His tutor, Reggie Petworth, he did not like. Petworth turned out to be
a "neo-cardiac" of the first water: even then he hadn't the decency to
be whole-hearted in his heartiness and wavered between complete
allegiance with Hodges and the college 'right' and a feeble attempt to
conciliate the 'left' as represented by Lawrence and Martin. Petworth
had come from Balliol with the Hertford, the Ireland, and a Philosophy
of Fun. It was Fun to write jolly compositions and Fun to set proses
out of George Meredith which bore no relation to classical thought or
idiom and couldn't conceivably be translated into reasonable Latin or
Greek. It was Fun to be a High Churchman, Fun to talk about priests
and masses, Fun to date your letters by feasts of the Church, Fun to be
a Liberal and believe in the people. Fun to have bad cigarettes sent
from a remote Oriental town because its monarch was a Balliol man, Fun
to collect things without sense or purpose, Fun, in fact, to pretend to
be a child.

"One doesn't mind Davenant pretending to be decadent now and then,"
said Martin to Lawrence, "because decadence always depends on posing
for its real point. A man isn't a decadent unless he knows he's a
decadent and plays up to it. But childhood is rather different, and I
don't see why blighters like Reggie should try and ape it."

"Just the Balliol touch," said Lawrence.

Martin was supposed to show up two compositions a week to Reggie
Petworth and to do occasional translation papers. He attended with
some regularity to make up for his complete absence from lectures.
Petworth exhorted him mildly to make more strenuous efforts and told
him what Fun Demosthenes could be if one read the private speeches,
about mining rights and water-courses and assaults. Whereupon Martin
was coldly polite and retired to renew his conversations about the
world at large, while Petworth would find a 'jolly' man and walk out to
eat lunch at Beckley, saying 'What Fun!' if he saw a pig with pleasant
markings.

To Martin, as he lazily reclined one September morning in the black
woods behind The Steading, the past was a vision of undimmed radiance.
Oxford had threatened but it had not fulfilled: rather it had grudged
him nothing of its plenty. It had given him friends (miraculously the
Push had not quarrelled) and views and a year of fine living. He knew
now how tainted by the poison of exams had been his first impressions
of that grey and gracious city, h