THE LESSON OF SPAIN
Perhaps Michael enjoyed more than anything else during his accumulation
of books the collection of as many various editions of Don Quixote as
possible. He had brought up from London the fat volume illustrated by
Doré over which he had fallen asleep long ago and of which owing to
Nurse’s disapproval he had in consequence been deprived. Half the pages
still showed where they had been bent under the weight of his small
body: this honorable scar and the familiar musty smell and the book’s
unquestionable if slightly vulgar dignity prevented Michael from
banishing it from the shelf that now held so many better editions.
However much the zest in Doré’s illustrations had died away in the
flavor of Skelton’s English, Michael could not abandon the big volume
with what it held of childhood’s first intellectual adventure. The
shelf of Don Quixotes became in all his room one of the most cherished
objects of contemplation. There was something in the “Q” and the “X”
repeated on the back of volume after volume that positively gave
Michael an impression in literal design of the Knight’s fantastic
personality. The very soul of Spain seemed to be symbolized by those
sere quartos of the seventeenth century, nor was it imperceptible even
in Smollett’s cockney rendering bound in marbled boards. Staring at the
row of Don Quixotes on a dull December afternoon, Michael felt
overwhelmingly a desire to go to Spain himself, to drink at the source
of Cervantes’ mighty stream of imagination which with every year’s new
reading seemed to him to hold more and more certainly all that was most
vital to life’s appreciation. He no longer failed to see the humor of
Don Quixote, but even now tears came more easily than laughter, and he
regretted as poignantly as the Knight himself those times of chivalry
which with all the extravagance of their decay were yet in essence
superior to the mode that ousted them into ignominy. Something akin to
Don Quixote’s impulsive dismay Michael experienced in his own view of
the twentieth century. He felt he needed a constructive ideal of
conduct to sustain him through the long pilgrimage that must ensue
after these hushed Oxford dreams.
Term was nearly over. Michael had heard from Stella that she was going
to spend two or three months in Germany. Her Brahms recitals, she
wrote, had not been so successful as she ought to have made them. In
London she was wasting time. Mother was continually wanting her to come
to the theater. It seemed almost as if mother were trying to throw her
in the way of marrying Prescott. He had certainly been very good, but
she must retreat into Germany, and there again work hard. Would not
Michael come too? Why was he so absurdly prejudiced against Germany? It
was the only country in which to spend Christmas.
The more Stella praised Germany, the more Michael felt the need of
going to a country as utterly different from it as possible. He did not
want to spend the vacation in London. He did not want his mother to
talk vaguely to him of the advantage for Stella in marrying Prescott.
The idea was preposterous. He would be angry with his mother, and he
would blurt out to Prescott his dislike of such a notion. He would
thereby wound a man whom he admired and display himself in the light of
the objectionably fraternal youth. In the dreary and wet murk of
December the sun-dried volumes of Cervantes spoke to him of Spain.
Maurice Avery came up to his room, fatigued with fame and disappointed
that Castleton with whom he had arranged to go to Rome had felt at the
last moment he must take his mother to Bath. To him Michael proposed
Spain.
“But why not Rome?” Maurice argued. “As I originally settled.”
“Not with me,” Michael pointed out. “I don’t want to go to Rome now. I
always feel luxuriously that there will occur the moment in my life
when I shall say, ‘I am ready to go to Rome. I must go to Rome.’ It’s a
fancy of mine and nothing will induce me to spoil it by going to Rome
at the wrong moment.”
Maurice grumbled at him, told him he was affected, unreasonable, and
even hinted Michael ought to come to Rome simply for the fact that he
himself had been balked of his intention by the absurdly filial
Castleton.
“I do think mothers ought not to interfere,” Maurice protested. “My
mother never interferes. Even my sisters are allowed to have their own
way. Why can’t Mrs. Castleton go to Bath by herself? I’m sure Castleton
overdoes this ‘duty’ pose. And now you won’t come to Rome. Well, will
you come to Florence?”
“Yes, and be worried by you to move on to Rome the very minute we
arrive there,” said Michael. “No, thanks. If you don’t want to come to
Spain, I’ll try to get someone else. Anyway, I don’t mind going by
myself.”
“But what shall we do in Spain?” asked Maurice fretfully.
Michael began to laugh.
“We can dance the fandango,” he pointed out. “Or if the fandango is too
hard, there always remains the bolero.”
“If we went to Rome,” Maurice was persisting, but Michael cut him
short.
“It’s absolutely useless, Mossy. I am not going to Rome.”
“Then I suppose I shall have to go to Spain,” said Maurice, in a much
injured tone.
So in the end it was settled chiefly, Michael always maintained,
because Maurice found out it was advisable to travel with a passport.
As not by the greatest exaggeration of insecurity could a passport be
deemed necessary for Rome, Maurice decided it was an overrated city and
became at once fervidly Spanish, even to the extent of saying “gracias”
whenever the cruet was passed to him in hall. Wedderburn at the last
moment thought he would like to join the expedition: so Maurice with
the passport in his breast pocket preferred to call it.
