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 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.