Looking for Class

by Bruce Feiler

  “The prince is becoming quite outspoken, isn’t he?”

  “It’s true. The Queen would never have delivered a speech such as that.”

  “I wonder what she thinks of Charles’s tirades?”

  “Excuse me?” he said.

  “I said, I wonder what she thinks when Charles makes his pronouncements on schools, architecture, and all that?”

  “Son,” said Terry, now standing once again and adopting his haughty, professorial air, “one does not openly wonder what the Queen thinks. And furthermore, let me give you one small piece of advice. When one is in polite company in this country, one does not commonly refer to Her Majesty with the term she.”

  “You Should Retain This Notice for Future Reference.”

  I sat on my bed several minutes later flipping through the mail that had gathered in my absence. There was a bill from the domestic bursar of the college, a receipt for two May Ball tickets, and a new term card from the Union Society listing upcoming debates, including the annual “American” debate at which I had been invited to deliver the opening address. But the weightiest item seemed to be the two-sided memo from the senior tutor of Clare, entitled “Summary of College Decisions, Periodic Review 1.” It began with a declaration of purpose:

  At a recent Liaison Committee meeting the Junior Members suggested that from time to time the College circulates a review of recent decisions made and agreements reached. The review would have “official” status in that it would be expected, and could be assumed, that all Junior Members of the College would both read it and retain it for future reference; for this reason a copy would be provided by the College in the pigeon-hole of each Junior Member. This is the first such notice.

  As I read through the list of sixteen “announcements and agreements,” I thought of the many newspapers and books I had read in England, as well as the prince’s speech about the state of the language. From the time I was a child, I had always heard that British English was more elegant than its American variant, more graceful and precise. While living in England, however, I came across prose every day that seemed to me more a sign of obfuscation than elegance, more a tribute to verbosity than precision. Like its cousin the conversation, the written word in England today—especially the words writ by the elite—is often so high-minded as to be obscure.

  As a self-appointed language explorer, I set out to map the local wordscape. In my journal I set myself this manifesto: It being apparent that I had taken up residence in the birthplace of the English language and that surrounding me at all hours of the day were shining examples of the writing of the Royals, it was decided by me that I should undertake a most thorough examination of the Queen’s English today in the hopes that I might learn to write my way into the royal family tree. By spring several rules were becoming quite clear.

  Rule Number One. It being incumbent upon the writer to give the “why” before the “what,” always begin each sentence with a dependent clause. The Independent, in the third paragraph of its lead story on Prince Charles, provided a sterling example of this technique: “In a speech which may well prove to have even more impact on public debate than his assault on architectural quality—in which he criticised a number of modern architectural schemes, describing one as a ‘monstrous carbuncle’—the Prince made a passionate plea for a return to basic skills….” This delaying tactic is so pervasive in formal British writing that I took to monitoring the length of opening clauses in some of the worst offenders. On one page in Sir Harry Hinsley’s Power and the Pursuit of Peace, the seminal work in our course, I counted 2 dashes, 3 semicolons, 7 commas, and 118 words—beginning with “Though not for the first time” and ending with “as well as in North America”—all before the subject. Royalists, I concluded, like to read sentences the way they eat baked potatoes, from the inside out. When it comes to writing down their thoughts, they split their idea down the center and serve up the fluffy parts first. Later they neglect the skin. Royalists, it seems, never learned what my mother says: that the skin is really the healthiest part.

