean games lies some three miles from the modern station and was hidden by a mountain. Finally we reached our long-desired haven. Phychtia, a small modern village, lies on one side of the railway and Mycenae (modern Mycenae, I mean) on the other. After buying some Andros water at the hotel ‘Helen of Menelaus’ we drove on to old Mycenae and had lunch which we had brought with us on a great stone just outside the famous gate of the Lions. I think I sent you a postcard of the gate […] After lunch we examined the gate more closely (the lions’ heads are lost unfortunately) and then went on and looked at the royal tombs excavated by Schliemann, the place where the wonderful finds of golden cups and ornaments were made⁶¹ […] we drove from there across the plain (including the dry bed of Inachus)⁶² to Argos: its citadel Lárisa rises 1,000 feet from the plain (three times the height of Mycenae) and is crowned by a fortress of Venetian times when as always it was a stronghold. We hadn't time to attempt the ascent, so just went and looked at the theatre, probably the largest of Greek theatres with 66 rows of seats. It is not, however, in the best preservation and so hardly so striking as others. From there we drove through modern Argos (population about 10,000) to Tiryns, the contemporary of Mycenae […] We were all quite tired of our plentiful sight-seeing and drove into Nauplia feeling quite keen for washing, eating and especially drinking. Nauplia is a quiet sea-port town (about 15,000 population, I fancy, I forget what) […] The New Hotel was quite comfortable tho’ the drains impressed one: still they're only young and foolish as yet. Apparently all the hotels there are since Miss Blanch's time: perhaps you remember she gave us a most harrowing account of Nauplia. We started off at 8.30 next (Tuesday) morning for Epidaurus (Epίdhavra as it is called now) and had a rather tiring four hours’ drive there […] the chief things of interest are the lie of the country and the people. We liked the Greeks especially the country folk: they are all so good-natured and good-humoured and ready to talk: you can get on quite well, even though your Greek is of the poorest kind. At a little khan⁶³ on the way we tasted some retsináto (wine flavoured with resin), the only flavour the Greeks like in wine. It was pungent but not as bad as I expected: on the way back I took some goat's cheese with my retsináto but it displeased me mightily. And so we got to Epidaurus […] the theatre […] is easily the best we have seen. The auditorium is wonderfully well-preserved with its 52 rows of seats: its peculiarities are the round orchestra (not horse-shoe shape, as everywhere else) and its (probably) not raised stage. To test its famous acoustic powers, Father and Madre sat on the topmost row and I took my stand first on the thymele⁶⁴ and then on the proskenion⁶⁵ and read them Baedeker and recited six lines of the Antigone.⁶⁶ Father then did me the like service with a few lines from the Prom. V.⁶⁷ In each case we heard every syllable, proving how easy it must have been for trained actors to make themselves heard […] Father sought to bargain several times for a shepherd's crook but couldn't get one under 4 drs., so didn't. You may call them shepherds but they generally herd goats or goats with a few goat-like sheep: up in the mountains they generally carry guns for the benefit of the wolves or a stray eagle. But the most picturesque sight in the country is to see the women in their bright dresses working in the corn-fields. There isn't much I suppose of real beauty in the scenery: few wild-flowers except the poppy (everywhere): plenty of olives but not many other big trees except occasional fine plane-trees and figs and mulberries. You hardly ever see flowing water and nothing grows except wheat – in little patches all over the place […] We left Nauplia early next morning by train and had a very long 40-mile journey to Corinth: our pleasant Corinthian landlord came down to meet us at the station and we had a very affecting farewell cup of coffee together. It was the farewell that affected us, not the coffee: have I told you about the coffee? I think it's of Turkish origin, I hope so for Hellas’ fair sake: it appears like Hecate in three dreadful forms⁶⁸ – γλύκο⁶⁹ or ’arf-an-’arf (coffee and sugar rivals in the cup): μέτϐιο⁷⁰ (coffee sinning): σκέτο ain't got no sugar. On a day I attempted γλύκο – one taste, have since stuck almost entirely to σκέτο: don't compare it to café noir – it's mostly sediment with a little liquid on top to lure you on to the sediment […] The train journey from Corinth was dull at first but when we got into the Megarid⁷¹ it became most delightful – easily the finest scenery we've seen in Greece – great cliffs rising almost sheer from a lovely sea, just leaving room for two narrow roads, the train road above, the carriage road below […] Once through the pass you get down to Megara […] From here on the journey is less full of interest: you pass through Eleusis and up through the Thriasian plain through a break in the Parnes chain and so round to Athens. Half-way you sight Menidhi, the modern Acharnae. The journey, I say, is ordinarily of only moderate interest but in this case we happened to pass a dynamite factory near Athens just as it blew up: it was awful tho’ certainly a grand sight: we afterwards heard a man was killed and five hurt. We were met at the Peloponnesian station by Ghiolman's man and drove home from which we at once swooped hungrily down on the excellent five o'clock tea-rooms where we have t'd every day. To vary the monotony and also hang the expense on this particular occasion I had two delicious glasses of cold chocolate. We next visited Ghiolman and congratulated and advised him on his trips. He certainly managed very well for us. Going with a dragoman would have cost us at least £6 more and quite unnecessary […] Thursday was our last day in Greece's eye, so Father and I scaled the Acropolis and paid it a short but sincere fare-well (καλǹν ἀντάμωσιν we say here).⁷² We came back vià the Agora and Tower of the Winds. Father and Madre then sallied out to call on the Minister (Sir F. Elliott) who had called twice when we were in the country parts; they found him out but met him just entering the hotel as they got back. He is a very fine man: we all liked him. He was very pleasant to us and had asked us to dinner but of course we were away. As it was he did us a great service by smuggling Father's valise of books into a sealed bag for the British embassy in Constantinople: the Turks you know confiscate all books and it is a weary business recovering them. We left at 2.30 on a dusty drive to Piraeus: tips at the hotel came to 22 drachmae – ruinous everywhere. Ghiolman's man put us on board this steamer quite safely. It is a very comfortable boat, 4,000 tons and new, so it is most delightful travelling […] when we got on deck next morning we were well into the Bay of Smyrna […] At its head on the slope of Sipylos lies the modern town of Smyrna which is a big one of 200,000 inhabitants, principally Greeks. We took a Greek guide (who spoke nine languages) and spent an interesting day from 10 to 4. We drove first up to the old acropolis and saw the tomb of S. Polycarp whom the Muhammadans have annexed as a Muhammadan holy man: we saw Turkish women wailing there and reading the Quran. From there we saw the top of Mount Pagos and an old Genoese fortress. From there we drove thro’ the Turkish quarter, past the old aqueduct, over the old caravan bridge and then thro’ the Armenian quarter where we visited the interesting Armenian cathedral and so to lunch. After lunch we went thro’ the Greek quarter and visited the Greek cathedral and the bazaars: altogether it was a very interesting day. We bought nothing except Smyrna figs as everything is so much better in Constantinople […]

Letter 11 To Rex, 29 May 1908, Grand Hotel Hungaria, Budapest

I'm writing this at about 9 p.m. by a window on the fourth floor from which I get a beautiful view of the Danube and all the lights of Buda on the other side: but I mustn't tell you about these things yet, I must go back to the now quite distant Byzantine times and give you a sort of account of Constantinople […] I think I got you safely down to entrance to the Bosphorus: the view as you get into the Bosphorus and then the Golden Horn is a fine one. Of course at the wharf was a yelling, shrieking crowd of agents, interpreters, porters, hotel-officials and other bakshîsh hunters but we remained in statu quo until there appeared the kawass⁷³ from the embassy to take charge of us. I surely must have told you of our distress over the valise of books as the Turks seize everything of that kind and it takes a long time to get them back through your consul while anything they don't like they burn. Sir Francis Elliott was kind enough to put them for us in a sealed bag addressed to the embassy at Constantinople and to wire for a kawass (or ‘bobby’) to meet us. So of course the bag containing the valise was respected by the customs and thanks to the kawass's fine uniform and a liberal use of bakshîsh we got off with a very cursory inspection of two trunks’ contents. Our only fear was for the books: the other ‘forbiddens’, spirits and tobacco, we were innocent of. As soon as the inspection was over we drove off to our hotel, the Pera Palace […] the grandest we've been in so far – very fine indeed and good decidedly, tho’ not in all respects. It was also the dearest we've struck yet. We went on the cheapest floor (the fifth) – also really the nicest as it was furthest from the odours and noises which Eastern cities supply plentifully – and even so had to pay £1 each a day, exclusive of baths or eggs for breakfast or mineral waters which one has to drink on the continent. Our four days’ stay cost us the appalling sum of £15. However the Pera Palace is really the only good hotel in Constantinople, as to run such a thing on European lines is very difficult in the East […] We didn't do much on Sunday. In the morning we went to the chapel […] at the embassy, first calling there on Mr Barclay, the chargé d'affaires, as the newly-appointed ambassador hasn't yet arrived⁷⁴ […] None of us cared much for the chaplain or the service there. Afterwards we walked round to the very much larger Crimean Memorial Church, getting there just at the tail-end of their service. They sang the national anthem in recognition of Empire Day. The afternoon we spent chiefly at the Imperial (Turkish) Museum: most of it we found shut […] Monday […] morning we spent on business at Cook's and the British consulate: we got permission there to go into Sta. Sophia and started off early afternoon with a kawass from the consulate. Of our company were a number of Englishwomen, mistresses at the Girls’ High School, Constantinople,⁷⁵ so we had a gay and giddy time. There were seven of them and three of us, so that's all right. Sta Sophia was marvellously interesting: we were however hurried

2 June, Kölner Hof Hotel, Cologne

round far too much to get what I should call a satisfactory look at it. You are really delighted with it if you go expecting the right thing. The exterior is sadly spoilt by a great buttress supporting the dome at the East end and its whole appearance Islamized by a couple of minarets standing in front. But inside, in spite of the changes made by the Turks who have carpeted and decorated it in eastern fashion, it isn't hard to make out that it is the Byzantine church. The massiveness of the whole effect, the huge dome and the eight supporting pillars all of extraordinary thickness make a lasting impression on you. The historical details and topography of it we examined very unsatisfactorily. There are scores of little facts and fictions about different parts of it which it is no use going into now. Unfortunately we were too much hurried […] The policeman who accompanied our big party was suspicious and wouldn't let us stay long anywhere. In a way we were lucky to get in. The restrictions on Christians entering the mosque vary from day to day these times according to the caprice of the Chief of Police. We happened to strike a lax week and got an order thro’ the consul without any difficulty. A last look at the S. Sophia and we were hurried off to the most beautiful mosque of pure Turkish taste in Constantinople – that of Sultan Achmed I (seventeenth century).⁷⁶ It is the only one in the world with six minarets. The famous one at Mecca so sought after by pilgrims used to have six, but to prevent our friend rivalling it they made another, making seven at Mecca. The interior is very beautiful, white marble and blue faience, and far more striking from the purely picturesque point of view than S. Sophia […] From there we went on to the museum on which we thus made our second descent. Armed with a letter of introduction to the absent (Turkish) director we got past the reluctant guards and had a good look at the new part now being put up and its two great treasures – the Jerusalem (oldest Hebrew known) and Siloam inscriptions […] After that satisfied with the afternoon's work we took ourselves back to Pera, the European side of the Golden Horn ϽϹ⁷⁷ Stamboul, the Turkish and more interesting side, and were easily persuaded within the school portals by the seven school mistresses who showed us the school, considerable attention and afternoon tea: the whole thing was nice and interesting […] we spent all Wednesday in the company of a guide (ten francs for a day is the regular charge) – the morning in driving to the Hippodrome and looking at the various treasures […] The afternoon we spent going up the Bosphorus by steamer – a delightful trip, most beautiful scenery and interesting buildings – medieval fortresses, Turkish palaces, modern European summer residences. All the well-to-do Europeans live up there at Therapia and thereabouts in summer. We just got a glimpse of the entrance to the Black Sea – a lovely one too. During the day Miss Etta Hughes came round the hotel.⁷⁸ She was awfully nice and it was a great pity that owing to our arrival on Sunday we couldn't let her know before. On Wednesday morning she took us round the bazaars: Father and I had only half-an-hour's look and then left the other two together to buy. I was rather sorry I hadn't longer there as they are the finest bazaars in the world […] Father and I drove out to the old Golden Gate, the chief gate in Byzantine times […] and the Seven Towers erected there by Muhammad II after the capture.⁷⁹ From the top of one tower we got a good view of the famous old city walls […] I'd like to've seen more of the walls but we'd no more time. The proper thing is to ride all round on horseback. The afternoon was spent in buying photographs and postcards and we left by the 7.30 train. An unwelcome surprise at the station was having to pay over £6 for our luggage in the train. Travelling in the continent is appallingly expensive, hotels, baths, drinks, luggage, everything very expensive unless you do it on the cheap as we will next year. Today we've lost two trunks (owing to no fault of our own). I hope we may recover them […]

Letter 12 To Rex, [?6 June 1908], Burton's Hotel, 29 Queen Anne's Gate, London, S.W.

[…] We were very sorry in a way to have to leave Constantinople so very soon as it is one of the most interesting of places but of course there was no more time to spare […] We'd taken sleeping berths through to Buda-Pesth [sic] and went first class as we anticipated a pretty heavy journey. It took us 42 hours altogether, leaving at 7.30 on the Wednesday night. We didn't see very much that night but after a very fair night's rest as I was lucky enough to have a cabin to myself I got up early just before getting into Adrianople. Soon after leaving Adrianople we left Turkish territory and it was a great contrast getting into Bulgaria – the women with their faces unveiled working in the fields, the different languages, faces, everything. Most of the day we journeyed through Bulgarian territory […] The journey however was most interesting: seeing the lie of the country and the life of the people made the time pass quite agreeably tho’ the train went very slowly […] Of course we had all our meals in the train as well as sleeping there two nights. The second night we were in Servian territory all the time, so we didn't see very much of Servia. One of the few differences between Bulgaria and Servia I noticed was that in Servia everyone wears the sheepskin cap with the crown pulled out into a peak. We got into Belgrade at 4.30 and as we stayed an hour Father and I had a walk round the town. We hadn't a chance of seeing much except the situation of the town which is rather fine – high, with the Save and Danube each flowing round one side. Just after Belgrade we got into Hungarian territory and reached Buda-Pesth at one. We stopped at the Hungaria Hotel which looks out on the Danube. We had a very interesting afternoon there, sight-seeing hard all the time: of course we took a guide and a carriage. Buda-Pesth itself is a very fine-looking place – new and spacious. It is very modern and tho’ the buildings are stucco they look very well as yet. The streets are very wide and the buildings big and solid-looking. So much for Pesth. Over the Danube is Buda, the older town. We drove there over one of the four fine bridges and went up and over the King's Palace which is a big modern building and not very full of interest inside tho’ it looks very well from the Pesth side of the river. Far more interesting was the church built by King Matthias Corvinus, the oldest in Buda where the kings of Hungary are still crowned. Afterwards we went round Pesth, went into S. Stephen's Cathedral and the law courts, both of which are splendid buildings and went round the city and the shops generally. Pesth is a very very modern city. It has some 800,000 inhabitants now but has only grown to that within the last few years. Owing to the great revival of national feeling, Magyar is universally spoken now and very little else understood except at the hotels […] Next morning we meant to put in at sight-seeing again but most of it was most unfortunately tho’ unavoidably wasted – Father couldn't get a single bank to give him money on his letter of credit as it appears to be a method not known there. This ended in our having to decide to go to Vienna tho’ we had meant not to stop there and to put in our time at Nürnberg. However we had time to go over the Parliament House there, which is a remarkably fine thing, really a most striking building. We were lucky enough to hear a debate in the House of Representatives and afterwards to get a very intelligent guide to show us round. We hadn't time for anything more as we had to catch the train for Vienna at 2 o'clock. Still in one day you can get a very good idea of Buda-Pesth: as I said it is a very fine-looking city at present tho’ how stucco will stand time and wear and tear I shouldn't like to say. But anyway it will always have its incomparably beautiful situation. The journey to Vienna was quite interesting. We got there at 6.30 and after failing to get rooms at the Bristol went to the Imperial – one of the best hotels in Vienna and really one of the best we've struck. The next day was Sunday and as we couldn't get to Cook's then (by the way it was because there was no Cook's in Buda-Pesth that we were stranded for money) we didn't leave till Monday night. We went to the embassy church in the morning – a most peculiar service in a way as two thirds of the congregation, including the ambassador and family, marched out just before the sermon: it wasn't such a very bad one either. In the afternoon we went into S. Stephen's Cathedral, a most beautiful Gothic, and had a somewhat unsatisfactory look at it. There were two services going on at the time – one of them being the first communion of newly-confirmed girls, which was a very pretty sight. From there we went out to Schönbrunn – one of the suburbs where are the Emperor's palace – not of any special significance – and huge pleasure-grounds with beautiful trees. There were crowds of people there and it gave us a very vivid idea of the way the ordinary Viennese citizen and citizeness amuse themselves. The palace unfortunately we couldn't get into as the Emperor is there at present. In fact we were in Vienna at the very best time as the Emperor's Diamond Jubilee celebrations are going on intermittently. We didn't strike any particular function however. The streets were lined with grandstands for spectators. Next day after getting money we set out to explore the city again: it was the biggest I had seen up to that time and impressed me wonderfully. It is so extraordinarily roomy and majestic – magnificent wide streets and huge blocks of buildings. It hasn't Buda-Pesth's fine situation nor is it so smart, brand-new-looking but it is naturally a far grander city. As it was practically a public holiday we couldn't get into several buildings we wanted to but we took a guide and tho’ exceptionally unintelligent he was useful in pointing us out the leading buildings and monuments. There are plenty of fine ones – both. The present Emperor has built several magnificent museums, a grand opera-house, fine statues etc. to his own glorification (his name recorded on all) and of course with his subjects’ money. The Maria Theresa monument is about the finest of all but what especially interested us was the lately erected monument to the assassinated Empress.⁸⁰ We went about a good deal in the electric trams which run along the Ringstrasse, the street, or succession of streets, that runs right round the city proper. Later on in the afternoon, after paying a visit to the modern picture-gallery, a very poor collection (the Belvedere pictures are now in the Historical Museum which was closed),⁸¹ we went out to the Prater and saw the Blumen-Korso:⁸² every June 1st they have this flower carnival. I dare say there were 3 or 400,000 people there. I've never seen such a crowd in my life. The long straight road was crowded with carriages ‘processing’ – all of them decorated with artificial flowers. It was a very beautiful sight tho’ in some ways disappointing: we didn't see a single pretty face among thousands of Viennese women (we hardly saw one throughout our travels) and the procession was too slow and the crowd not lively enough. The carriage-people certainly pelted one another with flowers but they didn't do it with vigour and go enough. Still we were very lucky and glad enough to have seen the thing […] We left by the evening train and […] had a long journey to Cologne: I slept very fairly, so the night was quite pleasant while the day journey on from about noon was beautiful. For a couple of hours we ran along the Rhine and got a very fair idea of Rhine scenery and castles as well as the fortress of Erbreitenstein. We reached Cologne at 4.10. There there was all sorts of trouble in store. Our two small green trunks that had been in the van could not be found and we were in despair as nothing could be found out about them. As we afterwards discovered, they'd been taken out at the German–Austrian frontier at Passau to be examined and came on to Cologne by a later train. We subsequently got them back thro’ Cook: but it was a horrible nuisance. The Kölner Hof where we stayed was a very comfortable tho’ only second-class hotel: luckily it was near the station and the Cathedral which we had time to visit: it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world – purest Gothic. We made an early start next morning […] and rattled thro’ Belgium, getting to Ostend at 2.30. The crossing to Dover took four hours and we weren't in London till 9.45: luckily however the sea was smooth and no one sick and the train journey giving us a first glimpse of English country most delightful. Young Y⁸³ was there to meet us at Charing Cross and we drove to Burton's where we've been ever since. It is a nice little hotel […] though only second-class style, it's clean and comfortable and nice people come, so I think we'll come back here. Thursday we spent in knocking round London – Father showed me a lot: we did well as it was oppressively hot. Friday Father and I spent down at Oxford: he showed me round and got me made a member for a fortnight, which was nice. We went into the grounds of Balliol and S. John's where we ran up against Harry Creswick with whom we had a five-minutes’ chat only as he had to catch a train […] Yesterday […] we […] did the Exhibition which is a wonderful sight⁸⁴ – everything good except the Victorian exhibit which is wretched […]

Letter 13 To Rex, 18 June 1908, Burton's Hotel

[…] Last Monday at 8.00 a.m. we left for Euston and caught the London and N.W. for Holyhead – 2nd class. It was a long but quite interesting and comfortable journey and we had such a nice lunch on the train. It was ideally smooth but quite cold – deliciously cold, I thought – crossing over but we never felt like being sick. We went by train from Kingstown⁸⁵ to Westland Row (Dublin) and were met by Uncle Rowan and drove to his house at 16 Waterloo Road. Aunt Cissy⁸⁶ was there to welcome us and took me into the garden and introduced me to Cyril and a lot of his friends both male and female who were playing badminton, a very popular winter game here – like tennis only with battledores and shuttlecocks […] Next morning […] Aunt Jeannie⁸⁷ took Madre and me to S. Patrick's and Christ Church cathedrals and showed us around them […] They were both in ruins and restored in their old form by wealthy brewers forty years ago at the cost of £150,000 and £250,000 respectively⁸⁸ […] In the afternoon […] Cyril took me to the Jaynville Club for tennis. Of course it was all mixed and on grass, still very enjoyable. No one there was very wonderful: some of the girls were rather good but none of the men were cracks. It's a very social affair playing there and I was introduced to millions of Irish girls, so had a good time. Luckily I was in respectable form and did great execution with Americans⁸⁹ […] On Wednesday morning we went over Trinity College: Father was actually recognized by an old porter. He went in and saw Purser⁹⁰ who was very glad to see him: Mahaffy was out.⁹¹ All the place was interesting but particularly the library where we saw the Book of Kells. Afterwards I met Cyril and he took me to a lecture of Dowden's⁹² on M. Arnold⁹³ – which was very good, tho’ of course it was Dowden rather than Arnold that allured me in. Then we had a hasty lunch and caught the train for Bray where he had got me an invitation to tennis. The people were called Acton.⁹⁴ We had some good games both mixed and men's. My Yanks were again of service – I've never got ’em in nearly so well ever: it must have been the Irish air. We had several sets and good fun. On the train journey part of the window I was sitting at was smashed by a stone thrown, I doubt not, by a patriotic but luckily misguided Celt […] Thursday Madre and I spent going to and at Enniskerry in Co. Wicklow (by train to Bray, drive thence) with the D'Oliers: you know Mrs was a Miss Osborne.⁹⁵ It was very wet still it was nice to see the beautiful green country. We drove through the Powerscourt estate which is very fine. By the way, to be irrelevant, jaunting-cars are delightful things. In the evening we dined with Uncle Charlie⁹⁶ in Hatch St. […] Friday morning, we went over the very interesting Portrait Gallery and scampered thro’ the ordinary National Gallery. We also paid an all-too-short visit to the museum, with its wonderful Irish antiquities – the Tara Brooch, Cross of Conn, Columba's Crozier and lots of other wonderful things – stone, copper, bronze, iron-age. The gold ornaments naturally reminded one of Mycenaean objects we saw in Athens. In the evening we went by train out to Raheny and drove to Grangemoor – Uncle Garrett and Aunt Kate's house⁹⁷ […] Crampton (the eldest Cooper was away) took me down badly before dinner at croquet, at which he is a champion.⁹⁸ He is 17 or 18. I can't say I liked the lad at all nor did I feel much attracted to any of the Walkers tho’ they were all very hospitable […] on Saturday morning Uncle Rowan took me first to the courts where I heard an interesting will case and some leading men talking (Barry, Solicitor-General for Ireland⁹⁹ and Healy Nationalist M.P.¹⁰⁰) and afterwards for a jaunting-car ride round Phoenix Park. It rained hard all the time. The ride was full of interest – especially seeing the scene of the ‘accident’ as it is called here – Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr Burke's murder in ’82: the nationalists have marked the spot with a cross in the dust and renew it as often as the police obliterate it.¹⁰¹ Phoenix Park is one of the finest things of the sort anywhere – seven miles round. We went to lunch with Mahaffy – very nice strawberry pudding. He afterwards showed us the chapel, halls and beautiful old silver plate given by Charles I, II, etc. I was sadly disappointed with J.P.M.: he is coarse, conceited and absolutely unattractive, also ridiculously paradoxical […] We left by the 7.30 train […] The passage was quite rough and if it'd been half an hour longer I'd have gone under. Luckily however both Madre and I survived. The train journey was deadly – small and unstretchable – in carriages: naturally a sleepless night. We got back to Burton's at 7 a.m. and went to bed for three hours. In the afternoon we went to S. Paul's and heard the Bishop of Stepney (Cosmo Lang):¹⁰² it was a full church and an interesting sermon but slumber nearly overcame me […] On Monday afternoon we had the garden party at Knebworth (Hertfordshire), Lord and Lady Glencone's:¹⁰³ it was beautifully organized, it was a lovely day and 6,000 present. The grounds and house were very interesting. We met Mrs K. Hughes, Miss Rankin, Bishop and Mrs Armstrong,¹⁰⁴ Mrs and Elsie Clark,¹⁰⁵ the Stephens¹⁰⁶ and others. Canon Peacey (Uncle Tom) and son Capel attended us¹⁰⁷ […] Tuesday, Wednesday, today I've spent thus – (1) twice for short time at congress, interesting but tiring – had to stand, atmosphere appalling: (2) exploring London – have walked at least 15 miles today: (3) seeing and going about with Wally Cain¹⁰⁸ […] Yesterday ’twas pitch-black at midday with fog: ’ts a fact. Most of my other time I've been working at Father's ‘Union of Societies and Brotherhoods in the Anglican Church’ for Holborn Town Hall tomorrow afternoon.¹⁰⁹ Canon Stephen spoke yesterday on the Historic Episcopate, when Frere head of the Resurrection Community at Mirfield made a rattling speech¹¹⁰ – would have pleased even a dissenting cat […]

Letter 14 To Rex, 25 June 1908, Burton's Hotel

[…] Did I get you down to last Thursday and various doings with Wally Cain […] on Friday morning I looked him up at Morley's (Trafalgar Square)¹¹¹ and he took me down to the Agent-General, who happens to be J.W. Taverner,¹¹² and humorously mistook me for Walter's son thereby causing mirth on all sides. We got the promise of tickets at the Trooping of the Colours tomorrow, which I shan't be able to use, woe is me! From there we went tubewise to Madam Tussaud's – really quite good and lifelike are the inhabitants: we, that is us, made several amusing mistakes. The Chamber of Horrors is a fraud as it failed to horrify either of us, though both in a most receptive mood. I lunched with the Cains at Morley's and afterwards was going on to Holborn Town Hall to hear Father's paper but old Mr Cain pressed me so much that all unwilling I had to accept his really very noble offer to shout me out to Ascot (last day). Wally and I rushed underground to Waterloo, only to find the 2.10 had gone and there wasn't another till 3.10. Of course that was useless, as we should only have seen the tail of the show. So we hansomed to Holborn Town Hall: to my disgust Father had already spoken – I showed my disapproval by promptly leaving the hall after 45 seconds’ audience. I believe he read his paper well and people liked it, which is nice. Wally and I went out thence to Lord's where we saw Yorkshire beat Middlesex by three wickets. The finish was an exciting one, Albert Trott¹¹³ bowling finely. A chance or two accepted might have made all the difference. Yorkshire are at present on top with Surrey and then Kent next. There was a good crowd there – perhaps 10,000. Lord's is supposed to be a most impartial crowd and they certainly applauded Yorkshire as heartily as their own side. The ground is a pretty one, but small and irregular, no boundary fence in places. In the evening we went to Daly's,¹¹⁴ Wally standing 6/- seats. It was the famous and merry Widow?¹¹⁵ Have you seen it? What do you think of it? I was grievously disappointed and thought it much like any comic opera, the dialogue inferior to most and the music only pretty in parts. I think it's the waltz that's done everything for it, we had it invariably on the Bremen and in Naples, Pompeii, Athens, Constantinople, Cologne etc. Unluckily we missed the regular widow, Lily Elsie,¹¹⁶ tho’ the girl who took it was distinctly good. Theatres here hardly ever start before 8.15, sometimes at 9. I went to the National Gallery again on Saturday […] In the afternoon Father and Madre and I went to the Exhibition early and frangled (let me introduce you to the word, ’tis Franco-Anglo - - you know) till 7. I enjoyed the Seneghalese village most. They've got lots of niggers over and they give you an idea of themselves and their life in every way. At seven we met the McLachlans and took them to dinner at one of the big dining-rooms there. There was an enormous and hungry crowd clamouring at the door and hadn't we engaged a table beforehand, we'd have got no dinner. It was a very nice dinner but we had to rush away early. Mr McLachlan took us all to the horse-show at Olympia:¹¹⁷ his cousin is a promoter and steward, so we got splendid seats for nothing. It is a huge stadium and the driving (of which we only saw the finish) and the jumping was a fine sight. There were some splendid horses but I don't think the jumping was anything marvellous as they couldn't clear 5 ft.10. This is only the second year of the show, but it is likely to completely oust the Dublin one […]

Sunday

Father and I went to S. Margaret's Westminster in the morning: there was a huge congregation and we got only poor seats. Canon Henson preached and very well too.¹¹⁸ It was a Hospital Sunday sermon¹¹⁹ and we were both much impressed by it. We took Archdeacon Peacock home to lunch¹²⁰ […] We went on to Hyde Park which was crammed. It was ‘Woman's Sunday’: there were seven enormous processions of suffragettes from different parts of the city. They all assembled in Hyde Park where there were 20 platforms and oratoresses holding forth to enormous crowds. There were between 2–300,000 people in the park, most of them well-behaved, tho’ others mocked. The speaker I listened to rather laid herself open to ridicule, as she talked about ‘dying for the cause’ etc. Father was lucky enough to hear Mrs Pankhurst and was charmed with her.¹²¹ Who should we meet there but Lash¹²² and Miss Lash?¹²³ Lash asked me up to Cambridge for two or three days, as it's vac. there now. I think I'll go. He's now moustachified. From Hyde Park to Chelsea and tea with Capel Peacey whose parish is down there¹²⁴ […] In the evening we went to Westminster (Congregational) Chapel which is quite near us: Campbell Morgan preached a wonderfully fine sermon. He's the leader of the Nonconformist ministers really and thought by many the best preacher in England.¹²⁵ The chapel (a big one) was full. Father spent all Monday at Kensington Town Hall listening to discussions on Biblical Criticism: I went in the morning and heard Dean Wace¹²⁶ and the Bishop of Calcutta¹²⁷ amongst others. In the afternoon Wally and I went out to Wimbledon and saw the opening day of the All England Championships. Tho’ we didn't see any remarkable play, we saw all the leading players in the opening round of singles – Ritchie,¹²⁸ Gore,¹²⁹ Caridia,¹³⁰ Wilding,¹³¹ Roper-Barrett,¹³² Eaves.¹³³ Ritchie is the most attractive player among the Englishmen: Gore and Roper-Barrett are both wonderfully safe but have ugly styles. In the evening we all went to the Albert Hall, where there was a vast crowd. It is a wonderful place for hearing and though I was high up and at the back I caught every sound in addition to seeing all right. The opening speaker was Balfour with whom I was quite disappointed.¹³⁴ His matter was emphatically good but his delivery and fluency both mediocre to non-existent. He was followed by Bishop Welldon,¹³⁵ Canon Henson, Father Waggett¹³⁶ and C.F. Masterman M.P.¹³⁷ – all of them excellent, Father Waggett the best of the lot. It was a great meeting. The subject treated from five different points of view was ‘Christianity and Other Intellectual Forces’. Tuesday […] In the evening we dined at the House of Commons with the Cherrys: Mrs Cherry is our first cousin once removed and he is Attorney-General for Ireland in the present ministry.¹³⁸ It was a nice dinner-party (only 12 people) and it was interesting seeing all the Members eating and talking and that kind of thing. Afterwards we sat on the terrace: the lights on the Southwark side looked very pretty and it rather reminded me of Buda-Pesth. We listened for a little time to a debate (heard Lloyd George¹³⁹) and then hurried away to the Colonial Institute Conversazione¹⁴⁰ where Mr Cain had invited us. We didn't get there – it was held in the Natural History Museum at Kensington – till 10.45 so only stayed three quarters of an hour […] Yesterday we started out early for S. Paul's:¹⁴¹ my lot was among tickets 1,000–2,000 who entered by the South Door. I got there at 10.15 and they let us in at 11. Service started at 12. The nave, aisles, transepts, galleries, choir, chair-galleries all packed and thousands tried ineffectually to get in – a great congregation. Service opened with the litany sung processionally by the minor canons. The procession was a long one – nearly 200 bishops, I think. After a very fine special hymn we had a short address from the Primate, short but not striking.¹⁴² During the offertory – presented by each bishop successively – the choir sang […] beautifully: it is supposed to be the best church choir in Europe. At the end we had a special Thanksgiving Te Deum sung ceremonially. It was a great and striking wind-up to the Congress. I see the offering came to £333,208. Melbourne's share was a poor one. In the afternoon I went out to Chelsea at five for the pageant: it was the final dress rehearsal – in the Ranelagh Gardens:¹⁴³ there was a big audience and the whole thing went off splendidly. It was really very pretty, particularly Scene III. Capel, who was a monk in Scene VI, gave me my ticket (2/6): some of the seats were at £2. 2. 0. The scenes were: (1) Caesar's passage at Chelsea (2) Offa's creation of the Archbishopric of Lichfield at Synod of Chelsea 786 (3) May-Day in Chelsea fields 1500 (very pretty maypole and morisco dances¹⁴⁴) (4) Sir Thomas More and his family 1527–1534 (5) Elizabeth and Sir J. Seymour 1547 (6) burial of Anne of Cleves 1557 […] (7) Elizabeth visits Howard of Effingham 1592: masques of the Faery Queene (8) Charles II founds Chelsea Hospital 1681: (9) death of Queen Anne 1714: (10) Dr Johnson and George II at Ranelagh 1749. It was a very pretty sight and the acting and elocution excellent. The interludes were spoken by Father Thames and Britannia […] Tomorrow I go down to Oxford to lunch with the Master of Balliol,¹⁴⁵ which unfortunately blocks my seeing Trooping the Colours. A street organ has just started up the Merry Widow Waltz, so I'd better stop […]

Letter 15 To Rex, 2 July 1908, Burton's Hotel

[…] I was all Friday down at Oxford: I left Paddington by the 10.30 train and got to Oxford in time enough to allow me a good stroll round before calling on the Master (Strachan-Davidson). I had lunch with him and three or four other Fellows (big F) in the Common Room. The only other person who sat at meat there was a Hebrew Galician count who seemed very intelligent and quite nice: he spoke many languages including the usuals and three slavs.¹⁴⁶ The Master was exceedingly pleasant and kind. He said he would do his best for me but of course I should have applied two years ago: however he'd try and get me in. I may in that case have to do an entrance exam in September. The Scholarship and Exhibition exams aren't until Dec. 4. I'm going to try for the Brackenbury Scholarship (History – nice papers and general) and a classical exhibition: of course no one could hold both. I talked a good deal to A.L. Smith, History Lecturer there: he was quite rude and snubby, which did me good, and seems a decent sort.¹⁴⁷ Afterwards I went round to his house to tea: I thought the aforesaid a particularly stupid old tea as Mrs A.L.S.¹⁴⁸ introduced me to none of the other members of the family, of whom there were millions, plain, old, pretty, beautiful, male, childish. A.L.S. slept and arose only to say a bluff-gruff farewell. Of course he's the tute I'll see most of if I get in […] All the same I was annoyed at having to lose the Trooping of the Colours. Father went in my place and liked it. He spent Saturday at Oxford, where he went to see Sidgwick.¹⁴⁹ I went out to the Zoo at Regent's Park and saw what was to be seen. It's a very huge collection and they've a good many creatures we haven't in Melbourne – three hippo's, several giraffes, a rhinoceros and other such things: still in some things they don't show up wonderfully marvellously. I was interested in the temporary collection just over from Australia and New Zealand. They get such collections on loan each year from a different part of the world. From there I went back and met Madre and Y at the New Theatre at two.¹⁵⁰ We went in 2/6 seats (pit) – quite nice. The play we wanted to see especially was ‘Lady Frederick’ by W. Somerset Maugham, a play which was refused by managers four years running: now he's got four of his plays being acted simultaneously in different London theatres.¹⁵¹ It shows managers must be generally careless to incompetent. It was preceded by a little one-act sketch ‘Pierette's Birthday’ – a frightfully harrowing, sentimental kind of thing, made me mournful but not of much value.¹⁵² ‘Lady Frederick’ on the other hand was a clever play: you're lucky if they take it to Melbourne. The character is an original one and the dialogue most unusually worth listening to. It's one of the very few plays I'd care to see again. The acting was good. On Sunday morning I was lazy and didn't go early: we went to S. Paul's at 10.30: we were given good seats in the choir, so heard splendidly. The nave and transepts were packed, as always. The service was perhaps a bit long (three hours) – full choral Mattins, litany, celebration: from a musical point of view it was perfect. The Te Deum was wonderfully sung. Though right up among the choir not a sound displeased. The (American) Bishop of Southern Brazil preached – quite American and eloquent.¹⁵³ The drift seemed to be ‘Blood is Thicker than Water’ – many words about the love of Americans for the land their fathers came from. In the afternoon we all went to call on Miss Brooke and her sisters: she came on the ‘Bremen’ you know, with her brother, Major General Brooke.¹⁵⁴ He's unluckily been very ill but is now getting over it slowly. In the evening Madre, Y and I went to S. Matthew's, Westminster, which is quite close, in a poor quarter: the service was nice […] the church ordinary High (for London) […] On Tuesday morning the ladies and I helped to choose my clothes. I bought things without number […] The rage now is all for waists in coats. I'm not getting one as I think I'm skinny enough already […] In the afternoon we all went out to Chelsea. We went through Carlyle's house which was more interesting than I expected. They have all sorts of relics of him of every description – including innumerable letters to and from him. The others went on to the pageant which they hadn't seen before. They had good seats (10/6) and liked it. I took Wally Cain to ‘The Mikado’ at the Savoy in the evening: it was splendidly done and I revelled in it. But you know I have a monomania for Gilbert and Sullivan. There was a huge crowd in Parliament Square – a suffragette meeting: all sorts of fun and 29 ladies run in. Nice people! But they're sure to get it soon. On Wednesday Wally wanted me to go to Henley but I couldn't get away. The morning we spent among the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum and Father and Madre got hold of Sir E. Maunde Thompson to whom they had an introduction.¹⁵⁵ He is a splendid scholar. Y and I had to hurry away to get to a matinée. We went to ‘The Explorer’ by W.S. Maugham at the Lyric – Lewis Waller¹⁵⁶ and Evelyn Millard¹⁵⁷ – an extraordinary play, so different from his ‘Lady Frederick’. It was disappointing – the second act giving promise that wasn't fulfilled: the solution was commonplace. The hero was of the kind that dominates all modern writing – reserved, unimpassioned, you know, with great feeling that people don't see […] Yesterday Father and I went to Henley: it was as pretty a sight as can be imagined but wanting in animation to my mind: nothing like the interest in the racing shown at our Melbourne edition […] We also unavoidably met C.O.S. again¹⁵⁸ […]

Letter 16 To Rex, 12 July 1908, Houghton, Huntingdon

[…] On Friday […] out to Lord's where I saw a bit of Gents. v. Players: it was a lifeless match, Players winning easily.¹⁵⁹ Saturday morning we all spent in packing: Friday night, I might tell you, was marked by the worst thunderstorm I've ever listened to – quite awful – many houses struck and people killed through the country. We left for Brighton by the 3.50 train and got to the rectory at Hove at about 5.30. The Peaceys were all very good to us and very nice all the time we were there. Uncle Tam (Canon Peacey) is an awful bore, really, like the Archbishop and quite dull¹⁶⁰ but the others were very nice […] not brilliant or anything like that but very affectionate to us and one another. They must have inherited their brightness from Aunt Ellen as their father is so terribly heavy. We didn't do anything particular that evening except stroll on the Front, the Brighton Esplanade and make one another's acquaintance. On Sunday we went early to the church which is just next door and again at 11. Between whiles we breakfasted and inspected the church.¹⁶¹ In Australia it would be reckoned a magnificent cathedral. It was begun some twenty years ago by the famous architect Pearson (now dead) and has cost some £40,000 already. Of course it isn't finished yet.¹⁶² They're at present engaged on a splendid stone reredos with a series of figures in it (like those in Winchester, Southwark, etc). It will cost £5,000 and will be dedicated on All Saints’ Day. Canon Peacey preached dully at 11. Afterwards we strolled on ‘the front’ till lunch. On Sundays it is a very animated scene. In the afternoon Father and Madre went to call on the Horace Manns at Preston Park¹⁶³ […] In the evening Connie,¹⁶⁴ Father and I went off to the famous S. Bartholomew's: it is the highest of churches in more senses than one – architecturally very striking, extraordinarily high inside and very effective from the contrast of its severe brick walls and rich coloured marble pulpit and sanctuary.¹⁶⁵ Father and I were both immensely impressed with its artistic effect. In tone it is quite high – four confession-boxes, holy water, to say nothing of things like huge stone crucifixes and side-altars to saints, which in England arouse no comment. The Church over here is very different to ours – things like altar-candles are not considered a wee bit high. The musical effect was good […] The service (except the lessons) was gabbled: the sermon ordinary […] Wednesday […] I met Y at King's Cross and we left for Huntingdon. All the country round is flat but green, and beautiful trees. Aunt Ethel, you know, lives in a rectory, a very picturesque place¹⁶⁶ […] Uncle Boyle arrived on Thursday: I like him exceedingly and have had several long chats with him. He has just been promoted to Post-Captain. He is really most interesting to talk to and has told me a whole lot of interesting things about Ceylon and about Ireland.¹⁶⁷ In the evening there was an open-air concert at ‘The Elms’ in aid of the District Nursing.¹⁶⁸ Most of it was piffle but Uncle Boyle sang four of his Irish comic songs, which I remember even from Carrara days.¹⁶⁹ He sings and acts them wonderfully well. Of course his brogue is inimitable […] Tomorrow we're having a regular tennis party […] an old Wimbledon player named Whymper is coming.¹⁷⁰ We went to Houghton Church at 8.30 and 10 today. It is quite High – vestments etc. The vicar, a man named Oliphant, is a very peculiar man and most people go to the neighbouring church at Wyton¹⁷¹ […]

Letter 17 To Rex, 16 July 1908, Burton's Hotel

[…] We didn't go to church on Sunday evening, merely sat and yawned to the all-too-close accompaniment of the Village Feast Band. Once every year in this part of the country each village has a burst-up of three or four days in honour of their patron saint (ours is S. Mary): they begin with Sunday evensong and then for the next three or four afternoons and evenings they have merry-go-rounds (to awful automatic music), cocoanut-shies, shooting-galleries etc. and all the population of the village goes. People come to stay from surrounding villages and all patronize the feast. We went yesterday evening for a bit but it soon palled on us, though Y and I went once on the giddy-go-round¹⁷² […] on Monday […] afternoon we had a small tennis-scrap – Colonel and Mrs Pelley (local people)¹⁷³ and Mr. Whymper (the old Wimbledon player). He must have been pretty good in youth's lusty years as despite his three-score he did well. We had one single in which I went down 2–6. Yesterday morning I went round to his place and had a single with him.¹⁷⁴ I rejoiced greatly in that I won 6–3 after losing the first three games. I then led him 3–2 next set when the wet telling on my racquet added six more broken strings to the two already gone. I hardly scored another stroke and he rounded out 6–3, 3–0. I feel I've improved a great deal as I've got a good grip of the service now […] I went to the dentist this morning and got a tooth filled – another to go next Thursday. He didn't hurt and seems good – named Harris. Madre was sick all day: we hope she'll be righter tomorrow. If so, Stratford-on-Avon […]

Letter 18 To Rex, 23 [July 1908], Houghton

[…] we all left in tolerably good nick by the 10 a.m. from Marylebone (Grand Central). The journey was for the most part uninteresting and long as we didn't arrive till 12.22. I proposed lunch but Father crushed the bashful idea with the weight of Shakespeare's name and as we walked up the main street we got sight of the King Edward VI Grammar School. So we went in and were shown round with other tourists (I own fellowship with the world,¹⁷⁵ why I glory in it and its associations). We saw the old Guildhall with its raised dais where the youthful Bill in all probability saw for the first time a play acted and the school-rooms especially that where he sat. A plate on the wall marks the traditional spot but the traditional desk was sold by the Council and is now at the Birthplace […] Of course the house has been in a sense restored but the old material and form is all left and it is still a King Edward VI Grammar School as it was in Shakespeare's day. It is perhaps the most interesting building in Stratford. The chapel was closed but we called on Mrs Headmaster.¹⁷⁶ She took us in and most interesting it was – essentially a chapel of possibilities – plastered and a beautiful timber roof just imploring to be visible. Perhaps Australia's chance? Father thinks so. Old frescoes on the South-West wall – intelligible when explained. An unsightly gallery at the West End must be removed. The rain was now beginning, I cried for bread and butter but Father led a trump – the Birthplace – and the way there […] The whole place is much restored of course. When you reflect that not till ’47 did the nation buy it from the butcher who for years had found his trade pushed forward by his great predecessor's name.¹⁷⁷ In the two rooms below are all sorts of relics – folios, quartos, first editions of all kinds, autographs, seals, and personal relics of every description. While there or rather in the library above the Schoolmaster (Rev. — Robertson) joined us. Tho’ young he proved a great addition to our party. As a trustee he carried us in everywhere uncharged for: you can only see Shakespeare's ruins at a charge. After a fair lunch, the rain raining, we four (the landlady showed us Washington Irving's poker and the room he wrote his sketches in)¹⁷⁸ drove out to Anne Hathaway's cottage. Unspoilt! Few relics but more memories – the kitchen, the best room, the chimney-corner where the two sat – Anne's bed-room – restored only the minimum required. From there to Holy Trinity Church. An interesting old church anyhow tho’ somebody says the church is merged in the mausoleum. You know what the tomb and old memorial are like. By him lie his daughter, her daughter, her husband. The chief modern feature is the beautiful window with its historical scenes – the American chapel […] After tea with the Robertsons we ‘did’ the Memorial Building, theatre, picture-gallery […] We left by the 7.15 and dined on the train […] On Saturday morning we at last used our order for the Tower. As always, there were thousands of visitors: with them we looked at the ordinary sights – Tower Green (a stone courtyard, a small railing enclosing the spot where the queens suffered), the Beauchamp Tower (with prisoners’ inscriptions), the regalia (in the Wakefield Tower), S. John's Chapel (pure Norman recalling St. Bartholomew's the Great, Smithfield) in the White Tower and the Armouries there. We also saw on our order (not hard to get) S. Peter's Chapel (where so many famous people are buried), torture-chambers, Little Ease,¹⁷⁹ Sir W. Raleigh's supposed cell etc (in the White Tower). You are really even on an order shown but little of the Tower, now used greatly for military purposes and garrisoning […] In the afternoon Father and Madre went to the Archbishop's Garden Party at Lambeth¹⁸⁰ and I to the Tate Gallery. It is a most fascinating collection (all modern), of course not comparable to the National Gallery but in its own way as good¹⁸¹ […] On Monday I bicycled over to Cambridge and spent all day with Lash. We went into nearly every college in Cambridge but just rushed round. I mean to go again and see it all properly. The only college we did at all well was S. John's […] I was delightfully surprised at it and think it's quite good enough for an Oxford or even a Melbourne college […] Yesterday we had a tennis party at the Herberts at Hemingford Abbot (about a mile away).¹⁸² I only had two sets and played rottenly. The day before we had one at Hemingford Grey (the Bevans’).¹⁸³ I rowed them down (only two miles) very badly: Kitty rowed back – a promising oar. I had four sets and was in goodish form. At every single fight I'm at my serve excites astonishment. Yanks or attempts at ’em are almost unknown among ordinary English tennis party players […]

Letter 19 To Rex, 31 July 1908, Burton's Hotel

[…] On Tuesday I went over to Cambridge to see Harry.¹⁸⁴ He's a great sort but unfortunately a Methodist – still his wines are good. His sister-in-law, Mrs Gordon McArthur, was there too.¹⁸⁵ I didn't have time for sight-seeing but he took me right over the Leys’ School of which he is Hon. Sec. It is a very fine school, splendid buildings, chapel, grounds etc – 180 boarders, Wesleyan of course. He's very keen about it as he's an old boy. Afterwards we played a singles’ match on the ’Varsity Club courts. They were beautiful courts but I played rottenly, lost my serve at intervals etc. He pipped me 6–2, 6–2, 6–4. I didn't think him wonderful either tho’ decidedly good. He says Andrews, the Cambridge captain, is the only man in Cambridge who can beat him.¹⁸⁶ Tennis here isn't of so high a standard as in Melbourne […] on Wednesday afternoon Y and I went to Hinchingbrooke Castle – Waifs and Strays meeting. Shook Earl Sandwich by the hand.¹⁸⁷ Beautiful rooms and grounds. Unluckily had to hurry away […]

Letter 20 To Rex, 7 August 1908, c/o Fräulein Lans, Neue Winterfeldtstrasse, Berlin, W.30

[…] I've been here now some four or five days […] After writing to you last Friday morning from my Attic (small a perhaps) in Burton's I proceeded to pack […] and then I saw Father and Madre off the premises: they went down to the Dyer Edwardes’ near Stroud¹⁸⁸ […] I left the hotel shortly after 7 and went by taxi (charming things they are) to Liverpool St., where I was naturally in excellent time (but not too early) for the Harwich train. It was crowded: Monday being August Bank Holiday all the people who get off then seemed to be flocking over to Holland, which is the most tourist-ridden country on earth I suppose. We got to Harwich at 10 and at once went on board the steamer – a fine new turbine, the ‘Copenhagen’. I went to bed pretty soon – nice clean cabin – and slept about three hours of the seven. We had a beautifully smooth crossing and got to the Hook (Hoek van Holland) at about 4.45. Then all day on the train which was a wee bit dull tho’ the country with its historical associations was not uninteresting. We went thro’ Rotterdam, Utrecht, Bentheim (luggage examined),¹⁸⁹ Osnabrück, Minden, Hannover. Holland is not relatively but absolutely flat and northern Germany much the same, so the journey was nothing from a scenic point of view […] Wib¹⁹⁰ was waiting for me at Friedrichstrasse Bahnhof and with her help I got my goods here. We went out to a restaurant for supper and talked the rest of the evening. Sunday I rose late and we got to the Englische Kirche¹⁹¹ a bit late: it is rather a fine church but the chaplain (Mr Fry) a dullish man.¹⁹² In the afternoon we went to the Zoo which was crowded and in the evening to the Gedächtnis Kirche (Lutheran).¹⁹³ It is a beautiful church, the interior being very richly painted. The service was only an hour long – mostly sermon of which I understood little. The singing sitting down is weird. The service was a dreary one and the congregation unworthy of the huge church […] on Monday Wib and I walked about and in the afternoon went out to Gross Lichterfelde West where we called on Tilly and the Institute.¹⁹⁴ Its efficiency impressed, its dreariness repelled. A gloomy suburb is Gross Lichterfelde West, out of Berlin irremediably. The Institute contains 32 students. I have not yet decided whether to take the vows. Perhaps I shall enter next Wednesday, perhaps never […] At present I'm looking out for a good teacher […] Tuesday […] evening we went to Ein Walzertraum¹⁹⁵ at Theater des Westens:¹⁹⁶ it's a comic opera – foolish but musically pretty. Perhaps it may be Anglicised and Australianized hereafter? Wednesday morning I went to the Neues und Altes Museum¹⁹⁷ and looked at their Egyptian collection, in the afternoon Wibbie and I went out to the Grunewald but hadn't time to explore it much, in the evening La Traviata at the Kroll Theater¹⁹⁸ – an admirable seat for 2.50 mk. The company (sang in German) was bad. An Italiana (Franceschina Prevosti¹⁹⁹) sang Violette ‘very middlingly’ (Wib's criticism). She was tremendously applauded. Yesterday I went to the Pergamon Museum²⁰⁰ in the morning and saw the Frieze of the Great Altar:²⁰¹ it is ‘fine’ (America again ‘at work’). In the afternoon we went for the second time to the Krauels. Son and daughter go with us tomorrow to the Spreewald (old Wendish place).²⁰² I love Berlin (very modern, most of the fine buildings since ’97 or thereabouts) […]

Letter 21 To Rex, 13 August 1908, at Fräulein Lans, Neue Winterfeldtstrasse

[…] Thursday night we went to the Zoologische Garten with Wib's friend Miss Mack and another American named Caspar whom she's engaged to,²⁰³ it was great sitting out in the open air and listening to two excellent bands. Everyone sits about and drinks beer. On Friday afternoon Wib and I went out to Charlottenburg now a big suburb of Berlin. Sophie Charlotte, queen of Frederick I (first King of Prussia) built a Schloss there about 1700 […] Next morning we got up at six. We went by the Hochbahn (overhead railway) to Oranien Str. where we met Fräulein Krauel. We only took the minimum of luggage (a tiny basket). We caught the 7 train from Göhrlitze Bahnhof which landed us at Lübbenow at 8.30. There we took boat and had a most delightful day, being punted about.²⁰⁴ It was ideal weather and we did enjoy ourselves. We went by various intricate creeks and canals thro’ the following villages – the whole country is a mass (maze?) of canals and a Kahn (a gondola)²⁰⁵ the only way of getting about – Lehde, Wotschofska (notice the Wendish–Slavonic names), Schützenhaus, Kannomühle, Eiche (where we had lunch), Buschmühle and finally Burg Kolonie about 7 where we stayed the night. The inn was passable. It was splendid day – lovely journey with overarching trees and beautifully clear reflections in the water […] Next morning we were up early and went on by water (an hour's journey) to Burg (the town proper). There were crowds of people there for ever so many Berliners go down there on Sunday to see the Spreewälderinnen²⁰⁶ go to church dressed in their best. The church was packed – peasants and strangers. It is a hideously plain church but both in and after church the women's gay dresses were delightful to look at – you will gather the general appearance from our postcards. Some were especially gay, others in mourning. The service was a great disappointment – we had expected Wendish but the Wendish pastor was away so we had to put up with German. At the end came a christening. The curiousest part was the list of announcements of births, deaths, marriages, betrothals – the good pastor uttered such very personal pious wishes for present and future welfare. After church we watched and talked to the Spreewälderinnen – the men were dressed like ordinary mortals – they all understand German and the children only German, Wendish seems to be dying. Then we walked off on a ‘foolhardy enterprise’ to see the Schlossberg, an old prehistoric camp consisting of a hillock.²⁰⁷ There was nothing worth seeing there. Disappointed we took boat and were punted back to Lübbenau by a shorter way through Leipe (where we had lunch) and Lehde. We got to Lübbenau at 4 and had to put in two hours there. I bought eine niederwendische Grammatik²⁰⁸ and read that – it is very like Russian in vocabulary but its morphology is more archaic – has a dual for instance.²⁰⁹ We also put in some time at the museum – a small room with a few old Wendish relics. We left by the 6.15 and got to Berlin before 8. Altogether we were jolly glad we went – it was a very cheap outing and cost only 19/- each for everything. Fräulein Krauel (aetat²¹⁰ about 23) was very nice tho’ tremendously German.

