his physique was imposing. He liked and encouraged the clever little
boys and made fruitless efforts to bully the ink-stained loafers; he
also determined to assault the fortress of the Olympians and to make
the great ones work; but he broke his soul upon a rock. When he
adjured them to do a little work they smiled in toleration. When he
suggested a change in the quantity or quality of their preparation he
was politely informed that Mr Foss never expected so much. He then
lost his temper, remarked savagely that he wouldn't be bound by the
idiosyncrasies of Mr Foss, and dealt out impositions. A schoolmaster
cannot afford to lose his temper unless he has complete self-confidence
and the will never to retract. Finney had not been gifted with a
forceful personality, and the weak man in a temper is a most pitiable
sight. The impositions meant the declaration of war and in that war
Finney was beaten all along the line.
To begin with, however, he relied on his hours with the Upper Sixth for
spiritual comfort, but his own experiences at school should have warned
him that even Upper Sixths are human. It was his duty to read
classical authors with them at a great pace and without attention to
detail in order to give the competitors for university scholarships a
wider knowledge of the ancient literature. When he came to read
Tacitus with them he soon discovered that they were quite capable of
amusing themselves. Having learned that journalese translations
annoyed him, they racked their brains and searched the halfpenny press
for new phrases. Finney shuddered and protested: next he whined and
finally lost his temper. This display was gratifying to the Upper
Sixth, who had just spent two tedious hours listening to Foskett on
Greek dialects. Besides, there is always satisfaction in luring fish
to one's bait.
Martin loathed and dreaded these hours. Not only did his recent
experiences as a prefect compel him to sympathise with the impotent
wielder of authority, but he had been attracted by Finney from the
first. Finney worked in earnest and without pose or pretension, a fact
which set him, in Martin's estimation, on a plane far above Foskett.
He worked for Finney as he never worked for Foskett, and consulted him
about his reading: naturally Finney liked Martin and did all he could
to help him. On several Sundays Martin went to lunch at the cottage
and met Mrs Finney, a pleasant little woman whose beauty was somewhat
marred by an expression of perpetual surprise. She was, like her
husband, a slight and unimposing figure, and she shrank from the
society of the college ladies with their continual "shop" conversation,
partly from shyness and partly from boredom. When she was not looking
after her baby she used to play the violin and read _The Bookman_ and
_The Studio_. For several hours every week she struggled with accounts
and wondered how things would work out: she managed well, and somehow,
miraculously, but persistently, they did work out.
She also liked Martin and he would come often to them. In a world that
was hard and unsympathetic he was graciously different; he was
essentially someone in whom interest could and should be taken, and
this was what the Finneys needed. They saw and, after a time,
understood his limitations, realising how his intellectual solitude was
narrowing his outlook and how his heretical views about politics and
life in general were left crude and immature because he dared not
pronounce them openly and demand criticism. Criticism he lacked, and
it was criticism they gave him, not the best perhaps, for the Finneys
erred occasionally on the side of excessive culture and preciosity, but
such criticism as would turn violence into strength and reveal
possibilities of reason and feeling where he had seen before nothing
but ignorance and sentimentality.
As Martin was destined for Oxford Finney thought it wise to introduce
him to the writing of Belloc. "You'll get heaps out of him," he said.
"Of course he goes to extremes, but his criticism of Socialism is the
only sane one and worth a million of Mallock and Cox and that gang.
And his arguments about religion aren't all nonsense. I don't agree
with him" (Finney attended school chapel regularly and was a party
Liberal), "but it's a point of view. And he can write."
Martin had never considered this outlook on the world before, and,
though at times he was angry, he began to read Belloc eagerly,
especially the verses. He had often heard his uncle talking about
Belloc, but so far he had never troubled to investigate the matter
further: now he was glad.
After lunch on Sunday afternoons he would walk with Finney on the
downs, and sometimes they would talk about the Public Schools. At
first Finney was reticent on their subject, but later he spoke with
growing freedom and intimacy.
