‘Mr. Slow does not intend to go to London.’
Years afterwards, he read in the Daily Mail that the Italian repulse by the Germans had been prepared for by a previous penetration of the villages behind the lines by Germans who had learnt the North Italian patois from gramophone records. He cut this report out of the paper, and carried it for months in his pocket, to show to every one he met how far-sighted he had been.
Slow believed in a Freemasonry among poets, and thought that they should always be ready to exchange their works one with another. He wrote to Lord Tennyson telling him this, and enclosing a copy of his ‘Wiltshire Rhymes’, and he was very proud when a copy of the Poet Laureate’s poems came in return; and in the train he could always find out when a fellow passenger was a writer, and would get into conversation and arrange an exchange of ‘Works’.
Slow’s Wilton patriotism was his strongest emotion. His ‘Wilton Chronology’contained every important Wilton date from the earliest Saxon records to the last conversazione given by the Mayor in the town hall. Red-letter days in his life were the dates of the bestowal of the ‘ ancient Borough’s’ new Charter, or the opening of the new cemetery. Those events excited his deepest emotions. Cemeteries were always favourite spots for Slow, who said that when he visited a new place, his first walk was always to its cemetery. He liked to learn the names on the gravestones.
When his carriage-building days were over, Slow retired to a villa he had built for himself and had called ‘ Ellandune’, which he believed to be the original name of Wilton. Here he collected and read books on local history; and on Wednesdays he repaired to Wilton House to act as guide to visitors. Slow had no æsthetic sensibility, but he knew about the pictures because they had been collected by Earls of Pembroke, and were among the prides of ‘our little Borough’. Though the visitors must have been puzzled by his idiom, the personality of their guide would make them realise that at Wilton they were in the heart of the Wessex of King Alfred.
Chapter Twelve
OXFORD
It was a surprise to me to find myself at Oxford as a student of St. Hugh’s Hall. My ‘home-keeping youth’ had not till then seemed to tend in any such direction. Only episcopal pressure could have landed me on this unexpected shore. The present Archbishop of Canterbury gave the first gentle impetus. He was not then even a bishop, but as Mr. Lang, he once gave some University Extension Lectures on History at Salisbury, and I went to them with my governess Miss Hocker. These were followed by the one really proud moment in my life. After the lectures, there was an examination, and Miss Hocker and I both entered for it. Only two names appeared in the first class—hers and mine. Then Mr. Lang said that I ought to read for History Honours at Oxford. Thus the seed was planted, but it lay dormant for some years more. Then Bishop Wordsworth stepped in. In memory of his first wife, he endowed a scholarship to be held at one of the Oxford Women’s Colleges, and he put pressure on my father to allow me to enter for it the first time it was awarded. Papa consented, being convinced that I had no chance of winning it. So was I. But I unexpectedly did. Then there was the circumstance that the Head of St. Hugh’s was Miss Moberly, a cousin of my mother’s, and the daughter of yet another Bishop of Salisbury. Though now a ‘Scholar’, I had not passed Smalls, or any equivalent entrance examination. I knew no Euclid or Algebra, and my only Latin had been taught me by my mother, who knew enough to get my brothers into their private schools. I quickly had some lessons in mathematics from an old schoolmaster in Salisbury and I rubbed up my Latin; but I had to take my University entrance examination at the end of my first term at St. Hugh’s. Thus unprepared, I embarked on a University career.
Only one of my fellow-students had, like myself, been educated at home. She was a Scotch girl, and she took to me from the first because she found that I knew how to pronounce the name ‘Menzies’. This was my only social success in that first term, and with most of the students I was not popular.
The women’s colleges of those days must have been rather like the upper forms in girls’ schools, and they had the same laws of etiquette. Of these I was not only ignorant, but I was unaware that they even existed. I went to Oxford thinking that college life was merely a rather cabined edition of ordinary social life, and I blundered badly, not knowing that I was blundering at all. On one occasion, I should have known better, and perhaps I did.
A week or two after I arrived, the Hall gave a party to the students of Lady Margaret Hall next door. The entertainment was to be an extemporized play with rather a large company, and when we met to rehearse it, I found myself in my element. I was used to acting, so I took charge of the rehearsal, planned the scenes, allotted the parts, and told everybody what to do. I was quite unaware of the fact that I had taken too much upon myself, and that the other performers saw that I needed a lesson. Everything seemed to me to be going very well, and then came the night of the party. The guests arrived, and I went to the
