‘I’d assess the whole problem,’ he said, ‘as having approximately the same dimensions as the Suffragette problem sixty years ago.’ Gifford paused. ‘Which,’ he added with a sudden flare of what wasn’t charity, ‘you must so clearly remember, Strathalan-Jerviswoode.’
‘Of course I do.’ What the Jarvie did suddenly and overwhelmingly remember was his mother’s attitude to the disnatured creatures called Suffragettes. And this in turn called up in him other and earlier memories so vividly (a mental habit growing on him of late) that for a moment all this talk of Student Power and the like seemed shadowy and insubstantial. He brought himself back to it doggedly, nevertheless. ‘You mean these rowdy young men want the franchise?’
‘Not exactly. I understand they’re getting that in their teens, and entirely without shouting. It’s in an altogether wider context, I think, that they want to assert their majority. They believe they’re grown-up.’
‘So they are.’
‘Nothing of the kind. That’s a mere sentimental convention.’ For the first time in a number of years’ acquaintanceship with the Jarvie, Gifford appeared to have nerved himself to counter-attack. ‘And least of all does it hold with your public-school boys. They’ve scarcely dipped a toe as yet in anything that can be called an adult world. Still, even with them, the signs and portents are there. You’ve noticed how undergraduates have largely given up kicking balls about, or whacking them with cricket bats and tennis rackets, or flogging those expensive boats up and down the river?’ Gifford now looked round his colleagues as a group. ‘They’ve taken to this marching, and sitting in, and defamatory scribbling instead.’
‘Not here, Wog,’ the Jarvie said stiffly. ‘On the contrary, the college is likely to be sending an Eight to Henley.’
‘All that carries on in a vestigial way, I agree. But the real drive is elsewhere. On second thoughts, I doubt whether the Suffragettes offer an adequate analogy. Probably we ought to go back to the Chartists.’
‘Or the Luddites.’ It was Charles Purchase who broke in with this. He was a young tutor and still not very sure of himself, a condition inclining him to alternate between long silences and vehemence. ‘Don’t kid yourselves that these lads and lasses want to get on committees and councils and governing bodies, or reform syllabuses, or have lasses and lads in their rooms all round the clock, or legalise pot. Nothing of the kind. They see this place as a machine that must be destroyed – precisely like loonie Ludd among the stocking frames in that Leicestershire village. So let’s face it. We live in this city amid a mob of ten thousand artificially retarded children. And an increasing number of them are turning systematically hostile, destructive, and bloody-minded. We may find the whole place a shambles any day.’
A brief silence was produced by these extravagant remarks. The Provost made a movement once more as if to rise, and again checked himself. To his credit (the Jarvie, who was perceptive in such matters, realised), it had struck him that an abrupt adjournment at this moment might carry a suggestion of rebuke. Finch was a tactful and composing man. In the end – it was necessary to admit – he would make a very tolerable Provost.
‘My dear Charles,’ Finch said easily, ‘I’m at least glad to hear they’re not out to legalise pot. And—do you know?—I believe that brings up a point of some significance. All this political, or quasi-political, activity may be dangerous. I don’t minimise it. Throughout the world today, students are a class that has gained a small measure of privilege and fails to see its way to much more. The whetted appetite has always been the prelude to revolution – as you, as a historian, know. Still, action in a political sphere – even very rowdy action – has a certain wholesomeness about it. A common purpose is inherently more respectable than a hunt after private satisfactions. One would rather have one’s son pushing down the railings and breaking the windows – rioting, if you like, in Grosvenor Square – than joining in some nasty little sexual orgy in a back street, or making lonely experiments with L.S.D. in an attic.’
Nobody had anything to say to this. The Jarvie, indeed, was about to snap out something like, ‘One would still rather he did neither.’ But a single very sufficient thought restrained him. Finch had a son, albeit quite a small one. He had not. He had only, from time to time, the solace—or was it the illusion?—of acquaintance ripening into friendship with one or another of the men. And certain current young men were in his mind now. As he left the Provost’s dining-room he managed to glance quickly at his watch. The prospects didn’t look good for a civil get-away by ten.
He very nearly made it, all the same, so that the clocks had not yet chimed the quarter-hour when he climbed the staircase to his rooms. The scrawled invitation was on the door as he had left it, and he took it down. The fire was burning brightly, the radiogram was open, the drinks were waiting, from the wall the Marquess of Montrose looked down with an air of having been perfectly willing to act as interim host.
There had not, however, been any visitors.
4
Gifford was the last man to leave the Lodging. Finch had detained him. Finch had remembered (what the Jarvie had not) that it was now more than a year since Gifford’s wife had been put away. She had gone off her head, poor woman, and in some fashion admitting only a slim chance of cure. The house to which Gifford proposed to walk back in North Oxford would be an empty house. So Finch had detained Gifford for a few final minutes in his well-warmed hall. Some other sort of warmth, a suggested warmth of personal regard, was what Finch had it in mind to intimate. He was full of good intentions.
The two men had stood in awkward silence for some moments, all the same. The Provost was not by temperament well-equipped to open the sacred source of sympathetic tears, or even to achieve the remote approximation to such a thing that would alone be decorous in the present circumstances. Nor was Gifford, perhaps, a man very ready to respond to anything of the kind.
