Looking for Class

by Bruce Feiler

  I managed to utter a feeble apology as the two of us split at the hall. Back in my room I turned on the light, slipped off my DJ, and began untying my bow, which through the cocktails, chili, and jelly had remained true to the soul of a shoe. In a moment there was a knock on my door.

  “It’s me,” said Halcyon with a nervous giggle. “I need your help.”

  I opened the door. Halcyon was standing in her sheer Chinese evening dress, leaning against the frame of the door. One of her feet was curled around the gentle slope of the other leg.

  “I’m afraid I’m stuck,” she said, staring straight into my eyes. “Can you help me out of my dress?”

  I took a breath and stared at the floor. I thought of Simon. “I’m only human,” he had said. “I enjoy having sex.” I thought of Ian. “If you say you’re only human,” he had preached, “and give into your urges, you can never find true love.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said, “but let’s go to your room.”

  We walked the several steps into her rooms and Halcyon shut the door. I undid the four clasps at the shoulders of her dress and watched it fall to the floor. For a moment, she stood in the center of the unlit room and stared at the moon through the open pane. Pausing at the cusp of a friendship that was about to change forever, I reached my hand toward the doorknob and stepped out into the dark.

  VI

  LEARNING

  The Pledge of Allegiance

  O Cambridge, home of Culture’s pure delights,

  My fostering Mother, what a desecration!

  Yet England chose you (out of several sites)

  To be a bulwark and to save the nation.

  —Sir Owen Seaman

  “Cambridge in Khaki,” 1914

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, fellow students of the world. It is a pleasure to be speaking to you in these rich and august surroundings. Very much of a pleasure, indeed….”

  The tattered leaves of Newton’s apple trees were swirling in a mid-autumn storm and sticking like mud on the thick lead windows of the School of Pythagoras. Outside, boats on the river were braving the gale for a last week of practice before the regatta; bicycles crossing the bridges toward class were skidding on the film of chestnut foliage that covered almost every walk; and stone buildings with names like Milton, Darwin, and Erasmus were leaking faster than the bathtubs of Clare in a kind of compensatory shower. Inside, where guests dared not mention the holes in the roof for fear of offending the ghosts of Genius Past, students were shaking off their dripping black brollies, which I still called umbrellas, and draping their trench coats and college-striped scarves over the fold-out white plastic chairs. It was a Thursday morning in Michaelmas Term and time for the weekly seminar sponsored by the Centre of International Studies. The week’s topic: The Crisis at Hand.

  “What I have to say to you this morning may seem to have very little to do with the Crisis,” said J. G. Lund, director of information for the European Community and visiting lecturer at Cambridge, “but I think it’s important to view this event in a wider context and paint a fairly broad canvas. What we are facing is not merely an immediate concern but a threat to our very survival—at least in the medium term.”

  After love, which is clearly the most prized, most discussed, and most “mucked up” part of university life, and drinking, which serves as a wobbly undercurrent to undergraduate living, various other activities slot into the A-list of prioritized endeavors on a university campus, including athletics, politics, pizza, movies, and the logical outcome of most of these: sleeping late. On this list academics would probably rate a respectable last. To be sure, this scale changes depending on the proximity of the next examination or the length of the next term paper, but for much of the time on most university campuses, and most of the year at Cambridge, academics is the activity of last resort.

  For graduate students, this equation is meant to be slightly altered. Ian, for his part, plunged himself wholeheartedly into his SPS papers: “The Politics of Love in Homeric Tragedy,” “The Tragic Implications of My Personal Life.” I, on the other hand, was studying the distinctly nonpersonal subjects of NGOs, nongovernmental organizations; IGOs, intergovernmental organizations; and UFOs, organizations whose purpose in life is unfathomable. In the meantime, as I listened to heightened British concerns about the European Community and thought about my thesis, I hit on the idea of comparing the Occupation of Japan with the parallel one in Germany. When I looked in the books Dr. Long had given me, however, I found no references to Europe. I decided I must be onto something, but wondered if he would approve.

  Meanwhile, the daily drone of lectures continued. The members of my course had long since decided to forgo most of our lectures, except the all-day seminars held once a week. These meetings were the only time we saw one another and even then, in established Cambridge monologic tradition, we rarely spoke. The myth in Cambridge is that students participate equally in their one-on-one tuition; the reality is that only one side usually gets to speak. Exceptions to this formula are so rare that when a student does speak up in class and breaks down the invisible barrier, the incident becomes, in an academic sort of way, exciting.

  “My approach to this topic is to touch on the issues of medium-term relevance to the current Crisis, and by that I mean effects that last longer than twenty-five years and perhaps as long as two hundred.” Mr. Lund was sitting behind a table on a tiny stage with a bright yellow spotlight shining directly on the crown of his balding head, casting shadows on his eyebrows worthy of Groucho Marx and distorting his nose so that it appeared like that of Charles de Gaulle. “I intend to start with a lengthy preamble that will offer a quick review of the events of our time and then end with a discussion of our fast and fleeting planetary occupation.”

