Appetite for Life : The Education of a Young Diarist, 1924-1927 (9781551996776)

by Ritchie, Charles

  I am working hard on Stubbs and the Gesta Francorum and preparing for my first essay for my tutor McCallum at Pembroke, whom I like. He is a tall Scotsman with protuberant blue eyes, a great authority on Calvin. The truth is: at the end of a day’s work I am lonely, if it wasn’t such a humiliating thing to have to admit. The sitting-room in these digs is infested with American Rhodes Scholars, friends of Post’s, who are very polite to me when I come in but then go on with their own conversation. I wish I could get rooms in college. The Dean says there is a chance I might.

  22 October 1926.

  This morning when I was sitting in my digs watching the rain come down on the wet playing fields opposite, the doorbell rang and a man named Morris came to call on me. He is the son of someone who knows the Lauries and so had heard of me. He seemed a modest little man with spectacles. He is a member of the Oxford Group, the Evangelical Religious group which is now so active. At first he talked uninterestingly enough of mundane things, but gradually he began to tell me of his struggles against temptation, against pride and impure thoughts, etc., and how the Oxford Group had changed his life. He had been on the verge of agnosticism but now he was happy as he had been brought to Christ. He said every morning he prayed for guidance for the day ahead, and more and more he received such guidance. In fact, he said he had been guided to come to see me, as he had been instructed that I was in need of help and might be struggling in the toils of sin and disbelief. He said that if I shared my burden with him it would become less hard to bear, and proposed that we might have what he called “a quiet time together.” All this was said with such gentleness and good faith that I was quite moved and said what is true, that I had always had a great wish to believe but that it had quite dried up of late and that when I went to Communion I felt nothing. He asked me whether I would come to an Oxford Group meeting, where I would find others like myself. I said that I would think it over but that I was not attracted to group meetings. He accepted this (apparently) and said that he would pray for me. I don’t quite know what to make of this interview or of Morris or of myself. I don’t, rationally speaking, believe in supernatural guidance, but then why should I trust my puny reason? It may be just a surface apparatus. Quite often when I am in trouble I call out “Oh, Christ.” It may just be habit, or perhaps I do really believe in Christ, and the rest is what Morris calls spiritual pride. Also, I quite enjoy the opportunity to talk about myself and the state of my soul.

  24 October 1926.

  Tonight at dinner in Hall I sat next to an Egyptian called Matza. He has a profile like a film star, beautiful manners, and an eager smile. We took to each other at once and after dinner I went back to his rooms in the High Street. They are quite palatial, strewn with magnums of champagne, boxes of expensive French chocolates, and Egyptian cigarettes. A man-servant produced liqueurs for us. Later, some of Matza’s friends dropped in: two Paris Americans, who from their talk live a kind of Ritz-bar existence, a lounging, pleasant fellow called Jeremy something, who somehow reminded me of Fabian Rockingham at home – the same careless charm – a man called Patterson who is at Pembroke and has just bought a racing car, and an Armenian called Sarkies with beautifully cut clothes and a black moustache, who has just come back from spending a weekend at Cookham with an actress. We had quantities of champagne and afterwards the man-servant set up a roulette table and we played. I lost fifteen shillings. I came home thinking, “This is the life for me, very different from the Johnson-Ducker set with their cocoa and limericks.”

  I was somewhat dampened to find a letter from Elizabeth, Aunt Zaidée’s maid, saying that she hopes I don’t mind her telling me that Aunt Zaidée had said, “Why does the dear boy address his letter to me as Mrs. Z. B. Prevost?” It was my letter to thank her for her cheque and I stupidly addressed it the way she signs her cheque instead of to Mrs. Prevost. She will think me a complete social ignoramus.

  27 October 1926.

  I dropped in to see Patterson, whom I met the other evening at Matza’s. Although he is only a freshman, he has succeeded by sheer gall and persistence in getting some of the best rooms in this college: a noble panelled sitting-room next the porter’s lodge in which he has installed a turkey-red carpet and hung up pictures of the lives of the cardinals in ye goode olde tyme in their scarlet robes, cracking nuts and drinking wine. He seems to want to match their style of living. On his sideboard were three outsize pineapples and a box of outsize Havana cigars.

