“But you don’t. You confessed just now that you didn’t”
“I know that—he was a chap with the mug and the pug of a pugilist. They’ve made him a bishop since—a sort of bishop.”
“A sort of bishop, Mr. Wingfield?”
“This one was made Metropolitan of the Salamander Archipelago. His see was in the sea—that was the joke made at the time. Anyhow, I asked him on what philological grounds he called the University the Varsity. I added that I came to Oxford to be educated, but I didn’t think that the people who shirked the correct pronunciation of the name of the very institution itself, but adopted the vulgarest that could be imagined and clung to it in spite of all correction, could say that they were earning their money honestly.”
“You said that to a don?”
“To that effect. You see he had been cheeking me like ribbons about something else.”
“And so they sent you down for your independence of thought?”
“Well, there was a bit of a scrap over the Varsity question. I got up a faction who had pledged themselves to call the place the University, and in our zeal for the truth we insulted the Varsity faction. They replied with counter-insults that took the form of pieces of brick aimed at our windows; we replied with pieces of stone and a few tins of ready-made paint that I had picked up seeing them go for next to nothing at a sale. It was that paint that did it. The paint was traced to me, and so I was the one to be sacrificed on the altar of pure pronunciation of the English language as opposed to the Oxford manner.”
“Well, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are a martyr to your own opinions, and that your opinions were right.”
“Yes, but though we hear that a great cause has its foundations cemented by the blood of martyrs, yet it didn’t turn out that way when I was the martyr; they went back to the old vulgarity of Varsity in a moment. There was not one there to pass on the blazing torch of pure English which I had lighted for them.”