Ronald Knox - Let Dons Delight: Being Variations on a Theme in an Oxford Common Room

Knox, Ronald Arbuthnott, 1888-1957

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TRENT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

LET DONS DELIGHT

BEING

VARIATIONS ON A THEME IN AN OXFORD COMMON-ROOM

BY

Plus cest la me me chose, plus ga change. Remark still waiting to be made by someone.

LONDON

1939

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY PURNELL AND SONS, LTD. PAULTON, SOMERSET AND LONDON

FIRST PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1939 BY SHEED AND WARD, LTD.

FROM 31 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.4

To

All this IV2ste of Time

Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/letdonsdelightbeOOOOknox

CHAPTER

I.

n.

hi.

IV.

v.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

In Which I Drop Off

Hannibal Ad Portas : 1588 Notes on Chapter II,

from Anthony a Wood and Bishop Challoner.

Cakes and Ale : 1638 .

Notes on Chapter III, from Anthony a Wood.

The Pigeons Flutter: 1688 Notes on Chapter IV,

from Thomas Hearnes Diaries.

Lost Causes : 1738 Note on Chapter V,

from Boswells Life of Johnson.

The Unchanging World : 1788 Note on Chapter VI,

from the Edinburgh Review.

False Dawn: 1838 Note on Chapter VII,

from Mark Pattisons Memoirs.

A Rear-guard Action: 1888 Note on Chapter VIII, can it be Mr. Nicolson ?

In Which I Wake Up .

Chaos : 1938 ....

vii

PAGE

I

U

hi

M5

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I DROP OFF

It was said in my hearing, over dinner at All Souls: How curious it would be if the Day of Judgement came at a quarter to eight on a Sunday evening, to find all the dons carousing in Hall, and all their wives eating cold shape at home. It is doubtful whether, in the general disturbance of values, this act of culinary infidelity would over-burden the most scrupulous conscience. But the observation on Oxford manners is certainly an accurate one ; nor is it only the fear of that questionable shape which drives the learned men back to the haunts of their bachelordom. Sunday night, when there are no cinemas open; Sunday night, when so many former undergraduates have come up for the week-end, with mature views on banking, or hair-raising rumours from the Foreign Office; Sunday night, when it is still fashionable to edify the junior members of the College by looking as if you had been to Chapela hundred considerations combine to make it guest-night everywhere. This is all very well, except for hangers-on of the academic world like myself, who have other fish to fry on most evenings, and can only afford to breathe the pure serene of Common-room on this one day of the

week. How are we to sample, when the rare invitation comes our way, the flesh-pots of other foundations, without guiltily absenting ourselves from the familiar company of Trinity (or wherever it may be) ? I am not, for this reason, much of a diner-out; but when, the other day, a friend asked me to dine with him at Simon Magus, I could not resist the allurement. Who could resist the port of Simon Magas, whether it be considered as an end in itself, or as a means to an endthat is, to the brilliant flow of soul for which the College is equally famous ?

Simon Magus occupies, for many reasons, a unique position in the University. It is the only foundation, unless you count the finishing-off of Christ Church, which dates between the dissolution of the monasteries and the death of the eighth Henry. It is the only one, unless you count the later and less fortunate experiment of Keble, which is built, as to its main portion, in red brick; the only come-back we have to the Cambridge man who boasts to us of the mellow glories of Queens. And the accident of birth which is perpetuated in its architecture was reflected in its early history. It had no remote memories which could chain it, however tenuously, to the ages of faith when the Popes word ran in England just as it did elsewhere ; nor was it, like Jesus, bound up with the nascent fortunes of Protestantism; nor yet, like Trinity and St. Johns, did it represent a deliberate effort to hark back to the older order of things, made in the brief years of Queen Mary. A man of the new nobility, Sir Piers Collett, founded it with

IN WHICH I DROP OFF 3

the ill-gotten gains he had derived from the looting of various Yorkshire monasteries; induced thereto by the proverbial bad luck which followed (in his case) with a swift blow of retribution. In memory of his two sons, who died from wounds inflicted on one another in a fatal brawl, he instituted at Oxford what was meant, evidently, to be an old-fashioned chantry foundation, but was governed by statutes prudently designed to advertize the New Learning. So exactly did it represent the spirit of its age, that the changes of religion which followed left little mark upon it. By the time Queen Elizabeth came to the throne it was, like England in general, halting between two opinions; accessible to Puritan influences, yet ready on the least provocation to go back to old ways which memory recalled, and loyalty had abandoned with reluctance.