On Monday […] we went off to the old part of Berlin (Alt-Kölln) and looked at churches of which there are three old ones. Kloster Kirche we couldn't get into but we went over Nikolaikirche and Marienkirche. Both were extremely interesting (13th-century partly, tho’ greatly restored) and I thought Nikolaikirche very fine. In the evening Fräulein Bukowski came to supper: she is a nice little thing. Afterwards we went out to the Terrassen at Halensee – grounds with a big grandstand. You sit there, drink beer and listen to bands. It was a beautiful evening and great fun. On Tuesday afternoon we were lazy: in the morning Wib played me ‘Walküre’ motives²¹¹ – she impressed on me 23 but I only remembered eight or ten […] I enjoyed the performance immensely – it was in the Neues Königliches Theater.²¹² I find it hard to compare with the Melbourne performance I heard as I went to this more understandingly and accordingly enjoyed it more. The first act was excellent good, the second less so, the third except for a dull bit in the middle also excellent good. Wib liked the singing but found the conducting bad […]

Letter 22 To Rex, 21 August 1908, c/o Fräulein Lans

[…] Last Thursday night […] Wib and I went to Was ihr wollt (12th Night for your benefit). It's never been a favourite play of mine so I went rather from motives of conscientious curiosity than from powerful magnetic soul attraction. However I must confess it was very good. The staging was simple enough and scenic effects kept in their proper place. The only trick which they utilised much was the moving stage (got from London I believe tho’ made much more of over here than there) – that is, at the end of a scene the stage revolves and gives you two or three little scenes (dumb-show) – which serve as connecting links between scene and scene of the play itself. It is rather neat. The acting was on the whole good – Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Sir Christopher Bleichwang he goes by here)²¹³ and Maria being ideally done: Sir Toby was very creditable, Malvolio satisfactory, Olivia passable, the Clown fair. The rest were poor and Viola insignificant. The play was staged in good taste. The audience was quick to catch points and especially enjoyed the drunken bits of which we wearied somewhat […] We were rather sorry afterwards we'd chosen that particular night for going as we had to get up so early next morning – 6.30. We caught the 7.52 from Anhalter Bahnhof and had a long and rather wearisome journey (3rd class) to Weimar which we reached at about 11.30 (three hours’ journey as the train started very late). The journey was only moderately interesting tho’ we went thro’ Wittenberg (famous Lutheranly) and Halle which was Händel's birthplace. On reaching Weimar we had some much-needed coffee. Thereafter we wasted no time. We took a tram right thro’ the town (30-odd thousand Einwohner²¹⁴) out to the thick of the Park. Thence we had a long walk […] back to civilization. However en route we saw the Liszt statue and the Shakespeare statue that stand in different parts of the park. At least it was something if not anything remarkable to take a walk which J.W. von Goethe and other people of that description probably grew to love or possibly hate from familiarity. We then presented ourselves at the castle but the Man with the Key was hard at work on Mittagessen²¹⁵ – sacrilege; so on advice we went back into the park and found our way to the Goethe […] Gartenhaus […] By the time we got back Mahlzeit²¹⁶ was done with and replenished Teutondom accompanied us to the door of the west wing (which was the end of his beat). So we got tickets and were escorted round by a man of ordinary intelligence. His chief shows were the four rooms dedicated to Goethe, Schiller, Wieland and Herder all of whom basked in Weimar under then-Duke Karl August's patronage (he stands equestrian in the Platz vor dem Schloss) […] Having rewarded the custodian handsomely for performing his duty we stepped across to the East wing. We didn't expect much – delightfully disappointed or surprised rather. A Lorrainer of sense and manners took us round: he knew a lot about it and (most unusual in a guide) could answer – and well – any question historical or otherwise one inquisitively put […] we parted from our leader with thanks and deserved mark – the best deserved of the much money we have distributed to wearisome and ignorant guides. We then decided to do the houses as the church was as yet shut – so we went straight to the Schillerhaus – a little place but as Schiller had it, one may well believe –his rooms, his furniture, his curios and possessions. It was interesting even to a foreigner who knows but little of Schiller – Germans would naturally feel more for it. Naturally we went next to the house Goethe's family had (himself lived in the Gartenhaus). It is now the Goethe National Museum and full of Goethe from the chair he died in, his bed, furniture, books, personal belongings etc. down to pens even he wrote with […] The church was open – so after refreshment (Wib coffee, I undrinkable chocolate) and much writing of postcards we ‘did’ the church. A little girl – rather pretty but of minimum knowledge […] took us round […] It was now, curiously enough, getting late – so contentedly giving up the idea of getting to Gotha by the 5.6 train²¹⁷ – if one is in Weimar it seems a pity not to see Weimar – we made for the Liszt Museum. This time Wib's spirit dominated the excursion-party, I went readily enough, she was as keen as one thing. It was quite interesting – I don't know as much about Liszt as a boy of my age should but still I know something and found the place well worth seeing especially as the old lady who took us round was Liszt's housekeeper. Wib was naturally charmed. The house is as he had it except the museum-room with his trophies and possessions and presents from crowned heads and appreciative communities. I was glad we had gone. There was still lots to see but ’twas too late to see it. We went off to the Friedhof²¹⁸ and thought it a pretty little place – but the thing of greatest interest – the Fürstengruft²¹⁹ where Göthe's and Schiller's bodies lie – was shut. However one can't hope to see all in a few hours and so we had a bit of a meal and got to the station for the 8.3 train.²²⁰ Neither of us had dreamt Weimar could be so interesting. It is the German Stratford-on-Avon but it means more to Germany than even Stratford-on-Avon does to us. Weimar surely represents to them the beginning of all the thought and energy that produced the German Empire – and in Weimar they have given poets, musicians, painters, patrons of them and all who have made their home here to good purpose their due. I send you the Goethe-Schiller statue that stands before the theatre.

We got to Eisenach at half-past ten. From fear of being crowded out we had written for rooms at the Rautenkranz – it was too good a hotel for people like us doing it on the cheap, however the charge was only reasonably exorbitant and prudent souls give few handles for ‘extras’. Early next morning we were up – who could fail to be with the image of the Wartburg²²¹ on one's mind and the sight of it before one's dressing self? […] we saw Eisenach a little. Then we trammed out to the foot of the Wartburg – only 5 or 600 feet I should think: ’twas hot and we groaned but really found the climb quite nice. There were Germans galore descending and ascendant and a large gathering were marshalled for the Führer²²² to lecture to […] lunch – 2.17 train to Erfurt. Got there at 3.25 and of course wasted endless time finding our way to the cathedral – in quest of which we entered several churches, mostly Roman (in Erfurt, strange for Prussia – eight Roman Catholic (including Dom) and eight Lutheran churches) […] We just caught the train and had no time to see the many churches (interesting enough) or much else in Erfurt which is a city of some 100,000 inhabitants.

In the train from 5.14 to 6.38. We got out at Naumberg (25,000 people) – it was beginning to get dark but we got in a tram and went to the Dom (Lutheran). A fine old church, cruciform and architecturally attractive – but plastered! However – historically most interesting, especially the old Norman crypt with beautiful sculpture work: and much interesting carving above ground too! A very superior man took us round. It was with difficulty we got him – so late, church shut long ago – and he was very well up in the church and so enthusiastic over it. He got and deserved two marks.

Caught the 8.13 to Berlin, got there 11.2. Delightful trip and only cost us grossly £2 each […] Last night we went to ‘Die Stützen der Gesellschaft’ (Pillars of Society you know). It was the first Ibsen I ever saw acted and went admirably. The acting (with two exceptions) was all that could be desired. The staging was satisfactorily quiet. The audience was frightfully small […]

Letter 23 To Rex, 27 August 1908, c/o Fräulein Lans

[…] On Friday night Miss Mack and H. Kaspar came round to supper and Wib rose to the occasion with a savoury dish. So it was arranged to meet on Saturday which we did and looked at his rooms, pictures, books etc. Then we all went to Ascher's – the best foreign book shop in Berlin.²²³ […] On Sunday […] Wib and I went to the nine o'clock celebration at the English Church (which is a pretty little building) and, after breakfast at a café just near, we went into the Swedish Church which is next door. The verger (sic) was deaf and not good at German. Unmoved by expostulation, he would have us to the English Church but one stuck to one's point and heard the Swedish service. We understood jointly some half-dozen words so can hardly criticize. It is really a German-Lutheran church, used fortnightly by the Swedish colony.²²⁴

We met Miss Mack and H. Kaspar at the American (mixed Protestant) Church²²⁵ at 12.30 and after lunch went out by train to Wender²²⁶ beyond Potsdam. In spring it is a great day resort of Berliners. It was pretty but not strikingly so and of little other interest. However, we had a jolly afternoon and have planned many trips […] Yesterday afternoon we carried out our first excursion schemes. We met Miss Mack and H. Kaspar at a quarter to two and went off to the Potsdamer Bahnhof from which we caught a train at 2.28 for Brandenburg. It was a lovely day and one of the jolliest times we have had. Alt-Brandenburg is a delightful place – three very old churches and the prettiest of situations on an island in the Spree and the opposite banks. The great sight is the Dom which it took us pretty well an hour to see. It was most interesting and I was annoyed at not being able to get postcards of it […] We wanted to get into the Katharinenkirche too – also a real medieval church, but the stupid Küster²²⁷ was not to be found. So with the Gotthardkirche, old but hardly so full of interest. I'm sending you a postcard of the queer old figure before the Rathaus:²²⁸ it is 16½ feet high and called the Roland column – very old. It marks the right of the town to a free market […] We looked round the town and went up on the Marienberg (with a Bismarck memorial tower) from which we got an excellent view of Brandenburg and the surrounding country (all absolutely flat). We got back to Berlin at 9.30.

Tonight we'll try to get in at La Bohème: a German company but Florencio Constantino about whom we've heard great things sings Rudolfo.²²⁹ Tomorrow night cheap seats at Faust. And Saturday night (if impressed tonight) 1 mark 50 Stehplatz²³⁰ for F. Constantino in Lucia di Lammermoor […]

Letter 24 To Rex, 4 September 1908, Neue Winterfeldtstrasse

[…] Wib's urging me to rush out with her to the Eis-Palast just up the street so I must be short. This Eis-Palast (copied from Melbourne of course) was just opened the other day and seems to be catching on immensely.²³¹ First day, report runs, there were 10,000 visitors […] I have accumulated a vast amount of news […] let's start with Thursday night. Bohème was a huge success: I enjoyed it very much more than when I saw it in Naples – naturally: I knew something about the music this time and added to that we add a splendid Rudolf – Florencio Constantino. He sang in his and your native tongue²³² while others gargled in Deutsch and naturally that gave him distinction but he has a beautiful voice and acts remarkable well. The final act is lovely but I liked it all. Mimi was passable. Miss Mack and H. Kaspar were there and at the end we went off with them to supper at Alt-Bayern – a well-known restaurant in Potsdamer Str. […] On Friday […] evening Wib and I again went to the Kroll: this time it was Margarete (Gounod's Faust)²³³ and ordinary prices only as Constantino wasn't singing. We got excellent seats for 2/-, better than the night before for 2.50. I was, as I knew I should be, delighted with Faust […] I must confess (much as I loved it in Melbourne) it was very much better done here. The staging was really admirable, the acting in most cases good and the singing much above the Melbourne standard. However I didn't care for Mephistopheles. I am sorry to say he was fat […] on Saturday […] evening I went alone to Lucia di Lammermoor at the Kroll. Constantino sang and his best: one applauded so long at the finish that Constantino ceased to appear and the management plunged us in darkness. Marie de Rohan²³⁴ was not good but I remembered Melba²³⁵ too well in the mad scene […] we had to be up early next morning as we were to see Wittenberg […] We left by the 8.30 from Anhalter Bahnhof and got to Wittenberg about 10. It is a quaint old town and you can pretty easily stick yourself down in Reformation times […] Monday – in the afternoon we went over the new Jewish Synagogue.²³⁶ It is rather imposing. In the evening Fräulein Bukovsky and we all went to the Schiffbauaustellung – full of models, ships, cabins, machinery: it was quite interesting²³⁷ […] Yesterday Wib and I would go [sic] to a Jewish wedding in the new synagogue but it'd been postponed […]

Letter 25 To Rex, 9 September 1908, Bible Hotel, Amsterdam

[…] Did we get as far as Friday (?) perhaps? Well my foreboding came true. We went to the Eis Palast: I wish I had been in the Melbourne one some time to have been able to compare the two. Anyhow this one is very fine and the fashionablest of resorts at present – big restaurants and gymnasium and all other such luxuries attached. It was my first sight of skating and naturally I was entirely fascinated by it though when I attempt it I expect many sudden drawbacks. Some of the skaters were wonderfully graceful.

And so on Saturday we got up early – Potsdam was in the wind. We caught the 9 (or thereabouts) train there, taking it as far as Charlottenhof Station. That is the end of Sanssouci Park and we accordingly began our walkings there. We went past Charlottenhof (an Italian-villa house built for Frederick William IV I think – we didn't go in) to the Neues Palais. To our great disgust (though we had expected it) we couldn't go in as the Kaiserin is there at present. Last time Wib was in Potsdam the Kaiser was there, so she's quite out of luck. We had a long walk from there to Sanssouci itself: the palace is built at the top of a series of terraces and steps and so should look imposing but is unfortunately (like the Melbourne House of Parliament) a bit low and so anticlimactically insignificant. The interior with its many memorials and memories of Frederick the Great and later of Frederick William IV was naturally interesting […] We took the steam-launch up the river to Neu-Babelsberg and saw Kaiser Wilhelm I's very simple Schloss there. The grounds and surroundings are beautiful and the Schloss attractive from its very simplicity. It is not now used. We finished the voyage to Neu-Babelsberg Station from which we got a train to Berlin at 4.24 and so were back early, though we saw practically everything. I was pleased with Potsdam but not enraptured: after all the extravagant praise Germans and others had sung to me of it, it was perhaps a bit disappointing to find the Schlosses there very ordinary in character. For instance there was nothing there anything like as beautiful as the Schloss at Weimar. However Potsdam is certainly a very beautiful place and quite full of interest.

That evening we went to Die Rabensteinerin – a play of Ernst von Wildenbruch's I had just read.²³⁸ I had heard great things of it and thought the first act promised well, but soon found it to be quite Blandholtian²³⁹ in character. On the stage it pleased me even less: we saw it in the Schauspielhaus and had all the leading actors including Matkowsky²⁴⁰ and Frau Wittich²⁴¹ but we both thought very little of it – it was a pity. On Sunday we got up early: we went – a long tram ride – to the Old Catholic service in Klosterkirche (in the old quarter – Alt Köln): it is the oldest church in Berlin²⁴² and is properly Lutheran but they lend it to the Old Catholics.²⁴³ The service was of course in German – High Mass. Afterwards we went round and had a talk with the Pfarrer.²⁴⁴ He was most friendly and insistent on the close union between his church and ours. He promised to send us a book containing their services and we gave him our address […] Later on we met Miss Mack and H. Kaspar and went for our last Ausflug²⁴⁵ together – this time no further than Cöpernick – scene of the notorious sham-Hauptmann's adventure a couple of years ago (or less, was it?).²⁴⁶ There was not much to see there, but we had a pleasant enough time […] Yesterday we were up early and got the 9.3 train for Hannover from Zoologischer Garten Station. We travelled 3rd and so were glad to arrive in Hannover which we did at a quarter to one. We found it a most interesting place though everyone had assured us it was

10 September, Grand Hotel Paulez, The Hague

quite modern and dull […] What was our annoyance to find that the 3.36 for the Hook was without a 3rd class. Cook's men had put us wrong. We should have waited for the 4 o'clock Amsterdam train. The result was we had to pay 6 mk. 80 extra for the journey from Hannover to Löhne where we got out and got the Amsterdam train and travelled very cheaply and moderately comfortably. We reached Amersfoort at 8.55 and after half-an-hour's wait got a small train for Utrecht which we got to in 25 minutes. Without much difficulty we found cheapish rooms in the Hotel Central and passed a fairly good night. Up at 7 and out early sight-seeing. We were charmed with the Dutch people. Our speech was unfluent and scarcely understandable but somehow we asked our questions and all we asked of put themselves out to the utmost to guide our erring steps […] Finally we were put on to the track of the Jansenist (or Oudkatholick) Church – hidden away as it is among a block of houses (from fear of persecution?), we should never have found it.²⁴⁷ The church was ordinary and small: emboldened with our success with the Old Catholic Pfarrer in Berlin, we asked to see the Herr Pastor. He proved to be very clerical and as Roman-looking as could be. At first he was very suspicious and our talk (he spoke poor German) about the English church, Old Catholics in Berlin, friendly interest was not convincing. But we gradually won him over and coaxed out some views to this effect – he considered the German Old Catholics to be in communion with us and also with the Jansenists but not the Jansenists with us. The Jansenists are more Roman than the Old Catholics of Germany, but of course un-papal […] Utrecht is their head-quarters – archbishop's see. They have only 9,000 adherents. He got always friendlier, wouldn't let us buy a prayer-book but gave one and we parted most affably […] We left Utrecht about two – a quaint old town – perhaps we shall go over it together some time. The chief street is the Maliebaan (Mall). It is only 22 miles to Amsterdam. Amsterdam is a big city and we wandered about a good while looking for one of the cheap hotels Cook recommends. Unluckily the (Western) station is a long way from the centre of things and hotel-land and we had much useless walking. It was difficult to ask knowing but a word or two of Dutch, but at last we got directions and went by tram to the Dam (most important square in Amsterdam). There the appearance of the Bible Hotel took our fancy: room and breakfast was two gulden 80 cents each (4/8) – Dutch money is hard to grasp at once – but the hotel was nice. Everything was shut, so we bought postcards, strolled around the streets (e.g. Damrak) round the Dam and finally went by tram out to the Oosterpark. It was pretty though not frightfully so. We had dinner at a restaurant, then came back to the hotel […] This morning we were up early and at 9.15 presented ourselves at the door of the Koninglijk Paleis (in the Dam – I sent you a postcard – big building in background: to the right Nieuwe Kerk). It took a long time to go round and was fairly interesting though hardly equalling a big German Schloss in beauty. Still there was lots of interesting matter – pictures, sculpture, furniture, gold and silver ornament etc. From there we went to the Nieuwe Kerk. It is an originally noble Gothic church, now ‘reformed’ atrociously, mutilated, bricked, plastered and what not – badly kept. Alack the day! […] Then we took a tram and went out to the Rijks Museum – luckily free. We didn't really have time to look at anything except the pictures and confined ourselves chiefly to the very famous ones – Rembrandt's Night Watch, Staalmeesters,²⁴⁸ and Anatomical Lesson (horrible subject) – Frans Hals’ Archers, a couple of Van der Helsts and so forth – Dutch painting is very well represented […] We left by 1.34 for Leiden […]

Letter 26 To Rex, 17 September 1908, 159 Knightsbridge

[…] We had only a journey of about 30 miles to Leiden viâ Haarlem – all the towns in Holland are ridiculously near each other luckily – of course it's only a small country and very densely populated. From the postcards we've sent you may perhaps gather that all the country is absolutely flat – green grass, rich-looking land in parts, cows and windmills as a rule to be seen. We should have liked to have seen something of the dykes and their value but had no time. An expedition to the island of Marken (in Zuider Zee) especially would have been interesting. We got to Leiden about lunch-time and promptly had it in a restaurant. Afterwards we saw sights […] Altogether Leiden is a quaint old town though not especially remarkable from the sight-seeing point of view. We couldn't unfortunately spare more than a couple of hours for it and had to get on ten miles further by train to The Hague. Here we had considerable trouble and weary walking to find a hotel. The one we finally got (Hotel Paulez) was moderately good and very dear. By the time we had got rooms there it was a bit late for seeing anything in The Hague, so we took an electric tram out to Scheveningen, the famous watering-place on the sea (pronounce something like Srayven: – a Dutch lady complimented me on my attempt). There is a huge esplanade, there in some ways like ‘the Front’ at Brighton. Of course it is a tremendously sought after place: English and Germans crowd there in summer but the season ends in August, I think. It was a fresh, blowy day: we walked about and inhaled German Ocean²⁴⁹ breezes and then came back […]

12 noon, Friday 18 September

[…] didn't we get up early at The Hague for sight-seeing? Having done so we took a tram out to the Palace in the Wood (Het Huis ten Bosch) one of the Dutch royal residences. Tickets cost half a gulden (10d.) but it was quite worth it as it was one of the most beautiful palaces we've seen. It is quite small and is now only used occasionally by the Queen as she can't fit her court in very well. She nearly always lives at Het Loo in summer and The Hague town palace in winter. We were taken round by a most charming yunk lady – Dutch of course but spoke splendid English and German – a welcome relief after the usual bored and stupid custodians of palaces. The rooms are beautifully decorated with Chinese and Japanese ornament – various presents from the Emperors of China and Japan. The situation of the palace, in the wood, is a delightful one. From there we went back to town and first of all examined Groote Kerk: it is old and of course full of interesting old windows, tombstones etc but there is not anything of striking beauty in it. The Queen was married there in ’01 and it is now the biggest official church. Then we explored the town again – a fascinating old place it is – and went into the old prison above a big gateway called the Gevangenpoort: we were quite sorry we went in. The dungeon dates from about the 13th century and the various rooms were full of the most disgusting instruments of the torture. Our guide told us all about them most realistically and to add to the horror rolled one of his eyes continually, a sightless one […] Wib and I were glad to get out of it and went on to the Mauritshuis to soothe our feelings with its picture-gallery which is a good one. One of the most generally known pictures there is Paul Potter's Young Bull, but Dutch painting generally is well represented. We should have liked to stay longer and seen it more leisurely as well as gone to some of the other museums and seen a bit more of the town which is a rather fine one but we had to push on. We took the steam-tram to Delft which is six or seven miles on. There we had lunch and afterwards sight-saw. First of all to the Nieuwe Kerk. To our astonishment we found it to be the Dutch Westminster Abbey – that is as far as tombs go. All the Orange princes and modern Dutch kings are buried there, why I don't know except perhaps because William the Silent from very good reasons set the example.²⁵⁰ There is an imposing monument over him in the choir and that same vault contains the bodies of practically all his successors […] We went next into a china shop – all Delft goods. I should have loved lots of them and thriftily refrained […] It was rather a disappointment not to be allowed to go over the china works: they have only been closed to visitors the last two years […] We caught a train about 4.30 to Rotterdam. Of course we got there too late to see anything there is to see. We loitered about the town, went for tram-rides, looked at the outside of Erasmus’ house, had dinner, all that kind of thing till about eight and then entrained for the Hook. There we arrived before nine and at once went on board where we had time to think over our three days’ trip and everything else we wanted to for the boat didn't leave till 11.20. By the way I need hardly say that we enjoyed it immensely, though it was rather exhausting rushing through at such a pace. We were surprised to find the people so amusing and polite, quite un-German, and the women so much better-looking. Few of the common people know any language but their own – but we had great fun staggering along with Dutch tho’ sometimes it was annoying […] We had a poor ship and a roughish passage […] On Saturday afternoon Wib and I went to a mattinee of Lady Frederick: I naturally found it hardly as amusing as first time but it is quite clever. On Sunday we saw the Eucharistic Procession²⁵¹ from the windows of Grandmother's flat in Ashley Gardens:²⁵² it was interesting. Apply to Father for full details and arguments against. On Sunday morning Wib and I went to S. Mary Magdalene's, Munster Sq. – incense, but not one of the extremist churches; in the evening Father and I heard Mr Addis (formerly Roman Catholic) in S. Margaret's, Westminster.²⁵³ On Monday evening, Alexander supplying seats, we two heard H.B. Irving in Hamlet at King's Theatre, Hammersmith:²⁵⁴ I liked him but the ruck of the company was poor. On Wednesday we all went again – this time Louis XI.²⁵⁵ H.B. was very forcible tho’ perhaps exaggerated as Louis: it is a striking play. Yesterday afternoon Madre and Wib and I went for 1/- seats at Duke of York's: wretched seats but delightful play – J.M. Barrie's ‘What Every Woman Knows’: Gerald du Maurier²⁵⁶ and Hilda Trevelyan²⁵⁷ – acting and play alike capital […]

Letter 27 To Rex, 1 October 1908, 159 Knightsbridge

[…] Next week I start at Oxford. College entrance exam – I must be in residence for the two days – are on the 7th and 8th: my subjects are Gibbon, vols. 4, 5, 6, 7: S. Mark and S. John in Greek and an English Essay. Gibbon has been delightful to reread and I know it fairly: the Greek Gospels I have barely looked at and must rely on a religious upbringing and fortune's favours. It is said Oxford only costs £110 a year. I'm allowing at least £180 but I fear more […] The weather has been wonderful – delightfully hot and this is October 1. You can't beat a North European summer but fancy such weather in October. All England stands amazed […] Last Friday Wally Cain took me to the Flag Lieutenant – a racy naval play and good fun.²⁵⁸ […] On Sunday […] evening Father and I went to S. John's Westminster. At the end of the service Archdeacon Wilberforce²⁵⁹ gave an exceedingly impressive address on the Luards’ deaths and then we had special intercessions for them and the relatives.²⁶⁰ He is a very fine man and a superb preacher – Father and I both place him at the top of what we've heard. In the morning at eleven Madre, Y and I went to S. Alban's High Holborn, which you probably know was the first big ritualised church in London. The service was highly ritualistic but not of the extremist type. Father Stanton preached:²⁶¹ I never heard a weirder preacher nor perhaps a more arresting one. On Monday […] evening Alexander took Father and Madre to Faust: Y and I went in the pit. We had messenger-boys in the queue from six to seven and ourselves stood from seven till half-past,²⁶² yet many were in front and the crowd enormous. The version of Stephen Phillips and Comyns Carr was a good one and the staging wonderful, so I enjoyed the play to a great extent.²⁶³ The acting was not satisfactory. As Mephistopheles, Beerbohm Tree was only good at times. Faust himself failed.²⁶⁴ Marie Löhr, a young Australian, was charming as Margaret but obviously without experience.²⁶⁵ Dame Martha was excellent.²⁶⁶ Next morning was Michaelmas Day and we all went to S. Paul's Knightsbridge (vestments) at 8.30. In the afternoon […] Y. and I went out and looked at the pictures at the Exhibition:²⁶⁷ the English collection is a very good one including many Reynolds, Gainsboroughs, Romneys, Turners etc. – of course all pictures which could not be seen otherwise as they are in private collections. The French collection I don't care for over-much […] Yesterday […] afternoon Father and I went out a-frangling. We looked at the pictures, went on the Flip-flap,²⁶⁸ scenic railway and innumerable other sideshows and altogether had a goodish time. It makes my sixth visit […]

Letter 28 To his father, 10 October 1908, Houghton

[…] I went up to Oxford on Tuesday and in the […] evening I dined in hall. There were not many there and it was quite an informal meal. Next day they kept me busy with exams. In the morning I had an essay for three hours. They gave a choice of five subjects. The one I chose was ‘Is oratory of more importance in ancient or in modern times?’ The others were of various kinds – Shakespeare's use of supernatural agencies, value of fortresses in warfare, and others of that sort. I gave ’em twelve sheets on oratory – broken by a short viva voce on Greek Testament. They asked me bits I hadn't read but the questions were quite easy. In the afternoon I had a three hours’ paper on Gibbon. It was an interesting one and I liked it. The five questions I chose were ‘When was the Saracen empire at its greatest? Explain its subsequent decline’: ‘Is Gibbon fair to the Byzantine Empire?’: ‘What were the motives, religious, political, social of the first Crusade?’: ‘In what part of his history does Gibbon display most historical genius?’: ‘What were the causes and circumstances of the final separation of the Western Provinces from the Empire?’. At 5.30 I had another viva voce with three other examiners who asked me my views on Gibbon and history and things generally. It was the comicest exam I've ever struck – most amusing – test of intelligence kind of thing. I liked being in college even though only in temporary rooms and dining in hall and all the other tricks […] Yesterday I heard was admitted, though I don't know yet whether I'll have rooms in college or not […]

Letter 29 To his father, 12 October 1908, Balliol

[…] I […] was much depressed on getting into college to hear that I hadn't got rooms and a Saturday afternoon was not the best hour in the world for looking about for lodgings, but luckily they managed to put me into this spare bedroom where I sleep like a top but haven't as much space as I should like. However, H.W.C. Davies,²⁶⁹ one of the History tutors (and a fellow of All Souls) has been very kind to me and has lent me one of his two sitting rooms. I had dinner in hall of course and noticed an immense difference in numbers. Hall is a very dead and awful meal. The tucker is excellent good but the whole affair only takes some 20 minutes. There is no grace that I hear of nor any attempt at dress, save the commoner's gown only. In the evening I went round to Fluffy Davis’ rooms and had a yarn with him. He is a grand chap and very nice to me.²⁷⁰ Yesterday, was I not energetic? To chapel at 8, breakfast in hall at 8.45, chapel again at 9.40. The Bishop of Bombay celebrated at 8 – he is an old Balliol man and tomorrow night they are presenting him with a pastoral staff.²⁷¹ The 9.40 was Mattins and a somewhat dead service: the singing was poorly and the responses beneath contempt and the breath. The tone of Balliol theologically is ‘Low’ I believe but their views would hardly pass the E.C.A.²⁷² […] I've seen a lot of Mervyn.²⁷³ He's been jolly good about looking me up and I like him immensely. Le Conteur is a nice fellow but very palpably below par socially. However he is a good chap and a splendid athlete. He may get his blue at cricket. I didn't go to evening chapel: the Bishop of Bombay preached and afterwards came into hall. Ye undergrads marked his entry by knocking the tables with eating instruments as in Melbourne. After hall I went into an American freshman named Carpenter's rooms and had a long chat with him. I rather like him. Many speak to me but unless they please, I chum not overmuch. However I've met a good many. Today I've been busy. I went to breakfast with two tutors – J.A. Smith and H.W.C. Fluffy Davis – in J.A. Smith's (not A.L.S. the history man) rooms. I liked J.A.S. I afterwards had a long yarn with him. He is a Greats tutor and will probably be mine AS I AM NOT GOING TO DO MODS²⁷⁴ BUT DO GREATS (you'll be pleased, won't you?) IN TWO YEARS. And then take another year for Modern History finals. I also had a yarn this morning with A.W. Pickard-Cambridge (you were right) and Cyril Bailey, tutors each. In the afternoon […] I bought one or two cheap necessary second-hand books and got measured for clothes and then hunted for lodgings. I found nearly everything full but struck two possibilities. But I do hope I get into college. They're giving me from tomorrow on rooms for a fortnight as R.L. Benson, one of the family,²⁷⁵ is touring with the Governor-General of Canada.²⁷⁶ I'm going to attend three lots of lectures – A.L. Lindsay on Plato's Theory of Ideas, the Master on Cicero's Letters and Mr Ross of Oriel on Moral Philosophy […] They allow me senior standing²⁷⁷ but I must write to W.E. Cornwall²⁷⁸ for a certificate of Final Honours. I find Oxford quite delightful but have done no sight-seeing yet. The weather continues perfect […]

Letter 30 To his father and stepmother, 14 October 1908, Balliol

[…] I enjoy the life, having been here a good few days and me now admitted to the University […] Yesterday I actually had two hours’ lectures – which seems to be considered a terrible deal up here. The first was the Master on Cicero's Life and Letters – you probably know he is a great authority on Tully and his doings.²⁷⁹ The other was W.D. Ross at Oriel on Moral Philosophy – my first dip into Ethics. I think I shall rather like it. In the afternoon I explored Oxford a bit including All Souls’ Chapel. In the evening with 18 others I dined with the Master – a very fine dinner, food and drink alike lavish. The Master is a very nice old chap, very absent-minded, but immensely liked and likeable. I sat next Reynell, the famous Adelaide athlete. I talked to him a lot and liked him immensely. He seems a very fine chap […] It was a pity I was up to dinner with the Master, as it was the same night as the presentation in hall of the pastoral staff given by the undergrads. of the college to the new Bishop of Bombay. I believe Ronald Knox, one of the cleverest men among the scholars, made a most amusing speech.²⁸⁰ I have just heard I have been elected to the Union. Tomorrow the debate is on Asquith's action over the Procession.²⁸¹ I mean to go. This morning I went to breakfast with Harry Creswick at his rooms in Wellington Sq. There were four others there. At twelve I had a lecture from A.D. Lindsay, one of the tutors, on the Theory of Ideas in Plato. It was a bit deep but interesting. Unfortunately he is very hard to follow and stammers. At 2.30 we were all lined up in hall for matriculation. After signing our names and paying £3.10. 0 we had successively to go up before the Vice-Chancellor (Warren of Magdalen) and receive a copy of the Statutes of the University. You remember it. It was a quaint but tedious ceremony as there were about 60 I should think matriculated. The nobility were represented by Lord Leveson-Gower (a kid of about 16) and two German Grafen.²⁸² The Vice-Chancellor, who had come to us out of compliment to his old college, in his short speech referred to the deaths of Louis Dyer,²⁸³ Whitmore²⁸⁴ and Churton Collins²⁸⁵ […] Uncle Boyce²⁸⁶ […] was very pleased at my taking Greats. I know you will be tho’ it's considered rather presumptuous to attempt so much. I'm amazed at the nature of the work about which I had a long talk with J.A. Smith, my tutor, a splendid man, from Aberdeen way.²⁸⁷ No verses at all! and even prose of but small account! amazing! […] Plenty of Thicksides (all of ’em)²⁸⁸ and H-r–d–t–s,²⁸⁹ also Plato's Republic all – Tacitus, Cicero's Letters and Philosophy of all kinds. My stars and planets! Now about the Brack.²⁹⁰ I've asked several people, chiefly H.W.C. Davis. I decided on entering. Not but what H.W.C.D. thinks my chance a poor one. He doubts very reasonably sufficiency of knowledge in me now or time to acquire such. However, granted I even pushed my younger rivals hard, passed or excelled them, still

maxima debentur pueris reverentia²⁹¹

I should amend to

Maxima debentur pueris²⁹²

The maximums are the right of the kids […]

Today for lunch I had

Cold Rosbif      8d.

Custard      4d.

Bread, Butter, Milk   4d.

Not so expensive as it used to be (e.g. Holland). The man thought I'd only have bread and cheese but your son proved equal to the occasion and his soul craved Rosbif and Custard and glad he was of them […] The Soccer Secretary had just been round to enrol, but I refused naturally. Rowing, rugger, soccer being refused, racquets being only playable on the Radley court,²⁹³ gravel lawn-tennis must content me and hockey if possible. I'm thinking of boxing. Reynell suggested it. It's the best of all sport but a bit strenuous for the chest. I think I'll try it. The same applies, only more so, to rowing – which I shan't try. I'd like golf but there's no one to teach and play me. It'd be the best sport of all for me. As for the King’s Own Colonials²⁹⁴ – it's a splendid thing and several Australians have urged me to join but I feel pretty decided against in my case. It's naturally an expensive job and besides tremendously strenuous, riding buckjumpers [?idea],²⁹⁵ and pretty hard field work. I'd love to join if I felt equal to it but will wait, see and learn more. I shan't anyway join this term. The chapel services are poor here – not nearly up to our little chapel at home. The men are excellently well-behaved but like dumb, driven cattle only they don't even low. The chaplain has a moustache. The character of Mattins is most peculiar. The service was: – two verses, general confession, Lord's Prayer, two psalms (for third morning!), second lesson (from S. Matthew!), several Sunday collects, hymn, College Prayer, benediction. The chaplain bears uneasily the immortal name of Gibbon. I went into evensong last night. The congregation comprised the minister (whether a clerk or layman I know not), Ronald Knox, who read the lesson, and me […] I do hope I'll be able to stay in college. All the best digs are gone […]

Letter 31 To his whole family, 18 [October 1908], Staircase XVI, no. 5, Balliol

[…] On Thursday […] evening I went to the Union debate. Asquith's action re Procession was condemned by 175 to 140. The speaking was I suppose good but only one speaker was remarkably so. He was a Roman Catholic and spoke admirably – a very witty speech (not Irish). He spoke against Asquith's action. Strange to say several R.C.'s supported it as a statesmanlike precaution against rioting. The religious aspect was naturally not raised and the speakers chiefly centred round the point, was Asquith's action a reasonable and fair one? I voted No but Ayes won by 35. At the beginning there may have been 400 present (including visitors) but towards the end everyone had left. The speakers spoke to a silent audience: there were no interjections – not one. But before the debate started, president and treasurers were assailed with SCORES of ridiculous, would-be-funny questions. Really it might have been a Shell form-room.²⁹⁶ Wit was occasionally present, folly ever. Why the president²⁹⁷ allowed it all, I am ignorant […] Today chapel at 9.40, moustached chaplain, no sermon. After, Mervyn, I and ‘Gerry’ Portus, a New-South-Welsh Rhodes and International Rugger, biked out to see G.H. Cookie, out at Bickley (five or six miles south-east of Oxenford)²⁹⁸ […] I've met several decent chaps including a gent. named Shaw, an oar, who lives on my staircase. I like him very much. I went to tea with MacMillan on Friday and have seen him since. Lectures continue few and mediocre […] Norfolk jacket is ordered.²⁹⁹ They had no striped sort for trousers. Therefore I have ordered the pair of dark sort you didn't like. Everyone here is wearing them – Mervyn H. and all the bloods. Everyone wears them, shopman amazed at my displeasure […]

Letter 32 To Kitty, [20 October 1908], 1.50, Balliol

[…] I got back from Oriel this morning after (1) an hour's chat with my old Scotch tutor, J.A. Smith, a splendid chap, best don in college, on the subject of Socrates, when he did most of the discoursing, the text being an essay of mine thereon which I had just declaimed (2) a moderately good sermon from the Master on Cicero's life between 64–63 B.C. […] and (3) an interesting but exciting lecture on Moral Philosophy from Ross of Oriel: the excitement was chiefly in trying to catch him. As it was I got six sheets of foolscap in my petite Handschrift. You might have fancied the yap, as it was rather nice – mostly on Heredity and Environment and Free Will which you used to debate about […] You speak of Carlyle. I am now the Sartor Resartus.³⁰⁰ Yesterday I bought a READYMADE OVERCOAT. You shriek with rage? For 45/-. Wib joins in the cry of derision? Well, look here. It's not at all bad, really, I took about 23 minutes to choose it. But it fits so well. I was keen on having one made. £4. 4. 0 and £3. 15. 0 were the usual prices. 45/- this and a born fit. I like the appearance – (Imitation) Fleece Raincoat it is called. I've just been into my cubicle to look at its colour: dark, blackish, with dull green and faint light lines I should say […] They sell two trouser presses, one 21/-, t'other 12/6. After careful contemplation I think 12/6 will do very well. Of boots, I've got a ready-made, very strongly shod, box-calf, 22/-: to make would have been 30/-. Shoppie was urgent to buy ready-made, naturally, wanted to get rid of stock on hand. They fit well and will do nicely for country and slushy roads. I bought boot-trees, 3/6. Of waistcoats I bought a very nice woollen one, fits well, and I like well the colour of it, for 12/6d. It seems nice to me […] Yesterday afternoon I spent in walking all over Oxford dig-hunting – but no Diggers’ Rest.³⁰¹ I'll have to go to old lady in Museum Road after all, but perhaps she's took now […]

Letter 33 To his father, 25 [October 1908], Balliol

[…] On Thursday night I went to a talk at the Union condemning the Government's action over South African affairs.³⁰² I heard the four speakers on the paper and then voted Tory, that is, aye. Unhappy me! do not know whether I am Tory or Radical. I seem to agree with everybody in some views and nobody in all. The speaking is good and yet disappointing. The young orators soar admirably at times but then either lose their confidence and sink and fall or else flap their views ineffectively. They all say clever things but all speak though wisely yet youngly. The audience is polite, sometimes moved to applause, never to dissent or interjection. Oxford's a funny place. They always do just what you'd not expect them to about everything. Young Rufus Isaacs spoke for the Noes and has a huge one (for Madre's benefit! isn't it a funny joke, it fell off the nib as I was writing the above line). His speech was partly eloquent, partly halting.³⁰³ Our Arnold Society meets next Tuesday night on unemployment. I shall talk unless too shy. On Friday night I went to an informal meet and coffee-drink of the King's Colonials. The claims and advantages of the Troop were laid before us freshers. Two Canadians spoke and very well too. There were a great many colonials there, I sat next Rivett and Le Conteur. Rivett had previously written to ask me to brekker with him tomorrow at Lincoln. I'm going. I liked him quite fairly. As for the K.C.'s I'm not going to join now but may very possibly attempt to do so next March. I'll see how I am. I've joined the O.U. Lawn Tennis Club and am playing in the Freshers’ singles this week (gravel courts). I shall probably also learn boxing. As for work why I'm going to three lectures a week, Master on Cicero's Times (dull), A.D. Lindsay on Plato's Theory of Ideas (interesting but hard to follow: lecturer stutters), and W.D. Ross of Oriel on Ethics, very interesting but ‘futile’ sort of stuff. I could never be keen on philosophy. It's such a resultless sort of thing, I think you've got to have a great soul to like it. I'm writing on ‘The Sophists’ for J.A. Smith this week. I like him very much. Yesterday at 5 p.m. I went to the weekly lecture in the Schools, Andrew Lang on ‘Homer’. Of course he was delightful, such a queer face and voice, but very interesting. I think he's a bit too much of the comparative anthropologist/mythologist and too little of the Homeric scholar, though. His defence of the unity of the poems was forcible but I don't think very deep. He was interesting on Homeric life and times. Next week Gilbert Murray talks on The Greek Epic. All my spare evenings at present go to History. I've nearly finished Maine's Ancient Law³⁰⁴ and am reading besides Stubbs’ Constitutional History vol. I (awfully nice),³⁰⁵ Macaulay's Essays³⁰⁶ and Tout's Empire and Papacy.³⁰⁷ I'm afraid my chance is next to nothing.³⁰⁸ It's worth trying for but don't expect me to get it, honestly […] Now about rooms; I'll probably have to go out of these tomorrow as R.L. Benson is coming back. I (1) may have to go straight into ‘digs’ or (2) may have other rooms either (a) for good or (b) till the last doubtful comes. I do hope I get in but I fear not. I go to chapel most mornings at 8.5. The way things work is this. One must put in six rollers a week:³⁰⁹ one can do three on Sundays (any two chapels and brekker in hall) and must get three others on weekdays. For this one either goes to roll-call at 7.50 or chapel at 8.5. I believe I need not put in rollers at all, as I have Senior Standing […] It's getting very cold now and frosty o'mornings. The air bites shrewdly but the sun generally shines tho’ it fails to warm. It's very poor having to splash in a puddle in the mornings instead of a glorious shower but in other respects we are luxuriously set up here. My scout is all attention and so far has not been seen by me thieving.

Letter 34 To his father, 30 [October 1908], Balliol

[…] I've just had a simple brekker of fish, toast, butter and tea badly made by my own efforts. It varies like one thing because I never know how much water to put in. This morning it was horrid but tomorrow it may be quite nice […] On Tuesday night I went to the Arnold: it is the biggest Balliol debating society but quite small – only 40 or 50 present I should think and in a quite small room. The subject was unemployment and the speaking I thought pretty good. I had meant to speak but the four speakers on the paper stole all my points³¹⁰ and as I knew very little about it to begin with I shyly refrained. I'll certainly have a shot later on tho’. They've run me in for a speak at the Colonial Club up here next Tuesday on ‘Rhodes’ object in opening the Scholarships to U.S.A. and Germany’. I know very little about it and will probably be atrocious. I wasn't at the Union last night as the subject – ‘Asquith on Unemployment’ – was a tedious one […] On Tuesday I had Shaw in to breakfast with me. He lived next me on the staircase (of course not now that I've moved) and so I saw something of him. He seems rather keen on History which he is doing and is in for the Brack! I expect he'll get it […] I told you I went to brekker with Rivett at Lincoln last Monday. I like him immensely and think Oxford must have done him a lot of good. Funnily enough he was over at Tilly's (Berlin)³¹¹ last April and seems to have learnt Deutsch fairly. How he liked it I don't know. I'm very comfortable here where I'm settled for a week at least. If Monson comes up on November 6 (last possible day) then I'll have to go into digs but thro’ the porter³¹² I've got some very nice ones and quite near at 55 Holywell – much better than old Mrs Higgins in Museum Road […] I didn't care for her rooms – quite gloomy, pokey things for 26/- a week. These others are 30/- but oh! what a difference! But I hope Monson won't come up and I'll be able to stay on here – very nice and overlooking Trinity quad. The Hippolytus of Euripides in Gilbert Murray's translation is being done tonight at the New Theatre by a London company:³¹³ it would be most interesting but I'm afraid I haven't time to go. The theatre is excellent up here but I can't possibly go being far too busy unluckily. You know G. Murray is the new Professor of Greek (vice Bywater)?³¹⁴ I'm going to hear him tomorrow on The Early Greek Epic. He is lecturing to Mods. people on the Hippolytus! I like what I see of the freshers up here. There seems to be no attempt at discipline in College – tutors’ discipline as we know it. Every Wednesday and Saturday evening ‘the Quendales’ (the drunk lot) get together in the quad and sing from circa 10 to 1! I'm fairly quiet here but I get most of Trinity's noises and their drunks last night made things noisy. Did I tell you how very much I liked the ’Varsity Sermon at St. Mary's last Sunday evening? I never saw a church more crowded or heard a more appropriate sermon. It was the Bishop of London.³¹⁵ He was really awfully good. I was a bit prejudiced against him from hearing his name continually in High Church mouths but really he deserves every word of praise he gets. He is one of the finest men I ever saw or heard. After, I went on an Oxford House, Calcutta meeting in Christ Church hall. Chapel here is a very dead thing. We have no choir and have the reputation of being very Low, so the result is most depressing. Very few turn up. Personally I hate the chapel prayers with bits here and there out of the liturgy. In the evening they have prayer-book evensong which I like considerably more but there are never more than three or four there […] On Wednesday afternoon the coxless fours began. Very little interest was taken in them […] I'm to go to tea with the Warden of New College on Sunday: he wrote – ‘Dear Mr L, as I have known your father a long time will you come to tea with us on Sunday at a quarter to five that I may make your acquaintance – yours sincerely, W.G. Spooner’ – perhaps I'll hear some Spoonerisms.³¹⁶ I'd written to tell him where you were […]

[PS] […] I called at Dr Grenfell's last Sunday. No one there – he has broken down badly, poor chap, and is in London. Papyrology is very hard work³¹⁷ […]

Letter 35 To his father and stepmother, 1 November 1908, Balliol

[…] The last four or five days here have been quite delightful after the cold a week ago. Since Friday it has been summer weather – lowest temperature at night 53. And this is the 1st November. Only six months of winter left […] On Thursday afternoon I had a game on the Balliol gravel courts with three others – Bernstein (a Galician Jew landholder's son, very clever but I don't care for his strong Semitic characteristics: he was the other man who was at lunch that day the Master invited me up in July), Vlieland, whom I don't know much, and Montefiore, son of the interesting Old Testament writer,³¹⁸ a Jew but very nice. He is on my present staircase and landing and I see a good deal of him: he is quite young. We had a rotten game as the courts were sodden. Next day I had to play off my first round in the Freshers’ Tournament. I was against R.E.L. Wingate (Balliol) and won easily (6–3, 6–2) as he was quite rotten: I had him in to tea afterwards – liked him very much indeed. He is Scotch but very ‘English’ and from Bradfield School. As for work it's going all right at present – very busy. Macaulay is very good reading: I'm at his essays on W. Pitt (elder) at present and it's nice to be looking out on the quad of his³¹⁹ old college (Trinity). The creeper on its walls is looking lovely at present. Last night they seemed to be having a drunk there: the noise was appalling and I couldn't get to sleep till about half-past twelve. Yesterday afternoon I went to hear Gilbert Murray at the Schools on The Early Greek Epic from an anthropological standpoint. So far from being an aged man as you told me, he is very young³²⁰ […] He dealt a lot with the primitive – Greek mysteries and those of the Australian blacks: the ῥόμβος, bull-roarer etc.³²¹ and among others two points he made were: that the Cyclic poems tho’ later than ‘Homer’ present us with a picture of an older and less refined civilisation and that the βασιλɛῖς³²² of the old tribes were the representatives in descent of the Hobs or medicine-men. Today I've been to a lot of places: chapel at 8, hall at 8.45 and then to All Saints’ (now S. Martin and All Saints’) in the High. It was the two hundredth anniversary of its re-building. The Rector of Lincoln (an old vicar) preached³²³ […] The sermon was quite an interesting one, mostly historical […] Afterwards I went on to New College to tea with Dr Spooner: he is a very cheerful old gentleman with a wife much larger than himself and three fair (i.e. not dark) daughters. You know him don't you? He's really an albino, I think […] I also went to college chapel at 6.15: the college chaplain (H.H. Gibbon) preached. The sermon wasn't bad and I think he seems a good, sincere man, but terribly uninspiring. The tone of the services is terribly ‘Low’ and I find it very depressing. The singing and answering seems so unhearty and we have such mournful hymns in our chorale book (Baxter, Cowper etc³²⁴) and any hymns I know are sung to different tunes […] Sunday night I went to the University Sermon at S. Mary's. It was the Bishop of Stepney and he preached on ‘Here I am, send me’.³²⁵ It was a very thoughtful and interesting sermon but I was feeling rather sorry all the time he couldn't apply it to Melbourne or at the present moment Montreal: but he is perhaps right in refusing the latter as his work here is perhaps of more importance³²⁶ […]

Letter 36 To his stepmother, 4 November 1908, Balliol

[…] Dr Caird, the late Master, died on Sunday night.³²⁷ The funeral takes place on Thursday. He was a man of about 70. On Monday afternoon I played tennis with the Bernstein I have mentioned and won easily, as he is quite rotten […] Yesterday I had two lectures in the morning – the Master (awfully dull and slow) on Cicero's Life and W.D. Ross of Oriel (interesting enough but idiotic kind of stuff I think Ethics is: I find it quite interesting but it seems such a waste of time). In the afternoon I had a single with Wingate whom I beat in the Tournament.³²⁸ We both played very much better yesterday and had a jolly good game, me pipping him at 4–6, 6–2, 6–1. I went round to tea with him afterwards and am playing in a four with him today. He is a very nice chap, nice face (wears pince-nez), does Maths, good golfer […] Last night came off the debate on Pan-Teutonism at the Colonial Club: there were only 17 there but we had a jolly good debate […] I wasn't nervous luckily about speaking and enjoyed myself. I spoke I think much better than at any previous attempt. The opener Brinker³²⁹ made a good speech. The annual dinner comes off next week. I believe I was to be elected to the Arnold last night but of course couldn't be there. This morning I went to brekker with two dons: H. McKinnon Wood (a nice little chap) and A.D. Lindsay from whom I have a lekker at 12. There were three others there and we had quite a decent time. The weather continues quite moderate but I expect it will soon get cold again […] In the way of clothing I'm well fortified. My purchases up here have been

One nice, comfortable warm and pretty Norfolk jacket (wear it always) (made to order)     37/6

One do. do. do. do. woollen waistcoat (ready made)       12/6

One do. do. do. do. pr. grey flannel trousers (made to order)   15/6

4 very –––––––– all woollen soft shirts (ready made)       38/–

4 very very –––– pairs worsted socks (ready made)       10/–

3 very ———— pairs all-woollen pyjamas (ready made)       39/6

1 very ———— overcoat (ready made)       45/–

1 thick pair boots (ready made)       22/–

All these things are κτῆμα ἐς ἀɛί³³⁰ (explain to Father) and awfully nice and comfortable. Of course as a rule one wears Norfolk and goes bare-headed or golf-cap: on Sundays all wear bowler and my nice little cane goes out walking with me […]

Letter 37 To his father, 5 November 1908, 3.30 p.m., Oxford Union

[…] This morning I had two men in to breakfast – Montefiore who is (was, now) on my landing and Bryce. Montefiore is a son of the Hebrew divinity writer and is an exceedingly nice fellow not a bit Jewy. His father was at college with Uncle Boyce: Bryce is a regular ‘Sandy’ in appearance and an old Etonian […] I have just come back from the late Master's funeral. He died last Sunday night. There were a good many people there but I thought a very poor attendance of Balliol men. We processed to St. Sepulchre's Cemetery in Walton St. I expect owing to the funeral there will not be the usual Guy Fawkes’ rows tonight […] I hope to be fairly comfortable in digs – there are two other (older) Balliol men there and I have really got their friend's rooms, as he was too ill to come up this term. The man whose rooms I've just had in college was Monson (son of the or a former Ambassador to Paris). He appears to suffer from agues and the scout began to light fires in my bedroom some days ago in view of his return […]

Letter 38 To his father, 8 November, 145 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

[…] I wrote to you last Thursday from the Union. That night I moved into digs (55 Holywell) and am now comfortably and I hope permanently settled in. They are very nice indeed – only a few minutes’ walk from Balliol and exceedingly comfortable. The bedder is quite airy and roomy and the sitter is awfully good – electric light and general luxury. They are a wee bit expensive but not frightfully so – 30/- a week and 2/- more for electric light – and the following charges for meals:– 1/3 brekker, 6d. lunch, 6d. tea, 2/- dinner. Of course tea is only indulged in when visitors occur and dinner I have in hall. Brekker is exceedingly good – porridge, fish (delicious) and boiled eggs (on Friday), liver and bacon (excellent) today, and coffee, toast, marmalade etc. – all splendid. I never had a better breakfast in my life than on Friday. For lunch I have a jug of milk, cheese, celery, butter, jam – quite substantial, very nice and thoroughly cheap. On Saturdays I have brekker in hall, as we have to get our Battels […] and I have dinner (i.e. lunch) here on Sundays […] Gerard East (son of South Leigh vicar) was here to brekker on Thursday and on Tuesday Wingate and Le Conteur. Tomorrow I go for brekker to Montefiore […]

Letter 39 To [?his father], [?15 November 1908]³³¹

[…] After lunch I played off my 2nd round of the ‘Freshers’ on the ’Varsity courts. I was against Meiggs of Merton, an American. We had an awfully good game in which he came out top. The scores were 6–4, 6–4. I played in better form than I had yet. He plays a rather good Indian (Singh of Balliol) next round and unless he gets pipped will win the tournament, if he can beat Le Conteur. The old pro. present thought he (i.e. Meiggs) ought to get his blue. He (Meiggs) seemed a rather nice chap. I said ‘Well we had a good go, hadn't we?’ to which he rejoined ‘I enjoyed that game vurry much’: we are going to fix up some goes later on. In the evening after hall I had two freshers round to coffee – Hannay […] whose rooms (the dark and dreary) I occupied for four hours, and Clark one of last year's Brackenbury Scholars and I think a pretty intelligent chap. I have made one or two discoveries – Wingate, whom I told you I liked so much, is the son of the Sirdar³³² and Bryce whom I had round to brekker the other day is a nephew of the ambassador-historian.³³³ ‘The world is indeed a small place’. Yesterday […] in the afternoon I played Bernstein singles: he is horribly poorish but led off 3–1: I then scored 24 games running and won 6–3, 6–0, 6–0, 6–0, 6–1. I didn't seem able to miss and wish I had played so v. Meiggs. Talking of sport, Mervyn is rowing stroke in the Trial Eight and everyone is hoping he'll get his blue. I do hope he will […] On Friday afternoon Cookie and Howell Collins³³⁴ dropped in on me and we had tea. I hadn't seen Howell for ages but rather took to him. (Howell's pa³³⁵ is going to speak at the Colonial Club dinner on Friday). He is staying with Cookie at Beckley. Cookie is mad on rugger and said it was his greatest interest in life […]

Letter 40 To Rex, 15 November 1908, 55 Holywell, Oxford

[…] Last Sunday I went […] to evensong in chapel at 6.15. The chapel was crammed as the Master was to speak about Dr Caird, which he did extremely nicely. He is a grand old chap and we all like him immensely. His Cicero letters lectures are a bit tedious. Men tell that one day he had to reprove a man in lekker for looking bored and taking no notes – and victim replied ‘Oh! it's quite all right, sir, I have my grandfather's’. Except for lekkers, though, the old Mugger is a great old chap: he behaved awfully well to Dr Caird and in fact could have been elected instead of him (in ’93). Monday passed fairly uneventfully. I had brekker with Montefiore: two others were there – a silly little Balliol idiot called Ashton and a New College Jew named Phillips, who seemed rich³³⁶ […] Monday morning is free from lekkers, so I was able to do some work. In the afternoon I took a bike from Armsted's shop³³⁷ on a trial spin up Woodstock Road and then round to the west and back through Wolvercote and Wytham – five or six miles altogether I should think. It seemed to run very nicely, so I decided to buy it. £4–10–0 is the figure – second-hand of course but only six months old and apparently in admirable condition. It is a tremendous advantage having a bicycle. In the evening I worked at History: I am reading now Macaulay's Essays, Stubbs’ Constitutional History, Bagehot's English Constitution³³⁸ and Lodge's Close of the Middle Ages³³⁹ – exams start on Tuesday fortnight but I am afraid that neither for that nor for the Classical Exhibitions have I a hope. On Tuesday morning I had Wingate in to breakfast: he is an exceedingly nice chap – son of the Sirdar – and of course lived for a long time in Egypt. I can describe him easily but he has a very English, and very boyish face, smallish, and wears glasses. He is really Scotch and was at Bradfield School. I often play tennis with him. He's rather an all-round man, so he plays soccer and hockey and is a splendid golfer […] In the afternoon I rode out to Radley with Montefiore, Huxley and Collier – the last two are grandsons of Professor Huxley³⁴⁰ and very bright interesting men […] I must tell you about the weather. Up to date it has been quite ideal. Monday and Tuesday were on paper very cold. On Monday we had 12 degrees of frost in Oxford and on Tuesday 15 (according to Uncle Boyce's thermometer 17!). But it was such bright sunny weather, you couldn't mind it at all. The only pang was the bed-leaving and tubbing,³⁴¹ which was chilly enough. On cold days everyone here wears gloves, white woollen ones are all the go and only 2/3 a pair. They are rather nice but not warm enough for Berlin, for which I mean to get fur ones, also much worn here. On Tuesday night it rained and the weather since has been as mild as you can imagine and quite fine. It must be as record an autumn, as the summer was a record summer […] On Tuesday evening I dropped into the Arnold. The subject was ‘’Tis better to have loved’ etc.³⁴² and the opener, an American, made a capital funny-speech. I came away after that. It is a hard place to speak in, the comic element much predominating. On Wednesday afternoon I went to two self-imposed lectures. The first was the inaugural lecture of the Professor of Music in the Sheldonian. I don't know his name but he has just succeeded Sir Hubert Parry.³⁴³ He made an extremely amusing and interesting lecture of it and I liked it very much indeed. He also played a couple of things – a nocturne of Chopin's and a fantasia of Bach (organ). Late on in the afternoon I went to the first of an archaeological series in the Ashmolean on ‘Recent Excavations in Greece’. The lecturer, Guy Dickins, was connected with the British School at Athens and is now appointed a Fellow of Exeter. The lecture was on Sparta and extremely interesting, expanding and illustrating the theory (now we might say the fact) that up to about 550 B.C. Sparta had been a quite considerable centre of art and industry. His lantern-slides were excellent. Before the lecture Professor Gardner spoke a few words. There were some 50 people there, mostly ladies. I believe Professor Gardner's Sculpture lectures at the Ashmolean are very good. I see I've forgotten to tell you about Professor McKail's lecture at the Schools on Tuesday last. It was on Milton and naturally a splendid one. Uncle Boyce who was there thought it was one of the best lectures he had ever heard. I won't go on as far as that, but I liked it very much. The only objection I had to the lecture was that MacKail would read all the poetry he quoted under his breath as though not meant for the profanum vulgus.³⁴⁴ On Thursday morning I had Cicero and Ethics lectures. In the afternoon I played tennis with the Bernstein and pipped 6–1, 6–-0, 6–3. In the evening I went round to see Le Conteur at Univ. and had coffee in his rooms and fixed up a game of tennis for the morrow. By the way on Thursday morning I had Carpenter a Yank at Balliol […] and East (see above) to brekker. I have had several men in to coffee after dinner and at other times. I also parted with a couple of hundred stamps to Bryce, one of the red-headed brigade – a nephew of the ambassador at Washington. He's quite a nice chap. On Friday morning I read my essay to J.A. at 11 – this week on Plato's View of Poetry as a Means of Education – and afterwards went to Lindsay on Plato's Ideas. In the afternoon I had five sets with Le Conteur on the Balliol courts. I could not get going at first but afterwards brightened up slightly though I could not win […] He is playing very consistently at present and ought I should think to be certain of his half-blue for that and I hope his cricket blue. I am hoping to get in the Balliol VI next summer.³⁴⁵ Unluckily it's the hardest college team to get in, as it's the best […] The average of tennis here is low, though there are a few champions. After tennis I went to tea with Clark whom I have had round to coffee before now: Collier was there. They are last year's two History Brackenbury Scholars. I went on from there to the Ashmolean and heard the second lekker on Sparta. It was on the Artemision this time and very good indeed.³⁴⁶ The next lekker is on Wednesday on Lycosura³⁴⁷ but as it is the day of the Australian match I shall hardly get there.³⁴⁸ In the evening I had to go to the Colonial Dinner, an expensive luxury which cost me 9/6. It went off pretty well though I didn't think with quite enough go. It was at the Randolph and there were about 80 to 90 men there. The speeches were Captain Collins (very poor),³⁴⁹ the Earl of Jersey (fair),³⁵⁰ Colonel Fortescue commanding the King's Colonials,³⁵¹ the Vice-Chancellor (Warren of Magdalen), H.A.L. Fisher of New College and McCallum who is president.³⁵² Fisher spoke easily best and was extremely amusing. As showing how the bonds of empire were tightening, he told of the man who went out to Bombay, where he felt lost among the thousands of darkies, the heat and glare of the sun and the inadequate supply of hansoms and taxis. He got into a suburban train and as he looked forth from the window while it crawled along he saw a match at cricket. Three small and young Parsis formed the match. The bowler was there, the batsman and the fieldsman (alternately longstop, short-slip, cover-point and mid-off). The bowler bowled, the batsman struck the ball high into the air, the fieldsman captured it. The bowler said ‘How's That?’ The fieldsman said ‘Out’. The batsman (Mr Fisher regretted the painful fact but in spite of the Vice-Chancellor's presence he had to record it) said ‘Damn!’ […] I sat next a Canadian named R.L. Henry from the University of Manitōba (he wouldn't hear of Manitobá or Minnesotá). I suppose after all he ought to know. All Englishmen over here seem to call Canada's little neighbour Newfoundland (an anapaest)³⁵³ which is certainly wrong. On the other side of me were Jenkins of Hertford from Armidale (N.S.W.) and Anderson (from North Shore C.E.G.S.³⁵⁴) […] Yesterday morning I worked. In the afternoon I had a few shots at the Oxfordshire Miniature Rifle Range. I started poorly but improved […] I went with Jenness who […] is from Wellington (New Zealand) and a very good shot […]³⁵⁵

Letter 41 To his father, 23 November 1908, 55 Holywell, Oxford

[…] Well, I wrote to you last Sunday morning – I went as always to lunch with Uncle Boyce […] I left about three and went out for a bike ride. I went over Magdalen Bridge and up Cowley Road. I hadn't meant to go far but eventually got out as far as Garsington, so I had a good ride. The roads were rather muddyish naturally so I got a bit dirty. The weather has been the great surprise. Occasionally but quite seldom it rains but it has not been cold for weeks now – delightful day today. Fresh and sunny – a λαμπρὸς ἄνɛμος³⁵⁶ kind of thing. I went to dinner in hall that night and afterwards to the ’Varsity sermon at S. Mary's. The Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity (Cambridge), the Rev. W.R. Inge, preached – rather well though lacking enthusiasm.³⁵⁷ I went on from there to hear J.R. Mott speak at the Schools. The hall was packed with ’Varsity men and Mott spoke extremely well – very decidedly and forcibly. You know his style. He has given five addresses up here but I have only managed to go to one. I liked him very much and I think everyone did. I didn't remember him much, though it was only about five years ago I heard him in Melbourne. He is much liked here³⁵⁸ […] On Tuesday afternoon I played tennis with Le Conteur but again could not win […] He and Singh ought to have a good go in the final of the Freshers’. Singh is an Indian and very good. He should be in the Varsity six, I should think – Balliol men. Later on I went to tea with Harvey in College. He is a Scholar, second year and very English. His father is the head of Toynbee Hall, the secular settlement in the East End connected with Balliol. Monson, whose rooms I had last in College, was there – rather an ass, and Bourdillon who is quite nice and has red hair. I was round to coffee with Bourdillon the night before. Wednesday was a high day – thousands streamed out to the Iffley Road Ground to see the match with the Australians.³⁵⁹ I bought a ticket for 4/- – huge expense – and got an excellent seat, though unfortunately without a back and I couldn't see all parts of the ground. Everyone thought the ’Varsity, who were thitherto unbeaten, were going to win, but they simply didn't have a look in after the first 20 minutes. The Australians did best in the beginning of the

November 24th, Tuesday afternoon

second half when their backs passed like lightning and were too speedy for the ’Varsity men.

