Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  CHAPTER XI. THE CIRCLE IS BROKEN

  EVEN away from Cambridge, which in those undergraduate years was necessarily the hot hub of the universe, life remained as highly coloured as at the time when Lambeth and Addington first flung open their adorable pasturages. It was thrilling to know that Robert Browning was coming to dinner one night, to be grasped by the hearty hand that had written the poems of which a fives competition had procured me a copy. There was but a small party on the night that I remember, and after dinner my father moved up to take the place next him, and beckoned to me to close up on the other side. Somehow a mention came of a volume of Austin Dobson’s, and Robert Browning preserved a cheerful silence till some direct question was put to him. Then, drinking off his port, he made a notable phrase.

  “Well, some people like carved cherry-stones,” he said.

  I fancy he always avoided talking of his own works, and that my father knew this, for certainly no allusion was made to them. But, as we rose, he volunteered a question to my father, saying, “What of my work do you like best?” On which my father replied:

  “Your lyrics.”

  Robert Browning gave some great gesticulation; he seems to me now to have rubbed his hands, or jumped or stamped a foot.

  “Lyrics?” he said. “I have deskfuls of them.”

  In consequence, I still faintly hope that some day there may be discovered a great ream of lyrics by Robert Browning, for, as far as I know, “deskfuls” have not yet appeared.

  On another occasion Tennyson was there. Of his conversation I have no sort of recollection, the reason for which lapse may be probably accounted for by the fact that he didn’t say anything. But I had picked his note of acceptance out of my mother’s waste-paper basket and the envelope signed in the bottom left-hand corner, both torn across, so he could not leave me comfortless.

  How very odd these dinner-parties, great or small, would have appeared at the present day! There was but one circulation of wine after the ladies had rustled forth, and even when they had gone, there was nothing in the shape of tobacco, which, combined with the indolent progression of the decanter, surely accounted for the austerity of Tennyson. A long sitting of abstemious gentlemen was succeeded by a short sitting in the drawing-room, and then the bell sounded at ten, and the whole company trooped into the chapel for a slightly abbreviated evensong. Sometimes, this service was before dinner; otherwise, at its conclusion, round about halfpast ten, the guests departed, for after this long devotional interlude, it was frankly impossible to resume a festive sociability. Already the cigarette-habit had made its footing in most houses, to the extent, anyhow, of a guest, if so decadently inclined, having opportunity of indulging his lust, but neither at Lambeth nor at Addington was there any parleying with the enemy. My father intensely disliked the smell of tobacco, and once only when the present King, as Duke of York, dined at Lambeth, was an after-dinner cigarette allowed. On that occasion I, greatly daring, told my father that he liked a cigarette after dinner (so it was popularly supposed), and for the first time, the gallery of portraits was veiled behind the unusual incense. There were many great stern houses in the eighties, which kept the flag of no surrender flying in the dining-room, but I doubt if any except my father’s held out till after the middle of the nineties. He knew of but ignored the existence of a smoking-room at Lambeth and Addington, but neither in drawing-room or dining-room, nor until the hour of bedroom candles (electric lighting being still an exceptional illumination) was there the chance of a cigarette.

  A story, ben trovato, it may be, was told in this regard, as to how, when a Pan-Anglican conference was in progress at Lambeth and the whole house was buzzing with bishops, my father had occasion late one night to visit the bedroom of one of the prelates, with some paper of agenda for next day: He got no answer to his tap on the door, and entered, to find the occupant on his knees before the fire-place. My father, supposing that he was at his private devotions silently withdrew himself, and tiptoed down the corridor again. The devotional tenant, unaware of any entrance, but knowing the rule of the house, continued to inhale his cigar, and puff the aromatic evidence of his crime up the chimney.... Though my father knew that his chaplains smoked, he would never acknowledge it, and if a letter, difficultly drafted and brought to him for his approval, bore unmistakable evidences of this aid to inspiration, he would sniff at the original letter and its answer, and say, “He must have written it in a smoking-carriage.” And though, again, he knew quite well that all his three sons smoked like chimneys, I have heard him confidently assert that none of us ever did. He would have liked to believe that. In fact he would have liked it so much, that his fervour allowed him to believe it.