  He began by saying to me, “I am sure I can trust you to be completely frank. I have ordered three suits from Shepherds, and jolly expensive they were, and now Jeremy says that the coats don’t fit, that the wind will whistle down the back of my neck where the coat collar stands off. Do you mind waiting while I put one on, and tell me what you think?” When he returned he was squeezed into a too-tight double-breasted suit of a colour I think is called “electric blue.” What Jeremy had said was perfectly true – the collar stood out a mile at the back. I had to say so. Patterson said, “What I don’t understand is that Sarkies gets his suits from the same man and his clothes are always immaculate.” Sarkies, that Armenian whom I met at Matza’s, is Patterson’s idol. He longs to be like him but I don’t think he will ever succeed. In the first place he hasn’t enough money. He says he is living already at double the rate of his allowance. (His family are not rich.) In the second place, no one could be less like an Armenian than Jim Patterson, but he wants to be the glamorous, high-living hero of a novel about Oxford, and an old-fashioned novel at that. He talked a lot about Jeremy, who he says is the younger son of the late Lord B. Patterson says that Lord B. died of shame when Jeremy was expelled from Harrow. He must have been a bloody old fool. Later on an old school-friend of Patterson’s came in. He is at Trinity and I walked back there with him. He said that Patterson was a very good fellow but “afflicted with a glitter complex,” and that he was quite well read but did not show it.

  28 October 1926.

  A Major Wilson came to call on me today. He had heard of me through Lewis, the Oxford Grouper. He is in the Intelligence Branch of the War Office and is at Oxford on a visit from London. He is a tall, thin, sallow-complexioned man of about forty with a military moustache. He was very interesting about the Balkans, where he spent some time as military attaché. He thinks there will be a communist revolution there one of these days and says the people at the top are hopelessly corrupt. He asked me what I intended to do when I came down from Oxford, and I mentioned that I might want to go in for diplomacy or to be a journalist if I could be a foreign correspondent. Major Wilson believes that the only answer to communism and materialism is the Christian faith, and that just as they have a faith we must have one too, and that the Oxford Group has the vitality that the church is losing. He asked me whether I was interested in the Oxford Group. I rather hedged and he looked at me very keenly and said, “I quite understand your doubts; for many years I shared them. In fact I was an atheist, but there is a spiritual power to be drawn on like any other kind of power if you know the way and the way is to put pretensions behind you and get back to the straight path of faith in Jesus.” Then to my amazement he asked, “Would you pray with me?” and there and then went down on his knees. Of course I couldn’t refuse, so there we were at 11 a.m. on an ordinary day: a distinguished military attaché and I, on our knees in my sitting-room in silent prayer. When he got up he returned to talking about the international situation without any self-consciousness. Then he said he must be off to catch the train.

  I was impressed by Major Wilson and I liked him. He didn’t talk a lot of stuff about purity and evil thoughts like Morris did. He seemed to combine simple faith with a clear mind. He did not make me feel awkward or embarrassed, and of course I am flattered that a man of his age and position should show so much interest in my spiritual welfare.

  29 October 1926.

  I read my first essay today to my tutor McCallum. It was on The Origins of the French Revolution. I had worked on it till I hated it. McCallum sai
d, “It has promise; you can write English.” Then he showed me his early editions of Calvin’s writings and I pretended to be interested. He said, “A delightful young undergraduette will be arriving as you leave. You should meet her. I am tutoring her in economic history,” and she did appear – a long, bony, pasty face with black wiry hair. I shuddered inwardly.

  I am lucky to have McCallum as my tutor. He is stern but human. He admires P. G. Wodehouse almost as much as he does Calvin.

