by C. P. Snow
They impoverished the family for generations: but they had a certain reward. It was a grand and handsome house, far finer than the Tudor one they had destroyed. It impressed one still as being on the loftiest scale. It also impressed one, I thought as I went from my bedroom to a bathroom after tea, as being grandiosely uncomfortable. There were thirty yards of corridors before I got to my bathroom: and the bathroom itself, which had been installed in the nineteenth century, was of preposterous size and struck cold as a vault. There were also great stretches of corridor between the kitchens and the dining-rooms, and no dish ever arrived quite warm.
I discovered one piece of news before I had been in the house an hour. Lord Boscastle had in his gift several of the livings round the countryside; one of these had recently fallen vacant, and Roy had persuaded him to give it to Ralph Udal. So far as I could gather, Roy had sent letter after letter to Lord Boscastle, offered to return from Berlin to describe Udal, invoked both Joan and her mother to speak for him. He was always importunate when begging a favour for someone else. Lord Boscastle had given way, saying that these fellows were much of a muchness, and Udal was now vicar of a small parish, which included the house of Boscastle itself. His church and vicarage were a mile or two along the coast.
I walked there before dinner, thinking that I might find Roy; but Udal was alone in the vicarage, although Roy had called that morning. Udal brought me a glass of sherry on to the lawn. It was a long time since we had last met, but he greeted me with cordiality and with his easy, unprickly, almost impersonal good nature. He had altered very little in appearance; the hair was turning grey over his ears, but since he was twenty-five he had looked a man in a tranquil and indefinite middle age. He was in shirtsleeves, and looked powerful, sunburnt and healthy. He drank his sherry, and smiled at me, with his eyes narrowed by interest and content.
“How do you think Roy is?” he said easily, going back to my question about Roy’s visit.
“How do you?”
“You see much more of him than I do,” said Udal, also stonewalling.
“Not since he’s been abroad,” I said.
“Well,” said Udal, after a pause, “I don’t think he is to be envied.”
He looked at me with his lazy kindness. “To tell you the truth, Eliot, I didn’t think he was to be envied the first time I set eyes on him. It was the scholarship examination. I saw him outside the hall. I said to myself ‘that lad will be too good for you. But he’s going to have a rough time.’”
He smiled, and added: “It seems to me that I wasn’t far wrong.”
He asked me about Roy’s professional future. I said that everything must come to him; the university could not help creating a special readership or chair for him within three or four years.
Udal nodded his head.
“He’s very talented,” he said. “Yet you know, Eliot, sometimes I think it would have been better – if he had chosen a different life.”
“Such as?”
“He might have done better to join my trade. He might have found things easier if he’d become a priest.” Suddenly Udal smiled at me. “You’ve always disliked my hanging round, in case he was going to surrender, haven’t you? I thought it was the least I could do for him, just to wait in the slips, so to speak.”
I asked him how much Roy had talked to him about faith. He said, with calm honesty, very little: was there really much to say? Roy had not been looking for an argument. Whichever side he emerged, he had to live his way towards it.
Udal went on: “Sometimes I wonder whether he would have found it easier – if he’d actually lived a different life. I mean with women.”
“It would have been harder without them,” I said.
“I wonder,” said Udal. “There’s much nonsense talked on these matters, you know. I’m trying to be guided by what I’ve seen. And some of the calmest and happiest people I’ve seen, Eliot, have led completely ‘frustrated’ lives. And some of the people I’ve seen who always seem sexually starved – they’re people who spend their whole time hopping in and out of bed. Life is very odd.”
We talked about some acquaintances, then about Roy again.
Udal said: “Well, we shall never know.” Then he smiled. “But I can give him one bit of relief, anyhow. Now I’ve got this job, I don’t see any particular reason why I should have to borrow any more money from him. It will save him quite a bit.”
