"La Morgue" was the room, adjacent to his own, which was, as a matter of fact, used as a mortuary when any death occurred within the college. The young host received his guests at the entrance to this apartment in the character of his Satanic Majesty, attired in a close-fitting garment of scarlet and black, with wings, horn, and tail; and most of the guests figured as dons, eminent churchmen, and other well-known personages in the university, the stately dean being, of course, represented, as well as {31} Mrs. Liddell, who afterwards expressed regret that she had not been present in person. A fracas in the refreshment room resulted in a jockey (the Hon. H. Needham) being arrested by a policeman, who conducted him to the police-office before the culprit discovered that the supposed constable was one of his fellow-revellers. The affair was altogether so successful that Bute designed to repeat it a year later; but the authorities of the House, who had given no permission for the original entertainment, peremptorily forbade its repetition.[6] [Sidenote: 1865, Oxford friends] Bute had come into residence at Oxford a few weeks after his eighteenth birthday; and the above reminiscences show that with all his serious-mindedness he possessed, as indeed might have been expected, something also, at that period, of what Disraeli called "the irresponsible frivolity of immature manhood." His amiability of character and remarkable personal courtesy prevented him from being in any degree unpopular; but his intimate friends at Oxford were undoubtedly very few; and it is curious that the most intimate of them all was not an undergraduate, or an Oxford man at all, but a lady much his senior, Miss Felicia Skene, daughter of a well-known man of letters and friend of Walter Scott, long resident in Oxford. Miss Skene was herself a person of remarkable attainments and qualities, one of them being a rare gift of sympathy, which seems to have won the heart of the solitary young Scotsman from the first {32} day of their acquaintance. Bute corresponded with her constantly and regularly, not only during his undergraduate days, but for many years subsequently; and his letters show to how large a degree he gave her his confidence in matters of the most intimate interest to himself. One of the earliest of these is dated from Dumfries House, Ayrshire, in the Christmas vacation following his first term at Oxford. Dumfries House, Cumnock, _Christmas Day_ [1865]. MY DEAR MISS SKENE,