"It's odd how we get chucked into it," Finney used to say. "Everyone
says teaching is the most important thing in the world, and they
chatter away about training and so on: and yet when it comes to the
point they allow their precious boys to be taught by men who are quite
untrained for this profession. No master at a Public School has had
any technical training or been taught how to see and shape things. He
just clears out of the varsity with some debts and a little despair and
then starts casually to do what is perhaps the most difficult and
important thing in the world. And they don't get the pick of the
varsities either: the standard keeps going down. The best men won't do
it if they can keep out."
Finney could not, in the presence of a pupil, finish his indictment as
he wished. Had it been possible he would have added: "The salaries are
contemptible and are kept low by the bribe of a house: which in reality
means that we have to pinch and scrape now because, if we are lucky, we
may be able to make a thousand a year at forty if we don't overfeed our
boys."
"And yet," suggested Martin, "don't you think it's rather refreshing to
find something left to common-sense. Everything gets into the hands of
faddists now. I once met an old lady who spent her life in teaching
children how to play. Imagine the cheek of it! You put me on to
Belloc and I think he's right about that sort of thing. We don't want
too much of the bureaucratic specialist."
"I quite agree," said Finney. "That's the tragedy. Just where
spontaneity really does matter, as in children's games, they go
blundering in and knock imagination out of their victims, or give them
someone else's, which is about the same thing. But just where training
might be of some use, they do nothing. The superstition that a man can
teach because he has taken a first in Classics at the varsity is
childish. I don't claim to know very much now, but when I started my
work I was hideously ignorant about the working of boys' minds: I never
knew when I was being obvious or when I got beyond them. Of course one
picks things up by experience, but it might be done so much better...."
"And then the narrowness," he rambled on, for he found a good audience
in Martin. "You'll get a first in Mods, if you take the trouble, and
by the time you're twenty or twenty-one you'll know all about Athenian
law-courts and what the Greek is for a demurrer or a counter-claim, and
you'll know all the hard words in Homer and be able to translate
Cicero's jokes. You'll cram up a lot of variant readings for your
special play and collect a nice set of texts with all the difficult
passages marked. And when it's all over you'll thank God and imagine
that you've done with it, only to find out that Greats is rather worse
and means spotting the words for Egyptian bogwort in Herodotus and
getting up the most meaningless bits of gibberish in Thucydides. It's
the same all along. A schoolmaster wants to make some money, a don
wants to make a name, so out comes a new reading, a new conjecture, a
new edition and a thousand other straws of pedantry to be piled on the
back of a poor old camel that collapsed years ago."
"It sounds pretty rotten," said Martin. "But I suppose at Oxford one
can read and talk freely and follow up the things one likes?"
"Yes, you must do that. Don't get worried about Mods. Are you
thinking of the Civil Service?"
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Well Mods won't matter much. So take up anything you really care for.
That's the only thing in life worth doing, and it may be about the only
time in your life when you're able to do it."
Of course Finney never spoke to Martin about school discipline, but it
was not hard for Martin to see that he was very much depressed. His
sufferings with the Fourth he might have expected: but that the Upper
Sixth should rag childishly was a cruel blow. He was so keenly anxious
to take an interest in his work and to make those hours of rapid
translation valuable: but everything seemed to go against him.
He went through some Tacitus and Juvenal and Pindar at a great pace
amid considerable amusement. For Tacitus gave facilities for
journalese, Juvenal for obscenity, and Pindar for colossal bathos. In
despair Finney turned to the sixth book of the AEneid, "Just to help
your hexameters." They surely wouldn't rag that.
Yet trouble did break out. One Cartwright, a large, genial, athletic
person who expected to get an exhibition at Cambridge for his games,
was always to the fore when there seemed any opportunity of baiting
Finney. To him fell the Daedalus passage at the beginning of the book:
his rendering was picturesque and contained such gems as 'Intrepid
aeronaut' and 'Bird-man.'
"That's not English and it isn't in the Latin," said Finney sharply.
"I don't know, sir," said Cartwright weightily. "'Praepetibus pennis
ausus'--note of daring. Intrepid. Intrepid aeronaut. Why not, sir?
And then 'levis super astitit'--note of hovering over. Bird-man. Why
not, sir?"
Finney paused in silence. The Upper Sixth were tittering like infants
of twelve, with the exception of Martin, who stared self-consciously at
his desk, hating every moment and dreading what was to come.