  Rule Number Two. It is incumbent on even the most casual writer that he begin most independent clauses with the word it, followed as closely as possible by a form of the verb to be. Announcement Number 13 in the Summary of Decisions was the perfect illustration of this regulation. “In the light of the University Safety Officer’s advice, it will not be necessary for every piece of electrical equipment brought to the College by students to be tested.” As far as I could tell, the sense among Royalists seems to be, why ruin a good sentence with a strong verb like “ruin,” when “it is apparent that this sentence is boring” will do the job just fine? Why make an announcement, or announce a decision, or decide a question, or question a report, when that report or question or decision or announcement can be relegated to that central source of all news in Great Britain: the tyranny of it. It is the most newsworthy subject in the British Isles. In the course of one day, it is revealed, it is reported, it is recommended, it is confirmed, and, despite its multifaceted personality, it is also understood. When it does not manage to do anything one day that could be considered news, journalists feel so obliged to report on its activities that they often just say, “It is interesting to note…”

  Rule Number Three. It being all the same, one choice or another, be obliged that the passive voice should be used. In the worldview of the Queen’s English, no one takes steps or actions or responsibility, no one need dirty his hands. Instead, things either should be, will be, or just simply are done; and when these things are completed, it is somehow made known to the public at large. On the morning after one of the biggest news events of the year, for example, the slaying of an unpopular regressive tax, the tried and tired Times began its story on the event with this impassive lead: “The death of the poll tax was announced yesterday.” In the speech to the Parliament announcing the death, the secretary of state for the environment and former president of the Oxford Union notified the country of the change with a suitably evasive rhetorical flourish (employing Rules One and Three): “In spite of the comprehensive system of income related rebates, and the reduction scheme we devised, the public have not been persuaded that the tax is fair.” No one acted; no one reacted; no one complained. It was just time for a change.

  Rule Number Four. In the event that one might be misunderstood, always clarify, repeat oneself, and say everything at least two times. On one hand it can be said that Royalists like their language used correctly. Grocery stores all across the kingdom, for example, have special checkouts for patrons purchasing 9 ITEMS OR FEWER. They also like their language to be delicate. A sign along the High Street in Cambridge, for instance, advises, DOGS MUST NOT FOUL FOOTWAY OR VERGE. But the biggest sin of all in English circles is to be ambiguous. “The review aims to be as short as possible,” the head tutor wrote in a parody of himself, “consistent with the need for clarity.” This problem is best solved by supplementing a simple statement with an explanation, an explication, and, if necessary, as it usually is, a healthy dose of extrapolation. A basic blue-blood motto seems to be: Don’t make implicit what can be made explicit. The entire body of the Hinsley sentence, for example, which I had copied and taped to my wall as a Cambridge merit badge, exemplifies this technique:

  Though not for the first time, for there had been a growing disparity between Western Europe and other areas since the eighteenth century, yet more rapidly, more extensively and more directly than before—in Turkey’s European provinces and in Central Asia from about 1870; in Turkey’s North African possessions, in the Near East and Persia, in undeveloped Africa and the undeveloped Pacific from about 1880; in China and Korea from about 1885; in the New World, even, from about 1890 as the United States expanded from her continent into the Caribbean, undertook the Panama Canal and asserted her right under the Monroe Doctrine to be the directing Power in South as well as in North America—the more developed states extended, were perhaps unable to avoid extending, their intervention and their control
in areas where society and government were still as they had been in the European Middle Ages.

  The British build sentences the way they build roads: a few motorways traverse the countryside and are linked together by a never-ending web of dual carriageways and narrow access roads that never meet directly in intersections, but come together in hundreds upon thousands of traffic circles that are called, literally, roundabouts. In England, it seems, the shortest distance between two points is around a circle.

  Rule Number Five. If at all possible under the circumstances, never state directly, always suggest. Perhaps the most noticeable feature of the Queen’s English is its all-around indirection. Unlike American English, which is straightforward, direct, and to the point (like a dead-end road), British English is loopy, roundabout, and generally understated. Even when it tries to be forceful, English worthy of the Queen’s pedigree is always genteel. In November I snipped the instructions from an English firework. “Insert upright in soft ground,” it advised. “Ensure firework will not fall over. Straighten fuse, light tip of free end at armslength and retire immediately.” Just the thought of an American ten-year-old reading this instruction was enough to make me laugh.

