The distinguished Oxford men who write to The Times in
defence of a famous Oxford view raise a subsidiary question which must be decided before the main issue is raised. There can be no adequate re-planning, they write, " so long as the gasworks occupies its present position, in which it bars the provision of amenities," and has other noxious effects. Now are we to gather that the whole weight of Oxford authority—its Chancellor, the Master of the Rolls, the Senior and Junior Burgesses, Lord Simon, Lord Samuel and the rest—is thrown behind the thesis that " gasworks " is a singular noun ? Turn to the adjacent column of The Times, which in a leading article warmly (and, if I may say so, rightly) supporting the appeal, writes that the lovely view of Oxford immortalised by Hardy in Jude the Obscure, "has long been marred by the squalor of the Victorian gasworks, which also obtrude themselves between the eyes of the visitor by rail and his first glimpse of the ancient city." Personally, I am with The Times all the time, and while I am as much against those gasworks as any of the signatories of the Oxford letter, I would not lift a lead pencil to write a line in protest against that gasworks. But I expect the temporising and contemptible verdict, will be that it is " optional."
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