by Angus Wilson
Neither Sir Edgar nor Gerald seemed to realize the joke. Gerald said, 'One should always mistrust amateurs,' and his heavy eyelids seemed almost to close. Sir Edgar said, 'Ah, my dear fellow, we pursue humane studies, we're not technicians. All this spectrographic analysis and fluorine tests and what-not. There's no place for "sweet-and-light" in all that.'
'No, no,' said Professor Pforzheim, shaking his head. 'The Tyranny of the Tool.'
Gerald Middleton seemed to take this more jocularly. He glanced at Sir Edgar, but the old man would not share the joke.
'I was told you wanted to see me,' Gerald said.
'Ah, yes, my dear boy,' said Sir Edgar, for so he regarded Gerald's sixty-two years. 'This infernal business of the editorship may well come up this afternoon. I do hope you won't make a fuss about accepting it.'
'I see no likelihood of fuss,' said Gerald. 'But don't count on my taking it. I can't say.'
'You're very wrong, you know,' Sir Edgar said gravely. 'We need a certain breadth of interest, we need imagination, and we need someone who can write at least tolerable English, if the series is to be of any use.'
'There's plenty of young fellows with all that,' Gerald said.
'The next candidate is Clun,' Sir Edgar said grimly.
Gerald's tone became sulky. 'I can't say at all,' he said.
'Well, be prepared to discuss it,' Sir Edgar insisted, then, taking out a gold hunter watch, he said, 'Two minutes.'
Professor Pforzheim bowed this time, then he said, 'Professor Clun, always so exact and methodical. How is he?'
'Always so exact and methodical,' said Gerald.
Pforzheim raised his eyebrows. 'And Dr Lorimer?' he asked.
'Always so inexact and unmethodical,' Gerald replied.
'No, that's not fair, Middleton,' said Sir Edgar. 'She has a fine brain, Pforzheim, but she's not been well lately.'
Gerald turned almost angrily on Sir Edgar. 'You don't understand my praises,' he said irritably.
Professor Pforzheim intervened tactfully. 'But, Middleton, I was forgetting. You are exactly the man I wish to talk to. The last survivor of Melpham,' and he laughed. 'You were there, were you not?'
'I was there, but I know nothing about it,' Gerald said, dismissing the subject.
'Bur you can tell me something about the circumstances? We must talk afterwards.'
'I was simply an undergraduate staying with the family, a friend of Stokesay's son Gilbert, you know. I didn't arrive until the excavation was practically over. ..." He seemed about to say more, then he checked himself.
Sir Edgar led the way through the door on to the platform. Gerald's dark, flushed face had grown more and more irritable. 'There's not a chance in a hundred that I'll take the editorship,' he whispered to Sir Edgar; 'you'd better know that.'
CHAPTER 2
'I DO not think,' said Sir Edgar, and his cracked old voice was additionally broken with emotion, 'that the Association has been privileged for a very long time to hear a speech at once so learned and so humane as the one we have heard this evening. Professor Pforzheim, in his survey of Dark Age and Early Medieval trade, has taken us on a vast geographical journey from Canton to the shores of the Iberian Peninsula, and from the Baltic to the Upper Nile; but he has taken me, and, I dare say, many of you on an even wider spiritual journey, for he has recalled, to me at any rate, a time when historical studies demanded, as their simple prerequisites, learning worn lightly, high courage of imagination, and strong intellectual discipline.'
Sir Edgar glowered at a number of scholars whom he felt to be pre-eminently lacking in these qualities. Gerald Middleton moved uneasily in his chair. He had strongly approved the speech himself, but he disliked a show of emotion in those whom, like Sir Edgar, he regarded as champions of reserve and decorum. How very unpleasant the effects of old age are, he reflected.
Jasper Stringwell-Anderson crossed his legs elegantly and observed Gerald closely through narrowed eyelids. He guessed that Sir Edgar's unwonted emotionalism would affect Gerald adversely and feared that it would stiffen his reluctance to become editor. 'Yes, yes,' he muttered, 'we're delighted to know there is still some heat in the dying embers, but don't go on for too long.' Sir Edgar, however, had more to say.
'The study of history is not a simple amassing of knowledge,' his voice seemed to gain strength, 'less still a technique; it is not even an exercise of wise judgement or clever analysis. It is, it must be, a discipline of the spirit, an act of faith in civilization.'
