by Raven, Simon
The seating of the “majores”, on this occasion as on all, followed the customary protocol. The Provost sat at the centre of the high table and facing down over the Hall. On his right was the senior Guest of Honour (the Scandinavian Ambassador), on his left the Prince. Opposite him was the Vice-Provost, with the third important guest, the German Scientist, at his right hand, and Richard, as “rediens et acclamandus” (“the returning one who must be acclaimed”), at his left. Walter, as Senior Tutor, sat at one end of the high table: the Senior Fellow at the other. Dotted around it was a selection of passé Engineers, politicians, Jewish Economists, local worthies and scholarly dotards of uncertain private habits, all being either senior Fellows or their guests; and among them were the official representatives from other colleges and associated establishments – people such as the Bishop of Bangor and the Headmaster of Eton, who, though they came every year, never seemed to get over their bewilderment at the Greek Grace or their consternation at the Latin bawdry which followed it.
Down in the body of the Hall were three long tables, parallel to one another and at right angles to the high table and its dais. At these the rest of us were accommodated – hugger-ugger and without regard to precedence, for it was in essence a democratic occasion, save that Fellows tended to be seated at top and bottom. Piers, as luck would have it, was some way from us; but Marc, with John Tyrrel on his right and myself on his left, was seated at the bottom end of the centre table: thus he had a good if rather distant view of the proceedings on the dais, and for what he could not see he had no scruple in substituting speculation. Both Tyrrel and myself had pleasant undergraduates on our second side; and what with their courtesy, Marc’s continuous reportage, and the truly admirable food and wine, what with the purple-hooded candles and the magnificent academic robes all about me, I began to forget I had ever had any purpose in coming to Cambridge other than to relish wit and well found refreshment.
“Walter is having a sticky time,” Marc announced with pleasure: “he has Professor Dobbs on one side and Doctor Partridge on the other. Dobbs is telling him about plant life in Scotland, while Partridge has recently developed a strong enthusiasm for Billy Graham. Walter is indifferent to plants and inimical to evangelism… But since Partridge is his own guest, he has brought it on himself.”
“Why did he ask him?” said Tyrrel.
“He wants to do a deal with him, my dear, over some faculty matter. It seems that Partridge has got a candidate for the next vacant lectureship – a young man from Leeds who was next to him in the queue for salvation at one of Graham’s rallies last summer. Walter, on the other hand, wants the vacancy for Richard; but since Partridge is just that much senior to Walter, his man is the more likely to get it. So Walter has been thinking and thinking, and now he has discovered, by a great stroke of luck, that one of Partridge’s other protegés has a reputation for being a tiny bit naughty when the students come to him to be supervised. So cunning Walter is setting up a bargain: unless the religious young man from Leeds stands down as a candidate for the lectureship, Walter will create a scandal about the other business.”
“What does Partridge say to that?”
“Denies that there is evidence. So Walter has lined up two thesis writers from Girton Coll., and a chorister who was being crammed for a Scholarship to Blundell’s, all of whom, he says, will say that Partridge’s protégé was very importunate… Partridge hasn’t heard about this yet, and that’s why he’s here tonight. After dinner Walter will get his revenge for all the evangelist chitter-chatter by swingeing him out of court with The Young Chorister’s Tale.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I’m a mathematician, my dear. Two and two always make four in my world, however many respectable people would prefer, on occasion, that the answer should be five or three… Do you see the enormous man with the totally bald head? The one with the rather pretty Order round his neck?”
“Yes,” said John Tyrrel, looking at Marc as a child might look at an adult who was taking him to the pantomime, “yes, I see him. What about him?”
“Well he, my dear, is a sociologist. That Order was given him by the King of Denmark for conducting an enquiry into the drinking habits of the lower class in Copenhagen. Now why do you think he went bald?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“Because one morning, after a night of enquiring into Copenhagen’s drinking habits, he woke up in a lavatory of his hotel with the attendant standing over him and asking what he’d like for his breakfast. He was so shaken by the man’s sang froid that all his hair fell out there and then on to the floor and they had to spend the best part of the morning clearing it up… Richard, I’m glad to say, is making a hearty meal and much enjoying himself. So long as he doesn’t drink too much before he makes his speech… We’ve a long way to go yet.”
