To the great satisfaction of the whole University, Mr. Gladstone most generously consented to give the first lecture, which consent he signified in the following letter:
Grand Hotel. Biarritz: December 18, 1891.
Dear Mr. Romanes,—Until I received your kind letter I reposed undoubtingly in the belief that the Vice-Chancellor had accepted my answer as the answer which best met the case.[94] I thought and think it right, for no one knows my poverty except myself. But Oxford is Oxford, and I think that if she desired me to climb up the spire of Salisbury, I should attempt it, or play the Græculus esuriens in any manner she desired. Your letter opens to me unexpectedly the fact that there is a desire, and that the proposal was not simply a courtesy.
I therefore thankfully and respectfully accept; secretly relying a good deal, as I own, on the fact that there is (if I recollect the V.C.'s letter rightly) a good deal of time before me, and that the chances of intermediate reflection may bring up something to the surface which is not now there, for I own my perplexity continues as to the chance of making any presentation not wholly worthless. But enough of this: and let me thank you very much for the interest you, who have so high a title, have personally taken in bringing me to the front.
We are much delighted with this place; more eminently, I think, a sea place than any other I happen to know.
I am sure, let me add, that you will make my apologies to the Vice-Chancellor; for I am sensible that the altered reply may seem less than respectful to the resident Head of the University.
Believe me, most faithfully yours,
W. E. Gladstone.
It had been arranged that the lectures (which the University, rather against the Founder's wish, decided should be called the 'Romanes Lectures') were to be given in the Trinity Term, but owing to the General Election of 1891, Mr. Gladstone postponed the delivery of his inaugural lecture until October 1892.
Journal, March 1892.—The Comptons have been here for Norman's baptism, which was a strikingly pretty ceremony in cathedral at evening service with the choir. Our Dean and the President of Magdalen, as well as Lady Compton, stood sponsors, so the boy is well provided. The students at St. Hugh's Hall decorated the font, and as the boy's second name is Hugh, he is a special protégé of the little Hall.