Ch. Ch., May 14, 1868.
One of the most frightful accidents I have ever known took place here last night. A man called Marriott, whom I knew well, one of the sporting set (he rode my horse in a steeplechase only last term), fell out of the top windows of Peckwater, and died in about half an hour. You may conceive what a state Ch. Ch. is in.... Mr. Capel is coming next Wednesday, and I am sure his visit will do good. Indeed I think this opportunity an admirable one, when the sight of death has awakened many from the dream of sensuality in which they habitually lie asleep.
A letter to the same correspondent next day gives a curious picture of the state of feeling at the House:
Ch. Ch., May 15, 1868.
Another fatal accident! What days we are living in. Yesterday afternoon some undergraduates were shooting crows with saloon pistols about Magdalen Walks, when one of them got shot through the stomach and died almost at once. He was an Exeter man.
We are all in black and white at the House, and very sad and depressed. Last night a number of us dined at the "Mitre," so as to keep away from the House. It was a strange meal—much noisy talk and a good deal drunk, but every now and then came long miserable pauses, and talk about Marriott in low, frightened tones. Afterwards they came down to my rooms for coffee, and as we sat here we could hear the passing bell tolling from St. Aldate's. Some, almost in desperation, rushed off to the billiard-room and played pool in a gloomy sort of way. It was anything to keep away out of the House. I assure you the gloom and misery of it all are excessive. I hear men saying that they simply dare not die.
I do feel that Mr. Capel will find men here not unprepared to listen to him. Left to themselves, they are evidently making desperate efforts to forget it all....
I had seen him lying in the ground-floor room where he died—totally unconscious, and breathing with great difficulty. The Senior Censor came in when I was there, and read over him the prayers for the dying. This was the very clergyman who told me a few months ago that he did not believe in prayer.... I went into the room again after the men had gone to the billiard-room. It was the room of a friend of his: the walls covered with pictures of horses and actresses, and whips and spurs and pipes. The body lay on a mattress on the floor, covered with a sheet. It was all dreadful, and I tried in vain in that room to say a De Profundis for him. As I went out I met men coming in carrying the coffin.