The Gaudy

by J. I. M. Stewart

  I had indicated my feeling by taking the initiative in standing up before I recalled the abrupt acrimony with which this very senior man had more than once turned upon his colleagues during their nocturnal discussion. There had been differences of view, but at the same time a perfectly evident admission of common concern. And then Lempriere had suddenly flung out this or that. It had been something more, I now saw, than succumbing to the temptation of quick wit or a tart phrase. It was rather that − in some obscure way − he wanted the college to himself. He had an impulse to savage not only anybody who infringed his monopoly of criticising it but also (by way of a kind of warning off) anybody who might do so in the future. In fact there was a respectable passion for the place at the root of his bad behaviour − when he did sporadically behave badly. It was something his colleagues were certainly intelligent enough to understand. There was a high probability that most of them were fond of him.

  This was a lot of considering to give to a tiny thing, and within moments we were continuing our walk as amicably as before. My sense of this was strong enough to prompt my next remark.

  ‘You lose no time,’ I said, ‘in putting the new boys through their notions.’

  ‘That’s Winchester.’ Lempriere now spoke humorously − but I thought he had to conceal a sense that mixing up one school’s slang with another’s was a serious matter. And I felt I knew something more about him. He was one of those men − and long ago I had discovered them to be quite thick on the ground − in whom the schoolboy is irruptive still. Tony, I remembered, had been aware of them too. They kept caps and colours and house photographs, he used to say, like French letters under their clean shirts and handkerchiefs, and sometimes they tumbled embarrassingly out of the drawer. The more weighted with tradition the school, the higher was the incidence of such retarded characters turned out. And Lempriere’s role as champion of the Lusbys over against the Mumfords was a topsy turvy, and perhaps unstable, reflex from this. Believing there was only one real school (as he most certainly believed there was only one real college), he took a poor view (when this perhaps provincial view of things was bobbing up in him) of public schools at large as constituting any sort of club.

  ‘Would you have been the same year as young Mumford?’ Lempriere asked. ‘Calls himself Marshmallow, or some such.’

  ‘Marchpayne. Yes, Tony Mumford and I came up together.’

  ‘Ah! That’s why he wasn’t a pupil of mine. But his father was.’

  ‘Cedric Mumford?’ For a moment this entirely astonished me. I had been reflecting, the day before, that Albert Talbert might now be teaching some old pupil’s son. If Lempriere was not talking nonsense he was claiming to be at least in a position to teach an old pupil’s grandson. But this, in fact, was perfectly possible. It merely meant that I had got the relative ages of these two old gentlemen slightly wrong. In an Oxford college an undergraduate of twenty may find himself with a tutor only two or three years older than himself. ‘I think of him as old Mr Mumford,’ I said with a shade of malice. ‘What sort of a pupil was he?’

  ‘Cedric Mumford? You know him?’

  ‘We’ve met.’ I said this before realising that it blankly contradicted the assertion I’d made to Killiecrankie. It was inconceivable that the discrepant statements could become of the slightest importance, but I detected myself wondering whether Lempriere’s native or acquired skill in telling lies made him a hypersensitive detector of lying in others. I even wondered whether, had he been at my own school long ago, he would have joined McKechnie in holding out against the romancing of the Secret Service Boy. ‘I believe Cedric isn’t very pleased’ − I added with incredible rashness − ‘with the way the college is threatening to treat his grandson Ivo.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be. I’ve never had a pupil who gave himself such airs as Cedric Mumford. Positively intimated that he intended to put you at your ease.’ Lempriere’s chuckle followed upon this. ‘And then, when you told him his essay was bloody pitiful, and that in fact you’d heard it from one of his chums the week before, he’d pretty well turn and snarl at you.’

  ‘Yes − Cedric still snarls.’

  ‘And who are they, in God’s name, those Mumfords? Catholics, of course − but not old Catholics.’

  ‘I suppose there’s a big difference − but as a Scottish presbyterian, I just wouldn’t know.’ I managed a little irony of my own this time. The distinction propounded again pleasingly echoed Plot on gentry and old gentry − although, indeed, the ambiance wasn’t the same. ‘Tony Mumford’ − I added this firmly, and by way of standing up to be counted − ‘was my closest college friend.’

