Dr. Verrall was an amusing story-teller, and I remember his telling a story of two old ladies who, while they were listening to the overture of _Lohengrin_, looked at each other with a puzzled, timid expression, until one of them asked the other: “Is it the gas?” Dr. Verrall told me he thought Rossetti’s poem, the “Blessed Damozel,” was rubbish. On the other hand, he admired his ballad, “Sister Helen.”
He said: “Why did you melt your waxen man, Sister Helen?” was a magnificent opening to a poem.
In spite of having learnt nothing in an academic sense at Cambridge, I am glad I went there, and I think I learnt a good deal in other ways. I look back on it and I see the tall trees just coming out in the backs, behind King’s College; a picnic in canoes on the Cam; bookshops, especially a dark, long bookshop in Trinity Street where a plaintive voice told one that Norman Gale would be sure to go up; little dinner-parties in my rooms in Trinity Street, the food arriving on a tray from the College kitchen where the cook made _créme brûlée_ better than anyone else in the world; one night fireworks on the window-sill and the thin curtains ablaze; rehearsals for the A.D.C., and Mr. Clarkson making one up; long, idle mornings in Trinity and King’s; literary discussions in rooms at Trinity; debates of the Decemviri in Carr-Bosanquet’s room on the ground floor of the Great Court; summer afternoons in King’s College gardens, and the light streaming through the gorgeous glass of the west window in King’s Chapel, where, listening to the pealing anthem, I certainly never dreamed of taxing the royal Saint with vain expense; gossip at the Pitt Club in the mornings, crowds of youths with well-brushed hair and straw hats telling stories in front of the fireplace; the Sunday-evening receptions in Oscar Browning’s rooms full of Arundel prints and crowds of long-haired Bohemians; the present Provost of Eton mimicking the dons; and the endless laughter of those who could say:
“We were young, we were merry, we were very, very wise, And the door stood open to our feast.”
I left Cambridge after my first summer term as I could not pass the Little Go, nor could I ever have done so, had I stayed at Cambridge for years. My life during the next five years was a prolonged and arduous struggle to pass the examination into the Diplomatic Service. When I left Cambridge I went to Versailles, and stayed there a month to work at French. Then after a few days at Contrexéville, with my father, I went back to Hildesheim and stopped at Bayreuth on the way.