There were two or three days of packing in London, while Maurice stayed
at 173 Cheyne Walk and was a great success with Mrs. Fane. The Rugby
match against Cambridge was visited in a steady downpour. Wedderburn
fetched his luggage, and the last dinner was eaten together at Cheyne
Walk. Mrs. Fane was tenderly, if rather vaguely, solicitous for their
safety.
“Dearest Michael,” she said, “do be careful not to be gored by a bull.
I’ve never been to Spain. One seems to know nothing about it. Mr.
Avery, do have some more turkey. I hope you don’t dreadfully dislike
garlic. Such a pungent vegetable. Michael darling, why are you
laughing? Isn’t it a vegetable? Mr. Wedderburn, do have some more
turkey. A friend of mine, Mrs. Carruthers, who is a great believer in
Mental Science ... Michael always laughs at me when I try to
explain.... Hark, there is the cab, really. I hope it won’t be raining
in Spain. ‘Rain, rain, go to Spain.’ So ominous, isn’t it? Good-bye,
dearest boy, and write to me at Mrs. Carruthers, High Towers,
Godalming.”
“I say, I know Mrs. Carruthers. She lives near us,” Maurice exclaimed.
“Come on,” his friends insisted. “You haven’t time now to explain the
complications of Surrey society.”
“I’m so glad,” said Mrs. Fane. “Because you’ll be able to see that
Michael remembers the address.”
“I never forget addresses, mother,” protested Michael.
“No, I know. I always think everyone is like me. Merry Christmas, and
do send a post card to Stella. She was so hurt you wouldn’t go to
Germany.”
In the drench and soak of December weather they drove off in the
four-wheeler. On such a night it seemed more than ever romantic to be
setting out to Spain, and all the way to Victoria Maurice tried to
decide by the occasional gleam of a blurred lamp-light how many pesetas
one received for an English sovereign.
The crossing to Dieppe was rough, but all memories of the discomfort
were wiped out when next day they saw the Sud Express looking very long
and swift and torpedo-like between the high platforms of that white
drawing-room, the Gare d’Orleans. Down they went all day through France
with rain speckling the windows of their compartment, past the naked
poplar trees and rolling fallows until dusk fell sadly on the flooded
agriculture. Dawn broke as they were leaving behind them the
illimitable Landes. Westward the Atlantic clouds swept in from the Bay
of Biscay, parting momentarily to reveal rifts of milky turquoise sky.
Wider and wider grew the rifts, and when the train passed close to the
green cliffs of St. Jean de Luz, the air was soft and fragrant: the sea
was blue. At Irun they were in Spain, and Michael, as he walked up and
down the platform waiting for déjeuner, watched, with a thrill of
conviction that this was indeed a frontier, the red and blue toy
soldiers and the black and green toy soldiers dotted about the toy
landscape.
Maurice was rather annoyed that nobody demanded their passports and
that every official should seem so much more anxious to examine their
railway tickets, but when they reached Madrid and found that no
bull-fights would be held before the spring, he began to mutter of Rome
and was inclined to obliterate the Spaniards from the category of
civilization, so earnestly had he applied himself by the jiggling light
of the train to the mastery of all the grades from matador to
banderillo.
In Seville, however, Maurice admitted he could not imagine a city more
perfectly adapted to express all that he desired from life. Seville
with her guitars and lemon-trees, her castanets and oranges and fans,
her fountains and carnations and flashing Andalusians, was for him the
city to which one day he would return and dream. Here one day he could
come when seriously he began to write or paint or take up whatever
destiny in art was in store for him. Here he would forget whatever blow
life might hold in the future. He would send everybody he knew to
Seville, notwithstanding Michael’s objection that such generosity would
recoil upon himself in his desire to possess somewhere on earth the
opportunity of oblivion. Maurice and Wedderburn both bought Spanish
cloaks and hats and went with easels to sit beside the Guadalquiver
that sun-stained to the hue of its tawny banks was so contemptuous of
their gentlemanly water-colors, as contemptuous as those
cigarette-girls that came chattering from the tobacco-factory every
noon. Michael preferred to wander over the roofs of the cathedral,
until drowsed by the scent of warm stone he would sit for an hour
merely conscious that the city lay below and that the sky was blue
above.
After Seville they traveled to Granada, to Cadiz and Cordova and other
famous cities; and in the train they went slowly through La Mancha
where any windmill might indeed be mistaken for Pentapolin of the Naked
Arm, and where at the stations the water-carriers even in January cried
“agua, agua,” so that already the railway-carriages seemed parched by
the fierce summer sun. They traveled to Salamanca and Toledo, and last
of all they went to Burgos where Maurice and Wedderburn strove in vain
to draw corner after corner of the cathedral, in the dust and shadows
of whose more remote chantries Michael heard many Masses. A realization
of the power of faith was stirred in him by these Masses that every day
of every year were said without the recognition of humanity. These
mumblings of ancient priests, these sanctus-bells that rattled like
shaken ribs, these interminable and ceremonious shufflings were the
outward expression of the force that sustained this fabric of Burgos
and had raised in Seville a cathedral that seemed to crush like a
stupendous monster the houses scattered about in its path,
insignificant as a heap of white shells. Half of these old priests,
thought Michael, were probably puppets who did not understand even
their own cracked Latinity, yet their ministrations were almost
frightening in their efficacy: they were indeed the very stones of
Burgos made vocal.
