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Authors: Sara Wheeler
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was her main source of support. When she got engaged, he sent her a book from school inscribed “There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an East wind is to put on your overcoat.”
DURING SCHOOL HOLIDAYS, Denys voyaged stealthily between Harlech, Haverholme, London, and, in August, the Scottish grouse moors. He liked the abrupt change of landscape and the contrasting rhythms of town and country. His restless spirit never tired of either. In the capital, he spent his time with school friends, among them the hospitable Philip Sassoon. The size of one of the larger department stores, the Sassoon residence at 25 Pall Mall featured cathedral-height ceilings, towering porcelain urns, and bowlegged French furniture topped with cupids. Everything seemed to be encrusted with gilt, and the sheeny surface of ten-foot oil portraits of assorted Sassoons quivered with the reflection of a forest of chandeliers. Besides such urban excitements, there was a constant flow of country-house parties—an essential sideshow in the Edwardian carnival. Denys would arrive to find a card inscribed with his name slotted into a little brass frame on a bedroom door, and before cocktails a water man brought kettles suspended from a wooden yoke balanced across his shoulders. At seven, a duchess “received,” lit up with jewels and attended by liveried footmen in house colors, and later silver grape scissors did the rounds at the conclusion of a ten-course dinner while maids waited in the passages struggling to stay awake.
AT NINETEEN, DENYS thought that he could get away with anything. In the autumn of 1906, he sat for the Balliol scholarship at Oxford. Candidates were required to write an essay on what they would do if they were given a million pounds. Julian Huxley argued that he would buy up as much of the British coastline as possible for conservation purposes. Denys stated that he would pension off the older Balliol dons. Huxley got a scholarship; Denys didn’t even get a place. It had always been assumed that he would go up to Oxford. His father, Uncle Murray, and the Avunculus Hector had matriculated at Balliol, all the dead earls were Oxford graduates, and Toby was prospering at Magdalen. Balliol was the obvious choice for a boy as brilliant as Denys: public schools still reckoned their status by the number of their Balliol scholars. But an unconventional streak had already emerged. Even at school, Denys wore eccentric clothes as an expression of nonconformism, in his final year favoring trousers made from a material in minuscule dogtooth check commonly used for sponge bags. Alan Parsons, who knew Denys intimately for three decades, reflected in 1931, “Even as a boy Denys was utterly different from other boys of his age. It was not merely a question of unconventional attire…but of unconventional outlook. I always thought that the twentieth century did not suit him.” He was known especially for his headgear, an association that was cemented when he wore a sun hat of coarse beeswaxy straw into class and the master shouted, “Take your hat off, Hatton.” But, however little Denys cared for Balliol, the truth was that Oxford was the nearest thing to Eton on offer. (“To pass from Eton to Oxford in October 1906 was a slight change,” Denys’s friend and contemporary Ronnie Knox wrote.) So, like many agreeable personalities who were lacking in ambition, Denys chose Brasenose, a placid college that topped the university golf table but failed to trouble its academic counterpart.
Founded in 1509, Brasenose took its name from a brazen (brass or bronze) door knocker in the shape of a nose. Denys was billeted on staircase nine in New Quad, which was still new then—the High Street frontage wasn’t completed until the college’s 1909 quatercentenary. Designed to reflect the asymmetry fashionable in the High Victorian era, the quadrangle, with its angled gate turret, was austere compared with the
DURING SCHOOL HOLIDAYS, Denys voyaged stealthily between Harlech, Haverholme, London, and, in August, the Scottish grouse moors. He liked the abrupt change of landscape and the contrasting rhythms of town and country. His restless spirit never tired of either. In the capital, he spent his time with school friends, among them the hospitable Philip Sassoon. The size of one of the larger department stores, the Sassoon residence at 25 Pall Mall featured cathedral-height ceilings, towering porcelain urns, and bowlegged French furniture topped with cupids. Everything seemed to be encrusted with gilt, and the sheeny surface of ten-foot oil portraits of assorted Sassoons quivered with the reflection of a forest of chandeliers. Besides such urban excitements, there was a constant flow of country-house parties—an essential sideshow in the Edwardian carnival. Denys would arrive to find a card inscribed with his name slotted into a little brass frame on a bedroom door, and before cocktails a water man brought kettles suspended from a wooden yoke balanced across his shoulders. At seven, a duchess “received,” lit up with jewels and attended by liveried footmen in house colors, and later silver grape scissors did the rounds at the conclusion of a ten-course dinner while maids waited in the passages struggling to stay awake.
AT NINETEEN, DENYS thought that he could get away with anything. In the autumn of 1906, he sat for the Balliol scholarship at Oxford. Candidates were required to write an essay on what they would do if they were given a million pounds. Julian Huxley argued that he would buy up as much of the British coastline as possible for conservation purposes. Denys stated that he would pension off the older Balliol dons. Huxley got a scholarship; Denys didn’t even get a place. It had always been assumed that he would go up to Oxford. His father, Uncle Murray, and the Avunculus Hector had matriculated at Balliol, all the dead earls were Oxford graduates, and Toby was prospering at Magdalen. Balliol was the obvious choice for a boy as brilliant as Denys: public schools still reckoned their status by the number of their Balliol scholars. But an unconventional streak had already emerged. Even at school, Denys wore eccentric clothes as an expression of nonconformism, in his final year favoring trousers made from a material in minuscule dogtooth check commonly used for sponge bags. Alan Parsons, who knew Denys intimately for three decades, reflected in 1931, “Even as a boy Denys was utterly different from other boys of his age. It was not merely a question of unconventional attire…but of unconventional outlook. I always thought that the twentieth century did not suit him.” He was known especially for his headgear, an association that was cemented when he wore a sun hat of coarse beeswaxy straw into class and the master shouted, “Take your hat off, Hatton.” But, however little Denys cared for Balliol, the truth was that Oxford was the nearest thing to Eton on offer. (“To pass from Eton to Oxford in October 1906 was a slight change,” Denys’s friend and contemporary Ronnie Knox wrote.) So, like many agreeable personalities who were lacking in ambition, Denys chose Brasenose, a placid college that topped the university golf table but failed to trouble its academic counterpart.
Founded in 1509, Brasenose took its name from a brazen (brass or bronze) door knocker in the shape of a nose. Denys was billeted on staircase nine in New Quad, which was still new then—the High Street frontage wasn’t completed until the college’s 1909 quatercentenary. Designed to reflect the asymmetry fashionable in the High Victorian era, the quadrangle, with its angled gate turret, was austere compared with the
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