Fortunately Finney controlled his temper and said quickly:
"Don't be childish, Cartwright. Translate, Warren."
Warren was an intelligent youth and gifted with endless audacity. A
week or two later they turned back to the first book (Finney couldn't
tolerate their assault on the second half of Book VI.), and Warren had
in his section the line:
"Succinctam pharetra et maculoso tegmine lyncis."
This he rendered: "With a check golf-skirt and a bag of clubs."
There was a wild roar of laughter and Finney went very red. Again he
controlled himself and merely said: "Quite good. But you might keep
your jokes till the end of the hour."
At last an event occurred which he could not overlook. Cartwright was
translating Tacitus and he had a book open under his desk. The words
flowed smoothly, with unwonted smoothness, for Cartwright was slow of
wit. At the end of the chapter Finney remarked: "Are you aware,
Cartwright, that you have reproduced the excellent translation by
Messrs Church and Brobribb word for word?"
"Have I, sir?" answered Cartwright with astonishment.
"You have. And what is your explanation?"
Cartwright reflected.
"Only that great minds think alike," he said at last.
"I shall report you to the headmaster," shouted Finney above the roar
of laughter.
Hitherto he had shrunk from informing Foskett of the way things went.
He had been afraid that any such move might be taken as a proof of his
own incompetence. Foskett might reasonably hold that it was a master's
business to look after himself and that a man who couldn't deal with an
Upper Sixth couldn't deal with anyone. And he had heard in the
common-room that Foskett was remarkably fond of his prefects and would
even back them against the masters, because he regarded them as more
valuable allies in strengthening his own position with the rank and
file of the school. After all, the masters were employees and far too
deeply concerned with the problem of earning a living to do any harm to
Foskett: they would be unwilling to resign, because, even if they found
posts, it would mean loss of seniority at the new school. Distinctly
he had the whip hand over them; but the prefects were harder to control
and demanded more respect. So the masters had grown chary of reporting
matters to the Head, and Finney had been warned that such a policy
might lead to snubs. But on this occasion there was plainly nothing
else to do.
Foskett spoke gravely to Cartwright for ten minutes on the subject of
example, and matters went on as before. Cartwright was captain of
football at the time.
So Finney continued to suffer, and because Finney suffered Martin
inevitably suffered too. The ragging got on his nerves and he began to
dread those long hours with their mirth and tragedy. At last he could
bear it no longer, and he determined to speak to Cartwright and his
allies and to point out how miserable they were making Finney: the man
was a human being after all, he would say, and as an enemy he was not
worth their efforts.
At first it seemed an easy thing to do, but when the time for action
came he shrank from the task. It would be so strange, so opposed to
all traditions. And Martin was distinctly one of the class of people
who hate asking questions or worrying tradesmen or exacting their
rights: he would rather have put up with a badly cut suit than protest
to his tailor. He was not afraid of Cartwright, but he was undeniably
afraid of asking Cartwright to be kind to Finney: it was just the kind
of task which Martin most dreaded. He could imagine Cartwright's
tolerant smile, the slight raising of the brows, the polite: 'Oh,
certainly!' It would be painful, it would be intolerable!
But it would have to be done. One final jest, one final look of
despair on Finney's face convinced him. So he nerved himself bravely
for the crusade. Cartwright was, as he had foreseen, quite nice about
it: he agreed that it was not good form to behave as the Fourth did,
and Warren and the others assented. Martin had struck the right note
when he used the phrase 'good form,' for no member of a Public School,
young or old, can stand the imputation that he is not a gentleman.
Martin was astonished at the ease and success of his task and was angry
with himself for not having acted before. Henceforward Finney taught
in peace and even made Cartwright begin to display a keen interest in
Pindar. It was a thorough change and altered the whole aspect of
Finney's work: he could forget the unspeakable Fourth-formers if he
could really care about his work for the Sixth. His relief was
obvious, and Martin, eagerly watching for every expression of it, felt
justly grateful.
