I cannot fathom the latest turn affairs have taken. To all intents and purposes I am forgiven by all concerned while poor Hobson still remains under a cloud. At lunch today Father left us and it was a little awkward but I found Marriott willing to talk quite ordinarily to me though obviously doubtfully at ease. There was a little bread throwing which I said must cease. Rawson sees too much; he is always saying: ‘did you see this or that’ probably I did but it is not always wise to see everything. I cannot conceive what Marriott meant; I put out a letter for him and asked him afterwards if he got it ‘Yes’ he answered ‘Why? Did you think the writing looked fishy?’ I still don’t know what he meant, probably a grievance.
I had a long talk with Cockerell Hobson the builders’ foreman, about having the names of my predecessors painted up in Hall on boards. I walked round to his yard and saw some boards he was making for the Young Men’s College at the back, which I rather liked. It will be a somewhat expensive job I am afraid about ┬ú20. I shall have rather a business to raise the money.
He was quite interesting on the age of Grant’s. He himself has not the smallest doubt that the Raynor’s [Number 3, Little Dean’s Yard] and Grant’s were built at the same time. Partly by internal evidence; by the fact the measurements of the two houses are the same and the chimnies are built into each other. He places the date from the windows being in this form [see illustration below] with the bricks narrowed over the window at about 1730-40 which is earlier than I expected. He also told me the roof of College rested on a bed of oyster shells which I didn’t know…
There was a good deal too much ‘cackle’ in hall about 7. I ‘halled’ to get someone to take my candle down and get it refilled, but no one came and I ‘halled’ again furiously and when Smurthwaite appeared I remarked severely that if they made a little less noise in Hall they might perhaps hear my ‘hall’ better.
I was actually asked two questions in Prep one by Colquhoun on a beastly Latin sentence out of Hillard and North and the other by Whitmore on a sum, my suggestion seemed to be successful in the latter case for he murmured it had come out which I was relieved as it was not ‘coming out’ for me, for I was trying it on a scrap of paper.
The house was quite quiet between 9 and 10 and I tried to write out an account of the debate on ‘Fagging’ last week in the Deb. Soc. Ledger. One sentence I wrote pleased me ‘he (the opposer) drew a pathetic picture of clothes stained and sticky with jam which oozed from the pot which the Fag had been Fagged to fetch’. There is a beautiful alliteration running through the sentence which is most pleasing!