After staying at Heidelberg for about a week I went back to London, and the routine of Garrick Chambers began once more.
CHAPTER IX
OXFORD AND GERMANY
The time soon came when I had to go up for my first examination, and before it there was a period of intensive cramming. I had scores of teachers, and spent hour after hour taking private lessons in Latin, German, shorthand, and arithmetic. A great deal of this cramming was quite unnecessary, as it did not really touch the vital necessities of the examination. I read a great deal of German; all Mommsen, a great deal of French, and all Renan; but literary French and German were not what was needed; long lists of technical words were far more necessary. The clichés of political leader-writers; the German for a belligerent, and the French for a Committee on Supply; an accurate knowledge of where the manufacturing cities of England were situated, and the solution of problems about one tap filling a bath half again as quickly as another emptied it. I spent a great deal of time, but not enough as it turned out, making lists of obscure technical words. I learnt the Latin for prize-money, which I was told was a useful word for “prose,” but unfortunately the word prize-money did not occur in the Latin translation paper. The word is manubiæ. I am glad to know it. It is indeed unforgettable.
We were examined orally in French, German, and in Italian. When I was confronted with the German examiner, the first thing he asked me was whether I could speak German. I was foolishly modest and answered: “Ein wenig” (“A little”). “Very well,” he said, “it will be for another time.” I made up my mind that next time I went up I would say I spoke German as well as Bismarck, and wrote it better than Goethe.
I kept my resolution the last time I went up for the examination, and it was crowned with success.
Here is one of the arithmetic questions from the examination paper set in 1894:
“What vulgar fraction expresses the ratio of 17½ square yards to half an acre?” (I am told this is an easy sum.)