  But I am sure it never entered his head that my mother smoked. She did: and once after a journey of a day and a night and half a day to the Riffel Alp, my father, absolutely unfatigued, insisted on the whole family getting on to a glacier of some sort without delay. My mother racked with headache, but thinking the air would do her good, came with us, but having gained the glacier, refused to proceed, and sat down on a rock on the moraine to wait for her family’s return. She indicated that I should stay with her, and as soon as the family’s back was turned she whispered, “Oh, give me a cigarette, Fred.” By some strange mischance I hadn’t got one, and was only possessed of a small and reeking clay pipe and some tobacco. But I filled and lit it for her, and there she sat smoking her clay pipe like a gipsy-woman, which made me laugh so much that the rest of the family turned round en bloc to see what was happening. Nothing appeared to be happening, because she was wise enough to hand the pipe back to me, and on they went. Then she had a little more, and her headache was routed....

  That Riffel Alp holiday was one of the most sumptuous. Mountain-climbing with guides and porters is an expensive pursuit, but my father “treated me” straight off to any two first-class peaks I wanted to ascend. My instant first choice was the Matterhorn, and after a few days’ gymnastics on less austere summits I set forth, chaperoned by the most zealous of Alpinists, Mr. Toswill, to make this adorable ascent. We slept in the Schwarz-See Hotel, and starting at a moonless midnight to the light of a lantern, stumbled on in that inconvenient illumination till the first hint of dawn made the east dove-coloured and the lantern could be quenched. The excitement of the climb quickened the perceptions, and that opening flower of day was the very glory of the Lord, first shining on the earth. We still climbed in the clear dusk, but high, incredibly high above us the top of the great cliff grew rose-coloured, as the sun, still below our horizon, smote it with day. The sky was clear and the stars grew dim, as the great halls of heaven were slowly flooded with light. Step by step the day descended from peak to shoulder of our mountain till it met us on the rocky stair. Dent Blanche, Rothorn, Gabelhorn, Weisshorn were dazzled with the dawn: looking down into the Zermatt valley was still like gazing into dark clear water.

  But that clarity of morning was not for long. On all sides clouds were forming — it is a mistake as a rule to speak of clouds “coming up”: they just happen — and before we reached the famous shoulder, it was certain that if we were to make our peak, we must race against the thickening weather. Already the range along the Théodul was blanketed, and mist-wreaths were beginning to form on the east side of our mountain below us. If they stopped there and did not form higher up they would do us no harm, but nobody would choose to be above the shoulder of the Matterhorn in cloud. So at high speed — duly recorded in the Visitors’ Book at the hut — we made our peak, opened the bottle of Bouvier (most of which in that low pressure of the air rose like a geyser and intoxicated the snows) and began the descent. The air was notably still: not a breath of wind stirred, but somewhere below us there were boomings of thunder not very remote.

  Before we got back to the shoulder a wisp of cloud flicked round the edge of the precipice which plunges a sheer four thousand feet on to the Zmutt glacier, and in a moment we were enveloped by it. The sun was expunged, the cold suddenly grew intense, and sn
ow denser than I thought possible that snow could be, began to fall. In five minutes we wore the thickest white mantles, so too, which was less convenient, did the rocks, which at this point are not only difficult by reason of their steepness, but dangerous because of the downward slope of the strata. The thunder moved up to meet us, in fact we were just beginning to pass into the storm-clouds themselves. The air was highly charged with electricity, for presently the points of our ice-axes fizzled and sang like kettles on the boil. Then below, a light, violet and vivid, leaped suddenly out of the murk of snow, and the thunder reverberated sharp as the crack of a dog-whip. Once our rope got fouled, and we all had to untie ourselves and stand perched on our steps, while the guide wrought to release it. Forty highly exciting minutes enabled us to crawl down through the storm, and reach clear air again, and though I am glad to have dived through a thunderstorm on the Matterhorn, I will willingly dispense with any further experience of the sort. Those forty minutes rattling with ambient thunder were much too tense to allow of conscious alarm, and I never wished I was “safe home” again. But I would never choose to do it a second time.