  ‘Was he, indeed? Well, friendliness seems much his thing. He was scattering it all over the place last night.’

  ‘I suppose he was.’ I felt it would be disingenuous to deny this charge. Tony had a little overdone kissing the babies. In some minds, at least, he had as a consequence created the impression against which the sagacious Mogridge had warned him. ‘But Tony’s a politician,’ I went on, ‘and seemingly becoming a distinguished one. A slightly too lavish agreeableness has to be excused as part of the tool-kit.’

  ‘Humph!’ (Lempriere really produced this noise—one more frequently printed than articulated.) ‘Public means that public manners breed − eh? He needn’t bring them into private places.’

  ‘You evidently take a strong line on the Mumfords. Does it extend to Ivo in the present generation? And is Ivo your pupil now?’

  ‘No, he’s not. But he’s a young man with a high nuisance value. I’m aware of that.’

  ‘Impertinently putting his elders at their ease?’

  ‘That I don’t know. Quite probably not.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re going to hear a bit more about his nuisance value.’ There had been an instant fair-mindedness in Lempriere’s last remark which encouraged me to take a chance in this way. ‘It seems he was the man who made that wretched bet with Lusby.’

  ‘Lusby! What the devil should young Mumford have to do with Lusby? They’d be poles apart.’

  ‘Well, yes − I’m afraid that that’s the rub. You’d expect it to be an intimate’ − I thought it quite cunningly that I brought in this term of Lempriere’s − ‘who’d make an idiotic wager like that with a man. Ivo must have gone out of his way to it, and I suspect that some of your colleagues may spy a certain malice in it as a result.’ I rather held my breath as I thus, mere outsider that I was, ventured on this criticism of fellows of the college.

  ‘Absolute rubbish!’ It was to my great relief that Lempriere snapped this out. ‘Mere callow thoughtlessness in the brat Ivo. Nothing more.’

  ‘That’s what I’d rather suppose myself.’ I felt things were now going well. ‘And, of course, the boy’s in trouble already. Something about some examination or other. And that’s why Tony was busying round a bit too much last night − making friends and influencing people. He’s very concerned.’

  ‘And why in heaven’s name shouldn’t he be?’ Lempriere looked at me sternly, much as if I were setting up as advocatus diaboli in this affair. ‘He is the lad’s father, isn’t he?’

  ‘It’s certainly very understandable,’ I said. Lempriere − as I rather suspected was his vulnerability − had jumped at an attitude, and I calculated it would be useful to leave him in it. All this was happening, so far as my own feeling went, against the background of the wretched events at Otby a couple of nights before. Ivo Mumford might be an undesirable youth. But on the small academic front I wanted Lempriere on his side. If I’d managed this it would be a contribution of sorts (staircase-wise, it might sentimentally be said) to the much more sensational turn being mounted by Mogridge.

  We were now back within the bounds of the college. Lempriere, a good deal to my relief at this ticklish juncture, had halted and was proposing to take his leave of me. But he had something more to say.

  ‘Do you see much nowadays,’ he asked with a fine casualness, ‘of those folk at Corry?’

  This stro
ke had all the effect at which it rather childishly aimed. I stared at Lempriere for a full second before managing a reply.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t.’

  ‘A pity. A man should keep up with his family connections. I do, and tuck away scraps of information that come to me as a result − for ages and ages, it sometimes is.’ Lempriere’s chuckle was even fainter and more internal this time. ‘Ninian’s licking, for example,’ he said.

  ‘How on earth ….’

  ‘You don’t even register − or, at least, remember − the names of your kinsfolk. Too busy inventing Lovelesses and Backbites and Wishforts for all those stage puppets, I take it. Your Uncle Rory’s wife − whom I hope you have the decency to think of as your aunt − was a Lempriere.’ This revelation, by which it was evidently intended that I should be a good deal struck, put Lempriere in excellent humour. ‘Nice day,’ he said, looking up approvingly at the sky. ‘Ever swim at Parson’s Pleasure? If so, come and renew your acquaintance with it this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t.’ Lempriere, I supposed, was just the sort of old gentleman who nostalgically frequented that bathing place of the young − the male young. ‘I have to go to tea with the Talberts, and that won’t be long after I get away from the Lodging.’