I laughed, but I was put off. I tried to examine why. From anyone else, I should have found that shameless candour endearing. Like Roy, I did not mind his sliding out of duties he did not like. I did not mind, in fact I admired, his confidence in his own first-hand experience. I did not mind his pleasure, quite obvious although he was so settled, in an hour of scabrous gossip. They were all parts of an unusual man, who had gone a different way from most of our acquaintances.
Yet I was on edge in his company. Roy had once accused me of disliking him. As we talked that afternoon, I felt that was not precisely true. I did not dislike him, I found him interesting and warm – but I should be glad to leave him, I found his presence a strain. I could not define it further. Was it that he took everything that happened to him too much as his by right? He had slid through life comfortably, without pain, without much self-questioning: did I feel he ought to be more thankful for his luck? Did he accept his own nature too acquiescently? His idleness, his lack of conscience, his amiable borrowing – he took them realistically, without protest, with what seemed to me an over-indulgent pleasure. He looked at himself, was not dissatisfied, and never kicked against the pricks.
It was strange. Though I was not comfortable with him, he seemed perfectly so with me. He told me of how he proposed to adjust his life, now that at last he had arrived at a decent stopping place.
He intended to devote Sunday and one other day a week to his parish: three days a week to his own brand of biographical scholarship: one day to sheer physical relaxation, mowing his lawn, ambling round the hills, sitting by the sea: which would leave one day “for serious purposes”. I was curious about the “serious purposes”, and Udal smiled. But he was neither diffident nor coy. He meant to spend this one day a week in preparing himself for the mystical contemplation. One day a week for spiritual knowledge: it sounded fantastically businesslike. I said as much, and Udal smiled indifferently.
“I told Roy about it,” he said. “It’s the only time I’ve ever shocked him.”
It struck me as so odd that I spoke to Roy when we met in the inner drawing-room before dinner. I said that I had heard Udal’s time-table.
“It’s dreadful,” said Roy. “It makes everything nice and hygienic, doesn’t it?” He was speaking with a dash of mockery, with hurt and bitter feeling. He shrugged his shoulders, and said: “Oh, he may as well be left to it.”
Just then Lady Muriel entered and caught the phrase. She gave me a formal, perfunctory greeting: then she turned to Roy and demanded to know whom he was discussing. Her solid arms were folded over her black dress, as I had seen them in the Lodge: my last glimpse of her after the funeral, when she kept erect only by courage and training, was swept aside: she was formidable and active again. Yet I felt she depended more on Roy than ever.
Roy put his preoccupations behind him, and talked lightly of Udal. “You must remember him, Lady Mu. You’ll like him.” He added: “You’ll approve of him too. He doesn’t stay at expensive hotels.”
Lady Muriel did not take the reference, but she continued to talk of Udal as we sat at dinner in the “painted room”. The table was a vast circle, under the painted Italianate ceiling, and there were only six of us spread round it, the Boscastles, Lady Muriel and Joan, Roy and I.
Lady Muriel’s boom seemed the natural way to speak across such spaces.
“I consider,” she told her brother, “that you should support the new vicar.”
Lord Boscastle was drinking his soup. The butler was experimenting with some device for reheating it in the actual dining-room, but it was still rather
cold.
“What are you trying to get me to do now, Muriel?” he said crossly.
“I consider that you should attend service occasionally.” She looked accusingly at her sister-in-law. “I have always regarded going to service as one of the responsibilities of our position. I am sorry to see that it has not been kept up.”
“I refuse to be jockeyed into doing anything of the kind,” said Lord Boscastle with irritation. I guessed that, as Lady Muriel recovered her energies, he was not being left undisturbed. “I did not object to putting this fellow in to oblige Roy. But I strongly object if Muriel uses the fellow to jockey me with. I don’t propose to attend ceremonies with which I haven’t the slightest sympathy. I don’t see what good it does me or anyone else.”
“It was different for you in college, Muriel,” said Lady Boscastle gently. “You had to consider other people’s opinions, didn’t you?”
“I regarded it as the proper thing to do,” said Lady Muriel, her neck stiff with fury. She could think of no retort punishing enough for her sister-in-law, and so pounded on at Lord Boscastle. “I should like to remind you, Hugh, that the Budes have never missed a Sunday service since they came into the title.”