Fortunately it was at least possible to exchange a few words on college affairs. Gifford had lately been induced to take on a small office of the kind that involves keeping confidential minutes, or issuing notices, or corresponding with headmasters, or signing forms for young men. What had been designed was additional employment of an unexacting kind which might help to keep his mind from private troubles. This appeared to have worked well; he showed signs of moving into college affairs. Hitherto he had been the sort of scientist whose work centred in some remote laboratory, and who came into college only to do his necessary teaching there, or to dine no more frequently than the proprieties of the place required. (It was this scanting of social obligation, the Provost reflected, which had made the Jarvie take an ill-will to him; and the Jarvie’s tendency to bait Wog had rendered Wog’s appearances all the more infrequent, so that there was a kind of vicious circle between them.) But nowadays Gifford was a little more in evidence again, and prepared to occupy himself, almost to a point of portentousness, with whatever of college policy or concern turned up.
‘About Strathalan-Jerviswoode,’ Gifford said suddenly, as he was reaching for his coat. ‘Is he still doing any teaching for us?’
‘Yes, I believe so. I believe anybody with a fancy for doing Greek verses goes to him. It can’t amount to much. But it no doubt helps him to feel that he’s doing something definite while still staying on with us.’
‘Still? Is there any term to it? Any understanding in the matter?’
‘There’s nothing of the kind.’ The Provost was conscious of refraining both from a frown and from edging towards his own front door. It was unfortunately true, he was thinking, that Wog was a colleague in whose presence one’s more genial impulses were reduced to making heavy going. Wog had started in on something that was no business of his. ‘The Jarvie is a strength to us,’ Finch was prompted to add, rather in the accents of his wife, ‘in a variety of ways.’
‘I suppose, Provost, he’s quite safe?’
‘Of course he’s quite safe.’ Finch was now too annoyed to make any pretence of being at sea bef
ore this question. ‘Anyone who can tell chalk from cheese must know that.’
‘He must have been an excellent moral tutor in his time, having the interest – the double interest – in young men that he has. And I have no doubt whatever about his continued keen concern for their welfare. What you say, however, greatly relieves my mind.’ Gifford paused. ‘Does anybody know his age?’
‘His age? Well, we know when he retired, and he must have been sixty-seven at that time. But I imagine you can look him up in Who’s Who tomorrow.’
‘Yes, yes. I would merely remind you, Provost, that senescence can be very treacherous. It would be unfortunate if we were to find ourselves landed with a scandal. Even in middle life, terrible things can happen to . . . to the human mind.’ Gifford was discernibly trembling, and Finch realised with sudden shock that the man was staring into his own domestic abyss. ‘Our defences are so slender! And in old age, if painfully achieved inhibitions lose their grip—’
‘I don’t see any danger, William.’ Finch did his best to speak at once gently and firmly. ‘There are facts of character as well as facts of mind. And in this case I must put my money on character. The Jarvie remains here on my invitation. So it must be regarded as my show.’
‘I beg your pardon, Provost. I can see you are inclined to charge me with a morbid view. I can see I have spoken sadly out of turn.’ Gifford’s hand was on the door-knob. ‘A most delightful dinner,’ he said mechanically. ‘Good night.’ And he was gone.
There was a malign as well as a suffering streak in the man, Finch told himself with an attempt at impatience. Or if that was too harsh, it was at least true that in Gifford’s attitude to the Jarvie an unacknowledged personal factor was at work. For years the Jarvie had made something of a butt of Wog – an activity very little to his credit. And Wog, without perhaps clearly knowing it, had an impulse to retaliate. In directing the imagination of disaster upon the old man, he was doing something not wholly remote from fashioning a wax image of him and sticking pins in it.
Instead of going upstairs at once, Finch crossed the hall, switched on the lights in his study, and stood for some moments in front of a dying fire. (Just here, although he didn’t think of it, the Jarvie and Provost Goldengrove had been accustomed to sit, exchanging favourable opinions about sundry young men.) Finch was well aware that the Jarvie entertained no very high opinion of him. And there was a number of reasons why he himself should have no outstanding regard for the Jarvie. The man had spent a long life in the college without, so far as Finch knew, ever having made the slightest contribution to learning. That was all right in its way; indeed, it was the regular old-fashioned thing. Yet, of course, the Jarvie was a liability. Finch, who had been inwardly cursing Gifford for his fussing, equally cursed himself for imperfect candour. He ought not to have snubbed Gifford. It had been scarcely honest.
The Provost walked over to his desk, produced a bunch of keys, and unlocked a drawer. A brief rummage produced a letter which was already pretty familiar to him. But he read it again now.
My dear Provost,
I am in some doubt about writing this letter, and please treat it as of the ‘no reply’ order if you choose. It is about a letter. The fact is that towards the end of the vac – only a couple of days before going up again, indeed – Alastair got talking about the Jarvie, who seems to have been very kind to him. As you know, the Jarvie was my own tutor, and is moreover some sort of remote kinsman, so it is of course wholly pleasing that he should a little take up Alastair. But then Alastair produced this letter. In justice to my boy I must say that he did so, it seemed to me, only in a spirit of the most kindly amusement. He says that, in vacations, the Jarvie is known to do quite a lot of such writing. And it is a follow-up of a certain amount of similar talking that he does with junior members of the college.