  ‘Ah, yes − another time.’ Lempriere spoke vaguely, as if already forgetting what he had proposed. ‘Good day to you, Dunkie.’ Once more he touched me on the elbow, and then he turned and walked away.

  XII

  Nine or ten hours had now elapsed since the departure of Mogridge in quest of the lurking Ivo. I had said I should remain in Oxford until the evening, but I was already beginning to wonder when and how a message would come through to me. It was impossible to form any notion of what to expect, since we had been left − both Tony and myself − with only the vaguest intimation of what would be going on. I pictured Mogridge arriving at that gardener’s cottage in some high-powered but unobtrusive car − one equipped, no doubt, with telephonic devices enabling him to hold scrambled conversations with various quarters of the globe as he went along. Ivo would then be extricated from what must be his nerve-racking seclusion, rapidly disguised as an exiled Tashi lama (or perhaps as a giant panda, comfortably accommodated in an air-conditioned crate), and thus despatched across the Atlantic to the care of persons alerted to receive him and expeditiously retransmogrify him into Lord Marchpayne’s son, who had been moving − certifiably at need − in impeccably respectable New York society during at least the past forty-eight hours.

  This might not be accurate in detail, but it scarcely managed to fantasticate what in essence was happening. I wondered whether the crazy plan − supposing it to succeed − would exert an elevating influence on Ivo’s future character and conduct. It seemed improbable. But then nothing of the sort was the object of the exercise. If matters were now going badly at Otby (only I had a dim faith that they were not) it was pretty well the unfortunate youth’s bare survival that was in question.

  The weight of this last, and quite realistic, thought gave me a restless half-hour in Junkin’s room and even in the inferior loo, and at the end of it I made my way back to the Great Quadrangle. The vast enclosure, bleak in the staring sunshine, was alive with tourists. Here Jamshyd − meaning the old members in their tails and gongs and gowns − had lately gloried and drunk deep; now the Lion and the Lizard − represented by the rest of the world and its cine-cameras − were on the prowl. They poured in in clots and clumps, each with its voluble and gesticulating cicerone, from long lines of motor-coaches parked outside. Here and there were small superior groups who had arrived in hired Daimlers or in private Cadillacs brought across the Atlantic with the baggage. Within a couple of hours they would be in Stratford-upon-Avon. But they were doing Oxford at the moment.

  There is nothing offensive to academic piety in these invasions, which testify to the haunting American suspicion that somewhere or other there has been a past. But it was evident that a certain physical inconvenience resulted from them. Oxford colleges are full of bottle-necks: one spacious quad may be connected with another only by a tunnel of such modest dimensions that it is hard to spot. The builders appear to have lacked the conception even of persons walking conversably two abreast. When thronged with compacted gapers these incapacious channels almost cease to be negotiable.

  I thrust my way through the scrum, and in the lodge passed the time of day with a porter. College porters, and not aged dons reminiscing over their wine, are the men with the best memories in Oxford, and this one greeted me by name as casually as Mogridge had done the day before. Properly gratified, I went out into the street. It was as crowded as the Great Quad, yet as little frequented, so far as I could see or hear, by the indigenous inhabitants of the city. In addition to more Americans, black and brown and yellow people thronged St Aldates, Carfax, the Cornmarket, their close juxtaposition reminding me of an improving if implausible picture in a devotional work given to me in childhood: it had represented nicely dressed and well-nourished children of every clime congregated smilingly round the Good Shepherd. And the clothing of these tourists, wanderers, or pilgrims was not so westernised as to preclude here and there a jostling of brilliant colours tumbling on one another as closely as pigments on my father’s palette at the end of a long day’s painting. There were people who appeared to have come straight from the desert, or the arctic circle, or improbable tropical isles. There were even (as in Wordsworth’s London) Negro ladies in white muslin gowns. I remembered spending a fortnight of my first long vacation in Oxford, when there had certainly been no such kaleidoscopic cosmopolitanism as this in evidence. But at that time the nations were still largely immobilised within their own territories, having been ravaged or exhausted by war.

