Let Dons Delight: Being Variations on a Theme in an Oxford Common-Room by Ronald A. Knox

Author:Ronald A. Knox [Knox, Ronald A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Religion, Education, Politics
Publisher: Sheed & Ward
Published: 1939-03-15T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

FALSE DAWN : 1 838

dr. haynes. I see by the paper, the Prince of Talleyrand has died.

mr. telford. Yes; they say he made a Christian end of it after all.

the provost (dr. watson). That was to be expected. You must consider that he has changed sides a great deal all his life ; and to die a Christian was the only way left to him, if he was to be consistent in his inconsistency.

dr. haynes. It is extraordinary, how much he did without sleep. You and he would never have got on well together, Dr. Greene.

DR. GREENE (a stout man of full habit , strongly contrasted with the spare figure of Dr. Haynes). If the Prince had come to live in Oxford, he would have wanted more sleep; I think it is a habit that grows upon us here. Though I suppose we shall all be as sleepless as Macbeth was, if we have the steam-engines here, drawing their trains of carriages into Oxford at all times of the night. What do you think, Mr. Provost; will the petition of Convocation have any weight, or will they carry the railway here from Didcot in spite of it ?

the provost. I believe we shall be defeated ; for that matter, we were already defeated when it came beyond

Wallingford. With such a government as we have now, a vote of Convocation goes for very little.

dr. greene. I cannot understand how they think there is any need for it. It was only the other day the coach went from London to Cheltenham in little over nine hours ; the steam-engines surely cannot travel much faster than that without grave danger to life. If they did, we should have no peace ; the men would be asking for leave to go up to London in the middle of term, and back again the same evening.

mr. telford. I am always expecting to hear that one of them has done so already, out of bravado, on one of the new velocipedes.

dr. haynes. The truth is, Convocation is too fond of sending petitions to Westminster. We are within our rights to make a protest, wdien we are threatened with the noise and smoke of a railway; as we were when they founded this mushroom University of London in spite of us. But you see how it was; when the Prime Minister received our petition against the London University, he probably did not read it, thinking it was only another protest against Catholic Relief.

dr. greene (rising to the bait). I never heard such nonsense. Does it not touch Oxford more nearly than any question of railways or of new Universities, when Parliament is full of Barneys and Paddys that take their orders from Rome ? When the city is represented by a Stonor, whose ancestors have been traitors for generations back ?

dr. haynes. \ ou are talking like the two-bottle men,

FALSE DAWN : 1838 175

Dr. Greene. If you will be honest with yourself, you will confess you

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