Listening to these Masses, Michael began to regret he had allowed all
his interest in religion to peter out in the irritation of compulsory
chapel-keeping at Oxford. Here in Burgos, he felt less the elevating
power of faith than the unrelenting and disdainful inevitableness of
its endurance. At Bournemouth, when he experienced the first thrill of
conversion, he had been exultingly aware of a personal friendliness
between himself and God. Here in Burgos he was absorbed into the divine
purpose neither against his will nor his desire, since he was
positively aware of the impotency of his individuality to determine
anything in the presence of omnipotence. He told himself this sense of
inclusion was a sign of the outpouring once more of the grace of God,
but he wished with a half whimsical amusement that the sensation were
rather less like that of being contemptuously swept by a broom into the
main dust-heap. Yet as on the last morning of his stay in Burgos
Michael came away from Mass, he came away curiously fortified by his
observation of the moldy confessionals worn down by the knees of so
many penitents. That much power of impression at least had the
individual on this cathedral.
When Michael lay awake in the train going northward he remembered very
vividly the sense of subordination which in retrospect suddenly seemed
to him to reveal the essential majesty of Spain. The train stopped at
some French station. Their carriage was already full enough, but a
bilious and fussy Frenchman insisted there was still room, and on top
of him broke in a loud-voiced and assertive Englishman with a meek
wife. It was intolerable. Michael, Wedderburn, and Maurice displayed
their most polite obstructiveness, but in the end each of them found
himself upright, stiff-backed and exasperated. Michael thought
regretfully of Spain, and remembered those peasants who shared their
crusts, those peasants with rank skins of wine and flopping turkeys,
those peasants who wrought so inimitably their cigarettes and would sit
on the floor of the carriage rather than disarrange the comfort of the
three English travelers. Michael went off into an uneasy sleep trying
to arrange synthetically his deductions, trying to put Don Quixote and
Burgos Cathedral and the grace of God and subordination and feudalism
and himself into a working theory of life. And just when the theory
really seemed to be shaping itself, he was awakened by the Englishman
prodding his wife.
“What is it, dear?” she murmured.
“Did you pack those collars that were in the other chest of drawers?”
“I think so, dear.”
“I wish you’d know something for a change,” the husband grumbled.
The Frenchman ground his teeth in swollen sleep, exhaling himself upon
the stale air of the compartment. Maurice was turning over the pages of
a comic paper. Wedderburn snored. It was difficult to achieve
subordination of one’s personality in the presence of other
personalities so insistently irritating.
Stella had not come back from Germany when Michael reached home, which
was a disappointment as he had looked forward to planning with her a
journey back to Spain as soon as possible. His mother during this
vacation had lapsed from Mental Science into an association to prevent
premature burial.
“My dearest boy, you have no idea of the numbers of people buried alive
every year,” she said. “I have been talking to Dick Prescott about it.
I cannot understand his indifference. I intend to devote all my time to
it. We are going to organize a large bazaar next season. Banging their
foreheads against the coffins! It’s dreadful to think of. Do be
careful, Michael. I have written a long letter to Stella explaining all
the precautions she ought to take. Who knows what may happen in
Germany? Such an impulsive nation. At least the Kaiser is. Don’t laugh,
my dear boy, it’s so much more serious than you think. Would you like
to come with me to Mrs. Carruthers’ and hear some of the statistics?
Gruesome, but most instructive. At three o’clock. You needn’t wait for
tea, if you’re busy. The lecturer is an Eurasian. Where _is_ Eurasia,
by the by?”
Michael kissed his mother with affectionate amusement.
“Will you wear the mantilla I brought you from Spain? Look, it’s as
light as burnt tissue paper.”
“Dearest Michael,” she murmured reproachfully, “you ought not to laugh
about sacred subjects.... I don’t really see why we shouldn’t have a
car. We must have a consultation with Dick Prescott.”
After dinner that night Michael wrapped up some stained and faded
vestments he had brought for Viner and went off to see him at Netting
Hill. He told himself guiltily in the hansom that it was more than a
year since he had been to see old Viner, but the priest was so heartily
glad to welcome him and accepted so enthusiastically his propitiatory
gifts, that he felt as much at ease as ever in the smoke-hung room.
“Well, how’s Oxford? I was coming up last term, but I couldn’t get
away. Have you been to see Sandifer yet? Or Pallant at Cowley, or Canon
Harrowell?”
Michael said he had not yet taken advantage of Viner’s letters of
introduction to these dignitaries. He had indeed heard Pallant preach
at the church of the Cowley Fathers, but he had thought him too much
inclined to sacrifice on the altar of empirical science.
“I hate compromise,” said Michael.
