Childish Loves

by Benjamin Markovits

  ‘No, I have got the names wrong,’ he said, ‘otherwise you would know them.’

  Later, he knocked on my door with a knife in his hand. The window to his room had been painted shut; he could not reach the top edge. So I stood upon one of his chairs, while he fretted at my side, and scraped away until the window fell open.

  The tutor I met on my way out. He introduced himself first to my servant, who introduced him to me. His name is Jones. His hand was damp when I shook it, and he called me ‘milord’.

  ‘I don’t suppose we shall see you at any of the lectures,’ he said and walked with me as far as the college gate.

  ‘I wished really to go to Oxford,’ I confided in him. ‘But there were no rooms at Christ Church.’

  ‘You may find your life here rather lonely in comparison. To school, I mean.’

  ‘But at least I have escaped my mother.’

  ‘I suppose your schoolmates are mostly at Christ Church.’

  ‘Lord Clare. Delawarr. William Harkness.’

  ‘Are there none at Trinity?’

  ‘One or two.’

  I saw him again at supper, which I ate in Hall, appearing for the first time in my state robes. The effect was superb, but uncomfortable to my diffidence. It seems I am the only nobleman admitted to the college this term. The result has been a flock of invitations, fluttering and vying for space upon my table. I have written to Hanson, who dispenses my inheritance, and requested him to order me down four dozen of wine – port, sherry, claret and Madeira, so that I may return in kind each geste of hospitality. The joiner’s work is finished, and most of my furniture has arrived. In short, I begin to like a college life extremely. The wine was sent, and I am drunk most nights on retiring to bed, which is rarely before two or three in the morning. Meanwhile, I have brought and bought a great many books and read none of them.

  *

  The great question has been to determine in which set I hope to establish myself. William Bankes likes to say that one needs the shelter of a reputation. I think he is right – and Bankes at least ‘recks his own rede’ and has fashioned for himself the largest reputation in college. For his rooms, which are located not five minutes from my own, he has imported two high-backed, oak-carved pews from the chapel at Kingston Lacy, his father’s seat, and positioned them on opposing walls. Against the chimney-breast hangs a replica of Christ crucified, from the Lady of Martyrs in Shelford – which he paid a carver’s apprentice two pounds for, and painted himself. On Sunday afternoons, which is when I first visited him, he hires a ‘moiety’ of the college choir to serenade him, and we dined (there were a few others besides) on claret and stewed quail while the boys hallelujahed round us.

  His taste in clothes is equally striking. He complains even on mild November afternoons of the cold and drapes across his shoulders a sort of table-cloth, of orient hues. But for all that, he is sensible and widely read, and guilty of nothing worse so far as I can tell than an appetite for feeding suspicion. The old Fellow across the hall once asked me, ‘What the devil does he do with those singing boys?’

  To which I had the quickness to reply, ‘Gives them supper,’ which amused him perhaps rather more than it ought. Later I heard him humming, as he made his slow way along the stairs,

  Little Tommy Tucker

  Sings for his supper;

  What shall we give him?

  White bread and butter.

  How shall he cut it

  Without a knife?

  How will he be married

  Without a wife?

  They call this place the University, but any other appellation would have suited it much better, for study is the last pursuit of the society. The master eats, drinks and sleeps, the Fellows drink, dispute and pun, and the employments of the undergraduates are more easily conjectured than described. I have only supped at home three times since my arrival, and my table is constantly covered with invitations – though I am the most steady man in college, as Bankes himself admits. There is nothing to vex me but money-troubles, though these are vexing enough.

