Читать книгу Ploughman of the Moon - Robert William Service - Страница 20

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The theatre having cast me out, I returned to literature for comfort. However, this time it was prose that interested me. I read the essayists from Addison to Hazlitt, and the purple patches of DeQuincey. But to me it was dead stuff, like tapestry and old lace. I have always disliked word-spinning. Better to say a fine thing poorly than to say a poor thing finely. I distrust adornment and seek simplicity of expression. The person behind the writing is more to me than his screen of words. I admire men of rich activities and hold book-men in small esteem.

It was this prepossession then that attracted me to the two writers who have most influenced my life. They came like apostles of light and leading. It was as if they had a special message for me and we were spiritually akin. Other writers have affected me. Stevenson, Kipling, Jack London, have inspired me, but it remained for these two to bring me a feeling of self-revelation and to some extent to change the pattern of my life. The first of these was Thoreau. By some instinct I knew from the first page of Walden that here was my meat. Here was a clean new world of tonic air and diamond clarity. Here was a man who thought for himself and whose ideas curiously coincided with my own. I, too, wanted to live in ultimate simplicity, and by solitary communion with nature to realize my spiritual self. Perhaps what I really wanted was to be lazy and shirk hard labour, but at the time it seemed to me I would like to be a recluse philosopher.

So I dallied with the idea that I would save a few hundred pounds and seek the sanctuary of the wilderness. To me Thoreau was like a spring gush of joy and sunshine. He meant escape, self-expression, freedom. And I have never gotten over this idea of escape. Little103 islands tempt me, and the hearts of cities offer me aloneness. As far as I decently could I have isolated my life, trying to achieve spiritual integrity. For I hold that it is not what we make with our hands and brains that matters, but what we make with ourselves....

And now to the second of the writers that made a minor revolution in my young life. One day I picked up a faded volume in an old book-store. Immediately my attention was riveted. It was narrative, but written in such a simple, direct yet picturesque style I was instantly captivated. It was as clear and lucid as a morn in spring. It achieved style by an unconsciousness of style and took colour from the atmosphere it described. I had that thrill of discovery and recognition one rarely gets from an author. Here was a man long dead who had so much of myself in him he might have been a blood ancestor. I devoured the book greedily. I told my friends about it but could not convert them to my enthusiasm. Indeed, I have never been able to gain disciples for this man, and now he is almost forgotten. To-day I am surprised at my infatuation, but my explanation is that he arrived at a moment in my life when I most needed some one like him. To get supreme pleasure from an author one must collaborate with him. It is this affinity of taste and sympathy that makes the perfect reader. Both must give.

But I had better reveal the name of this writer who put such a spell on me. He was a great and original character to whom book-making was a means and not an end; a fine, handsome man, a fighter and lover of horses, a friend of gipsies, a rover and a student. His name was Borrow and his book was Lavengro.

I know now why he gripped me. It was because he had the Romany heart, loving before all else animals, nature and freedom. He called with clarion appeal, and I responded with the eagerness of a fellow-vagabond. I vowed I would become another Lavengro. I dreamed of a caravan, a snared rabbit and the crackle of thorns under the pot. He revealed to me the gift of vagrancy. He was one of the unsettling urges that made me a lover of the open road.104

To these two I owe more than all the professors I ever had.... Thoreau, you fostered the recluse in me; Borrow, you kindled the wanderlust. I bless you both, for I have no reason to regret either.

But talking of professors brings me to the subject of this chapter, my student year. As I made my daily walk through the park with its winding river, the serene beauty of the University held my eyes. High soaring from the hill, I admired its dignity and envied those who could loiter in its cloisters. Then the idea came to me—why not be one of them? I visioned myself in cap and gown; I felt the grace of learning fall upon me. So I matriculated and joined classes. Because of my bank work there were only two that I could follow, one in moral philosophy at eight in the morning, the other in literature at half past four in the afternoon. I soon gave up the first. Bacon, so soon after my morning rasher, was difficult to digest; besides, I rather resented the moral qualification of philosophy. But I stuck to the literature class till my final act of rebellion.