“I don’t think Pallant compromises, but I think he does get hold of men
by offering them Catholic doctrine in terms of the present.”
Michael shrugged his shoulders.
“This visit to Spain seems to have made you very bigoted,” Viner
observed, smiling.
“I haven’t made up my mind one way or the other about Christianity,”
Michael said. “But when I do I won’t try to include everybody, to say
to every talkative young Pragmatist with Schiller’s last book in his
pocket, ‘come inside, you’re really one of us.’ I shan’t invite every
callow biologist to hear Mass just because a Cowley Dad sees nothing in
the last article on spontaneous generation that need dismay the
faithful. I’m getting rather fed up with toleration, really; the only
people with any fanaticism now are the rationalists. It’s quite
exhilarating sometimes to see the fire of disbelief glowing in the eyes
of a passionate agnostic.”
“Our Lord Himself was very tolerant,” said Viner.
“Yes, tolerant to the weaknesses of the flesh, tolerant to the woman
taken in adultery, tolerant to the people without wine at Cana, but he
hadn’t much use for people who didn’t believe just as He believed.”
“Isn’t it rather risky to slam the door in the face of the modern man?”
“But, Mr. Viner,” Michael protested, “you can’t betray the myriads of
the past because the individual of to-day finds his faith too weak to
sustain him in their company, because the modern man wants to reëdit
spiritual truths just as he has been able to reëdit a few physical
facts that apparently stand the test of practical experiment. While men
have been rolling along intoxicated by the theory of physical
evolution, they may have retrograded spiritually.”
“Of course, of course,” the priest agreed. “By the way, your faith
seems to be resisting the batterings of external progress very stoutly.
I’m glad, old chap.”
“I’m not sure that I have much faith, but I certainly haven’t given up
hope,” Michael said gravely. “I think, you know, that hope, which is
after all a theological virtue, has never had justice at the hands of
the theologians. Oh, lord, I wish earnest young believers weren’t so
smug and timid. Or else I wish that I didn’t feel the necessity of
coordinating my opinions and accepting Christianity as laid down by the
Church. I should love to be a sort of Swedenborgian with all sorts of
fanciful private beliefs. But I want to force everything within the
convention. I hate Free Thought, Free Love, and Free Verse, and yet I
hate almost equally the stuffy people who have never contemplated the
possibility of their merit. Do you ever read a paper called The
Spectator? Now I believe in what The Spectator stands for, and I admire
its creed enormously, but the expression of its opinions makes me spue.
If only earnest young believers wouldn’t treat Almighty God with the
same sort of proprietary air that schoolgirls use toward a favorite
mistress.”
“Michael, Michael!” cried Viner, “where are you taking me with your
coördinating impulses and your Spectators and your earnest young
believers? What undergraduate paradox are you trying to wield against
me? Remember, I’ve been down nearly twenty years. I can no longer turn
mental somersaults. I thought you implied _you_ were a believer.”
“Oh, no, I’m watching and hoping. And just now I’m afraid the anchor is
dragging. Hope does have an anchor, doesn’t she? I’m not asking, you
know, for the miracle of a direct revelation from God. The
psychologists have made miracles of that sort hardly worth while. But
I’m hoping with all my might to see bit by bit everything fall away
except faith. Perhaps when I behold God in one of his really cynical
moods ... I’m groping in the dark after a hazy idea of subordination.
That’s something, you know. But I haven’t found my own place in the
scheme.”
“You see you’re very modern, after all,” said Viner, “with your
coördinations and subordinations.”
“But I don’t want to assert myself,” Michael explained. “I want to
surrender myself, and I’m not going to surrender anything until I am
sure by faith that I’m not merely surrendering the wastage of myself.”
Michael left Viner with a sense of the pathetic sameness of the
mission-priest’s existence. He had known so well before he went that,
because it was Monday, he would find him sitting in that armchair,
smoking that pipe, reading that novel. Every other evening he would be
either attending to parochial clubs in rooms of wood and corrugated
iron, or his own room would be infested with boys who from year to
year, from month to month, never changed in general character, but
always gave the same impression of shrill cockney, of boisterous
familiarity, of self-satisfied election. To-morrow morning he would say
Mass to the same sparse congregation of sacristan and sisters-of-mercy
and devout old maids. The same red-wristed server would stump about his
liturgical business in Viner’s wake, and the same coffee pot put in the
same place on the same table by the same landlady would await his
return. There was a dreariness about the ministrations of this Notting
Hill Mission which had been absent from the atmosphere of Burgos
Cathedral. No doubt superficially even at Burgos there was a sameness,
but it was a glorious sameness, a sameness that approximated to
eternity. Long ago had the priests learned subordination. They had been
absorbed into the omnipotence of the church against which the gates of
hell could not prevail. Viner remained, however much as he might have
surrendered of himself to his mission work, essentially an isolated, a
pathetic individual.
As usual, Michael met Alan at Paddington, and he was concerned to see
that Alan looked rather pale and worried.
“What problems have you been solving this vac?” Michael asked.
