“That young Mackenzie is a most undesirable man,” he said. “We made a great mistake when we elected him to a Fellowship.”
“Considering the degrees he took,” said Jackson. “A first in mathematics one year, a first in mechanical science the next, and a fellowship dissertation which appears to be the most valuable contribution ever made to the subject of engines for aeroplanes, I don’t see what else we could do. I regretted the necessity as much as you.”
“I refuse to admit the necessity,” said Butler. “As the greatest classical college of the University, what have we to do with aeroplanes? I hope it is not our business to further the exploitation of mechanical toys.”
Jackson assumed the “rostrum” again.
“I don’t altogether agree with you,” he said, “about their being mechanical toys. There may be something in them after all. But I do agree with you that the study and construction of them should be conducted at their proper place and not at a University. One of Mackenzie’s gliders, or so I think he calls them, came sailing in yesterday through the open window of my lecture-room, followed a moment afterwards by Mackenzie himself without a word of apology. I think, however, he caught my next sentence, ‘After this most unseemly interruption’.... He was meant to in any case. I had a good mind to chuck a Thucydides through the window of his lecture-room and see what he made of that.”
“He wouldn’t make much of Thucydides,” said Butler witheringly. “He said to me the other day that he thanked God he hadn’t wasted a minute of his life in learning Greek. Latin he appeared to have learned for his own amusement: he liked reading Horace, he told me.”
“Turning the classics into a mere hobby,” said Waters, “and reading, I make no doubt, without notes or a dictionary, much as you read a French novel.”
“Amazing!” said Jackson, with his head on one side. “And the worst of it all is that he seems to have got some sort of hold over the undergraduates which is altogether irregular and unseemly. They talk to him as if he was a slightly senior undergraduate himself. No sort of good can come out of such relationships. A don is a teacher, and an undergraduate is a learner. They must both keep their proper places or the whole University system is undermined.”
“That’s the danger in having young men as fellows,” said Alison, “who have no sense of their positions and dignity. There’s too much of that sort of thing. And it’s the same at other colleges.”
Jackson took up his cap and gown.