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1 appendix In 1922 Caroline Ware was a student at Oxford. This letter, to her close friend Helen Lockwood (from the Lockwood Papers, Special Collections, Vassar College Libraries), provides a snapshot of the young Caroline Ware and foreshadows the adult Ware very well. 1 St. Giles, Oxford, October 16, 1922 Dear Helen: [. . .] Life at Oxford takes shape. Today I experienced my first class and my first introduction to the excruciating politeness and utter silence of the Oxford undergraduate as far as the ‘‘lady student’’ is concerned. One of the rules we have for our delectation says, ‘‘Conversation with men undergraduates before and after lectures is not encouraged.’’ It is not. Professor Firth was scheduled to hold a class this morning at Oriel College . The omniscient porter to whom one applies for everything directed me to lecture room no. 4. I went. The room, in fact the whole hall, was quite empty. I sat. After a time a man in a B.A. gown came in and sat also. We waited. Said he, ‘‘Prof. Firth begins his lectures today, does he not?’’ We looked it up to be sure, and continued to wait. Some minutes later he observed, ‘‘He doesn’t speak very loud, we had better sit on the other side of the room.’’ We did. We waited. Subsequently he remarked, ‘‘He is a very scholarly old gentlemen. He doesn’t attract many people.’’ We waited. At about fifteen minutes past the hour a man who might have been a porter came in and suggested that we might find Professor Firth in his room. We went, the B.A. competently leading the way, I trailing behind. Sure enough he was in his room, one with a stone mantel and portraits upon the wall, presiding at the head of a big old mahogany table over four men. The B.A. stepped back and let me in first. The class was most entertaining but the only gleam of humor that I caught in anyone’s eye was a twinkle from a Harvard man. The Englishmen all maintained a stolid solemnity. After about half an hour, Prof. Firth said, ‘‘I don’t want to keep anyone.’’ Nobody moved, so I sat tight, and conversation about Tudor foreign policy and the stupidity of the o≈cials of the Public Record o≈ce continued in a desultory fashion. After awhile Prof. Firth said 172 appendix again ‘‘I don’t want to keep anybody. Of course I am ready to answer any questions or discuss anything.’’ This time two of the others got up, so I rose too and made towards the door. Whereat Prof. Firth observed, ‘‘I don’t want to drive you out. I’m quite at anybody’s service for another hour and a quarter.’’ The others edged back a bit, so I edged too. Finally one of the men got as far as the door, with me at his heels. Whereat he opened the door and stood back with the most polite air while I went out. But when I turned to thank him and to make some remarks on the class, he was gone in stark silence, streaking down the corridor in the opposite direction. Such is Oxford! I do like it though, no end, in spite of the utterly absurd rules and regulations that make you feel like an infant or an idiot and the fact that one has to go about hindered by the wearing of a highly inadequate gown and ino√ensive cap, without which one may not attend lectures or university sermons, appear before an o≈cer of the university, and venture into the Bodleian, an examination, or the streets at night. I su√ered a few moments of discouragement when the old lady of the house came home, especially as her daughter kindly warned me that it was not safe to oppose her by expressing any unorthodox views on religion, politics, economics, war, imperialism, ghosts—anything one might have a view on, in fact. She is a total fool, and gets disgustingly sentimental over the dogs, and talks with a sort of pride about the ‘‘very bad districts’’ in which she sometimes goes to visit people and is on the whole quite intolerable, but silence at meals can be endured, and the English students in the house, as well as the old dame’s daughter, are excellent. I find myself, however, pouncing with glee upon stray Americans because you can’t laugh with English people over...

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