There were about two hundred of us in a class-room where the desks ranged tier above tier. The professor had a pale, bearded face, a suave voice and an absent manner. He read his lectures with an Oxford aloofness. I don't think he took much interest in his little beasts of students. They were a grubby lot anyway, mostly gawky lads from the country, with pimply, whiff-whiskered faces and shabby, ill-fitting clothes. Their parents had saved and scrimped to send their sons here, with the manse as the ultimate goal. They knew nothing of the city, except the road from their lodgings to the University. They did not want to know any more. To me, city-wise, they were poor boobs to be pitied and disdained. Could I not enter a pub, order a bitter and chaff the barmaid? Compared with them I was smeared with sophistication. Of all that class I think I was the only one who had looked on life through the beery haze of a bar parlour.

In front of me was a remarkable fellow called Tevendale. He was tall, with tight-fitting clothes that showed his muscular figure. He had a grim face and regular features. But most striking was his high-105domed head, almost twice the size of an ordinary head, and bulging at the temples. He never spoke to any one, entering morosely and leaving silently at the end of the lecture. It seemed as if he despised us. In all his classes he stood first. During the lecture he bent over a note-book, writing rapidly with a pen. He never paused, never looked to right or left. He fascinated me so, I would fall to watching him instead of listening to the professor.

Two other students attracted me. One was a wizened little fellow from a law office who took down the lectures in shorthand. The third had a dark, beautiful face and was the class poet. At Christmas, when we were asked to try for the poetry prize, he was the only one to make an effort. The subject was Inspiration; but for me, who disliked rhetoric, it had no appeal. My inspiration was always material and I was happiest close to earth.

I mention these three because in the examination before Christmas they came first, second and third. The fourth was myself. No one was more surprised than I. Out of a class of two hundred, to stand so high seemed wonderful ... till I realized that my triumph was one of stupidity. It was like this.... I used to take down in abbreviated long hand the professor's lectures, and when I got home I would copy them into a note-book. I would read this again and again, till I had the stuff almost by heart. Imagine, then, my delighted amazement when I sat down to my exam to find that all the questions were based on the lectures and that my notes formed a direct answer. I romped through the paper, giving the replies in the professor's own words. That I came fourth was putting a premium on lack of originality.

In my first class essay I followed the same copy-cat methods and came out fifth. The subject was: Was Hamlet Mad? and I followed the lead of the class text-book in my answer. The commentary was: "A thoughtful, interesting and well-written paper." But I was not pleased. I felt like a prize parrot.

Christmas came with its holidays. I haunted the corridors and closes of the University, preening myself on my success. I loved the106 big quadrangle with the ivy-clad homes of the Professors around it. I read famous names on brass plates, Kelvin, Jebb, Ramsey, Drummond, the Cairds. As I capped to them they would nod. But I felt a fraud. I was not a real student, just a one-class man, and soon I was to cease that....

My first evening in class I noticed a face vaguely familiar. I went up to the lad who was better dressed than those about him.

"Are you not Tammie McCurdie?"

He gave me a hostile stare: "Yes, but I don't seem to know you."

I did not remind him of the famous fight but I told him my name.

"Indeed," he said, looking at me with obvious distaste. "You've changed."

"You haven't. I should have known you anywhere." He did not like the way I said it. After a pause he said awkwardly: "Well, I must be going."

He went away with his friends and next time I saw him he cut me. I could have slapped his face, but I thought: "Poor chump! You're not worth bothering about." When my class standing was high he tried to make up to me, but I looked through him. He was intended for the ministry and his parents gave him more money than most of his fellows. One day I met him with a girl. It was very rare to see a student with a girl, so I stared hard. He got very red and looked the other way.