It is absolutely clear to me that what the Jarvie is concerned with is what he conceives to be the moral—and physical!—welfare of these young men. There is (curiously, perhaps) nothing whatever in his letter to Alastair, any more than there is in this talking I speak of, about the hazards of homosexuality. Alastair says everybody is confident he has never heard of such a thing! But the old chap is convinced that these young men are bound to have their sexual initiation in brothels (in which I suspect him to be, whether happily or unhappily, somewhat behind the times: Alastair has certainly been sleeping with the daughter of more than one of my neighbours – and I scarcely expect you to rusticate him because I tell you so). So the Jarvie writes confidentially on the virtues of potassium permanganate and God knows what.
So far, so funny – or touching. But – to be frank – he is injudiciously curious about these young men’s lives. He wants to know. (As a consequence of this, I gather from Alastair, they have been, with a wholly unconscious cruelty, tending to steer clear of him. How bloody life is!) Moreover his letter to Alastair is couched in terms of what might be called injudicious warmth.
By this I mean, of course, that if he writes many letters of the kind some of them may go to quite simple lads, and hence conceivably into the hands of parents who are outsiders. At Eton in my grandfather’s times there was a beak called Billy Johnson. He was a most honourable and moral man, but he did in holidays write that kind of letter. There was a row, with the angry parent of some colleger badgering the Head Man, and poor Billy Johnson was bewildered, appalled, and abased. He fled the place forthwith, buried himself in a cottage somewhere in the New Forest, and devoted the rest of his days to teaching young women Greek. Incidentally, he hastily changed his name to William Johnson Cory, and under it is familiar to poetry-lovers in Golden Treasuries and the like.
Well, as you can see, this letter is strictly for information. It is most kind of the college to invite me to the next Gaudy, and it has been sad to have to decline. I shall be back in my wretched Government House by that date, alas!
Yours sincerely, Claverhouse
It was an impeccable letter, yet it irked Finch anew as he reread it. Wondering whether this feeling had percolated into his reply, he rummaged in the drawer once more, and found the draft which he had later fair-copied with his own hand.
Dear Lord Claverhouse,
I am grateful to you for writing. Alastair (who continues to hold his place with us) will not be astray in a matter of this kind. He is an intelligent and well-balanced boy.
We shall keep our fingers crossed about Billy Johnson. A parent less effortlessly urbane than yourself might well turn up on us! Our next Gaudy, I am told, will be on the same date (not day) next year. Is it too much to hope that you might make a jotting of this fact now?
Yours sincerely, John Finch, Provost
It hadn’t been exactly cordial, Finch told himself. Perhaps it betrayed the hand of one whose own youth had belonged with what Claverhouse called ‘quite simple lads’. But it had been all right. Certainly it had been discreet.
Having read through this correspondence, the Provost was prompted to crumple it up and toss it on the fire. But the fire looked too far gone very certainly to consume even a few sheets of writing paper, and in any case it might be as well to keep the record intact. So he locked it up again, turned off the lights, and went upstairs to bed.
‘I was afraid you’d had to go back to work,’ his wife said. She was brushing her hair preparatory to disposing of it in an orderly way for the night. ‘Your secretarial assistance is quite inadequate. It wouldn’t happen in a larger place.’
‘I suppose not. But I didn’t really have work to do. I had a final chat with William Gifford – Wog, as the Jarvie still persists in calling him. And then, as a matter of fact, I had another look at that tiresome letter from Lord Claverhouse.’
‘He hasn’t written to you again, has he?’ Putting down her hair-brush, Mrs Finch looked sharply at her husband.
‘No, no. He will have gone back to govern his blackamoors – if they are blackamoors any longer – by now.’ Finch extricated himself from his dinner-jacket, which was growing a little too t
ight for him. ‘Anthea, is it your impression that the Jarvie really makes a nuisance of himself – a well-intentioned nuisance – to the undergraduates?’
‘Hardly at all.’ Mrs Finch perceived that this was an occasion upon which reassurance was the marital duty required of her. ‘He is really too much on the shelf for that. Talking to him at dinner was positively difficult, simply because he is so much at sea in contemporary Oxford.’
‘That wouldn’t necessarily preclude—’
‘Not in itself. But he belongs so much to the past that the young people can’t be bothered with him.’
‘I see.’ Finch was still doubtful. ‘But hasn’t it been your line that it’s precisely with the young people—’
‘One tries to keep him cheerful. It would be sad if he went into a depression, as the old so often do. He would have to be got away. Of course he must have plenty of money, and could afford one of those expensive private places. But it wouldn’t look well.’
‘It wouldn’t be well, either.’ Finch gloomily got out of his trousers. ‘It’s this suggestion of plying people with questions that I don’t like. Of course he isn’t going to corrupt anybody. But that sort of curiosity can’t, at least, be called wholesome. It’s part of the set-up of the voyeur.’
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