The Budes were the nearest aristocratic neighbours, whom even Lord Boscastle could not pretend were social inferiors. But that night, pleased by his wife’s counter-attack, he reverted to his manner of judicial consideration, elaborate, apparently tentative and tired, in reality full of triumphant contempt.
“Ah yes, the Budes. I forgot you knew them, Muriel. I suppose you must have done before you went off to your various new circles. Yes, the Budes.” His voice trailed tiredly away. “I should have thought they were somewhat rustic, shouldn’t you have thought?”
Revived, Lord Boscastle proceeded to dispose of Udal.
“I wish someone would tell him,” he said in his dismissive tone, “not to give the appearance of blessing me from such an enormous height.”
“He’s a very big man,” said Roy, defending Udal out of habit.
“I’m a rather short one,” said Lord Boscastle promptly. “And I strongly object to being condescended to from an enormous height.”
But, despite the familiar repartees, there was tension through the party that night.
One source was Joan: for she sat, speaking very little, sometimes, when the rest of us were talking, letting her gaze rest broodingly on Roy. There was violence, reproach, a secret between them. Roy was subdued, as the Boscastles had never seen him, although he put in a word when Lady Muriel was causing too much friction.
Even if Roy and Joan had been in harmony, however, there would still have been frayed nerves that night. For the other source of tension was political. At Boscastle, when I first stayed there, people differed about political things without much heat. There was no danger of a rift if a political argument sprang up. But it was now the summer of 1938, and on both sides we were feeling with the force of a personal emotion. The divisions were sharp: the half-tones were vanishing: in college it was 8–6 for Chamberlain and appeasement; here it was 3–3. On the Chamberlain side were Lord Boscastle, Lady Muriel, and Roy. On the other side (which in college were called “warmongers”, “Churchill men”, or “Bolsheviks”) were Lady Boscastle, Joan and I.
Roy’s long ambivalence had ended, and he and I were in opposite camps.
Bitterness flared up in a second. Lady Muriel favoured a temporary censorship of the press. I disagreed with her. In those days I did not find it easy to hold my tongue.
“Really, Mr Eliot,” she said, “I am only anxious to remove the causes of war.”
“I’m anxious,” I said, “not to lose every friend we have in the world. And then stagger into a war which we shall duly lose.”
“I’m afraid I think that’s a dangerous attitude,” said Lord Boscastle.
“It’s an attitude which appears to be prevalent among professional people. Mr Eliot’s attitude is fairly common among professional people, isn’t it, Helen?” Lady Muriel was half angry, half-exultant at having taken her revenge.
“I should think it very likely,” said Lady Boscastle. “I think I should expect it to be fairly common among thinking people.” She raised her lorgnette. “But it’s easy to exaggerate the influence of thinking people, shouldn’t you agree, Hugh?”
Lord Boscastle did not rise. He was out of humour, I was less welcome than I used to be, but he was never confident in arguing with his wife. And Roy broke in: “Do you like thinking people, Lady Boscastle?”
He was making peace, but they often struck sparks from each other, and Lady Boscastle replied in her high sarcastic voice: “My dear Roy, I am too old to acquire this modern passion for dumb oxen.”
“They’re sometimes very wise,” said Roy.
“I remember dancing with a number of brainless young men with cauliflower ears,” said Lady Boscastle. “I found them rather unenlightening. A modicum of brains really does add to a man’s charm, you know. Hasn’t that occurred to you?”
She was a match for him. When he was at his liveliest, she studied him through her lorgnette and capped his mischief with her ivory sarcasm. Of all the women we knew, he found her the hardest to get round. That night, with Joan silent at the table, he could not persevere; he gave Lady Boscastle the game.
But the rift was covered over, and Lady Muriel began asking energetically what we should do the following day. We were still at dinner, time hung over the great dining-room. No one had any ideas: it seemed as though Lady Muriel asked that question each night, and each night there was a waste of empty time ahead.