Clarissa Crane, conspicuously chic among the audience, felt that this was all she had hoped for: Professor Pforzheim's distinguished air and the 'magical' names he had mentioned - Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, Canton - had quite enchanted her. She was well on the golden road to Samarkand; indeed, had quite forgotten once or twice the annoying prohibition against smoking. And now this famous old man burning with dry fervour. 'A pocket prophet in short black coat and striped trousers, burning with dry fervour.' She was delighted with the phrase - it would serve so well to interpret the academic world to her literary friends.
'It is peculiarly fitting,' Sir Edgar was saying, 'that we should have heard this note again at the annual Stokesay Lecture. In his latter days, Stokesay spoke too often in those tones of generality, of popular rhetoric which is not the voice of history but of journalism. I can say this now, because I often said it to him,' he chuckled grimly.
Theo Roberts whispered to Jasper, 'I'd like to have heard that.'
'But,' Sir Edgar continued, 'Stokesay was one of the last great historians. At his best, he was very great, at his least, he never fell into that paltry, document-grubbing pedantry that now so often serves us up petty detail, preliminary field work, and supposes that it is giving us history.'
Rose Lorimer's eyes were shining and the artificial roses bobbed up and down in her excitement; she turned and smiled at random to the company behind her. A young woman lecturer from Sheffield catching one of these smiles was quite disconcerted; but Jasper, practised in the art, received two or three and dexterously returned soothing glances.
'Above all,' Sir Edgar ended, 'it would peculiarly have pleased Lionel Stokesay to know that the best of his memorial lectures - and having heard them all, I can confidently say it was the best - was given to us by a visitor from Germany, for Stokesay loved that country and delighted in its great tradition of scholarship and the breadth of its view of history's claims and functions.'
Sir Edgar sat down, feeling that perhaps he had gone a little too far, but after all, the fellow had given a fine speech, even if he was a Hun. He shook Professor Pforzheim's hand. 'Thank you, my dear fellow,' he said, 'a memorable and splendid occasion.'
The audience broke up into little groups. Gerald Middleton started to edge his way out before the discussion began. Professor Clun, however, had other ideas.
'Well,' he said, 'I don't think we learned anything new from that.' His protuberant green eyes stared up at Gerald's great height in intelligent terrier challenge. Gerald looked down at the little withered rosy-apple face. He noticed flecks of spittle on the little, ridiculous moustache. His sensual lips broadened into a contemptuous grin.
'I'm sure you didn't, Clun,' he drawled. 'You read all the Jahrbücher and Forschungen. But it was all new to me. I'm damnably lazy about reading German. I must say I thought the fellow's English very good.'
'I fancy he knows very little Arabic,' said Professor Clun. 'He made a curious jumble of that tenth-century North African trade manual. Of course, I don't profess to know Arabic myself, but then I don't set up as an authority on Mediterranean trade.'
'No,' said Gerald with a smile, 'I suppose not. I fancy though he was translating from the Latin version current in Western Europe. After all, he was using it to illustrate French and Italian trading customs, and if the only version they had was a jumble of the Arabic, perhaps that was the point. But I dare say I got it wrong.'
Professor Clun saw no possible response but an ambiguous smile. A uniformed attendant br
ought them sherry and biscuits.
'Thank you, Norton,' said Gerald. 'Merry Christmas to you.'
'Yes, yes,' said Professor Clun, taking his sherry, 'of course.'
'Thank you, gentlemen, and the same to you,' said Norton. 'Thank you for the doll for Jessie, sir. We're not letting her see it till Christmas, of course.'
'Oh, they sent it, did they?' said Gerald. 'You never know with these shops nowadays.'
As Norton moved away, Professor Clun said, 'They're all the same, these old soldiers. On the scrounge. They know very well which side their bread's buttered.'
'Norton was my batman on the Marne,' said Gerald, and flushed red at what he felt to be his own priggishness.
'I hear your son-in-law didn't get the Sociology lectureship at Exeter,' Clun said after a pause.
'No,' said Gerald.
'I noticed he didn't get Oriel or Bristol either,' Clun added.
'Thank you for showing such interest,' Gerald laughed. 'Donald hasn't a very good manner at interviews.'
