For example, one evening he was sitting with a girl on his knee, and had just read to her these enchanting lines in which he speaks of hearing the cuckoo call.
Inmemorison (gruffly and suddenly): What bird says cuckoo?
Girl (with extreme nervous agitation): The rabbit.
Inmemorison: No, you fool—it’s the nightingale.
The girl burst into tears and said she would not play any more. I think she was wrong. Whenever I hear any criticism of myself I always take it meekly and gently, whether it is right or wrong—it has never been right yet—and try to see if I cannot learn something from it. What the girl should have said was: “Now it’s your turn to go out, and we’ll think of something.”
Another occasion when Inmemorison was perhaps more pardonably annoyed was when a young undergraduate asked him to read out one of his poems.
“Which?” said Inmemorison.
I am told that the thirty seconds of absolute silence which followed this question seemed like an eternity, and that the agony on the young man’s face was Aeschylean. He did not know any precise answer to the question.
“Which?” repeated Inmemorison, like the booming of a great bell at a young man’s funeral.