PATTY LA VERNE 207 



after that week at Bristol, but she gave me good advice 

 to do so ; and there was the gloomy prospect of final 

 schools to face. Women can make or mar us at most 

 times, but especially when we are young, and I was young 

 as the world then was and full of money. She found 

 out about the impending examination, and drove me back 

 to Oxford kindly but inexorably. Many years afterwards 

 I heard from Haddon Chambers, who knew her, that she 

 retained a happy recollection of me, as I shall always do 

 of her, both as a good woman and a thorough artist. 



Well, there it was, I got back to Oxford and Juris- 

 prudence, after three weeks of absolutely novel life and 

 laxity. There was nothing for it but to redeem the time, 

 though the days had been anything but evil, and there 

 was always the wish to do credit to Dendy and fox- 

 hunting, as also to surprise the Balliol dons who were not 

 concerned in my preparation. To some extent the feeling 

 was the same as at Rugby, but I liked all the Balliol dons 

 well enough, and can truly say that, with very few excep- 

 tions, I intensely disliked the Rugby masters. Few people 

 can analyse their own motives, but I fancy my trouble has 

 always been that I was left my own master so early that 

 I play a lone hand unless someone in authority of a very 

 rare nature has got in sympathy with me, as Jex-Blake 

 did, or as Dendy did in another sense. Well, after all, 

 it does not matter : but, curiously enough, Patty Laverne 

 helped, and I set about those last few weeks of Juris- 

 prudence with full determination that the thing should be 

 done. 



The time was very short, however, and just at that 

 period was published the first volume of Stubbs's Con- 

 stitutional History. 



It should be explained that the schools of History and 

 Law had only just been divided, and while Hallam's 

 Constitutional Law was a fitting text-book for us, Stubbs's 

 Constitutional History was, on the face of it, outside our 

 sphere. 



But I had my doubts, and asked Mr Dendy if I should 



