Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter Three I Cannot attempt to give any description of Patrick's time at Balliol such as he must have given in the lost document which I have referred to in the last chapter--the continuation of his Eton reminiscences. All I can do is to give some extracts from the letters he wrote to his family at that period illustrating various aspects of his life at that time and his point of view about it. I have not attempted to group or arrange these extracts in any way, preferring to follow merely the order of date; for, indeed, it is one of the most essential features about undergraduate life that its various activities do not (except at certain periods, such as the last few months before Greats) disentangle themselves from one another; we are not bound, as we are bound later in life, to pursue this or that object to the temporary exclusion of others. The strands are inextricably woven together; at half-past four you may be discussing Life and Art with a circle of heavily-minded philosophers; at seven you will be indulging in some more or less orgiastic dinner, the conversation at which is frivolous, or even Fescennine; at a quarter-past nine (for you are probably gated) you attend a meeting of a political society with a gravity that suggests a mind entirely dominated by the subject under discussion. I have left the impressions, then, confused impressions, because that method seems truest to real life. Only, by way of introduction to the extracts, it is perhaps best to give here some account of the society and of the activities which they refer to. Patrick never lost sight of the fact that it is academic work which really counts at the University, however little his exterior conduct suggested it. At every moment he had scholastic laurels of...