When I was at All Souls College at Oxford some years ago I had a conversation during a Saturday evening dinner that has stayed in my mind ever since. Saturday dinners were poorly attended, and so we did not dine in the Great Hall, as usual, but in the smaller “dessert room.” This was my favorite room in All Souls. It had beautiful oak paneling and through its great glass windows there was a breathtaking view of the Hawksmoor Quadrangle and, looming beyond it, the Radcliffe Camera bathed in golden light. On a Saturday evening, with candlelight glinting off the eighteenth-century college silver, one felt one was in Very Oxford.
The conversation I took part in that Saturday night was with a distinguished Queen’s Counsel who bore a knightly title and, it was whispered, owned the finest collection of Worcester porcelain in the realm. (That was the sort of accomplishment that won you respect at All Souls.) I won’t mention his name because he was, and remains, a very private man. I doubt he would like his name bandied about by random American academics, even on the website of this distinguished journal. On that evening I watched as Sir J. circulated the room, which he had every reason to believe was filled with hardened atheists, and invited everyone to attend the weekly service on the following morning in All Souls Chapel. I asked one of my dinner companions whether tomorrow was some special occasion in the life of the college. “Oh no,” he said, “Sir J. does this every Saturday evening.” When Sir J. in due course made his way around to us and put in his request, I demurred, saying that I was Roman Catholic. This information clearly startled him, as though I had admitted to being a Martian or a Chinese spy. My companion reassured Sir J. that I was only a Visiting Fellow, meaning that time would soon rectify the college’s lapse in judgment. In any case, Sir J., not losing a beat, replied, “It doesn’t matter that you’re not Anglican. It’s a matter of observance.”