Finney could not guess the real cause of the new behaviour. For a
moment he thought that perhaps his manner was becoming more imperious
and that he had made definite progress in his efforts to acquire
authority. But, on reflection, he had to abandon this flattering
hypothesis, and he ultimately attributed the change to the growth of a
collective conscience and the recognition that scholarship exams were
dangerously near and that it might be as well to work seriously. That
he could have made such a mistake showed that he still had much to
learn about his pupils. But, from the pragmatic standpoint, his
ignorance was for his own good: had he known that he was merely the
recipient of charity, 'the something bitter' might have risen and
destroyed the new-born happiness.
XI
In December Martin, who was now seventeen and a half years old, went up
to Oxford to compete for a scholarship in Classics. Foskett had
encouraged him to wait another year, but John Berrisford held that boys
should be free from the pettiness of school life before they were
nineteen and advised Martin to go up early: this course would give him
another twelve months for Civil Service preparation if necessary.
Martin himself had no desire for another year at Elfrey, for, without
positively disliking the place, he wanted freedom. His prefecture had
brought him more trouble than release, and the Finneys, while they had
undoubtedly refined his tastes and broadened his views, had also
inevitably rendered him more discontented with the limitations of a
society which drove him to silence or to crudity.
Martin was not a remarkable classic and never learned to sympathise
with the somewhat pedantic traditions of a classical training, nor had
he the imitative faculty necessary for the composition of good prose
and verse in Greek or Latin; his work was always sound and often
interesting; but he never acquired the infallible dexterity of touch
which is the fruit of perfect sympathy with classical modes of thought
and expression. His translation into English showed more style than
accuracy, and he preferred rather to play loosely with ideas and to
follow the literary and social questions arising from a study of the
ancient literatures than to apply himself vigorously to pure
scholarship. There never had been any doubt about his being an Oxford
man. His tastes and abilities, his family connections and his project
of entering the Civil Service all pointed in one direction. Moreover,
he had somehow been obsessed with a notion that all Cambridge colleges,
with the exception of King's and Trinity, were like public schools
continued. Had not Heseltine gone to Cambridge? But Oxford would be
very different; for how could Oxford, the home of Shelley and Swinburne
and Morris, be anything but beautiful and brilliant? Martin was
thrilled by the exquisite promise of life: Oxford would be heavenly,
and heaven--well, heaven would be all atheism and epigrams. The
paradox pleased him and he wondered whether it was the sort of remark
he would make to his college debating society next October. But first
of all, he sadly remembered, there was this affair of scholarships.
He entered for a small group and gave King's pride of place. It had
been his father's college and was in many ways suitable. Its
scholarships were neither too hard nor too easy to win. It was a small
college in the first rank and commanded universal respect. It prided
itself on being successful, not brazenly, like Balliol, but with
discretion, unassumingly.
In spite of the opinions of poets, literary gentlemen and writers of
guide-books, it is possible to maintain that Oxford is not a nice place
in which to live, much less to work. In December it is, on the whole,
at its worst, and it was on the second Monday of that month that Martin
arrived in the city. Term had ended on the previous Saturday, and only
a few undergraduates were to be seen wandering about the deserted
streets with a bored and lost expression. Oxford has a double
personality: in term it serves efficiently as a crowded pleasure
resort; in the vacation it is one of those cities, like Bruges la
morte, whose justification is in the past and the memorials of the
past. A compromise is fatal and undergraduates must exist in hundreds
or not at all. A soft drizzle fell from a yellow, smudgy sky and the
streets were covered with a particularly loathsome mud. As he drove
down from the station to King's (he was to have rooms in college),
Martin was horrified: he felt that he had never seen a more lamentable
place. To be rattled in a hansom down George Street and then brought
face to face with the front quad of Balliol is not an inspiring method
of approach to beauty. But King's was more presentable.
An aged man, who looked dyspeptic and morose, staggered out of the
lodge and asked Martin's name: then he summoned a brisk underling,
immaculately dressed in a bowler hat and dark blue suit. The underling
picked up his bag and guided him up three flights of rickety stairs
into a dingy apartment, mainly remarkable for the smallness of its
windows. Outside the door Martin had seen the word 'Snutch.'
