Part 12 (1/2)
Young men, however, do not make excuses, and, as I have said, I was inclined to be hteous over stories of the Master's ”love of a lord”
The feeling which I engendered in the minds of the rest of the Balliol Dons differed very little from that entertained by the Master I can say truthfully that I never received a word of encouragement, of kindly direction, or of syard toelse The only exception was Mr A L Smith The reason, I now feel sure, was that they believed that to take notice of ined I should have been rude or surly, or have atte of a record, and so worthy of note
If I had been at a public school and had learned there to understand the ways of teachers and masters, as the public-school boy learns to understand them, as an old fox learns to understand the cry of the hounds and of the huntsood tere As it was, I misunderstood them quite as much as they misunderstood me Each of us was unable to handle the other Yet I think, on a balance of accounts, I had a little , very ie or experience of institutional social life
They, on the other hand, e of the exceptional boy who had not been at a public school Therefore they should quite easily have been able to adjust their minds to my case
They should not have allowed themselves to assume that the ”uppishness”
was due to want of that huhtly expected in their pupils
Curiously enough, raduate contemporaries at Balliol were farsomebody who had not been at a public school They appeared to have no prejudices against the homebred boy I was never made in the least to feel that there was any bar or barrier between me and my fellow-freshmen As proof of this, I may point to the fact that every one of my intimate friends at Balliol were public-school boys I have no doubt I was considered odd by most of my contemporaries, but this oddness, and also my inability to play football or cricket, never seemed to create, as far as I could see, any prejudice Indeed, I think that h from convention to be amused and interested by a companion as not built up in accordance with the sealed pattern
In spite of the Dons, about whohed twice for Mods, sent down froe, made to become an unattached student, and only reinstated at Balliol after I had got through Mods, and was guaranteed to be going to do well in the History Schools, I can say with absolute truth that I was never anything but supreht almost say deliriously happy
I may interpolate here that when I went back to Balliol afterthat the Master said, on reade is only taking you back, Mr Strachey, because your history tutor says that you are likely to get a First” I was appropriately shocked at this, for I had becoood many people in the University as simply a hunter for Firsts, a Head who did not care e, or how theiras they caed, that is, to take a tradesibe I naturally found soothing, for I was able to ih not as a winner of a First
Incidentally, also, though I did not acknowledge it to myself, I think I was a little hurt by the Master's want of what I ht call humanity, or at any rate courtesy in his treatment of the shorn lamb of Moderations
However, I have not the least doubt that he thought he was stiood This, indeed, was his constantexcept, possibly, be able to write light trifles for theto do in life I told hio to the Bar, which was then my intention To this he replied oracularly, ”I should have thought you would have done better in diplomacy”
That tickled enious attempt which I had made a day or two before to prove how et off three days before Collections and so obtain another whole week in the bosom ofthe recalcitrant portions of the College through sarcas it as a whole, however, I felt then, as I feel now, that sarcasht or useful to use in the case of persons who are in the dependent position when compared with the wielder of the sarcastic rapier;--persons _in statu pupillari,_ persons er than oneself, persons in one's employment, or, finally, members of one's own family Sarcasm should be reserved for one's equals, or, still better, for one's superiors The man who is treated with sarcasm, if he cannot answer back either because it is true, or he is stupid, or he is afraid to counter-attack a superior, is filled, and naturally filled, with a sense of burning indignation He feels he has had a cruel wrong done to him and is in no mood to be converted to better courses
That to which his etting even with his tormentor The words that burn or rankle or corrode are not the words to stiadfly of the State and stung that noble aniish old coach-horse is not necessarily good for a thoroughbred colt with a thin skin
To return toabout Oxford while I lived there
Instinctively I seem to have realised what I careat thing that one gets at a University is what Bagehot called the ”ih there must be exa, nothing of all this matters a jot in comparison with the association of youth with youth and the coer spirits I have lived ht themselves masters of dialectic, but I can say truthfully that I have never heard such good talk as in my own rooms and in the rooms of my contemporaries at Oxford There, and there only, have I seen practised what Dr Johnson believed to be an essential to good talk, the ability to stretch one's legs and have one's talk out ItJohn Wesley as a talker, sadly adreat qualities in this respect were all marred because Wesley was always in a hurry, always had so business in hand which cut hiraduate never has to catch a train, never has an editor or a printer waiting for him, never has an appointment which he cannot cut, never, in effect, has money to make He comes, indeed, nearer than anybody else on earth to the hellenic ideal of the good citizen, of the free ht with his friends, he talks The idea of his sparing hi for Mr Jones's lecture never enters his head for a e with a couple of friends is thein the world Inabout landscape to the principles the Romans would have taken as the basis of actuarial tables, if they had had them We unsphered Plato, we speculated as to what Euripides would have thought of Henry Ja, and felt that it was of vital import to decide theseto o on, indeed, I ah to become as much disliked by the readers of the present day as I was by the Oxford Dons of forty years ago
I could fill this book with stories of my life at Oxford, of its enchantment, of my friendshi+ps, of my walks and rides and ofa professional athlete, I had tiht also to recall, Mackail, Spring Rice (our Aton), Rennell Rodd, Nicolls, and a dozen others But space forbids I can only quote Shenstone's delightful verses on Oxford, in his _Ode to Memory_, verses which I have quoted a hundred times:
And sketch with care the Muses' bow'r, Where Isis rolls her silver tide, Nor yet omit one reed or flow'r That shi+nes on Cherwell's verdant side, If so thou
The song it Vails not to recite-- But, sure, to soothe our youthful dreaht Than other banks, than other strea pencil shown, assume they beauties not their own?
And paint that sweetly vacant scene When, all beneath the poplar bough, My spirits light, my soul serene, I breathed in verse one cordial vow That nothing should my soul inspire But friendshi+p warm and love entire
I do not mean to inflict upon my readers the tiresome record of my failure to pass Moderations, or the description of how I did eventually get through by a process which calish translations of Xenophon's _Memorabilia_, a portion of Livy's History, and Horace's Epistles To do so would be both long and tedious The circumstances have, however, a certain interest considered from one point of view, and that is the use and misuse of the classics for educational purposes
CHAPTER XI
A CLassICAL EDUCATION
Though I made such a hash of classical studies and was apparently so impermeable to Latin and Greek literature, I am not one of those people who are prepared to damn the Greek and Latin classics, either with faint praise or with a strenuous invective I ale copy of _The Times_ is worth the whole of Thucydides, or to ask, as did the late Mr Carnegie, what use Horess I believe that in all the things of the soul and the mind the stimulus of the Greek spirit is of the utmost value The Romans, no doubt, excelled the Greeks on the practical side of law--though not in the pure jurisprudential spirit