Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  This creed Mr. Jackson put into practice every day of the term. Greek was the special subject that he taught, and week by week his pupils, besides attending his lectures, which just now were concerned with the Peloponnesian war, made renderings of English verse into Iambics and English prose into its possible equivalent in Thucydidean or Platonic Greek. The point of these exercises really was to cram into the rendering as many tags from classical authors as could be dragged in. When a set of Iambics were plentifully besprinkled with phrases and unusual usages from Æschylus or Sophocles, Mr. Jackson considered them a good effort of scholarship, and never paused to reflect whether it might not be merely a specimen of the most comical Baboo Greek.

  Everything connected with classical Greek was an unrivalled instrument of education in his regard, and thus his pupils were also thoroughly instructed in Greek history. They might be as ignorant as a sucking child on the subject of French, Italian or English history; their claims, as regards history, to be educated rested solely on their knowledge of Greek history. Similarly it was nice to know dates; he had no objection to anyone being aware of the year in which Constantinople fell into the hands of Osman, or England into those of William the Conqueror. But it was necessary to salvation to have on the tip of your tongue the date of the death of Pericles. Subsequently, in Greek history, the classical age ceased, and that nation and language had not the good luck to interest Mr. Jackson any further at all.

  His loyal conspirator and coadjutor in keeping the Greek flag flying was Waters, who was to make one of the four to-night, and since his host Butler held the same views with regard to Latin as he to Greek, and had asked Alison, his Latin fellow-conspirator, to complete the table, Jackson felt justified in expecting a pleasant evening. It was not that he intended or expected that anybody would talk “shop” with regard to education; simply he felt happier and more at ease in the presence of classical scholars than in that of mathematicians or natural scientists. With natural scientists he had, however, a bond in common (when they did not bring into prominence their doleful heresy that natural science or natural history could possibly be considered an instrument of education), for he himself had for years been an enthusiastic collector of fresh-water shells. But that was his hobby, over which he unbent his mind, laying no claim to be an educated man because he had a very considerable knowledge of this branch of conchology, any more than Butler considered it a title to culture that he had a completer knowledge of Handel’s music than any living man, or probably any dead one, including Handel himself.

  Jackson strolled along the broad gravel path towards Butler’s rooms, passing groups of undergraduates on the way, to some of whom, his own pupils, he nodded; practically he knew none others, even by sight. Jim and Birds were among those he knew, who, since smoking in the court was forbidden, discreetly held their cigarettes behind their backs as Mr. Jackson passed them. But though short-sighted, he had a keen sense of smell, and pleasantly enough made a rather neat Latin quotation about incense.

  From Butler’s room came the loud resonance of a piano, which quite drowned the noise of his knocking, and entering, he found that sardonic colleague deeply engaged at his piano on the last movement of Handel’s Occasional Overture. Butler’s method of playing was to put his face very near the music, plant a firm foot on the loud pedal, and add the soft pedal for passages marked piano. He preserved an iron and unshakable tempo, counting the requisite number of beats to each bar in an audible voice, and not stopping till he got to the end of his piece unless the book fell off the music-rest, when he turned the page. When that occurred, he continued counting while he picked it up.

  To-night no such interruption occurred, and it was not till he had reached the last loud chord that he observed Jackson’s appearance.

  “That’s a glorious thing you were playing,” observed he pleasantly, as he put his cap and gown in the window-seat. “Glorious. They can’t write such music now.”

  Butler gave a short sarcastic laugh.

  “They can’t indeed,” he said. “Modern music is just trash: there’s no other word for it. The other day when I was up in town I went — good evening, Waters — I went to a concert in order to hear Handel’s violin sonata, and had to sit through a piece of Debussy. If it hadn’t been for the question of manners, I should have put back my head and howled like a dog.”

  “And had to grin like a dog instead,” suggested Waters, stroking his short black beard, which was streaked with grey. The applicability of the classical English epithet “silver-sabled” to his beard consoled him for those signs of the middle years.