And indeed we had. We were now at the fish and Chablis stage. This was followed by Goose and Chambertin (“The old man with the red nose spends all his time at the University tennis courts”) and this in turn by an iced bomb with Krug (“Can you imagine, my dear, screaming out of the boat house like a dervish at Omdurman”). After this came Devils on Horse Back, with whichever of the preceding wines one preferred (“Six foot seven inches, in riding boots…”); and then it was time for the cloth to be removed to make way for the port and speeches.
Once again there was a well established procedure to be followed, though by this day and date it was far more elaborate than anything that our Founder could have devised in his own time. As soon as the tables were cleared and the wine had gone round once, the Provost called upon the Vice-Provost to propose the loyal toast. We all stood to drink this; but as soon as we had lowered our glasses the Senior Fellow called out, in accordance with the custom, “Et rex Henricus, socii”, whereat, with a great shout of “Rex Henricus, Fundator nobilis”, all drained their glasses and threw them over their shoulders. (When and why this rather Russian ceremony had been initiated, I could never discover: suffice to say that it cost the College a small fortune annually, and that it was considered very lucky to be hit on the head by someone else’s glass.) After this we all sat again (Tyrrel looking as if he had wandered through the looking glass), while the choir sang a pretty Elizabethan love song; fresh glass was set, and the detritus was cleared off the floor by squads of bedmakers in black caps, who were traditionally regaled with coins and even bank notes, which they swept into their pans along with the broken glass.
Meanwhile, the wives and other adult female belongings of Fellows had begun to settle themselves in the Minstrels’ Gallery above, from which they were graciously permitted to listen to the speeches. This practice had only been introduced, some ten years previously, because of the insistence of an unfortunate Vice-Provost, whose shrewish wife gave him no rest till the College Council had adopted his suggestion. This had finally been passed but had never been generally approved – the less so as some of the wives, albeit they were only admitted on sufferance, complained that the songs and some of the speeches, not to mention the uninhibited drinking, were unsuitable in the presence of ladies. However, they were very properly told that if they did not like it they could stay away; and since they showed no signs of doing this, it seemed that the custom of admitting them was now with us for good and that it was to have, on the whole, no deleterious effect on the evening’s entertainment.
Clearly it was having none on this occasion. There would now be half an hour’s uninterrupted drinking before the speeches and further toasts began, and all around us the period was being used to good purpose. The decanters wagged merrily down the tables. Glasses were filled and emptied and filled again before the decanter passed. Several young men vomited and were taken away by friends, while discreet servants attended to the mess. The choir sang three songs of death, two of unrequited love, and a challenge to Apollo to inspire better poetry than Bacchus could. The two young men next to us toasted Tyrrel and myself in bumpers and we responded in kind. Marc lit a cigar, informed us
that the way people smoked cigars or ate bananas was indicative of their sexual characteristics. (“Anal, my dear, or oral”), and began a long story, in this connection, about the Professor of Poetry. Looking up by chance, I saw Penelope Goodrich in the front row of the Gallery; her eyes seemed to be straining towards where Richard was sitting at the far end of the Hall; her face was white and unhappy; she looked, at that moment, very vulnerable. I tried to catch her eye, so that I might wave and communicate my own confidence; but she had no eyes for me. Why are you so dismal, I thought; can’t you see that nothing could go wrong? Not here. Not in Lancaster College on the night of the Michaelmas Feast.
There was a tremendous belt on the gong and sudden silence. Up rose Walter, supposedly knowledgeable about Scandinavian affairs, to welcome the Scandinavian Ambassador and propose his toast.
“Your Excellency: Your Royal Highness: Mr Provost, my Lords and Gentlemen…”
The decanters still passed, but more discreetly now. Walter droned on. Penelope sat aloft with her eyes glued on Richard, who was sitting slightly to one side, was smoking a cigar (anal, my dear, or oral?) and looked entirely composed. Marc fidgeted and my other neighbour giggled. Walter wound up; we rose to drink his Excellency’s health; several people, forgetting which stage of the evening they were in, threw their glasses over their shoulders; and we settled down to hear the Ambassador’s reply.