  Because of its reputation for academic excellence, Cambridge tends to bring out the worst in its guest lecturers. Mr. Lund’s preamble was, as promised, lengthy, taking fully three quarters of his one-hour time. He talked about the passing of the Pax Britannica, the arrival of a unified Europe, and the need for people to abandon their national identities. He mentioned global warming, rapid population growth, as well as some of the problems of pesticides, herbicides, deforestation, and dwindling water supplies. In short, he discussed every conceivable threat to world peace except what his topic demanded.

  “As you can see,” he said near the end, “I have adopted a somewhat global perspective. But I intend to make a point much closer to home. British policy, your policy, over the last several hundred years was based entirely on self-interest. The interests of the states came first; the interest of the earth, last. Today the ethics of imperialism can no longer be defended. We live in ensemble now, and future leaders such as yourselves must learn to overcome your prejudices. To take the famous words of John Donne, a poet with whom I’m sure you’re all familiar, ‘No man is an island….’”

  “Sir,” a voice called out from the back of the hall. It was a student from Durham, in the north of England, and a recent graduate of Cambridge. “Sir, this is all very interesting, but what does it have to do with the current Crisis?”

  A few snickers skidded across the floor.

  “In the current Crisis,” he answered, “we have two states—one has attacked the other. The whole world has rallied to defend the invaded. We have gone to the brink of war. But we have to ask ourselves, ‘Pourquoi la guerre?’ Is war necessary, my friend? Is it wise?”

  “Sometimes,” the student said, “it is. War is what made this country great. We defeated Napoleon, we withstood the kaiser, we turned back Hitler. Under those circumstances, war would seem to pay, now wouldn’t it?”

  “No, sir,” Mr. Lund pronounced. “It may be what built your country. But it will also be what tears it down. We must step back from the brink and learn to fit into nature, the global envelope as a whole. The nation is dead in Europe, my friend, and Britain is just the last to go.”

  The student stood still for a moment before speaking. “If we
let it go, we have let down ourselves,” he said. “What is British history, if not our sovereignty?”

  “Young man,” Mr. Lund said. “Death is the price you pay for sin. I can only answer your question by returning to my old friend John Donne and say, ‘Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls.’ Do you know what comes next? I bet you do. Why don’t you tell us.”

  For a moment the class sat gripped by the scene: a student challenging the authority of a lecturer; a lecturer insulting the intelligence of a student. Finally, after a painful pause, the lecturer claimed the last word.

  “‘It tolls for thee.’”

  One of the most striking features of life at Cambridge is how overwhelmingly content the students seem to be. Unlike their peers around the world, Cambridge students—both graduate and undergraduate—hold few demonstrations, march in few picket lines, and attend almost no public rallies. As I wandered through Cambridge, I found myself longing at times for the sight of a hand-painted banner hanging from a window, a graffiti slogan spray-painted on a wall, or even a student daring to walk on the grass, unaccompanied. I longed for something—anything—that would demonstrate a sense of vitality and independent thought. Students at Cambridge not only walk on the sidewalks, but they wash behind their ears, eat their vegetables, and even, like grown-ups, defend their leaders in public.

  This sense of filial loyalty lies at the heart of the Cambridge tradition and, therefore, is not left to chance. Traditionally, Oxbridge colleges have fulfilled part of their founding covenants by providing graduates who would go forth from their halls to serve the state as clergy in the Church, officers in the military, or diplomats in the foreign service. Half the viceroys of India came from these two schools, as did most of the prime ministers in the last two hundred years. (One Cambridge great, Lord Cornwallis of Clare, is remembered for leading the British forces to defeat at the hands of the Colonists in Yorktown, Virginia. Perhaps if he had studied international relations instead of Greek tragedy, I would have been able to pay Commonwealth fees instead of the threefold foreigner rates to eat beneath his portrait in the Clare College Hall.)

  In short, when Britain was great, Oxbridge was great, and the two worlds enjoyed a symbiotic success, with Cambridge and Oxford like giant royal oaks that drew life from the realm and gave it back in turn through stability, shelter, and a steady supply of ripe, young fruit. For students the notion of duty long included military service. When Napoleon threatened the British Isles in 1803, nearly a quarter of the eight hundred students at Cambridge volunteered for the infantry corps. A century later students again flocked to fight for the Good and the Just in what they believed would be a Great War. In 1916 over three quarters of the three thousand registered students volunteered for military service, and those who remained were asked to assist the cadets who were training on campus. Sadly, most of the men who left for the Continent never returned to class. The war to end all wars may have been a military victory, but the loss of a generation of men and several generations of hope was nearly enough to fell the university and the youthful spirit it symbolized.

  Students in particular felt the blow. Gone were the days of mindless abandon and extravagant wealth; gone were the times when young men flocked unquestioningly to the beck of the Crown. Oxbridge undergraduates once again fought for their country during World War Two, but not before the Oxford Union in 1933 passed a resolution saying it would never fight for King or Country, and not before Cambridge fought a similar battle that divided the faculty ranks. Far from the heroes of the past, the Cambridge students who made the greatest name for themselves in the mid twentieth century were Messrs. Philby, Burgess, Maclean, and Blunt, who sold their souls to the Soviet Empire and have come to be known to most of the world as the Cambridge Spies.

