Читать книгу Katherine Mansfield, The Woman Behind The Books (Including Letters, Journals, Essays & Articles) - Katherine Mansfield - Страница 50

THE Giraffe Hole was on the floor below the Beauchamp girls’ room. How often the boarders leaned over the railing to look down that large square opening to see if their professor had come yet — to watch the professors cross to the Professors’ Room. It was the personalities of these eminent men — each distinguished in his own field — which drew the girls to class and which made them work — when they worked at all : for while “Woodie’s” rules were strict, the College had no regulations. Responsibility for attending lectures rested upon themselves : they might wander in and out of classes, or cut them, or go unprepared. Twice a year — at the end of the Michaelmas term for the professors, and at the end of the Easter term for external examiners — they wrote papers. But the habit of study was not required at Queen’s, as Kathleen had reason, later, to regret :

“I was thinking yesterday of my wasted, wasted early girlhood. My college life, which is such a vivid and detailed memory in one way, might never have contained a book or a lecture. I lived in the girls, the professor, the big, lovely building, the leaping fires in winter and the abundant flowers in summer. The views out of the windows, all the pattern that was — weaving. Nobody saw it, I felt, as I did. My mind was just like a squirrel. I gathered and gathered and hid away, for that long ‘winter’ when I should rediscover all this treasure — and if anybody came close I scuttled up the tallest, darkest tree and hid in the branches. And I was so awfully fascinated in watching Hall Griffin and all his tricks — thinking about him as he sat there, his private life, what he was like as a man, etc., etc. (He told us he and his brother once wrote an enormous poem called the Epic of the Hall Griffins.) Then it was only at rare intervals that something flashed through all this busyness, something about Spenser’s Faery Queen or Keats’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil, and those flashes were always when I disagreed flatly with H.G. and wrote in my notes : ‘This man is a fool.’ And Cramb, wonderful Cramb! The figure of Cramb was enough, he was ‘history’ to me. Ageless and fiery, eating himself up again and again, very fierce at what he had seen, but going a bit blind because he had looked so long. Cramb striding up and down, filled me up to the brim. I couldn’t write down Cramb’s thunder. I simply wanted to sit and hear him. Every gesture, every stopping of his walk, all his tones and looks are as vivid to me as though it were yesterday — but of all he said I only remember phrases—’ He sat there and his wig fell off’—’ Anne Bullen, a lovely pure creature stepping out of her quiet door into the light and clamour,’ and looking back and seeing the familiar door shut upon her, with a little click as it were, — final.

“But what coherent account could I give of the history of English Literature? And what of English History? None. When I think in dates and times the wrong people come in — the right people are missing. … But why didn’t I listen to the old Principal who lectured on Bible History twice a week instead of staring at his face that was very round, a dark red colour with a kind of bloom on it and covered all over with little red veins with endless tiny tributaries that ran even up his forehead and were lost in his bushy white hair. He had tiny hands, too, puffed up, purplish, shining under the stained flesh. I used to think, looking at his hands — he will have a stroke and die of paralysis…. They told us he was a very learned man, but I could not help seeing him in a double-breasted frock-coat, a large pseudo-clerical pith helmet, a large white handkerchief falling over the back of his neck, standing and pointing out with an umbrella a probable site of a probable encampment of some wandering tribe, to his wife, an elderly lady with a threatening heart who had to go everywhere in a basket-chair arranged on the back of a donkey, and his two daughters, in thread gloves and sand shoes — smelling faintly of some anti-mosquito mixture.

“As he lectured I used to sit, building his house, peopling it — filling it with Americans, ebony and heavy furniture — cupboards like tiny domes and tables with elephants’ legs presented to him by grateful missionary friends…. I never came into contact with him but once, when he asked any young lady in the room to hold up her hand if she had been chased by a wild bull, and as nobody else did, I held up mine (though of course I hadn’t). ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I am afraid you do not count. You are a little savage from New Zealand’ — which was a trifle exacting, for it must be the rarest thing to be chased by a wild bull up and down Harley Street, Wimpole Street, Welbeck Street, Queen Anne, round and round Cavendish Square….

“And why didn’t I learn French with M. Hugue-net? What an opportunity missed! What has it not cost me! He lectured in a big narrow room that was painted all over — the walls, door, and window-frames, a grey shade of mignonette green. The ceiling was white, and just below it there was a frieze of long looped chains of white flowers. On either side of the marble mantlepiece a naked small boy staggered under a big platter of grapes that he held above his head. Below the windows, far below there was a stable court paved in cobble stones, and one could hear the faint clatter of carriages coming out or in, the noise of water gushing out of a pump into a big pail — some youth, clumping about and whistling. The room was never very light, and in summer M.H. liked the blinds to be drawn half-way down the window…. He was a little fat man.”