  At its worst, British indirection has all the bite of cold toast. My favorite sign in Cambridge, for example, was one on the front door of the Marks & Spencer department store that warned potential delinquents: SHOPLIFTERS MAY BE PROSECUTED. But at its best, this stilus roundaboutus can provide a sort of unintended poetry. The last letter I opened on the first day of Easter Term before going upstairs and checking on Simon was a one-page memo from the deputy director of the Centre of International Studies. Its contents would have made Wordsworth proud:

  To: M.Phil. in International Relations course members

  Re: Compulsory Essay Examinations

  i) As you know, I am not allowed to tell you whether you have passed the M.Phil. in International Relations written papers.

  ii) As you also know, you would have been informed by a certain date if you have failed.

  iii) That date has now passed.

  XVII

  SEARCHING

  Body and Soul

  OUISA: How is [college]?

  PAUL: Well, fine. It’s just there. Everyone’s

  in a constant state of luxurious despair and

  constant discovery and paralysis.

  —John Guare

  Six Degrees of Separation, 1990

  “It happened several days ago….”

  Lucy Fudge and I were sitting on a brown plastic sofa in the JCR. It was a Thursday night in early May. The pubs had closed for the night, and the Clare Late Bar was just filling up with midnight crawlers stopping off for a final pint or stepping out for a study break from their bibliotechal hibernation.

  “As I was sitting there,” she recalled, “I felt the Holy Spirit inside of me as I hadn’t felt it for years. I used to be a good Christian—beginning when I was fifteen. I knew all the songs and prayed every day. But I haven’t prayed in several years, so for me to feel that strongly was definitely something special.”

  “So why that night?”

  She took a sip of cider, pulled back her blond hair, and crossed one leg beneath the other. Since January when Lucy started dating Simon, she had been cultivating a certain appearance, a kind of sultry-carpenter look, with manly brown pullovers, army green jeans, and the kind of thick-soled black leather shoes commonly worn by London punks and RAF officers. As her transformation became more complete, however, her attachment to Simon—a boyish prep to the bone—naturally began to splinter. As it did, she had sought me out to talk.

  “I’m telling you,” she repeated, “there was an evil spirit in the room that night. I’m convinced Henry was possessed. No one else could feel it, but I could.”

  “And what about Henry. Did he feel it as well?”

  Lucy smiled. “The next day he came to me and said he was sorry, it wouldn’t happen again.”

  Easter Term started differently than the previous two. After spending most of the first two terms in the pub or in bed, most students began spending more time preparing for their year-end exams. Simon, for one, added up the work sheets he hadn’t done, counted the days until his exams, and made out a ten-page revision plan. (At Cambridge any work done in preparation for exams, even work done for the first time, is considered “revision.”) Ian, for his part, had completed three essays for his course and had begun work on his last: a study of reason versus passion in Euripides’ Bacchae. I, meanwhile, was freed of lectures and able to focus on my thesis topic: namely, why did the Allies rebuild Germany and Japan in the late 1940s instead of fulfilling their original plans and tearing them down? Most historians, viewing the two cases separately, had cited Cold War politics or superpower conspiracies as a reason for the change. I, by viewing them side by side, was focusing on faulty original plans. I had only several weeks left to make my case, however: my draft was due to Dr. Long just days before the ball.

  In the interim I still had two of my Cambridge fantasies left to fulfill, since rowing was the only one I had achieved. The first of my remaining fantasies—the debate—was fast approaching and much of my time in the early weeks of term was spent preparing a “paper speech” for my Union debut. In early May, I even attended a workshop on how to debate “Cambridge style.” “Don’t be boring,” coached one of the boy-politicos. “Don’t read statistics. And, above all, don’t preach. Some people say practice in front of a mirror. I say that’s a bunch of crap.”

