The Shield is really ours and I feel that my year has not been entirely unsatisfactory and we end with one more Cup, a shield, than we had last year. It was difficult to get up very much enthusiasm in a sense at the end because it was more or less [a] foregone conclusion. However the great thing is that we have got it and won both our matches by an Innings. We beat Rigaud’s today by an Innings and 22 runs.
Gow gave me an ‘early play’ today, that is to say a whole holiday. Consequently I have been tramping the streets of London all day. I saw the King, Queen and Princess Victoria driving in semi-state, horseguards etc. this morning going to some Hospital or other and walked back with Hine-Haycock who also happened to be passing.
I went to lunch with the Precentor and as his sister was out we lunched t├¬te-├á-t├¬te. He was very nice and I learn with real grief that he has accepted a living near Birmingham and is leaving us in November. He told me that one of his reasons for leaving was that the Chapter were so exclusive they never try to bind people together, it is the Dean and Canons and the rest no-where. Really they are hopeless; the Precentor tells me they wanted to have some complete outsider to preach on Election Sunday but the Precentor was firm. He said it was absurd, Election Sunday was the boys’ special day and somebody connected with the place must preach and so he got the Dean.
From the Precentor’s I literally ran up–fields the short way (in the course of some pipe laying in Tufton Street they have turned out the old tree-trunk water pipes which must go back probably to Elizabeth’s time) thus breaking bounds and got up there just before the end of Seniors. Then I went to the Sweet-pea show at the Horticultural, a perfect wealth of colour.