By the time that Carter and King had written their chapters and read
them aloud, the Scorpions were all frankly adorers of Kathleen; by
midterm she had become an obsession. Eric Twiston and Bob Graham, “doing
a Cornstalk” (as walking on Cornmarket Street is elegantly termed) were
wont to dub any really delightful girl they saw as “a Kathleen sort of
person.” At the annual dinner of the club, which took place in a private
dining room at the “Clarry” (the Clarendon Hotel) in February, Forbes
was called upon to respond to the toast “The Real Kathleen.” His voice,
tremulous with emotion and absinthe frappe, nearly failed him; but
he managed to stammer a few phrases which, thought at the time to be
extemporaneous, called forth loud applause; but it was found later
that he had jotted them down on the tablecloth during the soup and fish
courses. “Fellow Scorpers,” he said, “I mean you chaps, look here, I'm
not much at this dispatch-box business, but--hem--I want to say that I
regard Kathleen with feelings of iridescent emotion. I feel sure that
she is a pronounced brunette and that the Blue Flapper we all used to
see at the East Ocker is nowhere. I've been playing lackers (lacrosse)
this term and I give you my word that when I've been bloody well done
in and had an absolute needle of funk I had only to think of Kathleen to
buck me up. Hem. Now gentlemen, you may think I'm drunk (loud cries of
_No_!) but I want to say in truth and soberness that any man who thinks
he's got Kathleen for bondwoman--hem--has me to reckon with!”
The applause at this speech was so immoderate that a party of Boston
ladies dining with a Chautauqua lecturer in the Clarendon's main dining
room, shuddered and began looking up time-tables to Stratford.
By this time the serial story had grown to the length of seven or eight
chapters, and the Scorpions became so engrossed in the fortunes of the
Kenyons (so, for convenience, they had dubbed Kathleen's family) that at
the dinner a separate health was drunk to each character in the story,
and one of the members was called upon to reply. Falstaff Carter
responded to the toast to “Joe,” and recounted his secret investigations
into the number of members of the university who bore that name.
He claimed to have tabulated from the university almanac 256 men so
christened, and offered to go into the life history of any or all of
them. He said that he was happy to say that the only Joseph who seemed
at all likely to be a poet was a scrubby little man at Teddy Hall, who
wore spectacles and a ragged exhibitioner's gown and did not seem to
threaten a serious rivalry to any Scorpion bent on supplanting him. “I
also find,” he added, “that the master of the New College and Magdalen
beagles is called Joe. He is a member of the Bullingdon, and if he is
the cheese it's distinctly mooters whether any of the Scorpers have a
ghostly show; but I vote, gentlemen, that we don't crock at this stage
of the game.”
It was decided at the dinner that during the ensuing Easter vacation the
Scorpions should make a trip to Wolverhampton, en masse, for the purpose
of picketing Bancroft Road and finding out what Kathleen was really
like. And then, after singing “langers and godders” (Auld Lang Syne and
God Save the King) the meeting broke up and the members dispersed darkly
in various directions to avoid the proctors.