"Mr Snutch's," said the underling. "These will be yours." Then, to
Martin's great surprise and at the expense of his own perfect trousers,
he knelt humbly down and lit the fire. It seemed incredible that one
so magnificent should stoop to light a fire. Then he said: "Your scout
will be in at six, sir," and vanished.
Martin turned to survey the room. On the walls were some extraordinary
banners or ribbons, on two of which were the words:
Ahwamkee University.
There were some photographs, plainly American, and a large engraving
called 'Love's Pathway.' On the wide expanse of shelves there stood six
lonely books--five large volumes on Law and the Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam. At the beginning of each was written: 'E libris Theo. K.
Snutch.' Martin was tempted to amend the inscription to 'E libris sex
Theo. K. Snutch.' On the mantelpiece were some athletic trophies. Mr
Snutch's residence at Oxford, at three hundred a year, was not
altogether unjustified: he could terrifically throw the hammer.
Next, Martin found a penny paper called _The University_ and eagerly
glanced through it to discover the quality of Oxford journalism. There
were jokes about Socialists with red ties and there was an open letter
to the varsity heavy-weight boxer. It began, 'Dear Chuckles,' and
ended with best wishes for 'the dear little girl who will some day take
the ring with you.' The reader was not even spared the allusion to the
possible appearance of 'Chucklets.'
"My god!" said Martin. He began to wonder whether he hadn't made a
mistake in refusing to go to Cambridge.
The room was depressing, so he put on his overcoat and walked out into
the rain: he went down St Olde's to the river. In those days
horse-drawn trams still rattled slowly through the streets, making a
feeble pretence of antiquity. It angered Martin that in this town,
with its new yellow banks and new college buildings, such hypocrisy
should go on and that people should confuse the relics of medieval
squalor with the works of medieval beauty. He came from a clean town
of the hills, and the clinging dirt and the sordid grime and meanness
of St Ebbs seemed haunting and insistent. Before Tom Tower and the
spacious splendour of Christ Church there was a common slum; he had
never pictured Oxford a place of slums. The Thames, too, had been in
flood for two or three weeks, and in the playing-fields across the
river goal-posts stood up amid acres of water, gauntly desolate. As he
passed out along the Abingdon Road he found meadows where the floods
had receded and left the grass rotten and stinking. The straggling
squalor of Oxford's edge only served to increase his despair: he had
expected to find a city with dreaming spires, and so far he had found
merely a slum, with yellow gasworks. Only now and then did he catch a
glimpse which charmed him. As he turned back and climbed the hill to
Carfax he began to loathe the place. But it must be remembered that he
had had an inadequate lunch and was under the shadow of an exam.
On returning to Snutch's rooms he found that the fire had almost gone
out. With the aid of _The University_ he managed to create a fitful
gleam, but it gave no heat. Someone was moving about in the rooms
opposite, another scholarship candidate presumably, a rival--damn him!
Martin began to think about tea: he did not know what to do and his
scout was not coming till six. Ultimately he went out to the Cadena
Cafe: it was full of young women from North Oxford who sat in
mackintoshes, feeding with desperate gaiety.
After he came back to Snutch's rooms and read a shilling novel which he
had found in the bedder. Soon after six the scout appeared and told
Martin that he could dine in the hall at seven: he was a large, grimy
man and sniffed prodigiously. Dinner in hall was very trying.
Half-a-dozen dons sat at the high table trying to pretend by forced
conversation that they were not thoroughly sick of one another: about
thirty schoolboys sat shyly on the long benches, apprehensive,
miserable. Here and there would be two from the same school, chatting
with animation and appearing to be very much in the know about Life and
the varsity: elsewhere strangers were huddled together, some silent,
others making fitful conversation. Financial distinctions were not
forgotten, and the candidates from Public Schools had gravitated to one
table, those from Grammar Schools to another. Martin found himself by
the side of a red-faced, ingenuous boy, who asked for the water and
then said:
"The Harlequins are better than ever this year."
Martin assented, and added: "What's your school?"
"Rugby. What's yours?"
"I'm from Elfrey. Have you anyone else in here?"
"No. We had four up for Balliol this year."
"That's a lot. Are the results out?"
"Yes, this afternoon. We got a schol. and an exhibition."
"That was jolly good."
The dialogue became more and more technical and immensely dull.