HE could not give the requisite time to his pupils, and, in fact, hardly knew some of them by sight. . . . One day he gave his servant a list of names of certain of his pupils whom he wished to see at a wine-party after Hall, a form of entertainment then much in fashion. Among the names was that of an undergraduate who had died some weeks before. `Mr. Smith, sir; why, he died last term, sir!' objected the man. `You ought to tell me when my pupils die', replied the tutor sternly; and Whewell could be stern when he was vexed.

— John Willis Clark, Old Friends at Cambridge and Elsewhere (1900), pp. 42-43

— Walter Jerrold, A Book of Famous Wits (1912), p. 263.