  “No, I assure you, grinning was beyond me,” said this musical sufferer, “though I admit the neatness of your quotation. It was a mere confused noise like nothing so much as the protracted tuning of the orchestra. But it’s no use getting angry with stuff that doesn’t merit the faintest attention.”

  Jackson put his head on one side, his favourite attitude when pronouncing critical judgments.

  “I’m not altogether so sure that I agree with you,” he said, “I’m not speaking about Debussy because I’ve never heard of him before, but I think some modern music is uncommonly fine. But you’re such a confounded purist, my dear fellow.”

  “Certainly I can’t find time for the second best,” said Butler. “There’s nothing been written in the last fifty years that has a chance of living.”

  “A sweeping statement, rather,” said Waters. “I was considerably impressed by the festival at Bayreuth two years ago: in fact I’m going again in August. There are certain parts of Tristan and Isolde that are very moving. Can’t I persuade you to come with me?”

  Jackson laughed.

  “Not if you were Peitho herself would you persuade him,” he said. “What was that phrase of yours, Butler, when you heard Tristan in London. ‘Three hours of neurasthenic cacophany,’ I think you called it.”

  “I believe I did,” said Butler, gratified that his dictum should be remembered. “But if I did, I understated it. Ah, here is our coffee: I wonder why Alison doesn’t come.”

  “He went to see the Master about something connected with the May-week concert,” said Waters. “He told us he might be a little late. I can’t quite agree with our host about Wagner, but I do cordially agree with him that there’s a cult of the incompetent sprung up, who make up for their want of artistic ability by sheer bizarre impertinence. Debussy I make no doubt is one of them (though like Jackson I never heard a note of him), and the modern impressionists and postimpressionists and cubists are others. If I may adapt Butler’s phrase I should have no hesitation in describing their canvasses as ‘Three feet of neurasthenic daubings.’ But of course their scribblings are merely pour rire.”

  Jackson put his head on one side again.

  “I don’t know that there’s much more to be said for any modern art,” he answered. “I myself am unable to give even the most admired modern painters a place in the pictorial tripos. Sargent, for instance: I don’t consider his portraits more than mere posters, pieces of scenic painting if you will, dabbed on, without any finish, like a copy of Greek prose without any accents. Ila, here’s Alison: now we’ll get to work.”

  It was curious to note now, immediately on the advent of the players to make up their table at whist, all these lesser problems and pronouncements with regard to the position of Wagner, Sargent and Debussy in the realms of art were immediately dismissed for the greater preoccupation. For those middle-aged men, in spite of their gently-fossilized existence, their indulgent contempt for anything that was not immediately “Cambridge,” their general pessimism about modern effort, retained a certain streak of boyishness and gusto, in that they were genuinely fond of games, both the milder and more sedentary ones that they themselves played, and those better suited to the robust vigour of their pupils, accepting the importance of them as a clause in the creed that made Cambridge just precisely what it was. Their theories about them, just as about education, might be all cut and dried, and the sap as co
mpletely be gone out of them as out of the pressed flowers in some botanical collection (which they would unanimously have alluded to as a Hortus Siccus), but they did believe in them.

  There was no elasticity or any possible growth or development that could come to those fibrous stems and crackling petals, but they believed in their creed and would have opposed with tooth and nail of conviction any suggested reform or innovation. For Cambridge, so long as the forts of classics and cricket stood secure, was to them an institution as abiding as the moon, and no criticism concerning it could be taken seriously, any more than you could take seriously a person who said that he would have preferred the colour of the moon to be pea-green or magenta. But Cambridge could only remain a permanent and perfect phenomenon, if it remained exactly as it was. Whatever in the world of flux and change might alter and crumble, Cambridge must present an unalterable front to the corroding centuries. Whatever change came there, must, in the very nature of things, be a change for the worse.