  I have had a letter from Hanson, who complains of the rate of my expenditure. He does not understand what is expected of a man of rank. I wrote him an angry letter in return. Bankes refers to him as ‘the solicitor’ and thinks the whole exchange contemptible (I have shown him some of the letters), a sentiment I heartily agree with; yet somehow I cannot leave off. Hanson’s interference has at least the advantage of keeping my mother at bay, for she depends upon him as a proxy. I have explained to him that we are now totally separated. The instant I hear of her arrival in Trinity, I will quit Cambridge, though rustication or expulsion be the consequence. She fears I have got into the hands of the money-lenders. Not yet; but Mrs Massingberd has promised to stand as guarantor, with a Jew of her acquaintance. Denied by a parent, I am forced to seek refuge with strangers.

  A part of these first few weeks, when I was not dining out, I have passed with Edward Long, whom I knew at school. He was a great favourite at Harrow among the masters, and perhaps this prejudiced me against him. But here he is very unhappy and I like him more. When the weather is clear, we ride out towards the weir above Grantchester, and on one sunshiny day stripped and swam. Then lay on the bank sunning, and afterwards threw eggs and coins into the water and dived after them. He said to me, as we cantered home again, sober and cold, and head-achey from the cold, that he felt himself to be a very innocent young man.

  I was rather puzzled for a reply, but he went on, ‘Indeed, I envy you the freedom of your manner with William Bankes.’

  ‘The freedoms and manner,’ I said, ‘are all his own. He talks, and we listen. But he is not so particular or strange as he first appears. And the rest of his set are good-natured enough: Rhodes and Milnes; MacNamara, Price and Gally Knight. When I am there, I never think twice about how we pass the time. It passes.’

  ‘I assure you, there is nothing I dislike more than my own silence.’

  ‘Oh, you talk well enough, when you wish.’

  In the evenings Long sits sometimes in my rooms, with his ‘cello on his knee, and plays. It gives me a kind of satisfaction to feel his music drifting through my window and across the college. Several hours might be wasted in this manner, while I revolve rhymes about my head and write some of them down. His face as he addresses the bow is almost as good as a painter’s model, for it hardly moves. What with downcast eyes, concentrated lip, and fair cast of skin (which has never yet known the need of a razor), it serves me very well for any number of Carolines, Emmas and Marys.

  Bankes, as it happens, expressed great interest in my ‘old friend’ and invited him to play in his rooms. But the experiment was not a success. The piece he had chosen, a cantata by Scarlatti, ran on tediously. Long felt this but having begun it could not bring himself to stop. Afterwards he made his excuses and retired very soberly at half past midnight, carrying his instrument awkwardly in hand and pushing his way out.

  *

  Bankes is the kind of man of whom stories are told. Sometimes he tells them himself. For example, once at Gronow’s, gaming late into the night, he emerged at last with twenty guineas in coin and a single opera ticket. Dawn had dawned, but he was engaged to MacNamara’s for breakfast and never likes to miss an engagement. At MacNamara’s they ate eggs and fish and drank champagne, from ten in the morning until four in the afternoon, by which point he was perfectly steady, so long as Price held him up. At six o’clock he dined with his father, where they finished three bottles of claret between them, and ate roast mutton, and afterwards he went alone to the theatre with his ticket. There was no one he knew in the box, and as it was completely full, no space to fall down in, either. His neighbours were all of them a little surprised to find him in their midst, having expected his companion of the night before, whose name he had forgotten. It so happens that at that time, which was shortly after the riots outside the Old Elizabeth, the theatre had stationed guards along the upper corridors, each with a musket, a high beaver ha
t, and a chair to sit in. There appeared to Bankes, as Lady Wishfort says, ‘nothing more alluring than a couch’ – separated as these were from the stalls by a thick curtain. After the first act he stood up and offered to exchange places with the guard outside his box, who agreed, for some portion of the twenty guineas he had won earlier in the day; so Bankes put on his hat and tucked the musket under his arm and fell asleep.

