In the spring of 1907 Donald took a trip to Italy with his sister and a Rhodes Scholar cousin from Australia.  It was the young men’s first visit, and each brought back a special trophy:  Donald’s, a large photograph of a fine virile “Portrait of a man” by Giorgione in black and white, and his cousin, a sweet Madonna head by Luini.

Donald gave his sister her trophy on their return home, in remembrance of the lectures she had given the two of them on the pre-Raphaelite painters in Florence.  It took the form of a water-colour caricature of herself, sitting enthroned in a Loggia as a sort of Sybil Saint with a halo and a book (Baedeker).  Behind her, and outlined against a pale sky as seen through an archway of the Loggia in the typical Florentine fashion, are the blue mountains near Florence, some tall cypresses, a campanile and a castle perched on the top of a hill—­all features of the landscapes through which they had passed together.  In the foreground are himself and his cousin as monks adoring, also with haloes, and expressions of mock ecstasy!

On his return Donald went for a few months to Rugby House, the Rugby School Mission, in order to cram for Oxford.  He thereby made a friend, and learned to love Browning.

After living so long at Brighton, and then in barracks, the beauty of Oxford was in itself alone a revelation to him.  The work there, too, was entirely congenial.  As a gunner subaltern he had been a square peg in a round hole.  As regards the work there had been far too much to be accepted on authority for one of his fundamental type of mind; the relations existing between an officer and his men—­in peace time, at any rate—­seemed to him hardly human, and the making of quick decisions, which an officer is continually called upon to do, was then as always very difficult to him.  His tastes, too, unusual in a subaltern, had made him rather lonely.  He found much more in common with the undergraduate than with the subaltern.  Going up as an “oldster” (22) was to him an advantage rather than otherwise, for his six years in the Army had given him a certain prestige which was a help to his natural diffidence, and helped to open more doors to him, so that he was not limited to any set.

He gained some reputation as a host, for he had the born host’s gift of getting the right people together and making them feel at their ease.  There was also, as a rule, some little individual touch about his entertainments that made them stand out.  His manner, though naturally boyish and shy, could be both gay and debonair, quite irresistible in fact, when he was surrounded by congenial spirits!  He played hockey, and was made a member of several clubs, sketched and made beautiful photographs.  His time he divided strictly between the study of man and the study of theology, and though he did much hard, thorough and careful work in connexion with the latter, he always maintained that for a man who was going to be a parson the former was the more important study of the two.