Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

"Yes, there are elements of interest in Catullus's use of phalaecians and scazons. As for the hexametric poems, it is undeniable that he handles the metre with far more elegance than Lucretius contrives, though to my mind a greater employment of enjambment would have improved them still further. His elegiacs, on the other hand, do not merit the compliment of imitation, and his pentameters are often positively uncouth." He looked up, saw my face and turned his lopsided smile on me. "You must not mind me, Tom, I am a little out of sorts myself." He returned the volume. "Have you heard the news? Quird is to be withdrawn from the school."

"I cannot say I am sorry to hear it."

"It appears that his father was badly hit when Wavenhoe's collapsed. The family has lost nearly all it had."

"It is, I'm afraid, a common enough story." I held out my hands to the fire. "I hope they are not in actual want?"

"Not quite. It is a dreadful business." Dansey's eyes glowed orange in the candlelight. "But of course few have suffered as Mrs Frant has suffered. Is it true that she is entirely dependent on the charity of her cousin Mr Carswall?"

"I believe so." I heard a trace of agitation in my tone, for I remembered that fatal codicil that had removed, with my unconscious assistance, her last hope of financial independence. I forced myself to continue: "And Charlie, too, of course."

Dansey waved a long-fingered hand. "At least he is young. Youth has astonishing resilience. But Mrs Frant's position must be truly wretched."

I mumbled agreement, not trusting myself to speak.

"No doubt she loved him?"

I made no reply, though Dansey waited for one.

"Yes, but then love is a curious emotion," he went on in a moment, as though I had answered in the affirmative. "We commonly use one word where at least three are required. When poets speak of love, they describe a passionate attachment to another individual. It is perhaps less an attachment than a form of hunger. However they dress it up in the language of sentiment, it is at bottom a physical appetite for the sexual act, a desire to enjoy the last favour. It is an extraordinarily powerful appetite, it is true, and one directed with remarkable intensity at a single individual, an intensity that may border on madness – as, perhaps, it did for poor Catullus with his Lesbia. Yet it is usually short-lived. I have known many young men who fall in love once a week. And when such a man marries the beloved of the moment, the passion rarely lasts at the pitch it attained before it was satisfied."

I stared at the fire. Dansey's voice had taken on a slow, dreamlike quality. I wished I were alone in a silent room.

"As to the second meaning," he said after another pause, another opportunity for me to speak. "On many occasions love is little more than a respectable synonym for lechery, a universal appetite for copulation, for unbridled carnality. The word love casts a veil of propriety over it. It is an attempt to disguise its nature, to shield it from the strictures of moralists. But, truly considered, the phenomenon is no more lovely or unlovely than the behaviour of a pig at a trough."

I stirred in my chair.

"Pray do not be uneasy," he said quickly. "The taxonomy of the emotions should be the province of the natural philosopher, as well as that of the poet. And, to the unbiased observer at least, it is clear that a mature person may feel for – for – another person a category of emotion which may properly be called love; indeed it may be argued that it deserves the appellation more than the previous categories. This would be my third definition of the word. I refer to an individual's calm and disinterested concern for the well-being of another."

I suppressed a yawn. "It sounds remarkably like friendship. Or a mother's feeling for a child."

"No, Tom, not exactly. It does not exclude passion, you see. Passion may play a part, albeit guided by reason, by experience. One sees it sometimes in married couples, in whom it may flourish after their initial ardours have subsided. One sometimes sees it, too, in friendships between members of the same sex, very commonly in soldiers or sailors who have braved terrible dangers together. If one had to characterise this type of affection, one could, I think, usefully entertain the notion of completeness. The lover feels incomplete without the beloved. It is an emotion that may flourish unobtrusively in unexpected places. Though it may embrace the sexual sphere, it is not confined to it."

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. I saw twin candle flames burning in his eyes. It is a terrifying thing to glimpse the depth of another's need.

I pushed back my chair and stood up. "Ned – pray excuse me – it has been a long day. I shall fall asleep if I stay another moment. You will not take it amiss if I withdraw, will you?"

"No," Dansey said. "No, of course not. You were falling into a doze. I warrant you hardly heard a word I've been saying."

I wished him goodnight. At the door, he called me back.

"You will want this," he said. "Your Catullus."

Neither of us referred to this conversation again. It was possible that Dansey believed, or affected to believe, that I had been on the edge of slumber during the latter part of it, and had not heard all he said, or comprehended the general drift of his remarks. So we lived and worked together on our old amicable footing. Yet something had changed. After that evening, I rarely sat with him late into the night beside the dying warmth of the schoolroom fire, or strolled smoking with him across the frosty lawn after the boys had gone to bed.

Nevertheless, I found my thoughts recurring to his remarks upon the subject of love on more than one occasion. If it were true that the tender passion could be divided into three categories, which category embraced what I felt for Sophia Frant – or, indeed, for Flora Carswall? I saw with peculiar vividness in my mind's eye the picture of Dansey's pig at his trough.

I could not say that I was looking forward to the end of term, to the six weeks of the school's Christmas holiday. Though a few boys would remain, the establishment would be considerably reduced, and Dansey and I would inevitably be thrown much together. I had agreed to eat my Christmas dinner with the Rowsells, but I had no other engagements or diversions in hand.

About a week before Christmas, I met young Edgar Allan on the stairs and he said to me, in that hurried and peculiarly breathless way that small boys have: "Sir, please, sir, but Frant begs me to give you his compliments and hopes you may be able to accept."

I stopped. "Accept what, Allan? His compliments?"

"You have not heard, sir?"

"Unless I know what I am supposed to have heard, I cannot tell, can I?"

Something in the logic of this must have appealed to him, for the boy burst out laughing. When his mirth had subsided, he said: "Frant wrote me to say that his mama is inviting me to stay at Mr Carswall's during the Christmas holiday. And Mr Carswall is to write to my ma and pa, and to Mr Bransby, requesting that you should be allowed to accompany me, though I should be perfectly safe in the care of the coachman, but Charlie says that women always fuss and sometimes it is wise to let them have their head."

"I have as yet heard nothing of this projected expedition," I said. "I am not convinced that it will be perfectly convenient." I watched Allan's face change, as though a cloud had passed over his good humour. "However, we shall have to see what Mr Bransby has to say about it."

The boy took this as a form of agreement. He bounded happily away, leaving me to wonder whether his information was accurate, and, if it were, whether Mr Bransby would permit me to go, and whether it would be wise for me to do so or not. Wise or not, I knew what I wanted. Lofty thoughts about the taxonomy of love in general, and about pigs and troughs in particular, were all very well in the abstract but I no longer had any desire to pursue them.