  Finally, and of much more pressing concern, I still needed a date for the ball. As a result, I began spending less time in the University Library and more time in the college pub. I was leaning up against one of the whitewashed pillars in the pub late one Thursday night when Lucy sat down beside me and started talking about the Holy Spirit. She was sitting on the beanbag chair in Simon’s room, she said, when Henry, their fellow first-year pal who had earlier competed in the Pie & Pints relay race, knocked on the door. He came in, sat down in a chair, and asked her if she was psychic. Then he took off his clothes. “Henry, stop it!” Lucy cried. “I feel cold.”

  For a moment, she recalled, the two of them stared at each other—she from her knees, he from his seat. Then Lucy closed her eyes and began to mouth some words in a kind of silent litany. She had had to keep praying, she said to herself. She had to keep talking and channel her thoughts. So she talked and prayed and whispered and thought until her lips were speaking in tongues and her eyes could no longer see.

  Then she smiled. “I dropped my hands onto my thighs,” she remembered, “and Henry reached for his clothes.” He began to redress: shorts, socks, trousers, and shirt. At last he slipped on his shoes. Moments later the spirit was gone.

  “It’s all part of a pattern,” Lucy said when she had finished her tale. “I’m going through this big transition right now. In school I was always very straight. But in my year out I went to Milan and lived with this woman. She was wild. She had two lovers every week, she went out every night. After leaving her I went to stay with her daughter in Berlin. I started drinking. I kissed a rock singer on top of the Wall. I did drugs….”

  Lucy was a remarkably unpretentious person. If anything, she took pride in her forthright attitude toward herself and toward others. Once, after one of our late-night chats, she asked me if I would have sex with her in order to give her a few pointers. When I declined, she couldn’t understand it and asked Simon why I wouldn’t. He, in turn, couldn’t understand her and asked me why she would.

  “I had lived such a cautious life,” she continued. “My family doesn’t talk very much. My father is very hardworking and strict. I wanted a change. Youth is a time of excess, I thought, while old people work all the time. I decided to explore my body. Drugs. Liquor. Sleep deprivation. I thought it would be a ‘one-off’ experience, a one-time thing. But I liked it.”

  She told me a story.

  “When I was in Berlin, I took acid,” she said. “A friend and I went
to see the Ninja Turtles and he asked me if I wanted to pop a tablet. It wasn’t really a tablet, though. It was a piece of paper. I ripped off a corner and put it on my tongue. I didn’t even use the whole thing. I chewed for several minutes, then swallowed…. The scary thing about acid is that you swallow this piece of paper and it’s two hours before it comes up.”

  “Comes up?”

  “Yes, the images, they come up. At first it was colors, an amazing display of violet and orange and green. And then music, whatever music you’re hearing seems to linger forever in your ears. My friend and I had the same experiences. As we were walking home from the theater, he was smoking a cigarette, and he dropped it to the ground. It seemed to burn a hole into the road—a big red volcanic hole like fire burning through the earth. He knelt down to pick it up and then jumped back. ‘Did you see that?’ he cried. ‘The ground opened up like Alice in Wonderland.’ We were having the same trip.”

  “So you enjoyed it?”

  She thought for a moment. “I guess so. But Simon doesn’t want me to do it anymore. He blames it all on Hillary…. Do you know her, Hillary? I think you would like her. She reads a lot, like you.”

  “As you were saying…”

  “Well, I guess I did enjoy it,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck and shaking out her hair. “But then again, I’ve often wondered which is better, drugs or sex? Of course, I’ve only had sex with one person. But sex is better, I guess. It takes less time, but still lasts longer. The problem is you need a man to have sex, and they’re unreliable.”

  I asked her if she meant Simon. She responded by telling me how they first met.

  “I just picked him out,” she recalled. “I was going through the matriculation photograph and looking for someone to teach me about sex. I picked Simon because he’s a boy, because he’s vulnerable. You know the first lover in Madame Bovary, the one who’s charming, handsome, wealthy, and talented? I wouldn’t want to go out with that man. I wanted somebody who’s less perfect.”