It is really impossible to render the variety of O.B.’s general conversation, of which the foregoing is but a dim reproduction. His performances, too (the expression of himself in deeds), were just as various, and yet everyone in Cambridge was aware that behind this garish behaviour there was a real, a forcible and a big personality. His performances chiefly expressed themselves in tricyclings and bathings, in lectures on English history, which nobody attended, and in At-Homes on Sunday evening, which everybody attended. He had a set of four rooms (the first being a bathroom) which were all thrown open to anybody, and if you had said you wanted a bath in the middle of the party, O.B. would certainly have said, “Ha, ha! awfully jolly,” have given you a sponge and a towel and have come in to help. Next to that came his bedroom, lined with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, with a bronze reproduction of the Greek “Winged Sleep” over his bed; then, not a whit more public than these apartments came two big sitting-rooms, in one of which was a grand piano, and four small harmoniums of various tones, one flute-like, one more brazen in quality, and two faintly resembling wheezy and unripe violins. On these--each with its performer and a miniature score--O.B. and Bobby, and Dicky and Tommy would execute some deliberate quartette, or with the piano to keep them all moderately together would plunge with gay, foolhardy courage into the Schumann quintette. Never was there a more incredible sight (you could hardly believe you saw it) than that of O.B. pedalling away at this Obeophone (for thus this curious harmonium was aptly named) with his great body swaying to and fro and strange crooning sounds coming out of his classical mouth to reinforce the flutings of his melody, while Bobby and Dicky and Tommy, nimble-fingered members of the Cambridge Musical Society, sat with brows corrugated by their anxiety to keep in time with O.B. They never learned that they were attempting an impossibility, but followed him faint yet pursuing as he galloped along a few bars ahead, or suddenly slowed down so that they shot in front of him. At the conclusion he would pat them all on the back, and say, “Awfully jolly Brahms is, or was it Beethoven?” and proceed to sing, “Funiculi, funicula” himself.... Groups formed and reformed; here would be a couple of members of the secret and thoughtful society known as “The Apostles” with white careworn faces, nibbling biscuits and probably discussing the ethical limits of Determinism; there the President of the Union playing noughts and crosses with a Cricket Blue; there an assembly of daring young men who tore their gowns, and took the board out of their caps, in order to present a more libertine and Bohemian appearance, when they conversed with the young lady in the tobacconist’s. Dons from King’s or other colleges fluttered in and out like moths, and the room grew ever thicker with the smoke of innumerable cigarettes. But O.B., however mixed and incongruous was the gathering, never lost his own hospitable identity in the crowd; waving bottles of curious hock he would spur on the pianist to fresh deeds of violence, making some contribution to the discussion on Determinism, and promise to speak at the next debate at the Union, as he wandered from room to room, bald and stout and short yet imperial with his huge Neronian head, and his endless capacity for adolescent enjoyment. Age could not wither him any more than Cleopatra; he was a great joyous ridiculous Pagan, with a genius for geniality, remarkable generosity and kindliness, a good-humoured contempt for his enemies, of whom he had cohorts, a first-rate intellect and memory, and about as much stability of purpose as a starling. His extraordinary vitality, his serene imperviousness to hostility, his abandoned youthfulness were the ingredients which made him perennially explosive. Everyone laughed at him, many disapproved of him, but for years he serenely remained the most outstanding and prominent personality in Cambridge. Had he had a little more wisdom to leaven the dough of his colossal cleverness, a little more principled belief to give ballast to his friskiness, he would have been as essentially great as he was superficially grotesque.