by C. P. Snow
Outside the text his imagination, so active upon the words themselves, so lively in his everyday life, seemed not to be much engaged. He gave only a passing thought to the societies where this religion grew or to the people in the congregations which used his liturgy. There was something in such speculations which offended his taste – “romantic” he called them, as a term of abuse. “Romantic,” said Roy scornfully, who himself was often described in that one word.
Yet, right from the beginning, there were times when his work seemed nothing but a drug. He had thrown himself into it, in revulsion from his first knowledge of despair. Despair: the black night of melancholy: he had already felt the weight of inexplicable misery, the burden of self. I thought that too often his work was a charm against the dark. He did not seem to revel in success, to get any pleasure apart from a mild sense of skill. I watched him when he finished his Soghdian grammar. He knew it was a nice job – “I am rather clever,” he said with a mocking smile. But when others praised him, he became irritated and angry, genuinely, morbidly angry, took to a fit of drinking and then worked such immoderate hours at the liturgy that I was afraid for his health, tough as he was.
At the dinner party Mrs Seymour had cried out how much he was to be envied. She was a silly woman, but she only said what everyone round him thought. Some people resented him because he had so much. Many saw the gaiety and felt that he could not have a worry in the world. None of them saw the weight that crushed him down.
Even Roy himself did not see it. In his boyhood and youth, he had been buoyed up by the animal spirits of the young. His spirits at twenty, like those of any vigorous man, were strong enough to defy fate or death; they drew their strength from the body, and for a time could drive away any affliction that was lying in wait. Now he was a little older he had passed through hours and days of utter blackness, in which his one feeling was self-hatred and his one longing to escape himself. But those hours and days passed off, and he still had the boundless hope of a young man. He hoped he could escape – perhaps in love (though he never counted much on that), perhaps in work, perhaps in a belief in which he could lose himself. He hoped he could escape at last, and come to peace and rest.
He did not know then that he had the special melancholy which belongs to some chosen natures. It did not come through suffering, though it caused him to suffer much. It came by the same fate as endowed him with his gifts – his intelligence, his attraction for women, his ability to strike a human response from anyone he met, his reckless bravery.
By the same fortune, he was inescapably under the threat of this special melancholy, this clear-sighted despair in which, more than anyone I knew, he saw the sadness of man’s condition: this despair which drove him to outbursts of maniacal gaiety. He was born with this melancholy; it was a curse of fate, like an hereditary disease. It shadowed all his life. Perhaps it also deepened him under his caprices, perhaps it helped to make him the most selfless of men. I did not know. But I knew that I should have wished him more commonplace and selfish, if only he could cease to be so haunted.
Since I was close to him, I could see that little distance. But he exhilarated me with his gaiety, pierced me with his selflessness, deepened all I knew of life, gave my spirit wings: so I too did not see much that fate had done to him and I hoped that he would be happy.
5: Lesson in Politics
The Master’s campaign to get Roy elected did not make much progress. All decisions in the college had to be taken by a vote of the fellows, who in 1934 numbered thirteen, including the Master himself: and most formal steps, such as electing a fellow, needed a clear majority of the society, that is seven votes.
For various reasons, the Master was not finding it easy to collect seven votes for Roy. First, one old man was ill and could not come to college meetings. Second, the Master was not such a power in the college as in the university; his intimate sarcasms had a habit of passing round, and he had made several irreconcilable enemies, chief among them the Bursar, Winslow, a bitter disappointed man, acid-tongued in a fashion of his own. Third, the Master, fairminded in most ways, could not conceal his dislike and contempt for scientists, and had recently remarked of one deserving candidate “What rude mechanical are we asked to consider now?” The comment had duly reached the three scientific fellows and did not dispose them in favour of the Master’s protégé.
As a result, the political situation in the college was more than usually fluid. For most questions there existed – though no one spoke of it – a kind of rudimentary party system, with a government party which supported the Master and an opposition whose leader was Winslow. When I first arrived, the government party generally managed to find a small majority, by attracting the two or three floating votes. In all personal choices, particularly in elections to fellowships, the parties were not to be relied on, although there were nearly always two hostile cores: the remainder of the college dissolved into a vigorous, talkative, solemn anarchy. It was an interesting lesson in personal politics, which I sometimes thought should be studied by anyone who wanted to take a part in high affairs.
Through the last half of 1934 Winslow and his allies devoted themselves with some ingenuity to obstruction, for which the college statutes and customs gave considerable opportunity. Could the college afford another fellow? If so, ought it not to discuss whether the first need was not for an official rather than a research fellowship? If a research fellowship, was not the first step to decide in which subject it should be offered? Did the college really need another fellow in an out-of-the-way subject? Could it really afford such luxuries, when it did not possess an engineer?
“Fellowships” occurred on the agenda for meeting after meeting in 1934. By the end of the year, the debate had scarcely reached Roy by name. This did not mean that gossip was not circulating against him at high table or in the combination room. But even in private, arguments were phrased in the same comfortable language: “could the college afford…?” “is it in the man’s own best interests…?” It was the public face, it was the way things were done.