  It may have been Price or Gally Knight who added something about the other terms of the exchange and the advantages of the little curtain. Bankes does not encourage such remarks but is never embarrassed by them. Among the choir-boys employed by him to ‘lengthen our afternoons’ are several who have become friendly with their pastor; they visit his rooms, even when they are not paid to. Boys of thirteen or fifteen, accustomed in their domestic lives to scenes of squalor and desolation, find amongst our friends a great deal to flatter and tempt them. They are given to eat and to drink and Bankes also has a passion for dressing some of the fairer specimens ‘with as much modesty as cunning’ – that is, very little of either. There is something in these exhibitions I dislike, a kind of forced good humour, but among the odd consequences of these odd displays is that they awake in me strong sympathies for the boys in question.

  There is one in particular who has, with real modesty and cunning, thus far resisted every attempt to beautify him, but continues to receive his ‘Sunday fee’ for singing in the little chapel. It was his voice that first attracted my notice, but his countenance fixed it. He is very fair, almost painfully so, and dark-eyed, and slight; and says little or nothing. When he does speak, it is almost impossible to hear him. Like certain birds, he must sing to be heard. His name is Edleston, and he is an orphan and lives in the low stone almost windowless house at the back of St Nicholas. I flatter myself that he makes some distinction between the interest I take in him, and that of Bankes, Price et al., for he continues to come each Sunday and, I have been told, takes his leave very early if he finds me absent.

  *

  Christmas I spent in London at Mrs Massingberd’s. But even to London the influence of William Bankes extends, or rather, I should say, of Skinner Matthews, another of his set. Matthews has a passion for ‘the fancy’, and through him I have become acquainted with that class of idler to be found most mornings at number 13 Bond Street, in the rooms of Henry Angelo and ‘Gentleman’ Jackson. I have vowed to become less than I was, and to this end waste an hour of each day in sparring and fencing, under their tutelage, in the hope of being wasted away in turn.

  Matthews is a very remarkable man, and a sceptic, but a principled upright character, nonetheless, in his narrow sphere. He has put me in the orbit of a famous French ‘entremetteuse’, who assists young gentlemen in their youthful pastimes. Something lately occurred in her line of business a little out of the ordinary, and when Matthews declined it, the refusal was offered to me. She sent me a letter couched in such English as a short residence of sixteen years in England has enabled her to acquire. But there was a postscript, which contained these words: – ‘Remember, Milor, that delicaci ensure everi succes.’ It appears the Regent had taken an interest, and was known to be jealous.

  The object in question was a pretty Portuguese creature, not more than fourteen years of age. She is the daughter of a mussulman merchant, who had embarked with his family at Lisbon and escaped the French blockade only to be overtaken outside Gibraltar by pirates. These shot away one of the masts, killing meanwhile the captain and first lieutenant etc., and a few dozen sailors and passengers, including the girl’s father, mother and brother, before storming the ship and driving her on to Tangier. The girl herself was largely unhurt except for a few splinters in her ankles and thighs. But the wounds became infected, gangrene set in, and the ship’s surgeon was forced to amputate both legs above the knee. She survived otherwise unblemished and was eventually sold on to a trader making his way to Marrakesh.

  A few months later she found herself in London under the stewardship of Madame DuReine. Madame presented her to me with an air of secrets penetrated, at the top of a narrow house, under the eaves, one wet low foggy January evening, with the damask curtains drawn – across the windows, across the four-poster bed – from which the maiden in question could do no more than sit up. The loss of her legs gave her an air of sweet dependency; she takes, at least, no other exercise. Her complexion is very pale, for a mussulwoman – that is, the shadow of pale, but her eyes are large and shining. And she is light enough to be lifted in one hand.

  But such amusements cost money, especially if they are to be repeated. Since then I have confined my promiscuities to one of the actresses at Covent Garden, whose part is very small, and who visits me sometimes between the acts. Elizabeth complains of my neglect. It may be, indeed, when even the conversions of the Jews dry up, that I shall be forced to make a brief return to Southwell. But I had rather go back to college. And there are reasons besides my mother for keeping out of Southwell. On my last visit, I was deemed by several brothers to have been guilty of an advance, or several advances. And I mean to commemorate a few of these maidens in humble verse, to be privately printed by Ridge of Newark and circulated among friends. I have begun to sleep very poorly alone, and when I sleeps not, I scribbles.

