[13] The late Sir Edward Cook once did me the honour to quote the words of one of my own characters: "I am tempted to wonder whether it much matters what a man be taught, so long as he meet enough men who have been taught something else." Therein lies the difference between university education and all other kinds.
[14] It is hardly possible to think of Oxford in those years without thinking of the second volume of Sinister Street and of the great picture in which Compton Mackenzie's observation, memory and delicate realization of atmosphere were so triumphantly blended. At the House we had, no doubt, a stereotyped conception of the "typical" New College man; Balliol, no doubt, had its conventional idea of the average St. John's man; it was left to Compton Mackenzie to shew, from the angle of Magdalen, the reaction of the Exeter "type" on the imagination of Univ. The book is confined within the limits which Oxford of necessity imposes on herself as the theme or background of a novel; Oxford is a phase through which youth passes, a kingdom wherein it tarries, a hive where it grows and works towards maturity; it is not generally a scene of romance, of spiritual crisis or emotional clash; and, because most novels on Oxford persist in forcing drama into the least dramatic lives, they stand condemned as psychological confusions. It is a kingdom of youth because youth is made comfortably secure from the material conflicts of conventional drama; and youth, however intensely interested in itself, does not regard its spiritual conflicts seriously, it no longer agonizes in doubt nor wrestles in prayer, and, if it fall in love, ecstacy will disturb its digestion as little as despair will derange its slumbers. And the novelist of Oxford who writes with perspective and a sense of the appropriate must treat his material as youth awakening but not yet awake and as youth snugly protected from reality.
For this reason and under these limitations, all women, all men who do not know Oxford and even the men who do will, in that order, be prudently advised to leave Oxford alone; after Sinister Street, with its analysis and atmosphere, its restraint and its consummate handling of countless figures on a giant canvas, there is no room for a book conceived on similar lines or scale; the novelist must force upon Oxford something which Oxford disowns or he may turn disgustedly away from a place where innumerable people talk and think endlessly about something that does not matter to any one else and where nothing ever happens.
[15] The House went head of the river in 1907 and remained there for the rest of my time, an achievement to be periodically celebrated with a triumphant bump-supper, fire-works and a bonfire which once afforded to some an opportunity of venting their displeasure on the Oxford Pageant stands.
[16] Mark Twain was the recipient of an honorary degree in these years, and the welcome accorded him was characteristic. By an unhappy coincidence certain news-bills had appeared with the words: "ARRIVAL OF MARK TWAIN IN ENGLAND. THEFT OF ASCOT GOLD CUP." Before he was allowed to take his degree, an untiring undergraduate chorus demanded to know: "Now, Mark, what did you do with the Gold Cup?" His reply I never heard; it was probably adequate, though occasionally he met his match in repartee. Once when he was staying in England as a young man, the income-tax authorities sent him an assessment form which he referred to Queen Victoria with the statement that he had not the honour to be one of her subjects; she must forgive his writing to her, because, though he did not know her, he had once had the pleasure of meeting her son. "He," said Mark Twain, "was driving in his coach of state to St. Paul's, and I was on the top of a 'bus." Many years later, when he returned to England in his glory, he was presented to King Edward who said that he was glad to meet him again. "Again, sir?" echoed Mark Twain. "Have you forgotten our first meeting?" asked the king. "I was in my coach of state, driving to St. Paul's, and you were on the top of a 'bus."
[17] Lord Wolmer, the late W. G. C. Gladstone and the late Francis McLaren are the only exceptions that I recall in my own time.
[18] The phrase is borrowed from my friend, Walter Roch.
[19] The parliament which ultimately conceded the vote was substantially the same that had refused it in 1913; its "mandate" was still primarily for the parliament bill and the bills covered by that; but the war changed, with other things, the responsibility of a member to his constituents and the new franchise was granted by men with no more authority to grant it than to abolish the monarchy or to make marriage compulsory.
[20] The name applied to themselves by members of a party which is Scottish in origin and which has, in the course of history, repudiated its allegiance to the Catholic Church and the Stuart dynasty and threatened to repudiate its allegiance to the Hanoverian dynasty.
[21] These quotations are taken from Mr. Hugh Martin's Ireland in Insurrection.