THE OXFORD MANNER
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sra,—I should be very much delighted to hear if any of your readers' can lay their fingers upon what ingredients constitute the " Oxford Manner." It has been my fortune in the last year or two to encounter a number of most delightful gentle- men who were at Oxford during the period shortly before the War, and they have some characteristic in common which enables an ordinary observer to guess, after a few minutes conversation, the place of their higher education.
This same something is not uncommon in books, and before a third of the volume is finished a conviction arises in many cases that this author was at Oxford. Is it that the Oxford man otthat period takes, as it were, a mental stand and lays about him, not indeed slashingly, but by springing mines, by pressing electric buttons, and, above all, keeping his assailant at a hundred yards range ? , In none of my acquaintances from post-War Oxford nor in my contemporaries of post-War Cambridge have I observed this faculty.—I am, Sir, &c., P. T.
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