not read over.On board the Cunard R.M.S. "Andania"
Oxford, July 4Honey dear :-
I'll write you a litle albeit I've no idea when you will get it - indeed I shall have to calculate whether I dare send it anywhere save to South Hadley.
We had cheerful days in London. Thursday evening we walked the streets three or four miles after dinner and chanced in - just after the collection was taken - at a most impressive Gregorian festival service in St. Paul's. Almost every seat was taken. Quite soon came the closing procession which came down a side aisle, singing, and up the central aisle of the nave - hundreds of choir boys in red gowns and red bed-room slippers, with white lace-trimmed cottas. The clergy had all their togs, and every few men there camea beautiful big embroidered banner. 'Twas quite splendid, and Charlotte's eyes stuck right out! She's absolutely enthusiastic about everything, quite unsophisticated in many ways, and a good companion.
We had a pleasant room at one of the White Hall Residential Hotels around Russell Square, 15-16 Bedford Place, and go back there later on. A fascinating woman and man, English, sat at table with us, just back from South Africa - had also been in Australia. The woman was not blasé and the man was most interesting. The house is very well cared for and food decently good. Rates moderate, which means 10-12s a day minus lunch.
Friday June 30 we chased the American Express and got money and mail and met our friends, one woman from the boat and G. Bacon's party, with whom we lunched. We find the A.B.C still here and cheap, but the service is awful. We've tried three of 'em and they're all equally stupid. In the afternoon I chased a raincoat, and 'tis well I did for it has rained every day, though there are sunny intervals. I bought me a coat at Selfridge's for about 32.00 (exchange is 4.43 at present) and have worn it every day. It's not my ideal, but it'll do - it's the right weight, and as the weather is, it's well to have it "proofed". It's a greenish, brownish thing. Friday evening we saw the best play I've seen in years, and by a fine company including Sir Charles Hawtrey as star. "Ambrose Applejohn's Adventure". It was both funny and interesting. We took the last two seats in the top gallery! And navigated via tubs, having tried buses in the afternoon.
Saturday we did a few more things - oh, yes, Friday we got our passports oisèd by the French consul, an interesting episode. No photograph absolutely necessary though he asked for one. Charlotte forgot her extras but got by. He took one of mine! Saturday p.m. we came to Oxford and are at the British American Club, which in vacation is a boarding house and very quite. Absolutely in the middle of things, and with excellent food, though no style to mention. We look over into the garden of Jesus College from our rooms, and Exeter is across the street, and the Sheldonian within a few rods, also Balliol and Trinity. It's not dark until 10 p.m. so we've had a grand time!
It's amazing how much I remember from that other visit, but being so in the midst we've seen things more compactly - and have come home for afternoon naps besides. We like to run around a second or third time to places! Most got locked into Christ Ch. Meadows last night because we were walking there at 9 p.m. with Miss Starr and her sister. Also met a man from the boat - very lonesome - and Miss Suell (the latter in London). Oxford is lovely - there's no doubt of it. We've been to service in Christ Ch., New College and Magdalen. The middle one was the best. We had long stays at the Hall at Christ Ch., at Merton, and the Bodlian and the tower of the Sheldonian. Also at the Museum, which is a homely, very homely junk shop, but the junk has good finds in it!
Today I called on Prof. Sir Chas. Sherrington, having sent Dr. Porter's note on ahead and been given an hour. He was most friendly - showed us the labs, full of boys up for honours exams. The work is almost all practical, hardly any lectures, though groups are assembled in the labs. at times. The system is so different from ours. We met an Oxford Biology girl on the boat, and she had almost nothing but zoölogy, nothing at all but that in her last two years, and her prep. had been mat. and classics. She had no lit. no English, no history, no economics, no art, no anything but her major line, and in that no botany or physiology. Now that means, for these boys we saw today more physiology than our M.A. folks get, far more than Dr. Cannon's boys get, but that girl on the boat was just what you'd expect! Absolutely crude and ignorant about most things. She had been out at least four years, one year normal training, (required for teaching - mostly practice), one year H.S. teaching - poorly paid she said - two years with a sister on Bainbridge Is. off Seattle, from which she was going home, to a Cornwall town. They were refined folks, but not wealthy at all. She was interesting - but so underdone! Of course he may have known lots of zoology - I couldn't tell about that, her work had been so different. Our system isn't perfect - but I don't like these, even if Camb. & Ox. do give the hardest exams. in phys. in the Brit. Isles, as Prof. Sherrington said. So many nationalities! And many Americans, Phodes scholars and others. Prof. Sherrington told us of the war-time, how 80 men 8 mos. after the war began were sleeping on the floor in Magdalen Hall - and none had a uniform or a weapon - they just couldn't make them fast enough. Oxford was an aeroplane school. The hall of the lab. has the group pictures of the students for many years - the majors (as we'd say) in physiology. There were around 30+ along 1910-13. In 1916, there were about 5 - two women, two Amer. & a colonial. The next year there was one woman, one Amer. and an ex-soldier so wounded he couldn't go back. Today 54 were taking the exams. The exams were practicals, and hard. Met Leonard Hill, name very familiar, and some more I never heard of. Prof. Sherrington showed us the picture of one young M.D. who operated in No-man's Land for 38 hours on a stretch on the emergency cases and wasn't hit, though men he was operating on were killed in front of him. And the tales the English lad on the boat told of Dover &c were as thrilling. I'm so glad Dover cliffs were clear & shining as we came by.
We've been out to Iffley - that lovely little church - and tonight to Headington on the bus - not interesting, though an estate we passed on the way would have been.
The gardens are wonderful - I'm going to get some seeds, though of course we don't have showers every 10 minutes. There's a perfectly exquisite little pink gladiolus - and so many littel borders I never saw before. The flowers and ferns and trees in the Botanic Garden here drive us crazy. We must start some more trees - the rare conifers particularly - for our successors. I'm sure some would be hardy. The daisies in the grass are a fraud. They're there - but single and white! Only one pink plant have I seen in millions. There is a sweet little bright yellow thing in Big Tom Quad, a Leguminous thing, and on tops of the old City Wall there are ivies, of course, and lots of cunning little flowers, names unknown. The birds whoop it up all the time! We have seen a robin & a song-thrush, the latter much like a wood-thrush-robin combination in song. The blackbird & starling are different, and I suspect the former of a lot of shouting. His wife is brown and fat, not elegant. We saw a chaf finch, or else 'twas something else! The specimens in the museum helped us little, though I'm sure the ship was followed by two kinds of black-backed gulls, as well as by kittiwake (??) gulls or others [sic] grey ones, and petrels. -
Must go to bed. Tomorrow we go to Cambridge and the Royal Agric. Show which crowds the town and elevates prices. We hope we have rooms, however.
Lots of love to you, honey.