The scores were:–

New South Wales (+ two Queenslanders) 2 goals, 1 penalty goal, 2 tries (19 points)

’Varsity 1 try (3 points)

About the alleged foul play. I have asked Y and argued much on both sides and have come to the conclusion that the Australians were a roughish team but played a clean enough game except that a few tried mean tricks occasionally. Middleton who was sent off the field for striking Roberts received great provocation and is I hear a nice chap and a gentleman.³⁶⁰ Dr Moran, the captain, defends (in today's Daily Mail) many of the practices for which they are penalized and abused and points out that much more allowance ought to be made for differing usage and interpretation.³⁶¹ They are certainly an exceptionally good team though perhaps not up to the All Blacks. In the evening I went to two meetings. (1) was a small gathering in J.S. Huxley's (I don't know him) rooms to talk about Toynbee Hall. It is a non-religious settlement in the East End whose principal aim is to get into touch with the working classes and study their problems. There are generally about 20 men there: they all live together and study the questions they are most interested in. Two of them were up on Wednesday and made extremely interesting speeches. The Hall has always been specially connected with Balliol. Afterwards I went on to a different assembling. We met in Bryce's rooms. He is a nephew of the ambassador and historian and an old Etonian. Apparently he has failed to get into any of the Eton coteries in college, in which modern poetry and old port are inspiringly discussed, so he would achieve fame by getting a brilliant circle around him in college. The club is limited to nine – Black, Paton and Macalpine (three very sober and deliberate Scots), Williams (nice but ordinary), Clark (a Brackenbury Scholar and brilliant chap), Montefiore, Carpenter (a Yankee), Bryce and me. Bryce's original idea was that we should study Icelandic, read the Eddas in that tongue and eventually make a tour to their home. The canny Scots, however, after much reflection discovered that it was meant we should learn Icelandic and found many objections. Most of us were idle and postponed the proposal indefinitely. After two hours’ discussion and foolery it was decided to talk about Kipling next time. This happened last night and went off rather well I hear. I didn't go as they finished at the awful hour of 9.35 p.m. Next Monday at 8 we are to discuss the subjectivity of poetry and I hope to find out in the course of the evening what it means. Bernstein is to be the guest of the evening and to open the debate […] Thursday […] evening at 8 took place the Morrison Dinner – the annual sports dinner to celebrate the Morrison Fours – freshers’ fours, which were rowed off earlier in the week. The dinner lasted two hours and a half. It was a very jolly affair and nearly everyone came. A.L. Smith was there and some of the other dons, one or two past men but not the Master. Mervyn, as captain of the Boat Club, presided and did so quite successfully. He made a speech about the doings of the Boat Club during the past year and was followed by the other captains of teams. Among other men who spoke was Jones, who got a first in Greats and his blue for rowing. He referred very warmly to Mervyn and mentioned, and very rightly, the fact that he had been chosen as emergency stroke for the English crew at Olympia. It seems unlikely however that he will get his blue, worse luck! The dinner was followed by a dance – males only as is the custom of the Arunta³⁶² and other tribes. I did not wait however as I thought 10.35 about time to get back to digs.

On Friday morning I had Rivett to brekker: I had also asked Creswick but he didn't come. The great event of the day was going down to meet Y. She arrived at 3.3 and we went off to Uncle Boyce's. I stayed there for tea. I then came back and did a soupçon of work and went back there for dinner at seven. We had a cab ordered and Y, Uncle Boyce and I drove to the Union. Unluckily we had only one lady's ticket, as Uncle Boyce was unsuccessful in the ballot. The house was packed to hear a woman speak there for the first time. There were at least 689 on the floor of the house for so many voted. The floor and gallery were teeming with members and visitors. Young Y only got a moderately good seat and didn't hear all the questions and answers which were exceptionally numerous and clever: the President (M.H. Richmond of New College) was in splendid nick and retorted in every case successfully. Some of the questions were put in the form of Limericks. After the questioning was done, R.A. Knox (son of the Bishop of Manchester) proposed that time has come to remove the electoral disabilities on women: I think I have told you Knox is a Scholar of Balliol and one of the cleverest men in Oxford […] his speech was extremely witty but mostly in irrelevant, barely seriosum,³⁶³ and wouldn't have convinced a cat (last night Knox was elected President for next term). To him responded the opposer, E.P. Swain of St. John's, Junior Librarian, in a poor though occasionally humorous speech. W.M. Ogilvy of Univ. spoke third and F.W. Bagallay of Exeter fourth. Ogilvy and Bagallay put the physical force – your favourite – argument very effectively.³⁶⁴ The only other speech allowed was Mrs Fawcett who spoke for about three quarters of an hour.³⁶⁵ She made a most admirable speech and was extremely clear, eloquent and humorous. The only argument she didn't topple over was the physical force – your pet one. She got round it extremely cleverly and plausibly but it was not convincing. It seems to me – and Uncle Boyce thinks so as well as you – that a woman's vote however ‘educated’ can be of no value because it means nothing, just as paper money would mean nothing if there were not coin behind it somewhere. The trouble is perhaps only a theoretical one – Mrs Fawcett might have urged – for what the Woman Suffrage party claims is only the vote on the same terms as men have it which would add one and three-quarter million women to the present seven and a half million men voters. Still it is a conceivable emergency that the male and female vote should be ranged against each other. But it was clearly pointed out that the politically interested woman has already a thousand ways and means of influence at work in the state. Uncle Boyce and I both voted together and both voted No. The Noes won by 31–660 to 629.³⁶⁶ I think Y enjoyed it – it was quite a unique occasion – several of the London papers noticed the debate.³⁶⁷ Mrs Fawcett got a most enthusiastic reception.

On […] Sunday […] I didn't arise till about 9 and after breakfast Miss Leane and Y came and we all went out to Cowley to the 11 ‘High celebration’. There was a big congregation and for a service of that type – not exactly my type, as of course you know – it was rather pleasing. There was an absence of tawdry decoration and meaningless ritual (though plenty of significant ritual of course) which was satisfactory. The service was audibly rendered and the singing good. The sermon was indifferent but I learnt a fact. In olden times it appears that at the Eucharist there were three readings – Prophecy, Epistle, Gospel: the first survives in such ‘for the epistle’ as last Sunday's (25th after Trinity) […] After lunch Y and I went forth to call on Miss Stevens (11 Woodstock Road) who had written to me.³⁶⁸ We had quite an interesting talk on the subject of Y's stories. She also told us of her new theories on the atmosphere about which she had rather a row with the Radcliffe meteorologist.³⁶⁹ She is very near the observatory. From there we hurried away to my ‘excavations’ where we had tea. After tea we got back to Woodstock Road and after supper we went to the Balliol concert – there is one every Sunday night in hall and very good too – for which I had got a ticket for Y³⁷⁰ […]

Letter 42 To Rex, 29 November 1908, 55 Holywell, Oxford

[…] on Monday morning […] we sent young Y away in great spirits. I think she enjoyed her time up here very much. I simply loved having her of course. In the afternoon I played tennis – Wingate and I against Phil Le Conteur and Rashid (a Muhammadan Sikh³⁷¹ at Balliol – he is rather a nice chap, a thorough gentleman all round – I believe he will get his cricket blue next year and he isn't a bad tennis-player so played for Balliol sometimes last year). Wingate and I started off well with 4–love, then lost 7–5 and 6–1. Last set we won 6–1 but it can hardly count as it was getting so dark. It gets dark about half-past four now […] I didn't help to discuss Kipling in our ‘circle’ on Monday night as they didn't meet until 9.35 which was dreadfully late.

On Tuesday morning I had two lectures. In the afternoon I went down to the Miniature Rifle Range with Jenness who very kindly helps me with it […] In the evening I had the choice of (1) Free Trade League which I haven't been coaxed into yet (2) the Arnold on Repeal of the Blasphemy Laws – Hon. C.A. Lister (Balliol) who was lately tried in court for using bad language to a policeman³⁷² was to make a humorous speech against the repeal (3) The Colonial Club to hear Morris Miller on ‘Imperial Ideas’: I believe he spoke badly and neglected his aitches.³⁷³ However I didn't choose any but worked.

On Wednesday afternoon at five I went to a lecture of Dickins’ on Epidaurus. It was of course awfully interesting as we had seen it all […] He dismissed the conjecture that the sacred snakes used to live there and seemed to think it was a well. He was interesting on the Theatre. He claimed – and we found it perfectly true – that every word spoken in an ordinary voice from in front of the stage could be heard everywhere in the Theatre. Whether they spoke in front or upon the stage is not clear but doesn't affect that question […]

Letter 43 To his father, 10 December 1908, Pragerstrasse 33, Berlin W.

[…] Wednesday fortnight […] was St. Catherine's day and we had great celebrations. There was evensong in chapel at 6.15 at which the Dean of Peterborough, an old Balliol man, preached: he has a very peculiar voice and manner and is frightfully unclerical – too much so.³⁷⁴ After chapel we all adjourned to hall where we had a very good dinner. High Table was very full – Sir Edward Grey,³⁷⁵ ‘Anthony Hope’³⁷⁶ and the Dean of Peterborough being the chief guests. The Master spoke about the progress of the college during the year and one of the senior men proposed the health of our guests. They all responded. Sir E. Grey was quite serious and made a good speech, talking a good deal about the value of ‘Greats’: there were not sufficient jokes to please me. Anthony Hope was rather amusing and everyone enjoyed his speech. After dinner the loving-cups circulated – did you have that custom at St. John's? There are always two men on their feet at once – the man who is drinking and the man whose turn it is next. It was a very good dinner and great fun hearing such big men speak. I can't remember anything about Thursday the 26th: probably I played tennis. By the way Le Conteur got beaten in the final of the Freshers’ 1–6, 9–7, 2–6 by Singh of Balliol (an Indian). On Friday afternoon I walked out to the Hinksey butts³⁷⁷ with Jenness and he lent me his rifle. I did very badly only getting 8 out of 25 at 200. I was marking most of the time with an old Indian soldier. On Saturday Jenness and I started at about 12 and went off for a bike ride. We went to Woodstock where we had lunch. We walked all over the grounds of Blenheim Palace and saw Fair Rosamund's Well and the Marlborough column, but we couldn't see the palace as it is closed at the end of the summer to sight-seers […] From there we went on to Northleigh and meant to look at the Roman villa there but found we had not time and so went on to Witney where we had tea and from Witney back to Oxford. It was a very nice ride – close on 30 miles I should say […] Sunday was Advent Sunday: I went to chapel at 8 and at 11 to S. Mary Magdalene's where we had a missionary sermon from a S.P.G. secretary³⁷⁸ […] In the evening I went to chapel at 6.15: Rev. H.H. Williams of Hertford, who is assistant chaplain at Balliol, preached. After hall I went to the ’Varsity sermon at S. Mary's at 8.30. Mr Woollcombe, Warden of Oxford House, Bethnal Green, preached: I liked him very much.³⁷⁹ From there I went back to the weekly Balliol concert: it was a very good one and they had up a very fine ’cellist named Haussmann to play.³⁸⁰ Everyone in Oxford nearly goes to the Balliol concerts. On Monday I took a rest before exams, and went out for a walk in the afternoon. In the evening we had a meeting of our circle of twelve – look at them in the photo I am sending. It is a Christmas present for Madre and you between you. The twelve are Bryce, Black, Carpenter, Clark, Cole (not in photo), F.K. Griffith, Montefiore, Paton, Castlehow, Macalpine, Williams, Leeper. Cole and Griffith are ardent socialists – they lately started a small magazine – the Oxford Socialist with a red cover and with a few other contributors.³⁸¹ They are rather pleased as it was reviewed by The Academy³⁸² and also by G.K. Chesterton.³⁸³ Our discussion was a jolly good one. Paton (Glasgow) read a paper on ‘The Subjectivity of Poetry’ which was really extremely good. He is one of the many Snell Scholars (Glasgow to Balliol). Then we all discussed the paper for a couple of hours. We had a jolly interesting talk which I enjoyed. Some of the men up here are very interesting and original, just as you described them. We are to meet once a fortnight next term. This time it was in Carpenter's rooms.

On Tuesday exams started: we began with an essay. It was a nice enough subject. I wrote hard all the three hours. Whether I said anything to the point it would be hard to say – but I had a tremendous flow of language and overpowering superfluity of illustration. I have been reading so much Macaulay lately that I can't make a simple statement without involuntarily illustrating it three or four times. This is perhaps better than Carlylese. Right through the exams I think I wrote more easily and forcibly than I ever have before, so I think it was excellent practice at all events. The papers were most interesting ones and I enjoyed the week of it. It was no strain at all, though it sounds like it. Essay then was Tuesday 10–1: I wrote 17 pages of foolscap size with a small margin, so you can see I was busy. In the afternoon the other Brackenbury candidates did Ancient, Medieval or Modern History Paper II, but I escaped that because I had to do Latin Translation for the Classical Exhibition. I am sending all the papers except Greek Prose which I have already sent. I translated the three bits pretty well except one or two bits in (2) and in (3) where I translated ‘in cornu sedebat’ – ‘was in a dilemma’!!!!!³⁸⁴ The exam was 3.45–6.45 which was a nice time (for England) as we could spend an interval of daylight in the open air. I played Le Conteur but got beaten badly 6–2, 6–1, 3–1. By the way how splendid about the Davis Cup! I have been pleased that Australian tennis has shown up so well but fancy Brookes being beaten!³⁸⁵ In the evening I went into Carpenter's rooms after hall and he played Schumann etc. He is very musical indeed and very clever – only 19 – classics, maths, science, music – everything quite brilliant. He is a Rhodes Scholar from Columbia University (N.Y.). Afterwards we walked down to 14 Banbury Road and I took rooms for next term and then round to the O.U. Musical Club (of which Carpenter is a member) to hear Hausmann play. He was again very good. I did no work in between the exams as it is impossible to cram for such papers and they discourage that to such an extent that you don't know what subject the particular exam is in till you enter the hall. There were about 80 candidates at least in (a dozen or so Balliol men). On Wednesday 10–1 we had General Paper no. I for which I had prepared by reading Macaulay's Essays, Maine's Ancient Law and Bagehot's English Constitution during the term […] In the afternoon I had Medieval History I […] On Thursday morning I had my fifth exam – General Paper II. It was evidently meant as an essay within seven choices according to taste and knowledge. I chose (1) and stayed there mostly all the time. I liked it immensely and did my very best on it. I just started (6) to show I could write on it if I had had time. As there are no marks it does not matter how few or many questions you attempt […] In the evening I went to the Union. The debate was ‘That Too Much Importance Is Made of Imperial Questions’. The motion was rejected by about 40 to 90 – a very small attendance. They had a visitor – working-man of course – from Ruskin College³⁸⁶ who spoke to the tune of a quotation of his from Will Crooks ‘What's the good to us of possessing an Empire on which the sun never sets when we live in dark little alleys on which the sun never shines?’³⁸⁷ The best speech on the other side was made by Guedalla of Balliol – a Spanish Jew – who spoke very imperialistically – all Jews are Imperialists, aren't they? […] I got up to speak quite four times but couldn't get the President's eye and did not wait till the end. It is very hard to get a decent chance unless you've been introduced to the President. Next term it will be a Balliol man.³⁸⁸ On Friday I had two exams. In the morning Greek Translation which I did only moderately […] In the afternoon we had Latin Prose which was rather a nice one. I did it very much better than I expected […] On Saturday I wound up with exams IX and X. I did IX (Latin Verse) very poorly. I wrote a poor epigram on the Kaiser of four lines or 5½ lines of elegiacs. I found it all very hard. The Hexameters were very hard and the elegiacs too, I thought several of the schoolboys in seemed to revel in them and did everything. In the afternoon I did Divinity, also optional. There were only five others in. Two went out after five, another after ten and another 80 minutes and so only I and another faithful one were left […] Well, that's the end of my exams. I did my very best right through – I don't mean in the hackneyed sense of trying my best, which goes without saying, but I did the papers as well as I could do them. I was hoping against hope that I might get something but it was not to be. On Saturday afternoon after the exam, which was 2–5, I went round and talked to my tutor, J.A. Smith. The work he set for the vac. was the whole Republic of Plato, Letters of Cicero and as much Herodotus as possible. Of course this is sheer madness. I cannot get through a third of that amount. I should have started Greats’ work in May, so am really two terms (this term the Brackenbury has absorbed a great deal of time) and a long vac. behind the others. The wisest thing, I think, would be not to take Greats till July 1911: what do you think? The amount of work to be done is immense and I could not even get a satisfactory class in under that time. But yet that means three years at Greats and Medieval History crowded out or relegated to a doubtful fourth year at Oxford and that's the very thing that I want to do most. No! I think I'd better attempt Greats in 1910 and be content with a poorish result, don't you? If I take an extra subject it will be Byzantine (and Modern possibly) Greek.

On Saturday evening I went down with Poole, Clark, Keen and Collier […] to the Balliol Boys’ Club in St. Ebbe's St. – a very slummy part. They were not a bad set of boys though of course very dirty and rough – all ages from eight to 20. We are supposed to talk and play various things with them. It is rather hard to do successfully at first.

On Sunday I took an absolute rest after my ten exams. I had arranged to take Jenness out to Cowley: he is a Methodist and has no idea what an English service and especially a ritual one is like. However Mervyn³⁸⁹ came round and we had a long two hours’ chat. Then we went round to Uncle Boyce's to lunch. After Mervyn left, Uncle Boyce and I went for a walk. He shares your views on most things though I don't think he would quite hold that a Home Ruler cannot be a loyal citizen. We then went back. I said affectionate adieux to all the household. Uncle Boyce and I arranged various ways of cabling possible result of the Brackenbury: of course they are not necessary now. Then I went back to college. After hall I went into various rooms to say good-bye: most of the men went down on the Saturday. I then went back and packed. I left early on Monday morning by the 9.5 (Castlehow, a Queenslander – I think a butcher's son³⁹⁰ – Rhodes Scholar – well-meaning but common and twangy – by the way people often don't believe I'm an Australian because they can perceive no Australian accent in my speech – went down with me). I got to Ashley Gardens about 11 and after seeing them all went out and got my return ticket via Flushing. After lunch – Uncle Boyce was there – Y and I went out and bought a nice pair of fur-lined gloves as a Xmas present to me from Aunt Ida.³⁹¹ Soon after we got back and repacked, it was dinner-time ἑσπέρα μὲν γὰρ ἦν καὶ ἐσάλπιγξɛν [?ότɛλɛφ —φουο]φύλαξ.³⁹² It was Uncle Boyce to announce my annihilation.³⁹³ However it was comforting to hear that my destroyer was only sixteen and a half years – Rugby – as I buoyed myself up with the quite likely groundless thought that I was handicapped by age.³⁹⁴ He will probably write to tell you what A.L. Smith and Pickard-Cambridge said about me. I'm glad I went in as (1) it has done me a lot of good (2) I think I will perhaps get more encouragement from the dons now. Most of them seem to think that Classics consist of Mods and Greats and nothing else. Personally the Balliol dons are a very nice set.

I left by the 8.35 from Victoria to Queenborough and had the smoothest of crossings […] Henry Kaspar came down to Zoologische Garten with Wib to meet me. Miss Mack has gone back to America […]

Letter 44 To his father, 23 December 1908, Pragerstrasse 33, Berlin W.

[…] We got back last night just before midnight […] It was a glorious trip. In our postcards to Australia and England everything was written as though the tour were a matter of course and it were the natural thing for us to be in Venice and Munich as well as Vienna. But up to the afternoon before the day we got off we did not know whether Venice would be practicable, let alone Venice and Vienna. Suddenly the thought struck me – why not go to Venice through Vienna and return by the ordinary route? As far as expense goes, there is very little difference. Accordingly we bought tickets, prepared sandwiches and stimulated our expectations. 3rd class single to Wien came to 21.90 each.³⁹⁵ It was rather a long journey but not uninteresting. We went by a rather longer route than we need have in order to take in Prague, so the journey took 15 hours and German 3rd is a very different thing to English 3rd – bare boards and no luxuries to which closed windows must as a rule be added. However, with the help of sandwiches and books we got on very well as far as Prague. Our coupé we had to ourselves and revelled in wide open windows. Directly we left Anhalter Bahnhof (Berlin) it began to snow heavily – it was beautiful – my first real contact with snow. It was delightful and fresh and pleasantly cold as can be. All along the line we saw people skating and rivers half-frozen. However at Prague when we went for a stroll on the platform three Czech ladies jumped our seats though we had strewn belongings on them according to the generally-recognised custom. When we came back we reasoned with them and produced our seat tickets but as we were by this time in the Austrian Empire our tickets were no good to us. However, in spite of these minor inconveniences the journey was a great success, though we were quite pleased to get to Vienna. The whole city was under snow and most fairy-like. We drove to the Hotel Südbahn which we picked out as our sort from Baedeker – no Imperial Hotel this time. It was a very comfortable hotel but did not provide breakfast! We had it in a café close by and our other meals in the Hotel restaurant […] Next day we […] went over the new Rathaus³⁹⁶ and wanted to see the wonderful picture-gallery (not the miserable one we saw in the so-called Lower Belvedere – but the real old Belvedere Collection, one of the best (no! hardly) in Europe, now in the Imperial Museum) but that unluckily was shut too […] It was a pity we couldn't put in more time in Wien but our time and money – especially our money – were unfortunately limited. We left early next morning for Venice which was 15½ hours on end in the train. As far as Pontebba (about eleven hours) on the Italian frontier we travelled as always 3rd, but in the Italian trains 3rd class often does not exist so the last four and a half hours we had to do second. Tickets were – from Vienna to Venice – 33 Kronen 15 h. each, which was cheap, wasn't it? (1Krn. = 10¼d.). The journey was a very tiring one but I think we all enjoyed it immensely. I have never seen such scenery as that about Semmering and the Eastern Alps. We were 3,000 feet up – thick snow everywhere, great bold mountains and valleys far below us and snow-laded Tannenbäume³⁹⁷ and picturesque little villages and often old castles all about us. It must be a delightful district to stay in and is naturally a favourite tourist resort. The train was crowded with mountaineers with Alpenstocks […] However it was rather a tiring journey and it was refreshing to get beautiful 2nd-class carriages on the Italian train where we could lean back on cushions. We got to Venice about 11 […] We took a gondola from the station to the Hotel Bauer-Grünwald (Grand Hotel d'Italie) which is on the Grand Canal very near St. Mark's (nearly opposite the Salute church). It was a long way from the station. We went by back canals and short cuts. My first feeling – as with Athens, London and Oxford – was one of disappointment. Everything seemed so dirty and damp and there was not anything of much beauty that we passed. We got to the hotel and went quickly to sleep. It was an excellent hotel – quite one of the very best – we got it – everything included – for ten lire a day! […] The reason was that Kaspar's mother goes there every year and Kaspar had been there himself before, so the proprietor, old Jules Grünwald,³⁹⁸ was most friendly […] Next morning sight-seeing began. First of all we went naturally to S. Marco. What a fine, spacious piazza! You would miss the Campanile of course, for the new one is not half finished yet and is disfigured with scaffolding. But I have never seen a nobler church. It naturally suggests comparison with the original – Sta Sophia.³⁹⁹ […] We had luckily an admirable guide-book, Grant Allen's Venice. Do you know it? It is wonderfully helpful – American.⁴⁰⁰ Luckily, while seeing the Baptistery we secured a few rays of sunlight – we didn't get many of them during our stay. That is probably a great disadvantage of visiting Venice in winter but there are advantages too:– (1) absence of fellow-tourists: this is, you will admit, a wonderful advantage. (2) Absence of unpleasant Italian smells or at least lessening of them. From S. Marco we strolled in the Piazzetta […] The afternoon we devoted to the Frari church and its treasures. The church is at present under repair like most things in Venice, so all the good pictures have been removed for safe-keeping to S. Toma quite near […] From there to S. Toma – in itself not of great importance. We went there to see its two great pictures – the Frari Madonna of Giovanni Bellini, the Pesaro Madonna of Titian […] we went back to S. Marco station (one always travels along the Grand Canal by steamer nowadays: perhaps when you were there even?) and then took a gondola and went slowly right up the Grand Canal the whole way, finding out from the gondolier all the names of the palazzi etc. […] It was quite cold on the canal. In the evening we read papers and Poe's stories⁴⁰¹ and wrote postcards. Tuesday came next. The whole morning was spent in the Accademy – wonderful place⁴⁰² […] In the afternoon we had another look at St. Mark's, went up into the gallery etc. Then Wib and Kaspar went to buy photos at Alinari's⁴⁰³ and I went in the steamer on the Grand Canal and walked on the Rialto and thereabouts. Wednesday morning we spent in inspecting the Doge's Palace […] Afterwards we went down into the prisons and saw Carmagnola's cell,⁴⁰⁴ Bridge of Sighs etc. What awful dungeons! and what a mock trial most of the prisoners must have had before the X and the III!⁴⁰⁵ […] On Wednesday afternoon we went to two churches – Sta Maria Formosa […] and SS. Giovanni e Paolo […] Thursday was our last day in Venice. In the morning we went off early to San Zaccharia. It was well worth seeing. There was a beautiful Bellini there, tho’ it was too dark to see it properly. Then we went off to the Accademy and had a farewell look at the pictures we liked best. Then Wib and I went on and had a hurried look at the Chiesa and Scuola di S. Rocco – the latter full of memories of Ruskin and murky paintings of Tintoretto whom Ruskin loved. The old custoda⁴⁰⁶ told us he had been there 28 years and often seen and spoken with Ruskin who lived five years in the Scuola.⁴⁰⁷ It was too dark to see anything properly. A hurried look for the last time at S. Marco and a hurried visit to the Casa Manin with its curious Scala d'Oro took up our last afternoon. We left by the 5.10 train for Verona […] Tonight is Heilige Abend.⁴⁰⁸ Wib and I had a Weihnachtsbaum⁴⁰⁹ and Kaspar came in. It looked lovely with its 36 candles […]

Letter 45 To his family, 31 December 1908, Pragerstrasse 33, Berlin W.

[…] The journey to Verona – 3rd class as ever, luckily in the winter the Italian peasant doesn't seem to travel so obviously as in summer – was in the dark and uneventful. Only want of time prevented us breaking the journey at certainly Padua and perhaps Vicenza. We got to Verona unexpectedly soon at 7.30. We took the omnibus belonging to the Hotel S. Lorenzo-Hotel Cavour on spec. It was a long drive to the hotel, which was quite a nice one – German proprietor of course. In North Italy – unlike Naples – German is a very useful language – I suppose because of the long duration of Austrian rule there and the crowds of German tourists and honeymooners that come to Venice […] We went to bed late and rose late […] We naturally made straight for the Amphitheatre past which we had driven the night before […] I had seen Pompeii and Pozzuoli but, good gracious, you might as well compare Houghton Church with Westminster Abbey. In the pouring rain we walked round the arena and round the top and in the passages and looked at the dungeons and guessed the cages of the wild beasts […] Of course it is still used for circuses and shows and is partially restored – that is a few of the seats are and the praetor's box bears a 15th-century inscription […] From there we hurried to the Museum. On the way we passed numerous inscriptions as in every Italian city saying so and so lived here – some recorded deliverance from the ‘falling tyranny’ of Austria. Victor Emmanuel as usual much to the fore with a statue. Others recorded the rise of the Adige in flood-years. It is a tremendous river. We got just a glimpse of the market-place – a most picturesque sight – and also passed the reputed house of the Capulets: the inscription records Juliet's name. How Romeo successfully serenaded such an impregnable house in such a public street – no nice comfortable garden – the electric trams whizz past the only door – is unexplained. Was Shakespeare ever in Verona? Certainly not before he wrote The Two Gentlemen in which one gent takes ship for Mantua (could he have gone by river, tho’?).⁴¹⁰ We hurried through the picture-gallery with a guide […] That was all we had time for. We had to hurry back to the hotel and get to the station to get the 12.10 train. We had a clear run to Ala on the frontier where we changed – 3rd-class of course. The scenery was fine but the best part we had to miss for it got dark soon after we left Trent (of the famous council)⁴¹¹ and the magnificent scenery of the Brenner Pass where we were over 4,000 feet up we saw nothing of. We got to Innsbruck about 9 after a rather tiring journey. We stayed at the Hotel de l'Europe – nice and quite cheap. Innsbruck was a disappointment. We had expected a mountain town with bracing air, glorious scenery and filled with Tyrolese peasants in their quaint dress. Instead, a big city of 50,000 inhabitants – full of hotels – well-paved, electric trams – snowing mildly, so that the streets were dirty and slippery, too misty to see anything of the surrounding mountains – no peasants. Next morning Kaspar was a bit ‘nervy’ and went off on his own hook and sight-saw. Wib and I did, I think, the best things though nothing there except one thing is of any importance. We went into several churches including the interesting old Hofkirche where is the tomb (tho’ not the body) of Maximilian I (d. 1519 I think)⁴¹² […] We also went into the rooms of the Hofburg that are shown including the Silberne Cappella⁴¹³ with a couple of silver images. Franz I, husband of Maria Theresa, died in one of the rooms of the palace. We had not time for much more, so did not go to the Tyrolese Museum with its relics of Andreas Hofer. All Innsbruck is full of memories of Hofer and his companions who headed the revolt against the French and Bavarians in 1809. Their monument stands in the Hofkirche.⁴¹⁴ We had to leave Innsbruck by the 1.14 train. Except for the tomb of Maximilian there is nothing remarkable there, but in clear weather the scenery must be glorious. The journey to Munich took four and three-quarter hours (3rd-class of course) as we got slow trains for cheapness: we had to change twice at Kufstein (frontier) and Rosenheim. We didn't reach Munich Hauptbahnhof till 5.50. We chose the first hotel we saw – Hotel Metropol. It proved excellent as they only got 2.50 M. from us for our rooms each and let us take our meals as we liked. After a hurried snack we went off to the opera house, for in Munich you get as good opera as any in Germany. The opera was Fidelio⁴¹⁵ and we got admirable seats for 5 marks – the opera is cheaper as well as better than the Berlin. The two famous Sängerinnen⁴¹⁶ – Morena⁴¹⁷ and Busetti⁴¹⁸ – were in excellent voice. The opera was […] finely done. Next morning Wib and I went to the ‘English Church’ which is only a hall tho’ I believe they are collecting money to build a church. The clergyman's way of reading the service was detestable – emphasis in wrong place kind of thing: his sermon was much better than I expected from his general style. After dinner we all walked about all over the town – did Ludwigstrasse and Maximilianstr. and some of the main churches such as the Theatinerkirche. Do any of you know Munich? Ludwigstr., running from the Siegestor to the Heldenhalle, contains most of the chief buildings. In the museum quarter of the town is a big archway called the Propyläen – put up in honour of the Greek patriots of the ’20s – I suppose because of Otto the Bavarian's election.⁴¹⁹ How different the whole tone of Bavaria is to Prussia! Quite different. The South German isn't a bit like the North German. He has a far more polished exterior – in fact he is a gentleman, which I doubt if the Prussian ever succeeds in becoming: accordingly an Englishman feels far more at home amongst them than amongst the northern savages. There seems to be none of that open antagonism in Munich to the British which the Prussians love to exhibit. The Bavarians are not so great a people as the Prussians: they have always been on the wrong side. They fought against the early Saxon Emperors, against the Reformation, against the allies in 1703, against the allies in 1742, against German liberty in 1809 and only just pulled straight in 1870. In the evening I went to the American Episcopal Church (also a hall). Their service is a bit different, isn't it? Such changes as ‘Oh! Lord save the State’ and various strange prayers take one by surprise. There was no sermon.

Next morning we were up late. As soon as possible we got out and went to the picture-gallery – that is, the Alte Pinakothek, the best of the many galleries in Munich, which is considered the centre of European painting […] From the gallery we went to an excellent photograph shop near and chose photographs hard – we bought, between us three, 48 – for 44 marks! (Kaspar got about 27). Time flew and we couldn't at all do justice to the Glyptothek which is one of the greatest collections in the world […] We had to drive hurriedly to the station or we should not have got our train – and so we finished our two days or one and three-quarter days rather in Munich. It must be a delightful place to stay in a long while. We decided that as Nürnberg was practically on the way back we might with advantage put in a night there as it would help to lessen the Berlin journey and would be very very interesting. We got there about 4, too late to see anything and so did nothing that afternoon. In the evening we went to the opera for which we got splendid seats for 3.20. The Opera House is a very fine one and the opera – Mignon⁴²⁰ – was ‘adequately done’ (H.K.). It is a charming thing. One of the tenors was from the royal Opera at Dresden. Next morning we had only about an hour and a half for sight-seeing: very little – but we worked hard […] We got a fair idea of the older part of the town which is full of interest and ‘did’ the two most interesting churches – Sebalduskirche and Lorenzkirche – which are full of Dürer's pictures and Peter Vischer. I should like to see Nuremberg again and more thoroughly – and see the museum and gallery and explore the town more and go over Dürer's house etc.⁴²¹ The other great identity is Hans Sachs. We saw his house and statue.⁴²² We had hoped they would be giving the Meistersingers at the opera the night before but they were keeping it for Christmas night – it must be the chief opera in Nürnberg.

The journey to Berlin was rather wearisome. We went 3rd as usual and it took about 12 hours. When we got home after midnight we were glad to go to bed […] On Christmas Day it snowed a little, so we had some satisfaction. Wib and I went to the English Church at 9 and again at 11 (Matins). There was a huge congregation – many people standing at 11. We went to dinner with the Delmers⁴²³ at 4 – wasn't it an unearthly hour? Mrs Eccles, Miss Towl⁴²⁴ were there and also H.C. Delmer⁴²⁵ who has been in Berlin now about two years. He invited me to lunch with him on Monday: I turned up, he didn't and has not replied to my postcard, so he seems rather a casual sort of person. It was quite nice at the Delmers’. Mrs Eccles we don't care for at all. Mrs (F.S.) Delmer is very sweet […] but both of them (i.e. Prof. and Mrs) tho’ they have been over here seven years have strong Australian accents. Prof. Delmer is interesting. Mrs Delmer is leaving for Australia soon for six months. Perhaps you may meet her? We didn't leave till after 9. It was quite amusing there with their big Xmas tree and the two little kids who hardly know any English! Prof. Delmer and Miss Towl were both very emphatic about the hatred felt by Germans of the British Empire. It appears that the chief toast in the German navy is ‘To that day’ (when the German fleet sweeps the British off the seas). Miss Towl is very nice and not a bit conceited.

We have had our Xmas tree too – lit up with about 40 candles it looks very fine. Last night when we had Fräulein Bukowsky and Kaspar in for Silvester Abend it looked very fine. We had the regulation German game of pouring molten lead into water to divine your luck for next year⁴²⁶ […] Last Sunday we went skating […] As it was my first attempt I took on a Lehrer,⁴²⁷ otherwise disaster would have been practically perpetual. Wib tried for a bit on her own for the first time and looked very pretty in her new, Christmas present, squirrel-fur toque. Talking of skating reminds me of the intense cold.

Friday       – 3^° Centigrade

Saturday      – 10

Sunday      – 13

Monday      – 17 = about Zero Fahrenheit

Tuesday      – 17

Wednesday – 12

Yesterday was about –7 Centigrade I should think and today is icy again. One's body is warm enough but no gloves can keep the fingers warm, and ears can simply be frozen off […]

Letter 46 To his father, 7 January 1909, Pragerstrasse 33, Berlin W.

We were so glad to get your letters from the Indian Ocean yesterday […] All you told me about the Germans and German feeling is most interesting. I am reading a German novel at present called Cavete⁴²⁸ – about an invasion of England by a Luftschiffflotte.⁴²⁹ That seems to be the prevailing feeling over here now – that England has ceased to be an island through the conquest of the air and that if she continues to ‘block’ German schemes of expansion in West Morocco and Mesopotamia, Germany must and will land an army by airship in London. In last week's ‘Lustige Blätter’ an airship is settling on St. Paul's dome.⁴³⁰ Certainly the feeling over here is just what it is in England – that the other side is in fault – that England resolutely and obstinately thwarts justifiable German schemes of expansion and trade extension in undeveloped fields. Far more than any English statesman – I haven't seen Asquith's name mentioned – the King comes in for a slating as the greatest meddler in Europe. Perhaps one may partly agree that England has been a bit ungracious to Germany. Germany – the German writers declare – must show that she is not a ‘quantité negligeable’ (quoted) as all the other powers insist on regarding her. Perhaps our statesmen in their dealings with Germany might use a little more tact and try to understand German feeling. I know very little about the matter but at present can't see why we shouldn't let Germany have a look in in Morocco – or as the Spectator suggests give them the misgoverned Congo⁴³¹ […] Last night (12th night) we played Snapdragon⁴³² […] We've been to the theatre twice – on Saturday to ‘Die Zwillinge’ a recent opera on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night – very pretty and clever.⁴³³ On Monday Wib and I went to Hedda Gabbler⁴³⁴ at the Lessing Theater: the play was admirably acted – no scenic or extraneous effects but acting pure and simple. It is a wonderful play but what a hateful character Hedda is herself: her part was played by Irene Triesch and wonderfully. She is a great actress.⁴³⁵ Last Friday we all three went to the Wintergarten– the leading Berlin music-hall of a higher class type.⁴³⁶ It is a huge terrace made into a hall in winter only. Some of the things were wonderful. I have never seen such acrobatic feats as were done by the Four Riegos (three men and a boy) and there were some absolutely extraordinary bicyclists – one man actually turned somersaults and rode across a tight-rope on a bike for four people in all sorts of position (backwards, moving from one seat to another while in motion there and finally actually on one wheel of it with the other three seats towering above him perpendicularly to the rope) […]

Letter 47 To Rex, 11 January 1909, Pragerstrasse 33, Berlin W.

[…] On Thursday night Wib went to Goldschmidt's concert⁴³⁷ and was enraptured […] On Saturday evening I went to Siegfried. I was determined to see opera at the Opera House before leaving Berlin. It is very expensive. I had to pay 8 marks 50 – terrible! Siegfried is magnificent. Berlin isn't I believe up to Munich or even Dresden but it was quite enough for me⁴³⁸ […] I thought Plaichinger very fine as Brünnhilde: she is very famous but I'm told going off now.⁴³⁹ Siegfried was indifferent. I got home late and the alarm didn't wake us next morning, so we didn't manage church which was bad. At 12 we went to the Nikisch Sunday concert.⁴⁴⁰ It was far the finest orchestral concert I ever heard or could have heard – and a lovely programme – a delightful symphony of Mozart, a Brahms rhapsody (Goethe's words) with the famous Schumann-Heink (alto)⁴⁴¹ and a nun's chorus: Schubert's unfinished symphony (a bit heavy) and four Wagner bits – Flying Dutchman overture, Lohengrin Vorspiel, Rienzi overture and an aria from Rienzi sung by Schumann-Heink. I thought she was wonderful. Kasparino says she is the leading contralto in the world […]

Letter 48 To Rex, 20 January 1909, 14 Banbury Road, Oxford

[…] On Monday we got up about 10 as usual and I think went to the Rheingold Restaurant for lunch.⁴⁴² We often go there. It is quite the best in Berlin as you get a deliciously cooked dinner worth at least 4/6 in London – there for 1.50 M. or so. In the evening we all went to Julius Caesar at the Royal Schauspielhaus. We got most comfortable seats in a Loge at the side for 2.50 each but though we could hear splendidly could not see well […] The play was on the whole quite remarkably good and I must with much reluctance agree with the view of my father and of the German people that Shakespeare in Germany is the real thing. Yet the house was not a good one. With regard to the actors, I thought Portia very bad, Brutus fat, lumpy and unconvincing, Cassius excellent, Antony variable rising to excellent in his funeral speech, Caesar ‘adequate’ (Kasparino's phrase) and most of the others passable. But the real hit of the play was the wonderful acting of the mob during Antony's speech, which was phenomenally good. The way they showed their tension, their obstinacy, their final conviction and the way they surged towards the platform was admirable. It was the best Shakespearian scene I have seen on the stage. Part of the play seemed to me poor stuff when I saw it acted now for the first time. Antony's pseudo-sublime speech, ‘Oh! pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth’, used to thrill and now disgusts me, and the last act with its perpetual suicides repels the modern play-goer (i.e. me) as its ‘excursions’ and ridiculous stage-warfare makes him cackle. But the play is a noble one. Only one scene was omitted – that of the meeting of the Second Triumvirate (Act IV, sc. 2). After the theatre we went to supper in Kempinsky's.⁴⁴³ Tuesday […] evening we went to a magnificent concert in the Beethoven Saal.⁴⁴⁴ It was Rosenthal, who my musical critics tell me is the most wonderful player for technique in the world.⁴⁴⁵ I had never heard anything so fine and found it absolutely ‘immense’. The hall was packed and there was prodigious enthusiasm which I fully shared. His final encore was his version of Strauss's Blue Danube and was quite magnificent […] On Thursday I started on the usual tedious journey […] Before we got to Flushing, I got a Daily Mail. Its Channel passage forecast was

VERY ROUGH

I showed it with diabolical glee to the two ladies in the carriage. We got to Flushing at 11.30 p.m., having left Berlin at 11.50 a.m. I shared a cabin with a German Rhodes Scholar named Heine, a Worcester freshman.⁴⁴⁶ I foresaw disaster and apologised beforehand for being sick. After two hours and after three hours I was sick – VERY sick – I've never been so sick – my goodness me I was sick – very sick. I then dropped off to sleep for an hour or so. Up early and at Victoria at about 9. I drove to the Flat, where Grandmother was not expecting me, and washed and shaved. Then we all had brekker […] Afterwards Miss Leane and I went out and saw the exhibition of cartoons from old numbers of Punch.⁴⁴⁷ It was most amusing and interesting. Then I took her into the National Gallery which she hadn't seen since she was tiny and on the strength of four winter days in Venice laid down the law. After that I took her to Eustace Miles and initiated her into Nut Cutlets⁴⁴⁸ – personally I stuck to Indian Dhal which I believe is curry. Then I dismissed her to meet her cousin on a ’bus and thought I'd drop into Peter Pan at the Duke of York's. Of course every seat was full – I don't wonder – so I stood for 2/6 in the Pit. You've seen it, I'm sure, last Easter? It's the most charming thing I ever saw – quite immense. After standing it (quite literally, not figuratively) for three acts (out of five) I had to come away to get my hair cut and catch a train. I got the 4.55, which was packed with ’Varsity men. I got to my digs at about 6.45 […] Next day was Sunday. I went to see J.A.S. at 10.45.⁴⁴⁹ He advised me about work and quite agreed it was best to take Greats in 1911 instead of next year. I shall probably take as extra subject ‘Byzantine Authors and Medieval (and perhaps Modern) Greek’. He thinks it a good one. There is now a Lecturer here in it – Mr Ménardos. Afterwards I went to S. Margaret's (Uncle Boyce's church – just near them) at 11.30.⁴⁵⁰ It is an exceptionally nice little church, High (vestments) but with little ritual and no mumbling. We had an excellent sermon from Mr Pullan the Vicar (a brother of Leighton Pullan)⁴⁵¹ […] On Monday morning I had a lecture in the hall of Exeter from Mr R. Marrett, a Fellow of Exeter, on Bacon's De Augmentis and Novum Organum,⁴⁵² which we have to read. He was good tho’ inclined to be slangy and over-boisterous […] In the evening we had another meeting of our circle. MacAlpine, a Scot, discoursed on Falstaff!!! He was good, though he treated Humour with becoming soberness. The discussion which followed was good – i.e. interesting but not particularly exciting. It was in Castlehow, the Queenslander's, rooms […] This morning I had a lecture on the history of Ethics (chiefly Hobbes) in New College hall from the famous Dr Rashdall. This afternoon Jenness and I walked out to Cumnor where A. Robsart's murderer Forster is buried.⁴⁵³ It is a fine old church about four and a half miles away. Afterwards I went to Marrett's lecture on Bull-roarers.⁴⁵⁴ It was good […]

Letter 49 To his father, 28 January 1909, 14 Banbury Rd., Oxford

[…] I've been taking exercise in the way of walks and bike-rides (on Saturday we rode a good 30 miles – Wallingford, Cholsey, Abingdon and back – and on Monday I went out to Woodstock again and back through Cassington) mostly with Jenness, Carpenter, Castlehow and Bryce. On Sunday I went to S. Michael's-at-the-North Gate at 11 and to chapel in the evening. As for lectures I am going to Marrett in Exeter hall on Bacon's Novum Organum and to Rashdall in New College ditto on the history of English Ethics – Young Y came up on Tuesday and I have seen a good bit of her […] She is looking so well and absolutely mad on Switzerland and winter sports. Yesterday and today she […] went out to skate at Iffley. I walked out to see the ice yesterday – most of Oxford was out there but the freeze wasn't a really satisfactory one – only about 14^o below. Last night I went to dinner at Uncle Boyce's – and the night before I had to speak at the Colonial Club. As I know nothing about South Africa and am anyhow a Unificationist,⁴⁵⁵ it was somewhat difficult to talk. I don't think I can have been a bit convincing but I got on passably. Coming away from the club Mervyn (for the first time) and four others (including R.G. Waddy of Sydney and Balliol – whose first night it was in Oxford) were progged for not being in academic dress,⁴⁵⁶ tho’ I've never seen anyone in Oxford ever in it at night. The Colonial Club is however sufficient excuse to get you off a fine. The weather has been beastly: the last two days – intense fog and frost […]

Letter 50 To Rex, 27 February 1909, 14 Banbury Rd., Oxford

[…] Like A.O. Jones I am most surprised and disappointed with the Australian team.⁴⁵⁷ That cad McAlister, whom up to the present I have always done my best to speak well of, ought to be kicked for picking himself like that.⁴⁵⁸ Why ever was he made selector? With Carkeek's election I'm also disgusted.⁴⁵⁹ Why not Gorry?⁴⁶⁰ Or Whitty?⁴⁶¹ I know nothing but why are they always so prejudiced against bringing Saunders to England – they always pick him for test matches in Australia. Is he a bad lot or what?⁴⁶² The batting everyone is agreed is all right but ‘where are the bowlers?’ ‘Oh! yes Cotter’⁴⁶³ – ‘yes, and?’ – ‘Oh! Whitty’ – ‘yet to prove himself one’ – ‘Noble!’– ‘Can't bowl more than four overs in succession for his leg's sake’⁴⁶⁴ – ‘Macartney’⁴⁶⁵ – ‘Change bowler’ – ‘Armstrong’⁴⁶⁶ – ‘maiden bowler’ – ‘O'Connor’⁴⁶⁷ – ‘third-rater’. So you see you won't get England or even Scotland out much under 4 or 500.

As for myself – they're coming to fumigate my rooms at 9 tomorrow morning and then I'm going to lectures. I went down to see the first night of Toggers.⁴⁶⁸ It was rather exciting tho’ not very much happened […]

Letter 51 To his father, 27 February 1909, Angel Hotel, Salisbury

[…] I must tell you about some of our travels. It all arose from Fluffy Davis advising me to take a weekend off and, as Jenness pleaded he wanted to study Stonehenge (he is doing the Anthropology diploma), we got off without very much trouble. I had to arise at the heathenish hour of 6.25 and we got off by the 7.10 train to Winchester. The ground was covered with snow which went all crunching beneath our bikes and it was also falling slightly. The main journey was a slow one and we didn't get to Winchester till after 10. There after having breakfast we started hard to work at sight-seeing. The first thing that caught our eye was Thorneycroft's new statue of Alfred⁴⁶⁹ – rather a fine one – and next the old town cross (14th-century). We first of all made our way to the cathedral which was wonderful. The one drawback was that all the transepts and East end was under scaffolding for repairs […] From there we went to the neighbouring ruins of Wolvesay Castle which was the scene of last year's Pageant, I believe.⁴⁷⁰ It is a beautiful old ruin – Norman architecture – quite over-grown with grass, and has any amount of interesting historic associations from Egbert to Elizabeth. It is very close to the school but we did not go there next, but up to the interesting old West Gate over which is an old room with a splendid collection of old relics (old weights and weapons and ornaments) of Saxon and medieval times. Then to the castle on the hill – in which is the grand old banqueting-hall built by Henry III […] the object of interest is ‘The Table Round’ for Arthur and 24 of his Knights – the seat on his left, ‘the Siege Perilous’, with the name of Sir Galahad, Sir Tristram and so on. The guide (a fairly intelligent man) seemed to believe in the table generally tho’ inclined to admit a mythical element into its composition. But as I said to him, the table must be at least as old as 1400 as Caxton in his preface to Malory (circ. 1480) mentions it as certainly Arthur's table and so it could not have been forged within memory of his generation⁴⁷¹ […] From there we walked out to the ‘Hospital’ of St. Cross – a mile and a quarter away. It is a wonderfully interesting old place […] We were taken round by one of the four Brethren of the Red (Cardinal Beaufort's) Gown. These are all supposed to be ‘gentlemen who have met with reverses’ whereas the other order who live there too – the older foundation by Henry de Blois, Bishop of Winchester, Stephen's brother – the Black Gown – 13 in number – are mostly working men. They must be over 60 and can be married […] Our old ‘Brother’ was very amusing (unconsciously). I've never met such a snob – his condescension as regards the Black Order was killingly funny – but he was very interesting.