  30 October 1926.

  Patterson had a roulette party last night in his rooms. I lost nearly £20 which I cannot afford. Jeremy was there. He is a charming creature, loose-limbed, casual, and funny. Matza was there. I noticed that though he was the richest man in the room he made the smallest bets. Patterson and Sarkies were both wearing co-respondent shoes. I talked to a man called Anstruther-Gray who asked me to lunch next week. He is very noisy and talks a lot, tall with a small head and pretty, ineffectual features. I walked home with the Armenian Sarkies. He is a third-year man and he said, “They are nothing but a lot of schoolboys.”

  It is quite true that these English undergraduates do seem incredibly young. It’s the way they have been brought up. For one thing, they have never had anything to do with girls except sisters and the odd girl they have met at a tennis party or a dance. They have never talked to a girl about anything. They are mostly virgins, though they would rather die than admit it, and they don’t know anything about petting as we practise it at home. They talk about sex a lot but it is mainly smut and endless limericks. There don’t seem to be any available girls at Oxford, only undergraduettes and whores. The only exceptions I have seen are a few stunning Scandinavian blondes who seem to be the preserve of a fortunate few. The undergraduettes are hardly regarded as girls. They are to be seen bicycling to lectures with unpowdered noses, wearing hideous regulation Tudor-style black velvet caps. At lectures they take down every word that falls from the lecturer’s lips as though their lives depended on it. No one I know has ever penetrated to a women’s college, although it is said that there are a few female wits and beauties there.

  31 October 1926.

  Morris called for me today to go with him to the Oxford Group house party which is taking place at Wycliffe College, the low-church establishment. These so-called house-parties are really Oxford Group meetings to which people come from all over the world. When we got to Wycliffe there were about forty men gathered in the big panelled sitting-room. They were of mixed ages, some quite middle-aged and others about our age, mostly undergraduates. We were greeted by a giant with a blond beard called Loudon-Hamilton. He is apparently a well-known athlete who came down from Oxford a few years ago. He seemed very breezy and friendly. None of the people there looked like religious fanatics. Several of them were naval officers. Some were foreigners: one or two Dutch and some Americans. The whole group looked well dressed, well washed, quiet, and gentlemanly. We sat about on chintz-covered chairs and sofas having tea. More and more people kept arriving until the room was quite full and there wasn’t enough space for everyone to sit down. I found myself perched on the arm of a sofa. After a time of ordinary talk Loudon-Hamilton, who seemed to be the organizer, said “as usual” we would start the meeting by silent prayer for guidance, so we all crowded down on our knees and stayed there for some time during which my own mind was a complete blank. When we came to, Loudon-Hamilton gave a practical account of how the Group was doing, the new members, finances, plans for the future, the date and place of the next house-party. It was all very business-like and at the same time informal, like friends discussing a project in common. When that was all over Loudon-Hamilton said that it had always been found helpful for members of the Group to share with each other their struggles and temptations in coming to Jesus; that we could all learn understanding and compassion in this way, that some of us had already done this but other newer members or those who had just begun to hear the Call were now urged to tell of their own personal experience. I thought, “Suppose I am asked to share, what on earth shall I say?” First of all, an elderly man with a strong Scottish accent rose to his feet and gave a very long-winded account of his doctrinal difficulties in accepting a personal God. I thought he would never sit down. He went bleating on and on and I could see the others were as bored as I was. I began to long for a cigarette, but of course that was unthinkable. Then one after another stood up and told of their experiences. Some were moving and interesting, but there was one man who told of his struggle against fornication and how he had to fight off temptation and temptresses. He was quite fat with a pasty face and black hairs all over his hands and I couldn’t help wondering what woman would be bothered tempting him. After that we had several men who told of their fight to attain Perfect Purity. I must say the audience quite woke up at this point, and I noticed Morris listening with a most peculiar expression on his face as if he was getting quite a kick out of this part of the proceedings. I began to think that there was a lot of showing off and boasting going on and that each one was trying to out-do the last one in describing the depths of his depravity and the torment of his remorse. I was simply amazed and really shocked to hear these nice quiet men, many much older than myself, standing up in their neat double-breasted suits and reciting these intimate things. But what finally put me off was that a young sublieutenant in the Navy got to his feet, quite red in the face, and said very awkwardly that his sin might not appear as great as some others but that he felt guilty not to confess it when so many had shared. It was that when he was at sea walking the deck on night-watch he was sometimes overcome with the desire to masturbate, that he looked up to the stars in heaven and prayed for strength to resist, but that to his shame he had sometimes given in. As he said this his voice broke and he began to sob. I was overcome with the most acute embarrassment and wanted to rush right out of the room. It was because he had not been showing off and he looked so wretchedly embarrassed himself. I closed my eyes so as not to look at him. However, someone patted him on the back and told him he had been very plucky to speak out and then to my horror Loudon-Hamilton turned to me and said in a quiet voice, “Would you like to share your burden?” I had suspected that this was coming but had been too much paralysed at the idea to have prepared any answer so I was tongue-tied. Although Loudon-Hamilton had spoken in a low voice, I could see the others were looking in my direction. At last I muttered that my sins had already been mentioned by other people and I had nothing to add at the moment. It was a most incoherent reply. Loudon-Hamilton said, “Come and make a clean breast of it; you’ll feel much better afterward,” but seeing the state of desperate self-consciousness and the kind of obstinacy that I had got into he put his hand gently on my shoulder and said, “No one is forced to share. Wait until you are guided.” Then people looked away and someone else took the floor. I daresay that by the looks of me they felt they had not missed much in the way of a spectacular confession.

