Anthony Powell - A Question of Upbringing

“They see a good deal of each other.”

“Well, well,” said Sillery. “He must take care about that, too. But I must attend to my other guests, and not talk all the time about old friends.”

I had the impression that Sillery regarded Stringham’s father as a falling market, so far as business was concerned; and, although he did not mention Buster, he was evidently far more interested in Mrs. Foxe’s household than that of her former husband. However, the room was now filling up, and Sillery began introducing some of the new arrivals to each other and to Stringham and myself. There was a sad Finn — called as nearly as I could catch — Vaalkiipaa: Honthorst, an American Rhodes Scholar, of millionaire stock on both sides of his family: one of Sillery’s pupils, a small nervous young man who never spoke, addressed as “Paul,” whose surname I did not discover: and Mark Members, of some standing among the freshmen of my year, on account of a poem published in Public School Verse and favourably noticed by Edmund Gosse. Up to that afternoon I had only seen Members hurrying about the streets, shaking from his round, somewhat pasty face a brownish, uneven fringe that grew low on his forehead and made him look rather like a rag doll, or marionette: an air augmented by brown eyes like beads, and a sprinkling of freckles. His tie, a broad, loose knot, left the collar of his shirt a little open. I admired this lack of self-consciousness regarding what I then — rather priggishly — looked on as eccentricity of dress. He appeared to have known Sillery all his life, calling him “Sillers,” a form of address which, in spite of several tea-parties attended, I had not yet summoned courage to employ. The American, Honthorst’s, hair was almost as uncontrolled as that of Members. It stood up on the top of his head like the comb, or crest, of a hoopoe, or cassowary, this bird-like appearance being increased by a long, bare neck, ending in a white collar cut drastically low. Honthorst had a good-natured, dazed countenance, and it was hard to know what to say to him. Vaalkiipaa was older than the rest of the undergraduates present. He had a round, sallow face with high cheekbones, and, although anxious to be agreeable, he could not understand why he was not allowed to talk about his work, a subject always vetoed by Sillery.

Conversation was now mostly between Sillery and Members; with the awkward long silences which always characterised the teas. During one of these pauses, Sillery, pottering about the room with the plate of rock-buns, remarked: “There is a freshman named Quiggin who said he would take a dish of tea with me this afternoon. He comes from a modest home, and is, I think, a little sensitive about it, so I hope you will all be specially understanding with him. He is at one of the smaller colleges — I cannot for the moment remember which — and he has collected unto himself sundry scholarships and exhibitions, which is — I think you will all agree — much to his credit.”

This was a fairly typical thumb-nail sketch of the kind commonly dispensed by Sillery, in anticipation of an introduction: true as far as it went, though giving little or no clue to the real Quiggin: even less to the reason why he had been asked to tea. Indeed, at that period, I did not even grasp that there was always a reason for Sillery’s invitations, though the cause might be merely to give opportunity for preliminary investigation: sometimes not worth a follow-up.

No one, of course, made any comment after this speech about Quiggin, because there was really no suitable comment to make. The mention of scholarships once more started off Vaalkiipaa on the subject of his difficulties obtaining useful instruction from attendance at lectures while Honthorst, almost equally anxious to discuss educational matters in a serious manner, joined in on the question of gaps in the college library and — as he alleged — out-of-date methods of indexing. Honthorst persisted in addressing Sillery as “sir,” in spite of repeated requests from his host that he should discard this solecism. Sillery was deftly circumventing combined Finnish-American attack, by steering the conversation toward New England gossip by way of hunting in Maine — while at the same time extracting from Vaalkiipaa apparently unpalatable facts about the anti-Swedish movement in Finland — when Quiggin himself arrived: making his presence known by flinging open the door suddenly to its fullest extent, so that it banged against one of the bookcases, knocking over a photograph in a silver frame of three young men in top-hats standing in a row, arm-in-arm.

“Come in,” said Sillery, picking up the picture, and setting it back in its place. “Come in, Quiggin. Don’t be shy. We shan’t eat you. This is Liberty Hall. Let me introduce you to some of my young friends. Here is Mr. Cheston Honthorst, who has travelled all the way from America to be a member of my college: and this is Mr. Jenkins, reading history like yourself: and Mr. Stringham, who has been to East Africa, though his home is that beautiful house, Glimber: and Mr. Vaalkiipaa — rather a difficult name, which we shall soon find that we have all got so used to that we shan’t be able to understand how we ever found it difficult — and Paul, here, you probably know from Brightman’s lectures, which he tells me he loyally attends just as you do; and I nearly forgot Mr. Mark Members, whose name will be familiar to you if you like modern verse — and I am sure you do — so make a place on the sofa, Mark, and Quiggin can sit next to you.”

At first sight, Quiggin seemed to be everything suggested by Sillery’s description. He looked older than the rest of us: older, even, than Vaalkiipaa. Squat, and already going bald, his high forehead gave him the profile of a professor in a comic paper. His neck was encircled with a starched and grubby collar, his trousers kept up by a belt which he constantly adjusted. For the first time since coming up I felt that I was at last getting into touch with the submerged element of the university, which, I had sometimes suspected, might have more to offer than was to be found in conventional undergraduate circles. Mark Members was evidently impressed by a similar — though in his case unsympathetic — sense of something unusual so far as Quiggin was concerned; because he drew away his legs, hitherto stretched the length of the sofa, and brought his knees right up to his chin, clasping his hands round them in the position shown in a picture (that used to hang in the nursery of a furnished house we had once inhabited at Colchester) called The Boyhood of Raleigh; while he regarded Quiggin with misgiving.

“Couldn’t find the way up here for a long time,” said Quiggin.

He sat down on the sofa, and, speaking in a small, hard voice with a North Country inflexion, addressed himself to Members: seeming to be neither embarrassed by the company, nor by Sillery’s sledge-hammer phrases, aimed, supposedly, at putting him at his ease. He went on: “It’s difficult when you’re new to a place. I’ve been suffering a bit here” — indicating his left ear which was stuffed with yellowish cotton-wool —” so that I may not catch all you say too clearly.”

Members offered the ghost of a smile; but there could be no doubt of his uneasiness, as he tried to catch Sillery’s eye. However, Sillery, determined that his eye was not to be caught by Members, said: “The first year is a greaf period of discovery — and of self-discovery, too. What do you say, Vaalkiipaa? Can you find your way about yet?

“I make progress,” said Vaalkiipaa, unsmiling: to whom it was perhaps not clear whether Sillery’s question referred to discovery in the topographical sense or the more intimate interior examination with which Sillery had linked it. There was a silence, at the end of which Members put in, rather at random: “Sillers, it is too clever of you to buy a suit the same colour as your loose covers.”