He went to Eton, and the religion in which he had been brought up stood
the moral test of the most critical years in boyhood. It never failed
him, and he never questioned it. But when that trial was over, and after
an illness which shook up his body and mind, he came under the influence
of a matron who held with no little force of character the views of the
Anglo-Catholic party. These views stole gradually into the mind of the
rather effeminate boy, and although they did not make him question the
theology of his father for some years, he soon found himself thinking of
the religious opinions of his uncles and aunts with a certain measure of
superiority.
"I began to feel," he told me, "that I was living in a rather provincial
world--the world described by Wells and Arnold Bennett."
This restlessness, this desire to escape into a greater and more
beautiful world, pursued him to Oxford, and, for the moment, he found
that greater and beautiful world in the life of Balliol. Bishop Ryle, a
good judge, has spoken to me of the young man's extraordinary facility
at turning English poetry at sight into the most melodious Greek and
Latin, and of the remarkable range of his scholarship. He himself has
told us of his love of port and bananas, his joy in early morning
celebrations in the chapel of Pusey House, his tea-parties, his delight
in debates at the Union, of which he became President, and of his many
friendships with undergraduates of a witty and flippant turn of mind.
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