  When I got back to my digs tonight I tried to think the whole meeting over. I do admire the sincerity of these people. I do believe that they are trying and perhaps succeeding in breaking away from the conventional Christianity, which is emptying the churches. I have been drawn towards their faith, perhaps more than I admit to myself, but I cannot and must not go on with it. It would be a fraud for me to continue. In fact, I have been a fraud, and the sin that I should have “shared,” but which I can only share with this diary, is that I have encouraged Morris and the others by putting on an interested, believing look when I was listening to them, and all the time I have had no real intention of joining the Oxford Group and I never have believed in Guidance, although I may have wished for it.

  1 November 1926.

  I find Post, the Rhodes Scholar with whom I am sharing these digs, easy to get on with. He takes no interest in me nor I in him, and we do not get in each other’s way. He is very easy-going except on one subject: the fire. The fire in the grate in the sitting-room is a very small fire in a very small grate. Each lump of coal that is add
ed to it is brought in on a shovel by the plumber-landlord, who drops the lump with a heavy-laden sigh. This annoys Post. Yesterday he went into the hall where the coal scuttle is kept, picked it up, and emptied the whole contents on the fire. The landlady made a terrible fuss and said he had used up a whole week’s coal supply and we would have to pay for it, but Post, shaking his head, said, “Not one cent.” He said it so finally yet in such an affable tone that the landlady retired nonplussed.

  In the afternoon I went to have tea with some Canadians, a mother and two daughters who have taken a house near here. The girls are not bad-looking, the sort I am used to meeting at dances at home, but they’re Upper Canadians and think Toronto is the centre of the universe and that Nova Scotia is inhabited by fishermen and peasants. They brightened up when they heard that I had been at Trinity College School and their mother said that it was “the Eton of Canada.” What damned nonsense!

  2 November 1926.

  That man Ducker has been telling me that I must take exercise, so today I turned out for soccer, having bought a soccer kit which was quite expensive. I cannot say I enjoyed the game. The ground was squelchy wet and there was an icy wind blowing. I haven’t played since school and didn’t want to make a fool of myself, so I rather hung around on the edges of the action, trying to imitate an eager player who longs to get the ball at his feet. However, when I got back to my digs and had a hot bath I felt very hearty and drowsy, quite the tired athlete.

  3 November 1926.

  This afternoon Morris called for me to take me to a tea-party given by a Mr. Mercer of Wimbledon, who is staying here on a visit with his sisters in North Oxford. Mr. Mercer is a genial and earnest gentleman who held my hand for at least two minutes when I came in and looked benevolently into my face, which embarrassed me considerably. All the people there were, I think, members of the Oxford Group. They did not talk of religion but I could smell it in the air. Mr. Mercer handed round the teacups with an air of condescending humility, as if he were St. Louis washing the feet of the poor.