The spring and summer were spent partly at Harrow, whither he went to take up the duties of an Assistant Master for one term, and partly abroad.

In the autumn he came up to Cambridge to lecture under very unusual circumstances. After such a degree it was natural that he should expect to be elected a Fellow. But the Master and Senior Fellows, in whose hands the election rested, rejected him while taking a man of his own year, much below him in academic distinction. No doubt they thought him young enough to wait; but to him it seemed an injustice, even an affront. A good deal of indignation was felt by some of the younger Fellows, and at least one of the Seniors thought he had good reason to feel hurt. “Romilly, one of the Seniors,” he writes to his mother on October 1st “(though not an examiner this time and personally unknown to me), wrote me a very kind note, to-day, in which he said, ‘I was much surprised as well as grieved that you were not elected this morning, as all the University expected you would be’ (pretty strong that for a Senior of Trinity) Trevelyan is justly indignant at their treatment of him. I doubt if he will stand again.”

Jebb was very angry, with the anger of hurt affection: he loved his College and she had snubbed him. All kinds of ideas filled his head. If Trinity would not have him, there were other Colleges where he would be welcomed. He was barely twenty-one and youth is rash; his friends felt something besides pure reason must be applied to the wound.