[[14]] The truth underlying the last sentence of this delectable report is that some of the wilder rioters chucked the Secretary of the Pageant's desk (containing all his papers) into the Cherwell; but it was rescued so speedily by two of their more sober comrades that no harm was done.
[[15]] This particular episode was really regarded by many people as almost an outrage; and an article called "A Blot on the Pageant," which I devoted to it in a weekly review, elicited many expressions of sympathy and approval in Oxford and elsewhere.
[[16]] The Master of the Oxford Pageant, to whom I protested emphatically against the scandalous caricatures of the Benedictines of Abingdon, calmly told me that the British public looked on a monk as a comic kind of creature, and would think itself defrauded unless he were so represented!
[[17]] The lines (vv. 824-826):
[Greek: échousa ... tàn phrygian xénan
tàn, chissòs ôs atenês,
petraía blasta davasen]
seemed to strike the good lady particularly—the sound, that is, not the sense of them. "Kisson——blast her—d—n her! Dear me!" she remarked; "what language, to be sure! I had no idea that Antigone [pronounced Antigoan] was that kind of young person!"
[[18]] The Rev. R. H. Benson died on October 19, 1914.