Meanwhile, nothing decisive was showing itself in Roy’s life. The months went by; the grammar was published, highly thought of by a handful of scholars; he tired himself each day at the liturgy. He saw Rosalind sometimes in Cambridge, oftener in London; she persuaded him to take her to Pallanza in September, but she had got no nearer marrying him. There were other affairs, light come, light go.
He became a greater favourite with Lady Muriel as the months passed, was more often at the Lodge, and had spent a weekend at Boscastle.
He knew this roused some rancour in the college, and I told him that it was not improving his chances of election. He grinned. Even if he had not been amused by Lady Muriel and fond of her, the thought of solemn head-shaking would have driven him into her company.
Yet he wanted to be elected. He was not anxious about it, for anxiety in the ordinary sense he scarcely knew: any excitement, anything at stake, merely gave him a heightened sense of living. At times, though, he seemed curiously excited when his fortunes in this election rose or fell. It surprised me, for he lacked his proper share of vanity. Perhaps he wanted the status, I thought, if only to gratify his father: perhaps he wanted, like other rich men, to feel that he could earn a living.
At any rate, it mattered to him, and so I was relieved when Arthur Brown took control. The first I heard of the new manoeuvres was when Brown invited me to his rooms on a January evening. It was wet and cold, and I was sitting huddled by my fire when Brown looked in.
“I suppose,” he said, “that you don’t by any chance feel like joining me in a glass of wine? I might be able to find something a bit special. I can’t help feeling that it would be rather cheering on a night like this.”
I went across to his rooms, which were on the next staircase. Though he lived in domestic comfort with his wife and family, those rooms in college were always warm, always welcoming: that night a fire was blazing in the open grate, electric fires were glowing
in the corners of the room, rich curtains were drawn, the armchairs were wide and deep. The fire crackled, and on the windows behind the curtains sounded the tap of rain. Brown brought out glasses and a bottle.
“I hope you like marsala on a cold night,” he said. “I’m rather given to it myself as a change. I find it rather fortifying.”
He was a broad plump well-covered man, with a broad smooth pink face. He wore spectacles, and behind them his eyes were small, acute, dark, watchful and very bright. He was the junior of the two tutors, a man of forty-four, though most of the college, lulled by his avuncular kindness, thought of him as older.
He was a man easy to under-estimate, and his colleagues often did so. He was hospitable, comfort-loving, modestly self-indulgent. He disliked quarrels, and was happy when he could compose one among his colleagues. But he was also a born politician. He loved getting his own way, “running things”, manipulating people, particularly if they never knew.
He was content to leave the appearance of power to others. Some of us, who had benefited through his skill, called him “Uncle Arthur”: “the worthy Brown,” said Winslow contemptuously. Brown did not mind. In his own way, deliberate, never moving a step faster than he wanted, talking blandly, comfortably, and often sententiously, he set about his aims. He was by far the ablest manager among the Master’s party. He was a cunning and realistic, as well as a very warm-hearted, man. And in the long run, deep below the good fellowship, he possessed great obstinacy and fortitude.
We drank our wine, seated opposite each other across the fireplace.
“It is rather consoling, don’t you think?” said Brown amiably, as he took a sip. He went on to talk about some pupils, for most of the young men I supervised came into his tutorial side.
He was watching me with his intent, shrewd eyes and quite casually, as though it were part of the previous conversation, he slipped in the question: “You see something of our young friend Calvert, don’t you? I suppose you don’t feel that perhaps we ought to push ahead a bit with getting him considered?”
I said that I did.
Brown shook his head.
“It’s no use trying to rush things, Eliot. You can’t take these places by storm. I expect you’re inclined to think that it could have been better handled. I’m not prepared to go as far as that. The Master’s in a very difficult situation, running a candidate in what people regard as his own subject. No, I don’t think we should be right to feel impatient.” He gave a jovial smile. “But I think we should be perfectly justified, and we can’t do any harm, if we push a little from our side.”
“I’m ready to do anything,” I said. “But I’m so relatively new to the college, I didn’t think it was wise to take much part.”
“That shows very good judgment,” said Brown approvingly. “Put it another way: it’ll be a year or two before you’ll carry as much weight here as some of us would like. But I believe you can dig in an oar about Calvert, if we set about it in the right way. Mind you, we’ve got to feel our steps. It may be prudent to draw back before we’ve gone too far.”
Brown filled our glasses again.
“I’m inclined to think, Eliot,” he went on, “that our young friend could have been elected last term if there weren’t some rather unfortunate personal considerations in the background. He’s done quite enough to satisfy anyone, even if they don’t believe he’s as good as the Master says. They’d have taken him if they’d wanted to, but somehow or other they don’t like the idea. There’s a good deal of personal animosity somehow. These things shouldn’t happen, of course, but men are as God made them.”
“Some of them dislike the Master, of course,” I said.
“I’m afraid that’s so,” said Brown. “And some of them dislike what they’ve heard of our young friend Calvert.”
“Yes.”
“Has that come your way?” His glance was very sharp.
“A little.”