'All this good-manner business,' Clun said. 'They take far too much notice of it now, in my opinion.'
'I suppose,' Gerald laughed again, 'that interviewers have always preferred a good manner to a bad one.'
'Charm,' snapped Professor Clun.
'Ability to get on with people, I should think,' Gerald suggested.
'Get on with people,' Clun held the concept up in the air for inspection, then dropped it heavily. 'Get on with the work is more important.'
'I must get on with my own business,' said Gerald, glancing at the clock. 'There's just a chance I may buy a Fuseli drawing this evening, but I'm afraid the dealer's too knowing. He'll ask more than I am prepared to give.'
'I'm surprised,'said Clun, 'that you should consider that in pursuit of your hobby.'
Gerald was suddenly very annoyed. 'Oh my dear fellow, don't you know,' he said, 'cheese-paring's always the mark of the rich.'
As Gerald began to move away, Professor Clun hesitated; he did not wish to remind Gerald of the coming discussion of the editorship, but his anxiety was too great to allow him to remain silent.
'The proceedings of the Association,' he said, 'the question of the editorship's sure to come up.'
'Oh, I don't suppose there'll be time for anything after the discussion,' Gerald said carelessly, 'and in any case, there are two or three excellent young chaps they ought to consider before they get down to you and me.' And he moved off.
He was not to be allowed to escape so easily, however, for Theo and Jasper were in wait.
'Well, didn't that make you feel grand?' asked Theo. Even his somewhat obtuse sense of situation had seen in Professor Pforzheim's lecture an opportunity to rouse Gerald to the need for action. 'Absit Clun, eh?' he laughed.
'Oh, Clun feels doubts about Pforzheim's proficiency in Arabic,' Gerald said.
'I hope he raises that in the discussion,' said Theo. 'Pforzheim looks to me a heavyweight. He'll make rings round our Arthur.'
'Well, you must let me know if he draws blood.' Gerald made to move on.
'You're not getting out of this so easily,' said Jasper, smiling, and fitting a cigarette into a Dunhill holder. 'Your place is here and you know it.'
'My dear chap, I know nothing whatsoever about Dark Age trade, or at any rate no more than befits a gentleman.'
'Then you must sit patiently like a gentleman,' said Jasper, 'until the Association's business comes up, Gerald.' Both he and Theo were perhaps a trifle over-jocular in their anxiety. Then he added in mock American, 'Who do we need for editor? One, two, three - M... I... D... Middleton.'
'Rah, Rah,' added Theo.
'Thank you very much,' said Gerald, 'but I'm not staging a comeback. You should get yourselves a job as agents for Mistinguette.'
'There won't be another Medieval series for twenty years,' said Theo; 'this is a serious matter.'
'The more reason,' said Gerald, 'for not appointing a played-out man. Look, if it's Clun you're worrying about, I've already told Sir Edgar to appoint one of you younger chaps. If they don't like either of your two faces, there's Prescott or Drake, or Hilda Ferguson, not to forget Edinburgh and the fair sex.'
'You know perfectly well,' said Jasper, 'that if it isn't you, it'll be Clun. And if by some odd freak one of our generation did get the job, you know very well we wouldn't have either the prestige or the connexions to make a success of it. Your ex-pupils make you a present of the compliment - you're the only man who has all that.'
'In the first place, I haven't,' said Gerald, 'and in the second place, if I were to be active again I should give my energies to England under the Confessor.' He spoke the title of his work, so long mooted and never realized, in ironic inverted commas.
'Ah,' said Theo, knocking his pipe out on the heel of his shoe, 'if I really thought that, you know ...'
But Jasper interrupted, 'If you don't take the editorship, Gerald, you'll never write another thing: if you do, you'll write The Confessor and much more.'
Gerald was about to be angry, then he checked himself and said drawlingly, 'Well, at the moment, anyway, you must excuse me. I have a chance of buying a Fuseli drawing and I don't intend to miss it.'
Jasper showed his annoyance. 'Overrated modern chichi,' he said.
Gerald smiled and began to walk away, when Theo, red in the face, produced his prepared piece. 'Look here,' he said, 'we all know your Cnut was damned good and your lecture notes. But you're not Acton. It's not enough. If you don't help history now, she won't help you. You'll be classed as a second-rater.'