From there we walked back to Winchester and walked over Winchester College. I think they are the finest school buildings I've seen (‘school’ to include university college) […] We went into Sir C. Wren's assembly-hall […] where the quaint old Latin rules are set forth at large – silence to be maintained, eyes not to wander in school, scholars not to stay at home ‘feriis exactis’⁴⁷² etc. Unfortunately, however, the famous ‘learn, leave or be flogged’ could not be seen as it was covered over by a big sheet in preparation for a lantern lecture⁴⁷³ […] we had to leave Winchester, tho’ with much regret, at about 4.30 after having sight-seen continuously from 10.30 to 3.45 […] We rode eleven miles to Romney, and had a short look at the fine old Norman abbey there. When we started it was snowing but it soon cleared up and the ride was a delightful one. We caught the train at Romney and got to Salisbury (15 miles) at 6.30. Salisbury is 26 miles (11 + 15) from Winchester […]

Letter 52 To his father, 5 March 1909, Oxford Union

[…] On Sunday morning we got up early and went to the 8 o'clock celebration in the cathedral. Then we came back to breakfast and afterwards went back and looked at the cathedral till the people coming in to 10.30 Matins forced us to desist from sight-seeing. I was a wee bit disappointed with the cathedral: it has a noble exterior and the spire is glorious, but the interior is so very bare, quite unadorned and almost devoid of stained glass and has none of the memories of Winchester […] off we set from there to Stonehenge. We took the right road but not the shortest one. Consequently we had ten miles to ride and made this fully 15 by constantly missing our way in the absence of signposts and getting several miles on a wrong road. To add to our worries there was a good sprinkling of snow on the ground which made it quite hard work. However we got there finally all right and were properly impressed with it. It wouldn't be easy to describe to you but the idea of the thing is […] two outer circles of huge upright blocks joined by the continuity of the flat pieces on top. An inner circle of smaller stones on the same principles. And inside an ellipse of five huge disjoined triliths (three of them still entire), and an inner ellipse […] The date one might put about 2600 BC I believe (Neolithic) but nobody really knows very much about it. On the last night of the nineteenth century one of the big triliths was blown down or fell somehow!⁴⁷⁴ nothing having fallen for 97 years previously – and several of the bigger ones are propped up now. Some of them are huge (20 feet or so high and some six feet beneath the earth). They remind you of Mycenae in a way but belong to a very different order of civilisation. It is rather impressive seeing them as it is very easy to summon the requisite amount of sentiment. The only drawback is the barbed wire fence tho’ it is really a blessing as it has stopped the chipping that used to be carried on continuously and prevents name-cutting. Americans are fond of the place naturally: one offered £25,000 for it the other day!⁴⁷⁵ The surroundings are in keeping with the place as the whole plain is covered with barrows many of which people have not taken the trouble to open. We rode from there to Warminster, 17 miles. It was a good road and a nice ride and I should have liked to push on to Bath, another 17 but Jenness was a bit tired in the knees so we stopped in Warminster, had lunch (4 p.m.) and caught the train to Bath, where we stopped again at the Angel Hotel […] and went to bed early. Next morning we had brekker at 7.45 and got to work at sight-seeing. Besides the glorious (Perpendicular) abbey the great object of interest is the Roman baths […] I forget the whole town is built on Roman foundations! but of course they have been unable to excavate except under the baths. Besides the fine hot springs they have found, they have discovered practically the whole Roman baths – a regular Pompeii on a larger scale. The old Roman brick- and stonework looks as good as ever while walls put up 50 years ago are already looking unhappy. They were builders. We had a most interesting old guide who had done a great deal of excavating himself and showed us everything. Any amount of jewellery and odds and ends have been found there but only one inscription about repairing the baths […] I took the waters (2d. a glass) but did not drink deep: they taste of the Iron Age! The abbey we didn't do well. It is a noble church and contains a few interesting people […] But we had to push on. We rode out to Bradford-on-Avon, some eight miles. It was fearfully hilly as Bath lies in a hollow and took us some time. Bradford's streets consist of the steepest ascents I ever saw in any town. It is a nice old place but we'd only time for its great treasure – the old Saxon church […] It is the only perfect Saxon church in England and was only ‘discovered’ in 1856, having up till then been used as a cottage and schoolroom and with a chimney.⁴⁷⁶ I am sending you postcards of it. It is the greatest and most fascinating of churches and could hardly hold more than 10 people I should think – so tiny […] We hadn't long to stop as we wanted to catch the train to Chippenham (13 miles off) at 1.42. We had 70 minutes and thought we should do it all right. Unfortunately we ran up against the strongest wind I've ever struck on a bike. It just about knocked us silly and we missed the train by ten minutes […] So we had to wait for an hour and a half and got back to Oxford too late to hear Sven Hedin's lecture: I believe it was very good. What a wonderful explorer he is!⁴⁷⁷ In the evening Carpenter and I went to Godowsky's concert.⁴⁷⁸ He has a great reputation and up to a certain point we liked him well but he doesn't seem to possess any feeling and in the Chopin things he played, as in a lovely Tarentelle of Liszt, I thought he was horrible […] My great news is however of last night. I've broken the ice at the Union. I went down not really meaning to speak and not having thought of anything, the subject not being a great specialty of mine. However, I gleaned hints from various speakers and then started jumping up and at about attempt six I got the President's eye: he is a Balliol man (Knox) and knew me by sight I spoke very much better than I expected and felt very relieved to have done it at last.⁴⁷⁹ By the way, this is the first meeting I've been able to go to this term or I'd have had a shot before […] There were only some 25 left in the house when I managed to get my word in – it opened with a hundred – and it wasn't till 10.30. Yet after me some six or seven spoke! Of the speakers, Dodd (the mover) a Welshman, was excellent and absolutely convincing. Guedalla […] was as usual very witty and cutting. The two opposers were very poor and Cecil (who was sent down last term you remember) was absurdly bad I thought. To show he took an interest in Wales he reminded his house that his great ancestor (Burleigh) was a Welshman.⁴⁸⁰ You'll see I referred in my speech to Australian conditions. It was because he quoted the Bishop of Adelaide (what bishop?) to the effect that reunion was more improbable in Australia than in England! I spoke very keenly for disestablishment for all churches but particularly for Wales. I never realised till last night how real the agitation is and how very real Welsh nationality is! Funny isn't it? I also quoted what you've often told me about the progress of the Irish Church since disestablishment […]

Letter 53 To his father, 11 March 1909, Oxford Union

[…] I didn't go to Keir Hardie's meeting last Friday.⁴⁸¹ I think it was a very disgraceful affair. Whatever a man's political eccentricities are it isn't fair to howl him down, when he comes up as the guest of an Oxford (Fabian) Society, before he can even open his lips. Of course it was an organised row – the progs were much upset but Keir Hardie doesn't seem to have minded much. He said it was nothing to Cambridge's protest.⁴⁸² It's so hard to remember what I did other days – because I've done so very little on account of the disgusting snow which of all things in the world is most detestable. I think people would willingly swop snow for any amount of good Melbourne dust. The latter may give a few odd ones tuberculosis, but snow is responsible for thousands of cases of influenza. On Friday afternoon I went with Uncle Boyce to Mackail's Lecture in the Schools – his only one this term as he has been ill – on Shakespeare's Sonnets. It was extremely good, but just orthodox. He strongly opposed the Lee view⁴⁸³ in a scholarly way and, as for H.W. and ‘dark lady’ theories etc.,⁴⁸⁴ he declared that with our present knowledge it was quite impossible to say anything for certain about them. He is a delightful lecturer tho his voice is not good. On Sunday I only went to chapel once – in the evening […] Yesterday afternoon Jenness and I went to hear Ménardos the new Byzantine and Modern Greek lecturer on ‘Popular Greek Poetry’: the audience consisted of about a dozen people, mostly ladies, but included the Vice-Chancellor.⁴⁸⁵ The lecture was a most interesting one – excellent language but of course a very curious accent which made it rather hard to follow […] There is a meeting of the Union tonight on Indian nationalism. I'm not certain whether I shall go. I was much interested in what you said about the Union. I never knew before about your being on the Library Committee. It isn't as good as being Secretary or Junior Librarian or Treasurer but still it is a great distinction and of course a stepping-stone. What interesting men you had up with you, but I dare say some of the people up now are going to do great things. There are some very able men up – Balliol gets fully half of them it seems to me but perhaps I'm biassed. Certainly we are easily first in self-conceit. Even New College we look down on with benevolent interest and places like Jaggers or Pemmer or Wuggins or B.N.C. merely provoke a sympathetic smile. Mods are in full swing now and I'm glad to be out of them. Probably I'll have to do collekkers⁴⁸⁶ on Saturday but I hope not […]

Letter 54 To Rex, 18 March 1909, Pragerstr. 33, Berlin W. 80

[…] Friday wound up the term – on which the following remarks. The Balliol men I know best are among the Freshers (whom you can contemplate in the photo I sent you) Clark, Bourdillon, Bryce, Montefiore, Chavasse, Randolph, Walker, Keene (England) – Wingate, Black, MacAlpine (Scotland), Carpenter (America), Bernstein (Galicia), Jenness and Ziman (New Zealand), Castlehow and R.G. Waddy (Australia). Of these I like the underlined best. Carpenter is a very nice chap and I see a great deal of him. He wanted me to go to France with him this vac. but of course I was coming here. Wingate I like very much too but am not so mad on his two chief associates – Hancox and Singh: Hancox is quite common and Singh is an Indian; he is the first Indian I have ever known and I am sorry to say I am not attracted to them. They are quite different to us even though they have a very thorough coating of English education. I can't but feel that they are quite out of place in Oxford – and they feel it and resent it themselves. Indeed you will find that the archseditionists in India are generally or at least very often old ’Varsity men. Clark is a very nice chap and very bright. The two Australians are good chaps but pretty so-so socially – as of course Jenness is – (the photos of his family are startlers!)⁴⁸⁷ but he is a nice chap and I like him. Of course I know nearly all the Freshmen a bit and a good many of the others too but not so many as if I had been in college. Counting up the other day I found I knew about 50 Balliol men and only a very few – eight or ten – from other colleges. That isn't much out of about 3,000 but perhaps more will come in time […] I came down by the 4.20 train on Saturday and got to Paddington at 5.50. Y met me and Pat whom I saw for the first time.⁴⁸⁸ We went to the flat and saw them all – and then we three young ones went out to dinner somewhere in Soho and afterwards Y and Pat saw me off by the 8.35 from Victoria […] I had the usual dull journey over – by Queenborough and Flushing for the second time – a loathsome journey. I went 2nd-class boat as well as train this time so my return ticket only cost £4. 19. 2. It was not rough but a bit choppy and I only just managed to keep off sea-sickness. I didn't manage to sleep. Wib and Kaspar met me at Zoologischer Garten and since then nothing has happened […] The weather has been coldish but today is a Spring day, harbinger of much delight […]

Letter 55 To his father, 26 March 1909, Pragerstr. 33, Berlin W. 80

This is our last day in Berlin as we leave for our northern trip tomorrow. We are naturally looking forward to it with great hopes but I don't know how long we can stay away – it depends altogether on the money, as we feel we can't spend more than £6.10 apiece over it […] It is not the best time of year to go up North but still it ought not to be too cold by April […] Wib […] has been going to an American dentist here, as everyone does. Even the Kaiser and Kaiserin go each to their special American.⁴⁸⁹ American dentists and American ‘shoes’ (i.e. shoes and boots) are quite triumphant here in spite of patriotism and protection – just as English fashions and English jams are. Certainly the number of Americans over here is tremendous. They are an interesting race though very different from us and I think are getting further and further away from us – look at their names – every second one is a foreign one – German, Dutch, Scandinavian, Polish, Bohemian – and the foreign blood is bound to have some influence on America's digestion even though she appears to swallow it at once – a poor attempt at a metaphor. Talking of nationality, I see you had a meeting in Melbourne to discuss the question of giving a Dreadnought to the Imperial government but decided not to;⁴⁹⁰ rather a pity but of course public opinion doesn't run that way. They seem to be trying to raise one in Sydney by private subscription. Surely they'll never manage that! New Zealand have come forward well, haven't they?⁴⁹¹ The thing the Imperial Government seem to be a bit slack over is aerial navigation. The Germans are laying such tremendous stress on it. I wonder what effect Balfour's censure motion will have.⁴⁹² Surely it's no hope of getting carried? […] I read Wildenbruch's ‘Das Edle Blut’ the other day – awful tosh.⁴⁹³ I think he's a fearfully mawkish writer. If you want two good novels, the two best seem to be (acc. to Frl. Klatt⁴⁹⁴) Gustav Frenssen's ‘Jörn Uhl’ and ‘Hilderlei’ (don't know if I've got the latter rightly spelt) – I haven't read either but mean to.⁴⁹⁵ Frenssen, she told me, was a pastor and was suspended for ‘Hilderlei’. ‘Jörn Uhl’ has been translated by F.S. Delmer of course […]

Letter 56 To his father, 7 April 1909, Pragerstr. 33, Berlin W. 80

[…] what you want to hear this week is all about our travels […] Kaspar (or ‘the signorie’ as I always call him) went with us. You remember he is affianced to Miss Mack, Wib's American friend, and that we met him over here last summer and he went down with us to Venice at Christmas. He is an exceedingly nice chap – one of the nicest I have ever met, and tremendously musical without being absurdly so […] His father is a Bohemian and his mother a German – they live in Washington (D.C.).⁴⁹⁶

Well we left by the 8.45 a.m. train on Saturday (27th) for Copenhagen […] We travelled 3rd, so our through fare to Stockholm only cost 32 marks each. We spent the whole Saturday journeying to Copenhagen. About four and a half hours’ train to Warnemünde – then two hours’ ferry across to Gjedser in the Island of Falster. The 1st- and 2nd-class carriages were taken on board the ferry, but there is not room for the 3rd class as well. 3rd-class passengers have to get out. We had the choice of staying in the cabin below in unbearable stuffiness or going up on deck. We did the latter. It was very cold and inclined to be roughish but we got across without mishap. It was easy to tell we were going northwards from the fact that there were junks⁴⁹⁷ of ice in the Gjedser Harbour! Then we had an hour or so's train journey across Falster to Orehoved where we again had to get out (1st and 2nd class again stayed in) for a 20 minutes’ passage (impeded by young icebergs) across to the Island of Zealand. From there we had a couple of hours more in the Zealand train getting to Copenhagen at a quarter to 7. We put up at the Monopol Hotel which ranks as first-class but which we didn't think very much of. However it was cheap and Wib's room was a very nice one. The Monopol is in the big square (Kongens Nytour=the King's New Square) where the opera house and palace are. We tried to get into the opera where ‘Carmen’ was being given but it was all udsolgt⁴⁹⁸ (I'm very proud of my not extra numerous Danish words). So we went to bed early instead […] After breakfast we all sallied forth. We went first to the cathedral – Vor-Frue-Kirke (Our Lady's Church) as it is called – and saw a confirmation there. It was very interesting. The girls were all dressed in long white dresses with white bows in their hair and the boys wore – some evening dress and some (naval cadets, perhaps) sailor suits. The pastor (he may have been a bishop – he looked like a 16th-century preacher with his black gown and ruff-collar) first addressed them all (they stood or sat in an ellipse near the dais from which he spoke) and then went round and confirmed them. They rose from their places, two by two, as he came to them. He addressed a question to each of them to which each nodded assent and then put each of his hands on a girl's forehead or a boy's head (as the case might be) and said a different verse of a hymn over each. While each pair was being confirmed, all their friends and relations in the church stood up too. When he had finished he gave them another sermon and then it was over and all the fathers and mothers came forward and kissed their children and their friends congratulated them. It is a great event for them socially as well as religiously and they get ever so many presents as well. It was curious to notice how fair all the people were – very little non-Teutonic blood in that part of the world […] We went on to the National Museum and looked at the wonderful prehistoric Danish collection there […] We went and had lunch and afterwards out to the zoo which was quite interesting tho’ of course like every other zoo. They had two giraffes there in an artificially warmed house, for the climate would be a bit on the nipping side for them. The polar bears looked happy and contented […] In the evening I went to the Frederickskirke by myself and listened with a very scanty congregation to some hymns and a sermon in Danish. The church is about the finest in Copenhagen, a noble one (in form of a great dome) both inside and out. I was very pleased with the Danish churches generally as with everything else in Denmark. Next morning we got up earlyish and went out sightseeing. We did the Thorwaldsen Museum very thoroughly and were delighted with it. Most of the things were not wholly executed by Thorwaldsen⁴⁹⁹ but all were his idea and carried out under his direction […] We bought photographs of the ones we liked best afterwards. We should have liked to have bought a little bust for you but they were all so expensive and we were so afraid of their breaking. The shops in Copenhagen are full of them. After lunch we went out to Roskilde (Roskeela – d silent) about 20 miles out. There we had a couple of hours. Roskilde was the capital up to 1443 but it has remained the burying-place of the kings ever since. The cathedral was a beautiful, Gothic brick building – beautiful inside too and well kept […] We got back to Copenhagen just in time for the opera at the Royal Opera House. It was La Bohème and was well done […] It is not a long opera so we got to bed quite early and set out about 10 next morning […] we went to the Art Museum and looked at the pictures. There were some fine ones here: all the big people are represented but none of their best work. The gallery is not half up even to the Kaiser Friedrich in Berlin. Copenhagen's forte is not pictures but sculptures in which I imagine it is only behind Rome, Athens, Paris, London and possibly Naples. I should guess its sculpture collections would stand at least seventh among those of the cities of Europe. Even the Art Museum was full of them, and specially the modern Scandinavians, Bissen, Jerichau and Sinding⁵⁰⁰ […] and then there is the gorgeous Thorwaldsen Museum and the two Glyptoteks⁵⁰¹ […] On our way back to the hotel we stopped and bought a few photographs, but we had to hurry back, as owing to my persuasion we had decided to go by the slightly longer route to Stockholm by Elsinore and Helsingborg instead of the quicker one by Malmö which however entails the longest sea crossing. I was very keen to at least see the surroundings in which Hamlet would have lived if he had lived. We were sorry to leave Copenhagen and I could gladly have stayed on but we had our tickets to Stockholm bought and they allowed no delay. So we left by the 5.55 that night and reached Elsinore (Helsingør as the Danes call it) about 7.30. It was unfortunately dark and we could only from the steamer guess by the lights whereabouts the Slot or castle of Hamlet stood. The passage is only three and a half miles and took 20 minutes. It was quite mournful work to leave Denmark as we liked it and its people so very much. They are a fine race and the nearest and most friendly to the English of any, surely. Their language is certainly vilely hard but we didn't have to attempt it so much because the officials etc. nearly all understood German. In Sweden on the other hand few know anything but their own language and you find English hardly second to German as next known. The Swedes are like the Danes a fine race but slower, sleepier, and drunkener. We got a train at Helsingborg at 9 and journeyed in it to Hassleholm where about 10.30 we had to change to catch the Malmö–Lund train we should have been in if we had come the other way. We were in it from 11 to 9.25 next morning and as we journeyed 3rd class in a crowded and stuffy carriage with bare boards and very upright seats it was a wee bit tiresome […] A bit out of Hassleholm we struck the snow and from there on the plains were thickly covered. Spring comes late up as far north as that […] Our long journey was over at least and we went straight to a hotel called Belfrage's which though starred in Baedeker we found very poor; cheap however.

After a meal we explored Stockholm a bit. We went to the National Museum but as all the Swedish prehistoric antiquities and the few fine pictures they have were shut up on account of repairs, we soon got bored with the very queer ‘masterpieces’ of unknown modern Swedes and forsook the Museum for our hotel. Kaspar and Wib rested […] I sallied out, however, as I felt very energetic and walked at least ten miles exploring the northern metropolis all round everywhere and finally out to the Djurgaarden […] where the famous pleasure grounds called Skansen are.⁵⁰² They are an artificial wild country with reindeer, Lapp village etc., and I believe in summer a great resort of the Stockholmers. Of course at this time they were feet deep in snow and one could only move on cleared paths. We went to bed early after a good dinner. Next morning we went off about 11 o'clock to Uppsala, which we were eager to see. It proved about the best day of our whole trip. The train journey there took about an hour. We explored the Domkyrka (pronounced –ch) which is the old centre of Swedish religion and still the seat of the Swedish Primate, the Archbishop of Uppsala […] From there we next assailed the University Library eager to see the Codex Argenteus – the one MS. of Ulphilas’ Moeso-Gothic Bible (circ. 380) on which we depend for our knowledge of the existence of the language!⁵⁰³ Baedeker said it was exhibited but we could not find it and finally elicited the fact that six months ago it was decided not to show it any more even under a glass case – why it is hard to say. I was disappointed. Neither bribes nor blandishments availed […] I was afraid I had hardly enough prestige to carry conviction if I proclaimed I had come all the way from Australia to study Moeso-Gothic. Mournfully we turned our steps towards the best restaurant in Uppsala and consumed an excellent dinner for two crowns (about 2/3d) apiece. Swedish cooking is peculiar but not displeasing. The best feature of Swedish meals is the invariable hors d'oeuvres – Smörgåsar (butter) in Swedish – like what we had on the Bremen. One hears so much about Danish butter in England. We found the butter in Denmark invariably execrable, in Sweden invariably delicious. What is the meaning of this? After lunch we decided to go out to Gammla Uppsala which is about two and a half miles away. We motored out across the snow-laden plain. The air was very keen but it was quite delightful as we were all well wrapped up. It was really nearly as sacrilegious thing to do as to motor out to Mycenae or Tiryns say – Old Uppsala was the most ancient capital of Sweden and from the Odin Hill(ock)s there all the kings of Sweden down to Gustavus Vasa harangued their people. Just by the hillock are three large barrows wherein old pagan kings are buried. We climbed one through the deep snow and gazed northwards – our furthest north – not quite so far up as the Shetlands […] We looked at the old church close by which is on the site of a famous pagan temple. There was nothing of very much interest there except a few old carvings and a curious old wooden coffin and a bride-stool. But to our surprise we came across Celcius (the thermometer man)'s tomb there.⁵⁰⁴ What a curious burying-place – he was professor in Uppsala. Gammla Uppsala has only about six houses now, once the capital of Sweden! We had some mead (Swedish, mjöd) at a neighbouring farm-house which we drank out of silver-mounted horns and felt like Vikings. Round my horn was an inscription saying that Crown Prince Gustaf (the present King) drank out of it on a certain day. Mead is something like cider – it seemed to me – sweet with a slightly bitter after-taste. We only stayed in Gammla Uppsala about half-an-hour and then mournfully turned our faces again south to Uppsala and Stockholm. We got back to Stockholm about 6.30. Wib and Kaspar were again a bit tired, but I felt full of energy and so went to the opera at the Royal Opera House. It was Donizetti's La Favorita and like all those old Italian operas very tuneful and pleasing but one tired of it after a certain time. It was fairly well done – of course in Swedish. England is the only country where they have an English-speaking prima donna singing them in Italian. Funny country! as if English were unsingable.

Next morning we again essayed sightseeing. We managed to get into the Riddarholsmkyrka which is on an island to itself. Services are no longer held in it – it is only a mausoleum. Nearly all the kings since Gustavus Adolphus are buried there, including Oscar II, in three chapels or vaults, those of the Vasa kings, the late Vasas (or Carolinians) from Charles XII on, and the Bernardottes.⁵⁰⁵ We could not see the latter, including Charles XII's tomb, as it was shut. From there we went on to the Royal Library and saw some of the old MSS and incunabula under glass cases […] We then took an explorer's walk round and I went on to and up by a lift to the top of a huge wooden tower called Katherina-Hissen from which I got a good idea of Stockholm.⁵⁰⁶ The most interesting features of Stockholm's situation are the fact of its being built on islands (‘The Venice of the North’) and the fact that you see everywhere houses built up on the natural rock like Naples only much more so, which gives it a very picturesque appearance. It must be a very gay place in summer but it was more fascinating visiting it amidst the ice and snow. However we could not afford to stay longer and as repetition of our ‘all-night sitting’ in the train was out of the question we left about 5.50 and resolved to break the journey at Linköping. We got there close on 12 and were lucky enough to strike a good, cheap hotel – very nice. And why? cheapness and luxury combined! Because Linköping is not a foreigners’ resort – in the hotel they spoke nothing but Swedish (with which I had to grapple) and did not have a special English-American rate! It was a delightfully clean and very comfortable place. We didn't get up till 10 next morning as we all wanted a good rest and that gave us lots of time to see the town. We then went out and saw the cathedral […] We left Linköping by the 2.51 after sending some postcards thence […] and after seven hours in the train got to Malmö about 10. I got up at a quarter to 7 next morning and took a solitary walk around the town. There was nothing of interest to see except the castle in which Bothwell was imprisoned and that was hardly of thrilling interest.⁵⁰⁷ It was too misty to see Copenhagen (17 miles) across the Sound. We left by the 9 train to Trelleborg where we posted the letters and went on board the German steamer Stettin on which, as the waters were very glassy, we had a delightful four hours. We got to Sassnitz in Rügen about 2 and then stayed in the train till 7.47 when we reached Berlin – the train being taken across the short stretch of water between Rügen and the mainland […]

Letter 57 To Rex, 16 April 1909, Pragerstr. 33, Berlin W. 80

[…] On Easter Day I went to St. George's at 9 and again at 11 […] The church was crowded then and very well filled at 9. The neighbouring café was crowded with breakfasting Engländerinnen.⁵⁰⁸ They (i.e. the café-owners) make a lot out of the English Church 9 o'clock services, especially on Christmas and Easter Day. We have really done nothing else this week except go to the opera twice – Humperdinck's Hänsel and Gretel (together with a very clever modern one-act opera by Blech: delightful – called ‘Versiegelt’)⁵⁰⁹ as a matinee on Easter Monday – and Offenbach's Hoffmann's Erzählungen⁵¹⁰ last night. Wib and Kaspar got sick of it as I must confess, the singers were not on form – so we came away half-way through. I was very sorry we did as I was quite charmed with the opera – very pretty music (Madre'll know it perhaps – there's a famous Barcarolle, second act) and very dramatic […] I forgot to say that it was ‘An Englishman's Home’ that we tried to get into first last night⁵¹¹ – it started on Easter Eve at the Neues Theater but we found it was off after only four nights’ run! The Berlinese have very wisely and dignifiedly (one must own tho’ with indignation) squashed it by simply not going. My opinion of Major du Maurier (self-styled ‘A Patriot’) who allowed the rights to be sold to a German manager is not a high one […] I share your indignation about the Japanese cook but I understand the maid's feelings⁵¹² – 9/10 Americans, 99/100 Australians, 999/1000 Canadians would behave so, don't you think? However our real enemy is Germany. It seems to me, though I've seen far too little to claim any right to a view, that war's absolutely inevitable unless we build so hard and work so energetically as to make Germany feel disinclined or unless Germany and England realise the awfulness of the situation and frankly and generously shake hands. Intensely as I dislike the Germans and as every Englishman and American I've met here does – one must admire their patriotism and their energy. Personally I think they're a loathsome race but a great nation […]

Letter 58 To his father, 30 April 1909, 14 Banbury Rd., Oxford

[…] Three mornings this week I've got up to go with Jenness for rows (not ‘disturbances’!) on the Upper River. We took a boat for the term at 10/- each and go early to avoid collision and criticism. It was cold this morning and I have a fire for the first time this term.

I've been playing tennis a bit and yesterday was picked in the Balliol six (we have six in a team here, not four) versus Trinity. However it rained too hard to play […] Tennis is of a very poor class comparatively in Oxford […] I went to the Union last night and heard an interesting debate on the Dreadnought question. The best speech was against but I remained unconvinced and voted for them.⁵¹³ The only ally England has is – I am convinced – America: if there's war with Germany Russia and France will both be keen to fight Germany but will be frightened. Japan will also remain neutral – but America will join us if Germany started to win. It is a pity that the matter has been made a party question.

I'm sorry Lord Dudley has been fomenting sedition.⁵¹⁴ Home Rule is not a live issue in Oxford. People are far more interested in Defence and Tariff Reform and Socialism. Those are the three great issues. Most of the Oxford men I've met are Home Rulers but more or less indifferent to the matter. I'm still properly anti-Home Rule but I think that the imminence of the danger is probably very much exaggerated. The Conservatives will be in again some time this year. Tariff Reform is quite certain and I hope Colonial Preference. It's funny to see the violence of party spirit in Oxford. The debate last night resounded with curses on the heads of Navyite minister and unscrupulous Tory leaders. Everything's turned into a Liberal v. Conservative discussion […] I see posted up at the Union a telegram that the Queen of the Netherlands has a daughter.⁵¹⁵ The excitement in Holland will be prodigious. The reason is that they have been dreading annexation by Germany, and indeed I see in the Nineteenth Century that a leading German statesman says that in event of war the first thing that would have to be done is to annex Holland⁵¹⁶ […] I'm going to a lot of lectures this term –

Rashdall (New College) on Political Philosophy

Grundy (Brasenose) on Hellenic Versions of non-Hellenic History

Lindsay (Balliol) on Republic I–V

A.E. Zimmern (New College) on Introduction to Greek History

Tod on History of Sparta to 432

Zimmern is very good and stimulating.

I haven't done much else. They are giving a grand-opera week in Oxford (Moody-Manners Co.)⁵¹⁷ and I went to the opening performance (Faust) but it was very crude, tho I suppose not bad considering […]

Letter 59 To his stepmother, 7 May 1909, 14 Banbury Rd., Oxford

[…] The past week has been a very happy one – mostly taken up with tennis-playing. We've had several games – against New College – who beat us badly – against Worcester – whom we beat badly – and against Jesus when we just lost. A match takes a good four hours from 2.15 to 6.15 or later, so it is quite hard work, but very interesting […] Ian has been up doing exams.⁵¹⁸ I took him into hall on Sunday night and also to the concert and saw a good deal of him. I think his exams (he's trying for Oriel you know) went all right but I haven't heard results yet. On Sunday I went to lunch with the Burrows (Mrs Burrows is Dr. Wilkinson's sister-in-law)⁵¹⁹ who are always very nice to me and then on to see C.O.S. She was also very nice and talked most interestingly. She doesn't seem at all well yet tho and says her complete recovery will take a long time. She explained her new meteorological discovery to me and it was very interesting […] The weather is delightful – day after day of cool, sunny weather – the only disadvantage being a little too much dust […] I've been reading Tess of the D'Urbervilles lately.⁵²⁰ It doesn't in my opinion at all equal Far from the Madding Crowd but it has some wonderful parts […] I had two men (Maclehose and Carpenter: see Freshers’ group) and L. Bernstein (Fresher: Polish Jew: very learned) and F.P. Griffiths (a Californian) to brekker yesterday […]

Letter 60 To his father, 14 May 1909, Oxford Union

[…] I was interested in your speech on the Dreadnought question and thought it very good.⁵²¹ How stirred up people are in Australia over it! Here there is great excitement too, but it tends too much to assume the character of a party conflict between Liberals and Conservatives. Everything here is enslaved to party demands and it is so hard to fall in altogether with either party. I'm Unionist in everything except when they champion the useless capitalist (I don't mean all capital, merely the lazy and selfish portion of the big landholders) and the brewery interest. Next week (Eights’ Week) the famous non-party M.P. – Harold Cox – is coming up to talk at the Union⁵²² […] On Monday night I went to a small dinner-party at the Sidgwick's (ten there altogether). It was very nice – Old Sidgwick is a nice old chap, isn't he? Mrs Sidgwick is somewhat formidable but the two girls are very interesting and one of them very pretty.⁵²³ They organized a boating-party for Saturday tomorrow and I was to come and bring another man but it fell thru as C.O.S., for whose benefit it was, couldn't come that day. I went round to see her on Tuesday. I have just heard she has had to go into hospital again. She is having an awful time but bears it splendidly. My opinion of her has gone up enormously since I've seen more of her […] On Tuesday night we had a meeting of the Colonial Club. I didn't speak. I'm Treasurer this term and they've nominated me for Secretary next term […]

Letter 61 To his father, 21 May 1909, 14 Banbury Rd., Oxford

This is in the rush of Eights’ Week, so you may well imagine there isn't time for much […] On Monday and Tuesday we had tennis matches against Trinity and the House and won both. My partner and I won all our rubbers. These matches are very good fun and last all the afternoon as they are six aside and each pair has to play every other pair – making best out of nine rubbers in all. Last Saturday MacDonnell and I won the 2nd round (1st we had a bye) of the Varsity Open Doubles and are thus in the semi-final. Unluckily we have to meet the best pair in the Varsity next.

From this you'll gather that tennis is occupying me mostly. I'm also however doing a lot of lecture-going and find some of them excellent. I was sorry to miss a public lecture of Mackail's yesterday as I had to see the Eights […] Oxford's very gay and lots of people up. Everyone's in flannels including me. I have also invested in a new £3. 10. 0 suit which passes Y's critical eye favourably and a trousers-press (these details are for Madre) […] Tomorrow and Sunday nights we are going to the Balliol concerts: Sunday to lunch and boating with the Sidgwick's. Thursday night's Queen's College ball. Monday–Tuesday–Wednesday Australians stay here.

Whom should we meet on the Balliol barge yesterday but Beard and Cookie. Beard's staying with him for a few days only. They're coming to lunch with me tomorrow. Extraordinary how things change. I remember how at school we used to laugh at Beard's ‘exaggerated Oxford (sic. – Cambridge?) accent’ – now it's his awfully broad Australian accent that one notices.⁵²⁴

I'm slowly increasing my circle of acquaintance in Balliol. I daresay it's now 70 to 80. Out of Balliol I don't know many except Colonials and them chiefly thru being Treasurer of the Club and endeavouring to get in money.

The last few mornings I've been trying to punt. It's very amusing and I'm improving a bit. Everybody does it this term […]

Letter 62 To his father, 4 June 1909, 14 Banbury Rd., Oxford

[…] Everything's looking beautiful up here and the term is worth both the others together in every respect […] My last letter was a very poor one written about 8 in the morning before dashing off to catch the train to Birmingham. Eight's Week was tremendous but work was virtually impossible. In addition to the Eights, which we watched every day except one, there was the Australian match which Y and I attended two days. It was unfortunately a draw owing to rain but the ’Varsity put up a very good game⁵²⁵ […] On the Saturday afternoon Y and I attended a garden party of the Sidgwicks in Corpus gardens which was quite nice. In the evening she and Primrose⁵²⁶ came with me to the concert.⁵²⁷ It was a very good one – Fanny Davis played⁵²⁸ and Mrs Henry Wood sang (Mr H.W. accompanied her).⁵²⁹ I didn't like Fanny Davis’ playing a bit but Mrs H.W. was delightful: she is a Russian and some of her songs (mostly French) were delightfully pretty. There was another concert on Sunday night […] It was an absolutely perfect one – they had the Wessely string quartet⁵³⁰ and a clarinet man – and did two perfectly beautiful things perfectly. Most of Sunday afternoon was taken up with the Sidgwicks. I went to lunch with them (in flannels of course as at almost everything – barring concerts and dances! – in Eights’ Week) and afterwards on the river. I thought they'd have raked up another man or so but I was the one victim – one to six (one of them oldish!). However we had a very good time and pretended to row and paddle as you do on the Cher⁵³¹ very lazily. There were so many boats it was almost impossible to get in six successive strokes. It was a pity we didn't take out tea with us. I went back to tea with them afterwards and then to college chapel – then concert. Most of Monday Y and I spent at the cricket, watching Gilbert's wonderful bowling.⁵³² The Australians batted wretchedly except Noble and (especially) Gregory.⁵³³ They are a very disappointing team. The match was played on the Christ Church ground and there was quite a good attendance. They didn't play it in the Parks as they are not allowed to charge for admission there.

In the evening a man got me to act as steward at an Empire Day cinematograph display called ‘Our Navy’ at the Town Hall. Several of us turned up prepared to organize a surging crowd but there was nothing to do as there were only two rows of chairs filled! Empire Day is only beginning to catch on here. In fact English people don't seem to grasp the idea of anniversaries much. My old landlady, who is tremendously patriotic, didn't know it was the Prince of Wales or yours or Mr Smith's birthday yesterday.⁵³⁴ She only knew it was her brother's. Wednesday morning we spent at the match. In the afternoon there was to have been a tennis match v. Magdalen but it was too wet. Thursday night I've already told you about. It was an unqualified success and after very gloomy forebodings we all enjoyed ourselves immensely as the chaperones were most energetic introducing. There weren't many more than 180 there I should think – just about the proper number anyway. Y thought it one of the prettiest things she'd ever seen – the gloomy old college cloisters and quad lit up with Chinese lanterns and electric lights. We got there at 7.10 as it was a Cinderella⁵³⁵ and the law forbade us being out after 12, and so began in broad daylight and passed gradually into starlight and lanterns […] Friday morning broke bright and sunny and I arose at 7.30, wrote three letters, had breakfast and got the 8.42 to Birmingham. I went with Bill Ronald (used to be at the school with me – great bowler)⁵³⁶ who had been staying a couple of days with Mervyn. We got to Birmingham at 10.34 and went by tram out to the Edgbaston ground.⁵³⁷ I hadn't got my Melbourne C.C.⁵³⁸ but Ronald had his and on the strength of this and Major Wardill's card⁵³⁹ we saw the Secretary⁵⁴⁰ who was very nice and gave us both complimentary tickets to the Members’ Reserve for the match! Good. However Ronald knows Laver, saw him, introduced me and we had a long talk – mostly about Wib! about whom he asked much and often!⁵⁴¹ […] We also had common topics of conversation in cricket and Siberia. I don't mean that I suggested that the whole team should be sent there tho Blythe and Hirst⁵⁴² were getting them out absurdly easily, but he remarked he was going back by Siberia and so I remarked my brother was just coming that way. However he wanted to meet Mrs Maudsley⁵⁴³ who had a letter of introduction to him as manager but unfortunately they did not know each other by sight. He asked me if I knew her and then we went round to find her – in the course of which he took Ronald and me up into the sacred area reserved for Test match players and committee and their families and there we had the best seats on the ground. There we stayed all day. Afterwards Mrs Maudsley came up with two nieces. She was just there for the day. I introduced Laver and Ronald and we sat together the whole afternoon […] As for the cricket, you've already heard in Australia more explanations of the collapse than I've been able to think of. As far as I could tell, the wicket was not at all bad and Laver told me he thought the Australians should have made 180 first innings. 74! It was a case of wretched batting and Blythe and Hirst taking full advantage of that.⁵⁴⁴ Again the Englishmen were got out much more cheaply than was expected thru Macartney's brilliant opening and Armstrong's steadiness afterwards.⁵⁴⁵ In the second innings I hoped we should make 300. Noble unluckily got out to the most marvellous catch I've ever seen.⁵⁴⁶ But otherwise we got on pretty right that night, Gregory batting beautifully. Next day it must have been sheer, inexplicable collapse […] Since Saturday […] the weather's been extraordinarily cold and wet and I've got rheumatism […]

Letter 63 To his stepmother, 11 June 1909, Oxford Union

[…] I'm quite recovered if the weather hasn't. Really the only two incidents of the week were defeats at the hands of Merton and Keble. Merton were too good for us but against Keble I played very badly. They were very bad but unluckily we had nearly all our proper team away. These college tennis matches are good fun tho not contested with the keenness of our college matches. People don't go wild about winning and losing in amateur sport in England. They play for the game, not to win – which is the best I'm not sure – you lose in patriotism what you gain in sportsmanship. Tomorrow we play Guy's Hospital (they come up to play us). I spent most of last Sunday at Uncle Boyce's […] In the evening we had a meeting of the Colonial Club in the Balliol J.C.R. We had Colonel Seeley (Under-Secretary for the Colonies)⁵⁴⁷ to talk to us on Relations between the Mother-Country and Self-Governing Colonies. He was good – clear but not eloquent – and supported the Liberal attitude of not rushing reforms (?) like Imperial Federation or Imperial Defence organization – but to let each part of the Empire work as it please. Steele Maitland, a Unionist M.P., also spoke⁵⁴⁸ – very well indeed as a piece of oratory but I think fallacious. I funked speaking but four or five members of the Club got up – among them R.T. Elliott.⁵⁴⁹ I was talking with him there and went round to tea with him on Tuesday. He seems a silly little man but a very good scholar […] I was beaten by a vote for the Secretaryship next term – a good thing for my prospects of work as the Treasurership this term has taken up quite a lot of time […]

Letter 64 To his father, 18 June 1909, 14 Banbury Rd., Oxford

[…] Last Saturday we had rather a good tennis match. Guy's Hospital sent up a strong team against us including two old Blues and we just lost by 5 matches to 4. We lunched them first and had a very good game tho unluckily it was very wet […] On Monday […] evening the Press Delegates arrived by motor from Coventry and stayed at the Randolph.⁵⁵⁰ Worcester gardens were illuminated in their honour. I went there and strolled round with Dr. Hackett⁵⁵¹ and his party which included the indefatigable but foolish little Elliott (R.T.) who wishes to be remembered to you […] Wednesday I spent in London. Grandmother gave me a ticket for the Church Pageant⁵⁵² and on the strength of that one got a return railway ticket for 6/8. I went up by the 8.40 train and went straight to Lord's where I saw the play from 11 to 1.30.⁵⁵³ It was well worth seeing. England started their second innings with 17 for one wicket and at lunch when I had to leave it was 111 for 9. Anything finer than Armstrong's bowling can hardly be imagined, as the wicket was a good one.⁵⁵⁴ I think this victory ought to help the team a great deal. The match was at Lord's and I was much struck by the generous way in which the crowd applauded both sides and especially good fielding. As the wickets fell one heard poor attempts at cooees all round the ground.⁵⁵⁵ From there I went on to the Pageant at Fulham Palace. It was a wonderful sight – something like 5,000 performers. However I got slightly bored with it as it was very long. I couldn't stay for the evening performance, so only got down to 1350 A.D. […]

Letter 65 To his father, 24 June 1909, 27 Hatch Street, Dublin

[…] On Friday I had a collections paper in Herodotus Books 1–3–5 and on Saturday morning one on Plato – Republic Books 1–5 – The papers were quite nice ones but I expected to do very badly as I hadn't been doing or rather revising the work in question for a very long time. However I got on quite passably tho not well – I did the translation all right but the questions only scampily as I wasn't primed enough with the facts. On Herodotus I got β (i.e. second) and on Plato – translation part α– and questions β–. Collections of course don't matter at all but I expect to do much better next October after a good Long Vac.'s work […] On Sunday I went to lunch at 145 and saw Aunt Maimie and Uncle Boyle there – both as nice as usual. Uncle Boyle invited me up for a week-end to Rathmullan, Co. Donegal – where his ship is – while I am in Ireland – and said he could easily put me up on board, but I don't expect I shall have time or money to go, tho it would be nice […] On Monday the two events of importance were Hand-shaking and the arrival of the Australian mail. At the former the Mugger impressed on me the fact that the Long was pre-eminently the time for work, which I hope it will be in my case […] I left on Tuesday by the 11.48 from Oxford and had to change twice – at Wolverhampton and Chester. At Chester I had an hour and walked along Foregate St. and went into the cathedral. Evensong was being sung, so I couldn't explore it. We got to Holyhead at 7 and had a fairly smooth to roughish crossing. I daresay I should have been sick if I had stayed on deck, so after dinner I lay down and dozed for two hours and a half. I arrived at Hatch St. at 10.30.

Yesterday […] we were to have gone to the regatta, as ‘Trinity Week’ (a new idea)⁵⁵⁶ is at present in progress but it was too wet. We're probably going today. Tomorrow night Cyril and I are going to the College Ball and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday next week will see us in for a tennis tournament at Killiney. I hope to do some bicycling too on Uncle Charlie's bicycle. Last night two young solicitors came in and we had a bridge four […]

Letter 66 To his father, 8 July 1909, Grangemore, Raheny, Co. Dublin

I got your fine long letter the day before yesterday […] Knox is one of the Bishop of Manchester's sons and among the half-dozen most brilliant men in Balliol or Oxford (to me these are synonymous). It is funny to think of his father's⁵⁵⁷ and Digby Berry's names together.⁵⁵⁸ The former as you know is a tremendous anti-Education-Bill-and- denominational-schools-supporter and young Knox is a great frequenter of Cowley Church (at least I've seen him there on the two occasions I've been).⁵⁵⁹ I haven't met him as he is a long way senior to me and a terrific ‘blood’ but I know Chavasse (son of the Bishop of Liverpool) very well. I have had him round to brekker and often go in to coffee with him. He is a medical and a very nice chap […] Last Thursday (today week) Aunt Jeannie took me out to Glasnevin. We looked at Parnell and O'Connell and Mr Burke's tombs in the cemetery⁵⁶⁰ and explored the lovely Botanical Gardens of which she is very fond. We also […] went into ‘Mrs Delany's house’ and one of the daughters of the house showed us all over it – the old oratory and shell-room and hall etc. – and round the beautiful old garden with the little temple and the neighbouring churchyard where Dean Delany is buried and the place below the ‘temple’ where the Drapier letters were printed⁵⁶¹ […] Friday morning I spent at the Records Office⁵⁶² looking up some things for Uncle Walter⁵⁶³ (who's very much interested in the Allen pedigree) about different Irish ancestors […] Uncle Charlie took me there and the people remembered you and your Swift researches there⁵⁶⁴ very well […] On Sunday Uncle Charlie went to St. Anne's, Dawson St. at 8 and I at 10. Afterwards we wrote letters and then caught the 1.30 from Harcourt St. to Shankill where we were invited to lunch with some people called Quin (or Quinn?).⁵⁶⁵ He is a retired Indian Civil Servant with £1000 a year pension, a delightful house and lovely garden (in which he takes a great interest), a charming wife and three charming daughters […] All Monday Ziman (who is a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar, a Jew, a Balliol Scholar) who is over here for a month or so and I spent in an excursion to Glendalough. We went by train to Rathdrum and bicycled eight miles from there to Glendalough. After lunch as pouring with rain we explored the Round Tower and Seven Churches – in which I was most interested. They were so new to me – quite a fresh experience seeing these old Irish buildings of the seventh and eighth centuries. They are perhaps not architecturally excellent (though some of the churches are remarkably fine ones) but they are so small and quaint and ruined and fit in so supremely well with the beautiful mountains and the beautiful lake. It is a place to write poetry in if one ever feels inclined to write it. It is pathetic to look at all the tombs of later days there – people who've gained their last wish of being laid in the holy ground on which St. Kevin and the other holy men of old lived and prayed – a superstition of course but one it is hard to blame severely […] Afterwards it rained on but in spite of it we went on the lake and into St. Kevin's bed⁵⁶⁶ as many thousands have done before us […] and wished and talked not to the pullers-up-the-cliff about Kathleen's ghost etc.⁵⁶⁷ […] The rain stopped and after tea we bicycled back 18 or 19 miles to Bray […] We caught the 8 p.m. train from Bray.

On Tuesday we had an even better excursion possibly. Cyril and a man named Acton⁵⁶⁸ and I caught the 9 train from Amiens St.⁵⁶⁹ and got to Drogheda at 9.45. After a look round and seeing the interesting old gate of St. Laurence we bicycled up the valley of the Boyne to the Obelisk.⁵⁷⁰ A fearful thing happened there. Acton is a great nationalist (an Imperial Home Ruler) and just as we were crossing the bridge – an ominous place for a man of his views – he ran into Cyril by accident and damaged his own wheel. So we had to call on a neighbouring rector he knew⁵⁷¹ and borrow his bike. This wasted a lot of time and so we went on then to Mellifont. We saw the abbey and had lunch there […] We got on there to Monasterboice up fearful hills (Louth is a very hilly place) and in pelting rain. But Monasterboice was well worth seeing. Do you know the fine old round tower (we went into it) and three beautiful Irish crosses in the little churchyard and the few ruins of the old Monastery […] From there we got back to the rectory of Mellifont to tea and afterwards Cyril and I rode off to Newgrange to see if we could see the tumulus. Acton's bike prevented him coming. We didn't get there till 6.50 and found it shut.⁵⁷² It is a huge tumulus – very big and in some ways may be compared with the ‘Treasury of Atreus’⁵⁷³ (vide comparison in Mahaffy's Rambles⁵⁷⁴ […]). We could only peer in and see a long low entrance leading to some vast burying chambers. The slabs of stone however were much smaller and the entrance less imposing than at Mycenae. We came back via Dowth tumulus⁵⁷⁵ but that was also shut. I was very sorry as I was very keen to see them […]

Letter 67 To his father, 23 July 1909, Houghton

[…] You ask about lectures – last term I went to a great many but irregularly as they took up so much time. This is foolish I think and next term I will revert to what I did in October and Hilary Terms and only go to two or three (say six hours a week) but regularly to all, as it is better to get hold of the ideas of a few men than sip those of a lot. Every week I have to write an essay and take it to my tutor (J.A. Smith). Junior members of the college write on general subjects and go in batches (six at a time say) but Greats men write for their own tutor on their own work and go separately. Last term I wrote them on the last five books of the Republic – they are very fascinating but as hard philosophy as you get anywhere I should think and do require thinking over. I wrote on such subjects as ‘The Immortality of the Soul – is it proved in the Republic and Phaedo?’ – ‘The Place of Mathematics in Plato's Scheme of Education’ – ‘Plato's View of Dialectic’ – ‘His Similes of the Lime and the Cave’ – ‘The Theories of the Nature of the ɛίδη⁵⁷⁶ Propounded in the Parmenides’⁵⁷⁷ etc. After I had read my essay (four, five, six or seven pages of an ordinary notebook) J.A. would start talking and talk on most interestingly, I occasionally questioning or being questioned, for an hour or so. He is a splendid man – most unfortunately he will be away for the next two terms and will be greatly missed. It is interesting work – Greats – since the Long started (five weeks nearly) I have got thru two books (5 and 6) of Herodotus and one (VII) of the Republic and have still to finish Herodotus and Republic and read two or three books of Thucydides and five of the Ethics. And of course it's not merely reading the texts (that's quite a job tho’) but making up the matter. You have to get up the history very minutely (interesting work) and read as much on Plato and modern philosophy as you can […] I left off my last at Saturday week. That last day in Ireland Crampton and I spent the morning of in Dublin. We went to lunch with Dr Mahaffy and he was really very very nice to us. He took us all over the College to the library etc and was very cordial and interesting and talked very nicely about you and how much he liked you. He gave us a very nice lunch – ‘us’ is Crampton, me and young Bury (son of the τού πάνυ⁵⁷⁸ Bury)⁵⁷⁹ an awful young ass (heavens!) – seems strange doesn't it? – a conceited young monkey – who doesn't see why it is ‘worthwhile’ to treasure old books or old things or learn dead languages or read history. What a son for J.B.B. This beautiful specimen is staying with Mahaffy at Howth. I played tennis all the afternoon and left by the night boat […] I had five splendid days in London at the flat […] On Tuesday night I went by myself to 2/6 seats at Covent Garden and heard Tetrazzini in La Traviata.⁵⁸⁰ It was simply beyond words. I heard this opera before in Berlin⁵⁸¹ and love it but Tetrazzini made it paradise. The rest of the cast was first-rate too – Scotti,⁵⁸² Sammarco,⁵⁸³ John MacCormack⁵⁸⁴ etc. Have you ever been inside Covent Garden – what a huge place it is, and a huge crowd! One day Ian and I […] did Hale's Tours (which you liked so much) – Holland, Stockholm and Rome.⁵⁸⁵ Holland was very good – the others not so good. We went to the Tivoli one night which was very amusing and surprisingly high-class⁵⁸⁶ […]

Letter 68 To his stepmother, 13 August 1909, Houghton

[…] With Rex's arrival in England the weather has become beautiful – the first summer we've had since May. The last seven days have been glorious – shade temperature about 77–80 each day – just splendid and I don't think there's any climate to beat England – if only the summer wasn't so short […] R.A. O'Brien was up last Sunday for the day and was very interesting and amusing⁵⁸⁷ […]

Letter 69 To his father, 27 August 1909, Hotel Continental et de la Gare, Lausanne

[…] We had a delightfully interesting tho very exhausting two days in Paris – full of enchantment for both of us. First morning we spent over Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle – the afternoon for three hours in the glorious Louvre […] In the cool of the evening we went out to Versailles on the electric tram. The palace of course was shut but that we did not mind as it contains more of quantity than quality as regards works of art, I believe. But we walked about the grounds which looked their best in the evening light and thought of Louis XIV–V–VI and Watteau and all the other things the big, spacious, stiff gardens make you think of […] Yesterday morning we spent in going out to S. Denis […] In the afternoon again we spent three hours in the Louvre and afterwards went to St. Etienne-du-Mont – the beautiful church next the Panthéon. It is most remarkably and most unorthodoxically beautiful – a compound and a very successful one of the Gothic and Renaissance. The Panthéon and St. Sulpice were both shut. The evening we spent in exploring the Champs Elysées and got home very early to bed as we were tired […]

Letter 70 To his father, Friday, 3 September 1909, Hotel Croix Fédérale, Champéry

[…] I have been here a week with Carpenter. It is a most wonderful place at the head of a splendid gorge with snowy peaks of 7–11,000 ft. just opposite (the highest of which is the famous Dent du Midi) and equally high peaks blocking the gorge at both ends. Switzerland is a wonderful novelty to me. I've never seen mountains like this. And the picturesque little chalets dotted everywhere and the clear-looking and -sounding torrents dashing down the mountainside. I believe the climate had been glorious till I arrived last Saturday, but since then it has become foggy, damp, and icy cold (Champéry is 3,300 feet above the sea) with no sun […] Carpenter is a fine climber and has been up everything near including the Dent du Midi. I have only laboured up one peak and that a very easy one (about 2,000 ft. above us or 5,300 altogether) […]

Letter 71 To Rex, 6 September 1909, Hotel Croix Fédérale, Champéry

[…] Today at least the weather has improved and is simply perfect. I intend then to stay on here so long as this weather continues and then depart to the Italian lakes […] However if the weather gets bad before that – we mean to go to Annecy in south-east France near Aix-les-Bains. This is one of the most beautiful places on earth and I love it when the weather is perfect as it was today. Nearly everyone has left now as the season is ending – there are only about 20 left in our hotel. Those at our table are a nice old American lady of 85 – a Mrs Munroe – very active and interesting – and her niece a Miss Webster who is young and pretty and very nice and with whom we have great fun. My chief diversion is composing idiotic riddles in verse and we have a great time at dinner. The other lady at our table is a quite nice but fairly-unable-to-see-jokes-tho-trying-hard-to-and-very-agreeable Englishwoman who is going on to Siena in a fortnight about – a Miss Carr. The other people I see most of in the hotel are a Roman family – the Della Roccas.⁵⁸⁸ The father (who is Baron de Rocca) and the mother both speak English but the two boys don't and so we have to jabber at each other in German which they know (and French too) […]

Letter 72 To Rex, [10 September 1909], Hotel Croix Fédérale, Champéry

[…] For the last five days the weather has been perfect and our temper accordingly. The weather makes all the difference here. On a clear bright day the view and atmosphere are just perfect. Carpenter has quite recovered from his cold and today is attempting the hardest climb to be found here (over 10,000 and very difficult) – the Dent Jaune – with a young Russian-American Alpinist […] Mrs Munroe's grandson (the aforementioned Russian Alpine climber) has arrived and another addition to our table is a Greek Professor (of Greek) in the University of Alexandria whom we all see a lot of. I attempt witticisms to him in a sort of jargon of Greek (ancient and modern), French and Italian and he returns them with a mixture of English words which makes it very funny. Meal-time is always very amusing and not to be missed for anything. However we are melting away now – Greek Professor on Saturday, Miss Webster on Sunday, Mrs Munroe and grandson (named Vasiletsky) on Tuesday – and Carpenter and I on Monday I think to Annecy via Geneva […]

Letter 73 To his stepmother, 17 September 1909, Hotel Beau Site, Talloires, Lac d'Annecy, Haut Savoie

[…] It took us nearly a whole day to reach Geneva but it was most lovely on the lake. We stayed there till Wednesday and so saw it quite well […] I liked Geneva very much and so far from being a strict and sober place I found it (especially on Sunday) the very heart of merry continental life, theatres, concerts, street restaurants, bands everything – awfully gay. I was sorry we couldn't stay longer but of course it wouldn't have been easy to have worked there. We stayed at the Geneva Hotel in the Rue du Mont Blanc […] very nice and cheap! (only 2½ frs each for a room). As for the sites of the place I failed to get any appreciable pleasure out of the cathedral with its extraordinary jumble of architecture outside and bareness inside – But I liked the queer little Russian church very much […]

Letter 74 To his father, 26 September 1909, Hotel Manin, Milan

[…] I'll […] begin my news with last Monday […] our last day there […] In the afternoon we took a walk across to Menthon […] From there we took the steamer and went on to Annecy to shop. It was lovely coming back to Talloires in the evening while the sun was setting […] early next morning we left, and parted at Annecy station – he going off to London via Geneva–Lausanne–Paris and I taking the 9 o'clock train for Aix-Les-Bains. There I changed and had a clear run till Modane which you may remember is the last station on the French side of the Mont Cenis – I didn't like the latter at all – 20 minutes of dull, hot, stuffy darkness. What a magnificent undertaking it is tho’ – especially for 30 years ago.⁵⁸⁹ After changing at Modane I got straight on again for Turin where I arrived at 7.30 […] I think I was wise in not stopping there. Its only associations and memories (apart from having been the capital of the Taurini!⁵⁹⁰) are concerned with the House of Savoy and Italian independence and that is not a thing of the past enough yet to have become fascinating. I hadn't a day to spare for it from my time in Milan. So I changed again and got to Milan at 11 p.m. after a long day's journey of 15 hours. I came to this hotel which is in a very nice position opposite the gardens and very good in every way – expense 11 frs a day pension […] I'd no idea that there was so much of interest here as I'd never heard of much in Milan before beyond the Duomo and the Brera⁵⁹¹ but there's lots! To take what I've done in chronological order – the first morning I spent in getting my bearings and inside the Duomo. It is wonderfully impressive with its immense height. Guide-book says Street called it the finest interior in Europe⁵⁹² and certainly it is just wonderful. I saw Mass celebrated there. You know Milan has a rite of its own – the Ambrosian Liturgy – which is rather rare in the Roman Church.⁵⁹³ I don't know enough about such things to say what the differences are but one at least is the reading of a third passage of scripture – from the prophets – in addition to the epistle and gospel. In the afternoon I went out to look at the best Roman remains – the portico of Maximian's palace or baths – you remember he had his capital at Mediolanum – I think I sent you a postcard with a view of them. They make a fine impressive picture […] standing out there in the middle of the street with trams running on both sides of them. It was then too late to do galleries or anything – so I took the tram out to Monza – about one and a quarter hour's ride – to see the old cathedral there. It is built on the site of the church founded there by Theodelinda, Queen of the Lombards, in 590 and in it the Lombard kings were crowned at one period. What I went out for to see especially was the famous Iron Crown itself which was placed on the head of these Kings and of their successors – Charlemagne – down to Napoleon and last of all Ferdinand I of Austria in 1835.⁵⁹⁴ The crown itself is not iron however, as I had foolishly imagined. It is of gold with jewels inlaid and the iron is merely a thin circlet running round the side of it (made out of a nail from the Cross). It cost me 6 lire to see it but I think it was really worth it – most interesting. I wish you had seen it. No king of Italy will ever again wear that crown till church and state are reconciled. It is funny that Monza should happen to be the place where King Humbert was assassinated!⁵⁹⁵ Next day (Thursday) I had a very busy time. The whole morning I spent at the fine old castle which the Sforzas built and which is now a national museum – full of interesting sculptures and antiquities. The afternoon I devoted to churches – S. Lorenzo again (the church by the Roman portico I've been talking about) which occupies the site of Maximian's baths, Sant’ Eustorgio and Sant’ Ambrogio […] Friday morning I spent in the Brera […] In the afternoon I did what everyone comes to Milan to do – went up to the top of the Duomo. The view was disappointing as it was a cloudy day and Alps were not in evidence but it gave me a very good idea of the position of Milan. The roof with its countless marble statues is of course wonderful […] I also did a little church that afternoon – S. Nazaro – with interesting tombs of the great Trivulzi family – Yesterday morning I did another gallery – the Poldi-Pezzoli – like the Wallace Collection in London – a private collection given to the nation. It is beautifully housed and tho small is an excellent one and contains some lovely pictures of all schools. In the afternoon I did two more churches – S. Maurizio with a series of absolutely lovely frescoes by Luini and Sta Maria delle Grazie in the refectory of which is the famous Last Supper.⁵⁹⁶ There is said to be hardly an inch of the original work left owing to the bad surface and the need for constant retouching but the beauty of the picture still clings to it […] That ended my solitary walks here, for at 7 p.m. Rex arrived from Florence […] This […] afternoon we saw the Ambrosian Library with its priceless manuscripts and autographs and the picture collection there, which is a very fine one […]

Letter 75 To his father, 15 October 1909, Balliol

We've been up a week now and have all had time to begin settling down a bit […] Oxford weather was at its very worst when we came up. I promptly – like many hundred others I daresay – caught cold and felt just about a rotten as can be felt with a cold for two days – Sunday and Monday. But I think I'm pretty right again now. I've had a most interesting week so far. Lectures take up most of the mornings – some of them extremely good ones – notably E.M. Walker (of Queen's) Ἀθηναίων Πολίτɛια (Aristotle's I mean)⁵⁹⁷ – he (i.e. E.M.W.) is in the very forefront of Greek historians up here and the sort of man whose articles even Germans have to notice. He has a most inspiring manner too (very rare in Oxford) and his lectures are consequently thronged. He has other (lesser) accomplishments too, such as a prodigiously good memory, so that he can practically dispense with notes altogether – even for headings! and dates!! and most of his references!!!⁵⁹⁸ He knows all his texts as an old evangelical preacher would know the Bible. Then I'm going to Joachim of Merton three times a week on Aristotle's Ethics – very good and quite profound: unfortunately monotonous and hard to hear. A.D. Lindsay (Balliol) – three hours a week on Plato's Ideas etc and the last five books of the Republic – irritating manner and no logical order but I think if I can only manage to attend closely (which is hard) he'll tell us a lot as he's got a big reputation. M.N. Tod (Oriel) twice a week on the πɛντηκονταɛτία – fine word!⁵⁹⁹ – one of the coming men and a great admirer of the great modern Germans – Beloch, Busolt, Gilbert and especially Eduard Meyer of whose Geschichte des Altertums I've already purchased two volumes⁶⁰⁰ […] I'm also attending W. Temple of Queen's on the Development of Plato's Ideas Theory and find him so far very clear and interesting. This afternoon I'm going to Hogarth⁶⁰¹ on the Hittites as a diversion – one hour a week only – he ought to be splendid – and to-morrow afternoon G.B. Grundy on The Economic Background of Greek History (compiler of the nice red maps you've got). For essays – as our adored J.A. Smith is away in Canada for the next two terms – some of us are being sent to W.D. Ross of Oriel on Modern Philosophers – first essay next week on J.S. Mill's Utilitarianism. When I tell you that in addition this term I must get thru four or five books of Thucydides and go over again as much ‘Republic’ as possible and get thru Herodotus again historically you'll agree there's lots to be done […] The great event has been settling Ian comfortably in College – Hertford. You gasp? Yes we've always thought very poorly of Hertford but Uncle Boyce is rather convinced of the contrary now. He thinks it's a very live college and coming fast to the front. They took Ian without exam – I was very much surprised that he didn't get into Oriel as I thought his work easily good enough to pass – but Oriel seem to have got a bit uppish since the Cecil Rhodes bequest⁶⁰² and want to have a ferociously high standard apparently […]

Letter 76 To his father, 22 October 1909, Oxford Union

[…] Most of the afternoons this week have been filled up with tennis and bike-rides. I doubt I shall take up any other game here as it takes up too much energy necessary for work and absorbs you too much. In addition I shall be joining the O.T.C. (Officers’ Training Corps) this year which will also occupy time but not too much, I hope.⁶⁰³ I should have preferred joining the King's Colonials⁶⁰⁴ but I don't know enough about riding and I think I should find the work a good deal too strenuous. In addition it means camp for three weeks practically in the middle of the Long, whereas the O.T.C. are infantry and get down early and have their camp over in the first ten days of the Long. I suppose it's not at all the same as joining the K.C's but at least it's something I feel.

