used. When he sat down people crowded to praise him and even men of great
distinction in life flattered him with extravagant compliments. Strange to say
he used always to declare that his appearance about the same time as Prince
Rupert, at a fancy dress ball, given by Mrs. George Morrell, at Headington Hill
Hall, afforded him a far more gratifying proof of the exceptional position he
had won.
"Everyone came round me, Frank, and made me talk. I hardly danced at all.
I went as Prince Rupert, and I talked as he charged but with more success, for
I turned all my foes into friends. I had the divinest evening; Oxford meant
so much to me. . . . .
"I wish I could tell you all Oxford did for me.
"I was the happiest man in the world when I entered Magdalen for the
first time. Oxford--the mere word to me is full of an inexpressible, an
incommunicable charm. Oxford--the home of lost causes and impossible ideals;
Matthew Arnold's Oxford--with its dreaming spires and grey colleges, set in
velvet lawns and hidden away among the trees, and about it the beautiful fields,
all starred with cowslips and fritillaries where the quiet river winds its way
to London and the sea. . . . . The change, Frank, to me was astounding; Trinity
was as barbarian as school, with coarseness superadded. If it had not been for
two or three people, I should have been worse off at Trinity than at Portora;
but Oxford--Oxford was paradise to me. My very soul seemed to expand within me
to peace and joy. Oxford--the enchanted valley, holding in its flowerlet cup
all the idealism of the middle ages. (Oscar was always fond of loosely quoting
or paraphrasing in conversation the purple passages from contemporary writers.
He said them exquisitely and sometimes his own embroidery was as good as
the original. This discipleship, however, always suggested to me a lack of
originality. In especial Matthew Arnold had an extraordinary influence upon
him, almost as great indeed as Pater.) Oxford is the capital of romance, Frank;
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