Gerald flushed and his heavy jowl trembled slightly. 'I don't think you mean to be impertinent, Theo,' he said, 'but you are. And what's worse, you're being melodramatic,' and he walked away.
As he got to the doorway, Rose Lorimer bore down upon him, with Clarissa Crane in tow.
'Hello, Rose,' he said, with an affectionate smile. 'Good, wasn't it? I've got to run now, my dear, but a Happy Christmas to you.'
'Oh, Gerald, you're not going before the discussion; that's too bad of you.'
'You do my discussing for me, my dear.'
'Oh, I'm afraid I shan't be able to say anything for you.' Rose took such conventional facetiousness quite seriously. 'I've a most important thing to ask Pforzheim myself about trade and the Christian mission, and about St Boniface....'
Rose's breathless excitement was interrupted by Clarissa's strangulated sophistication. 'Since Dr Lorimer's so excited, I'll have to introduce myself. I'm Clarissa Crane,' she announced in the simple, direct voice she used to take the celebrity off her name.
Gerald did not recognize the note or the name, but his sensual eye took in her slim feminine figure. He smiled.
'I know a novelist has no place here,' said Clarissa to repair the ignorance that her practised eye had recognized, 'but I'm foolhardy enough to be writing about the seventh century, and Dr Lorimer kindly brought me along. I wanted particularly to meet you, because you can tell me something about Melpham.'
This second mention that evening of Melpham finally removed any glamour that Clarissa might have had for Gerald. His professional eye had already detected a shop-soiled frigidity beneath her chic. 'I know nothing whatsoever about Melpham,' he said curtly. 'If I remember rightly, Bishop Eorpwald died in 698; my interests begin roughly at 950.'
'Oh, but you knew the Stokesays frightfully well. Dollie's told me a lot about you. She's a great friend of mine.'
At the mention of Dollie Stokesay's name, Gerald's face softened again. 'How is she?' he asked eagerly.
'Oh! wonderful, as usual,' said Clarissa.
It seemed a curious description to Gerald of chronic dipsomania, but he let it pass. 'I haven't seen her since before the war,' he said. 'I wish I could help you about Melpham, but there's nothing to tell. I was simply a friend of Gilbert's and I knew even less then than I do now of the seventh century.'
'Gilbert Stokesay? Oh, that's terribly interesting. Everyone talks about his work now, except, of course
, Dollie. It seems so incredible to think of her in connexion with Futurist manifestos and so on. I don't suppose she's ever read a line. Gilbert Stokesay! Oh, I shall certainly ring you up,' Clarissa said. Melpham might just help with the novel, Gerald Middleton was rich and distinguished, but Gilbert Stokesay was a smart name; there was no doubt of Clarissa's determination to keep in touch. Gerald had refused to see innumerable Americans who were writing theses on his dead friend's work, but they could not bring him news of Gilbert's widow. It would tax his ingenuity to avoid saying anything about Gilbert or Melpham for half an hour, but it was an ordeal he was prepared to undergo if he could hear from Clarissa a first-hand account of Dollie. Anything to get news of her, without actually seeing her. 'That will be delightful,' he said, and disappeared through the doorway.
Clarissa said loudly to Rose, 'I'd no idea he was such a charmer.'
Sir Edgar was piloting Professor Pforzheim round the room. He advanced towards a tall, military-looking man wearing orange suede shoes. 'Professor Pforzheim, you must meet Colonel Brankscombe,' he said; 'he's the fellow who's going to bear witness against you in The Times tomorrow.'
'Fascinating lecture,' said Colonel Brankscombe. 'Afraid I can't hope to do you justice, but I've got the salient points, I think.'
'Are none of your colleagues here?' asked Sir Edgar.
'No, Ottery doesn't seem to have made it.' The Colonel turned to Professor Pforzheim as if in apology. 'If you'll let me know where you're stopping, I'll let you see what I've written tonight, if you like.'
'Oh,' said Professor Pforzheim in chuckling delight, 'this is quite wonderful. The Times is willing to be checked. I don't think any foreigner would believe it. Thank you very much, but I am sure that it is quite unnecessary,' he added, with a little bow; 'the accuracy of The Times is proverbial, you know.'
Once again Sir Edgar was forced to avoid catching a compatriot's eye. That was the trouble with foreigners, the unnecessary embarrassing things they said.