I stayed in again this morning, as I could quite as well work in the House as over in Library and as I wrote to Ward in sending him the notes of Deb. Soc. for the Elizabethan ‘the prospect of hearing Forbes ‘elucidating and elocuting’ the beauties of Milton was not sufficiently attractive to make me brave the draughts of Library.
I have been drawn with Graham in the Fives ties, so we are not a hopeless couple, unfortunately we have knocked up against Hobson (F.G.) and the smallest Rawson.
My curiosity was strained to breaking point by seeing the Committed of the Nat. Hist. Soc., marching across the Yard carrying drawers (I hasten to add of cabinets. Really I am very vulgar and low minded!). This evening after prayers I went into college and looked at these drawers which have had glass fixed on top. I also saw the collection of butterflies the Society is buying which looks, I think, a very good one.
We have a somewhat dull meeting of Shak. Soc. and finished ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona’. I read what little I had disgustingly.
Hobson tells me that Chiswicks are delighted at the execution of Whitmore, I wondered how they would take it, but they seem agreed that he wants to be squashed, and Whitmore himself seems somewhat wormified and there is no doubt that he has had a nasty ‘jar’ not to say a ‘rebuff’ after finding that for once public opinion on which he relies has very decidedly gone against him. I wish he would be less noisy, he has got it into his head that I hate him, indeed he told Mrs. Thresher so and he added that he reciprocated the feeling! He is quite wrong: I don’t care for him, he is at a silly and awkward age, but if he would make himself a little less conspicuous, we should get on allright. He is the only boy in the school who has not responded to my conciliatory efforts, I am perfectly willing to forgive and forget but at present he is simply a nuisance, three-quarters, rather more, of the noise of the house is caused by him, if you hear any voice raised it is certain to be his, and moreover he is incapable of taking a hint, one that does not wish to be always setting on a person, but the moment one overlooks anything, he does at once take it to mean that he may do more, and by sheer bluster makes the House (or rather Hall) believe him to be a much injured person. I am glad to hear Minchin the man is firm with him: ‘Either you stop using that ungentlemanly language or out you go from my room’ are, I hear, the methods he adopts. I am getting rather tired of Master Whitmore. I have tried to be kind and gentle, now I think I shall make myself a nuisance to him.
The Professor’s cold has gone to his throat, his ‘travelling’ cold is a great joke between us.
At Prep somebody kept making little noises, rolling something that rattled on the floor, not bad enough to say anything. I looked up and showed myself displeased once, which had a good effect.
This evening in Lit. Soc. we began ‘Julius Caesar’, on the whole not a bad reading. Father: Anthony, Gilman: Cassius really quite good, myself: Brutus I was good I think tonight having somewhat studied the part for the Vincent Prize (which is Julius Caesar this year) Pemberton and Colquhoun were also good, Hobson horribly dull as Caesar and the rest rather funny. Graham perpetrated one gem: the lines ‘Brave son derived from honourable loins! Thou like an exorcist has conjured up etc’ appearing thus as rendered by Graham: ‘Brave son deprived from honourable loins, thou like an ex-chit has conjured up!!!’, almost as good as some years ago SA Dickson’s ‘hyenas laugh’ for ‘heinous’ though this perhaps somewhat excusable. As a matter of fact, I was pleased with the reading, people have considerably improved…
All in bed when I went round tonight.