Years of Plenty Part 17

Martin had come up to Oxford firmly convinced that he was about to sink into Luxury's softest lap. He found that he had to live in two dingy rooms three storeys from the ground. The "bedder" had a tiny slot of a window opening on to the kitchens of a neighbouring college: the "sitter" was slightly larger but just as dark. All the furniture, for which a heavy rent was charged, had fallen into a state of gloomy squalor suggestive rather of Camberwell than of Mayfair. The carpet, whose flagrant ugliness of colour and design was obscured by the dirt of ages, had actually given way in places and everywhere there was dust. Galer, who, with the aid of a hara.s.sed boy, had charge of nine sets of rooms, had neither the time nor the inclination to do any cleaning. He flicked cupboards with a duster in a dilettante way from time to time but further than that he never went.

Martin also discovered that the college did not contain hot baths and that the only method of procuring such a luxury was to heat a large can of water at his 'sitter' fire. All meals, except dinner, were brought through the open air across two quads and arrived in a tepid state; nor was this improved by the fact that Martin lived at the top of his stairs and had to wait till those below had been supplied. There was no service lift and no means of emptying slops on the stairs, and everything had to be carried up and down the tortuous steps, even the bath-water. But Galer would have been the last person to encourage the introduction of lifts; he was at least thorough in his Toryism. Dining in hall meant swallowing four abominably served courses in twenty minutes.

"So this," thought Martin, "is the princely life," and he wondered whether he would suffer the same fate as Uncle Paul, who

"Was driven by excessive gloom, To drink and debt, and, last of all, To smoking opium in his room."

All Sat.u.r.day he was pestered by invaders who wanted him to row or be a soldier or join the National Service League, or the Men's Political Union, or the Fabian Society, or the Tariff Reform League. In despair he joined everything, except in cases where the man talked about immediate subscriptions: then he boldly refused. But few secretaries had sufficient enthusiasm to collect money. So Martin became a member of numerous societies of the majority of which he heard nothing more.

Sometimes he received a printed notice of various meetings which he did not attend. He used to wonder vaguely who paid for all the printing ... certainly he did not.

And so for the first two or three days of his residence he felt pestered and irritable. There were so many things to find out, such as when and where to be gowned, who were freshers and who were unapproachable seniors, what att.i.tude to adopt to one's scout and one's tutor. It was all very perplexing, and although Martin did not suffer the acute agony of apprehension that had made terrible his first few days at Elfrey, he remained, in spite of all the hints given him by his cousin Robert, ashamed of his ignorance and fearful of mistakes.

Soon he was sent for by his future tutor, Mr Reginald Petworth. Martin found him surrounded by undergraduates who called him Reggie and conversed with unconvincing heartiness. He knew that he hadn't ever to say "sir" to a don, but he was not prepared for Christian names.

However, that would only begin after a considerable acquaintance. The crowd began to melt away and he was soon the only man left.

"Well," said Petworth cheerily. "Let me see, you're----"

"Leigh."

"Oh yes, of course. You wrote some very jolly hexameters for us in the scholarship exam."

Martin was deeply astonished. Two howlers! "Why, I thought that paper would have done for me," he said.

"Oh, you howled once or twice. But you were jolly, very jolly."

Martin was silent and Petworth produced cigarettes.

"Um, yes. Have a good vac?"

"Splendid, thanks. I was in Devonshire most of the time. Dartmoor way."

"Dartmoor is good, isn't it? I want to go down and dig about in the hut circles. I am sure they haven't done enough. Pa.s.singham of Exeter found some awfully jolly bones, besides some arrows and things. Do you like digging?"

Martin confessed that he had never tried: he would have liked to add that he found the hut circles disappointing. But he didn't dare to say so. This conversation was rather trying and he was relieved when Petworth came to business and mapped out his lectures and hours for showing up compositions.

"I'm usually in after ten," concluded the tutor. "Come up and see me and bring any questions. And don't do less than an hour a day."

"That won't kill me," said Martin.

"It's possible not to reach that standard, I find. Oxford is full of things to do. Don't do all of them."

Martin went away with a muddled impression of countless book-shelves, two excellent arm-chairs, some nice prints, a little, bright-eyed urbane man and a general atmosphere of invincible jolliness. He was not at all sure that he liked it.

For the first week or two Martin was the unwilling but abject victim of Galerism. Galer had a way with youths and could handle even the most p.r.o.nounced, aggressive, 'd.a.m.n you, I'm a man of the world' type of fresher. His influence, he knew, would never utterly die, but time would weaken it: and so in the first few days he did his best to train the new-comers on his stair in the best traditions of the college and university. Also he endeavoured to keep them from sowing political wild oats: there was nothing Galer loathed more bitterly than carrying up Radical or Socialist newspapers. Martin soon began to hate the man fervently. He wanted to find out how one could change one's rooms, for he would live in a pigsty to avoid Galer.