On Wednesday I spoke at the Arnold Society for the first time, on the greater desirability of a literary than a scientific education. I got on much better than I expected – I spoke on the paper, third – but of course not well. Tho I have improved a good lot on Melbourne performances I don't think I'll ever get on at speaking. You have to think and express yourself so quickly at Oxford to meet with any success. The Union speakers are not always very thorough but they're always clear if only in parts. In college societies like the Arnold these things are exaggerated. Matter does not matter but you must be epigrammatic and be able to ‘nag’ cleverly, which is difficult as some of the speakers are very good at it and it needs absolute confidence. Luckily I wasn't nearly as nervous as I expected […]

Letter 77 To his father, 5 November 1909, Balliol

For the first time for a good many days there is a splendid sun shine to cheer us up – the weather has been very cold and damp – in fact it's going to be a rattlingly cold winter – the worst for 60 years I have heard it prophesied tho who is competent to say that I don't know […] I've put in some five drills with the O.T.C. and passed the first very elementary shooting. On Tuesday we have a field day.

I find my essays on Modern Moral Philosophy questions very interesting and enjoy them very much […] At times I'm sorry I've taken Greats as it will leave me so little time for Modern History but yet it's such a splendid course that I shouldn't have liked to miss it. Madre may be interested to hear that last night I saw ‘Passing of Third Floor Back’ here⁶⁰⁵ – Ian Robinson (Forbes’ brother) in name part.⁶⁰⁶ He was quite good but not up to 7/3⁶⁰⁷ […]

Letter 78 To his father and stepmother, 19 November 1909, Rex's rooms, New College, Oxford

[…] This winter is going to be a disgraceful one I'm afraid. Snow already in many places – we had a sprinkling of it the other day. Colds come often and stay long […] Two or three days ago Y arrived here and I hope she will be here the next few days. Yesterday afternoon we all went to Paderewski⁶⁰⁸ – the Town Hall was crammed and every window except one or two tiny ones glued – even these the wretched man as soon as he noticed them ordered to be shut. Once he started a few bars and then suddenly stopped and rushed off the stage platform in despair because he noticed a window open – a wonderful person! It was a splendid concert and as we hadn't heard him before we were electrified – I went with Carpenter and Sadler – Rex with Kitty, Primrose and Miss Leane. In the evening, after dinner at Uncle Boyce's, I took them all to hear Chesterton⁶⁰⁹ speak at the Union on the subject, ‘The House of Lords as at present constituted is a standing menace to the state’.⁶¹⁰ He made quite a good speech in favour of abolition or reconstruction – one of which is, I think, necessary. I didn't record my vote as I couldn't quite agree with either side – I often find myself in this position as party-politics prevents a fair discussion of questions. I'm having lessons in Modern Greek (first day) free from the University Lecturer in the subject (Menardos) – as I shall probably take it as a special subject for Greats […]

Letter 79 To his father, 26 November 1909, Balliol

[…] Your letter last Tuesday was a long one discussing mostly Rex and his course and we (Rex and I) have talked a lot about it. I quite agree with all that you say about the importance of keeping the idea of the consular service to the fore and not just trying for a 3rd in History with a view to some petty mastership for which he has no sort of inclination. But you will realise by now that this is not the end he is aiming at in embarking on the History course, but that it is only by doing the History course that he could qualify for the consularship examination and that to have taken up the Modern Language School would have no prospect of any career at anything at all except perhaps a guide at Pompeii or a notary's translator. Really, tho we have considered the question again and again and discussed it in all its bearings with Uncle Boyce, my convictions are not shaken that History is the best – in fact the only course for Rex to take up. And Oxford clearly seems the best place not only to prepare for it in, but really the best way of preparing for the exam – in which not only will the knowledge and style which he acquires here be fully equal or superior to any he could acquire at a special coach's but there is actually a prejudice in favour of Oxford men […] The two most interesting events of the week were the Romanes Lecture by Mr Balfour on Wednesday afternoon⁶¹¹ and the S. Catherine's dinner last night. I just managed to write in time to get a ticket for the lecture. It was in the Sheldonian and there was a great crush – I got a very bad place but luckily the man was easy to hear. He was introduced by Lord Curzon (the Chancellor)⁶¹² who had torn himself away for a few hours from the debate in the House of Lords.⁶¹³ About the lecture I hardly know what to say – it is always the custom of Romanes lecturers to write their lectures but Balfour unfortunately hadn't had time, he said, to get his into literary form, and only had a few notes to rely on. The subject was ‘Questionings in Criticism and Beauty’ – he was chiefly occupied in considering the value and possibility of a standard of taste and criticism. He raised some interesting points tho none I thought very original. Let me give you two among many.

If an architect of, say, the Late Decorated period⁶¹⁴ were called upon to repair a splendid Norman church, he would do so in his own style – in this he would only be following the Early English⁶¹⁵ builder before him who had already shown his style in the repairing he had done – and be just as surely followed by the Perpendicular⁶¹⁶ architect who would add a Henry VII Chapel or the Renascence architect with a Tudor doorway. Only want of time and of money prevented all these men from pulling down their predecessors’ work and building the whole church in their own style – any other style being to them ugly. Yet we come along and admire them all – artistically as well as historically. How to explain this? Have we therein reached a height from which we can see the beauty of every different kind of form or are our sensibilities duller than those of the men who built and are we not really alive to the differences which divide beauty from deformity?

Again – the Greeks were the most artistic people in many senses who have ever existed – yet their music according to modern standards was in the most primitive, barbaric stage of development – They barely knew the rudiments of harmony and part-writing and had merely two or three paltry instruments which a modern musician would laugh at. Yet so far from this rude art failing to impress this most artistic of peoples we find the Greeks confessing to more impressibility by music than any other art – and this in the days of Sophocles, Pheidias and Iktinos!⁶¹⁷ How is this to be explained? Is it the case that this is to be considered the one weak spot in Greek aesthetic culture or are we to suppose that the Greeks had such intense musical feeling that they could obtain from their wretched citharas and pipes the aesthetic emotion [for] which we need the organ, the violin and all the various wind and stringed instruments we possess, expressing forms of which the Greeks were unconscious, to supply us with. Which is the answer?

I'm afraid it would be hard to describe the lecture in full – these are but two points which I happen to remember. If you would care for it, I could get it for you (it was actually published in book form next day from reporters’ verbatim accounts)⁶¹⁸ – but I don't know if aesthetics interest you very especially. The general impression was one of disappointment which I did not share – I liked him, tho I don't think I really understood his last part about German aesthetic metaphysics.

Last night we had St. Catherine's dinner (Nov. 25th). I don't know if you remember from my account of last year that S. Catherine is our patroness and that the college gives us a dinner every year on her day.⁶¹⁹ The most amusing part is after the dessert when the big silver loving-cups go round and we all stand up by threes and drink out of them as they go. Speeches began with the usual one from the Master recounting the doings of the past year (I'll send you the pamphlet sent round to us all). I don't know anyone who strikes you as such a perfect gentleman as the Master – that may seem a rather unnecessary thing to say of the Master of Balliol but I mean not only in little things or in big things or in most things but in everything. I don't think he is a man of very great intellectual power or original mind (that is, for Oxford – though I don't want to belittle his achievements, which are great) but he is a most lovable man and I only wish I saw more of him. This is my one grievance against our dons – I never get to know them. They don't seem to ask men in much to their rooms – except perhaps a favoured few – in the way they seem to have done in Uncle Boyce's time. Perhaps it is my fault but I certainly haven't made any friends amongst them. You often ask about my friends – well, I suppose I know some 70 or 80 Balliol men – not a very large proportion out of 180 but yet perhaps enough to get on with. Unfortunately, one or two of the nicest men I have had no opportunity of meeting which I am sorry for – but I know some dozen or so very well and see a lot of them. Chief among them is Carpenter, who is one of the most attractive men I have ever come across. Then I see a lot of Bryce who is on this stair – he hasn't any brains worth speaking of but is very nice and I'm glad to know him. Bourdillon is another very nice man of whom I see a good deal – and then there is Macdonell, president of the Colonial Club this term, a Canadian, who is a year senior to me: he is an awfully nice man. Huxley is another man I like immensely – he is a most brilliant man too, unluckily I haven't seen so much of him this term as last. I like Wingate too very much but I don't care for his friends – it is funny he chooses such curious people when he might be friends with anyone in college with his name and being as nice as he is. Bernstein thinks it is due simply to indolence. I think I've talked about Bernstein before. He is a most curiously interesting man – a Pole and a sceptic – but unlike most sceptics and most Jews, the reverse of aggressive. I didn't care for him much at first but I have got to see that he is much nicer than I thought. I was round to breakfast with him last Tuesday and met Toynbee (I think a son or nephew of Arnold Toynbee:⁶²⁰ he is probably among the half-dozen ablest men in college and I hope to get to know him better). Then there is little Clark of whom I used to see a great deal last year – he is very clever but knows it – a certain first in Greats, I think – but I'm rather tired of him. You'll find a lot of these people in the Freshers’ photo. One of the nicest men whom I haven't met yet is Poulton, the rugger international – I should like to know [him] as I believe he's awfully nice but I've never come across him. Two men I know quite well who bore me to extinction are Chavasse and Macalpine. Chavasse is quite nice and good at work and sport and that sort of thing but so limited (Mendelssohn the greatest of musicians kind of thing): it is the fault of his Tory-Evangelical upbringing. Not that I want to run down Evangelical principles which are as good as anything man can ask for, but I can't find anything in this sort of solid-stolid-Conservative-Protestant limitated self-sufficiency. This is rather a lot to say about Chavasse who is quite a nice man, but you can't make friends with a man whose ideas are so limited. Macalpine again is a Baptist: he has got up a Bible class to which I belong as well as Bourdillon, Chavasse, Randolph (a nice, jolly, good-tempered little man) and Walker (a rather nice but quiet Scotchman). Macalpine is a very good and worthy and able person – I don't mean this as a sneer but as a true account – but so limited – not that we aren't all absolutely limited and full of prejudices – but the men you like to know are the men who are conscious of that – not the men who think they are broad. Therefore Macalpine doesn't interest me tho to a certain extent I can admire him (I don't mean he is religiously intolerant – no one in Balliol is that – but merely unexpansive in his views). Then there are Paton and Black two very deep and interesting Scots: I like Paton and like what I know of Black. So on ad infinitum. A very nice man is Harvey (whose brother is Warden of Toynbee Hall):⁶²¹ his cousin is Sadler, rather stand-offish to me last year but very friendly this – he is very nice and just aesthetic enough to be attractive without being affected. He and Carpenter are the closest of friends and are going into digs together next year. Williams, secretary of the college debating society, the Arnold, is a quite nice man, Cornish High Churchman (typically Cornish-looking – of Iberian descent, I imagine, small and dolichocephalic).⁶²² Look up the Freshers’ group for these people. Keen is not a bad or uninteresting man but is mistaken enough to think you employ your energies best by talking like an epigrammatic fool when you're not one. I don't know Guedalla – he is the cleverest, [most] paradoxical speaker in Oxford – and one of the type's most unattractive products (some of them are attractive): he is a Spanish Jew by descent and a cynic by profession – and I think a shallow cynic, which is unpardonable – epigrammatic on the top of it and perhaps the cleverest speaker I have heard – yet I voted against him for the junior treasurership at the Union and am glad he was beaten. F.K. Griffith and Cole were the authors of ‘The Oxford Socialist’ a threepenny magazine in the Freshman year⁶²³ – Griffith is very fresh and boyish in his Socialism (he has just been elected secretary of the Union), Cole is a rather thoughtful and very bitter cynic (I don't know either Cole or Griffith well). Maclehose is another man I like […] he is cousin to A.T. Macmillan (who is the biggest bore in college if you take him seriously, but distinctly amusing to me as I don't) and to Dyer (son of Louis Dyer: didn't you know him? I think)⁶²⁴ one of the most original among this year's freshers. But this is enough. F.P. Griffiths is a Californian and a very nice little man and liked by everyone. Then here are all the colonials – of course I know them, but tho I like them all I think, they aren't so much worth describing – as they are all more or less of the type which you get mostly from overseas, good athletes and good workers, but not gifted with the originality of thought and theory which distinguishes the Balliol Englishman. This applies to most of the colonials I have met whether here or thru Mervyn […] But I was speaking about the dinner. R.A. Knox (son of the Bishop of Manchester: he is taking orders – a High Churchman and Socialist – and will be a bishop!) proposed the guests in perhaps the cleverest speech I ever listened to. It was simply reeking of topical allusions skilfully put and graceful compliments to the guests and cleverly managed classical quotations. He is senior scholar of the college and was president of the Union last Hilary term. The three guests were the Archbishop of York (Lang), Professor W.P. Kerr (Scots, pronounced Karr-r-r)⁶²⁵ and a funny old parson named Clarke⁶²⁶ who supplied what he himself called the satyric-dramatic touch, to the brilliant trilogy just over. York was good but a little too long: Ker was good but almost inaudible. The dinner was a great success.

The one thing we all think and talk about nowadays is the House of Lords.⁶²⁷ As I am neither a Liberal nor a Conservative I feel quite impartial about the Lords but these points seem obvious to me:–

1. (1) We must either accept the Budget or Tariff Reform.⁶²⁸ Tariff Reform if it assumes the aspect of preferential trade is probably a great Imperial ideal: but can you expect the English people to vote for it when it certainly must mean dearer food for at least the next ten years (and possibly for longer or for ever!). The Budget is fair and eminently reasonable to all deserving men, even dukes and publicans: but it embodies a very debatable principle, Socialism.

Both alternatives to me are unattractive.

1. (2) If the House of Lords pass the Budget it becomes for ever a nonentity as Socialism can and will be steadily introduced into our polity thru the Budgets instead of thru ordinary Bills: if the Lords reject the Budget they go in the face of the constitutional conventions of 200 years – set the interests of their party above that of the country and make representative government a farce – what are they to do?

2. (3) The House of Lords is out of date, selfish, and out of touch with modern social movements: (b) but a second chamber is necessary to the stability of our constitution and no modern elected chamber would really maintain that balance or command the respect which such a venerable chamber as the House of Lords does.

3. (4) The House of Lords must be mended or ended? If ended, what if anything is going in its place? If mended, how? and will not reform itself make it stronger and more able to flout the people's will […]

Letter 80 To his father, 9 December 1909, 208 Ashley Gardens, S.W.

[…] On Tuesday night I had to open at the Colonial Club. My motion was ‘That this house favours the extension of the franchise to women in England on the same basis as it is now enjoyed by men’. I have always been rather an opponent of women's suffrage but I agreed to propose it for the sake of argument and the result is that after some day's real thought about it I have decidedly come to favour it! This will perhaps surprise you – I remember that old physical force argument of yours – it is the only one that ever impressed me much. But I no longer think it really quite convincing because it seems to me that though it is quite true that the original foundation of our majority-rule system lies on the fact that a majority is presumably stronger than a minority, yet this cannot be said to exist now as a constant standard for valuating votes. For instance in the case of men – one might be as strong as three others and yet have only equal or inferior (if rich enough) political rights. And again in the case of parties, who shall say that the Liberals who rule the country by an immense majority are really physically stronger than the Conservatives? It is really quite as much brain as muscle that controls – and if as you say such an extraordinary crisis should arise as to set all the women voters against all the men and the latter should refuse to obey – would not women have just as many weapons at their disposal for reducing men to obedience as men's one of physical force?

I'm sending you my speech as I scribbled it out at first, tho not quite as I delivered it. It went off all right I think and I enjoyed speaking but we didn't win unluckily. I summed up much less badly than usual – in fact better than I spoke first on the whole.

On Wednesday afternoon […] I had promised my modern Greek teacher – Ménardos – to be at his lecture on ‘Two Zante Poets of the Early 19th Century’. The Vice-Chancellor was coming – he is very keen on Greek and a friend of Menardos’ – but he didn't turn up and I was the only one present and it was delivered to me alone! I was sorry for the poor man as he had taken great trouble in preparing the lecture which was a really excellent one. I've told you about him before I think. He has been giving me a couple of lessons a week free (he won't take any pay as he is the University Lecturer). Next term I am going to begin reading some Byzantine authors with him with a view possibly to taking them as an extra subject for Greats but in any case for preparing for my Modern History work.

There was rather a funny debate on Wednesday night at the Arnold (college debating) Society ‘That Scotsmen should be discouraged’. The speaking was not particularly good but the best thing was a long letter in the broadest Burnsese Scotch from the man who was to have moved the motion against the Scots. This was read by the president (Gibson, a Scotchman) with the splendidest accent; he afterwards called on the vice-president to translate the letter which he did in the most wonderful, soul-stirring, star-soaring language. They were both very clever. Of course the Arnold is mostly a ‘rag’ – the speeches are seldom serious, though often extremely clever. The chief fun consists in putting absurd questions to the officers of the society ‘touching the discharge of their official duties’. (This is a great institution also in the Union and in all other Oxford societies: was it in existence in your time?)

On Friday afternoon and Saturday morning we had ‘collekkers’ – one on the subject matter of the ‘Repubber’⁶²⁹ – the other on Greek History (490–431): I didn't do very well on the first, getting only β+? But I did all right on the History and got αβ (that is between β++ and α– –). This next vac. I have a great deal of work before me – All Aristotle's Ethics (revise I–V and read VI–X) and as much Thucydides as possible, as well as much modern philosophy and ancient history reading.

On Saturday afternoon I went to a matinee of the Merrow⁶³⁰ […] which is still tremendously popular. I think it is decidedly overrated, though by comparison with the ordinary type of musical comedies it is infinitely superior. The dialogue is very amusing in parts and the music very clever. I think continental light opera is certainly much ahead of ours, tho I don't know anything I like so much as Gilbert and Sullivan. They are the most delightful things of the sort ever written to my mind and that of most people in Oxford. The Gilbert and Sullivan season some weeks ago in Oxford was a huge success and deservedly. I went to two matinees and one evening performance seeing The Pirates […] Princess Ida and The Gondoliers⁶³¹ […] On Monday morning we had Handshaking. The Mugger didn't say anything in particular this time but merely ‘Go on and prosper’ which was rather an ordinary remark. My tutors were just sort of ordinarily pleased.

I got down by the 4.20 train in the afternoon and at once went to the flat where I found Rex. We at once dressed and hurried off to Bryce's – 35 Bryanston Square – as he had asked us to dinner. His father and mother are in America with his uncle at Washington at present, so the only other person there was his young sister, about 12 I should think – she was a nice little thing – and tremendously self-possessed.⁶³² They gave us a very nice dinner (it is a very grand house) but we had to rush away early as the Drury Lane play for which we had seats started at 7.45. It was called ‘The Whip’ and was the regular Drury Lane melodrama⁶³³ […] It as extremely well done and admirably acted, but of course it's the sort of thing you wouldn't come to see much oftener than once a year, as it's so transparently absurd. The Queen was very delighted with it and has been twice. It was interesting seeing the famous theatre like that too, with all its dramatic memories. I saw a tablet to Henry Irving put up by the Dramatic Authors of Italy and unveiled the other day by the Italian Ambassador.⁶³⁴ In this particular play there were some thrilling scenes – such as a railway collision and a 2,000 Guineas race which were admirably done and would have delighted your heart. It is really only pure Bland Holtism⁶³⁵ with the acting considerably improved and a different sort of audience.

Tuesday afternoon and evening Rex and I spent with four other men and a commissionaire⁶³⁶ in visiting some parts of the East End. It was disappointing in a way as we didn't see any of the miserable hovels a great number of the people must live in. We went however to several ‘doss(sleep)-houses’ – big buildings, sometimes with 450 beds where you can get a night's lodging for 3d. or 4d. (they are surprisingly clean and airy thanks to the L.C.C.'s constant inspection⁶³⁷) – one of them was a big Salvation Army place. We went over three of these places. We went down some of the worst streets in Whitechapel – Wentworth St., Middlesex St. (Petticoat Lane), and Duval St. (formerly Dorset St.). Everywhere Jewish faces – everywhere you see notices in Yiddish (more Yiddish than English), German, Russian. Then on to Limehouse (where the Chinese quarter, a very small one, is) and Wapping. We saw Wapping Old Stairs from which Nelson embarked for the Victory and a great many other old places. But on the whole it was a disappointingly little we saw, considering that we were tramping about from 2.30 till 7.45 […] I leave tonight with Carpenter, Bryce and Sadler by the night Fishguard passage. We get to Glengarriff some time tomorrow afternoon.

Yesterday […] I met Jenness for lunch and took him to Eustace Miles’.⁶³⁸ From there we went on and I showed him the Temple Church and Gardens.⁶³⁹ Then we parted and I went for 1/- to a matinee at St. James’ Theatre – The Importance of Being Earnest – It is an old play of Oscar Wilde's revived and was produced by George Alexander.⁶⁴⁰ It was quite a delightful play and full of fun from beginning to end. It is one of the few things of his that can be acted, I suppose – at least judging from his reputation⁶⁴¹ – George Alexander and Allan Aynesworth⁶⁴² were in their original parts and the girls (Stella Patrick Campbell⁶⁴³ and Rosalie Toller⁶⁴⁴) were excellent too.

I had a hard day's theatre-going as in the evening we all (Aunt Ethel, Aunt Ida, Y and I) went to The Blue Bird at the Haymarket. It is a fairy play by Maeterlinck and the first night of its first production in Europe (outside of Russia where it has been done by 59 (!) companies in the cities and provinces) – so it was a very interesting occasion and Maeterlinck himself was in the house.⁶⁴⁵ We got excellent seats in the second row of the pit (2/6 each and 1/9 each for messenger boys for two hours) and saw and heard splendidly. I am sending you and Madre the book of words and you will read it, won't you? It's simply the most charming thing ever written this century – we all simply loved it and the whole production of it was wonderful – such a sweet little fairytale (which the kids would love) and with a whole philosophy behind it. The acting was really quite remarkably good and Dyltyl (little Olive Walker⁶⁴⁶) was simply ideally done. The dog was remarkable too.⁶⁴⁷ Read it slowly and I think you'll love it – read the stage directions too – I can only say again we were charmed with it. It got a most tremendous reception from a crowded house. Maeterlink and Mme Maeterlink were in the house but we could not get him out for a speech⁶⁴⁸ […]

Letter 81 To his stepmother, 16 December 1909, c/o Simon White, Glengarriff Castle, Co. Cork

I hope this letter will get in time – It ought to but I'm rather suspicious of Irish punctuality perhaps because I'm so punctual myself. This letter ought really to be headed Elysium, as this is quite one of the most delightful places to be found anywhere. It is a splendid roomy old house built in 1790 by a forefather of the present owner Simon White⁶⁴⁹ and very comfortable looking out on Glengarriff Harbour and the Caha Mountains.⁶⁵⁰ But I'll forbear description until I get some postcards with views. We left London (Paddington) at 8.45 on Thursday and got to Fishguard at 2.15 – had quite a smoothish crossing but I was unfortunately sick tho I had a cabin to myself – only the second time (I've been ill) in 18 crossings of the English and Irish channels. We had breakfast in Cork and got to Bantry at 2.30 p.m. whence we drove in the pouring rain to the castle some twelve miles off. Here we've been since then […] Mr White and his sister-in-law, Miss Puxley,⁶⁵¹ are both very nice and his little daughter Rosie (aged 13)⁶⁵² is an amusing little thing too. They are all very nice to us – and we enjoy ourselves very much. We improve at billiards, bridge, also above all at work of which we do a lot […]

Letter 82 To his father and stepmother, 29 December 1909, Glengarriff Castle

[…] We went to lunch the other day with the calibrating officer here (Kitchener, nephew of the Kitchener) quite nice but rather peculiar⁶⁵³ […] On Christmas Eve we took a good part of the day and left home at 11 getting back at 5 – to go up Sugar Loaf. We had a bicycle ride of seven miles each way and the climb was 1,887 ft (date of my birth!) – It was a most glorious day and we had a most splendid time and a delightful ride and walk. The view from the top of Bantry Bay, the Atlantic and the mountains of Cork and Kerry was a splendid one. (Church of course on Christmas Day and last Sunday.)

Two or three days before that Carpenter and I went up Shrone Hill (818 ft) (exactly opposite the castle) one afternoon. We canoed across to the other shore and back and had a magnificent walk. After the heavy frost and snowfall two days before – the bogs were all frozen over and covered with snow over the ice – which is delightful to walk on. The whole view (looking so different under snow) was very striking. Another day we bicycled up to the tunnel on the neck of the Caha Mountains – which leads from Co. Cork into Co. Kerry. It is about six miles from here and was a most interesting ride. Another day we went up Cobduff (1,344 ft), a hill behind the castle and we have taken lots of other walks and bicycle rides and canoeings. We've twice paid visits to the Hutchins’ who live at Ardnagashel House about four miles off. Old Mr Hutchins is about 80 and was in the police in Melbourne from 1852–7, since which he hasn't been in Australia. He is unfortunately quite blind nowadays. He has got a huge family most of whom are coming to the dance here tomorrow night.⁶⁵⁴

We had a very nice Christmas. Young Simmie – 11 years of age – arrived from School two days before – none of us take very much to him as though he is rather a bright kid and full of spirit he is so frightfully cheeky and rude to his father and aunt.⁶⁵⁵ Young Rosie (13) however is a most attractive child and we all get on very well together. Mr White is awfully nice too though rather wild-Irishy […] The weather has been splendid – hardly ever frosty and when it is always with a bright sun – generally as mild as summertime and with beautiful sea and mountain air combined and glorious scenery […]

Letter 83 To his stepmother, 5 January 1910, Glengarriff Castle

[…] Last Wednesday we canoed across to Garnish Island which the Bryces have lately bought. It is a most picturesque little place right in the middle of Glengarriff Harbour and we can see it well from our bedroom windows. It is about 36 acres – so quite big enough to be comfortable and surrounded by little islands and rocks. On the highest point of the island is a Martello tower put up in 1815 when the French were still thinking out another attack on Bantry Bay. We went up the tower and walked all over the island which is a most charming place. Of course the Boyces intend to build a lot there and plant it all over – so that it will not be ready for them to stay there for a couple of years. Till then they are going to take the castle every summer still.

On Thursday night there was a dance which was great fun. About 50 people came and we had a splendid time – the dance started at 9.30 and went on till 3 […] Most of the people round came including the Leigh Whites who live at Bantry House⁶⁵⁶ – and all the Hutchins – It was really a huge success and splendid fun […] On Friday – tennis on the gravel court in front of the house. On Saturday – Badminton tournament at Eccles’ Hotel Motor Garage – we got together six pairs and had a very good day […] Tomorrow we hope to have a tennis tournament but of course it depends on the weather.

On Sunday morning – church. The vicar is quite a young man named Harvey⁶⁵⁷ – quite nice, but dullish – with very little to do as his permanent congregation is only the Whites and two families in the village, everyone else being a Roman Catholic. In the afternoon Roland and I bicycled over to Ardnagashel – the Hutchins’ house – and said goodbye to two of them: Lily and Ellen (about 19)⁶⁵⁸ who left for London on Monday to stay with the Bryces […] I'm still enjoying myself immensely here – they are very kind to us and we live in supreme luxury and contentment. They feed us most awfully well and give us even such things as tea in bed in the morning and hot water bottles at night. Mr White is a very nice sort – but very happy-go-lucky and doesn't care what he says to anybody. The little girl Rosie is a very nice kid and full of spirits. The sister-in-law Miss Puxley is nice too but not thrilling […] Roland leaves on Friday to go up and help his father who is M.P. for Inverness Burghs.⁶⁵⁹ I shall probably stay till Monday and then leave via Cashel for Tenby. We have to be back in Oxford on the 15th but if the Oxford City election occurs on the 15th instead of the 14th we shall probably not be allowed to come up till the 17th for fear of disturbances.

I get on awfully well with both Carpenter and Bryce. Bryce is not a bit intellectual but very nice and most good-natured. Carpenter is a splendid man and most interesting – good all-round and at everything. He plays most exceptionally well – piano – and does nearly everything equally well. He knows much more than I do about every single subject except things like modern history and politics and religious controversy, in which three things he is profoundly uninterested. He hasn't read a newspaper for years. Bryce on the other hand is mad on politics and a staunch Liberal of course. He could for instance give you the name and politics of every single M.P. Like all Englishmen of the upper classes he is a partisan by tradition first and conviction only in consequence. It is hard for a colonial who feels himself in agreement with certain measures of one government and certain of the other side – to label himself either a Liberal or Conservative. I'm certainly neither and though I'm Unionist (on THE question⁶⁶⁰ – anxious Fathers, please note!) and in favour of a strong navy and denominational education and women's suffrage – yet I'm quite radical in other ways – a Free-trader, Church disestablisher, Licensing Bill supporter and Old Age Pensioner etc. But tho perhaps I might vote for a Unionist or a Liberal – I could not by any means agree with all their views. This election ought to be a most interesting one – the Liberals will probably get in again but with a reduced majority – and possibly having to depend on Labour and Nationalist support. I should feel more sympathy for the Unionists did I not feel completely sceptical as to the consistency of their leaders and the honesty of their supporters – an undiluted Protection would be a most dangerous step for England […]

Letter 84 To his father, 2.15 p.m., 14 January 1910, 208 Ashley Gardens, S.W., begun at Neath Station on the way from Tenby to London

[…] I think I wrote last week on a Wednesday. Next day was the Epiphany and Miss Puxley and I went across by boat to church at 11. Afterwards we had a tennis tournament to which Harvey, the vicar, and three Hutchins came. It started about 12 and went on till 4.30 and we had quite good fun as luckily it didn't rain. It was an ‘American’ one (in which everyone plays six games against everyone else and you count up not by wins but by number of games scored) – my partner (Miss Puxley) and I won finally. At the end of the day we played some most exciting passage hockey upstairs which ended up rather sensationally with Tom Hutchins being dashed into a window at the end of the passage.⁶⁶¹ Luckily not much damage was done. In the evening we attempted Snapdragon but something was wrong either with the raisins or whiskey and we couldn't get them to light, so it was rather a frost.⁶⁶² […] I left on Monday morning […] at 10, caught the 11.45 train from Bantry and got to Cork at 2.15. I had about an hour there and walked about a bit, including a walk to the top of St. Patrick's Hill, which is I think the steepest street I ever saw. I think Cork is a rather fine city – good buildings and very picturesquely situated. From there I got an excellent train to Dublin, getting in at 7.25 […] Next morning I went in to see Uncle Charlie in his office – he was very busy as it was the final day of Law Term and I didn't stop long […] I did some shopping, had a look in at Trinity and then […] went back to Waterloo Rd.⁶⁶³ and they took [me] down to the Olympia Rink where we all roller-skated.⁶⁶⁴ It was my first attempt but I enjoyed it very much as Uncle Rowan and Cyril were very good about taking me round. We spent several hours there and when we got back it was nearly time for dinner […] Next morning I arose at 5.45 and just managed to catch the 6.40 from Kingsbridge. It was snowing hard and fearfully cold and I had a beastly journey of three and a half hours to Waterford. There are no direct trains from Dublin to Rosslare as I suppose very few people go that [way] and you have to go by a frightfully roundabout way through Kildare, Carlow, Kilkenny and Waterford. I didn't enjoy the final part of the journey at all as it was ghastly cold (just arrived at Newport, last stop before Paddington) and 3rd class in Ireland is not comfortable. However, at Waterford North I had an hour's wait and time for breakfast, which put me in a better mood for the Rosslare–Fishguard crossing. That was quite a success as though it was very decidedly rough, we did nothing but roll and there was none of the pitching which I hate so much – so I quite enjoyed it. The trains from Fishguard to Tenby are very slow and I didn't arrive until a quarter past six. Ian met me and conducted me to Uncle Boyle's house which is on the Esplanade – looking straight out on the sea and Caldy Island […] I arrived just in time to dress for the dinner party which was very nice and which I enjoyed […] Yesterday morning we went down to see Uncle Boyle at work in his office at his surveying and chart work. It was really most interesting and gives you an idea how painfully accurate to 1/1000 of an inch these calculations have to be. None of the ‘it'll do’ attitude which can be adopted in other branches of work to some extent. Uncle Boyle showed us several maps which he had made too of parts like the top of the Persian Gulf – some places where no white man had ever been before. It is likely to be a very interesting region in view of German railways extension in that part.

In the afternoon I explored the town and surroundings […] This week has been a gay one here as it is the Hunt Week and there is something on every night. Last night we had another dinner-party which was very nice, and afterwards we all went to some amateur theatricals in the Assembly Rooms. There was a comedy ‘The Jacobite’⁶⁶⁵ which was quite well done and that was followed by ‘Trial by Jury’⁶⁶⁶ in which Uncle Boyle was the Usher – the only part which takes much acting – he really did it extremely well and is a born actor. The thing wasn't at all badly done for amateurs and really went off very well.

Tonight there is another dance⁶⁶⁷ but I wanted to get to London for the elections tomorrow, so have come away […]

Letter 85 To his father, 21 January 1910, Balliol

[…] We have been up again now about four days and just getting into work. The lectures that promise most this term are E.M. Walker's on the Peloponnesian War – largely criticism (very favourable criticism) of Thucydides. He says that Cornford (the Mythistoricus man)⁶⁶⁸ is thoroughly unsound, though very interesting. I shall probably be going to Schiller of Corpus on Aristotle's Ethics as well, and also attending a class of W.D. Ross (Oriel) and doing essays for him on the same subject […] The elections are of absorbing interest. Everybody here keenly interested – unfortunately everyone in England is a partisan. A Unionist Free-Trader like you or me is in a hard position. Over in Dublin all the family are Unionist Tariff-Reformers, of course, as everyone in Ireland. They asked me what I was and I said you had brought me up a Free-Trader, luckily adding before anyone else, ‘Not a very good advertisement of the system’. I think the extent to which party feeling is carried here is terrible. I should like to see a bare Unionist [majority] but not strong enough to bring in a Tariff […]

Letter 86 To his stepmother, 18 February 1910, Balliol

[…] I'm reading a paper next Sunday before the Decemvirs⁶⁶⁹ against Home Rule, based chiefly on Dicey and Horace Plunket.⁶⁷⁰ We had a discussion last Sunday and I find that practically every member there (except two) are Home Rulers – most Oxford men who think (I don't say who have had experience of Ireland) are – and Scotchmen generally are Home Rulers (and Home Rulers for Scotland too). Chesterton says rather neatly in his life of G.B.S. – ‘Shaw disliked Home Rule just as he disliked Home Influences and Home Cooking’.⁶⁷¹ I find myself still an Anti- tho, though all my prejudices are with the down-trodden English-bullied priest-ridden people of the South rather than with the Garrison. I doubt if Home Rule would be quite as fatal as is thought – it would certainly result favourably in many ways, e.g. in shaking off the yoke of the Roman Church in politics and in putting some backbone into Irishmen. If the Roman Church can be divorced from politics there, there seems no reason why Irish self-government in purely legal affairs should not be quite successful. However it is too risky experimenting at present with our defences in their present precarious condition, so you will find me still voting (or wishing to vote) Unionist […] Most of the last few days Rex and I have spent in dig-hunting. Bryce is coming in with us too. We saw several very nice ones in the High and also in Holywell but we shall probably go to Beaumont St. as we liked some there very much. The High is really much the nicest street to be in and some of the digs aren't at all dear, but Uncle Boyce thought it would be noisy. Some very nice rooms we saw were encompassed above and below by the rooms of the Myrmidon, a Merton wine-club – so we decided on the whole that work would not prosper there […] Toggers started yesterday when both Balliol boats managed to keep their places […] The other Saturday we both went to a huge missionary breakfast in the Town Hall – but I believe I told you about that. Old Canon Christopher has organised them for years – he is 90 now but still active.⁶⁷² Father spoke of him in one of his last letters. This time the Bishop of Hokkaido was the speaker and very interesting tho with the usual unfortunate Evangelical mannerisms which grate horribly at first but I liked him better afterwards.⁶⁷³

Oh! a point Father mentions. Of course 102 is far too many Members⁶⁷⁴ for Ireland, and 40 would be far too few. The proper representation would be about 74 for Scotland (at present 72), 61 for Ireland (at present 102), 30 for Wales (as now) and 510 for England. But it must be remembered that if Ireland is over-represented now, it was under represented for half a century. When their population stood at eight millions, that of England at 15, Scotland at two and a half and Wales at one, they were absurdly under-represented […] Bryce is back now […] He told me that his brother was cremated at Golders Green.⁶⁷⁵

Letter 87 To his father, 25 February 1910, Balliol

[…] I enjoyed all that you said about Kitchener. The Morning Post⁶⁷⁶ keeps me well-informed as to his doings and I see that he is most complimentary about the Australian troops and enthusiastic about organising our defence⁶⁷⁷ […] My Home Rule paper went off quite well […] We had a quite interesting discussion. You see I should be in favour of devolution if I thought it would really satisfy the Nationalists or quieten the country. Next Sunday we have the Union of South Africa as our subject and meet at Mrs Haldane's.⁶⁷⁸ Last time it was in Hattingh's rooms at Worcester. He is a full-blooded Dutchman and was in the besieging force at Ladysmith,⁶⁷⁹ but like all the Dutch up here cordially accepts British rule now and shows not a trace of bitterness. The granting of Home Rule seems to be turning out most surprisingly well and Unionists acknowledge now that it was a wise and generous act […] Bryce goes down tomorrow as he is going abroad with his family to Algeciras […]

Letter 88 To his stepmother, 4 March 1910, Balliol

[…] I wrote last week just before setting out to a Field Day. It was quite a success though rather hard work and very wet and cold – lots of ploughed fields which had been rained on for days to charge through and other diversions of that description. Still it was quite fun and we all enjoyed it […] On Sunday morning I went to chapel at 8, and at 11 to S. Martin and All Saints’ – the big Queen Anne church in the High (at the corner of the Turl) – to hear Rev. A.J. Carlyle. He is a rather interesting don at Univ. – lectures in Political Philosophy – and quite an interesting preacher, though rather of the college lecturer stamp in delivery – that is, rather familiar and self-interruptive […] This morning Carpenter came in and told me that the college want to keep Sadler in college next year – he was going in with him and so now he suggested his coming in with Rex and me. We went down this morning and looked at some very nice rooms in King Edward St. which I knew of, and shall probably take them […] Still beautiful weather here. So far from being the coldest winter on record, it has been phenomenally mild. Today it is quite hot and yesterday was simply perfect. I can begin to retract what I may have said in the past against the Oxford climate. During the past few weeks the sun has been bright and hot nearly every day […] Shackleton lectures tonight in the Town Hall, and as I haven't heard him yet I may go⁶⁸⁰ […]

[PS] I'm so glad you liked The Blue Bird – People here either love it or think it very trivial or else like it but condemn it as very largely copied from other things.

Letter 89 To his father, 11 March 1910, Balliol

[…] Lectures stopped yesterday – Walker finishing off what had been an extremely fine series on the Peloponnesian War […] Last Monday were the Balliol sports – they went off fairly well, but of course hardly a soul there and no ladies. College sports are not at all a social function in Oxford, any of them, with the one exception of Eights […] Last Wednesday night I spent at the Boys Club: they have an appalling game of indoor soccer there at which you get very hot and dirty. The boys are mostly very decent fellows, though somewhat unwashed: they are very quick and clever and do a lot of sly leg-pulling at your expense […] Last Sunday the Decemvirs met in my rooms – the subject was ‘India's position in the Empire’ and we had papers from two Canadians (Munro of New and Hawkins of Univ.) and afterwards a discussion. I think I forgot to tell you that the Sunday before we went out to Mrs Haldane's house in North Oxford and had our discussion at her invitation there. It was on the Union of South Africa and we had an excellent 25 minutes paper from Castlehow (a Queenslander at Balliol) and a very interesting three quarters of an hour one from Hattingh (a Dutch South African at Worcester). I opened the discussion afterwards and we all talked quite a lot. I believe we're going out there again next term. Mrs Haldane is sister-in-law to the Minister (her husband being a Fellow of New College) but is a very keen Tariff Reformer! She is rather eccentric with short curly hair but they have a very nice house […] The weather is still marvellous! hot and sunny every day […] winter, contrary to all prophecy, has been wonderfully mild – nothing like as bad as the average Melbourne winter, one can say quite truthfully […] There was a very interesting debate at the Union last night ‘That it is undesirable to have any colour barrier within the empire’ – opened by Macalpine of Balliol – well, I believe, tho I arrived too late to hear him – opposed by a South African, Broome of Oriel – moderately good. The third and fourth speakers were A.J. Carlyle, whom I have mentioned before – vicar of S. Martin and All Saints’ in the High and ex-President of the Union – and W. Pember Reeves formerly High Commissioner for New Zealand.⁶⁸¹ They were both extremely good – very fair and clear and interesting, and really so absolutely in agreement with one another that I to show my absolute agreement with them didn't vote at the end. They were both agreed on the wisdom of very strict supervision of the entrance of cheap Asiatic labour into the colonies and if necessary of total exclusion of the lower Asiatic, and both agreed that this should be carried out by an economic and educative test and not merely or only on the ground of colour. It is in South Africa, however, that the question is really acutest. And there Carlyle regretted the exclusion of the Kaffirs from the Union Parliament and maintained (and Reeves appeared quite in agreement with him) that there should only be exclusion for men who do not reach a prescribed standard in wealth and education […] I hear from Le Conteur that Dr. Freda Bage (is she a doctor by the way?) is in Oxford⁶⁸² […]

Letter 90 To his stepmother, 18 March 1910, chez Mlle. Guidici, 35 Avenue MacMahon, Etoile, Paris

[…] My doings towards the end of last week chiefly centred round collekkers, which happened on Saturday morning […] they were in Greek History (431–403 B.C.) and it was quite a nice paper – I very stupidly only got three questions done as I spent about one and three-quarter hours on the first question […] and you are supposed to get five questions done on a Greats paper […] Balliol didn't go down till Monday, when we had Handshaking. The Master in saying goodbye advised me not to stay in the morass (is this spelt right?) between α and β but to choose the right one – easier said than done […] Rex has described our two days in London. We stayed at St. Ermin's Hotel⁶⁸³ as there was no room at the flat, and went to the theatre each night – on Monday to the ‘Empire’ which was long and stupid⁶⁸⁴ and on Tuesday to ‘Justice’⁶⁸⁵ at the Repertory Theatre (Duke of York's). It was extraordinarily well acted and made an extremely favourable impression on us (us being Rex, me, O'Brien, and Bernstein). You have probably or should have read it by now, so I shan't bother you with a description but we all thought the law court scene was done excellently – as well as it is possible to do such a scene, and the whole play was absorbingly interesting. Though the idea is not perhaps very original nor the characters, the thing hangs together splendidly and acts well which is the best test. In the afternoon Rex and I went to Maskeline and Devant's in 1/- seats and were interested and mystified like everyone else there.⁶⁸⁶ On Wednesday we crossed and here we are. By the way the crossing (Dover to Calais) only took an hour and was so perfectly smooth that I don't think anyone could have been upset. That evening we went to Moulin Rouge, the famous music-hall of the Avenue de Clichy. We were in the promenoir⁶⁸⁷ as seats were too expensive and got very tired of the show itself, which is much worse than anything you saw on a London stage. But of course the place and the people were interesting though far from attractive. We got back late and didn't like to disturb our hostess, so we slept at Ian's hotel – Louis Le Grand in Rue Louis Le Grand (off Avenue de l'Opéra) […] We have only one room but can use the salon as much as we like and I have been working there all morning. Madame Guidici and her sister (don't know her surname) are both very nice and make things very pleasant for us […] I'm writing this in our room which has a little balcony (sixth floor) looking out south – right above the Avenue MacMahon and along to the Arc de Triomphe to the right: in front some way off is the Russian Church. We haven't as yet seen much sign of the floods and the Seine seems quite orderly but everybody is quite willing to talk about them.⁶⁸⁸ […]

Letter 91 To his father, 25 March 1910, chez Mlle. Guidici, 35 Avenue MacMahon, Etoile, Paris

[…] Ian leaves either tonight or tomorrow morning for London after a very energetic ten days […] he has enjoyed his time here most tremendously, which I am very glad of as he had been looking forward to Paris for ever so long. He determined to see the so-called gay side thoroughly and so has had a very very exhausting time. We have been out some nights with him […] but on either night he has gone to the various cafés and cabarets alone and seen quite a lot. I admire his presence of mind as it is quite a difficult thing to ‘do’ these places without being made a fool of, and he has really behaved in a very sensible way – which either shows our row on the first was unnecessary or that it did some good.

We haven't done very much in the daytime. A couple of visits to the Louvre by the others […] Hotel del Invalides which I hadn't been to before and which of course we felt was wonderfully impressive – and on Thursday (yesterday afternoon) to a matinee at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre⁶⁸⁹ of Rostand's well-known play La Samaritaine⁶⁹⁰ […] It was just specially revived for Holy Week. The subject is of course the Woman of Samaria's meeting with Christ and it is strange to English ideas for Christ to be represented on stage but though it doesn't perhaps approve itself to us, it was done in this case with great reverence and didn't grate at all or at least very little. The Samaritaine, Photina, was of course Sarah herself and to one who had never seen her before it was a revelation. Her voice is perhaps rather harsh when raised very high but otherwise it is most beautiful and alike from it and her slim figure it is very hard to believe that it is a woman of 67! It was a great pleasure to see her and we liked the play, tho necessarily from my very small [knowledge] of French I couldn't follow the dialogue except vaguely […] On Sunday afternoon we went out to the Bois de Boulogne and saw some horse-racing at the Cour d'Auteuil. It was an unusual way to spend Sunday afternoon – but a French race-course is a much more orderly and less excitable place than an English – and we did little more than stroll about for a few minutes. I mean this as an explanation as you might perhaps be rather surprised to hear of our frequenting horse-races on Sunday, naturally […] I have been going to early church (8.20 a.m.) all this week except yesterday, when I was too tired after our visit to Maxim's, the famous night restaurant⁶⁹¹ […] (It is chiefly famous from being the scene of the plot of The Merry Widow.⁶⁹²) The church is S. George's just near the Avenue d'Iéna and I like it very much indeed […] The celebrant wears vestments and so it must be classed as a ritualistic church but I doubt if it would offend you at all in other ways; at least it doesn't me and our tastes pretty well agree on these points […] At 11 on Sunday and again today at 10.30 and again from 12–3 (Three Hours’ Service) we went to the Embassy Church. I liked Bishop Ormsby:⁶⁹³ Irish of course – I could easily imagine it was Uncle Charlie speaking, the voice and accent were so like. The services there I liked too, the only point in which it didn't compare favourably with S. George's being that the congregation struck one as consisting mostly of passers through and not at all interested in what was taking place or joining in it. But I suppose that must always be the case with an embassy. We liked the Three Hours’ Service very much and Bishop Ormsby, though he didn't arrange his addresses well as term was up when he had just finished his fourth address. The addresses were very good though I doubt if as appropriate as either Ernest Hughes’ or Archdeacon Crossley's⁶⁹⁴ […]

[PS] I've rather altered my views about Germany in various reflexions and think the conflict may probably be averted though probably not without tact and hard work.

Letter 92 To his stepmother, 1 April 1910, chez Mlle. Guidici, 35 Avenue MacMahon, Etoile, Paris

[…] I don't wonder you were keen to be in the middle of the elections – as a matter of fact however I think you would be rather disappointed with them.⁶⁹⁵ Such a display of ignorance and prejudice and corruption and party hatred as to disgust you quite. Of course in Oxford we were right in the thick of the interest of it all.⁶⁹⁶ I must say I am very disappointed with the Unionist Party. Though still an absolutely staunch Anti- on the question⁶⁹⁷ and a second-chamber-man as one calls oneself now⁶⁹⁸ and anti-Socialist and strong Maryite⁶⁹⁹ and Imperialist and everything else that's nice, and so a thoroughgoing Unionist to that extent, I find it very hard to support a party who win their seats solely (not by the above doctrines of this I am convinced, but) by the ignorant and stupid clamour of an uneducated country population for that pernicious doctrine of Protection which so many Unionists have been forced in the interests of party to take up and which it seems to me must be entirely wrong – and by the selfish greed of the landlords and the way they intimidate their tenants and employees to vote. As for Protection, please don't take it up, but stay Unionist with misgivings. There is hardly a single sound economic student in England (so far as I can discover) who favours the thing. How sorry one feels that the Conservatives have taken it up. Unfortunately for them they will never convert Scotland and Lancashire – the most intelligent portion of the whole British electorate – Birmingham (under their idol worship of Chamberlain)⁷⁰⁰ alone of the great industrial cities has taken it up […] I attended St. George's on Easter Eve (when the verger impelled me reluctant in a soft collar to take up the offertory) and at 6.30 on Easter morning. It is an extremely nice church and I like it better than the Embassy to this extent that its congregation is a permanent not a tourist one. We heard Bishop Ormsby at 10.30 at the Embassy Church […] He has such a friendly voice and cordial Irish brogue and must be a very loveable man. I hardly think him a very good preacher however – nice to listen to, but too fond of repetition to have time for telling you much. In between 6.30 and 10.30 I went to Notre Dame. I got there at 9.10 but Mass didn't start till 9.30, so I could only hear about a half- hour of it. In the afternoon we attended Vespers at 4.30 in St. Eustache (just opposite the Markets in Rue Coquillière). I don't know whether you know the church. It is one of the most beautiful (inside, not out) in Paris: very lofty, with tall slender pillars and a glorious roof – very late Gothic (about 1520) inside, rather ugly Renaissance porches outside. But above all it is famous now for its music. I don't know what music it was they gave but it was very very beautiful and exquisitely sung […]

Letter 93 To his father, 8 April 1910, chez Mlle. Guidici, 35 Avenue MacMahon, Etoile, Paris

[…] This week we have begun lecture-going in earnest: on Wednesday we went to hear Maurice Croiset at the Collège de France on Euripides.⁷⁰¹ You know the name of course, though I'm not certain whether it is he or his brother Alfred who wrote the well-known history of Greek literature.⁷⁰² I understood a fair amount of the lecture which was on the Andromache and very clear and easy to follow. He pointed out the obvious fault of it – lack of unity, there are practically three plots in it, aren't there? – and made very interesting comparisons with the Andromaches of Virgil and Racine. I went to another lecture today on French history (time of the 1848 barricades) but didn't understand much. Our principal excitements have been our excursion to Chartres last Sunday which was most delightful. We got there about 11 and heard High Mass and some very beautiful music in the glorious cathedral. Afterwards we explored the very charming old town with its quite untouched medieval-looking narrow side streets and some nice old churches and a fine Norman gateway […] On Wednesday afternoon we went to an awfully interesting museum here – Musée Guimet – which I should think must be one of the best collections of things oriental in Europe […] I read the L'Echo de Paris et Le Journal every morning on the Lords resolutions, alleged death of the Negus Menelik,⁷⁰³ Roosevelt v. Merry del Val⁷⁰⁴ (wherein it seems to me that the Papacy attempted an impossible thing and asked far too much: the Methodists also failed to behave like gentlemen, but they were naturally pleased with what looked like a victory – before deciding the question, however, one would like to know whether it is true or not that the Methodists there carry on a bitterly anti-clerical policy or not), the prospects of a Peruvian-Equatorian war,⁷⁰⁵ the maritime strike at Marseilles,⁷⁰⁶ the visits of von Bethman-Hollweg to Italy⁷⁰⁷ and such things […]

Letter 94 To his stepmother, 15 April 1910, chez Mlle. Guidici, 35 Avenue MacMahon, Etoile, Paris

[…] Mlle. Guidici (elder) took us both to a reunion of some R.C. society the other day – the Society of Joan of Arc – as it was really very good for our French. The president (M. de l'Abbé Croizat) gave a long and extremely interesting and eloquent address on the duty of patriotism.⁷⁰⁸ It was largely a panegyric on the Frenchman of the old regime and an attack on Voltaire and Rousseau, and modern socialistic and collectivist movements. One sympathised with his religious and patriotic feeling but could not of course endorse what he implied about the French Revolution, which was certainly no unmitigated evil but rather a Great Fire of London in the French political and social constitution. We were introduced to him afterwards and exchanged a few sentences of English. The following day (Sunday) we attended service at the Russian Church near here at 1. We had got the idea that it was the Russian Easter and so thought it was likely to be a very impressive service – which it was, though I don't think it was Easter. The church is not a large one but very beautiful and always well attended. The service was, as you may imagine, very beautiful, largely owing to the ritual (which is very elaborate), the deep tones of the two priests (both typical Russian giants) and some good singing by a small concealed choir […] In the afternoon we went to the Carnavalet, the museum which contains the relics of every age of the history of Paris from Caesar to Napoleon III […] It is housed in the old Hôtel where Mme de Sévigny spent all her early and I think nearly all her life in the Marais quarter⁷⁰⁹ […] We went on Sunday, as it is a free day, but it was rather a pity as many others naturally went for the same reason! […] The Louvre has been claiming still a great part of our afternoons […] Our one grievance against it is that there is too much to interest you there: to spend more than an hour and a half on end there is quite tiring, I find and one's time for visiting it too is so limited owing to work. The other day I met a Balliol man named Keen there of my year – clever (very) but talks rather glibly. He was first passing through Paris on his way from Florence, where he had taken refuge after probably a splendid first in Mods. I say ‘probably’ only as the results aren't out yet […] The weather has been glorious and Paris looking its best. The Champs Elysées in spring is a most glorious prospect; but in the side-streets and more sheltered parts of our avenue the trees are only just beginning to bud. Last Thursday, which was very fine, Rex and I paid 3 francs each to be carried to the top of the Eiffel Tower (1,000 ft). I think on the whole it was quite worth the money, as you get a quite unrivalled view of the position of Paris – right beyond for instance the hills of the Versailles direction […] I went to an extremely fine concert in the Trocadéro yesterday, where ‘Dies Iste’ – a new work of the Abbé Perosi – Maitre de Chapelle of the Pope – was performed under his conductorship⁷¹⁰ – and some things of Palestrina's among them his beautiful ‘Stabat Mater’, were sung – perfectly […] huge audience – the Trocadéro is supposed to seat 6,000. There are a great many fine views of Paris but quite one of the best is from the balcony of the Trocadéro […]

Letter 95 To his father, 22 April 1910, 208 Ashley Gardens, S.W.

[…] we're back in London en route for Oxford – and Paris is all over. It has been quite one of the most delightful vacs I have ever had. We're both simply in love with Paris – history apart, it is the most interesting city in Europe – and from the historical point of view I suppose it is only less interesting than Rome, Athens, and Constantinople – from the artistic I should think only inferior to Florence […] We finished up our stay with two theatres – Hamlet at the Comédie Française and Phèdre (Racine's) at the Sarah Bernhardt (at least I went to Phèdre while Rex went to Chanticleer, which as I hadn't read, I shouldn't have understood and which everyone thinks pretty stupid and very disappointing after all the fuss made about it).⁷¹¹ Hamlet was extraordinarily well performed, from the Prince of Denmark to the first grave-digger and Osric. We were lucky enough to see the great Mounet Sully in it⁷¹² and although he is getting old and nearly blind now (his favourite part nowadays is Oedipe Roi⁷¹³) he played it capitally – and (apart from his appearance, he wore a beard and looked old enough to be the Queen's grandfather) he was a perfectly splendid Hamlet. The others were good too, all of them, very good – and we enjoyed it tremendously. I suppose the Comédie Française is quite the first theatre of the world – as far as acting is concerned – it also extremely cheap, and so one can see great plays properly done without spending too much.