“It would probably be more likely to come to me. Why, Chrystal–” (the Dean, usually Brown’s inseparable comrade in college politics) – isn’t completely happy about what he hears. Of course,” said Brown steadily, “Calvert doesn’t make things too easy for his friends. But once again men are as God made them, and it would be a damned scandal if the college didn’t take him. I’m a mild man, but I should feel inclined to speak out.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“I’ve been turning it over in my mind,” said Brown. “I can’t help feeling this might be an occasion to take the bull by the horns. It occurs to me that some of our friends won’t be very easy about their reasons for trying to keeping him out. It might be useful to force them into the open. I have known that kind of method take the edge off certain persons’ opposition in a very surprising way. And I think you can be very useful there. You’re not so committed to the Master’s personal way of looking at things as some of us are supposed to be – and also you know Getliffe better than any of us.”
Under his stately, unhurried deliberations Brown had been getting down to detail – as he would say himself, he had been “counting heads”.
“I suggest those might be our tactics for the time being,” said Brown. “We can wait for a convenient night, when some of the others who don’t see eye to eye with us are dining. Then we’ll have a bottle of wine and see just how unreasonable they’re prepared to be. We shall have to be careful about tackling them. I think it would be safer if you let me make the pace.”
Brown smiled: “I fancy there’s a decent chance we shall get the young man in, Eliot.” Then he warned me, as was his habit at the faintest sign of optimism: “Mind you, I shan’t feel justified in cheering until we hear the Master reading out the statute of admission.”
Brown studied the dining list each day, but had to wait, with imperturbable patience, some weeks before the right set of people were dining. At last the names turned up – Despard-Smith, Winslow, Getliffe, and no others. Brown put himself down to dine, and told the kitchen that I should be doing the same.
It was a Saturday night towards the end of term. As we sat in hall, nothing significant was said: from the head of the table, Despard-Smith let fall some solemn comments on the fortunes of the college boats in the Lent races. He was a clergyman of nearly seventy, but he had never left the college since he came up as an undergraduate. He had been Bursar for thirty years, Winslow’s predecessor in the office. His face was mournful, harassed and depressed, and across his bald head were trained a few grey hairs. He was limited, competent, absolutely certain of his judgment, solemn, self-important and self-assured. He could make any platitude sound like a moral condemnation. And, when we went into the combination room after hall, he won a battle of wills upon whether we should drink claret or port that night.
Brown had been at his most emollient in hall, and had not given any hint of his intention. As soon as we arrived in the combination room, he asked permission to present a bottle, “port or claret, according to the wishes of the company”.
Brown himself had a taste in claret, and only drank port to be clubbable. Francis Getliffe and I preferred claret, but were ready to drink port. But none of the three of us had any say.
We had sat ourselves at the end of the long, polished, oval table; glasses were already laid, sparkling in the light, reflected in the polished surface of the wood; the fire was high.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Despard-Smith solemnly, “our c-colleague has kindly offered to present a bottle. I suppose it had better be a bottle of port.”
“Port?” said Winslow. “Correct me if I am wrong, Mr President, but I’m not entirely certain that is the general feeling.”
His mouth had sunk in over his nutcracker jaw, and his nose came down near his upper lip. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his face was hollowed with ill-temper and strain; but his skin was healthy, his long body free and active for a man of nearly sixty. There was a sarcastic twitch to his lips as he spoke: as usual he was caustically polite, even when his rude sa
vage humour was in charge. His manners were formal, he had his own perverse sense of style.
Most of the college disliked him, yet all felt he had a kind of personal distinction. He had done nothing, had not published a book, was not even such a good Bursar as Despard-Smith had been, though he worked long hours in his office. He was a very clever man who had wasted his gifts. Yet everyone in the college was flattered if by any chance they drew a word of praise from him, instead of a polite bitter snub.
“I’ve always considered,” said Despard-Smith, “that claret is not strong enough for a dessert wine.”
“That’s very remarkable,” said Winslow. “I’ve always considered that port is too sweet for any purpose whatsoever.”
“You would s-seriously choose claret, Bursar?”
“If you please, Mr President. If you please.”
Despard-Smith looked round the table lugubriously.
“I suppose no one else follows the Bursar in pressing for claret. No. I think–” he said triumphantly to the butler – “we must have a bottle of port.”
Francis Getliffe grinned at me, the pleasant grim smile which creased his sunburned face. He was two years older than I, and a friend of mine since we met in a large London house years before. It was through him that, as I explained earlier, I came to the college at all. We were not intimates, but we thought alike in most arguments and usually found ourselves at one, without any need to talk it over, over any college question. He was a physicist, with an important series of researches on the upper atmosphere already published: he was a just, thin-skinned, strong-willed, and strenuously ambitious man.
The port went round, Despard-Smith gravely proposed Brown’s health; Brown himself asked one or two quiet, encouraging questions about Winslow’s son – for Winslow was a devoted father, and his son, who had entered the college the previous October, roused in him extravagant hopes: hopes that seemed pathetically extravagant, when one heard his blistering disparagement of others.