“Oh, I’ve been swatting like a pig for Mods,” said Alan hopelessly.
“You are a lucky lazy devil.”
Even during the short journey to Oxford Alan furtively fingered his
text-books, while he talked to Michael about a depressing January in
London.
“Never mind. Perhaps you’ll get your Blue next term,” said Michael.
“And if you aren’t determined to play cricket all the Long, we’ll go
away and have a really sporting vac somewhere.”
“If I’m plowed,” said Alan gloomily, “I’ve settled to become a
chartered accountant.”
Michael enjoyed his second Lent term. With an easy conscience he
relegated Rugby football into the limbo of the past. He decided such
violent exercise was no longer necessary, and he was getting to know so
many people at other colleges that the cultivation of new personalities
occupied all his leisure. After Maurice and Wedderburn came back from
Spain, they devoted much of their time to painting, and The Oxford
Looking-Glass became a very expensive business on account of the
reproduction of their drawings. Moreover, the circulation decreased in
ratio with the increase of these drawings, and the five promoters who
did not wish to practice art in the pages of their magazine convoked
several meetings of protest. Finally Maurice was allowed to remain
editor only on condition that he abstained from publishing any more
drawings.
Nigel Stewart’s meeting of the De Rebus Ecclesiasticis together with
the visit to Spain induced Michael to turn his attention to that side
of undergraduate life interested in religion. He went to see Canon
Harrowell, and even accepted from him an invitation to a breakfast at
which he met about half a dozen Klebe men who talked about bishops.
Afterward Canon Harrowell seemed anxious to have a quiet talk with him
in the library, but Michael made an excuse, not feeling inclined for
self-revelation so quickly on top of six Klebe men and the eggs and
bacon. He went to see Father Pallant at Cowley, but Father Pallant
appeared so disappointed that he had brought him no scientific problems
to reconcile with Catholic dogma, and was moreover so contemptuous of
Dom Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B. and Clere Abbey that Michael never went to
see him again. He preferred old Sandifer, who with all the worldly
benefits of good wine, good food, and pleasant company, offered in
addition his own courtly Caroline presence that added to wit and
learning and trenchant theology made Michael regret he had not called
upon him sooner.
Nigel Stewart took Michael to a meeting of De Rebus Ecclesiasticis, at
which he met not only the six Keble men who had talked about bishops at
Canon Harrowell’s breakfast, but about twenty more members of the same
college, all equally fervid and in his opinion equally objectionable.
Michael also went with Nigel Stewart to Mass at St. Barnabas’, where he
saw the same Keble men all singing conspicuously and all conveying the
impression that every Sunday they occupied the same place. By the end
of the term Michael’s aroused interest in religion at Oxford died out.
He disliked the sensation of belonging to a particular school of
thought within a university. The ecclesiastical people were like the
ampelopsis at Trinity: they were highly colored, but so inappropriate
to Oxford, that they seemed almost vulgar. It was ridiculous they
should have to worship in Oxford at a very ugly modern church in the
middle of very ugly modern slums, as ridiculous as it was to call in
the aid of American creepers to cover up the sins of modern architects.
Yet Michael was at a loss to explain to himself why the ecclesiastical
people were so obviously out of place in Oxford. After all, they were
the heirs of a force which had persisted there for many years almost in
its present aspect: they were the heirs after a fashion of the force
that kept the Royal Standard flying against the Parliament. But they
had not inherited the spirit of mediæval Oxford. They were too
self-conscious, too congregational. As individuals, perhaps they were
in tone with Oxford, but, eating bacon and eggs and talking about
bishops, they belonged evidently to Keble, and Michael could not help
feeling that Keble like Mansfield and Ruskin Hall was in Oxford, but
not in the least of Oxford. The spirit of mediæval Oxford was more
typically preserved in the ordinary life of the ordinary graduate; and
yet it was a mistake to think of the spirit of Oxford at any date. That
spirit was dateless and indefinable, and each new manifestation which
Michael was inclined to seize upon, even a manifestation so satisfying
as Venner’s, became with the very moment that he was aware of it as
impossible to determine as a dream which leaves nothing behind but the
almost violent knowledge that it was and exasperatingly still is.
The revived interest lasted a very short time in its communal aspect,
and Michael retreated into his mediæval history, still solicitous of
Catholicism in so far as to support the papacy against the Empire in
the balance of his judgment, but no longer mingling with the Anglican
adherents of the theory, nor even indeed committing himself openly to
Christianity as a general creed. Indeed, his whole attitude to religion
was the result of a reactionary bias rather than of any impulse toward
constructive progression. He would have liked to urge himself forward
confidently to proclaim his belief in Christianity, but he could
acquire nothing more positive than a gentle skepticism of the value of
every other form of thought, a gentleness that only became scornfully
intolerant when provoked by ignorance or pretentious statement.