  Of the great ancient fortress of Cambridge, St. Stephen’s College was beyond doubt the most impregnable bastion. Founded by Henry VII., it had had a glorious record of opposition to every reform and innovation that had assaulted its grey walls. When first railways began to knit England together, St. Stephen’s had headed every defensive manœuvre to keep their baleful facilities away from the sanctuary.

  St. Stephen’s collective spirit did not wish to “run up” to London in two or three hours: it preferred the sequestering methods of the stage-coach. Till some forty years ago it had consisted entirely of fellows and undergraduates who had been scholars of St. Stephen’s School, and at the conclusion of their enjoyment of Henry VII.’s endowment there, proceeded for the rest of their lives, if so disposed, to be supported by Henry VII. at St. Stephen’s College. They entered it as scholars, became fellows in due course, and taught to the succeeding generation precisely what they had learned.

  Then had come that overwhelming assault on the tradition of centuries, which our four whist-players thought bitterly of even till to-day, when the college was thrown open to boys from other schools who, instead of necessarily taking up classics, went in for all sorts of debased subjects such as natural science and medicine. But there was no help for it: that particular gate of the bastion had to be opened, and scientists moral and physical, even students of modern languages, mingled with the white-robed classical choir. But the spirit of the more loyal-hearted portion of the garrison remained unbroken, and sturdily, long after the rest of Cambridge blazed with electric light, St. Stephen’s, owing chiefly to the determined stand made by Jackson and Butler, moved in its accustomed dusk of candles and oil lamps.

  The introduction of bath-rooms provoked a not less gallant opposition: in the time of Henry VII. hot baths were unheard of, and if nowadays you wanted one, you could get a can of hot water from the kitchen. And it was only under the severest pressure that those debasing paraphernalia squeezed their way in. Not for a moment is it implied that Jackson and his friends were like bats who preferred the dark, or like cats who disliked water, but only that they disliked any change, and preferred things precisely as they were....

  The game proceeded in the utmost harmony and with academic calm, and was interspersed with neat quotations. For instance, when at the conclusion of a hand, Waters said approvingly to his partner, “You saw my call all right,” Jackson without a moment’s thought replied, “Yes, Waters, one clear call for me.” Or when hearts were trumps, and Butler proved only to have one of that suit, he paused, without applying his lit match to his pipe, to say, “Eructavit cor meum.” As that one happened to be the ace, it was quickly and sharply that Alison said, “But your heart is inditing of a good matter.” Even when apt quotation failed, something academic was fragrant in their most ordinary remarks, as when, spades being turned up as trumps for the third time running, Butler referred to “the prevalence of those agricultural implements,” or when his partner found that his hand contained seven diamonds, he called it “a jewel song.” There was not one atom of pose or desire for effect in those little mots, their minds thought like that, and their tongues faithfully expressed their impressions.

  The third of these pleasant rubbers came to an end about a quarter to eleven, and, a “senatus consultum” being taken, it was resolved not to begin a new one, but to relax into conversation.

  “Non semper arcum,” said Butler, rising. “Ho, everyone that thirsteth, you will help yourselves, please. I think you said, Alison, that when we had finished Sarah Battling, you wanted to tell us what the Master spoke to you about.”

  Alison was busy making a curious drink that he found refreshing, which was a mixture of port and soda water (called Alison’s own) in exactly equal proportions. There must be just as much port as there was water, neither more nor less, else some recondite flavour was missed. He was a man of about forty-five, clean-shaven and alert: his great acquirement was an inward knowledge of Cicero’s letters so amazing, that when once he set a piece of Latin translation in a college examination, composed not at all by Cicero, but by himself, even the Master had been deceived, and asked him out of which of Cicero’s letters he had taken that piece. In other respects he played lawn-tennis, and was responsible, as precentor, for the music of the College services in chapel.

  “Yes, it is a matter of some importance,” he said. “The Choral Society, of course, are giving their annual sacred concert in chapel during May-week, and they have most unfortunately selected Elgar’s ‘Dream of Gerontius’ for performance. The Master tells me that he is inclined absolutely to refuse to give permission for it, but asked me first to consult some of you. I told him I should meet you three tonight, and he said that he desired no better subcommittee.”