  Even in the mid-nineteenth century topographical painters and engravers could confidently represent the main thoroughfares of Oxford as almost free of wheeled vehicles: dons and undergraduates, alike voluminously gowned, stroll in a meditative calm those cobbled streets, impeded by nothing more formidable than an occasional flock of sheep. The city had become what was thought of as horribly noisy in my time; now it could be described journalistically as submerged beneath the roar of traffic. It is an inaccurate phrase. If some distance off, even heavy traffic mutters; near at hand, its chief characteristic is a restless miscellaneousness not easy to repel from one’s attention. I had enough on my mind, however, to induce a state of the most old-fashioned abstraction, and if I was presently hearing anything as I walked it was the Corry burn.

  This came to me by way of my recalling my Aunt Charlotte, and that in turn from remembering my first glimpse of Arnold Lempriere the night before. What had struck me then − I realised it now − had been the obscure sense of some family likeness as revealed to me. Yet his connection with my aunt could scarcely be closer than a cousinship. Had I ever known that her maiden name was Lempriere? There was a good reason for believing I had not. It is a name with an odd celebrity in English literary history. No inquiring boy who loves Keats remains ignorant of the existence of Lempriere’s classical dictionary, and the information sticks, since there is a curious fascination in the idea of somebody almost as young and ignorant as oneself quarrying a whole imaginative region out of such a book. So had I ever heard the name of Uncle Rory’s wife I should have made this association in due course and the recollection would have remained with me.

  What I happened to remember of Aunt Charlotte at the moment was her interest in careers for Ninian and myself. When I went fishing − an unproductive sport − she would sometimes appear carrying a camp-stool or a shooting-stick and settle down to a discussion of this topic. The burn babbled and brawled; in its glinting waters there rarely flashed and vanished minute presences which I believed to be trout; my aunt spoke to me seriously about what she called ‘adopting a profession’. She can scarcely have believed that Ninian and I could ever become a charge upon the Glencorrys, so her insistence must have been disinterested or − more precisely − anima
ted by the persuasion that she had one of God’s ordinances to propound. Boys who won’t inherit acres must adopt some honest means to a livelihood. It was a perfectly sensible view. Offered to me in Edinburgh, and among companions nearly all of whose fathers were professional men, I would have accepted it at once. But with the heather round me, the burn murmuring messages I just couldn’t catch, the peewits crying, and above me a pale blue sky as unflawed as a dunnock’s egg: amid these presences I judged my aunt’s conversation inept and boring. Whether I showed this I don’t know, since I have little memory of the stages by which I became a tolerably polite and civilised boy. If I resented these exhortations, it was principally because of what they were saying, by implication, about my father. Aunt Charlotte, who so plainly came of barbarians, contrived, far more than her husband, to be a philistine as well. Uncle Rory, although he seldom thought a thought or opened a book, had something in his blood which admitted the place of a certain strangeness in the world; to him my father was a crofter’s son who had gone a little dotty but who, like other naturals, conceivably had a glimpse of something. A generation on, he would have muttered that the fellow was entitled to do his thing. To Aunt Charlotte my father had simply come from nowhere and was nowhere; if by marriage he had acquired sons who had some tide to be regarded as gentlemen, then it was essential that these sons should find an ordered place in society. As it was improbable that either of our parents were giving thought to the matter (and in this Aunt Charlotte was perfectly right) then it was incumbent upon their kinsfolk to direct Ninian and myself in the way we should go.

  Aunt Charlotte possessed, although not as strongly as Uncle Rory, a sense of the duties of kinship; had this not been so, my brother and I would never have been received at Corry Hall. My mother, too, had this feeling − intermittently, because most things were intermittent with her. My father had it not at all. His affections and interest (the latter, again, intermittent in its character) lay entirely within the nuclear family which his own household constituted, and about nearly all blood-relationships beyond it he was entirely regardless and vague. Something of this attitude both Ninian and I picked up − which is why it would never have occurred to either of us to be curious about Aunt Charlotte’s origins. I had been obliged to learn about them from Arnold Lempriere, and had so learnt because Lempriere himself took a significance in such ties for granted. Remote as our connection was, he thought of me as a kinsman, so that his relationship with me at once acquired a character distinguishable from that which he enjoyed even with colleagues of long standing. At present, at least, I could find nothing in myself that responded to this idea.