H. P. Grice: "Only the poor learn at Oxford"

H. P. Grice: "Only the poor learn at Oxford" 

Despite a formidable outlay of intellect, Oxford failed to make me really studious. The old witticism, 'only the poor  learn at Oxford,’ had long since ceased to have any meaning.  However, even in my time there were still a few men to whom graduation meant little more than the satisfaction of having passed the examinations and was not a prerequisite to the comfortable futures that, barring family financial disasters, they had good reason to look forward to. For relaxation I have always preferred outdoor exercise to reading. And, ever since I can remember, it has been from people rather than from textbooks that I have got my education. So it was not only to save his venerable institution from one day being blamed for the absence of intellectual qualities in the Heir Apparent but also as a shrewd judge of character that President Warren published after I had left Oxford a generous but somewhat apologetic report upon my progress: “Bookish he will never be: not a 'Beauclerk,’ still less a ‘British Solomon,’ ” he warned, adding, however, . . all the time he was learning more and more every day of men, gauging character, watching its play, getting to know what Englishmen are like, both individually and still more in the mass. . . If by “learning ... of men” President Warren had in mind that along with English literature, modern languages, and constitutional law there was a bright leavening of all forms of amusement, Oxford certainly lived up to its reputation as a teacher. I was initiated into the more sophisticated pleasures of carousing and even indulged in mild games of roulette. The stakes were not high, but the conspiratorial atmosphere in which these games of chance were conducted added to the excitement* In this ’way I got to know some young men whose upbringing had been a good deal less strict than mine. There were plenty of excuses for celebration. If the College Eight had “bumped” itself to “head of the river” on the Isis, the Oxford stretch of the Thames, during Eights Week, the feat would be celebrated with ia festive “bump supper” in “Hall” that would climax with a bonfire inside the walks, fed with furniture tossed out of the rooms of undergraduates who had incurred their classmates’ displeasure. Twenty-first birthdays by custom called for a party, and, eventually, the carrying out of those who could no longer walk by those who thought they could. And on Sunday evenings after dinner in “Hall” everybody who counted for something repaired to ‘"Gunner’s,” a musty little taproom at the foot of the stairway leading to the Junior Common Room, where Gunstone, the steward, a plump, red-faced, bald-headed old-timer, dispensed beer and other drinks. There with mounting enjoyment we listened to his rough stories and never left until he had performed his famous banana trick-inserting a banana in the neck of a bottle filled with burning paper and watching the vacuum suck it down with a thud. The only time my father came to Oxford to see me I had Gunner perform this feat for his special benefit. “By God,” said the King appreciatively, “that is one of the darnedest tricks I have ever seen.” Whatever the occasion, Magdalen celebrations always ended the same way. Arms linked together, the celebrants would head for the President’s house, to stand swaying under his bedroom window, chanting in chorus, ‘"Well row^ed, the Free.” Wholly aside from his literary leanings, President Warren’s corpulence would have removed him from any conceivable athletic connection; nevertheless, all through the night little bands of undergraduates would deviate from their way to bed to pay the President this incongruous compliment. It is characteristic of collegiate memories that in reminiscence the hell-raising side momentarily overshadows the daily plodding drudgery I always associated with study. Oxford is a serious place; and the truth is that my days by and large were sober, tranquil, and studious. In the winter my leisure was given to football, beagling with the New College, Magdalen, Trinity packs, and riding; in the summer I punted on the Gherwell River and went for natural-history walks. At these pursuits and in the company of the small groups who foregathered in mine or other men’s rooms when the evening work was over, I formed new friendships that compensated in part for the uprooted attachments of the Navy. The experiment of sending me to France the year before having apparently had no ill effects, it was my mother’s idea that I should go to Germany during the Easter and summer vacations in 1913. The purpose of these two trips was to improve my German and to teach me something about these vigorous people whose blood flows so strongly in my veins. For I was related in one way or another to most of the many Royal houses that reigned in Germany in those days.