I read Phèdre before I went and found it quite easy to follow the action, tho not very much of the verse except when I remembered it. I was tremendously impressed with it […] Sarah was quite at her (present) best and splendid to watch. I went with a Canadian, Macdonnell (at Balliol) and he enjoyed her acting immensely tho he doesn't know much French – he was with us the last few days and we went round with him in the afternoons. He is an exceedingly nice man, very frank and good-tempered, going for Greats next June. He is captain of the Varsity Lacrosse team at present – but going back to Canada in August where he means to become a Presbyterian minister. Scotch by descent (at least Orcadian) […] On Sunday morning after 8.30 church at S. George's (Avenue d'Jéna) I went on to the Armenian Chapel in the Rue Jean Goujon and stayed for their whole service from 9.30 to 12.10! It was most interesting, though very peculiar. It is not nearly as impressive as the Orthodox (Greek or Russian) service to which it does not bear much resemblance. There is no eikonstasis⁷¹⁴ as in Orthodox churches, with doors which the priest opens to come through at different parts of the celebration. Instead the sanctuary is curtained off and so the whole celebration of the Mass takes place behind and the congregation sees nothing of it – rather opposed to Protestant ideas. In other ways, however, the Armenians are severely puritan. They are monophysites⁷¹⁵ and so (I suppose to emphasise the divine and [?—] it the human nature of Christ, would it be?) they have no eikons in the churches with candles before them. Only one picture (on the curtain) of the crucifixion, our Lord and the apostles of course with Armenian faces. They are an interesting, but I imagine, a pre-eminently worthless race.

One other thing suggests itself about Paris: in the season it is quite the busiest town in the world – the traffic is wonderful and although the motors go at double the pace of the London ones, one never sees an accident. The drivers are really wonderfully clever. I didn't notice at all what people say about there being no rule of the road. They seemed to me to observe it absolutely and it is surely ipso facto impossible in such traffic that they shouldn't. Not to observe it would mean very sudden death. Their streets are really much wider than our London ones and one doesn't get the congestion of traffic we do here. The police – though so much despised by Englishmen – are not at all bad and seemed to me to control the traffic very well. The worst thing about Paris is the Métro which after the floods gives forth three times worse air than the London Tube.

We came across on Wednesday by Calais – it was a little blowy but neither of us was sick. We have been staying at St. Ermin's as the flat is full, and of course having our meals here. On Wednesday night we dropped in to the Hippodrome at the end just to hear Réjane and the company in a little sketch, ‘Lolotte’.⁷¹⁶ They were admirable, but the piece was too slight to give much scope. All yesterday morning I spent at the British Museum looking at the Nineveh and Kouyunjik sculptures. It must be the best Assyrian collection in the world. What an interesting study – but what a loathsomely unattractive people the Assyrians were […]

Letter 96 To his stepmother, 28 April 1910, Balliol

Do you remember some beautiful lines I once (sic) repeated to you about my desire to be in England when April was there?⁷¹⁷ The rain is pouring down in torrents – really it's nearly as wet as the day before yesterday […] On Saturday morning I had a collekker on the works of Thucydides in which modesty forbids me to add, but I shall nevertheless, that I got α–. On Sunday Rex and I paid two calls. The first was on the Vincent Smiths,⁷¹⁸ who, I now know, was an old Dublin friend of Father's […] From there we went on to Lady Westland's at the end of Woodstock Rd.⁷¹⁹ She had written asking us both to her dance next Friday […] Lady Westland had heard of us through a Miss Fisher, a New Zealander, and friend of the Giudicis, whom we had met in Paris:⁷²⁰ she seems very nice indeed […] This week I've been doing a great deal of lecture-going – four hours today, three hours yesterday, etc. […] Bryce got back on Sunday full of Spain and with a smattering of Spanish. I think he is going to learn some more this term: he is doing the History school […] Our first tennis match is on Saturday against Keble and next week we play Univ., Trinity, Merton and Coventry Town […] We are looking forward very much to the Anglo-Japanese exhibition:⁷²¹ it will be a splendid opportunity of seeing things Japanese […]

Letter 97 To his father, 5 May 1910, Balliol

[…] The subject of Roosevelt's Romānĕs’ lecture is announced now – ‘Biological Analogies in History’.⁷²² I have applied for a ticket and hope I shall get one. There is sure to be a huge number of applicants. Incidentally, I can't quite agree with your views on Americans. I'm personally rather keen on Americans: some of them are very interesting men and even the tourists one sees, though objectionable, very, are at least energetic and always patriotic. They are a great race and quite strong enough to manage their Negro, German, Italian, Irish and other difficult people. It's time English people and newspapers lost their jealousy of them which was shown so disgracefully in 1861, just as it's time that American anti-Englishism, now on the wane, should cease altogether. Again about Japan. How can you look with reliance on such a people – pagans and easterns – and proverbially treacherous even among pagans and eastern? The alliance is all very well as a political expedient at present but it cannot mean anything more: in the event of a Japan–American war for instance every Englishman would be bound by every obligation of kinship and religion to support America, treaty or no treaty⁷²³ […] As for lectures – I'm again attending Joachim of Merton on Aristotle's Ethics; Rashdall (New College) on Political Philosophy; Webster (Wadham) on Aristotelian Logic; Macdougall, on Sub-consciousness; Professor Haverfield on Roman Constitutional history; and going as well to Professor Egerton on Colonial History and J.A.R. Marriott on the English Constitution. The two last as extras and to keep up my history […] By the way I got progged the other night. I had been to Samson and Delilah⁷²⁴ – the first night of annual Moody-Manners week of Grand Opera⁷²⁵ – and came away at the beginning of the Third Act – it wasn't that I didn't like Samson and Delilah, which is just lovely: just imagine that absurd ass the Censor of Plays didn't allow it in England till last year, because Samson is a Biblical character: it is this false Puritanism (not the real thing) which makes England and America (especially) so ridiculous – but my nose began to bleed. It didn't go on long but I thought I had better go back to college. I was walking with my eyes on the ground and went right past the prog. without noticing him when hailed by a buller⁷²⁶ to stop. He⁷²⁷ of course wanted name and college, but next morning when I paid him a visit at the Old Clarendon Building it didn't cost me anything as having been in the theatre gets you off. It's really an amazing [thing] that I've never met the prog. before, as I suppose I've been out without a gown some 300 times after hours like everyone else. But the progs are quite sensible men and see that if they tried to enforce the rules by hunting people all and every night they would make themselves ridiculous, so they don't overdo things. The buller told me he thought he had seen me come out of the bar of the George which was the reason he stopped me […]

Letter 98 To his father, 13 May 1910, Balliol

What a tremendous shock the news of the King's death⁷²⁸ must have been to you all in Melbourne. Even here no one felt anxious right up to the last minute, altho’ it was known that he hadn't been well for some time and it now transpires that he was so ill at Biarritz that the doctors were within an ace of summoning the Prince of Wales there. But really one had no idea that there was anything seriously wrong – it wasn't till Friday evening when the bulletins came out saying that ‘his position was critical’ that one realised that he was really very ill indeed. And he died that night at 11.45. I first heard the news from my scout when he came to call me at 7.30 on Saturday morning. It is so very very sad – and just at this moment his loss will be even specially felt because so much was hoped from his intervention in the parliamentary squabble. He seems to have kept up wonderfully till the last – at Covent Garden twice the previous week on his return from Biarritz, gave several audiences on the Thursday and even smoked a cigar on the Friday morning, it is said! altho he must have known for some time back that things were serious. He will be a most tremendous loss to judge from what everyone says at home and abroad – but one feels grateful that he was allowed nine years to do so much in, for he really has done an enormous amount, and both in France and Germany even more than in England itself he is recognised as one of the greatest and most beneficial forces in recent politics. The new king has made an excellent impression so far: his thoughtful act in asking the theatres to keep open (except of course on the day of the funeral) was very much appreciated, as though they had at once all closed voluntarily it would have meant that hundreds would have been thrown out of employment. In the case of the Stratford festival which I had meant to attend on that very Saturday to see Ellen Terry⁷²⁹ in the Merchant of Venice – F.R. Benson⁷³⁰ abandoned the whole last week of the festival, paying all the salaries – very nice of him, wasn't it? Of course everything here is cancelled – all the Eights and Commem. Week's balls, concerts, everything. Eights themselves will be held but merely for four days and there will be no jollifications of any description at all. I am hoping to get up to town to see the Lying-in-State in Westminster Hall next Thursday and on Friday, the day of the funeral, the O.T.C. go to Windsor to line the streets there. He is to be buried in the Albert Memorial Chapel near S. George's Chapel.

On Tuesday was the Proclamation. I turned out in the O.T.C. and we lined the High. I heard bits of the proclamation – shockingly read, by the Town Clerk, I think – in front of S. Mary's South-Eastern door. The Vice-Chancellor and doctors in their robes took up their stand at the door and the Mayor and corporation came down the street in procession and the proclamation was read facing S. Mary's. The High was just packed. I believe afterwards they went on to Carfax and to the four ancient gates of the city – S. Michael's, Magdalen Bridge (Eastgate) and two others.⁷³¹

This has quite overshadowed everything else this week […] I am sending you an Observer as its articles and notices on the King are rather good, I think – it must be a very difficult task to write such things: they always seem very stilted. I don't much care for Queen Alexandra's Letter – my ‘poor broken heart’ doesn't read well – it is also very unreal and I wish she hadn't done it – and now it's going to be framed and sold at £1.1.0. each and proceeds to the charities.⁷³²

The newspapers as usual insist on calling the late king ‘the peace-maker’ and the new one ‘our sailor king’ (like James II and William IV, not a very illustrious couple). His reign seems to promise well, though some people think his wife will twist him round her finger – she is rather a contrast to the very characterless though good-hearted Queen Alexandra – and the first Queen consort of British race since (not counting Anne Hyde, who died long before her husband's accession⁷³³) Katherine Parr.⁷³⁴ It came upon me as a great surprise to remember that the new Duke of Cornwall is 16.⁷³⁵ One thinks of him as a little boy, whereas he is nearly of age.

Lectures continue very interesting – This morning at 9 an excellent one by J.L. Myres on Ancient History in general and yesterday, also at 9 and also excellent, Hogarth on ‘Aegean Civilisation’. The other lectures as before, except that J.A. Smith has begun his course on ‘Hegel and the Philosophy of Religion’ – I find it very hard like all things of that description. On Tuesday night I went to a most excellent lecture in French by Professor Cartailhac of Bordeaux, a great authority on Palaeolithic art, who is in Oxford to receive an honorary degree from the university.⁷³⁶ It was on the Palaeolithic art of the cave-dwellers in Dordogne and southern France and northern Spain – very bright, and easy to follow – and illustrated by excellent slides. I knew something about the subject before I went, so was not wholly unprepared. Isn't it wonderful to think that these people who lived at the latest 8,000–6,000 B.C. – and a great many authorities think 20,000–18,000 B.C. – had such undeniable skill in the drawing on reindeer bone and the carving on rocks, of animals (especially bisons, mammoths, reindeer, and horses) – and that the neolithic peoples who lived long after and had much better tools, have left us nothing comparable to the others artistically […]

Letter 99 To his stepmother, 25 May 1910, Balliol

I scribbled off last week's letter just the night before our day at Windsor. We had a most interesting time there – get an Illustrated London News Funeral Supplement⁷³⁷ and look at the picture on page 21 of the procession in Windsor Castle grounds. We lined the road there and I was just […] opposite the South (side) door (just opposite where the line of troops curves.⁷³⁸ I got a most splendid view of the eight rulers⁷³⁹ and the other big people in the procession and tho it was rather tiring as we had to stand there from 10.30 to 2.15 it was most interesting. We left Oxford by the 8.10 train (got up at 6.15, breakfast 6.45) and got back at 7.15 p.m. – The High St. of Windsor was packed with spectators […] Inside the Castle grounds there were very few people, as only servants and dependants of the Castle were allowed there. The ceremony itself was most impressive – the gun-carriage, preceded by Life-Guards and drawn by bluejackets and followed by rulers and representatives of every civilised country. They were all on foot and as we stood at the present as soon as the gun-carriage came in sight we saw very well, though naturally when a long procession moves past – however near you are and however slowly they move – it isn't possible to take in who they all are and I couldn't of course remember them all. But I think I made out all the kings – The Kaiser looked splendid altho on foot like everyone else and the others were Spain, The Hellenes and Norway (abreast), Portugal, Denmark and Bulgaria (in a white astrakhan cap), and The Belgians with Franz Ferdinand of Austria⁷⁴⁰ and the Turkish Heir Apparent⁷⁴¹ – and a lot of interesting people behind (among them Prince Rupprecht, representative of Bavaria,) and rightful (Jacobite) King of England⁷⁴² – it was curious to see him there. It was a most gorgeous day and everyone thought the procession was really most wonderfully effective, accompanied by the band of the Life Guards playing Chopin and Beethoven's Funeral Marches and the Scottish pipers making queer mournful sounds on their pipes. After the service, which lasted three quarters of an hour, we again saw the royalties as they came out and walked informally back to the Castle past us, the King and the Kaiser talking together. We also saw the Queen and Queen Alexandra getting into their carriages – From there we marched to Eton, where we had something to eat, and afterwards to Slough where we caught the train.

Nothing much has happened this week except that it has been Eights’ Week but very different to the usual Eights’ Week – only four nights racing instead of six and no balls or concerts […] this afternoon we have a parade at Headington Hill in preparation for the review by Sir Ian Hamilton⁷⁴³ tomorrow. I must rush away and dress for it […]

Letter 100 To his father, 3 June 1910, Balliol

[…] On Wednesday afternoon we went to tea with Dorothy Leeper at Maggie Hall.⁷⁴⁴ We had tea in the garden with Dorothy, a friend of hers Doris something or other (didn't hear the name when we were introduced)⁷⁴⁵ and a don, Miss Howard, who was very dull.⁷⁴⁶ Dorothy is not a bad little thing, very young and small, and not particularly good-looking, but quite bright and talkative: her friend was very nice indeed, and one of the very few good-looking Oxford ‘hostiles’. They showed us over the Hall and the new buildings: they have a pretty little chapel. There are about 70 of them I think. Last night I went to debate at the Union for the first time this term.⁷⁴⁷ There was only one good speech – Cockburn's – though Guedalla as usual said some very clever things. I wish you could hear Oxford speaking of the new epigrammatic, paradoxical type – if well controlled and kept in its proper place in a speech, it is most effective – but Guedalla sometimes lets himself overdo it. Of course the chief interest of the evening was Henry Arthur Jones – who spoke for about half an hour.⁷⁴⁸ He said some very interesting things – especially about modern actors and their inability to render blank verse properly, contrasting them very unfavourably with both modern French and German Shakespearian actors and actors of Phelps’ time.⁷⁴⁹ Many of his arguments were very sound and the motion was carried very easily in a small House by 161–56 – but his speech was not well arranged or expressed and he is obviously not the ’Varsity type of man. Still he was decidedly worth hearing. Next Tuesday comes Roosevelt's Romanes lecture for which Rex has already a ticket.⁷⁵⁰ Ours haven't been assigned yet […]

Letter 101 To his father, 17 June 1910, Balliol

[…] last week […] was […] the Romanes Lecture delivered this year by Roosevelt. I was very lucky to get a ticket as the Sheldonian was of course packed. Dr Goudy, the Professor of Civil Law, introduced Roosevelt in a Latin speech mentioning his various exploits in peace and war. Roosevelt naturally got a splendid reception, both when taking his degree⁷⁵¹ and when he went up to the desk to deliver his lecture.⁷⁵² I liked the lecture immensely as it was very eloquently phrased and very forcibly delivered – the peroration was excellent and throughout he spoke most clearly and impressively. What he said, however (the subject was ‘Biological Analogies in History’) was not very deep or very original – though very sound and very sensible – and accordingly most men thought it was a very poor lecture. I think they were expecting too much – Roosevelt is not a scholar nor a profound thinker and he should not have been expected to give us something very scholarly and profound. The one possible blot on proceedings was the behaviour of the Chancellor (Curzon) who in addressing to Roosevelt and the beadles the usual words simply played to the Gallery. Perhaps he was sensible, however: he saw that all the undergraduates would laugh anyhow at the absurd pomposity of the Latin phrases, so he thought it was best to pass it all off as a joke – but some people thought it was rather a degradation of his office.

Roosevelt's Egypt speech has aroused a lot of comment both in and out of Parliament.⁷⁵³ Two parties are very sick with him – the Jingoes for daring to pronounce an opinion on England's sacred foreign policy! the Nationalists for supporting England's tyrannical attempts to crush Home Rule in Egypt. Most sane people (such as Sir Edward Grey and Uncle Boyce) were delighted with his eloquent appeal to England to continue her good work in Egypt. It is very pleasing to hear such nice things said of one's country by a man of such standing and experience as Roosevelt but it must be remembered (1) that he was only some four or five days in Egypt (2) that he only heard the point of view of the army of occupation and its officials, not the nationalist one (3) that he is avowedly a tremendous supporter of white rule over coloured in every portion of the world.

I don't mean to say that one doesn't hope and believe that British rule isn't in the best interests of Egypt – it certainly has conduced to the material welfare of the country; but is it therefore justified? is it right to occupy a country because its government is not good and you can govern it better? Of course I know there were special circumstances calling for British interference in 1882,⁷⁵⁴ but does that justify our presence in 1910 when nearly the whole population desires independence? It's very hard to say, isn't it? and there is a lot to be said against the Roosevelt view.

Last weekend I was up in town […] I went to a matinee on Saturday of my favourite opera – Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman, the most heavenly music ever written (a slight exaggeration of a fanatic). I also went to see Rembrandt's very famous ‘Polish Rider’ which was formerly in the possession of a Polish noble family and has been bought for £60,000 by an American named Frick:⁷⁵⁵ it is on view in London this month on its way to New York […] On Sunday […] afternoon I went to a magnificent London symphony concert in the Albert Hall (one of their regular Sunday afternoon concerts). It was a glorious one – Elena Gerhardt sang perfectly⁷⁵⁶ […]

Letter 102 To his father, 30 June 1910, Houghton

[…] I was up in town on Monday […] I took Rex out in the afternoon to Wimbledon and we saw some fine tennis – men's singles and mixed doubles. The semi-finals of the Singles’ Championship of the World were well worth watching.⁷⁵⁷ A.H. Lowe, an old New College man and well-known player,⁷⁵⁸ putting up a great fight against Beals Wright the famous American,⁷⁵⁹ though he was finally beaten three sets to one: in the other semi-final Wilding (New Zealand) beat J.C. Parke the Irishman⁷⁶⁰ – and on Tuesday Wilding, I see, beat Wright after a great match. So today, if it was fine enough, Wilding as Challenger was to play A.W. Gore, the present holder⁷⁶¹ […] You ask in your letter one or two questions about Oxford – I think it is quite true that there is less camaraderie in an Oxford college than in a Melbourne one (though I am chiefly basing my remarks on Balliol – smaller colleges – Corpus, Hertford etc. –are very keen on college events and everyone in college seems to know everybody else): it is due partly to the men, who are much fonder of picking and choosing their own friends than in Melbourne where one knew everyone in college by his Christian name, partly by the system of separate stairs and separate meals, I'm very glad to have seen something of both systems and think that they are each suitable in their place. In England, which is socially the very reverse of democratic, such fellowship is very hard to realise (even though Oxford men are – from the very nature of the work and expenses of the university – much more of one class than in Melbourne):– in democratic Australia snobbishness would be so unmeaning that it could only be ridiculous. It is much nicer having been to Melbourne first, for while I loved the open and common life of Trinity it would be irksome to go back to it after the independence of Oxford. After a time even hall every night becomes a bore, and nearly everyone is glad to go into digs and not have to make conversation continually with whomsoever you sit next. As for sports, what you say is also true. There is not any wave of enthusiasm about college sports here. Most men are more interested in playing than applauding or talking about games. Everybody plays games but they play them rather for exercise and for amusement than because they think it really matters who wins – and to that extent I think they must be considered perhaps as looking on sport in a more proper light – not that in the actual playing of a game they are fairer (for that would be impossible) than an Australian ’Varsity man. Conversation is certainly more interesting: one rarely talks about sports or travel (arch-abomination I really do think and Rex agrees with me – it is surely the dullest thing on earth to listen to someone else telling what places he has been to or what games he has played – and makes a man an awful bore to listen to). There are so many things for a good conversationalist, not that I mean for a minute that an Oxford undergraduate is generally brilliant at conversation, but at least he is light and his way of passing over important things (in which you know he is really properly interested) and discussing trifles is the right method for casual conversation – while if required he can go deep too. Of course I think the various Oxford affectations are overdone but even their excesses are marks of refinement, a shrinking from blatancy, and an avoidance of what can grate on the feelings. Union speaking certainly cannot be called good – there is such an obvious lack of depth and perhaps more important (for depth is too much to ask of a young speaker who cannot have got deep down into big questions yet) such a total lack of eloquence. Eloquence is not the rage – its place is taken by antithesis of a superficial sort and especially paradox. It at least saves one from listening to what is commonplace and second-hand but it cannot be considered as genuine oratory. I very rarely go there now – only once last term to hear H.A. Jones. As for speaking myself there it would be only waste of time for me – for I could never get above a tail-end speaker there and what's the use of that? Unless you're a clever epigrammatist you seldom please a Union audience. But as far as speaking goes, Rex and I never got out of the very bad class I now realise fully. I'm glad the memorial service went off so well.⁷⁶² This king seems likely to turn out very well and will I think be liked and respected. I hope the Accession Declaration Bill goes through all right:⁷⁶³ I do wish the Church Association wouldn't oppose it – it's funny how extremes meet – fancy their justifying their intolerance by that of Rome!!⁷⁶⁴

Letter 103 To his father, 5 July 1910, Hotel Wildbad, Rothenburg

[…] Today has been one of the most enjoyable that could possibly be imagined – in one of the very most delightful of cities – one of the rarest of things, a perfect medieval town practically unspoilt by modern additions and improvements […] I went up to London only on Friday afternoon and left at 9 o'clock the same night for Cologne. I had a rather uncomfortable four hours crossing via Ostend – it was very cold, as I was on deck the whole time – and then a seven hours journey to Cologne, getting there at half past 11 […] I had booked my bicycle through to Cologne with my other luggage […] I found the hotel the other three were at with little trouble – the City Hotel, the Cölnische Hof (where we stayed, do you remember?)⁷⁶⁵ next door being full – and looked for them that morning in the cathedral and picture-gallery

Munich, Hotel Metropole, 8th

but did not find them. However I ran across Rex by accident in the street. It was too late then to do much sight-seeing but Rex and I went to one or two of the old churches […] We had a glorious day on the Rhine next day from 9 a.m. till 9 p.m. It is really wonderfully interesting and beautiful, especially between Coblenz and Mainz – doubly interesting when you have an invaluable Baedeker […] We did not think very much of Mainz, but the cathedral was interesting with its old Romanesque nave and Gothic cloisters. We had just a night and morning there as we had to get on to Rothenburg. After about six hours on the train we reached it on Monday evening and came to the Hotel Wildbad – the most charming hotel I was ever in – most beautifully built for a summer hotel, long cool cloisters and corridors, big clean comfortable bedrooms with splendid views – situated in most lovely gardens with the river Tauber flowing through them and with glimpses from it of the splendid old towers and wall of Rothenburg. Rothenburg would simply be impossible to describe – to wander through the town is to get a true idea of what the German middle ages were like – the fine old walls with old square towers about every 50 yards, the funny old streets with their queer windings and red-tiled churches and houses – and picturesque little courtyards, many of which we pushed into. We had a simply delightful two nights and a very full day […] in spite of incessant rain – exploring churches and houses and dungeons – the old Rathaus where took place the famous (but unfortunately legendary) Meistertrunk (‘Giant-draught’) which saved the town from sack by Tilly.⁷⁶⁶ The huge goblet which a citizen of the town had to empty at one draught is still preserved and at 12 o'clock every day (we saw it) at the windows of a house in the principal square, the scene is enacted by clockwork – Tilly's sentence (it was in 1631) and Nusch's wonderful act of deliverance […] the citizens still act a play describing it every Whit-Monday.

We […] had a very interesting time indeed in Nuremberg – a day and a half of seeing most interesting and lovely things – the three grand old churches – Sebaldus, Lorenz and Liebfrauen-kirche […] the fine old castle from which the ancestors of the present Hohenzollern family protected and bullied the town as Burggrafen in the 14th century – and all the scores of beautiful old houses and courtyards – and the picturesque views one gets of river, and walls and buildings […] Nuremberg […] is not so perfect as Rothenburg but of course contains more famous and beautiful things […]

Letter 104 To his father, [13 July 1910], Pension Quisisana, Theresienstr. 84, Munich

[…] We got back to Munich on Monday after our three days in Oberammergau – one of the most charming of all charming places. We were staying at the house of Sebastian Lang, who played Annas and has two daughters who had minor parts.⁷⁶⁷ They (and the whole people of the village, in fact) were most perfectly delightful people – so simple and yet with such beautiful manners – so very industrious and so kind – they really took simply an incredible amount of trouble over us and we were just charmed with them all. Sebastian Lang actually went Burgschaft⁷⁶⁸ for me for £20, which I had asked the bank to send me by telegraph order but which I couldn't get as the post official would take nothing but a passport as a proper means of identification – though I had all sorts of other documents, university ones and others, to prove who I was. I could never have got the money at all if Lang hadn't stood surety for me. I am going to send him a small present from here. This is but one of countless ways in which they looked after us. They were really a charming family.

Of course the village is spoilt in some ways – Cook's offices, and motors, and motor buses – two or three (but fairly quiet-looking) hotels and shops galore with such things as tourists want. But it is still a charming place, though I daresay 20 or 30 years ago it was still more charming. But we failed to find any trace of bad effects on the Oberammergauers – they are the most delightful people – so very strikingly handsome (men, women and children – all the men in the play wearing flowing locks), so intelligent, so polite, so kind. You get the proper atmosphere for the play from the people of the place.

With the play itself we were more than satisfied nor do I think that anyone would fail to be. The day began for us by attending High Mass in the Church at 6 and then after breakfast we went to the Theatre. The seats there (and we had excellent ones) are under shelter but the stage itself is in the open air with the tops of the mountains of the Bavarian Oberland showing in the background. Luckily we had a perfect day for our performance though every day since it has poured with rain – but wet or dry the play takes place and the unfortunate performers get drenched through. It began at 8 and with a two hours break for lunch went on to 6 – that is, two divisions of four hours each. The story is just the New Testament one in 17 acts from the Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to Easter morning. But between every act the chorus come on to show tableaux of Old Testament scenes wherein the story was typified and to sing verses on the subject of the act which followed. Of the actors I think Judas was perhaps the best, though every single part was well done in a way which would do credit to a first-rate company and with an added dignity and fervour which it would be hard to match anywhere. It was Zwink's third appearance in the part of Judas – and in 1880 he had played S. John.⁷⁶⁹ He was really wonderful and the scenes of his remorse and suicide were some of the strongest in the play. Anton Lang – as in 1900 – played Christus and wonderfully too – though his acting perhaps fell a tiny bit below what I had hoped for.⁷⁷⁰ But his bearing and expression were all that could be desired and he was always engrossingly interesting. Of the others what struck us all most was the wonderful acting of the Jewish priests and rabbis in their meetings to decide on Christus’ fate and the marvellous way in which one could realise the frenzy of the mob – the huge crowd of frenzied people on the open-air stage far surpassing in numbers and vigour an ordinary stage-mob. Our host, Sebastian Lang, did the part of Annas with great dignity and effect. In 1900 he was Caiaphas. It is extraordinary how the people of this remote village can so realise the life and character of the persons of the Passion drama. But the whole thing is wonderful and it is hard in any degree at all to give a description of it […]

Letter 105 To his father, 22 July 1910, bei Frau Korntheuer, Hubertusstr. 13, Nymphenburg, Munich

We were busy all this mornining at Pension Quisisana, packing up, seeing off Roland Bryce, who left by the 8.30 a.m. for London, writing necessary letters, and paying a visit to Frau Korntheuer out here in Nymphenburg to see if she would let us off our promise to come for a fortnight. However, as she had refused other offers through expecting us, she quite reasonably wanted fairly high compensation – 45 marks – and we thought it would be very extravagant of us to throw such a lot of money away and decided to come here for a fortnight – at the end of which time we hope to have heard of a family or good German pension in the Bavarian Hochland or in the North Tyrol, to whom we could go for the next two months. We have very nice rooms out here and both the Korntheuers seem very nice people and determined to make us very comfortable so we should get a good lot of work done in the next fortnight […] on Friday afternoon we went […] to Vienna, getting there at about 10. Of course we travelled 3rd class, and as 3rd in Germany and Austria is not very comfortable we were quite glad to find a fairly good hotel (the Savoy-Englischer Hof) near the Westbahnhof at which we arrived. Needless to say, it was not quite the same class as our first friend, Hotel Imperial in Kärntner Ring. They charged us 3.75 kr. for a room each (i.e. about 3s. 2d.) which is about as cheap as a stranger can get in a hotel in a big city […] Saturday morning we spent at the Kunsthistorisches Museum which I had failed to see on both my former visits to Vienna. We had no time for anything except the picture-gallery […] In the afternoon we went to the Jagdausstellung, an exhibition of hunting trophies from all lands which is being held in the Volksprater.⁷⁷¹ No one pays much attention to the exhibits but the bands and cafes in the exhibition grounds are quite delightful and very popular. In the evening we went to another very amusing place – Venedig in Wien – entrance 1 mark – large grounds, crowded with people, where one wanders past open air theatres, bands, cafes, roller-skating places and all kinds of sports.⁷⁷² It was very typical Viennese or struck us as such […] next morning [we] caught the 7.00 a.m. boat from Pressburg⁷⁷³ and had a very jolly voyage of three and a half hours’ down the Danube. It is very beautiful though not (in my opinion) so interesting or so varied as the Rhine. The entrance to Hungary just before Pressburg is very fine, however. A sweep of the river and one sees the rock jutting out in mid-stream which bears the 900-year-old statue of Arpad, who led the Hungarian invasions of the 9th century – and at the next river station one hears and sees the Magyar. Pressburg (or Poszorny as it is in Hungarian) comes soon after – and we got off and spent six or seven hours there […] it is not really a very interesting place, though one gets a good view from the old ruined Schloss which rises above it. From 1525 to 1698, while Buda was in the hands of the Turks, it was, I think, the capital of Hungary but is decidedly a bilingual town and one hears far more German than Magyar in the streets […] We came back by train […] The tickets, 3rd class, from Wien to München cost 22 kronen (18/5d.) each which left us with 66 heller!⁷⁷⁴ […]

Letter 106 To his stepmother, 29 July 1910, bei Frau Korntheuer, Hubertusstr. 13, Nymphenburg, Munich

[…] Next Friday Rex and I hope to start for the mountains […] We've written to England for our tennis racquets as we think tennis is a very good way of getting to know Germans, besides being the most satisfactory way of exercising oneself […] [Rex] is busily engaged in an ‘epoch-making’ (it is his own word) comparison between Trinity⁷⁷⁵ and New College! […] I think that much of what he says is very sound – Oxford and Melbourne can hardly be compared without unfairness to both. Oxford and Cambridge are of course quite unique and will neither stand nor allow comparison with modern universities of which Melbourne, it seems to me (though I can't see that I have any right to pronounce on the question, as I know nothing about it – still I may as well do so) is a very excellent example. Compare Melbourne with the great modern English universities – or better still partly with them, partly with T.C.D., whose men strike one as very like ‘Heaven's noblest work on earth’ (if you recognise the quotation).⁷⁷⁶ In T.C.D. as in Melbourne colleges one gets (although on the whole a socially superior type of man to Melbourne) yet an atmosphere of sport and good fellowship and enjoyment of life – but not the intellectual stimulus, the original types of character and independence of thought which one comes across in Oxford […] Munich is a charming place, after Florence the ideal European city to live in […]

Letter 107 To his father, 5 August 1910, bei Frau Korntheuer, Hubertusstr. 13, Nymphenburg, Munich

It is about the worst summer ever known in Europe and everywhere it is nothing but rain and thunder […] We met two Canadian Rhodes Scholars (one from New College, one from John's) in the Old Gallery on Wednesday. They told us the news of the Schools. In Greats there were some 26 firsts given (out of perhaps 150) – Balliol got six, New College and the House⁷⁷⁷ four each. In History out of ten firsts (perhaps 180 in but they are very sparing of their firsts in History) Balliol got four – not a bad record for Balliol! […] Have you seen Foster Fraser's new book?⁷⁷⁸ It is said to be severe on us as a people but of course we are ludicrously touchy […]

Letter 108 To his stepmother, 11 August 1910, private house, Tegernsee, Upper Bavaria

I really don't know whom we are staying with. Hotel Guggemos just couldn't take us in so we were shoved into a quite comfortable place next door where we are very happy. No one here seems to boast any English and so we are getting quite a lot of practice at the language of languages […] we have only been here about (barely) four hours. In other words our train left Munich at 2.42: we got here (37½ miles) about 5 o'clock and it is now 9 […]

Sunday night: Went alone […] to a most delightful concert in the Tonhalle where we had been once before with Bryce. Admission is only 1 mark and you sit there at refreshment tables and listen to an admirable orchestra. The concert was a very attractive one – and quite varied, you will admit, when I say it included in the course of three hours Händel's Largo, the Vorspiel to the Meistersingers and the very hackneyed but to me ‘perennially pleasurable’ (as Rex would have said before he went to Oxford) or ‘simply topping’ (as he would say now) Barcarolle of Offenbach's ‘Hoffmann's Erzählungen’ […]

Monday night: I was lucky enough to get hold of a most excellent 5 mark 30 seat from a man who wished to sell it for the performance of Figaro's Hochzeit.⁷⁷⁹ Every summer – in case you don't know, but you probably do – there is a Wagner festival in the Prinz-Regenten Theater and a Mozart festival in the pretty little Residenz Theater […] Richard Wagner is unfortunately slightly out of the reach of us paupers, as all the seats cost 20 or 22 marks […] For Mozart however seats run from 20 (often sold for 30 marks) down to 3 – and I was lucky enough to get this perfectly splendid one for 5 marks. The Mozart performances (of which there are only seven, while there are about 18 of the Wagner) are given in the Residenz Theater which was built about 1760 for Mozart opera, so you feel the setting at least is appropriate. It is a dear little theatre, joining the Royal Palace and the big Hoftheater […] and very prettily decorated. The performance was naturally perfectly splendid, with Mottl conducting⁷⁸⁰ and Maud Fay,⁷⁸¹ Bosetti and others just as famous singing. The Mozart and Wagner festivals are both carried out by the same singers […] The hours of the performance were quaint – 6 to 9.30 – they evidently believe in no dinner and adequate sleep for music-lovers.

Tuesday evening: We had managed to get 4 mark seats (the cheapest going) for the performance of The Merchant of Venice by the visiting Berliner Deutsche Theater⁷⁸² (whom I saw once in Berlin) at the Munich Exhibition where there is a very charming theatre:⁷⁸³ the Künstliche Theater. The performance was again – to use the same expression for the nth time – simply splendid […] Wassmann (whom I once saw in Berlin as Sir Andrew Aguecheek) made a capital Prince of Arragon.⁷⁸⁴ The way he said ‘Gold, Silber, schlechtes Blei’ was simply irresistible.⁷⁸⁵ Shylock was extraordinarily good too – Rudolf Schildkraut who played him portrayed him quite relentlessly heartless, yet one felt deeply sympathetic with him all the time.⁷⁸⁶ His return to his deserted house (Act III?) was too harrowing for words. Jessica (Camilla Eibenschütz⁷⁸⁷) and Nerissa (Marguerite Kupfer⁷⁸⁸) were both excellent. Morocco (Paul Conradi⁷⁸⁹) was also just admirable: he really did look and speak like an Oriental, which is difficult. Porzia (Elsa Heims⁷⁹⁰), to end up, was certainly very good indeed – that is to say she acted with plenty of spirit, very intelligently and was very dramatic in the critical scene. The only point in which one could find fault was she perhaps hardly seemed to feel the terrible issue deeply enough. The whole idea of masquerading as the learned barrister was to her rather too much of a funny adventure, and she seemed too confident from the beginning of her ability to win. Yet she was certainly excellent and I don't expect there are many better to be seen. Even the difficult and thankless parts of Bassanio (and the Doge) were quite well done, though Bassanio didn't interest as much on the stage as I thought he would have. The beautiful scene in Act V was all that could be desired. I was very sorry to miss the first three or four scenes as I had to spend from 5 o'clock to 7.10 in the dentist's chair having the new crown forced in which demands Sandovian muscle⁷⁹¹ in both torturer and victim […] We go on to Achensee tomorrow I hope. But I don't know when my 50 books or Rex's 38 are coming after. Things move slowly in these parts. We'll be very sorry to leave Bavaria – I can't call it Germany for it is an entirely different atmosphere from Prussia and Prussian dependencies. In Munich one isn't conscious of the existence of Berlin, unless one happens to be a Prussian tourist and then to all appearances one is conscious of nothing else. Munich is as essentially a capital as Rome or Madrid – Prussia has not annexed Bavaria – and Bavarians think and know that without their action there could have been no united Germany. Berlin may be the artificial capital of the unity which Hohenzollernismus has made of its grabs, Munich is nevertheless the chief city of culture in the Empire – the natural centre of the confederated Europe of the future […]

Letter 109 To his father, 19 August 1910, Villa Männer, Gossensass, Tyrol

[…] I'm just finishing the Annals […] which I've been reading the last three weeks carefully with Furneaux's edition⁷⁹² – it's certainly a most excellent edition, simply full of information about imperial times. I hear Spooner's corresponding edition of the Histories is quite bad, having been done very carelessly⁷⁹³ […] we have charming rooms and balconies looking straight out on the Tribulam and its sister glaciers (10, and 11,000 feet) […] On Monday night there was quite a bad fire here (at the same time as the big fire at the Brussels Exhibition – the big fire which destroyed the magnificent Karersee Hotel in South Tyrol to which we were thinking of going, and another at Igls near Innsbruck⁷⁹⁴) – the houses are all so close together that nine were destroyed although the firemen worked hard. If a strong wind had been blowing the whole village except our pension must have been burnt down.

We have had several festivities lately – the big annual Sommerfest on Sunday, Monday was the Mariahimmelfahrt (Assumption) and yesterday the Kaiser's eightieth birthday.⁷⁹⁵ The place is full of Austrians and Germans and no English – but so far we haven't had very much German as these people will talk English […]

Letter 110 To his stepmother, 26 August 1910, Villa Männer, Gossensass, Tyrol

[…] We play a little mild tennis here but the end for which we sent for our racquets has not been fulfilled. We thought we should probably meet a lot of nice Austrians at tennis but no one here is any good at all and very few play, though they are excellent courts. So for exercise we have to content ourselves with walks of which there are plenty of every sort. On Saturday we walked to Sterzing and back – seven miles altogether. It is a charming little old village on the main road from here to Italy and known even in ancient times (Vipitenum in the province of Rhaetia). We went into the old Rathaus and spent a long time looking at old pictures and carvings and talking to the woman who showed us over it. She was very pleasant and it was quite cheap regarded as a lesson in Deutsch – 40 heller (4d.) for the two of us. Presumably in expectation of the 40 heller she declared that the English were such a very attractive people, much better mannered than the Germans. My old passion for argument was roused and I held forth long and ungrammatically on the Gemütlichkeit⁷⁹⁶ of the Germans.

Sunday was such a perfect day that we simply couldn't waste the opportunity of going to the Amthorspitze. On paper it seems quite an achievement to go up 5,500 feet (the Spitze is 9,025 and we are 3,495 here) but in reality it is a very quiet easy walk – not any steeper and if you take your time not any more exhausting than the Camel's Hump!⁷⁹⁷ We left about 9.30 and with about 20 minutes rest half-way for tea got on top at 1.30 and stayed there three quarters of an hour. It was absolutely no strain on either of us […] Rhys arrived here on Tuesday after eight days real mountaineering. He goes simply anywhere – all the passes and paths which Baedeker says are hard for experts – and does them in half the ordinary time. I think he'd make a splendid Alpinist if he had time for it. His people have left for America now and he's going to be with us for the next three weeks and then to spend the last three weeks at Glengarriff with the Bryces […] Yesterday we walked over and back to the Brenner Pass which is seven miles away […] The Berlinerin who sits at our table and is chief of our German conversation came too and walked very very slowly but supplied German conversation which was useful. Rex has improved a lot but is still quite rudimentary – and I am very little better […] he⁷⁹⁸ of course is incomparably better than we are as he had a German nurse and spoke nothing but German till he was seven – but even he is very far from being really good. I've met very few people that are – I doubt very much if there are half-a-dozen Englishmen at Balliol who could talk German (inclusive of dons). The number at Trinity, Melbourne was duck's egg […] I have written for information about the British Museum. In case that seems possible, I should try for it after Schools, applying of course some time before – but I must get fuller particulars. If not, I should like above all things another year at Oxford to do Modern History, and after a shot for a fellowship […] I should try to get an appointment as lecturer or coach. But at present I'm thinking mostly about the British Museum […] I quite agree with what Father says about Egypt – and especially the occupation of the Sudan⁷⁹⁹ – but one must make the disinterestedness of the British occupation a matter of faith, I'm afraid. No foreigner believes it (Roosevelt (an Irish Home Ruler!) excepted) but Englishmen should as long as they can […]

Letter 111 To his stepmother, 1 September 1910, Hotel Laurin, Seiss, Tyrol

We came on here from Gossensass last Monday after being there a little over a fortnight during the last five or six days of which Rhys had been with us. We had had a very good time there but the season seemed to be ending and everyone was leaving, so it wasn't any good staying on. On two of the last nights we were there we went to entertainments of rather different sorts. The first one was a Tyrolese concert – given in the big Hotel Gröbner by six people from Meran. The entrance was only 1 krone and it was more than worth it. A man and a girl did a Tyrolese dance – a most charming thing to look at, but so complicated it must take ages to learn. The songs and jodeling were very good indeed and we enjoyed it immensely […] The other entertainment was perhaps equally interesting though far more primitive. Several of us went up from the pension to a little restaurant in one of the woods and saw a very rough-and-ready peasants’ dance – Bavarian waltzes and other very vigorous and exhausting exercises. There were only a few peasants there but they danced with great energy […] On Monday we left. Rex and I bicycled down to Waldbruck, about 35 miles. It only took about three hours to do, as it was downhill all the way (net drop of about 1,700 feet) and a simply perfect road. We stopped however for an hour in Brixen to have lunch and to see the very interesting cathedral of what used to be an independent and powerful ecclesiastical principality like Salzburg only hardly so strong. It was ‘suppressed’ like Salzburg in 1803 to be quite accurate. As soon as one gets past Franzensfeste (about 18 miles from Gossensass) the whole aspect of the country begins to change – vines and acacias and other things one associates with Italy come in to the place of the firs of the North Tyrol, though if you look higher up on the hills you see the trees which you meet with further north […] Brixen is quite Italian-looking though the people mostly speak German. There is also a third element which interested us more than either. I asked a man how we were to find our way to the Domkirche in intelligent though unfortunately unintelligible German. Rex followed in Italian but was only vaguely though luckily sufficiently understood. The man was obviously as his attempt to speak Italian showed a Ladin-speaker⁸⁰⁰ […] We met Rhys at Waldbruck where he had gone by train – and we drove up about eight miles to this place where we have been ever since. The first night, however, we passed at a hotel called the Seiser Hof which was crowded and where we could only get very indifferent rooms and quite expensive. As it is not particularly well situated we wondered why it was so crowded till we found the cooking was weltberühmt⁸⁰¹ and certainly very good. That's what draws the Germans. Here the food is not so good and the place is consequently quite empty except for us and an Austrian baron and his wife who are quite nice. But we've simply splendid rooms with two huge balconies and are very comfortable – and pension is only 22 crowns (about 19/-) for the three of us collectively a day […] Today we had a splendid walk, going right over to St. Ulrich, the chief town of the Grodner Tal and back […] we had a most interesting time in St. Ulrich talking Ladin and looking at some splendid wood-carvings by a local artist named Moroder who, one hopes, will soon be as well known as he deserves.⁸⁰² Some of his things are simply charming (the subjects are mostly taken from the pictures of Defregger the well-known Tyrolese painter⁸⁰³) […]

Letter 112 To his father, 10 September 1910, Hotel Regina d'Ungaria, Verona

[…] we have at last left the mountains and got down into Italy bringing Rhys with us […] I just found out from him the other day that in the May number of the North American Review he had a pretty longish poem in (called ‘Michel-Ange’).⁸⁰⁴ To show you what that means, I must say that the North American Review is a particularly good paper and that he got $100 for the poem […] We had a very happy time at Seis […] We had jolly good weather up there and a fair amount of German-talking to an Austrian Baron and his wife, a Munich architect and the one chambermaid. The hotel was practically empty, as the season was over. From Seis we came down on Thursday, the day before yesterday, to Verona and have been having a delightfully interesting and very economical time here. The hotel is a pretty poor affair, as you would probably conclude from the fact that no-one here speaks any language but Italian, not even French […] On the afternoon we arrived we did nothing but visit the Amphitheatre and sit about there watching the sunset. It was about the only thing I saw in Verona my first visit here,⁸⁰⁵ but I enjoyed it every bit as much this time. It is almost perfect except for the top enclosing wall which there is very little left of […] yesterday […] we began with the old Romanesque church of S. Zeno […] went on to S. Bernardino close at hand with its beautiful 16th-century Cappella Pellegrina and then after an early lunch we did in the following order – the Scaligers’ tombs, Sta Anastasia, the Duomo (with the fine mosaic pavement of a Roman bath discovered in ’85) S. Giorgio in Braida […], Sta Maria in Organo […], the old, i.e. Roman, theatre, and the beautiful garden of the Palazzo Giusti from which one gets a splendid view of the whole town. It's really a most charming town with its old brick churches and interesting market-place, and courtyards off it […] The tombs of the Scaligers are certainly tremendously fine, tho the best of them was under scaffolding and the only way we could see it at all was by climbing up a workman's ladder when no one was looking. This morning we are going to the picture-gallery and this afternoon we leave for Padua […]

Letter 113 To his stepmother, 16 September 1910, Venice

[…] Who could actually describe Padua, Venice? Rex? […] investigation proves that he has already described it. With every word of his I cordially agree but I don't think he has laid it on strongly enough about Giotto in the Chapel of the Arena […] The rest of Padua is comparatively commonplace, though it possesses the famous Gattamelata in the square⁸⁰⁶ outside the stupendous church of S. Antony (Il Santo). On the second morning before we left for Venice, Rex stayed in bed and Rhys and I rushed out and saw the fine hall of the Palazzo della Raggione with the huge wooden model of the horse of Gattamelata, which looks much more tremendous under cover. Then we paid a hurried visit to the very interesting little picture-gallery which has some very nice things though it is hardly up to the Verona one […] We got back just at one minute to 11 in time to catch the tram to Venice which started from our hotel door. It is a topping way of entering Venice by sea […] As for Venice itself, it is simply perfection. It is even more delightful to be here in summer than winter⁸⁰⁷ – longer days to sight-see in, brighter colours and more charming nights to ‘gondole’ in […]

Letter 114 To his father, 18 September 1910, c/o Signora Jalla, 28 Via Venti Settembre, Florence

[…] We had a perfectly wonderful time in Venice which I enjoyed even more – much more – than the first visit […] Luckily the weather was good and we had a delightful hour one evening in a gondola with the moon nearly full […] The Academy claimed two whole mornings […] But some of the most lovely things are to be seen outside the Academy – in the Doge's Palace with its glorious Tintoretto's and in the many churches of which we visited at least a dozen. Beyond that we had time for little except of course S. Mark's where we spent one complete morning and another afternoon […] we spent a very delightful half-afternoon at the Lido and had tea in a hotel with a glorious view out on the Adriatic with its perfectly blue waters contrasting with the pretty, red sails of the fishing-boats. Another time we got a glorious view of Venice and the lagoons from the tower of the church of S. Giorgio Maggiore on the small island of the same name facing the Piazzetta […] It was very, very sad having to tear ourselves away from Venice yesterday after not quite five full days but Rhys had to go straight on to Glengarriff where he is to stay three weeks with the Bryces and we couldn't curtail our stay in Florence any more […] This morning we went to the English Church in Via La Marmora but found it closed – it is not to reopen till next Sunday. (The other one, I afterwards heard, is open, however.) From there we went on to the Belle Arti,⁸⁰⁸ just looked in for 20 minutes to catch a glimpse of things like David and Spring and the Coronation of the Virgin […] We went on to the monastery of Sta. Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi and had a good look at Perugino's wonderful fresco of the Crucifixion and afterwards went into the Archaeological Museum opposite and spent a very interesting hour among the Etruscan tombs. We chanced on an Irish-American priest very much interested in such things and a very pleasant man, and he showed us some interesting things and was very agreeable. He said however that his chief work was Latin epigraphy […] our family (one father – aged 70 (?), one mother – 50 (?), one daughter – 20 (?), one son – aged 17 (?)) are Waldensian by origin and Protestants […] They seem very nice […]

Letter 115 To his father, 23 September 1910, c/o Signora Jalla, 28 Via Venti Settembre, Florence

[…] I do want to insist that I haven't lost my feelings of patriotism. I always feel myself an Australian and say so too. By the way, it was interesting to notice, as we did while we were in Austria, how much space the Neue Freie Presse (as you probably know, about the second best paper to ‘The Times’ in existence) and the ‘Münchner Neueste Nachrichten’ give to Australian affairs. Practically every day a small paragraph – far more than Australian papers give to German affairs! Even events like the N. S.Wales elections are recorded, the debates about the Land Tax in the House of Representatives and Deakin's vote of Want of Confidence,⁸⁰⁹ and finally the reasons why Lord Dudley is resigning – they gave three (i) some disagreement with Fisher's Government,⁸¹⁰ (ii) the failure of Lady Dudley's nursing scheme,⁸¹¹ (iii) ‘a purely personal reason’.⁸¹² In fact, however, there would be little use in our returning to Australia if we can secure posts in England as there is incomparably more scope for our particular line of work there. But that does not mean that we have given up all feeling for our native soil.

Lastly Florence […] We see before us unending vistas of things that we want to see, and the things that we want to see again here – and another ten days was all too little here. So far this has been our programme […]

Monday afternoon: Santa Croce

Tuesday afternoon: walked about the city and saw Ponte Vecchio

Wednesday afternoon : Belle Arti

Thursday afternoon: the glorious Medici tombs at Medici Chapel with B. Gozzoli's fresco

Friday morning: Santa Maria Novella

Friday afternoon: Belle Arti; ‘Or San Michele’ (with Orcagana's wonderful tabernacle)

[…] We use Grant Allen's guide-book to Florence⁸¹³ a great deal as well as Baedeker. It is quite a good guide-book as it helps you to find pictures and also to notice points in them, in other words it is an excellent book so long as you don't fall down and slavishly worship his every opinion […]

Letter 116 To his stepmother, 30 September 1910, c/o Signora Jalla, 28 Via Venti Settembre, Florence

[…] We are both as keen as ever about this place but that only makes the subject difficult to describe as enthusiasm looks odd on paper unless one is a Barzini⁸¹⁴ or Marie Corelli.⁸¹⁵ Barzini by the way is the most famous journalist in Europe. He is the correspondent of the Corriere della Sera of Milan and is sent to all the important scenes of action in Europe. His accounts of the splendid flight and tragic death of Chavez were tremendously fine. It made a great stir in Italy – apparently it was not the injuries he sustained from the shock of coming to earth, but heart failure in consequence of his frightfully abrupt rise and fall which killed him.⁸¹⁶

I'd better begin by giving you a diary of what we've been doing here […]

Last Sunday morning – 8.30 church

Rest of morning: Uffizi (1st visit) […]

Monday afternoon: S. Marco (1st visit)

Tuesday morning: Uffizi (2nd visit)

Afternoon: Fiesole […]

Wednesday morning: Uffizi (3rd visit)

Afternoon: Sta Marie del Carmine, Sto Spirito

Thursday morning: 8.30 church (Michaelmas)

Rest of morning: Pitti

Afternoon: Spanish Chapel in Sta Maria Novella

Today: morning: Bargello

afternoon: excursion to the Certosa di Val d'Erna

[…] I find by discussion with our family that Botticelli is considered a very English taste. Apparently pre-Raphaelitism has mastered the Italians as it has undoubtedly the English […] For later painters neither of us care greatly, though I grew very fond of some of the great Tintoretto's we saw in Venice – they are really gorgeously beautiful – and Titian was such a great painter that you have to admit against your will that he was perhaps the very greatest of all, even though you do not love him so well yourself […] This afternoon we made a very charming excursion to the Carthusian monastery of Val d'Erna beautifully situated on a hill in most fascinating country. The inside is interesting but nothing like, of course, as beautiful or so interesting, as the famous Certosa di Pavia near Milan we were seeing together this time last year.⁸¹⁷ The monks do not talk much there – except when showing strangers round, only two and a half hours a week (on Sunday afternoon). St. Bruno would be a good patron for Dialectic Societies! […]

Letter 117 To his father, 6 October 1910, Royal Hotel S. Marco, Ravenna

[…] We had to arise this morning at the unprecedented hour of 5 […] Largely owing to the heroic exertions of kind-hearted Signora Jalla we managed to catch a train for Bologna at 6.30 a.m. – indeed we actually arrived at the station at 5.55 a.m. […] First, about our last week in Florence. We tried to make up in it for whatever deficiencies (I don't think many people would consider there were many) there had been in our first fortnight's sightseeing. On Saturday morning we examined the frescoes of the Annunziata church but were hardly as thrilled by them as we expected and hoped […] From the church we went across to the Hospital of the Innocents just next it – the one with the charming Della Robbia Innocents along the façade […] The afternoon we spent in bicycling out to Prato and back – about 22 miles the whole ride. The ride was curate's-eggy, but it was a lovely day and we enjoyed ourselves very much. Prato is a most picturesque old place, surrounded by walls and with quite a fine old Tuscan-Romanesque cathedral in the middle of the town […] On Friday afternoon we paid a long-meditated visit to two churches to the S. of the Arno – Sto Spirito and Il Carmine. […] Sunday I opened with a visit to the Belle Arti from its opening hour (ten) to a quarter to eleven, when I had to go. It was just a parting visit, my fourth there […] It was hard to tear oneself away, but luckily I had to go in order to be in time for church at 11. I went this time to S. Mark's (so-called, by Baedeker, ‘Anglo-Catholic Church’).⁸¹⁸ One would have expected something truly elaborate, but we had a service like that in Trinity chapel.⁸¹⁹ However, both churches in Florence are quite advanced in tone, which is very rare in continental chaplaincies. After church I found my way back to the Piazza del Duomo where I found Rex in the so-called Opera (or museum) of the cathedral […] To conclude, Monday morning: Badia with Filippino's lovely (I think –iest) picture […] afterwards the church of the Ognissanti (or a second visit to Sta Maria Novella, I forget which). Tuesday […] I paid my second visit to Santa Croce with its scores of lovely frescoes – but Wednesday morning after seeing some beautiful Ghirlandaio frescoes in the church of the Santa Trinità I went on and spent the last two hours of the morning just wandering through the Uffizi and from there through the corridor which connects them into the Pitti. I had already seen the Uffizi quite well having spent three full mornings there, but just wanted a last look. The same is true of the Pitti, though there I think I saw all I wanted my first visit. It is a pity that the 20 or 30 (perhaps 40) perfectly splendid pictures there are mixed up with so much (relative) trash […] A more disturbing element than uncongenial pictures is the passing of fellow-tourists – though I won't say it is altogether unpleasant, as I am hardly rapt enough in oblivion as I sit on a comfortable armchair opposite the Granduca to fail to get enjoyment and profit from contemplation of the German emotions which find expression right down the gamut of Kolossal–wunderhübsch:⁸²⁰ of the anxious American mother afraid that her very small, thin, exhausted and exhausting son has not taken in the fact that the picture (that is, any which the guide chooses to mention) is an original (if he can only really grasp the fact now, he can learn in another ten years time – an original by whom): of the trios Japanese who wander through speedily under the adroit conveyance of an English-speaking guide, eyes fixed on Baedeker, ticking off the pictures as the guide mentions them, and seldom raising their eyes to the pictures, for if they are really there, all is well […]

Letter 118 To his father, 16 October 1910, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

[…] I last wrote from Ravenna (exclusive of a postcard from Lugano which I hope you got). Rex has told you of what we did there and how the long-delayed rain burst upon us that morning with such terrific force as to preclude any further thought of our long-planned invasion of S. Marino. I was very reluctant to give it up as I had always been so keen to visit it as the smallest independent state and the oldest surviving constitutional republic in existence, and besides I had heard from so many people (including all the Jallas) how interesting and quaint it is. However in such pouring rain the twelve-mile bicycle ride from Rimini there was out of question and we had to get back to Bologna where we could get our luggage and some dry clothes […] about Ravenna – I should love you to see it and have great hopes you still will. It is the one town in Italy (apart from Rome itself) where you can find yourself carried back to the 5th century, when Honorius fled to its marshes to escape the invasions of Alaric, and when his sister Galla Placidia and her son Valentinian III held their not very triumphant court there. That is its first period of importance – its second was under Theodoric who built churches there for his Arians: its third from 539 to 750 when it again belonged to the Roman Empire as the seat of the exarch of the ‘Byzantine’ Emperors as we absurdly call them […] However apart from other thoroughly interesting things of which Ravenna is full, the chief sights certainly are: S. Vitale – Sant'Appolinare Nuovo –and Sant'Appolinare in Classe, the church out in the malarial marshland which we visited in torrents of rain […] We had an extremely interesting morning in Bologna seeing its picture-gallery with Raphael's famous Sta Cecilia […] Among the churches two of the most prominent are the huge, unfinished S. Petronis which was intended originally for about the biggest church in the world – S. Domenico with the splendid tomb of S. Dominic in one of the chapels […] There is beautiful sculpture of the tomb (some by Michael Angelo) but apart from that the church is uninteresting. The great sight of Bologna is certainly Santo Stefano or the Seven Churches – which connect together to form a rather straggling unity. Two of them are splendid old brick churches of the 10th century or earlier but others are modern. The oldest one is built in imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and is most impressive.