"Your cheese, sir," the wheezy voice would say. "I see as 'ow these deemagogues 'ave brought a lot of transport workers out. Wicked I call it. Wot the Gov'ment ought to do is to be firm. 'Ave out the troops and 'and out a bit of sleeping-draught. That's my notion of ruling.

One of those there riff-raff killed a loyal worker."

"In other words, a scab," said Martin boldly.

"It's a 'orrid name to give a chap," said Galer. "I don't see no crime in bein' loyal. I 'ope you don't 'old with these paid agitators!"

"I certainly hold with Trade Unionism."

"The Trade Unions aren't wot they were. Oh no! Swelled 'ead too big for their boots and all that."

Martin made no answer and, while Galer rambled on, he saw that the only policy was to declare himself a revolutionary and have done with it.

Of course Galer would despise him: but he might cease to argue.

The crisis came at lunch-time two days later.

"By the way, sir," said Galer, bread in hand, "are you 'aving a paper?"

"Yes, I start to-morrow. _Daily Herald_ and _Manchester Guardian_."

Galer sniffed, threw down the food, and left the room in silence.

II

If Baedeker treated of Oxford colleges as he treats of Continental hotels the visitor would probably be informed that King's is 'well spoken of.' King's is small and comfortable but plainly in the first grade. No taint of specialism mars its charming mediocrity. It is not, like Balliol, aggressively successful, cornering the university scholarships and claiming half the important people in Europe as its alumni, nor does it, like New College, combine a gentle attachment to the humaner letters with supremacy on the river. It does not aspire to royalty or rugger Blues. Most cla.s.s lists contain one or two firsts from King's and the King's eight never falls from the top division.

The college has two excellent quads, a garden, a pleasing chapel, and some astonishing beer. Its port, however, is the worst in Oxford.

King's men were essentially Public School men. Few rich young men from Eton came to a foundation which was neither particularly notable nor particularly notorious. Wealth is not scrupulous as to which of those types it favours, but it abhors the mean. Nor did the Grammar Schools or the colonies supply more than a t.i.the of the college, which drew mainly upon the middle rank of Public Schools. Herein lay both its strength and its weakness. Its strength lay in its freedom from cranks and bores, its weakness lay in its uniformity: a house which is not divided in itself may stand firm, but it is likely to be a dull and gloomy mansion.

Martin would have preferred to go to Balliol or New College, but as he was paid eighty pounds a year to go to King's there was no profit in grumbling. And so he set to work to find company, in which respect he was indeed fortunate. While many of the freshers turned out to be good men and dull, some even bad men and dull, the scholars were all interesting. The uniformity of Public School tone naturally drove the more critical together, and in Martin's year the house was saved from gloom by at least a partial cleavage. Necessity aided inclination in forming the Push.

The Push consisted of five men and contained a governing trinity.

These were Martin, Lawrence and Rendell. Rendell, the first cla.s.sical scholar, was attached to what the others called the ineffable effs--Fabianism, Feminism and Faith. His G.o.d was paradoxical, but not so exciting as Mr Chesterton's, and more interested in Social Reform and Munic.i.p.al Trading than in beer and ballads.

Rendell managed to entertain his various faiths without becoming a prig or a Puritan. During his first months of emanc.i.p.ation from school he had shown a suspicious hankering after beans and djibba-clad women, but Martin and Lawrence suppressed such tendencies with a firm hand.

Rendell, though not pliable on the subject of religion, yielded on this point and soon declared his complete contempt for the eating of vegetables and drinking of ginger ale.

Lawrence was primarily noticeable for size. He was six foot three and broad in proportion: he had a ruddy and cheerful countenance and prodigious hands and feet. Essentially he believed in violence. He didn't care twopence, he declared, for Fabianism or Construction Policies and professed an intense desire to smash things, especially religion and the social system. He called himself a Neo-Nietzschean, but he certainly could not have distinguished between Neo- and Palaeo-Nietzscheans. To tell the truth, he had, like many followers of that great dyspeptic, never read a word of him. Lawrence hated music, except the Ma.r.s.eillaise (for its a.s.sociations) and the Barcarole (for its effects) but he was taught at Oxford to like Sullivan. He read the poems of John Davidson and the philosophy of Georges Sorel. In smoking, eating and drinking he did all that might be expected of him, and he could play rugger amazingly well when he was not too lazy to turn out.

The trinity talked to each other all day and all night, and there were soon very few problems of the universe which had not been satisfactorily settled.

The need for a new point of view became apparent.

"Let's have that fellow Chard in," suggested Martin.

"Coffee in my rooms?" said Lawrence.

"Right-o! To-morrow night, if he'll come."

"Oh, he'll come," said Rendell. "He's rather sick of life. Isolated, you know. He only talks to Davenant."