Some nonsense about hygiene and democratic monarchies. Mercifully brief. Who next? The Senior Fellow, to welcome the semi-mediatised princeling: “When you look around, Your Royal Highness, at the riches which your distant ancestor saw fit to place at the disposal of learning…” Jesus Christ almighty, and whatever will the little wretch reply? “…When I look awound, Mr Pwovost, at the wiches which my ancestor so wisely placed at the disposal of learning…” God help us all, is the man a travelling advertisement for Wepublicanism? And now what? One of the dimmer college scientists, welcoming Herr Doktor Whatsisname. “Your work, an inspiration to many of us here, appreciated even in Oxford” – Ha! Ha! Ha! – “has revolutionised the world’s approach to the Incidental Functions of Independent Cyclonic Factors considered as Asymptotes of the Temporal Co-ordinate.”
“Great Balls of fire,” said Marc Honeydew sotto voce, “they threw that into the dustbin when I was still in knickers.”
So now, Herr Doktor: reply, reply: dig your kit out of the dustbin, along with Marc’s old knickers, and give us the works.
“Excellence: Hochiet” – (?) – “Herr Provost; mein Herren…” By all the gods at once, the insufferable brute is going to talk in German.
And so he did for forty minutes flat. After which the Provost, unrattled, unhurried and radiant, rose to perform a work of love, to welcome back into our midst Richard Fountain, our beloved friend and colleague, redeuntem et acclamandum.
“…As the years pass, I sometimes feel very old and lonely, sitting here in this College in which I have lived for so long and which I have loved so much. Of those with whom I was reared, in whose company I came into manhood and learned to explore the secrets of poetry and reason, the few that are not dead are old and scattered. So that it is you, my younger friends, who have come to mean most to me and whose welfare will exercise me until my last day. You will understand, then, that it is always sad for me when any of you leave this College, even though I know that you must necessarily go into the world to get your living. How joyful, therefore, when I am enabled to welcome home someone who has left us indeed, but only for a short time, and who has now returned, his face bronzed by a warmer sun, and his mind filled with deeper knowledge. I tell you all that of all the pleasures this Feast brings me every year, the pleasure of wine and company, of receiving many guests both great and humble, of reflecting, as our Founder would wish, on the good year now before us – of all these there is none which can compare with the pleasure of welcoming home old friends and dearly loved members of this College. And is not a Feast a fitting way for a man to welcome his friends? Is it not meet that those who return should be greeted with well spread tables and flowing wine cups? And so now, dear Richard, I welcome you with all my heart to this our Feast. I give you the greeting of Lancaster College and the blessing of an old man who has served it, in true faith, for as long as he can remember. And I bid the rest of you, all that are here present from the greatest to the least, to rise to your feet and drink, in nomine beati Henrici, to the health and happiness of our truly beloved Magistri Richardi Fountain, redeuntis et acclamandi.”
“Magister Richardus Fountain.” A great shout of two hundred voices swelled into the air. “Rediens et acclamandus.” And then again, louder this time than before, a welcome home to make a man’s heart heave within him, “Reditus, acclamatus, carissimus sociis”, a mighty roar of affection and inebriety that rang round the ancient rafters while glasses were drained and set down and a storm of clapping burst through the Hall. Then we sat, all save the Provost –
“And so now, Richard, we call on you. Now you must reply to your friends.”
And this was it. There was dead silence. Marc sat tensely and wiped his palms with his handkerchief. Penelope gazed along the Hall and her lips, I thought, moved as if in prayer. Tyrrel lowered his eyelids; the Provost reseated himself with unobstrusive dignity; and Walter Goodrich sat back with a beatific smile. And then, calm as a summer morning and cool as a breeze off the sea, Richard Fountain rose to speak.
“Your Excellency: Your Royal Highness: Mr Provost, my Lords and Gentlemen.
