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

From my point of view, as a human being, the easy conditions 
under which I took up residence at Oxford in October, 19 ts, 
were a vast improvement over those laid down by the Prince 
Consort for my grandfather some fifty years before. To prevent 
young Albert Edward’s possible contamination from too inti- 
mate association with the undergraduates of Christ Church Col- 
lege, my grandfather was obliged to live apart in a rented house, 
with a large household, and to wear a special gown when he 
attended lectures. His classmates had to rise respectfully when- 
ever he entered “Hall” or a lecture room. 

Fortunately for me, all that had passed by the time I went to 
Oxford. I took my place freely among the other four thousand 
undergraduates of the University— a circumstance that was hailed 
by the press as fresh evidence of the innate democracy of the 
British Monarchical system. But the Socialist son of a miner who 
might sit beside me at lectures would scarcely have agreed that 
I entirely shared the common lot. I had been spared having to 

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pass Responsions, the University entrance examinatioxis. The 
rooms assigned to me at Magdalen College in '‘Cloisters” had 
been specially done over; and I had a tub~the first private 
undergi'aduate bathroom, I believe, to be installed at the Col- 
lege. Also I had with me my personal tutor, Mr. Hansell, who 
occupied a room directly under mine, and my valet, Finch. And 
my Princely status was further establishd by my father’s appoint- 
ment of an equerry, Major The Honorable William Cadogan, 
of the loth Hussars, to attend me on nonacademic occasions. 
Also, for reasons that soon became apparent, Dr. T. Herbert 
Warren (later knighted), the President of Magdalen College and 
a former Vice-Chancellor of the University, took a special inter- 
est in me. 

Yet all these ostensible advantages could not entirely cure my 
nostalgia for the Navy. All around me were young men united 
in friendships formed at Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Charter- 
house,^ and all the other public schools. At first I was acutely 
lonely, and I was under the added disadvantage of being some- 
thing of a celebrity. 

A crowd of reporters and photographers descended upon 
Oxford to record for the popular press the more intimate aspects 
of my adjustment to university life. Their vivid accounts in turn 
stimulated a rush of tourists, and for two or three days I hardly 
dared to venture out of my rooms lest 1 find myself the object of 
their concentrated gaze. Nor did I wish to be seen near the Col- 
lege Deer Park until all the publicity had died down, for the 
local guides had spread the story that the Park had been re- 
stocked to enable me to do a little stalking when my studies 
palled. 

All this vulgar commotion within Magdaien^s ancient pre- 
cincts irritated the College fellows, but no more so than the 
undergraduates, who showed their displeasure by emptying 
pitchers of water upon the inquisitive sight-seers' heads. 

The plain fact is, of course, that I was pretty much of a prob- 
lem to Oxford. To be sure, I could box a compass, read naval 
signals, run a picket boat, and make cocoa for the officer of the 
watch. But these accomplishments, which the Navy had been 
at such pains to teach me, were manifestly without significance 
to Oxford's learned dons. 

To lead me with ail possible celerity into the higher fields of 
learning, Oxford generously gave me access to its best brains. 

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I attended the history lectures of Mr. Charles Gx*ant Robertson, 
later Vice Chancellor of the University of Birmingham. The 
Rev. Lancelot Ridley Phelps, later Provost of Oriel College, 
talked to me voluminously on political economy. My study of 
the French language continued under M. Berthon; and Profes- 
sor Hermann Fiedler, who later became Taylorian Professor of 
Modern Languages, was brought in to improve my German. 

But of all the erudite men selected as my tutors I especially 
remember Sir William Anson, a distinguished British jurist 
and Warden of All Souls College. Every Monday morning the 
door of his house on High Street was opened to my ring. Sir 
William would be waiting in his study dressed in a morning 
coat— his habitual garb. After a brief comment on the weather 
this brilliant, distinguished, and charming man discoursed in 
a rare musical voice for an hour on constitutional law and the 
political problems of the day. 

