ed, had fallen into a state of gloomy
squalor suggestive rather of Camberwell than of Mayfair. The carpet,
whose flagrant ugliness of colour and design was obscured by the dirt
of ages, had actually given way in places and everywhere there was
dust. Galer, who, with the aid of a harassed boy, had charge of nine
sets of rooms, had neither the time nor the inclination to do any
cleaning. He flicked cupboards with a duster in a dilettante way from
time to time but further than that he never went.

Martin also discovered that the college did not contain hot baths and
that the only method of procuring such a luxury was to heat a large can
of water at his 'sitter' fire. All meals, except dinner, were brought
through the open air across two quads and arrived in a tepid state; nor
was this improved by the fact that Martin lived at the top of his
stairs and had to wait till those below had been supplied. There was
no service lift and no means of emptying slops on the stairs, and
everything had to be carried up and down the tortuous steps, even the
bath-water. But Galer would have been the last person to encourage the
introduction of lifts; he was at least thorough in his Toryism. Dining
in hall meant swallowing four abominably served courses in twenty
minutes.

"So this," thought Martin, "is the princely life," and he wondered
whether he would suffer the same fate as Uncle Paul, who

"Was driven by excessive gloom,
To drink and debt, and, last of all,
To smoking opium in his room."

All Saturday he was pestered by invaders who wanted him to row or be a
soldier or join the National Service League, or the Men's Political
Union, or the Fabian Society, or the Tariff Reform League. In despair
he joined everything, except in cases where the man talked about
immediate subscriptions: then he boldly refused. But few secretaries
had sufficient enthusiasm to collect money. So Martin became a member
of numerous societies of the majority of which he heard nothing more.
Sometimes he received a printed notice of various meetings which he did
not attend. He used to wonder vaguely who paid for all the printing
... certainly he did not.

And so for the first two or three days of his residence he felt
pestered and irritable. There were so many things to find out, such as
when and where to be gowned, who were freshers and who were
unapproachable seniors, what attitude to adopt to one's scout and one's
tutor. It was a