That is a perfect picture of Cramb, the disinterested and unregarded scholar, upon whom a sudden blaze of national repute descended in the early years of the Great War; and then he died. But the rapt attention which Kathleen gave him — though not his lectures — was peculiar to herself.”Nobody saw it, as she did.” And in fact the effect of Cramb’s lectures upon his class was, occasionally at least, not wholly different from the effect of M. Hugenet’s lectures upon his, as described in Carnation :

“He began, and most of the girls fell forward, over the desks, their heads on their arms, dead at the first shot.”

On one such occasion, it is remembered, the beautiful Isobel Creelman attracted the notice of the shortsighted Cramb; and to his question what she thought she was doing, replied with calm impertinence :”I’m closing the ink-well to keep the ink from evaporating.”

A characteristic story of Cramb is told by one of Kathleen’s contemporaries. He was describing to a very dull girl the impression made upon him when he read The Arabian Nights for the first time.”Didn’t you,” he said in his fierce Scottish accent,”when you first read The Arabian Nights imagine you saw a genie coming out of every jar or bottle?” “No,” said the hapless creature. Cramb made a desperate pause : then gathered himself together and, with one of his rare, exquisite smiles, said :”Do you mind supposing that you did?”

By her own confession Kathleen learnt little under Cramb; and the records bear it out. She was fourth or fifth from the end in a class of forty in her first year. It was no better with Hall Griffin — another distinguished scholar. In the English language examination she was among the last five; and even in an English composition examination in Easter, 1904, she was only seventh among fifteen. Her deep personal interest in Walter Rippmann, though he singled her out as a girl with a destiny, did no more than make her progress in German erratic.

In her journal for July, 1904 — when she was fifteen — is a careful list of her recent reading. It serves to remind us that she was a schoolgirl still.

Books I have read. June, 1904.

All books which I have enjoyed are marked thus

Life And Letters Of Byron, I. Thomas Moore. B., J. 17; F., J. 17.

Aftermath. J. Lane Allen. B., J. 17; F., J. 17.

Dolly Dialogues. Anthony Hope. B., J. 17; F., J. 18.

Poems. Jean Ingelow. B., J. 13; F., J. 14.

Life And Letters Of Byron, Ii. Thomas Moore. B., J. 17; F., J. 18.

How Music Developed. Henderson. July 16.

The Choir Invisible. J. Lane Allen. July 18.

The Captain’S Daughter. Swen Ovedor.(?) July 20.

Life Of Romney. Rowley Cleve.(?) July 15–20.

A Kentucky Cardinal. J. Lane Allen. July 23.

Life And Letters Of Byron, Iii. Thomas Moore.

Rupert Of Hentzau. Anthony Hope. July 24.

My Japanese Wife. Clive Holland.

A Japanese Marriage. Douglas Sladen.

Captain Pamphile. Alexander Dumas.

Vilette. Charlotte Bronte.

The Heart Of Rome. F. Marion·Crawford.

Poe’S Poems.

Music I have studied.

Caprice. Noel Johnson. July 13–14.

Warum. David Popper. Begun J. 13.

Le Desir. Servais. Begun J. 14.

Variat. Symphon. Boellmann. Begun J. 15.

Writing I have done.

Franz (Prose). 13–17.

Poem. 16th.

Alone (Poetry). 14th.

Schoolgirlish, too, were her arguments in the College debating club, of which the proceedings are amusingly and candidly described by a critic in the College Magazine.

“The Proposer gave a speech proposing; the Opposer gave a speech opposing. Two more speeches were made — one for each side, usually by the dearest friend. After this, fell an awful silence finally broken by some courageous individual, venturing to remark — more silence. Then a few opinions uttered in hesitating or questioning accents. Another terrible silence, broken by the announcement that voting would be taken. Voters voted according to whether they were more friendly with the Proposer or Opposer.”

If the last sentence be true, as probably in the main it was, the account of a debate in February, 1904, where Kathleen and Ida were directly opposed to one another, has an interest beyond that of her arguments, though these for the first time have a recognisable touch of her own courage and individuality. The motion which Kathleen proposed — derived apparently from The Times — was this :

“That pastors and masters, parents and guardians, commentators and cranks have done their best to spoil the taste of Shakespeare for us by making it a duty instead of a pleasure.”