  “Is his objection to it on the score of Elgar, Elgar’s score one might say,” asked Butler, “or on that of Gerontius? If on that of the composer, I am disposed to agree with him. I know nothing about Gerontius, as a literary production, except that a hymn which we occasionally sing in chapel with a vulgar tune, is excerpted from it, I believe.”

  Jackson chuckled.

  “On the score of Elgar, Elgar’s score,” he repeated. “Very neat, Butler. I know the hymn you mean, ‘ Praise to the Holiest in the Height.’ It goes admirably into Greek iambics.”

  “Equally well into Latin elegiacs,” said Alison. “No, the Master has no feeling against Elgar’s music: that wasn’t his point. But he could not see himself permitting the performance in chapel of a libretto so markedly, so pugnaciously Roman Catholic. I am bound to confess that there’s something to be said for his view. What do you say, Jackson? You are our spiritual pastor.”

  Jackson took his stand by the fire-place, and put his head on one side.

  “Well, if I’m bound to speak as from a rostrum,” he said, “I shall be disposed to ask for notice of that question. It’s an uncommonly nice point, and the question, of course, on which it all hinges is how far the purpose of a libretto is extinguished by being treated musically. I remember going to see Gounod’s Faust, of which the libretto contains some frankly intolerable situations. But somehow when treated musically they did not strike me as actually indecent.”

  “The indecency of the music would be enough for me,” said Butler incisively. “Nothing else but that would strike me.”

  “Ah, there’s our purist again. But just now the question is not so much of Purism as Puritanism.”

  “After all, we sing ‘Praise to the Holiest’ in chapel,” remarked Alison. “I have known the Master join in it.”

  Butler drew in his breath with a hissing inspiration as of pain at that recollection.

  “Yes, yes, sufficient unto the day — usually Trinity Sunday — is the Master’s singing of that hymn,” he remarked. “If the Master proposed to sing the whole of the ‘Dream of Gerontius’ himself I would be steadfast in prayer that it should not be given at all. But he has not threatened that, I gather.”

  Waters extracted a few crumbs of biscuit that had fallen
in his silver-sabled beard.

  “I think Jackson has hit the nail on the head,” he remarked. “The question is how far music purges the libretto. In my view it doesn’t: it merely emphasizes it. Another appeal, the musical, is added. I admit the inconsistency of singing a hymn that comes out of Gerontius, but you do not remedy that inconsistency by adding to it the far greater one of giving, as Alison neatly phrased it, a pugnaciously Roman Catholic work in a Church of England chapel.”

  “And those who vote for the motion, that is the exclusion of Gerontius?” asked Alison.

  He counted hands.

  “The ayes have it,” he announced. “I think we may conclude that Gerontius will have to seek another dormitory.”

  “To sleep, perchance to dream,” suggested Waters.

  This point being settled, the unrest in Ireland and possible Labour troubles were lightly touched on, but such subjects had very little concern for these sheltered lives, and presently, even before Alison had drunk his tumbler of Alison’s Own, more exhilarating topics came under discussion. There was a proposal to be brought by some Junior Don at the next College meeting that the dinner hour should, during the summer months, be postponed, from 7.30 till 8; this aroused Butler’s gloomiest apprehensions.

  “That young Mackenzie is a most undesirable man,” he said. “We made a great mistake when we elected him to a Fellowship.”

  “Considering the degrees he took,” said Jackson. “A first in mathematics one year, a first in mechanical science the next, and a fellowship dissertation which appears to be the most valuable contribution ever made to the subject of engines for aeroplanes, I don’t see what else we could do. I regretted the necessity as much as you.”

  “I refuse to admit the necessity.” said Butler. “As the greatest classical college of the University, what have we to do with aeroplanes? I hope it is not our business to further the exploitation of mechanical toys.” Jackson assumed the “rostrum” again.