My Thursday morning sessions with Dr. Warren were, I 
regret, not so rewarding, A burly man with a beard, he under- 
took as a pundit of English poetry to fire my interest in the 
humanities. With half a dozen other undergraduates we met 
weekly in his book-lined study to read aloud for his direct criti- 
cism essays on various subjects prepared at his direction. We all 
dreaded this hour. Our essays were dull and the President’s 
comments uninspiiing; but, looking through these composi- 
tions today, I find they did reflect to some extent my interests at 
the time. Historical characters appear to have attracted me more 
than the poets. But, given my choice of subject, which was some- 
times the case, I found less difficulty in giving expression to my 
youthful enthusiasm. I became especially absorbed in the epic 
of Captain Scott, who, with four gallant companions, perished 
from exposure in the Antarctic on the way back to their base 
after reaching the South Pole early in 1912. 

The President was a man of learning; it was therefore dis- 
illusioning to discover that the thing he appeared to value most 
in the world was his connection with an obscure baronet, a fact 
he managed to insert into every conversation. It was generally 
suspected that he was obsessed with the idea of filling Magdalen 
with titled undergraduates; hence, whenever he beamed upon 
me, I was never quite certain whether it was with a teacher’s 
benevolence or from a collector’s secret satisfaction with a 

96 


coveted trophy. In any case, he struck us all as being somewhat 
of a snob. 

Yet, despite this 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 com- 
fortable futures that, barring family financial disasters, they had 
good reason to look forward to. For relaxation I have always pre- 
ferred outdoor exercise to reading. And, ever since I can remem- 
ber, 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 intel- 
lectual 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 con- 
stitutional 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 a 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 re- 
paired to ‘"Gunner’s,” a musty little taproom at the foot of the 
stairway leading to the Junior Common Room, where Gun- 
stone, the steward, a plump, red-faced, bald-headed old-timer, 
dispensed beer and other drinks. There with mounting enjoy- 
ment 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 con- 
nection; 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 reminis- 
cence 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 at- 
tachments 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 

q8 


that reigned in Germany in those days. So I progressed sump- 
tuously from one koniglichen Palast or grossherzoglichen 
Schloss to another, sampling the lavish, if formal, hospitality my 
kind relatives had to offer. It is strange, looking back on the life 
of those German Courts of varying size and importance as I 
knew them, to think how close they were to the end of their 
stiffly ordered days. With defeat in war, in 1918, the power of 
those hierarchies— the focal points of the social pattern of the 
prewar Reich-disappeared almost overnight. And, although 
some of the rulers still retained their castles and their estates 
and even the respect and affection of their subjects, their Courts 
were relegated to the limbo of Graustark. 

Around the middle of March of that year I set off for Wiirt- 
temberg with Major Cadogan in place of Mr. Hansell; Dr. 
Hermann Fiedler, a jovial man of fifty with the mustache of a 
German burgher, in place of M. Escoffier, and always the faith- 
ful Fkich. I enjoyed the motor trip up the Rhine and seeing 
the places of interest on the way to Stuttgart, where I was the 
guest at the palace of King Wilhelm and Queen Charlotte of 
Wurttemberg. For a Konigspaar Onkel Willie and Xante Char- 
lotte were sympathetic and easygoing. Their ample figures 
betrayed the justice they did to their four full meals a day. Their 
pleasures were simple and sedentary. As a diversion from the 
quiet evenings spent at the palace or in their box at the Opera, 
the King would escape to dine with one of his regiments--''Den 
zweiten Uhlanen” or ''Dm gelben Dragonern.'* 

After an enormous lunch almost every fine afternoon the 
King and Queen took a leisurely drive through the suburbs of 
Stuttgart in an open victoria, and sometimes I was summoned to 
drive with them. Under the influence of the warm sun and the 
gentle motion of the carriage, Onkel Willie would quickly fall 
asleep, only to be constantly aroused by a swift jab of the 
Queen's elbow to acknowledge the salute of one of his soldiers, 
the precise salutation of a stolid Wurttemberger, or to straighten 
the Homburg hat that kept sliding rakishly to one side of his 
head. This process had been going on for so many years that, 
when Onkel Willie got that dig into his well-padded ribs, he 
was able to straighten his hat in his sleep.