After a pause and a little conversation, I called upon Lawrence Solomon to propose the toast of "The School." He was very amusing indeed. Most of his speech would not be very comprehensible to an outsider for it largely consisted of an ingenious dove-tailing of the sentences in the Latin and Greek Arnold. I shall never forget the lucid and precise enunciation with which he delivered the idiotic sentences in those works, more especially where he said, "such a course would be more agreeable to Mr. Cholmeley and I would rather gratify such a man as he than see the King of the Persians."
Cholmeley, amid roars of welcome, rose to respond. I think I must have told you in a former letter that Cholmeley is a former classmaster of ours, a former house-master of Bentley's, and one of the nicest men at St. Paul's. We invited him as the only visitor. He said a great deal that was very amusing, mostly a commentary on Solomon's remarks about the Latin Arnold. One remark he made was that he possessed one particular Latin Arnold, formerly the property of the President, which he had withdrawn from him "with every expression of contumely"--because it was drawn all over with devils. He made some very sound remarks about the Club as an answer to the common charge against St. Paul's School that it was aridly scholastic, without spontaneous growth in culture or sentiment.
Then Fordham proposed "The Ladies." He was killing. Fordham is a personality whom I think you do not know. He is one of the most profoundly humourous men I ever knew, but his humour is more thickly coated on him, so to speak, than Bentley or Oldershaw, i.e., it is much more difficult to make him serious. He is one of the most fascinating "typical Englishmen" I ever knew: strong, generous, flippant on principle, rowdy by physical inspiration, successful, popular, married--a man to discharge all the normal functions of life well. But his most entertaining gift which he displayed truly sumptuously on this occasion is a wonderful gift of burlesque and stereotyped rhetoric. With melodramatic gestures he drew attention to the torrents of the President's blood pouring "from the wound of the tiny god." Amid sympathetic demonstration he protested against the pathos of the toast, "the conquered on the field of battle toasting the conquerors." As the only married member of the Club he ventured to give us some advice on (A) Food, (B) Education, (C) Intercourse. He sat down in a pure whirlwind of folly, without saying a word about the feelings that were in all hearts, including his own, just then. But I was delighted to find that marriage had not taken away an inch of his incurable silliness.