Meanwhile, The Oxford Looking-Glass, though inclining officially to
neither political party, was reflecting a widespread interest in social
reform. Michael woke up to this phenomenon as he read through the sixth
number on a withering March day toward the end of term. Knowing Maurice
to be a chameleon who unconsciously acquired the hue of his
surroundings, Michael was sure that The Oxford Looking-Glass by this
earnest tone indicated the probable tendency of undergraduate energy in
the hear future. Yet himself, as he surveyed his acquaintances, could
not perceive in their attitude any hint of change. In St. Mary’s the
debating clubs were still debating the existence of ghosts: the essay
clubs were still listening to papers that took them along the by-ways
of archæology or sport. Throughout the university the old habit of mind
persisted apparently. The New College manner that London journalists
miscalled the Oxford manner still prevailed in the discussion of
intellectual subjects. In Balliol when any remark trembled on the edge
of a generalization, somebody in a corner would protest, “Oh, shut up,
fish-face!” and the conversation at once veered sharply back to golf or
scandal, while the intellectual kitten who had been playing with his
mental tail would be suddenly conscious of himself or his dignity and
sit still. In Exeter the members of the Literary Society were still
called the Bloody Lits. Nothing anywhere seemed as yet to hint that the
traditional flippancy of Oxford which was merely an extension of the
public-school spirit was in danger of dying out. Oxford was still the
apotheosis of the amateur. It was still surprising when the Head of a
House or a don or an undergraduate achieved anything in a manner that
did not savor of happy chance. It was still natural to regard Cambridge
as a provincial university, and to take pleasure in shocking the
earnest young Cambridge man with the metropolitan humors and airy
self-assurance of Oxford.
Yet The Oxford Looking-Glass reflected another spirit which Michael
could not account for and the presence of which he vaguely resented.
“The O.L.G. is getting very priggish and serious and rather dull,” he
complained to Maurice.
“Not half so dull as it would be if I depended entirely on casual
contributions,” replied the editor. “I don’t seem to get anything but
earnestness.”
“Oxford is becoming the home of living causes,” sighed Michael. “That’s
a depressing thought. Do you really think these Rhodes Scholars from
America and Australia and Germany are going to affect us?”
“I don’t know,” Maurice said. “But everybody seems keen to speculate on
the result.”
“Why don’t you take up a strong line of patronage? Why don’t you
threaten these pug-nosed invaders with the thunders of the past?”
Michael demanded fiercely.
“Would it be popular?” asked Maurice. “Personally of course I don’t
care one way or the other, but I don’t want to let the O.L.G. in for a
lot of criticism.”
“You really ought to be a wonderful editor,” said Michael. “You’re so
essentially the servant of the public.”
“Well, with all your grumbles,” said Maurice, “ours is the only serious
paper that has had any sort of a run of late years.”
“But it lacks individuality,” Michael complained. “It’s so damned
inclusive. It’s like The Daily Telegraph. It’s voluminous and
undistinguished. It shows the same tepid cordiality toward everything,
from a man who’s going to be hanged for murder to a new record at
cricket. Why can’t you infect it with some of the deplorable but rather
delightfully juvenile indiscretion of The Daily Mail?”
“The Daily Mail,” Maurice scoffed. “That rag!”
“A man once said to me,” Michael meditatively continued, “that whenever
he saw a man in an empty railway compartment reading The Daily
Telegraph, he always avoided it. You see, he knew that man. He knew how
terrible it would be to listen to him when he had finished his
Telegraph. I feel rather like that about the O.L.G. But after all,” he
added cheerfully, “nobody does read the O.L.G. The circulation depends
on the pledges of their pen sent round to their friends and relations
by the casual contributors. And nobody ever meets a casual contributor.
Is it true, by the way, that the fossilized remains of one were found
in-that great terra incognita—Queen’s College?”
But Maurice had left him, and Michael strolled down to the lodge to see
if there were any letters. Shadbolt handed him an invitation to dinner
from the Warden. As he opened it, Lonsdale came up with a torn replica
of his own.
“I say, Michael, this is a rum sort of binge for the Wagger to give. I
spotted all the notes laid out in a row by old Pumpkin-head’s butler.
You. Me. Tommy Grainger. Fitzroy. That ass Appleby. That worm Carben.
And Smithers. There may have been some others too. I hope I don’t get
planted next the Pumpkinette.”
“Miss Wagger may not be there,” said Michael hopefully. “But if she is,
you’re bound to be next her.”
“I say, Shadbolt,” Lonsdale demanded, “is this going to be a big squash
at the Wagger’s?”
“The Warden has given me no instruction, sir, about carriages. And so I
think we may take it for granted as it will be mostly confined to
members of the college, sir. His servant tells me as the Dean is going
and the Senior Tutor.”
“And there won’t be any does?”
“Any what, sir?”
“Any ladies?”
“I expect as Miss Crackanthorpe will be present. She very rarely
absconds from such proceedings,” said Shadbolt, drawing every word with
the sound of popping corks from the depths of his pompousness.
Michael and Lonsdale found out that to the list of guests they had
established must be added the names of Maurice, Wedderburn and two
freshmen who were already favorably reported through the college as
good sportsmen.
Two evenings later, at seven o’clock, Michael, Maurice, Lonsdale,
Wedderburn, and Grainger, bowed and starched, stood in Venner’s,
drinking peach bitters sharpened by the addition of gin.