  My second selection was the Dent Blanche, but after starting for it a blizzard made the ascent impossible. So for fear of losing my second big peak altogether — things like the Breithorn, ascents of the Riffelhorn from the glacier, and a subsequent crossing of the eastern face of the Matterhorn were picked up by the way — I chose the Zienal Rothhorn, and with Nellie made an entrancing ascent. There was a huge cowl of snow on the summit, and sheltered by this from the wind we sat for nearly an hour in the blaze of the translucent day. Coming down an ill-fitting boot tore the base of one of her nails, and she was in bed next day with considerable pain. But with what scorn she answered my query as to whether, on her part, the expedition had been worth such a payment. Simultaneously there began a week’s bad weather, and we produced a stupendous Swiss Saturday Magazine.

  My third year at Cambridge, it may be remembered, I had resolved to devote to a strenuous course of the classical tongues, and the autumn of 1889 saw me provided with a shelf of interleaved Latin and Greek authors (in order to make quantities of profound notes on the opposite page); with a firm determination to remember every crabbed phrase in case of finding some approximate English equivalent in passages set for translation from English into Baboo Latin or Greek, and triumphantly dragging it in; with pots of red ink to underline them, and with an optimistic determination of getting a first in my Classical Tripos. Eustace Miles who could work longer and more steadily than anyone I ever came across before or since, became the anchor to keep me moored on the rock of industry, despite the engaging tides and currents that made me long to drift away, and I would take my books to his room and vow that I would remain glued to them as long as he. If I worked alone my infirmity of purpose was something ghastly to contemplate, but the living proximity of a friend who set so shining an example shamed me into industry. He was bound for the same port as I, namely, a first in the Classical Tripos, and was a master in the art of inventing ludicrous phrases which contained the key to dates, and memorized the events of the Peloponnesian War for me in a few unforgettable sentences. We had intervals when we set the table on its side to serve as a back wall for some diminutive game of squash, and then refreshed and dusty we followed the odious symptoms that attended the plague in Athens. I quite lost sight again of the beauty of the classical languages, for just now the learning of them was the mere grinding of the mills that should produce a particular grist. It was no leisurely artistic appreciation, like that which had fitfully inspired me under Beesly and during my last year at school; I but wanted to commit a sort of highway robbery on Sophocles and Virgil, and take from them the purse that should pay my way for a first-class ticket. After two terms of this, for the only time in my life, I was considered to be in danger of growing stale from sheer industry, and for a fortnight of the Easter vacation, in accordance with my father’s suggestion, Monty James took two other undergraduates and myself for a bookless tour through Normandy and Brittany. It was nominally a walking-tour, but we went by train, visiting Rouen, Caen, Bayeux, and Lisieux, and finishing up with Amiens and Beauvais. We played quantities of picquet, and the Nixon saga was enriched by a Pindaric Ode in praise of Pnyxon winner in the tricycle race against two Divinity professors....

  The last paper in the Tripos, after translations into English from Latin and Greek verse and prose, and translation into Latin and Greek from English, was in classical history, of which I knew nothing whatever, and so I sat up three-quarters of the night and read through the whole of two short history primers. In the few hours that intervened between that degrading process and the history paper, it was impossible to forget crucial dates or events of any magnitude, and by dragging in all collateral information, and dishing it up with a certain culinary skill acquired by years of Saturday Magazine, I produced a voluminous vamp of information. And then after some days of waiting came the lists, and the year of Babooism had won its appropriate reward, for, sure enough, I had taken a first. As for the history, I had produced a paper that caused me to be congratulated by the examiner (Dr. Verrall) on my “grasp” — acquired the night before — and was advised by him to take up history for a second Tripos. That, knowing better than he what the tenacity of my grasp really was, I thought better to decline.