When we remember the passionate delight of Katherine Mansfield’s rediscovery of Shakespeare in after-years, the report of her speech takes life. She was speaking of her own experience; and we can recapture something of her girlish vehemence. She is already the rebel against the decorous curriculum of the College.

“K. M. B., proposing said : ‘When the average boy goes to school, he is plunged into the most magnificent of Shakespeare’s works. If a person has a tendency early in life to be literary, the very idea of being forced to learn Shakespeare deadens the sense of the appreciation of the beautiful — a true schoolboy never appreciated the beautiful at all, so he considers Shakespeare in the same way as anything else that is forced upon him. The most glorious pieces in Shakespeare have been read and re-read, quoted and misquoted by cranks and commentators till they have lost all true significance. There is so short a step from the sublime to the ridiculous!’”

“A foreigner said to me,’ Nearly all foreigners love and appreciate Shakespeare as much as you English.’

“‘Why is this?’ I asked.

“‘Oh, of course we do not read Shakespeare till we have had some experience of life — Shakespeare is not for a child.’ I felt a little crushed!

“It is impossible for a student to form an original opinion for himself, for he is always more or less biassed by what he has been forced to learn in his youth. Why should Shakespeare be employed in schools as a spelling book or reading book? Of a surety this is what happens when we come to consider how we are recommended to the Clarendon Press as an authority to find the correct spelling of the word ‘cousin’ in 1680. After laborious references to other plays of Shakespeare we have to take recourse to the researches of a certain Dr. Faulkner, folio ix, end of sect. v! The predominating element in a teacher is duty. The satisfaction of finding that a pupil can quote 50 lines of Shakespeare without faltering is to them far greater than finding that a pupil appreciates the intrinsic value of the speech. Even the divine Shakespeare himself, would writhe in his grave should he hear a fat, podgy little boy roll off a long farewell (with appropriate or seemingly appropriate gesticulations). Why should Shakespeare be made the bogey of the schoolroom?”

“Ida Baker, opposing the motion said : ‘At home you are first of all given a story book with several tales from Shakespeare, perhaps illustrated and so you learn the story of the plays. Later, when you are older, you discover that Shakespeare made the people talk and to gratify your curiosity to know how they talked — what sort of things your favourite hero or heroine said, you read the plays, and with a certain amount of extra pleasure (though of course you didn’t realise it then) in watching the developments. That is the result of forcing at home. At school it is stronger. If a play is chosen for that term, you know you are doomed to learn by heart at least five or six long speeches. But when you are older, it is wonderful what pleasure you get in finding how immense, how vast, is the meaning which you failed to appreciate when you first read it. You may suggest that however good it may be to force children to read Shakespeare, yet it would be better to leave them alone. But, I say, if that were so, half, if not more of the children would never open a Shakespeare at all! Finally, I offer my deepest gratitude to all or any who taught me to read Shakespeare.’

“K. M. B. summing up, said : ‘In reply … unless we followed the advice of others, we should choose by covers and gilt edges. If you have a boy to stay in the holidays he would choose to go to see “The Orchard” sooner than a play of Shakespeare — and why? Because at school they have made it a duty instead of a pleasure!’”

The voting is eloquent. For Kathleen’s motion there was cast one solitary vote. For Ida’s opposition there were twenty-one.

It is an index of her isolation. During the remaining year and a half which she spent at Queen’s, she never again took an official part in a debate.

The “big lovely building” which she remembered so glowingly in Carnation meant much to “the little Colonial.” The architecture of Harley Street was not a thing to be taken for granted by one from a country where the oldest houses belonged to the 1850’s. It was the tradition which half-consciously she reabsorbed, and in which she found her own peculiar delight. Her native delicacy and fastidiousness, the natural and exquisite grace which in later life quietly set her apart, found sustenance in the spacious Waiting Room with its beautiful ceiling; the Library, with the familiar portrait of Frederick Maurice, the Founder, hanging above the fireplace; the carved Library table with the Chaucer inscription along its edge; the great lower stairway with its graceful fluted balustrade. She drank it in.

Even the vista down the Giraffe Hole belonged to an earlier age. Perhaps its potentialities were half-realised on the nights of the innumerable school dances in the Pfeiffer Hall. These consumed a surprising amount of emotion and surplus energy, considering that they were merely school affairs. Except on rare occasions, the girls had only each other to dance with; but the lights, the dresses, the fires flaring on either side of the Hall, the bonbons thrown down the Giraffe Hole by special friends to special friends — all made an exciting, a thrilling ball.