After Christmas things did not go so well. We had to study Chaucer and from the beginning I could not stick the stuff. I loathed his outlandish dialect and I thought he wrote rhymed doggerel. Youthful prejudice, no doubt, but I gave up in disgust. So when the next exam came round I did not sit. Then came the second series of essays. The subject was the character of Ophelia. But by this time I was beginning to revolt against University tradition. I resented its narrow academic atmosphere. In our class anything modern was anathema. No writer was supposed to exist beyond the Victorian era. The dogmatism that prevailed antagonized me, yet the country boys swallowed the class dictums like gospel truths. Who among107 them, I wondered, had read George Moore, Zangwill, Kipling, Barrie, Henley and the Yellow Book? I was inclined to be in the advance guard of the literary movement, while the professors and their class following were still stuck in the Victorian mud. To them slang was unthinkable, and the new writers were cocky upstarts.

Specially obnoxious to me was the professor's assistant. He was a son of the manse, being groomed for the ministry. To him literature meant classic literature, and he gave lectures full of grandiloquent phrases. I remember a paper he read on the Heroines of Shakespeare. It finished up: "They should be ensainted forever in the high heaven of divine poetry." This peroration brought the applause of the class, but one listener murmured: "Bunk."

In my essay on Ophelia I thought I would be different. Any one can be right, but few can be original. So I ventured to suggest that she was a bit of a slut and that this was partly responsible for Hamlet's distracted state of mind. I tried to prove my point by quotations from the text, and imagined that at least there was something to be said for it. Above all, it was the best bit of writing I had done, dashing, aggressive and confident. Here, said I, is an essay that will be marked ninety per cent.... The time came when we got our themes back. Anticipative of triumph I received mine eagerly. What was this? Twenty-three marks! There must be some mistake.... No, I turned over the pages. They were scored with blue pencilling from end to end. Every line was subjected to the same bitter censure. And at the end I read: "A perverse and obscene bit of work—unworthy of a student of this class."

Anger succeeded amazement. It was a cold rage that seemed to suffocate me. All through the class I boiled and fumed till I could hardly contain myself. I could scarcely wait till the students had gone. The youthful assistant was still at his desk arranging his papers. I went up to him, trembling with a fury beyond control.

"Did you correct this?" I said in a choked voice. He took it from me, glanced over it, threw it back contemptuously.

"I think I did. What about it?"108

"It's unfair and prejudiced, and I protest."

He looked at me in surprise. He was a pompous chap. "The Professor concurs with me in my markings of the essays," he said, with a sneer. Then he went back to arranging his papers, indicating the matter was closed. But I said: "I think you're a liar and a silly ass as well."

He sat up as if shocked. Then he got white and pointed to the door. "Leave this room, sir. And I'll see you never re-enter it."

I said: "I'll go when it jolly well suits me. Would you like to eject me? Come and try."

"I will report you to the Faculty. You will be expelled."

"Come and expel me now. Are you a coward as well as a liar and a fool? Why don't you put off that gown and wear petticoats? They would suit you better."

"I wish for no unseemly wrangle here," he said.

"Anywhere you like then."

He bent down, fumbling over his papers. I snatched them up and flung them in his face. He said: "This is an outrage. It is unprecedented ..."

"All right," I said, "you are a coward and a dirty dog. I won't enter your class-room again. I'm not one of these fools that swallow all you say. But I'm a private student, I have paid my fee and I doubt if you could keep me out of the class. We are man to man, and I tell you that if ever I meet you outside I will pull your nose and kick your professorial bottom." With that I walked away, but at the door I turned for a last broadside. "Rotten funk!" I shouted. "You're no more than a greasy gob in a fishwife's spittle."

So ended my college career. No more could I see myself as a scholar, living in a sheltered world of books. I did not want to. Then as I walked home my fury died and I was strangely happy. A great load had been lifted from me. Now I realized how hard I had been driving myself, poring over my notes every spare moment, reading up authorities. How often had I studied under a whining gas-jet until the early hours of the morning! How often gone to109 bed with eyes smarting and head seething! No, I had not enjoyed this last year....

Well, that was another chapter finished. I tore up my notes and chucked my class books into a cupboard. Stopford Brooke, Nichols, Taine—to hell with them! Let others swat them up. I was finished for good. And that night I celebrated my freedom by getting mildly plastered in a low-down pub.