“I consider,” said Lady Muriel firmly, “that we should have a picnic.”
“Why should we have a picnic?” said Lord Boscastle wearily.
“We always used to,” said Lady Muriel.
“I don’t remember enjoying one,” he said.
“I always did,” said Lady Muriel with finality.
Lord Boscastle looked to his wife for aid, but she gave a slight smile.
“I can’t see any compelling reason why we shouldn’t have a picnic, Hugh,” she said, as though she also did not see any compelling reason why we should. “Apparently you must have had a regular technique. Perhaps Muriel–”
“Certainly,” said Lady Muriel, and shouted loudly to the butler, who was a few feet away. “You remember the picnics we used to have, don’t you, Jonah?” The butler’s name was Jones. He had a refined but lugubrious face. “Yes, my lady,” he said, and I thought I caught a note of resignation. Lady Muriel made a series of executive decisions, like a staff major moving a battalion. Hope sounded in the butler’s voice only when he suggested that it might rain.
Lord Boscastle was having a bad evening. We did not stay long over port, for Roy only took one glass and was so quiet that it left all the work to me. When we went into the biggest of the drawing-rooms (called simply the “sitting-room”; it was a hundred feet long) Lord Boscastle received another blow. His wife never played bridge, and he was relying on Joan to give him his rubber. He asked whether she was ready for a game, with an eager expectant air: at last he was in sight of a little fun.
“I’m sorry, Uncle. I can’t,” said Joan. “I’ve promised to go for a walk with Roy.”
She said it flatly, unhappily and with finality.
Lord Boscastle sulked: there was no other word for it. He stayed in the room for a few minutes, complaining that it did not seem much to ask, a game of cards after dinner. People were willing to arrange picnics, which he detested, but no one ever exerted themselves to produce a four at bridge. He supposed that he would be reduced to inviting the doctor next.
That was the limit of degradation he imagined that night. In a few minutes, he took a volume from his collection of eighteenth-century memoirs and went off sulkily to bed.
Roy and Joan went out immediately afterwards, and Lady Boscastle, Lady Muriel and I were left alone in the “sitting-room”. It was clear that Lady Boscastle wanted to talk to me. She made it crys
tal clear: but Lady Muriel did not notice. Instead, she brought out a series of improvements which Lady Boscastle should adopt in her régime for the house.
Lady Boscastle could not move up to her own suite, for that meant calling her maid to help her. In all this gigantic mansion, she could not speak a word to me in private. It seemed very comic.
At last she insinuated some doubts about the orders for the next day’s picnic. Lady Muriel rebuffed them, but was shaken enough to agree that she should confer with the butler. “In your study, my dear,” said Lady Boscastle gently, and very firmly. “You see, you will have plenty of paper there.”
Lady Muriel walked out, businesslike and erect.
“Our dear Muriel’s stamina used to be perfectly inexhaustible.” Lady Boscastle’s eyes were very bright behind her lorgnette. “She has changed remarkably little.”
She went on: “Lewis, my dear boy, I wanted to talk to you a little about Humphrey. I think I should like your advice.”
Humphrey was the Boscastles’ son, whom I had met at Monte Carlo; he was a wild effeminate lad, clever, violent-tempered, restlessly looking for gifted people to respect.
“All his friends,” said Lady Boscastle, “seem to be singularly precious. I’m not specially concerned about that. I’ve known plenty of precious young men who became extremely satisfactory afterwards.” She smiled. “But I should be relieved if he showed any sign of a vocation.”
She talked with cool detachment about her son. It was better for him to do something: he would dissipate himself away, if he just settled down to succeed his father. Their days were over. Lord Boscastle was not willing to accept it, preferred that his son should wait about as he himself had done; but Lord Boscastle’s response to any change was to become more obstinate. Instead of taking a hand in business, he plunged himself into his gorgeous and proliferating snobbery. There was imagination and self-expression in his arrogance. It was his art – but his son would never be able to copy him.