  Having taken a first (such a first!) my father was more than pleased that, pending the choice of a profession, which I had already secretly registered, I should stop up another year and attempt to perform a similar feat in some other branch of knowledge. Should that also be accomplished, I should be of a status that could see a Fellowship at King’s within possible horizons, and he wanted no finer threshold of life for any of his sons than a Fellowship of his college. Here then his scholastic sympathies were completely engaged, but infinitely more potent than they was his desire that we should all of us enter the priesthood of the Church to which, with a unique passion, all his life was dedicated. Arthur at this time, had already been an Eton master for over five years, and had not taken orders, and it was not likely now that he would. I was the next, and when my father more than gladly let me stop up at Cambridge with a view to a second Tripos, for another year, he coupled with his permission the desire that I should attend some Divinity lectures. Never shall I admire tact or delicacy more than his upon this subject. For years while at school he had put before me, never insistently but always potently, his hope that I should be a clergyman, so that now I was quite familiar with it. But at the very moment when a strongly expressed desire on his part might have determined me, he forbore to express such desire at all: if I was to be a clergyman I must have the personal, the individual sense of vocation, and not take orders because he wished it. Already I knew that he wished it, but he would not stir a finger, now that I had come to an age when definite choice opened before me, to influence my decision. He wished me to attend Divinity lectures in order to learn something before I either chose or rejected, but beyond that he never said a word in argument or persuasion, nor even asked me if I had attended these lectures. At the very moment, in fact, when his wish, had he expressed it, that I should take a theological Tripos with a view to ordination, would have had effective weight, seeing that he was allowing me to spend a fourth year at Cambridge, he, with a supreme and perfect delicacy, forbore to put a pennyweight of his own desires into the scale, and welcomed the choice I made of taking up archæology for a second Tripos. He merely wished me to attend a few divinity lectures, and left it at that. Hugh, meantime, triumphantly carrying the banner of early failure which I had so long held against all corners, had unsuccessfully competed, after a year of cramming, in the Indian Civil Service examination, which had been his first choice of a profession. Having failed in that, he was to come up to Trinity in October, unblushing and unhonoured. I passed the banner to him with all good wishes.

  There were some weeks of long vacation after the archaeological decision was made which I now know to have been loaded with fa
te so far as my own subsequent life was concerned, though at the time those scribblings I then indulged in seemed to be quite as void of significance as any particular number of the Saturday Magazine had been. For one morning, at Cambridge, where I had returned for a few weeks before we went out to Switzerland in August, I desisted from the perusal of Miss Harrison’s Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, and wrote on the top of a piece of blue foolscap a word that has stuck to me all my life. For a long time there had been wandering about in my head the idea of some fascinating sort of modem girl, who tackled life with uncommon relish and success, and was adored by the world in general, and had all the embellishments that a human being can desire except a heart. Years ago some adumbration of her had occurred in the story that Maggie and I wrote together; that I suppose was the yeast that was now beginning to stir and bubble in my head. She must ride, she must dance, she must have all the nameless attraction that attaches to those who are as prismatic and as hard as crystal, and above all she must talk. It was no use just informing the reader that here was a marvellously fascinating personality, as Maggie and I had done before, or that to see her was to worship her, or that after a due meed of worship she would reveal herself as no more than husk and colouring matter. Explanations and assurances of that sort were now altogether to be dispensed with. Scarcely even was the current of her thought, scarcely even were the main lines of her personality to be drawn: she was to reveal herself by what she said, and thus, whatever she did, would need no comment. There is the plain presentment of the idea that occupied my youthful mind when I wrote Dodo at the top of a piece of blue foolscap, and put the numeral “one” on the top right-hand corner; and where this crude story of mine still puts in a plea for originality, is in the region of its conscious plan. Bad or good (it was undoubtedly bad) it introduced a certain novelty into novel-writing which had “quite a little vogue” for a time. The main character, that is to say, was made, in her infinitesimal manner, to draw herself. In staged and acted drama even, that principle — bad or good — is never consistently maintained, because other people habitually discuss the hero and heroine, and the audience’s conception of them is based on comment as well as on selfspoken revelation. Also in drama there is bound to be some sort of plot, in which action reveals the actor. But in this story which I scribbled at for a few weeks, there was no sort of plot: there was merely a clash of minor personalities breaking themselves to bits against the central gabbling figure. Hideously crude, blatantly inefficient as the execution was, there was just that one new and feasible idea in the manner of it. What I aimed at was a type that revealed itself in an individual by oceans of nonsensical speech.