Rex has described our splendid trip up the two lakes in perfectly brilliant weather […] We were only too sorry that want of time prevented us seeing something of the Lake of Lucerne which we passed in the dark – otherwise our journey back to England was quite successful and we were lucky in getting home just one day before the big French railway strike. We […] got here on Thursday night since when I have had the usual unpleasant cold which one always catches on arriving in England […] I am sending you Garvin's editorial in today's Observer on political prospects. He is the most talked of editor in England at present and the Unionist party generally follow his advice.⁸²¹ I wonder will you agree with his views. I must own I am coming to feel that the Devolution for which Scotch, Irish and Welsh are all clamouring must be granted, before any satisfactory settlement of Imperial Questions is possible. One cannot but see the advantages in thoroughness of such Devolution. Will it threaten the stability of British government? […]

Letter 119 To his father, 27 October 1910, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

We have been up here about a fortnight and are settled down to work quite hard in these digs which are certainly a most comfortable abode. We have all very nice rooms and at present have all our meals together which we like much better than solitary banquets […] Our rooms are 38/- a week each (inclusive of coals, lights, etc.) which is more than I paid in my Banbury Rd. digs which came to 31/- only, but oh! how infinitely superior these digs are – in fact about as nice as one could desire. They are slightly above the average in price, which is from 30/- to 35/-: one can procure digs in Oxford at very various prices according to situation and quality from 8/- a week (I have heard but it sounds rather incredible, I have never come across any under 15/- and those were very small and remote) to 70/- which some of the digs in the High cost. But I very much prefer these – they are, as you see, very much cheaper, much less noisy and extremely comfortable and we are awfully [well] looked after. Meals are at average prices – 1/3 for breakfast, 1/- for lunch, 6/- for tea, 2/- for dinner – but far above the average as regards what we get –really we are fed extraordinarily well. There is only one other man in the house – a Magdalen graduate of four years’ standing whom we haven't yet met – so the landlady, her daughter, the cook, maid and ’tweenie⁸²² (isn't it a huge establishment?) have only us to look after […] I don't know if I ought to have another year at Oxford as it is is high time for me to be earning money instead of continually spending it. I am at present considering the idea of the British Museum […] The only other idea which has struck us would be if we could get into some publishing business (such as Macmillan?) which would be extremely interesting work, but I imagine very hard to get into. In the event of my attempting another year up here after Greats I should of course like to take the History school – either the ordinary school or some special work in connection with it. At present Greats is enough to engross one's energies […] I was interested to read what you said about Temple:⁸²³ he was very much liked as a don up here and I think very sound and interesting. I went to a course of lectures by him on Plato's Theory of Ideas last Hilary Term and liked them quite well. I know his small book too but don't know if it is considered very deep⁸²⁴ […]

PS […] I am doing mostly philosophy lectures this term – A.D. Lindsay (Balliol) on Kant's Critique; Professor (as he is now) J.A. Smith on The Theory of the Judgment, Joachim (Merton) on the Domain of Logic, and informal instruction from Professors Cook Wilson (a most humorous and otherwise unique small man) and J.A. Smith. Also Roman History (early Empire) lectures from Prof. Haverfield, E.G. Hardy (Jesus – the Juvenal man), and Cunningham (Worcester) […]

Letter 120 To his father, 4 November 1910, ‘9 The Tedder, Okker’ [9 King Edward St., Oxford]

[…] We rarely do anything but work now, which has become of absorbing interest. The lectures are unusually good this term and I am doing nearly 18 hours a week of them which is looked on as a very great deal in Oxford […] One of the best lectures of the week is Joachim's – really an extremely good one, though his delivery is so shockingly bad: but the matter is excellent. J.A. was rather dull at first on the History of Logic but he is now really grappling with the subject which has got very interesting. But the most unique person is little Cook Wilson: the two hours of his informal instruction never seem too long, he is so very amusing and has such a wonderfully keen mind. Of the history men both Haverfield and Hardy are good, particularly the latter whose lecture this morning was extremely good. Cunningham is less satisfactory.

I had a quaintish experience. I walked or rather dashed rudely right past the exiled Royal Family of Portugal⁸²⁵ without so much as a nod. There were some people collected round Magdalen when I got there at 12.10 or thereabout, very late after my lecture at Jaggers. However I never guessed for a minute with characteristic lack of νούς⁸²⁶ that there were royalties about, so dashed along the cloisters in haste to get to J.A. in Magdalen Hall, past Manuel and Queen Amelia and the rest of them. The porter of Magdalen, who brought up the rear, first informed me who the people were, but of course I had then no time to look at them. It has been rumoured for some time that Manuel is coming up to the House.⁸²⁷ I wonder will he ever get back to Portugal […]

[PS] For the second year in succession Balliol has got both All Souls fellowships – Radcliffe (a law man) and Shaw-Stewart, a very brilliant scholar (reputed the best in Oxford).

Letter 121 To his stepmother, 11 November 1910, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

[…] Everyone has been having colds lately owing to the beastly weather which we have really earned at last after two perfectly mild winters: Rhys caught a very bad one which is really a sort of bronchitis and has been in bed for three days now – Oxford weather doesn't agree with him at all though he is very keen on clear, intense frosts à la weather Americain. I had meant to go last night to Kubelik and Backham's big concert here⁸²⁸ but unfortunately my cold was too bad. Otherwise I am not going out at all as I am working pretty hard this term mostly on Logic which I find quite stiff […] I am still going in with all the lecture-going I outlined last week and enjoying it very much – especially J.A. Smith, Joachim and Cook Wilson's informal instruction: the last is a pricelessly funny little man – and I'm sure anyone would enjoy and feel stimulated by his two-hours class […] We have got several replies from French people offering pension in families for the Christmas vac. One morning a small Siamese prince named Waidyakom⁸²⁹ paid me a visit as he wished to recommend one of the families – a M. de Felice at Bergerac near Bordeaux – he (the Siamese) is a fresher at Balliol this year – and having been five years at Marlborough spoke beautiful English.

We had a great old political discussion the other night at 145:⁸³⁰ Wib is a good Liberal and we gave her good reasons for her faith – the others mostly Conservatives or Tories. Rex and I could hardly be classed as party-followers, you may be interested to hear: let us be called Moderate Liberals. One cannot follow wholeheartedly a party who could try to introduce single-chamber government or make rash bargains with the Welsh and Irish Nationalists, but undoubtedly they are in the main right and conscientious men, while it seems to me impossible to remain attached to a party like the present Unionist one with no real policy except a wild scheme of Tariff Reform […]

Letter 122 To his father, 18 November 1910, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

[…] This term I have only been out twice in the evenings – once early in the term to a concert of Pachmann's⁸³¹ and the night before last a dinner-party of the Vincent Smiths which I could not get out of. I enjoyed myself very much though I did not meet anyone very exciting there. Mrs Smith is rather bromide, and the daughter not very bright. Vincent Smith himself is quite interesting to talk to on politics, though of course like all Anglo-Indians he is a very violent Tory […] They both want to be remembered to you […] Nothing ever happens here except letters and work and I see very few men this year being really too busy […] The Roman History is extremely interesting – I'm very glad I took the third period (43 B.C.–117 A.D.) instead of the second (133 B.C.–60 A.D.) as it gives one an opportunity of really getting to know something about the organisation of the Empire by Augustus and his successors. His policy of client-princes as for instance in the small Alpine states or in Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Commagene etc. bears really a very close resemblance to the Bhutan, Nepal and Sikkim of modern India – while I think you can almost find a parallel between ancient Armenia and modern Tibet: China is our Parthia trying to absorb the kindred subject-kingdom, while the Tibetans, like the Armenians, though feeling themselves by nature more akin to China (Parthia) have often to fall back on the protection or submit to the invasions of the Western power. Unfortunately, however, the parallel is really very slight as England can attack China on the East as Rome never could Parthia. Perhaps one might rather see the parallel in Afghanistan and Russia.

Egypt, with its independent organisation under the Roman Emperor, is certainly the ancient parallel of India. By the way, isn't it splendid news that the King and Queen are going out to India to be crowned in Delhi?⁸³² Apart from the historical interest of it, it is certainly a most far-sighted thing to do – and I'm sure you like many other people including me have been wishing for it for some time. I wonder, will he visit other parts of the Empire as well?

I suppose you are all interested in the South Africans’ tour at present. I doubt however if they will beat Australia, but they ought to [be] very interesting to watch⁸³³ […]

Letter 123 To his stepmother, 25 November 1910, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

[…] The weather has been simply disgusting, freezing cold and foggy, far the worst and coldest I have yet experienced in England. We were to have had Night Operations – we military people – on Shotover Hill last Wednesday night,⁸³⁴ but the weather was so impossible that they had to be cancelled. It isn't that the thermometer has gone very low, though one day it went down to 18 degrees, but it has been so damp, and foggy and sunless that everyone has colds.

Last Friday night we gave a great banquet as Bryce attained his twenty-first year – our contemporaries here are all about three years younger than we are. We didn't hint to him that it was to be anything beyond an ordinary scrappy dinner and so he of course turned up in a scraggy old Norfolk while we all appeared in full evening dress. The dinner as you see from the enclosed menus was quite a nice one,⁸³⁵ and with dessert and wines cost each of us about 6/- but on the whole it was [the] cheapest and most satisfactory birthday present we could give him. It was only about 4.30 that we decided to have a menu and toasts, and so in two hours, menu, toasts, and speeches had to be made up, which was hard work […] The first toast was REX – we all rose to drain our glasses except Rex who (of course, by arrangement) remained seated looking very pleased till an indignant stare from Rhys and me brought him to his feet and his senses.⁸³⁶ I then proposed the toast of ‘The Universe, New College and Portugal’ in an Italian speech which I enclose, endeavouring to weave the three parts of my subject into a harmonious whole. Rex replied in a very admirable Portuguese speech which he got off very well – its eloquence and in consequence far surpassing mine. Rhys then proposed Roland's health in a very apt little oration in Spanish, to which the guest of the evening, who had – naturally – not understood our rhetoric, interspersed with much applause, replied quite creditably in English proposing our health. We had really very good fun, and I think he enjoyed it. The weekend he spent up in town and came back loaded with presents. His uncle – the ambassador man⁸³⁷ – gave him £1,000 to be used as a fund for travelling expenses. Nice, wasn't it?

The only other excitement I have been present at was the debate at the Arnold last night for which owing to the importance of the subject there was quite a record attendance of some 40. The speaking was first-rate and much better worth listening to than the Union debates. Perhaps you wouldn't think that very much could be said on the subject, but most of the speeches lasted 20 minutes and were packed full of ideas. The four who spoke are all very brilliant men, Keen and Finlay of my year, Lobel the year ahead, and Barrington-Ward the year behind. I think you will realise that it would be quite absurd to try and speak at one's college debating society as you urged in a letter a little while ago, as you cannot speak on flimsy subjects like these unless extraordinarily brilliant […] The election here will probably take place on the 3rd December before we go down and it ought to be great fun. Rex and I are both quite good Liberals now, though not Home Rulers – yet one cannot but feel that when practically all Ireland but one small party desires Home Rule it is impossible to deny it to them long with any justice. The enclosed paper will show you that at the last election the numbers of Nationalist and Unionist voters were practically equal in Ulster, with if anything a slight Nationalist majority. I admit that the Nationalist leaders are an unreliable set and Ireland is at present under the thumb of the priests, but the grant of Home Rule would be the very way of freeing Ireland from the grip of the Church – as the French and Portuguese and Italians have freed themselves. Why is it that English Roman Catholics are all anti-Home Rulers? But we are not yet Home Rulers, Rex and I, for it is a terribly serious question, yet that something must be done is beyond question. I was disgusted with the attitude of Garvin, the Editor of the Observer, an article of whose I sent you – who after advising Imperial Home Rule for two successive weeks, on finding no enthusiasm for the idea at once turned round and simply bellowed in the coarsest way against Redmond as the American dollar-primer⁸³⁸ (N.B. a great part of Redmond's money was given him by Laurier⁸³⁹ and prominent Canadian statesmen!) […]

Letter 124 To his stepmother. 15 December 1910, chez M. le Pasteur Braud, Les Lilas, Cité Gely, Montpellier

[…] We arrived here about 10.30 last Friday night and after much trouble found the house and roused the Pasteur and his family to let us in. Since then we have been working steadily and are extremely comfortable and happy here as the weather has been delightful – plenty of sun – and we haven't needed a fire yet (what a contrast to Oxford!). Montpellier is really one of the nicest provincial towns in France as it has a very good picture-gallery and a quite famous old university, and the town is splendidly situated in very charming country and within seven miles of the sea. Palms and olive-trees grow in the open-air in abundance – just like the Riviera. We are in reach of ever so many interesting places too – Nîmes, Arles, Aigues Mortes, Carcassonne, Maguelone and lots of other old Phoenician, Greek, Roman or medieval towns, so that there is lots to do in our spare time – which isn't often! So far we have contented ourselves with going down to the sea at a place called Palavas, a sort of ‘Lido’ on a narrow sandy strip between the Mediterranean and salt-water lagoons,⁸⁴⁰ but a rather dull place in the winter, though in the summer it has big crowds who come for the bathing and the casino […] M. Braud is very active, though 71, and though he has retired. His wife is very kind to us and the daughter quite bright and attractive. They talk with an excellent accent as they really come from Northern France, though the accent of educated Southern Frenchmen isn't I think [as] bad as it is made out to be. The country people in intercourse with one another do not speak French at all but Languedocian a more or less of a patois or dialect connecting the Provençal and Catalan languages.⁸⁴¹ Languedocian extends West from the mouth of the Rhone (on the East side Provençal is spoken) to Narbonne where Catalan begins, but it is not a literary language like the other two though a paper is published in it. It is unintelligible to a Frenchman and to my ears almost more Italian in sound though with sudden lapses into Frenchness. The university here is very good and has very good courses for foreigners which I should have very much liked to attend but Greats leaves but little time for such diversions. There are simply crowds of foreign students among the 1,600 there, including 25 Egyptians and one hears Russian and other weird tongues in the streets. One of the most interesting things we have done was last Sunday afternoon when the Pasteur and Rex and I went to a big aviation display by a man named Gilbert.⁸⁴² It was perfectly thrilling and a most interesting thing to see. He had a very good day for it and had no trouble at all in managing his machine, flying the second time for nine minutes and reaching 525 metres (about 1,720 feet) according to the papers, though it didn't look nearly that height. It is a most beautiful thing to watch and I should think quite the most exciting sensation in the world to fly about in an aeroplane of your own. The French quite hold the first place in aviation still, though the Americans press them close and the English are quite good now. It is funny that we have never seen them before as there are aviation meetings going on everywhere now […]

Letter 125 To his father, 21 December 1910, chez M. le Pasteur Braud, Les Lilas, Cité Gely, Montpellier

[…] We are most exceedingly happy here and as well off as can be. The weather has been simply a revelation. After Oxford, with its six weeks of continuous gloom and frost and fog, to find a place where the sun shines almost fiercely every day is quite delightful. The walks round, whether along the beach between a gloriously blue Mediterranean and wide stretches of sea-lakes or étangs, which stretch in a chain parallel to the whole beach from Aigues Mortes on the East to Narbonne on the West, or inland through woods of olive trees and pines (both unperturbed by winter changes) past bits of old ruined castles and quaint old villages perched on strongly fortified hills – it really is most charming to take such walks, especially under cloudless skies […] We visited the picture-gallery one day which is not at all bad for a provincial town […] On Sunday afternoon, after seeing another display by the aviator Gilbert, we went to a rather tedious party […] Monday we devoted to an excursion to Nîmes, the first we've made. It was really extraordinarily interesting. The arena is hardly as good as Verona but the Maison Carrée is just beautiful and shows the Corinthian style at its very best⁸⁴³ […]

Dec. 22nd

[…] It's a pity Rex is not writing as he could have told you graphically how we enjoyed our three hours party (!) last Sunday afternoon – crowds of French people all sitting round a room playing consequences and clumps or forfeits.⁸⁴⁴ It was amusing but rather tedious […]

Letter 126 To his stepmother, 30 December 1910, chez M. le Pasteur Braud, Les Lilas, Cité Gely, Montpellier

[…] On Saturday night Mlle Braud and the servant and we three went to the Midnight Mass at the church of Notre-Dame quite near. The church was absolutely crammed and not an inch of standing room to be found, but however we got there at 11 and so found seats. I was disappointed in the service which might have been very impressive – the music was absolutely trivial and the priest's voice poor and weak. We came away at 1 o'clock as of course there was a communion which lasted a very long time.

Christmas Day passed off very well though it was a very poor substitute for one at home. They gave splendid meals, however, and were very nice indeed to us, so that we had a very good time. Dinner in the evening was a brilliant affair with turkey and very nice blazing plum-pudding which was a great success. They even gave us stockings in the morning with little knick-knacks inside such as small woolly dogs and other such suitable offerings […]

Letter 127 To his father, 6 January 1911, chez M. le Pasteur Braud, Les Lilas, Cité Gely, Montpellier

[…] Work has been going excellently here although I haven't been averaging more than five hours a day. How different Oxford work is to Melbourne. In Melbourne we used often in Trinity to sit in front of Latin or Greek books 10–14 hours during Third Term or the Stew Vac.,⁸⁴⁵ just trying to learn off by heart the English translation of the text! which of course we promptly forgot after the exam. In Oxford no one ever works more than eight hours – ten hours would be thought stupendous! – and six hours a day average is I think quite good […] As to the papers you sent me I thought they were very good [… A] small criticism I should make is do not ask them to do all the questions – at Oxford one is never asked to do more than four or four and a half questions in three hours, and (2) a very wide margin of choice is allowed – to force people to do eight questions – some badly, some well or rather all indifferently to badly from lack of time – is not, it seems to me, nearly so satisfactory as letting them do the ones they like well […] I see the Commonwealth has at last taken over the Northern Territory and also the Federal Capital site: are they going to keep the full name Yasscanberra⁸⁴⁶ – quell'horreur! I'm glad to see the South Africans having been doing so well in the second test match⁸⁴⁷ – their tour opened so wretchedly, and they seem to be a very sporting side – I'm sorry to say more popular in England than the Australians. I think our politics more or less coincide – two-cameral, Liberal Unionist Free-Trader, and all that – yet I think I should vote for the Liberals if I had a vote here. Their reform of the Upper House is (party-feeling apart) really essentially moderate and reasonable and leaves the Upper House full use of its suspensory two-years veto […]

Letter 128 To his father, 20 January 1911, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

[…] Rex has not told you very much about our doing at Hyères⁸⁴⁸ […] On Sunday morning we went to the very pretty little English Church and in the afternoon we took a walk with M. Braud and a M. Cabrel who kept the pension. It was really a very nice pension and we were very comfortable there. We left early on Monday morning and got to Avignon about 2 o'clock. In spite of the most biting wind (really shockingly cold) we explored the town and the Palace of the Popes which is very imposing and despotic-looking outside but inside is being spoilt or ‘improved’ by restorations – as it was occupied as barracks from 1791 (when the French Revolution took Avignon from the Papacy) till 1898. There are however two sweet little chapels […] Rex has told you about our meeting Rhys at Avignon (not of course by accident) and our journey with him to Orange a few miles off. The Roman theatre there is just wonderful with a magnificent situation on the side of a hill. It is in excellent preservation and is used as a National Theatre nowadays where the Comédie Française give performances every summer. The most remarkable thing to me was the huge building at the back of the stage. It looked so unnecessarily big for actors’ dressing rooms – I will send you a postcard of it. The triumphal arch just outside the town is very fine too […] From Orange Rex and I went north, leaving Carpenter, who was going back by another way. We had a couple of hours at Lyon giving us time for dinner and then travelled all night but not uncomfortably to Paris where we arrived at 6.50 a.m. After breakfast […] we caught the train to Amiens and had about three hours there. The cathedral (which I think you know?) is extraordinarily beautiful and its architecture most interesting. The weather was perfectly beastly – oh! so cold. We had a smooth crossing by Calais and slept at the flat […] This morning I had a collekker which I did all right […]

Letter 129 To his father, 10 March 1911, Oxford Union

As I have the first of my exams this afternoon perhaps you will forgive me for writing only a short note this time. Next week I hope to write a long letter and also send you the papers as the exam will be over by then. It is for the Jenkyns Exhibition (a Balliol affair) which has been in existence for 40 years at least and is worth £100 a year for four years […] Of course I have no earthly chance of getting the thing nor will I ever be in the first half-dozen – in fact I am afraid I shall do very badly as my philosophy is still in a very rough state and my scholarship as you know very feeble. Still it will be very interesting doing the papers as they are very good practice for Greats. We begin with an English Essay this afternoon from 3.45–6.45 and go on tomorrow afternoon and after that all day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The subjects are (1) English Essay (2) Philosophy (3) History (4) Greek (Philosophical) Sight Translation (e.g. Porphyry: and Aristotle's obscurer works) (5) Greek and Latin Sight Translation (6) Greek Prose (7) Latin Prose (8) Greek and Latin Verse. A man named Toynbee (son, I think, of Paget Toynbee)⁸⁴⁹ who is a brilliant scholar and historian and a very sound philosopher – a Winchester man – is likely to get it, though a Scotchman named Paton may run him close.⁸⁵⁰ Both are very nice men, Paton especially. Last year it was won by R.A. Knox (son of the Bishop of Manchester) who is now a Fellow of Trinity – Toynbee (though only in his third year!) was awarded a special prize of £50 – and there were specially mentioned Brandt (now a Fellow of B.N.C.) Shaw Stewart (now a Fellow of All Souls’) and Gibson (now a Fellow of Balliol) but this year the standard is not so high still it is far too high for me naturally […] Last Sunday night Temple preached in the Balliol chapel – quite a good sermon. I am reading his new book on ‘Nature of Personality’ – based on a course of lectures he gave up here a year ago.⁸⁵¹

On Wednesday night Rhys and I went to the fourth Classical Concert of the university year in the Town Hall. They are given by the Bach choir and orchestra of Oxford men and ladies (including a few professionals) under the conductorship of Dr H.P. Allen, Organist of New College,⁸⁵² and generally awfully good though this was the first I had ever attended. Only two things were done – Vaughan Williams’⁸⁵³ new Sea Symphony conducted by himself and the Choral Symphony.⁸⁵⁴ The first was very long and rather good in parts. The Choral Symphony is of course perfectly glorious though I don't believe it was extraordinarily well done.

On Thursday afternoon I bicycled out to Boar's Hill to see Miss Stevens. She looked much better – she is really wonderful, fancy her having designed and superintended without any architect's help a house for herself and a cottage as well. It is really a very nice little house,⁸⁵⁵ perched on one of the loveliest sights in Boar's Hill which is becoming quite a famous ‘mountain’ resort for Oxford people who are run out – you get a lovely view of Oxford from there […] Rex has told you about the Union debate.⁸⁵⁶ The speaking was very good, even for the Union, but I was very disgusted with Birrell as a man.⁸⁵⁷ He is of the tiresome bourgeois Nonconformist type which I don't find at all attractive, but his arguments and facts were good – especially the facts, for it is impossible to find new arguments on either side – and he was especially good on the Ulster question, and also on the economic issue at stake. The motion was carried Rex and I assisting – I'm afraid you would have gone out by the Uncle Boyce door though. But the more I see and hear of Home Rule and anti-Home Rule here the more I feel drawn to a faith in the former and a disbelief in the bogeys raised by the Conservative Party (did they not raise similar scares in 1869?).⁸⁵⁸ Practically every historian up here – Fisher, Davis, A.L. Smith etc. – is a Home Ruler – and all the rising generation […]

Letter 130 To his father, 28 March 1911, chez M. Louis Paulian, Rue de la Bordère 9, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris

[…] I am sorry you feel quite as strongly as you do about smoking, because I do not quite feel I can fully agree with your complete condemnation of it. But first of all please do not think that Rex and I have become regular and systematic smokers or have ever in the least intended to do so – or that there was ever any likelihood of it for I certainly do not feel in it any of the great attraction which alone would make one a slave to it. For my first year at Oxford I didn't smoke at all and I am sure that I missed a great deal by not doing so – not in the actual thing itself which amounts to practically nothing in my eyes for it is a very minor enjoyment and one which I dispense with altogether in the vacs for weeks (and in the Long for months) together, but in the opportunities for really interesting conversation which I can honestly say it affords. If you offer your visitor a cigarette and fail to take one yourself a sort of stiffness broods over the conversation and you can see that he feels that he is rather staying beyond his time, or (if you explain that you never smoke) that you will not somehow get into an interesting conversation together. I really do feel this to be a genuine and very important advantage of cigarette-smoking. I do not feel quite prepared to abandon this altogether but please do not think that I wish in any way to disregard your wishes or fail to appreciate the dangers you allude to. All I mean is that cigarettes play an altogether minor part in my (and Rex's) life and that I feel entirely and absolutely able to dispense with them if it were completely necessary, but I do feel that perhaps you do not entirely appreciate the advantages which they do really offer towards helping conversation and discussion. Rex and I should both be very sorry if you continue to ask us to entirely give up smoking cigarettes. It is a thing which if I promised to do I feel sure that I [would] regret extremely, and such a promise to total abstinence would (as in the case of wine – incidentally, of course we never keep wine in our rooms: the only thing we ever offer people who come to lunch is Bass's Ale and even that we practically never have, say thrice a term if that – and we never keep it in our rooms) – such a promise would be extremely irksome and I feel I do want to reassure you on the point as I quite realise that being so far away from us you do feel anxious to help us and I should be very ungrateful and undutiful indeed if I did not take the suggestions and advice you offer. I would like then to promise, if you would prefer a promise to an assurance, that I will not smoke more than a dozen cigarettes in any single week. I think you will feel and agree with me that it shows how little attraction I feel in smoking when I say that this promise will cause me no trouble at all except in merely remembering and I do not think that will be at all difficult. At present in the vacs (more than half the year) I do not smoke at all, and during term-time (eight and a half weeks) I certainly never smoke more than 20 in a week and I doubt if I have ever smoked quite as many as that in a week, while some weeks I may happen to smoke not more than two or three or sometimes none. When you mention people suffering from cigarette-smoking, that is quite true, but these are people who smoke 20–30 a day and often 40–50 – and certainly they are terribly injured by it. A doctor in Oxford (the best in Oxford) told me that even half a dozen cigarettes a day could not do me any harm, and of course I have never averaged half that and practically never (once only that I can remember) smoked as many as that in one day. Still I should like to give you a proof of the entire absence of control cigarettes have over me by promising, if you would like me to do so, never to smoke more than twelve in one week (of course this is a mere maximum and does not imply that I will necessarily every week at all for in the vacs with Rex I do not smoke). I hope I have not written too much about this but I felt sure you would really like me to tell you everything I did and felt about it and I hope I shall be meeting your wishes.

The other subject you dealt with in your letter is something very different – politics. I must say that I agree with (I suppose, inherit) your feelings about men and affairs to a very large extent. I feel just as you do about the grandeur of the Empire and the folly and blindness and wickedness of those who put their own little local comfort before the fulfilment of Britain's Imperial mission. For certain views of Australian Trades-Unionists and ignorant slanderers of Britain's Imperial administration I have the greatest contempt. Moreover I go beyond you, I am sure, in feeling personal repugnance (but I am certain, unreasonable repugnance) to the British (whether English or Welsh) Nonconformist, uncultured, bourgeois Lloyd George–Birrell type – Lloyd George is as repugnant to me in politics as the Salvation Army are to me in religion. Yet I feel sure that he and his party are right and that the electors of England are right in holding that they are right. I am deeply (I am talking absolutely sincerely and earnestly and truthfully not argumentatively) conservative and ‘aristocratic’ (if I may use the word in its etymological meaning) in sympathy and by prejudice – I feel a strong prejudice in favour of the monarchy, of order and traditions in Church and state, of a strong and Conservative government, and even more whether by inheritance or environment (for of course all my relations on both father's and mother's side feel as you do about politics) I cannot help feeling a glow of triumph when I hear that the Conservatives – our class, our faith, our old cause – have won another seat from the supporters of the new levelling, anti-traditional principle. And yet I do earnestly, if ignorantly, feel that the Liberals are right and the Conservatives wrong – that privilege except of merit must go and that education, the right to govern and the right to think must be given to the inhabitants of Great Britain, as it has been to those of Australia, France, Scandinavia, Canada and the United States, to quote only a few examples. From the Lords, who have failed ignominiously as an impartial, and revising chamber, who allow Balfour's innovations to pass into law because they are Balfour's, and reject Asquith's because they are Asquith's, must be taken for ever the right of blocking the people's will. The Veto Bill, which will and must pass introduces ‘no single-chamber government such as Greece and Costa Rica alone possess’ but a parliament of two chambers where the upper can only definitely suspend, not indefinitely refuse the resolves of the Commons.⁸⁵⁹ Far as England is at present from complete emancipation from the tyranny of privilege and birth and wealth, and the ignorance and insularity of voters in town and still more in country, she is moving in that direction – and the new social and educational reforms which the Liberal Party are pledged to will hop painfully in that direction. Behind the Liberals is the thought and conscience of England, behind the Conservatives is all the power which a privileged and I am afraid selfish class can wield (and very effective it is through its wealth, its property, its plural voting,⁸⁶⁰ and its control of tenants and small farmers’ votes).

Abroad the Liberal policy – the policy of Edward VII and Sir Edward Grey – seems to me excellent: South Africa has been made a free, self-governing and united nation, France has become England's warm friend (this is really a fact, not a diplomatic pretence), Italy has drawn nearer to England in sympathy and co-operation, Russia has been satisfied and won to friendship, Japan has been treated with the same prudence and diplomacy which the Conservatives (it is true) were first wise enough to adopt, the small European states, Scandinavia, Holland, Spain, Greece, look to England for help and support – and best of all thanks very largely to Sir E. Grey and Mr James Bryce the most cordial relations have been entered into with the United States. Even Germany, which Mr Balfour did not scruple to say was on the eve of a treacherous attack on us, has been satisfied by the assurances of the Government: our moral strength has been maintained undiminished, and our army organised at last on a clear and satisfactory basis, while the Government has shown its dignity by refraining from impudent and insulting references to foreign powers and has preferred deeds to words. At last India is to be treated with sympathy, national aspirations are to be satisfied and they are to be taught how to begin to learn self-government, but there is to be no empty-headed gift of freedom to a peninsula to which for the next century this could only mean anarchy.

And here is Ireland – here more than anywhere I feel that I am no longer able to agree with my natural feelings of conservatism and descent. I agree that Professor Dicey's two books⁸⁶¹ contain much sound academic theory about the evils of a federal as compared with a unitary system and much wise (and I think quite justified) insistence on the fallacy of drawing analogies from colonial self-government. If Ireland was contented and happy and prosperous under the government of Westminster, who could fail to be glad of it? But Ireland is not, and Ireland never will be – and in that fact, it seems to me, lies an argument which all other arguments, however excellent (and some of them are excellent), fail to get over. It is little to the point to complain that Henry II had no right to attack Ireland, that the Statute of Kilkenny was unjust,⁸⁶² that Poynings’ Law was iniquitous,⁸⁶³ that Elizabeth depopulated Ireland, that James I (like Mary Tudor before him) populated it with intruders, that Cromwell (justifiably) wasted it, that William III broke his word to it,⁸⁶⁴ that George I's second Parliament contemplated its enslavement,⁸⁶⁵ and that George III gave it nominal freedom for 20 years⁸⁶⁶ only to end by making it a nominal (unwilling) partner in the United Kingdom. There are times when these facts make me think that English history is not so glorious as most Englishmen seem to think, and I can understand, though as English (or Anglo-Anglo-Irish) I do not share the bitterness of the Irish in America and Australia. But it is not past history but present facts which are of importance to the modern fair-minded observer. Ireland is today a moral, intellectual, physical and economic wreck – by which I mean that the Irish people as a people has no notion of responsibility for their political, intellectual and economic existence. Their politics consist of anti-Britainism, neither more nor less – they are interested in nothing but trying to wrench themselves free from a dominant partner they do not like, who is high-principled and conscientious as well as sensible but unfortunately of wholly incompatible opinions, interests, and above all sympathies: failing to wrench themselves free, they brawl and punch and scratch, and if they get their head free they only use the occasion to scream louder and bite more fiercely, while Britain (or England) can only see two remedies to give Ireland a chance to recover her self-respect by setting her on her feet and giving her a small allowance to teach her how to behave like a nation not an aggregation of savages – or to press the bond tighter, to suffocate or starve her prisoner while she at the same time is injured herself, has her attention distracted ceaselessly from managing her own and her other children's affairs and incurs to the bargain the hatred of Ireland's exiled children and a bad reputation among the nations of the world.

Land Laws, Tenant Purchase, R.C. Universities, Old Age Pensions, Congested Districts Reform,⁸⁶⁷ and all the benevolent (I use the word seriously and non-sarcastically, honestly) measures by which England tries to satisfy or help Ireland are useless. Ireland wants one thing – the right to call her soul her own, the right to keep her purse with an English penny inside it in the way she pleases, the right to take her place in the Empire as a gallant and worthy partner, not a miserable tho pampered captive. Now what are the objections to Home Rule? As far as I can see they are two, religion and finance – religion might almost be written Ulster, for the two problems are practically the same. There are some 200,000 Ulstermen who declare that they are prepared to carry out certain threats they uttered in 1869 of ‘dying in the last ditch’ (I am not sneering at Ulstermen, I respect them though I dislike them) if ever a Home-Rule, Papist Parliament at Dublin tries to order them about. That is to say that half the population of Ulster (the other half is Nationalist or Liberal) declares that it has a right because it came in in 1608 at a golden moment and took confiscated land which the English had seized from the original owners,⁸⁶⁸ and has since that time been upright, thrifty and canny (tho essentially unIrish and unfeeling) in its life and traditions – that it has a right to say that the English of 1911 must respect the guarantee which they conceive they have inherited for three centuries that Ireland shall be governed as they and not the Irish wish. ‘But’, the Irishman will say, ‘if you are fond of Ireland why don't you join with us in a common movement to secure the right of governing ourselves instead of hanging on the skirts of our big, benevolent but stupid neighbour across the water?’ ‘No’ replies Ulster, ‘I am Protestant first, and a Scoto-Irishman second. I don't trust you. You talk of friendship, but you mean mischief. You want to destroy my religion, sack my warehouses and drive me and my industries out of the country. No! I'll die in the last ditch’, and these Ulstermen give their neighbour credit for so little sense that to wreck a century-old grudge he will drive out all the wealth of Belfast and all the industries which make Co. Down and with it Ireland rich, and, more than that, call down on his own accursed and stupid head the vengeance of English and Scottish arms and at least the end of grants from the English treasury. Wouldn't the Irishman be happy without Ulster wealth and English money-grants – it seems to me (a wag) that the Irishman is not such a fool, and I'll swear he's not such a knave as that. As for dying in the last ditch because Ireland is to be given freedom, it was the Daily Mail (not my side but yours, and yours exaggerated) who printed out the other day that Ulstermen who did this ‘would be none the less rebels because they called themselves loyalists’, and it is as rebels and ungrateful ones that the British Government should treat them.⁸⁶⁹

In spite of what you say about the Roman Church being astute enough not to support Home Rule if it were going to hurt her, I cannot help feeling certain that the beginning of Irish self-government would be the beginning of the end of Rome Rule – vide France, Italy, Portugal. Priests can arouse or shout with insurgents, they cannot permanently rule a free and self-governing nation. Moreover under Mr. Gladstone's 1893 Bill⁸⁷⁰ the Irish parliament was to have no power to meddle with certain subjects – defence, religion, financial relations with Great Britain. Ireland is not to be given practical independence like Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, with no connection with the Empire except that of sentiment – she is to become a free, self-governing nation, but bound to England either (1) (which I should on the whole prefer) by a solemn international treaty or an imperative financial need, or (2) by participation as a unit in an Imperial Parliament at Westminster. (2) might but would not necessarily involve Scotch and Welsh Home Rule but there is no real demand for them. (1) brings me to the great crux – finance. Ireland is admittedly too poor, too impoverished to pay her own way at first: she would need an allowance from England and is the English taxpayer to be asked to pay over his hard-earned cash to another uneconomical and as he considers ne'er-do-well nation without any guarantee for its proper expenditure and repayment? A very proper grievance, and I entirely and honestly sympathise with the English tax-payer in this, and to me this is the great difficulty of the whole scheme. But it is not to be an unsurmountable difficulty because I hope that the Englishman is not the man to let expediency outweigh justice, and secondly I trust that he will find it sincerely to his advantage to make the financial agreement Ireland desires, and therefore I feel strongly that it is for Ireland to ask this money, not as a compensation (what compensation can there be) for the miseries which our fathers have inflicted on her – for how are we in 1911 to be asked to pay for what our fathers did in 1611 and 1711 and 1811 – but as a loan – a loan to which it will be to England's advantage to make (1) because Irishmen will be restricted (a) by the limited nature of the annual grant which will not be indefinitely supplementable as at present and (b) by their newly-acquired feeling of responsibility and control of their own finances to a limited expense, and it will cost the Englishman less than at present in that he will pay as a fixed and satisfactorily definite amount (to be decided by a commission or international agreement). (The amount to be repaid in a definite or indefinite number of years.) (2) because Ireland will have every chance of becoming prosperous and every hope of being happy, and Ireland's prosperity will be Britain's: while Ireland's financial need (if not her gratitude) will hold her to Britain. (3) because England will at last be allowed time to manage her own affairs. (4) because the last and only great blot on England's just Empire will be removed. For these reasons I do not think that the financial difficulty is an unsurmountable one.

I do sincerely, if ignorantly, think that Home Rule is the right measure for Ireland to receive, for England (oh! that it could be a national non-party gift, sincere though the Liberals are, I firmly believe) to give, for the Empire to applaud and for America to rejoice in. Instead of Ireland being the open sore in the Empire, she can become a happy and self-respecting partner – as for separation, apart from the impossibility of it, owing to Ireland's financial and commercial dependence on Britain, it would be as impossible then as now for the fleet and army would still be under the Imperial not the Irish Government.

I hope I haven't bored you with my long-winded arguments. At least they are put as I feel them – they are partly drawn from books and speeches, partly (and I hope in great part) arguments which I have framed to myself, though many others will of course have done so before me. It is one of the biggest questions I know and one of absorbing interest to any Englishman. I have written down these arguments honestly though I admit with very imperfect knowledge but I hope not with too imperfect sympathies for the various sides. Most of all I feel the force and strength of your position and the traditions of loyalty to Britain and Protestantism which the Ulstermen and Anglo-Irish have inherited and worthily maintained. I should wish to rank myself on the Union side by descent and tradition, but I feel more the justice of the other as well as trust its practical utility. I will not quote authorities for as you show there are great authorities on both sides whether Mahon,⁸⁷¹ Lecky⁸⁷² and Dicey or Gladstone,⁸⁷³ James Bryce, Lord Morley⁸⁷⁴ and Theodore Roosevelt. As far as I can see now Home Rule appears to me what is just and what is statesmanlike, but the question is one which I will look into with all my spare energies and all my spare time – and with my present knowledge of England, Ireland and the world I have little right to speak at all […] I've been to the theatre twice here – once with Rex, Primrose and Marian⁸⁷⁵ at the ‘Comédie Française’ (or ‘the Français’ as one calls it) where we saw what I thought a very dull and commonplace play ‘Des Marionettes’ by Pierre Wolff,⁸⁷⁶ admirably acted and easy to follow. I also saw Debussy's opera ‘Pelléas et Mélisande,’ based on Maeterlinck's wonderful play of the same name which you and Madre must read.⁸⁷⁷ The opera is perfectly splendid: most lovely, peculiar music of a world remote from ours in all but truth (what a stupid description: this last sentence is Rex) […] I began at 10.30 p.m. and wrote till 1.50 a.m. […]

Letter 131 To his stepmother, 14 April 1911, chez M. Louis Paulian, Rue de la Bordère 9, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris

[…] Saturday evening we all four went to the Opera – Gounod's Roméo et Juliette […] Kousnyetsoff, the famous Russian,⁸⁷⁸ was Juliette and made a perfectly wonderful one – that is to say she sang gloriously and acted dramatically too, though she wasn't of course a bit like Juliet. Roméo also sang well, under the shape of the mature but deservedly famous Signor Muratore.⁸⁷⁹ The orchestra and choruses were perfect to our ears. The opera here one cannot help feeling is the first in the world though perhaps their special forte is to excel in such works as Gounod's and those of his Italian masters and French disciples and rivals. They claim themselves, however, to give Wagner better than anywhere else in the world and say that the so-called supremacy of Munich and Bayreuth in Wagnerian opera is simply a fantastic illusion. I doubt if they are right but they may be. With the £1 which Aunt Ida had given us each we bought 22 fr. opera hats! which are very necessary things to wear when walking in the foyer between the acts – which is tremendous fun […] On Wednesday afternoon Rex and I paid our first and last visit to Père Lachaise. It is a very dreary place and I think strange cemeteries are always so, though one feels some sentiment at graves like Chopin's or Musset's.⁸⁸⁰ The Abelard–Héloise monument is rather out of date in such a modern cemetery, isn't it?⁸⁸¹

Yesterday we met Primrose and Marian at an exhibition of 18th-century British pastellists. There were some exceedingly pretty things there and as I was completely ignorant of pastels before (I didn't even know what they were) it was quite a revelation to me […] The artist best represented there was John Russell (?) of whom I am ashamed to say I had never heard before.⁸⁸²

Last Sunday morning we went to Mattins at S. George's (Rue Auguste Vacquerie) which is the prettiest and nicest English church here. One of the Cowley Fathers (Father Conran)⁸⁸³ who is here for Holy Week preached a very simple sermon but one we both liked. I am going to the Three Hours’ Service this morning, which he is taking there […]

Letter 132 To his father, 21 April 1911, chez M. Louis Paulian, Rue de la Bordère 9, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris

[…] I wrote last on Good Friday morning. After finishing the letter I went off to S. George's to the Three Hours’ Service. Father Conran […] who had been giving address throughout Holy Week, took the service and was extremely good […] on the Saturday […] we went for a walk in the Bois and went into the Jardin d'Acclimatation which is half the Zoo of Paris, the lion and tigers etc being kept in the Jardin des Plantes at the other end of the city.⁸⁸⁴

On Easter Day Rex and I went to S. George's at 7.30. There was naturally a very big attendance and the church in fact is nearly always crowded – there is a very considerable permanent English population in this part of Paris and the church is not like most of the continental chaplaincies in an uncertain and fluctuating condition. I also went to Mattins at 10.30 when it was naturally filled to overflowing.

In the afternoon we met Primrose and Marian and took them to see some very good tennis on the covered courts of the Tennis Club de Paris. There were several English playing as well as all the French champions. Wilding beat Gobert,⁸⁸⁵ one of the best of the young French champions after losing the first set. But in the final on the following day he went down to a very young (16) slightly-built Frenchmen named Laurentz⁸⁸⁶ after a most exhausting five-set match – the first time he has been beaten in France (or England) for a couple of years.

On Monday afternoon we all four went out to Juvisy⁸⁸⁷ where there is one of the best aerodromes in the world, and saw some perfectly wonderful flying. At one time there were four aeroplanes up at once all going at tremendous pace at different heights. It was a most wonderful sight. I had not seen a biplane before and was very much struck with them. They look (at least) infinitely more secure and less likely to capsize than the monoplanes. It was so fascinating watching them that we stayed on and on till very late.

On Tuesday afternoon Rex and I went to the Salon.⁸⁸⁸ It is huge and such a mix-up. But there were some perfectly lovely things there – some wonderful landscapes made up of most daring colours but yet with a glorious result.Of course these adventures in colour are not always successful, but one feels glad that France supplies artists who try new things – so long as Paris exists there can be no stagnation in the artistic world. If we have time I should rather like to visit the Salle des Indépendants, a huge place where those who have not been accepted at the Salon, exhibit.⁸⁸⁹

Rex has told you about Wednesday night at the Opéra […] Tannhäuser was done very finely indeed. Elisabeth was very fat and had a rather unpleasing voice but otherwise everything went perfectly, incongruous as Wagner necessarily sounds in French. The staging was necessarily a very great improvement on what we saw in Melbourne. For scenery I doubt whether there is anything in the world better than the Paris Opera. The ‘hall of song’ in the second act was a most perfect medieval German hall with quaint old painting and mosaics and perfectly good architecture, though it was not quite like the original which I think you have seen on the Wartburg, haven't you? […]

Letter 133 To his stepmother, 28 April 1911, 208 Ashley Gardens, S.W.

[…] about last Friday we went out for a long row on the Seine below Paris with the young man of the family. It was a glorious day and as he set the pace we got plenty of exercise […] On Sunday afternoon we went up to the top of Montmartre and got a splendid view of Paris from the Church of the Sacré Coeur – and afterwards had tea in a very fine new restaurant – Edward VII in the Rue Caumartin, only opened a few days before, where there was an excellent orchestra playing to us alone and what we ordered! You got tea and as much as you like to eat for 2 frs., which is not extraordinarily expensive under the circumstances. On Monday afternoon Rex and I visited the Salle des Indépendants where 4,000 pictures which have failed to get admission to the Salon are every year exhibited. It was an extraordinary collection – the most incredible experiments in colour and drawing, nine tenths of them quite hideous often revoltingly so – not more than one tenth or less could be allowed a claim to beauty. Still it is by trying every method and every material that Paris succeeds in producing easily the best modern painting. And it is by the experiments of people like the Indépendants that more successful painters win their fame⁸⁹⁰ […] We left by the 10.20 on Wednesday morning […] Quite an interesting afternoon and evening in Rouen. There are some splendid bits of architecture there, especially the glorious lantern of St. Ouen⁸⁹¹ – and its interior generally. Its West façade is however a disappointment. I like the curving West front of St. Maclou – and the Butter Tower of the very unequal cathedral. But the tablets and memorials of Joan of Arc are as interesting as anything there. Yesterday morning we spent in Dieppe where there is one perfectly charming church. Our crossing to Newhaven was vile – the worst three hours of my life or Rex's. Oh! terrible. We were very ill the whole time […]

Letter 134 To his father, 2 May 1911, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

[…] We had a first tennis match of the term against Queen's (a very poor college in every respect) but after a very successful start the rain began about 3 o'clock and so I came home and changed. Balliol are very bad indeed this year, so I have only a very doubtful honour in being Secretary and choosing the teams is rather a melancholy task. I think Rex ought to play on the New College six this term. They are the only college side which is any good and hard to be put on […] Carpenter is back of course from Florence, where he had been the entire vac. As I expected he was most tremendously keen about it and simply revelled in it […] He is one of the most sincerely and deeply artistic people I know – and really loves beautiful things. Music is of course what he is fondest of and best at, but any new thing like architecture or engravings, which he takes up, he seems to grasp and get into the heart of in a moment: he is never content with surface knowledge as Rex and I so often are but likes to get right into a subject, tho his tastes are most tremendously wide since he is frightfully keen on subjects like Mathematics (especially in relation to Philosophy) and Metaphysics. I am afraid the last few weeks with him have been more devoted to poetry than Greats: he is just finishing a four-act play in verse which I am longing to see […] It is not however of very great importance to him whether he gets a 1st or not, as during the vac. he heard that he had won the ‘Drisler Fellowship’ (i.e. scholarship) at Columbia University (N.Y.) which gives him £130 a year for two years, the first of which must be spent in New York, the second in Athens or Rome.

With regard to 1sts, I am afraid both Rex and I have practically – perhaps I should say absolutely – no chance […] It is a peculiar kind of brilliancy that secures an Oxford 1st and I am afraid we are both very lacking in it. Oxford is certainly a most marvellously unique and inspiring system of education, and it would be impossible to devise better, I think, for turning out a gentleman. If this be the ideal of a university then nothing else equals it, and I feel in many ways this is the case. We cannot however ever expect from Oxford scholars of for instance the Mommsen⁸⁹² – Eduard Meyer – Krumbacher⁸⁹³ type. Greek and Roman history are frankly taught in Oxford because a study of them helps to supply a quite unique culture. There is simply and absolutely no research. All lectures given have a direct bearing on the Schools and love of learning in the sense that the French and Germans feel it is non-existent. Oxford then is a place which foreigners regard with amusement and amazement. The peculiar character of its curriculum, at once absurdly broad and hopelessly narrow, quite bewilders them. Its entire isolation from all the other universities of the world except Cambridge and (to some extent) Dublin, and its practical refusal to recognise any other degree than its own annoys them, and its exclusively aristocratic character (for it is undeniable that an Englishman who is not a gentleman is a fish out of water here – the colonials and Americans fare somewhat better) disgusts them. But as a matter of fact Oxford is an ideal university for a ruling class: for England is frankly an oligarchy not of power but of influence, which is now for the first time to be forced to recognise that even in England, the most conservative country in Europe after Russia and Prussia (Prussia alone, not the German Empire), democracy must come as it has come for instance in France, Scandinavia, and the British colonies. How Oxford and an Established Church will fare under a democracy is not hard to say. But it would be a most uncongenial task to record a quite logical vote against Oxford for it is certainly the most charming thing in England (or Europe). Menardos said to me last term ‘I like Oxford, it is so aristocratic’ […]

Letter 135 To his father, 19 May 1911, Balliol

[…] The one thing of importance that has happened is that my hopes of getting the British Museum appointment have quite disappeared as I got a note from Kenyon⁸⁹⁴ the other day which I am sending you […] As you will see it is especially unfortunate. There is a vacancy at present and in the ordinary course of events they would probably have soon filled it up, but apparently at present they wish to get some special work done and require skilled help for it. It is very disappointing as the Master had been kind enough to promise me to try and get a nomination for me through the Lord Chancellor,⁸⁹⁵ and I do not think that the exam would have presented any insoluble difficulties […] I am sorry I have not yet managed to read the pamphlets you sent me on Home Rule, but I certainly shall at the first opportunity […] Please don't think that we have become brazen-throated supporters of Redmondism and the Jesuits. Such is the reverse of the truth. I think I dislike Jesuitism as a system more every day, and am a whole-hearted admirer of republicanism and liberty of thought in action in France and Portugal. It is a question of means and I still imagine that Home Rule would mean ultimate (not immediate) emancipation for the Irish people. I do not see how England or the Empire's position would be in any way worse or less secure than at present. The English-Roman-Catholic-Anglican and Irish-Protestant alliance against Home Rule seems to be wrong because it has no sympathy with the Irish people and merely desires to maintain the present system of comfortable (for the rulers) security in Ireland […]

Letter 136 To his stepmother, 26 May 1911, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

[…] On Wednesday night we had a very nice little dinner. Sadler and Bryce invited eight of us (including one don, Cyril Bailey, and us three) to dinner at Taphouse's rooms:⁸⁹⁶ they gave us an awfully nice little dinner and we had a very good though quiet time afterwards.

Tomorrow Carpenter and I go away for a week to Brecknock to get a whiff of the mountains […]

Letter 137 To his stepmother, 1 June 1911, Priory House, Brecon

It really has been exceedingly hot the last few days – an average of about 80 which is quite extraordinary for these islands especially so early in the year. But apparently the first summer since 1908 has arrived at last.

We (Carpenter and I) left Oxford by the 11.25 train on Saturday morning and came here by easy stages arriving in Brecon at 6.42 in the evening. We broke the journey at Worcester and Hereford – about one and a half hours at each place. Worcester Cathedral is rather uninteresting outside, but inside it is really extremely fine with very good vaulting and proportions, and a perfectly enthralling little Norman crypt which our guide proudly proclaimed couldn't be matched anywhere. He was quite a wonderful man and kept us in fits of subterranean laughter with his extremely inconsequent and priceless ramblings. Hereford Cathedral is very inferior in every respect, but yet its general massiveness and squat strength are quite impressive and rather akin to the Welsh and Welsh Marches style of architecture – more like secular strongholds than spiritual.

With some trouble we found digs here but got very nice ones. It is a big house in which we have very nice bedrooms, a sitting room and a croquet lawn (and bathroom), together with four very adequate meals a day for 6/-. Brecon is quite a nice little town on the junction of the Usk and a very pretty little river, the Honddu, and in full sight, though not very easy reach, of the hardly deservedly famous Beacons. On Monday (after a preliminary walk on Sunday when I attended the two churches, one morning, one evening) we clomb [sic] the Beacon. The difficulty was not height (which is only 2,906 feet above sea level or 2,456 above the town) nor steepness (for all the slopes were very gradual and grassy) but distance for we had to walk 3–4 miles before beginning our climb. However we left after lunch about 2 and got back quite comfortably about 7.30. It was quite a nice afternoon excursion though it is hard to see why people rave about the Beacon's wildness and majesty. It is an eminently quiet, civilised, though not tourist-haunted, hill and apparently owes its fame to the fact that it is the highest hill of South Wales (i.e. south of Cader Idris). The view from the top was nice but not thrilling. It was a good day and we could see a fair distance but not to the Bristol Channel as you can sometimes.

The country round here is very pretty and really extremely English, magnificent trees and delightful little shady walks – but we are a wee bit disappointed as the guide-book had excited us to expect very wild rugged Welsh country, but I'm sceptical as to whether ‘Wild Wales’ is anything more than an alliterative spondee.⁸⁹⁷ The town is quite a nice little place with a very fine old priory church […] and very quaintly named streets, e.g. The Street, Pendrē, Postern, The Watton. The amount of Welsh talked in the town is rather disappointing, i.e. none, but people warn you that out on the hills or on market days in the town a weird din is often to be heard. The only signs of Welshness I can notice are (1) the complexions, the two Welsh types (dark, small, Iberian and red, ruddy-faced Keltic) alongside the Saxon and (2) the difficulty and strangeness of the inhabitants’ articulation of English […]

Letter 138 To his father, 16 June [1911], 9 King Edward St., Oxford

I am feeling in a very contented frame of mind with all my Schools over. They began last Thursday […] and we had twelve of them – two a day till Wednesday afternoon. They were really very much better than I expected, and I quite enjoyed them especially the Logic one which I had rather dreaded but which was luckily for me a very easy and interesting one and I think I did fairly well on it […] The papers invariably stimulate you to think and I find at the end of a paper I am full of theories as to causes of things even though the theories are generally worthless! […] As to a class, I think I have got a 2nd, I did no bad papers and think I showed good knowledge (in some cases minute knowledge) of the subject and fairish judgment, but I doubt if any of my papers were 1st-class work […] I don't know how other men have done.⁸⁹⁸ Le Conteur, I'm afraid, has no chance of a 1st as he did his classical papers very badly. But you will say nothing about this, will you? Carpenter did well and has a chance of a 1st but he made a hash of his Latin texts […] The weather has of course been marvellous. For six weeks without a break we have had perfect weather, bright warm clear weather, no rain and yet no awful heat such as my native land afflicts its inhabitants with. For ten days together the temperature was between 76 and 83 and the weather absolutely heavenly […] There is certainly nothing equal to a proper English summer. My viva is not till the 31st July. I shall probably go up to town for the Coronation and then come back for the New College Ball, and then either go abroad or to Wales or somewhere for the following month. July is the delightful month in England […] I am to be up next year, doing Modern History, and am looking forward to it immensely […] I don't think I told you of our interesting visit to Llandaff and Bristol on our way back from Brecon. Llandaff is a suburb of Cardiff and has a nice little cathedral admirably restored with a very interesting and quite French-like West front which survived the 18th century which tried to turn it into a Palladian temple. Oh that 17th and 18th century. What people they were.

Bristol is perfectly wonderful and quite the Nuremberg of England. A perfectly glorious church S. Mary Redcliffe and an extremely interesting cathedral, with interior thrusts instead of flying buttresses.⁸⁹⁹ On each of them we spent a very interesting hour and a half, afterwards we went out to Clifton, and slept the night in Bristol […] Perfectly wonderful old streets, old timbered houses and perpendicular churches – it is still a 16th century city with modern building added to but not supplanting the old ones – as London would have been but for the Great Fire.

We had a very nice dinner on Wednesday night given by the Greats dons to all the men doing Schools. I enjoyed it immensely. The Master was present but as guest not host. It was in the Old Common Room and there were 21 of us saved (or escaped) ones there, three dons (Lindsay, Wood and Gibson) and the Mugger […] Last night Rex and I went to Weber's Freischütz at the New Theatre which was the opera given this year (last year it was Fidelio) by Dr H.P. Allen (organist of New College) and an Oxford company helped by a few professionals. The opera is a perfectly charming one and in parts was quite well given, though the theatre is really too small for these things […]

Letter 139 To his stepmother, 23 June 1911, 9 King Edward St., Oxford

The great event of the week has been the Coronation […] We went up to town on Wednesday afternoon and slept with Uncle Walter in some rooms in Vincent's Square quite near⁹⁰⁰ […] We arose very early in the morning and were in our seats (which the Hacketts had given us) in the Mall in the front of Stafford House by 7.15.⁹⁰¹ There were huge stands quite nicely draped right down the Mall, crammed with people, but at the side of the road itself the crowd was never very thick, never more than eight to ten deep. The road itself was lined with troops. From our stand we got a very fine view from Buckingham Palace and the new Victoria Memorial in front of it (which is really extremely good for a British-made London monument, I think)⁹⁰² of St James’ Park in front with the Queen Anne Mansions in the high background, and to the left the Admiralty Arch just opened for the first time – a very mean and undignified business, in three low arches instead of one fine one like a proper Arc de Triomphe – on the left. It was really a Canadian stand and we were surrounded by Canadians which was rather nice as they were all so full of enthusiasm. There was awful anxiety as to the weather, but it went off quite decently, though there were a couple of five-minute showers before the procession went by. The first procession did not start till 9.30 but it was never dull waiting as troops and notabilities including Siamese, Abyssinians, Malayans, Chinese, Persians were continually passing which made things quite interesting. Kitchener rode down the lines on a special inspection before the procession began. The first division of it started at 9.30 consisting of the foreign princes and representatives in 18 magnificent state coaches. Some of them looked very gorgeous, and quite a large number of the grandduchesses, crown princesses and others were extremely good-looking, but the crowd remained insular and apathetic (except for the Crown Princess of Sweden who got a cheer)⁹⁰³ till the German Crown Prince and Crown Princess⁹⁰⁴ passed in the last and finest state coach. They were greeted with tremendous enthusiasm, and looked very pleased. The Kaiser and his family seem extremely popular in England. Of course the Crown Prince however is fairly well known from his visit to India and various athletic achievements.