  Fifty years later, the cynicism that bred the spies seems to have faded. Most students today seem remarkably patriotic and openly desirous of their place in the Establishment. Simon, like many, voted Conservative and disapproved of European unity. Ian, like nearly as many, planned to practice law and dreamed of becoming a member of Parliament. Even the head of the Cambridge Socialist Party wore a DJ to Union debates. Cambridge reinforces this sense of tradition and goes out of its way to cultivate it. For the university, the key to achieving its goal is the presence of over two dozen colleges that can monitor students’ lives. Each college is set up along strict hierarchical lines, somewhere between a tight family and a loose prison. At the top is the master, a largely ceremonial title bestowed upon an aging don (or some other dignitary). Beneath the master is a group of senior officers, including the dean, the bursar, and the head tutor. Below them is the platoon of sixty fellows, who in effect hold ownership of the college and set its rules of conduct.

  The colleges take their parenting duties extremely seriously. Beyond the myriad rules governing parties, music, and spend-the-night guests, colleges have a variety of other patriarchal tendencies. While waiting in the Clare Office one day, for example, I happened onto a guidebook for future students of the college. The booklet, written in a tone reminiscent of a free-market Mary Poppins, contained advice on how prospective students should spend the months before they come up to Clare. It included tips on traveling (If you are going abroad, you should plan the trip carefully and make the necessary preparations in good time), looking for work (Earning as much money as possible is a perfectly legitimate aim: money greatly enhances the quality of life), and even padding one’s C.V. (Typing is a skill that will be useful for the rest of your life. Many jobs have secretarial support, but sometimes you will have to do your secretary’s work as well. So acquire these skills now).

  It was almost unimaginable to me that an American university would send such a booklet to its students (Maybe you should learn to tie your shoes; Don’t forget to look both ways). But in Cambridge, where college fellows are considered in loco parentis, such activities are normal. Indeed, I came to believe that what I was witnessing in Cambridge was comparable to what I had seen in Japan, where schools regulate students’ dress, the length of their hair, even the tread on their shoes. As late as the 1960s, for example, teams of Cambridge dons, known as bulldogs, used to patrol the streets at night penalizing students for not wearing the proper gown, or even the proper legwear (in days past, students were required to wear hose with their gowns instead of full-length trousers).

  Of course, some students do rebel. One woman at Clare was famous for never wearing underwear; her boyfriend never wore shoes (whether he wore underclothes was not as readily apparent). But conformity still rules most endeavors at Cambridge—even down to spelling. Several weeks after our dinner at Ian’s, I went to visit Cyprian, who was busy correcting proofs of his Ph.D. thesis that the Cambridge University Press was about to publish. One matter, however, was delaying publication: the name of the greatest Roman poet. Cyprian wanted to spell his name Vergil; the Press insisted on Virgil.

  “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “Academic totalitarianism. The e was changed to an i in the Middle Ages to echo the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ, the source of Western culture.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?”

  “It’s dishonest,” he said. “Vergil didn’t believe in Christ. He hadn’t even been born. The name should be spelt with an e.”

  “So why can’t you?”

  “The chairman of my faculty says the name has an i,” he said, “so for anyone who wants to get published, it does. He’s such a Sagittarius.”

  As with secondary schools in Japan, Oxford and Cambridge act as surrogates—both for students’ families and for the state. Students may resent the intrusion, but they know that those who comply with the rules and mind their p’s and q’s will be rewarded with a place in the Establishment. After all, two thirds of upper-level civil servants still come from Oxbridge, as do a similar percentage of top-level bankers and barristers. In many ways, Oxbridge is like a giant finishing school and the code of conduct the colleges enforce is, in effect, a pledge of allegiance for the ruling cl
ass. Ironically, the leading enforcers of this code are not the masters and fellows of the colleges, nor the professors and lecturers of the university, but the people who have much closer contact with the students and much greater influence over their lives: the porters of the colleges, the unspoken parents-at-large.

  “Bruce, how do you do it? You’re a ladies’ man.”

  Terry handed me a written message that Thursday afternoon as I stepped into the Porters’ Lodge. The Lodge, a crowded foxhole at the foot of the giant archway that leads into Memorial Court, featured two walls lined with mail slots, called pigeonholes, one wall plastered with outdated announcements, and one wall filled with duplicate keys for the daily gaggle of students who locked themselves out of their rooms. The responsibilities of the porters are somewhat vague but seem to resemble the duties of a ruling junta in a Third World dictatorship. They issue visas to visitors, deport illegal aliens, control all the incoming and outgoing mail, and maintain paramount authority over the one telephone in the college where all the students and most of the professors receive their incoming calls. In addition, they also possess the only keys to the gates of the college, which they lock every night at 2 A.M. with penitentiary finitude.

  “I’m afraid I’m far from a ladies’ man,” I said. “If anything, I have the opposite problem. I’m in a slightly awkward position with a woman on my hall.”

  “Ah,” he said. “Young Halcyon.”

  I looked at him, dumbfounded. “How do you know?”