Ninian: I don’t understand. Education is at the bottom of all the mischief; teaches the people discontent and damned little else. What does a working-man need to know except how to do an honest day’s work and watch his cricket or his football on a Saturday? As a landlord I regard my tenants as my children, and I know them well enough to know that good old English ale and good old English sport mean a damned sight more to them than cheap editions of the classics. Being educated above their station, that’s what they are.
Tim: That would not teach them much.
Ninian: I don’t know what you mean.
Selina: I have often heard you say yourself, Ninian, that the only thing a gentleman need learn is how to play the game—which, by the way, he ought to be born knowing.
Tim: In case of accidents there’s Eton.
Ninian: Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.
Selina: But Hamlet wasn’t written there.
Lord William: I always find it so difficult to write out of doors. However still the day, there’s always enough breeze to blow the paper about.
Ninian: I don’t see what that has to do with education.