After a break came more troops and the four magnificent coaches conveying the Royal Family. The last one contained the Prince of Wales and his sister and brothers. He looked very well as far as I could see him. Princess Mary bowed very energetically but awfully stiffly.⁹⁰⁵ It must be hard to do gracefully and must take time to learn. Of course the Queen does it extremely well.

Then another break and at 10.30 the royal procession started. You will see nearly as much of it it […] on the cinematograph as we did. They both looked awfully well and got tremendous applause. I got a very good view of the Queen – not so good of the King as he was on the further side. The rest of the procession consisted of princes, generals, etc. and Indian maharajahs who made a splendid show in the most brilliant dress. It was a most wonderful sight, though of course the chief thing was the King and Queen in the fine old state coach drawn by the eight creams⁹⁰⁶ with grooms and postilions ad lib […] We all came back to Oxford by the 6.15 train […]

Letter 140 [To his stepmother, c. June 1911], 208 Ashley Gardens, S.W.

[…]⁹⁰⁷ Last Saturday Herbert Smith (son of Vincent) came to lunch. He is a don at Magdalen and such a very nice man⁹⁰⁸ […] I saw Elsie Masson's last letter to Rex⁹⁰⁹ […] The opera season must be fun. The prices are rather a revelation to Melbourne, aren't they? I hope you manage to go to some more. I think I should avoid Melba in La Bohème – I can't picture her as Mimi, though if you shut your eyes it would be all right. I've only heard Samson and Delila in Oxford from the Carl Rosa Co.: of course it was rather a farce as the theatre is tiny and the company indifferent. However I enjoyed it. Of modern French operas I think Pelléas et Mélisande is perfectly charming. I wonder is Melba producing it chez vous⁹¹⁰ […]

[PS] I had a very pleasant time at a little club meeting last Sunday – the Decemvir, a small thing (ten members!) mostly colonials. A man read a most excellent paper on Race Problems, and I spoke at great length and very bromidically […]

Letter 141 To his father, 9 July 1911, Harker's Hotel, York

[…] Last mail I wrote I told you about the two Commem. Balls and the delightful time we had. I went down a couple of days after – on the Saturday (yesterday week) […] I went to Huntingdon via London and had time to […] visit Westminster Abbey in a long queue of people after an hour's wait. It was interesting seeing the abbey just as it was for the Coronation with all the thrones and stands in place – you would hardly have recognised it. From the North and South Transept seats (foreign princes) people must have seen splendidly but from some of the seats in the nave nothing except the procession in and out can have been seen.

In the afternoon I went out to Wimbledon and saw some of the big tennis which is always fascinating to watch. Decugis the great French player⁹¹¹ beat the former English champion Gore⁹¹² but subsequently got knocked out by another English player⁹¹³ though he and his partner Gobert won the doubles championship (the first time foreigners have ever done so).

I went down to Houghton in the evening for six days and had a most delightful time […] Carpenter came down on Monday and we stayed on till Friday. We left Huntingdon by an early train on Friday and spent two hours in Peterborough […] Then on to Lincoln where we had a full afternoon. It is a splendid old town with the nicest old Roman archs and Romanesque houses and winding streets, one of which is truly rather Pilgrim's-Progressly called ‘Steep Hill’. The cathedral has a glorious situation on top of a hill […] We heard very beautiful Evensong in the choir and then had to hurry away […] We slept at Grantham and chanced on a very good choir-practice in the church,⁹¹⁴ the vicar of which I later found out is W.I. Carr-Smith:⁹¹⁵ I suppose any church would prosper under his care.

Yesterday was duller than the day before. It was quite a hot day (nearly 90°) for England though I liked it in shade. We went off for two side excursions, the first to Belvoir Castle (pronounced as you probably know ‘Beevor’) where the Duke of Rutland lives.⁹¹⁶ We had quite a nice six-mile walk there. We went over the castle and found it very disappointing. The pictures were not half as good as I expected […] In the afternoon we went via Newark to Southwell and saw the cathedral⁹¹⁷ […] From Newark we came on to York and slept here⁹¹⁸ last night, today having a comparative rest. We attended morning service in the Minster and this afternoon after seeing the ruins of S. Mary's Abbey and walking right round the walls we went to Evensong […] The Choral Celebration was very beautiful but Evensong I thought was badly sung and neither equalled the beautiful services one hears in S. Paul's London. And to my taste the principle and effect of a rood-screen shutting off choir from nave is calamitous. I love the huge view and volume of sound one gets from the West door of S. Paul's and Ely too […]

Letter 142 [To his father,] 17 July 1911

[…]⁹¹⁹ All through our trip the weather has been absolutely ideal. The summer is one of the best, I believe, ever known in England. April, May and the first week of June were all rainless, practically cloudless with blue skies and consistent 75 degrees temperature days, and then after a fortnight of uncertain (not bad) weather the sun again appeared and till yesterday there had not been a sign of cloud in the sky for three weeks – really glorious days nothing like which could be produced anywhere. The papers talk of heat waves and consequent deaths which I find hard to understand except possibly in London where it is inclined to be stuffy. Out in the country and in the North it is quite ideal and you never feel too hot but always happy. An English summer like this is quite impossible to beat.

After lunch at Fountains⁹²⁰ we came back to Ripon and went over the cathedral very thoroughly with the very nice old verger who was extremely intelligent about the architecture even for a verger and they are as a rule extremely well-informed on the subject and know lots about the minutest points. This one had the additional advantage, however, of having been a mason himself and so was very well up in the technique of the thing and a very charming old man too. One of the most interesting things there is the Saxon crypt (built like the one at Hexham, the only other Saxon crypt in England, by Wilfrid about 680) which he took us round explaining the details of Saxon masonry and plastering: but upstairs was very interesting too though our friend had occasionally to leave us and go off to the Bishop (Boyd Carpenter⁹²¹) who was taking round the Kaiser's sister.⁹²²

From Ripon we went on to Durham – such a contrast in towns, Durham a dirty smoky place […] while Ripon was ideally clean and picturesque – but everything against Durham is forgotten when you leave the dirty little poky town on one side and from the opposite side of the river look up at the magnificent cathedral rising above its wooded banks.

We stayed at a very dingy little inn sharing a room which the landlady said was 500 years old in excuse for the windows not opening properly: age was certainly its only strong point. That night we strolled round the cathedral and examined its fine exterior in the twilight. Next morning we […] left Durham about 11 after hearing Matins which was disappointingly sung (not nearly as beautiful as the services I have heard at Ely, or Lincoln or York) and went on to Newcastle where we had lunch and looked at the Church of S. Nicholas which is now Newcastle Cathedral.⁹²³ It is merely a rather uninteresting Perpendicular parish church and very different to Durham and Lincoln! but it has quite an interesting lantern in the shape of a crown, from which S. Giles’ Edinburgh has been taken: Newcastle is however much nicer than the S. Giles’ copy which is senselessly overlaid with heavy ornament and quite awkward and ugly […] After lunch we went out to Hexham and saw the very interesting Early English abbey which has a Saxon crypt […] From Hexham we went back to Newcastle and caught the train to Edinburgh getting there about 8 o'clock. We stayed at a Temperance Hotel and were really quite comfortable and well looked after. They rather correspond to Australian coffee-houses but are slightly better. In the evening light we had a splendid first view of Edinburgh and the magnificent south side of Princes Street and the Pentlands in the distance to the south-west and were of course delighted with it.

Next day we went round and saw all that we could, though we were unable to get into Holyrood or St. Giles’ because of the preparations for the King's visit – he was to arrive there today, Monday (17th). However we saw the National Gallery which is really extremely good with some perfectly splendid Italian pictures and 18th century British […] We left extremely early next morning, actually succeeding in getting up at 5 and catching a 6.10 train […] I felt very sleepy all day, but managed to keep my eyes open and had a most splendid day. We went via Glasgow to Loch Lomond, up the lake by steamer, by coach across to Loch Katrine (Inversnaid to Stronachlachlar) where we had lunch and then went up the lake which is really lovely and coached through the Trossachs to Callander, went by train from there to Killin, and up Loch Tay by steamer to Kenmore, coached through the beautiful valley of the Tay to Aberfeldy, and then by train to Ballinluig where we changed and went on to Blair Athole where we spent the night. It was a rather tiring day of 13 hours but we saw some perfectly lovely scenery […] It is not of course like proper mountain scenery in Tyrol or Switzerland or New Zealand, but is really perfectly charming and in its soft effect quite unsurpassable (unless Killarney is as good?) […] We stayed the night at Blair Athole and next day went on to Dalwhinnie which we chose for its height – it is 1170 feet, very high for Great Britain but has little else to recommend it except its delicious invigorating air. I was rather relieved on the whole to find that we couldn't get rooms there, and that we had to try somewhere else. We decided to go on to Aviemore but found it a very flat uninteresting place though in full sight of the Gramp[ians] […]

Letter 143 To his father, 1 August [1911], Balliol

[…] Since last Friday […] we have both been wholly preoccupied and occupied with vivas. Rex's came on Saturday. He only had about seven minutes and the questions merely concerned two points – the relations between Pitt and George III's ‘Friends’ and Bute,⁹²⁴ and the effect of the Golden Bull⁹²⁵ on the great princely houses of Germany in the 14th century. He seems to have done quite well in it and we should all have felt absolutely certain he had got a 2nd if not a 1st (which I still think is just possible, but I'm afraid very improbable) if Jane (his coach) had not pronounced that he was a certain 3rd.⁹²⁶ He is such a dogmatic person that one naturally distrusts what he says, and besides Rex's papers were certainly of β to αβ quality […] still Rex is naturally rather upset by what Jane said and cannot help feeling uneasy, though I think without real ground. I'm sure he's got a 2nd though […] My viva came off yesterday. Le Conteur came early in the morning and was only asked a couple of easy questions in Greek History and so has obviously got a certain class, which may either be, I hope, a 2nd or more probably a 3rd.⁹²⁷ His non-classical education has been a severe handicap to him and I even doubt if he has found his Melbourne philosophy (though in itself good) of much use for Oxford Schools. He is such a nice man and I hope very much indeed he is given a 2nd: it means a great deal to him. If he gets a 3rd you can explain to people the handicap he laboured under.

I was down for 45 minutes, beginning at 10.55 so I knew I was on the border-line somewhere. As a matter of fact they did not begin operating on me till 11.7⁹²⁸ and stopped at 11.55 so I had about 48 minutes. As usual one examiner alone conducted the viva – indeed for the first ten minutes the three philosophers (Joseph, Ross and Burnett⁹²⁹) were not in the room. Benecke, the other historian, was there but speechless. Stuart Jones examined me. Funnily enough I has met him before at a dinner party at Aunt Maimie's in Tenby (S. Wales)⁹³⁰ […] he actually remembered me, at least he told Uncle Boyce whom he met at dinner that evening that he did. He was really exceedingly nice to me and though he asked me questions as to the most minute details he asked them very fairly and gave me every chance. In fact the vivas are extraordinarily fair and reasonable exams and the examiners the most sympathetic of men. The object of the viva is never to pull you down but to give you a chance to strengthen or raise your position. My Philosophy, for instance, was I think (or rather hope) a certain or probably poor 2nd. My History (again I hope) was α or nearly so. And the usual practice in those cases is to viva you on your best subject. Carpenter got fifty minutes on Philosophy and came out splendidly. Castlehow (Queensland) got 35 minutes on Roman history, and two other Balliol men (Clarke and Lobel) got an hour each on Philosophy.⁹³¹ My relief at getting History instead of Philosophy was great as it showed they were considering me for a 1st (at least I trust it was not a question of a 2nd or a 3rd but I feel practically certain from the style of question asked that it wasn't that, though the less confidence one has as to these things the better).

Stuart Jones must have asked me about 150 questions. We began on the Athenian βουλή⁹³² and certain comparisons (not altogether, but to a considerable extent justifiable) which I had made with the American Senate. We then considered Athenian literary men in public life. I knew of course Sophocles had been strategos⁹³³ in the Samian War⁹³⁴ but did not know he had been Hellenotamias⁹³⁵ in 443 and (probably) Proboulos in 413.⁹³⁶ That however started two lines of questions. First as to the importance of 443 in Athenian financial history (that being the year of the creation of the five districts among the allies who paid φόρος⁹³⁷) – which resolved itself into a discussion of the Quota Lists and by an easy transition to the origin of the connection of Lemnos and Imbros with Athens and Miltiades II. All this discussion took some time and on several points I was stupidly bowled out but got in a few good answers which pleased him. Second as to the accounts given by Thucydides and Aristotle's Ἀθηναιου Πολιτɛια⁹³⁸ of the appointment of the Probouloi and the revolution of the 400 (digression on Draco's legislation in 6th century). This I knew quite well. We then discussed cleruchies⁹³⁹ in the 6th century (Chalcis and Salamis) and somewhere wandered off into Spartan constitutional history whereon he was rather searching. The ephorate provided a fruitful theme for discussion and in some points mistake. But on the whole I did fairly on it.

You see from what I have written how much the examiner changes his method of attack from what you say – every remark you make involves you in further questions.

He then tried Roman history. We began with a mistake I had made in my paper in attributing the abolition of double camps (i.e. of two legions together) to Vespasian – I to some extent retrieved myself there explaining why Domitian had done so. It was after the revolt of Saturninus in 91. This led on to a discussion of Domitian's campaigns on the Danube and the defeat of Juvenal's butt Fuscus⁹⁴⁰ of whom I first heard from you. Finally we wound up with Nero's opening speech to the Senate and to what extent the policy outlined in it was adopted.

You see it was quite a long viva for I have given it only in a compressed form omitting scores of digressions and matters of detail. I can't tell what is my position. I did well but I doubt if well enough as I was guilty of many inaccuracies and of a good deal of blank ignorance. He certainly wanted great knowledge of detail and I should have done better at such an examination. I'm afraid therefore, though I still hope for a 1st, that I have missed one. But if I do miss it I can have no feeling against the examiner for he treated me extremely well.

The results come out on the 8th August and will be in the Morning Post and Times of either that day or the 9th where you will of course see them. By the time this letter arrives you will know the results by cable. Rex and I will be in Switzerland […] I doubt if you would care much for the Oxford modern type – he is never serious on the surface and his humour is of the whimsical not the downright Irish type the charm of which is quite distinct and different.

I am not writing on things political as it is so hard to understand one another in letters. But I feel sure a little conversation would find us in agreement with one another on most points. But complete agreement between two people on all these questions seems to me impossible. But why should it affect their other relations? It certainly does not do so in public life for Balfour and Asquith are the best of friends. But I will write more about this properly […]

Letter 144 To his father, 11 August [1911], Hotel Alpina, Grindelwald

I hope by this time you know of our results […] It must have been exciting getting the news by cable – I know we found it quite enough merely hearing it by an ordinary telegram. We had expected to hear on Monday evening but the results apparently did not come out till Tuesday at mid-day and we consequently heard nothing till 5.30 that evening (4.30 English time). We had gone down to the Post Office to send off a wire for news when suddenly a telegram arrived […] I was not so much surprised as relieved at hearing my news: I rather thought I had just pulled it off but of course I wasn't at all sure about it. I made certain however when I had got my 1st that Carpenter and Castlehow who had been given the same sort of viva as I had, had got theirs too. To my very great disappointment I heard next day that they hadn't. They must have only just missed it for they were both vivaed for 1sts and were quite certainly on the line. It was very disappointing for both of them and especially for Castlehow who had never failed to get alphas in collections at Balliol and whom I looked on as a certainty. It will not affect his position at present as he has already been appointed Vice-Principal of St. Andrew's, Sydney University, but it might probably tell against him in the future.⁹⁴¹ He is a man I have grown to like very much and I think he will get on. Of course you know he is not of very lofty origin but I shouldn't think that would matter much at St. Andrew's: but he [is] as good-natured and reliable as can be imagined and exceedingly tolerant even though his intellectual interests are not very wide.

I am sending you a list of 1sts. It may interest you to examine and count them. You will notice that Balliol is easily (as usual) supreme in Greats though we had a very poor History year. The Times of August 9th gives the schools of the 1st classes: I appear as ‘Sydney’. Manchester Grammar School got four 1sts in Greats and so did Winchester. Eton, Rugby and many others two each. One colonial (me), three Scotchmen and the rest English.⁹⁴²

I can and need hardly say how thankful I am about my result and how lucky I feel I have been to have got exams which suited me so well and such an excellent and interesting examiner as Stuart Jones. Of course I feel very, absurdly, proud of my 1st. I feel good now that I took things very easy from start to finish and that it never became at any point a cram exam. As I have said in other letters I never managed to get more than eight hours done in my whole course and that not more than once or twice. My general average on working days was about four or four and a half. I'm sure however that is ample for Greats though I shall have to do six for History where there is a vast mass of fact to be learnt. In Greats especially for Philosophy cramming is quite useless. The papers demand knowledge but they want not so much full and detailed information as the candidate's own views based on but not taken from books […] Although Grindelwald is 3400 ft. it's not too cool and has been over 80 in the shade several days running here. I see London has gone back to 90° again. Talk of Australia! As a matter of fact though this European heat is delightful […]

Letter 145 To his stepmother, 16 August [1911], Hotel Alpina, Grindelwald

[…] I'm sending you a letter I got from my Philosophy tutor A.D. Lindsay. It explains itself and shows I was right in thinking it was my fifty minutes viva on History that pulled me through. It is fun being the first Commoner in Balliol to have got a 1st in Greats for some time, though several have in History. This year of the seven Balliol 1sts in Greats, three were Scholars, three were Exhibitioners, and enfin me. I am also sending W.D. Ross's letter. He was one of the board of examiners (Joseph, Burnett, Ross, Stuart Jones, Benecke) but did not have anything to do with my papers as he had for two years been my Philosophy tutor in the absence of J.A. Smith. Ross is a Fellow of Oriel but an old Balliol man […] What do you think of English weather now? Most people are reconsidering their opinions. A sunny April, hot very hot May and early June, and then after ten days showery, a blazing July and August. In July there were 31 days (as usual) but without a drop of rain and a temperature of 80° or over sixteen times. August however is hotter. Last Wednesday at Greenwich it was 100° in the shade (bravo England) and Friday and Saturday continued well with 90° and 91°. Tuesday had been 97°. The previous record in England was 97! some sixty or more years ago so things are going ‘some’ (American idiom, you know!) […]

Letter 146 To his father, 23 August [1911], Hotel Central, Engelberg

[…] I am working and mean to continue to do so really hard for a good class in Modern History and hope to be able to pull it off. At any rate I will do my best but the amount of work to be done for it is appalling! Most men take two and a half (and two good men in Balliol are taking three and a half) years for it, and my knowledge of history is limited to a few good lessons from Bunty Evans at school in 1902⁹⁴³ and some desultory reading since. Certainly I have Greats training which alone makes the idea feasible. One other Balliol 1st in Greats (G.N. Clark, a Brackenbury Scholar) is essaying the task with me, but don't feel too sure I shall do well […] I find that I have Dr Kenyon's letter after all. I am so sorry I was stupid enough to forget to send it […] You will see that there may be a possibility of me getting in next year but I doubt it⁹⁴⁴ – and I also doubt whether it is a really good enough appointment. I don't mean this conceitedly though it certainly reads like it. What I mean is £150 is small pay for life in London and only 30 days holidays a year, though bank clerks get much less and I suppose it is enough really to content one […] I did love being in Trinity more than anything – it was most tremendous fun in college and did us both worlds of good, I think after our stupid shyness at school. Balliol life in many ways is a poor substitute, I admit – and yet in those few other ways Oxford is so far superior as to outweigh all the charms of life in college in Melbourne. You are so much in the centre of action and thought, instead of the prejudiced, unreasoning, petty politics of Melbourne and eternal talk of sports and medical shop – I should get bored with that now. And you get not only knowledge but ideas, so much more interesting. I abused the Classical course in a letter to you a little while ago – perhaps I wasn't fair but it was interesting to find Rex and I and Castlehow the (quite Australian) Queensland Rhodes Scholar who just missed a 1st in Greats had exactly the same experience of University work. Eternal prepared texts. ‘Translate with marginal notes’. The ten, eleven or twelve hours a day (once I remember 14!!) I spent ‘watching my books’ (as the Americans say) was sheer waste […] Little as I want (to be accurate I don't want at all) to return to Australia, I am fond of it. I like my fellow-countrymen very much. I see lots of them at Oxford, though don't think I associate with them and neglect the really most interesting people, the Englishmen from the public schools. Of course I know and like lots of them and it's mixing with them that makes up the real interest and charm of Oxford. I am and shall always be an Australian (this reads very melodramatically, doesn't it? unless taken literally when it appears rather obvious and barely worth saying) but I feel I am interested in other things than what I should get there […] on Thursday Rex and I (accompanied for the first part of the way by Castlehow and Hooton) walked over the Grosse Scheidegg to Innertkirchen and then up the valley to Guttannen where we slept – quite a good day's walk considering we carried a heavy Rücksack. Next day we went on but soon abandoned the Rücksack sending it on by post which is the best way of sending luggage in Switzerland. We walked right up the valley of the Aare (the Hasli Thal)⁹⁴⁵ to the Grimsel Hospice where we lunched and then over the Grimsel Pass 7100 ft. into the Canton of Valais. At the top of the pass is a small lake the Totensee taking its name from the burial in it in 1799 of the French and Russians who fought a battle there.⁹⁴⁶ We went right down into the head (5700) and after tea went up the steep road to 7500 ft. Hotel Belvédère which is just by the Rhone Glacier⁹⁴⁷ […] It was amusing sleeping at such a height. The hotel was excellent and we had a glorious view of the Finsteraarhorn and the Valaisian Alps. Next day we walked over the famous Furka Pass into the Canton of Uri down to Andermatt where we arrived at lunchtime. Andermatt is on the St. Gotthard [Pass] (on top of the tunnel of course which begins three and half miles further north at Göschenen and goes through to Airolo) and we had meant to stay there but found it a deadly place in summer, high (4700) but dull and only amusing amid winter-sports. So we went on by train to Flüelen and then by boat to Lucerne, the lake looking lovely by night […] Engelberg is full of French, Italians and Russians – hardly any English, none in the hotel […]

Letter 147 To his stepmother, 1 September [1911], Villa Männer, Gossensass

[…] I wrote last week from Engelberg where I stayed a week […] It is a much quieter place than Grindelwald and there were very few English there when I was there – certainly none at our hotel but you could see from the notices up everywhere that in winter there must be quite a lot. My great companion was a young Hungarian, a very nice man and extremely interesting on matters political – he talked excellent English so my profound knowledge of Magyar (pronounce please Módyor) was not called into play. He has promised to look me up at Oxford next year on his way to America. His name was Goda – J.G. Goda: in Hungary you put the Christian name after tother and say John Goda thus – Goda Janos (pronounced Găwda Yānosh). He says that it is generally expected that Franz Ferdinand's great aim when he becomes Emperor⁹⁴⁸ will be to found a third great kingdom to balance against both Austria and Hungary – a Slave⁹⁴⁹ one consisting of Bosnia, Servia and Macedonia. Possibly in the future the Hapsburgs may even leave their ancestral capital Vienna, for Austria is speedily becoming Social Democrat, and they will find it more prudent to fall back on the strongly conservative Catholic Hungary and the strongly conservative or primitive Orthodox kingdoms. But of course this is all air-building. He knew a great deal about England and the British colonies and was interesting to talk to about them. Though a very strong Anglophile he shared the view (held by all nationalities of other nation's than their own's policy) that English foreign statesmen are as unscrupulous as they are adroit. Certainly foreign views of English honesty don't please one but it is mainly a matter of point of view and motive and if you read ‘Le Temps’⁹⁵⁰ and the Neue Freie Presse (which is practically the same in German) in succession on Agadir you will see how fully both nations insist that the other is the one guilty of violent aggression in Morocco.⁹⁵¹

On Sunday […] I left for Lucerne and found my three Australians there. After tea I went to see Thorwaldsen's famous Löwendenkmal to Louis XVI's French guards⁹⁵² […] it is a perfectly splendid thing – and also went into the Gletscher Garten,⁹⁵³ a curious collection of rock formations caused by the action of glaciers some time before any of us including Adam and Eve were in existence. We went to bed early as we left at 9.15 next morning for Innsbruck. However by mistake the boots called me at 5.20 and as I had no watch I thought it was 7.20 and got up. So I went out and walked about for a couple of hours and had a most interesting time as Lucerne is an awfully pretty old town with old walls and towers. At 9.15 we left – travelling 3rd of course and got to Innsbruck at 6.25. It was quite an interesting journey as you go first of all along the lakes of Zug, Zürich and Wallen – pass through the tiny principality of Liechtenstein which lies between Switzerland and the Austrian province of Vorarlberg and is after Monaco the smallest independent state in Europe, smaller even I think than S. Marino – no! possibly S. Marino is smaller – and then go through some fine scenery in Vorarlberg (including a very unpleasant 16 minutes tunnel). I had quite good practice in the train as I was sitting next to a Polonaise who talked almost as good French as her companion who was French. They were actually travelling 3rd straight through from Neuchâtel to Vienna practically 24 hours and then after a short stop on to Bessarabia!

We got a very good and nice hotel in Innsbruck where we slept that night. We had meant to stay on there but found it intolerably hot and after spending a whole day (Tuesday) hunting for rooms in the suburbs and vicinity – we got hold of lots of nice rooms but all the places were dull and dusty and hot and Innsbruck although some people crack it up appears to me very uninteresting and plain. Perhaps in the winter season. Finally I persuaded the three – Castlehow, Mann and Hooton (all of Sydney University though Castlehow is a Queenslander) – to come on here where Rex and I were last year. Frau Witwe Doktor Männer was very bucked to see me again and is giving very good rooms and pension at seven kronen so we are doing well […]

Letter 148 To his stepmother, 8 Sept. [1911], bei Frau Schneider, Lindenaustrasse 34, Dresden

[…] I'm here for a day or two on my way through to Berlin and as all the hotels are full owing to a Hygiene Exhibition here,⁹⁵⁴ I'm in a ‘mobliertes Zimmer’.⁹⁵⁵ I left Gossensass the day before yesterday and broke the journey for lunch at Innsbruck and dinner in Munich which after a rather hard 3rd class seat was refreshing. I got to Regensburg, or Ratisbon if you like Baedeker prefer that, at 10 p.m. and slept there. Yesterday morning I had a most delightful time exploring five or six of its ten or twelve Romanesque churches […] The town is in its way quite as interesting as Nuremberg and of course much older […] They didn't even speak English at my hotel, the biggest in the town. I got here at 11 p.m. last night and went to the Grand Union Hotel where I had expected to find Rex but they knew nothing about him so perhaps he has decided not to leave Berlin – I go on there on Saturday after a good two days look at the Sistine Madonna etc.⁹⁵⁶ They may be stolen like Mona Lisa before long!⁹⁵⁷

It was delightful in Gossensass […] On Monday at 6.30 a.m. Castlehow, Mann and I went forth and up the Amthorspitze (9025ft.) which you may remember Rex and I went up last summer⁹⁵⁸ […] When I got down I found my Hungarian friend Goda. He and his friends, a Major Pringle and family, are in Gossensass for some weeks. However I didn't see much of them as I left on Wednesday but hope to see him some time in Oxford […]

Letter 149 To his father, 15 September [1911], bei Frau Werneburg, Spichernstrasse 15, Berlin W.50

[…] Last week I wrote from Dresden. We had barely two days there as Rex was not at all enthusiastic about it and only stayed even as long as that under compulsion. Both mornings we spent entirely in the picture gallery […] Apart from the gallery there is certainly very little to see in Dresden, for rococo buildings soon pall on one how[ever] enthusiastic at first

[…] Dresden was very hot and very full of visitors as there was a big Hygiene-Ausstellung on. We visited it in the evening, when it was cool and there was music. There were exhibits from practically all European countries but they were shut in the evening so we didn't see them. The great feature of the place to us was the great number and variety of milk-drinks which could be got at 1d. a glass – rather a change after Switzerland where it cost always from 2d.–6d.!

I've been nearly a week now in this family. The people are intensely dull and I find that it is hard to evoke much conversation except on the boring subject of Essen (food). The only pensionnaire who comes to meals is a Swedish girl aged 20 – very dull and bromidic and ultra-Teutonic. I wish I could talk as good German as she does. Her accent is excellent, also vocabulary, but the total effect is very ugly as she has the peculiar and to me hideously cacophonous Swedish intonation, which is the most necessary thing of all to learn in learning the language of each nation […] Last Sunday Weego⁹⁵⁹ and I went to the English Church at 11. There is a new chaplain – named Williams – and he preached quite a good sermon⁹⁶⁰ […] I'm sending you a letter I got from Castlehow. He's a very nice man and should do well in Sydney: of course he's a bit common, but that doesn't matter much I should think at St. Andrew's where he is to be vice-principal.

Letter 150 To his father, 22 September [1911], p/a Frau Werneburg, Spichernstrasse 15, Berlin W.50

[…] Last Saturday night we all four went to the first night of a new comic opera ‘Die Dame in Rot’⁹⁶¹ and were delighted with it. We managed to understand nearly all the dialogue which was really very clever and not vulgar as German operas like the Merry Widow generally are. We all loved the music which was very light and pretty, and not the hopeless ragtime catchy things of English musical comedy.

Last night Rex and I tried Hamlet at the Deutsches Theater, Reinhardt's, famous Shakespearian theatre⁹⁶² – and really I suppose the most famous Shakespearian theatre in the world. We only stayed two acts however as Rex had rather a headache and I felt no particular keenness for more. So unlike what we saw at the Comédie Française with Mounet-Sully as Hamlet.⁹⁶³ Last night everything was very restrained and sober – hardly any scenery, and Claudius, who talked in a low voice, really awe-struck whispering Franciscoes and Marcelluses and Horatios and an academically quiet and depressed Hamlet. Rosencrantz (acted by the famous buffoon-actor Wassmann whom I've also seen as Sir A. Aguecheek and Aragon in the Merchant of Venice)⁹⁶⁴ was on the other hand absurdly over-acted and ridiculously exaggerated. Polonius I thought very good. Ophelia was so unattractive and Jewish, so Jewish (Elsa Heims her name is). But the general tone – we only saw two acts however and so can't very well judge – was one of gloom and depression rather than excitement and being English I was disappointed. The performance however like all big French and German performances, far excelled similar English ones in the way the blank verse was handled – English actors don't understand the way to give poetry […] Berlin is different after Paris. No history, no atmosphere of mystery and originality. Everything clean, healthy, airy, spic(k) and span. Of course we are not qualified to say much about Germans as we never meet any so as to get to know them. I think I should like them in spite of their enthusiasms for eating and drinking – the men that is who are generally intelligent, and if not officials, polite. The women are hopelessly stupid and unattractive – they talk about Essen because they have nothing else to talk about and intellectually and politically and socially their office seems to be to listen and obey. I don't wonder French and English women despise them.

Pro-French as I am however I am not at all sure my sympathies are not with Germany in this Morocco crisis. Spain is indignant but helpless. England since 1904 in return for a free hand in Egypt has ceased to protect her own interests in Morocco which were originally far greater than those of France. Only Germany is determined that France shall not make further encroachments without protest, and without recognising that Germany now too has colonial ambitions. Hence the Agadir incident. Germany must have colonies not so much for surplus population as for trade, and it seems only fair (though as far as morality is concerned – what about the rights of Morocco to independence guaranteed by the Treaty of Algeciras)⁹⁶⁵ that if they give France a free hand in Morocco they should have (1) an assurance of their trade being protected (2) territorial compensation in the Congo which France from her huge African empire can well afford to give. The temper of Germany apart from the small noisy Pan-German faction is profoundly peaceable: the French as always are bellicose, as they have been since Julius Caesar's time. What they think about is not the justice of their claims on Morocco but the possibility of avenging Sedan⁹⁶⁶ […] Term starts on Oct. 12 when we take our degrees for the second time in our lives – this time it is more expensive than Melbourne, the charges are nearly prohibitive, something like £12 I think […] I was so glad to hear of the great tennis victory. Trinity could easily play and beat Oxford this year […] But tennis is bound to be better in Australia, where it is played all the year round. I think however the future of the game lies with America who are practically certain to win the Davis Cup this year⁹⁶⁷ […]

Letter 151 To his stepmother, Michaelmas, 29 September 1911, p/a Frau Werneburg, Spichernstrasse 15, Berlin W.50

[…] It looks like war today between Italy and Turkey – the ultimatum must be answered by 8.35 tonight.⁹⁶⁸ Much as one prefers Italians to Turks, and Italianism to Turkism, it is hard to feel anything but sympathy for Turkey. Italy's alleged grievances are so absolutely ridiculous and her whole conduct utterly shameless – entirely run by the banks and capitalists with interests in Tripolis, while the Italian people as a whole are dead against war. It would do the government good to meet with the same sort of reverse as Crispi's government found in Abyssinia.⁹⁶⁹ For once in a life-time German and English papers agree in denouncing Italy's iniquities, but miserable political expediency prevents them acting up to their convictions as to what is due in fairness to Turkey […] I went to a most interesting exhibition yesterday – a combined one of Lapps, Samoyedes and Eskimos. One got quite a good idea of their manner of life. There were big herds of reindeer and Arctic dogs there, and 20 polar bears who performed the weirdest tricks⁹⁷⁰ […]

Letter 152 To his father, 5 November [1911], 38 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

[…] This morning I went to morning service at St. Giles’, the church almost next door to us. It is certainly not true to say of Oxford that the churches are not used. All the ones I know are always full, although I suppose Oxford has more churches in proportion to its population than almost any town in the world […] Yesterday, to go backwards I had a Foreign History class at 12 with A.L. Smith, and a lecture (they are rare nowadays) from Haverfield on Roman Britain at 6. Sandwiched in between them was a long bicycle ride to Banbury. All three of us started but Rex had to turn back after eight miles as he had to get back to tea. Ian and I went on the whole way (22 miles) and had a most delightful ride. I had never been in that part of north Oxfordshire and so the country was all new to me […] Oxfordshire is a most wonderful county, and though I won't say I prefer it to Switzerland – I certainly don't do that – I think in its own way it is as beautiful as any country I have ever seen. There is such infinite variety in the low groups of hills and rich green valleys and leafy woods […] On Friday night Bryce and Sadler came to dinner and were very nice. Sadler is more Carpenter's friend than ours. Rex and I like him but feel we have practically nothing in common with him, and have never got to know him much though we have seen a good deal of him. He is very much of the aesthete and has extremely good taste. He writes quite good verse himself, and is very keen like many other men up here on modern movements in writing and painting – like the new Post-Impression School of Painting in Holland and France. He is actually editor of a magazine called ‘Rhythm’ of which two numbers have appeared and to which he has got a good many English and foreign artists to contribute⁹⁷¹ […] This year neither of us has much to do with College and I don't often go there at all except for classes. I find them most extremely interesting. A.L. Smith is a born teacher – he suggests lines of thought and study and helps you to do the work yourself rather than give you merely his own ideas and interpretations though he has plenty of them too. All the work is interesting. He gives me two hours a week on early English constitutional and social questions, and another two on medieval German and Italian history, and as time allows we do all the work from the contemporary authorities themselves – the way of course of really enjoying and getting profit out of it. You approach modern books then in quite a different spirit.

I think some time ago I advised you to read Hilaire Belloc's Eye-witness.⁹⁷² I am heartily sick of it now and rather suggest to you ‘Don't’ except that it would interest you to read a couple of numbers of it as everyone knows of it here. I think that some of his attacks on the English Party System may be justified. I certainly think that English party politics among the upper classes are tending to become merely a matter of heredity or convenience for dialectics – as they are almost entirely in the United States. But Belloc's attacks on them and on the Jews – though I sympathise with his object to a slight extent – are so unbalanced and so bitter and in such disgustingly bad taste that I simply hate the paper now.

Do you ever read the Westminster Gazette?⁹⁷³ Of course you will not find yourself in agreement with its political views, but it is so exceedingly restrained and sensible that I am sure you would like it, and its foreign politics seem to me admirable. The news from Tripoli is most appallingly [sic],⁹⁷⁴ and yet – though I have from the beginning thought the whole affair was most shameful or shameless and it is becoming worse and worse – all the same I feel all my sympathy nearly for the Italians. I cannot help wishing them to win now, though they certainly don't deserve to […] I was round to dinner with three Balliol men last night – Bourdillon, Walker and Chavasse and we had a very long and interesting talk afterwards – on the quite insoluble question of the priority of Mind to Matter or vice versa!! It is a rather fascinating one […] tomorrow McKinnon Wood my former tutor and N.T. Huxley whom I have mentioned before come to lunch. Huxley (grandson of the ‘monkey man’)⁹⁷⁵ got a brilliant 1st in Math. Mods, is now doing Greats and then going back to Math. Finals – rather a brilliant combination but he is a very able man […] All Souls this year went to two History men – no lawyer. Cruttwell of Queen's (son of Canon Cruttwell ??? […]) and Williams of Jesus. They were both firsts in Mods, Greats and History, and very good men. A man named Bernstein, a Galician (Austrian Polish) Jew of Balliol was prox. acc. (unannounced).⁹⁷⁶ He was to breakfast with us this morning.

I was very pleased to see that the Archbishop is being kept in decent order nowadays. How frightfully trying you must find him!⁹⁷⁷

Have you seen any of Seton-Watson's books on Austria-Hungary and the Slav question?⁹⁷⁸ I believe they are very good, and hope to get hold of them shortly. I am just finishing Freycinet's ‘Question d'Egypte’ at present. It is interesting. Freycinet was Prime Minister in 1882 and practically responsible for the break-down of the ‘Condominium’.⁹⁷⁹ He writes very nicely of the English but thinks that the ultimate grant of independence to Egypt should be the goal of their policy. I feel I must read a great deal more on the subject before opinionising on it […]

Letter 153 To his father, 27 December [1911], chez M. le Pasteur P. Longo, 50 Rue Gioffredo, Nice

[…] We had a very nice Christmas here – in fact the whole past week has been delightful. Practically every afternoon we take a short walk in some new place and with the weather uniformly good everything looks beautiful. Last Friday Canon Langford⁹⁸⁰ and Rex and I started early and went to Vence, an old town some 20 miles off – inland – perched on a hill for safety like all the old towns in southern France and surrounded with splendid old walls. Canon Langford knew it well and showed us lots of interesting old things – Roman and medieval […] We climbed up to an old building of the Templars above the town and got some wonderful views of the sea in the distance.⁹⁸¹

Rex and I spent Sunday afternoon at Villefranche which is on a most beautiful little bay about three miles off. In the morning I went to the English Church⁹⁸² at 8 and to the American⁹⁸³ at 10.30 while Rex went to hear M. Longo preach in the Temple Vaudois just by us⁹⁸⁴ […] In the evening the Longos (all except the Father who was very tired with his Sunday services and Christmas ones to follow next day) and Rex and Ian went off to a big soirée at the Hotel Suisse given by the proprietor, Hug, who is a very nice man,⁹⁸⁵ and whom Mr Balfour knows well⁹⁸⁶ […] It seems to have been a very great success. On Christmas Day we went off to the English Church at 8. In the afternoon we paid a call on Mrs Balfour and Lady Fairfax.⁹⁸⁷ As usual they were very nice indeed to us. We all think they are quite charming […] On Tuesday all three of us went off for a day's excursion with Canon Langford and another Englishman – quite young, Lincolnshire, very dull, rich, his people live here. We took the train to Monte Carlo and went up by funicular to La Turbie 1500 feet above from which you get a famous view stretching from Antibes to Ventimiglia with the renowned principality just below you. There was a gorgeous sunshine and simply a blaze of colour on sea and land […] From there we walked along the old Roman road which goes more inland than the Corniche⁹⁸⁸ and under Canon Langford's guidance discovered and deciphered four Roman milestones […] We walked down to La Trinité and from there back to Nice by tram.

Yesterday we three had a very good afternoon in Monaco, the town itself which is up on a high peninsula. We visited the Prince's Castle and the very beautiful simple Romanesque cathedral (modern) and had gorgeous views from the Promenade above the cliffs […]

Letter 154 To his father, 5 January 1912, chez M. le Pasteur P. Longo, 50 Rue Gioffredo, Nice

[…] We left Nice on Friday morning at 7 o'clock! by train to a place called Contes, and afterwards on foot for the rest of the day up to Peira Cava. It was only about 18 miles and on a splendid road, but we had quite heavy Rücksacks so it represents more energy than at first appears. It was a simply delightful walk as we started from sea level and gradually made our way up from vines and olives and eucalypti and the small maritime pines of the coast area to the huge forests of northern pines and firs, and after about 4,000 feet found ourselves among the snow. At Peira Cava itself the snow was quite thick and everything seemed quite Swiss and Alpine – rather a contrast to the country round Nice with its quaint old Italian villages with their muddy, white-washed houses perched on little hills covered with vines and olives rising in walled terraces and simply glowing in the sunshine. Peira Cava itself is merely a collection of a few chalets, one or two hotels and the barracks of one of the Alpine regiments of the French army (who like the Swiss and Italian troops are trained to carry out their manoeuvres in winter if necessary on skis). It is situated in splendid pine-woods and surrounded by an amphitheatre of snow-covered Alps, and in the distance (20 miles or more) you can just see the Mediterranean, and the coastline of the Cap d'Antibes. We arrived just in time for sunset which was as fine as any I had ever hoped to see […] For the remainder of the afternoon and evening we had a most amusing time, playing games and enjoying ourselves generally. It was great fun as we had the hotel, a very nice one, to ourselves and simply did what we liked. Our party consisted of Rex, Ian and me – the two Longos (Mlle Renée, Mlle Paola) and two of their friends, a M. Bonnel, who is a young Marseilles doctor, and his sister. They are really all – first three excepted – extremely nice and really most amusing and clever, though absolutely natural and not a bit the sort of very artificial type of person which is considered typically French. But at any rate our friends are either Italian or southern French and voilà la difference. They are ever so much more sincere and unaffected than the Parisian, and yet equally quick and amusing […] Ian and I – strange to say! – were the two first up next morning, at 6 […] At 8 we all left on our return journey. First we climbed for a few hundred feet through some splendid fir-woods, crossed the ‘col’ covered in thick snow and came down by a parallel good path into the parallel eastern valley of Moulinet and Sospel which is shut in on the east by the Alps that divide Italy from France and are covered with fortifications. It was a long way down but all the time we had a gorgeous view of snow mountains, and sunny valleys so it was delightful. We had lunch in a quaint old village – Moulinet – and from there struck the road which led us in about two and a half hours to Sospel which is practically on the Italian border. There we hired a voiture of the wagonette type which brought us after a simply charming drive of three hours to Menton where we had dinner and then returned by train to Nice […] All the way back the French and Italian members of the party sang – perfectly beautifully nice old French and Piedmontese songs – of the 16th century type. Naturally we were mute except to admire. But at last under compulsion Ian gave us the Merry Widow and Rex and I rendered The Wearing of the Green with such rich Irish brogues as to excite universal surprise. Then we all joined our voices in Yip-i-addy-i-ay⁹⁸⁹ and I venture to say never have such harmonies been heard as ours together with the rush of mountain-torrents and the tinkle of goat-bells […]

Letter 155 To his father, 12 January [1912], chez M. le Pasteur P. Longo, 50 Rue Gioffredo, Nice

[…] Rex says he has told Madre all about our doings up to Monday including our excursion on that day with Canon Langford, and Carr the assistant chaplain and his sister an insufferable suffragette to Ventimiglia and Mentone, and the very interesting time we had exploring the Palaeolithic remains of certain caves in which all the four known periods of Palaeolithic men are represented, the oldest – the Chelles⁹⁹⁰ or Neander Tal period going back according to some authorities to 200,000 B.C. – rather old-fashioned? They only have human bodies of the fourth – Madeleine period – perhaps 20–30,000 B.C.⁹⁹¹ […] Tuesday was unfortunately wet but Ian and Rex and I carried out our intention of going to the Ile St. Honorat, the furthest out to sea of the two islands off Cannes. Unfortunately we arrived at Cannes just too late for the small steamer which left at 10. It was drizzling quite steadily but we couldn't miss St. Honorat after coming so far, so we chartered a small fishing boat with two mariners – one of whom was styled the captain of the vessel – and half-sailed, half-rowed in 3/4 hours to the island. Luckily it was smooth! We all enjoyed ourselves most awfully chatting with and ragging the men, who were as full of spirits (non-alcoholic!) as Irishmen or southern French generally are – quite as quick as your fellow-countrymen but better educated and with more independent ideas. After lunch at a tiny restaurant on the island we set about exploring it under the charge of the mate who had been rather silent in the boat while M. le Capitaine had done the jesting but now became quite a conversationalist and wit. We were shown over the old monastery founded by St. Honorat in 410! by one of the (Cistercian) brethren, who since the French Revolution have replaced the original Benedictines […] Afterwards we saw a fine old 12th century castle built on the sea against the Saracens, and walked all round the island which was once covered with monastic buildings but now holds only these 41 Cistercians […] On the Wednesday afternoon we again went up to play tennis at Madame de Chevigny's⁹⁹² where we had played on Sunday afternoon. The same people – two desmoiselles de Contes were there, very nice amusing girls […]

Letter 156 To his father, 26 January [1912], 38 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

[…] I want to explain that I am actually giving up History Schools. I found a note here for me on Monday from Kenyon almost offering me the Assistantship I had wanted in the British Museum in the Egyptian and Assyrian department. I saw him on Wednesday and it seems quite possible that I may get in next June without examination. Whether there is an exam (it would be next July) or not however, I shall have to begin work at once on preparing for the Museum. Hebrew is the chief subject, and means hard work, and I should be examined as well in Egyptian history, Latin, Greek and German. All this means work. Under the circumstances, History Schools are out of the question. I do not regret it, as in the short space of time at my disposal I can get little good out of the work except a great deal of cram with a possible 1st, and A.L. Smith has been kind enough to promise me a testimonial in which he will say that I should probably have got one […] Going on with History would mean a plunge in the dark, and even if I got a 1st no certainty of anything, except a possible schoolmastership or Canadian or Colonial lectureship both of which I should dislike. The Museum gives you an interesting life with a chance of getting on and distinguishing yourself and mixing with most interesting men, English and foreign. I know that you think a university post is a finer and better one. It would however as I say be impossible for me to get a Fellowship here, nor in truth would I much care for an Oxford don's life. It is a very easy and comfortable one, but the atmosphere of it does not attract me, largely because I had not an exclusively English education. It is too all-absorbing and the dons are too much of the same type. Of course the routine of the Museum I shall probably loathe but I fancy it will be less distasteful than college routine except that the pay and vacs. are inferior. But in any case I think I should not have the faintest chance of an Oxford Fellowship as I lack the confidence in dons’ society as well as the qualifications of scholarship required (I don't mean, we are shy in general society: I don't think we are now at all, we enjoy going out – but the society of a common-room is appalling!) […]

Letter 157 To his stepmother, 2 February [1912], 38 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

We have been having what is very unusual in Oxford a week of heavy frost and quite brilliant sunshine with the result that all the flood-waters which have distributed themselves have frozen hard and everyone has been skating for days past. I haven't yet tried, but I mean to buy some skates today and have a try tomorrow morning. It seems quite worthwhile as the weather is so extraordinarily favourable and quite delightful, and there are so many places to skate on. We have had some quite low temperatures at Oxford such as 12° (20° of frost) a few nights ago and I fancy tonight will be much colder still […]

Letter 158 To his father, 15 March [1912], 38 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

[…] We went to tea with Dorothy last Saturday afternoon and talked Oxford shop: she is quite a nice little thing, but has got just a touch of that keenness about the University and all its work which feminine undergraduates (in Oxford they must always remain undergraduates)⁹⁹³ always display […] I saw the Master a few days ago: he was very nice, as he always is, – he is really a very nice man though rather a hermit to follow people like Jowett⁹⁹⁴ and Caird. He promised to try and get me a nomination from the Lord Chancellor⁹⁹⁵ to compete in the examination for the Assyrian Assistantship […] I am arranging work in Hebrew with C.F. Burney of St. John's who is very good at Semitic languages (he has edited ‘Kings’ for instance), Syriac, Aramaic etc. and is also Grinfield Lecturer on the Septuagint. He is quite a young man though already a D.Litt. […] On Wednesday Harvey who got a 1st in Greats last year and was staying up in Oxford with Sadler who is his cousin came to tea – I had last met him in Berlin where he spent three months in Tillys! Awful! He seems glad he did it but wouldn't go back!⁹⁹⁶ Hunter of New College came too and Ian. We know Hunter chiefly through tennis (he is President of the ’Varsity six) this year, but he is quite an interesting [man], rather reticent – reading Theology (his father is a well-known Scotch Nonconformist preacher in Glasgow but I think this man is going to take Orders in the Church of England) […] I will send you your 3/- in 1d. stamps – they are ugly things, aren't they? I'm afraid Mackennal was responsible for them⁹⁹⁷ – while the very much better-looking King Edwards were the work of a German named Fuchs⁹⁹⁸ […]

Letter 159 To his father, 18 Apr. [1912], Houghton

[…] The news of the total loss of the Titanic with two-thirds of the people on board is simply appalling.⁹⁹⁹ As yet it seems impossible to get any further news as to how the accident could ever have occurred. For a ship bound for New York to be wrecked by an iceberg seems extraordinary, and with such enormous loss of life. It must be dreadful for those with friends on board to be left waiting in such suspense.

The Home Rule Bill is extremely interesting and the discussions on it almost more so. I am not proposing however to launch out into a discussion of it now. Letters are too unsatisfactory. Possibly before it can come into force (September 1914) we may be able to talk it over together.¹⁰⁰⁰

I have just sent back Dolben's poems to Ian's aunt […] he lent them to me for a fortnight or so.¹⁰⁰¹ Some of them are really very beautiful. It is sad that he died so young, though I am doubtful whether he would have developed much more as he was preparing for a monastic life, whether Anglican or Roman, and his writing would probably have become monotonous in feeling. Bridges’ introduction shows however that he must have been a very lovable personality.

Rex has probably described our short stay in Cambridge. We had Hardinge's rooms (son of the Viceroy)¹⁰⁰² and were quite comfortable. But somehow none of us were very keen on Cambridge – it is not exactly that it is a copy of Oxford. It is another ideal I think and a much less inspiring one – more German in tone, more learned and less cultured, more exact and less imaginative. As a town it does not compare with Oxford, nor architecturally. Of course one always excepts King's Chapel where I went to hear Evensong: it was very beautiful though the anthem was a weak, wishy-washy thing. The other interesting thing in Cambridge is the Fitzwilliam Museum which has a really delightful picture gallery […]

Letter 160 To his father, 26 Apr. [1912], The Rectory, Houghton

[…] How terrible the loss of the Titanic was, and how frightful to think it might all have been avoided by proper precautions. The inquiry is showing up the laxness and carelessness of the arrangements made for the safety of those on board.

I read Lloyd George's speech last night.¹⁰⁰³ I disagree with his religion and his Church history, but I admire the former and I think the second though not a historian's view of history (contrast Freeman¹⁰⁰⁴) is, what is really more vital and valuable, a national view. In showing the unsuitability of Anglicanism to the Celtic races I thought him at his best. The Celt must have the fervour and religious rapture of a Catholicism or Protestantism: Anglicanism, or the religious expression (in popular sense) of English national life is quite unsuited for them. Though the disendowment of the poorer parishes of Wales seems very cruel it seems to me the only course, if religious bitterness is to be overcome in Wales. The Church's present position is not one that does her any good in the eyes of non-Churchmen. And just think of the splendid advantage of getting rid of patronage – and its iniquities […]

Letter 161 To his stepmother, 2 May [1912], The Rectory, Houghton

[…] Raymond¹⁰⁰⁵ went back to Haileybury today. I miss him very much. He is an exceedingly nice boy – very bright and sensible to talk to with lots of ideas, quite grown up in lots of ways and yet very fresh and full of go, though there is on top the usual Public School and ’Varsity pretence of slackness and nothing being worth doing – a very English pose […] Deep in ‘Morning Post's nowadays. I will avoid controversy, but I can say that I find the Home Rule discussions in the House extraordinarily interesting […] What silly young Radicals you must think us? However I'm not exactly an Anarchist, I can reassure on that point. According to Hilaire Belloc there is no difference except in name between a Liberal and a Tory, so do try and forgive us the folly of changing our names […] I feel I owe almost as much to my short stays abroad as to Oxford and that is saying an enormous lot […]

Letter 162 To his father, 9 May [1912], The Rectory, Houghton

[…] Today I am taking [Henry Kaspar] partly by bicycle partly by train to Northampton to see the Australians play Northants. The latter are a weakish side but I am afraid my continent's team is not particularly good itself. Certainly Notts. beat it very easily¹⁰⁰⁶ […] It must have been interesting to hear Amundsen.¹⁰⁰⁷ Do you think though that it is right to feel a patriotic grievance about Scott's failure to get there.¹⁰⁰⁸ Surely in such things we can all be citizens of the world, and whether the Pole has a Norwegian or English name doesn't matter much […]

Letter 163 To his stepmother, 16 May [1912], 28 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

[…] I got back on Monday afternoon very sorry to leave Houghton but on the other hand very keen to get back to Oxford to arrange for Semitic pedagogues to give me their kind and cheap help for the term. I have seen my two men – S. Langdon Ph.D. Shillito Reader in Assyriology – I think from Columbia University N.Y.C. (Carpenter's university) and the Rev. C.J. Burney D.Litt. who has promised me his continued assistance in the Jewish tongue. These two lingoes (a splendid rhyme for Jingoes and dingoes) will absorb all and more of the energies I can spare from Morning Post, Weekly (Australian) Mail, the German and other European speeches hereinbeforeabovementioned [sic] etc.

I think I told you Henry and I were going to Northampton: veni, vidi and if I may associate myself with Sydney Gregory and his followers vici in the ever-memorable struggle against the Northants foemen.¹⁰⁰⁹ Henry had never seen a match of our national pastime before, so he enjoyed the weirdness of it as much as I. It is a curious game cricket – a totally illogical and badly-contrived one really (Proof: No foreign nation has taken it up, although the French have decidedly surpassed England and Australasia at Lawn Tennis – as perhaps you know – and the Germans, Dutch, Hungarians and Belgians are quite our match at Rowing and Football). And yet to one of English (not British in this case ϽϹ¹⁰¹⁰ Scotland, Ireland and Wales) blood cricket is as fascinating as our charmingly illogical but at once beautiful and practical political and social and religious constitution. This is of course only written in fun (sic) as I shouldn't dream of being disrespectful to the British Constitution: I don't think it will crumble under my poor weak gibes […] I am reading ‘Pêcheur d'Islande’ at present¹⁰¹¹ – I agree with you that it is perfectly charming. He and Anatole France¹⁰¹² have a most extraordinarily delightful style in which English prose-writers are so completely and hopelessly deficient (Don't think I think style everything – Thomas Hardy has no style at all, nor H.G. Wells and they are perhaps bigger men than the two Frenchmen) […] for the last three or four years I have come to realise in complete ignorance how much the greatest of the Arts is Music.

As a result of going to chapel this morning (Ascension Day) I got an invitation to breakfast with the Chaplain, the first in four years – a nice man formerly a captain in the Bengal Lancers – but rather boring¹⁰¹³ […]

Letter 164 To his stepmother, 24 May [1912], 38 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

[…] The important news this week is about the British Museum. Rex really did very well indeed but the two men elected were brilliant Greek and Latin scholars and in this it was impossible for Rex (as it would be for me) to approach them. He really did excellently in French 89% (only 1% behind Waters who is Lecturer in French here) and very well in German. Of course it is a great disappointment to him but possibly on the whole it is a good thing as he was not certain whether he would have liked the life really. It may turn out to have been the best thing for him. Of course at present he is spending all his time debating possibilities of all kinds – Foreign Office, modern languages appointments, business, secretaryships etc. – I expect by next week there will be something to tell you […] I had a very good time in Cambridge last Saturday. The Pembroke team seemed to consist mainly of millionaires […]

Letter 165 To his stepmother, 7 June [1912], 38 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

[…] a small book that would interest you is, ‘The Future of Austria-Hungary’ by ‘Scotus Viator’ (Seton Watson) published by Constable 1907 – about 2/- I should think. Rex and I have just read it and have read something of his bigger book ‘Racial Problems in Hungary’ also very interesting¹⁰¹⁴ […] Greats began yesterday.¹⁰¹⁵ History next Thursday. Bryce and Sadler are back from Devonshire – Bryce is having a typist for his History Schools; his writing is well-nigh illegible […]

Letter 166 To his stepmother, 26 July [1912], 38 Woodstock Rd., Oxford

[…] I see a few men who are up for their vivas or doing special work. Two (Bernstein and Clarke¹⁰¹⁶) were here to tea on Monday: they are both in for the ‘All Sogger’ for which Bernstein was 3rd out of 20 last year.¹⁰¹⁷ I played a game of tennis yesterday for fun with two very nice but very bad Canadians (G.M. Smith and Sage) and A.L. Smith! A.L. is not exactly good – in fact appallingly bad but great fun to play with […]