“The men have gone in to hall,” said Venner. “You ought to start round
to the Warden’s lodgings at ten past seven. Now don’t be late. I expect
you’ll have a capital dinner.”
“Champagne, Venner?” asked Lonsdale.
“Oh, bound to be! Bound to be,” said Venner. “The Warden knows how to
give a dinner. There’s no doubt of that.”
“Caviare, Venner?” asked Maurice.
“I wouldn’t say for certain. But if you get an opportunity to drink any
of that old hock, be sure you don’t forget. It’s a lovely wine. I wish
we had a few dozen in the J.C.R. Now don’t go and get tipsy like some
of our fellows did once at a dinner given by the Warden.”
“Did they, Venner?” asked everybody, greatly interested.
“It was just after the Transvaal war broke out. Only three or four
years ago. There was a man called Castleton, a cousin of our Castleton,
but a very different sort of man, such a rowdy fellow. He came out from
the Warden’s most dreadfully tipsy, and the men were taking him back to
his rooms, when he saw little Barnaby, a Science don, going across New
quad. He broke away from his friends and shouted out, ‘there’s a
blasted Boer,’ and before they could stop him, he’d knocked poor little
Barnaby, a most nervous fellow, down in the wet grass and nearly
throttled him. It was hushed up, but Castleton was never asked again
you may be sure, and then soon after he volunteered for the front and
died of enteric. So you see what comes of getting tipsy. Now you’d
better start.”
Arm in arm the five of them strolled through Cloisters until they came
to the gothic door of the Warden’s Lodgings. Up the Warden’s majestic
staircase they followed the butler into the Warden’s gothic
drawing-room where they shook hands with the great moon-faced Warden
himself, and with Miss Crackanthorpe, who was very much like her
brother, and nearly as round on a much smaller scale. They nodded to
the Dean, mentally calculating how many roll-calls they were behind,
for the Dean notwithstanding the geniality of his greeting had one gray
eye that seemed unable to forget it belonged to the Dean. They nodded
to Mr. Ardle, the Senior Tutor, who blinked and sniffed and bowed
nervously in response. Fitzroy beamed at them: Smithers doubtfully eyed
them. The two freshmen reputed to be good sportsmen smiled grateful
acknowledgments of their condescension. Appleby waved his hand in a
gesture of such bland welcome that Lonsdale seemed to gibber with
suppressed mortification and rage.
“Will you lay five to one in bobs that I don’t sit next the
Pumpkinette?” whispered Lonsdale to Michael, as they went downstairs to
dinner.
“Not a halfpenny,” laughed Michael. “You will. And I shall get Ardle.”
Upon the sage-green walls of the dining-room hung the portraits of
three dead Wardens, and though the usual effect of family pictures was
to make the living appear insignificant beside them, Michael felt that
Pumpkin-head even in the presence of his three ferocious and learned
forerunners had nothing to fear for his own preëminence. Modern life
found in him a figure carved out of the persistent attributes of his
office, and therefore already a symbol of the universal before his
personality had been hallowed by death or had expressed itself in its
ultimate form under the maturing touch of art and time. This quality in
the host diffused itself through the room in such a way that the whole
dinner party gained from it a dignity and a stability which made more
than usually absurd the superficial actions of eating and drinking, and
the general murmur of infinitely fugacious talk.
Michael taking his first glance round the table after the preliminary
shynesses of settling down, was as much thrilled by his consciousness
of the eternal reality of this dinner party as he would have been if by
a magical transference he could have suddenly found himself pursuing
some grave task in the picture of a Dutch master. He had been to many
dinners in Oxford of which commemorative photographs had been made by
flashlight, and afterward when he saw the print he could scarcely
believe in his own reality, still less in that of the dinner, so
ludicrously invented seemed every group. He wished now that a painter
would set himself the problem of preserving by his art some of these
transitory entertainments. He began to imagine himself with the
commission to set on record the present occasion. He wished for the
power to paint those deeper shadows in which the Warden’s great round
face inclined slowly now toward Fitzroy with his fair complexion and
military rigor of bearing, now toward Wedderburn whose evening dress
acquired from the dignity of its owner the richness of black velvet.
More directly in the light of the first lamp sat Maurice and Appleby
opposite to one another, both imparting to the assemblage a charming
worldliness, Maurice by his loose-fronted shirt, Appleby by the
self-esteem of his restless blue eyes. The two freshmen on either side
of the Dean wonderfully contrasted with his gauntness, and even more
did the withered Ardle, who looked like a specimen of humanity dried as
plants are dried between heavy books, contrast with the sprawling bulk
of Grainger. On the other side, Michael watched with amusement Miss
Crackanthorpe with shining apple-face bobbing nervously between
Smithers pale and solid and domed like a great cheese, and Lonsdale
cool and pink as an ice. In the background from the shadows at either
end of the room the sage-green walls materialized in the lamplight: the
three dead Wardens stared down at the table: and every fifteen minutes
bells chimed in St. Mary’s tower.