  *

  In Cambridge, the weather improves, and Long and I have returned to the weir above Grantchester – on horseback only, though we speak of resuming our more strenuous exercises soon. He is becoming less unhappy; that is, he grows lecturous. He says that he does not think me happy and deprecates my association with William Bankes. Long’s father knows Bankes père and says he is the kind of man of whom it is remarked, on a very slight acquaintance, what a good fellow he is, I should like to know more of him; and then one begins to wonder why he has not more friends.

  ‘Bankes has a great many friends. I am only too conscious of how slight my claims to his attention are.’

  We were sitting on the mossy roots of a willow, to which our horses were tethered, and smoking damply. The trees reflected in the water were mere sketches of trees, between blottings of clouds. An early March day. We were both cold, though I was conscious also of a strange reluctance to stand up and go.

  ‘What claims has he on yours, I should like to know. There are stories told about him which do not bear repeating.’

  ‘My dear Long, I am not so innocent as you believe. There is something very flattering in your concern. It supposes me to be what I am not and what I never was.’

  ‘You are not so difficult to know as you would perhaps wish.’

  But then, he has got in with the clerical set, which includes Hodgson and Burton-Smith. They attend Widmore’s lecture on Church history and meet afterwards at the Crowne. His shelves are filled with volumes of Canon Ryman’s Reflections and Interpretations, and when he brings his ‘cello to my rooms, as he continues to do, he plays Purcell’s fantasias or something from Croft’s Musica Sacra. I believe his new friends discourage these visits, but Hodgson is not a bad sort and has besides this great inducement to sociability – he is short of cash.

  I have been forced again to apply to Mrs Massingberd. Augusta refused to stand as security for another Jew-debt, and, which was worse, alerted Hanson to my predicament. It seems as easy to renounce a sister (whom, after all, one has hardly known) as disown a mother. Mrs Massingberd is more persuadable. It is a great vice to think about money at all, but without it, one thinks of nothing but money. A subscription was put round for a statue of Pitt, who was a frequent visitor of the college and died early this year. Hanson has said to me (several others have remarked the same) that they expect my true calling to be oratory. I gave some thirty pounds. It has also been necessary for me to maintain a carriage. Finding nothing that would satisfy, I went to the expense of having one built.

  Bankes begins to quiz me about Edleston. It is perhaps his greatest vice that he interprets everything in the light of his own character. The truth is that I do not entirely disagree with Long. A few of his Sund
ay boys have become through his influence habitual drunks; one of them was even barred from chapel. Since he lived on the parish, this child (for he is little better than a child) has forfeited not only his position in the choir but his dwelling-place also. Edleston tells me it is not known where or how he lives. But Edleston himself, who has a great horror of drawing attention, is sober and modest and chaste. It is for his sake that I have bought the carriage, as he dislikes the show of appearing publicly with me. In this way we travel freely unobserved.

  *

  A few weeks ago, I took Edleston to the weir above Grantchester, where we swam from its banks. Or rather, I swam while he watched me, clutching his arms together – in spite of the warm May morning, full of motes and sunshine. I stripped and dived in and lay with my head on the water, but Edleston grew cold even before I did and wished to return to the carriage – a half-mile tramp through wet grass.

  His father, who was in trade, died a few years before; his mother he never knew. There is a sister, too, a few years his elder, from whom he has jealously kept me. Perhaps they have other relations, but none has claimed them. Since his father’s death, he has ‘sung in the choir and made his bed’ in the orphanage – he knows no persons of influence but Reverend Broughton and Mrs Carmichael, who runs the priory school. From them he has learned manners and a little Latin. His sister dislikes Mr Bankes, or dislikes his visiting him, which amounts to the same thing; but he has never before had a penny to call his own, and Mr Bankes is generous. Each Sunday he tells himself to keep away but cannot.