The Project Gutenberg EBook of Zuleika Dobson, by Max Beerbohm

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Title: Zuleika Dobson
or, An Oxford Love Story

Author: Max Beerbohm

Posting Date: November 25, 2008 [EBook #1845]
Release Date: August, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZULEIKA DOBSON ***

Produced by Judy Boss

ZULEIKA DOBSON

or, AN OXFORD LOVE STORY

By Max Beerbohm

NOTE to the 1922 edition

I was in Italy when this book was first published.
A year later (1912) I visited London, and I found
that most of my friends and acquaintances spoke to
me of Zu-like-a--a name which I hardly recognised
and thoroughly disapproved. I had always thought
of the lady as Zu-leek-a. Surely it was thus that
Joseph thought of his Wife, and Selim of his Bride?
And I do hope that it is thus that any reader of
these pages will think of Miss Dobson.

M.B.
Rapallo, 1922.

ILLI ALMAE MATRI

ZULEIKA DOBSON

I

That old bell, presage of a train, had just sounded through Oxford
station; and the undergraduates who were waiting there, gay figures in
tweed or flannel, moved to the margin of the platform and gazed idly
up the line. Young and careless, in the glow of the afternoon sunshine,
they struck a sharp note of incongruity with the worn boards they stood
on, with the fading signals and grey eternal walls of that antique
station, which, familiar to them and insignificant, does yet whisper to
the tourist the last enchantments of the Middle Age.

At the door of the first-class waiting-room, aloof and venerable, stood
the Warden of Judas. An ebon pillar of tradition seemed he, in his garb
of old-fashioned cleric. Aloft, between the wide brim of his silk hat
and the white extent of his shirt-front, appeared those eyes which
hawks, that nose which eagles, had often envied. He supported his years
on an ebon stick. He alone was worthy of the background.

Came a whistle from the distance. The breast of an engine was descri