“And how is The Oxford Looking-Glass progressing, Avery?” inquired the
Warden, shining full upon the editor in a steady gaze. “No doubt it
takes up a great deal of your valuable time?”
The Dean winked his gray decanal eye at the champagne: the Senior Tutor
coughed remotely like a grasshopper: Lonsdale prodded Michael with his
elbow and murmured that “the Wagger had laid Mossy a stymie.”
Maurice admitted the responsibility of the paper for occupying a
considerable amount of his _leisure_, but consoled himself for this by
the fact that certainly, The Oxford Looking-Glass was progressing very
well indeed.
“We don’t altogether know what attitude to take up over the Rhodes
Bequest,” said Maurice. Then boldly he demanded from the Warden what
would be the effect of these imposed scholars from America and
Australia and Africa.
“The speculation is not without interest,” declared the Warden. “What
does Fitzroy think?”
Fitzroy threw back his shoulders as if he were going to abuse the
Togger and said he thought the athletic qualifications were a mistake.
“After all, sir, we don’t want the Tabs—I mean to say we don’t want to
beat Cambridge with the help of a lot of foreigners.”
“Foreigners, Fitzroy? Come, come, we can scarcely stigmatize Canadians
as foreigners. What would become of the Imperial Idea?”
“I think the Imperial Idea will take a lot of living up to,” said
Wedderburn, “when we come face to face with its practical expression.
Personally I loathe Colonials except at the Earl’s Court Exhibition.”
“Ah, Wedderburn,” said the Warden, “you are luckily young enough to be
able to be particular. I with increasing age begin to suffer from that
terrible disease of age—toleration.”
“But the Warden is not so very old,” whispered Miss Crackanthorpe to
Lonsdale and Michael.
“Oh, rather not,” Lonsdale murmured encouragingly.
“I think they’ll wake up Oxford,” announced Smithers; then, as everyone
turned to hear what more he would say, Smithers seemed inclined to melt
into silence, but with a sudden jerk of defiance, he hardened himself
and became volubly opinionative.
“There’s no doubt,” he continued, “that these fellows will make the
average undergrad look round him a bit.” As Smithers curtailed
undergraduate to the convention of a lady-novelist, a shudder ran round
the dinner party. Almost the butler instead of putting ice into the
champagne might have slipped it down the backs of the guests.
“In fact, what ho, she bumps,” whispered Lonsdale. “Likewise pip-ip,
and tootle-oo.”
“Anyway, he won’t be able to ignore them,” said Smithers.
“We hope not, indeed,” the Warden gravely wished. “What does Lonsdale
think? Lord Cleveden wrote to me to say how deeply interested he was by
the whole scheme—a most appreciative letter, and your father has had a
great experience of colonial conditions.”
“Has he?” said Lonsdale. “Oh, yes, I see what you mean. You mean when
he was Governor. Oh, rather. But I never knew him in those days.” Then
under his breath he muttered to Michael: “Dive in, dive in, you rotter,
I’m getting out of my depth.”
“I think Oxford will change the Rhodes Scholars much more profoundly
than the Rhodes Scholars will change Oxford,” said Michael. “At least
they will if Oxford hasn’t lost anything lately. Sometimes I’m worried
by that, and then I’m not, for I do really feel that they must be
changed. Civilization must have some power, or we should all revert.”
“And are we to regard these finished oversea products as barbarians?”
asked the Warden.
“Oh, yes,” said Michael earnestly. “Just as much barbarians as any
freshmen.”
Everybody looked at the two freshmen on either side of the Dean and
laughed, while they laughed too and tried to appear pleasantly
flattered by the epithet.
“And what will Oxford give them?” asked the Dean dryly. He spoke with
that contempt of generalizations of which all dons made a habit.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Michael. “But vaguely I would say that Oxford
would cure them of being surprised by themselves or of showing surprise
at anybody else. Marcus Aurelius said what I’m trying to say much
better than I ever can. Also they will gain a sense of humor, or rather
they will ripen whatever sense they already possess. And they’ll have a
sense of continuity, too, and perhaps—but of course this will depend
very much on their dons—perhaps they’ll take as much interest in the
world as in Australia.”
“Why will that depend on their dons?” challenged Mr. Ambrose.
“Oh, well, you know,” explained Michael apologetically, “dons very
often haven’t much capacity for inquisitiveness. They get frightened
very easily, don’t they?”
“Very true, very true,” said the Warden. “But, my dear Fane, your
optimism and your pessimism are both quixotic, immensely quixotic.”
Later on in the quad when the undergraduate members of the dinner party
discussed the evening, Maurice rallied Michael on his conversation.
“If you can talk your theories, why can’t you write them?” he
complained.
“Because they’d be almost indecently diaphanous,” said Michael.
“Good old Fane!” said Grainger. “But, I say, you are an extraordinary
chap, you know.”
“He did it for me,” said Lonsdale. “Pumpkin-head would have burst, if
I’d let out I didn’t know what part of the jolly old world my governor
used to run.”