“It is an ancient custom that, when a man comes from far away, he should be asked for the news he brings. He is asked for his message. I have brought back a message, a very simple one, and it is this which I shall now pass on to you.
“For it is a message of salvation, which you must all hear. It is a message of hope, of liberation, of escape. I have suffered in acquiring it, but my suffering is now done, and will in any case be well rewarded by the response which I hope to raise in yourselves. In a word, my prize has been my own freedom, and this prize will be many times multiplied in worth if I can share my freedom with all of you; with those of you who are our guests, if you will hear me, and more particularly with those of you, my friends and my colleagues, who have welcomed me home to Lancaster with such abundance of voice and spirit.”
Still dead silence, not a single shuffle. What is he going to say? Trite but harmless words about the Greeks and their nobility? Richard is seldom trite. A paean in praise of the old gods? The gods of wine and song? If so, he would have to be partly ironic in his tone; and his tone is not ironic at all.
“The message is this. You must beware, all of you, of those who seek to possess your souls. But we know this already, you will say: here, in Lancaster, the citadel of protest and intellectual freedom, we know all about keeping our souls from other men’s possession. But this is not true, my friends. Which of you, from a child, has not been possessed – possessed by parents, or by schoolmasters, by lovers perhaps, or by your elders who are in this very room? Which of you has not been stifled and suffocated, until the breath of life has left you and you remain, a mere shell, to do the bidding of an alien spirit? For a person, or a regiment, a country or a college or a faith – something alien in any case – has drained the life blood from you, until you are no more as the gods would have you be than is a rotten fruit crushed into the gutter.
“And so, you will ask me, how would the gods have us be? They would have you in full enjoyment of all their gifts. The smaller gifts, such as wine and laughter. The greater gifts, such as the love of the body and the exercise of strength. Above all, the gift of freedom. For it is freedom which is the oldest and the best of all their gifts. And by this I do not mean freedom simply to come and go as you wish, or even to speak your mind as you see fit on the topic of the day. I mean freedom to live with your whole mind and your whole body – your whole being – in the pursuit of those prizes, prizes of beauty or wisdom or power, which your own soul chiefly covets. You are not to be fobbed off w
ith the petty schemes of academic hirelings, the parochial patterns of prestige and modest earnings which will be coyly but insistently put before you as guides to a suitable life. You are to look into your souls and see what of vision is to be found there; and then, keeping this vision clear, not suffering it to be obscured or tarnished by the quibbling morality or sly vanities of old men, you are to follow your vision through to its end and goal, whether this be a throne or a hermit’s cell or the very pit of Hades.
“This is what the gods wish for you. That you follow the visions they have given you in the freedom which they have ordained for you. Like Alexander, you may come a conqueror to the limits of the known world; or like Plato, to the highest mysteries of speculation; like Hector, to a shameful passage behind another’s chariot or like Helen to be called strumpet and whore. But Hector’s fate and Helen’s are as noble as Alexander’s, because by following their visions they won the love of the gods, so that their names have come ringing down the centuries in immortal poetry. It is for you to choose: follow your vision, to win the love of the immortals, even if that be joined with present infamy among mankind; or let your vision be clouded by the safe counsel of those who would confine you to the grey world of calculating drudgery. You must choose. But of those who are here to help you make your choice, most of them wish only to wipe out your visions, to corrode or steal away your bright souls. Much of my message is, therefore, a warning, and I sum up my warning thus: Beware of the thief who comes to take your soul. He is with you always. There are many of them sitting among us now, making ready, so soon as they rise from table, to slip their nimble fingers into your breast and take from it what is most precious, to seal it away in their cabinets and watch it grow – for grow it still must – on the food which they will feed it into some grotesque shape which they have preordained. So hide your souls well, my friends; or else there will come the smooth deceiver in the black gown or the scarlet robe – such a man as is sitting there” – he pointed down the Hall to no one in particular – “or there” – once again he gestured vaguely – “or there, worst of all there,” he screamed out with all his strength; and then pointed with his whole arm, and almost, it seemed, with his whole body, at Doctor Walter Goodrich.