Part 32 (1/2)

JOWETT (guardedly): ”Oh, indeed! I will take you to see her and then you can ask her about all this”

MARGOT: ”I should love that! But perhaps she would not care for me”

JOWETT: ”I do not think she will care for you, but would you mind that?”

MARGOT: ”Oh, not at all! I am quite unfemnine in those ways When people leave the room, I don't say to myself, ”I wonder if they like me,” but, ”I wonder if I like them”

This made an impression on the Master, or I should not have remembered it Soale in her house in South Street Groups of hospital nurses aiting outside in the hall to see her When ent in I noted her fine, handso on a sofa, with a white shawl round her shoulders and, after shaking hands with her, the Master and I sat down She pointed to the beautiful Rich above her mantelpiece, and said to e Pembroke, the son of my old and dear friend, is devoted to you Will you tell me what he is like?”

I described Lord Pembroke, while Jowett sat in stony silence till we left the house

One day, a fewin the vicinity of Oxford with the Master and I said to him:

”You never speak of your relations to me and you never tell ; I have told you so much about myself!”

JOWETT: ”Have you ever heard that I was in love with any one?”

I did not like to tell hiale, I had heard that he had wanted to marry her, so I said:

”Yes, I have been told you were in love once”

JOWETT: ”Only once?”

MARGOT: ”Yes”

Complete silence fell upon us after this: I broke it at last by saying:

”What was your lady-love like, dear Master?”

JOWETT: ”Violentvery violent”

After this disconcerting description, we drove back to Balliol

Mrs Humphry Ward's novel ”Robert Elsmere” had just been published and was dedicated to my sister Laura and Thomas Hill Green, Jowett's rival in Oxford This is what the Master wrote to me about it:

Nov 28, 1888

DEAR MISS TENNANT,

I have just finished exareat institution of which you may possibly have heard To what shall I liken it? It is not unlike a net, and when it is full of fish, pulling it up again and taking out fishes, good, bad and indifferent, and throwing the bad and indifferent back again into the sea Aood fish there have been Archbishop Tait, Dean Stanley, A H Clough, Mr

Arnold, Lord Coleridge, Lord Justice Bowen, Mr Ilbert, &c, &c, &c The institution was founded about sixty years ago

I have been dining alone rather disine that I receive a visit froe, who enlivens el?

But I believe that she is an angel, pale, volatile and like Laodamia in Wordsworth, ready to disappear at a moment's notice I could write a description of her, but am not sure that I could do her justice

I wish that I could say anything to coh But no one can comfort another The memory of a beautiful character is ”a joy for ever,” especially of one as bound to you in ties of perfect amity I sahat your sister [Footnote: Mrs Gordon Duff] was from two short conversations which I had with her, and from the manner in which she was spoken of at Davos

I send you the book [Footnote: Plato's Republic] which I spoke of, though I hardly knohether it is an appropriate present; at any rate I do not expect you to read it It has taken reat interest of it is that it belongs to a different age of the human mind, in which there is so much like and also unlike ourselves Many of our coht out for the first tiinal this book is the most perfect work of art in the world I wonder whether it will have anyor interest for you