Anthony Powell - A Question of Upbringing

“More of a poet,” said Stringham, who loved to emphasise this side of Le Bas’s personality; and had indeed built up a picture of his housemaster as a man whose every spare moment was spent in scribbling verses with the help of a rhyming dictionary. He said: “There is a touch of distinction about Braddock alias Thorne, and absolutely none about Le Bas.”

“Must we spend the whole afternoon reading this stuff?” said Templer. “It is about as interesting as the house notice-board. Let’s go somewhere where I can have my pipe. There is no point in trudging about the town on Sunday.”

And so we turned about towards the fields, passing the house again, and entering an area of dusty cow-parsley and parched meadows. While still on the road the figure of Widmerpool appeared in front of us. He was tramping along in the sunlight, swinging arms and legs like an automaton of which the mechanism might be slightly out of order. We walked behind him for a time, Stringham doing an imitation of the way Widmerpool put his feet to the ground. From an unreasoning fear of the embarrassment that would be caused me if Widmerpool should look back and himself observe Stringham’s agitated pantomime, I persuaded him to stop this improvisation. I had remained in some odd manner interested in Widmerpool since that night in the fog; and, although Stringham’s imitation was ludicrously exact, to think that Widmerpool might see it was for some reason painful to me; though I was almost sorry when the time came to turn off the road and leave Widmerpool to disappear in a distant cloud of dust.

“I don’t know what I should do without Widmerpool,” Stringham said. “He keeps me young.”

“I sometimes wonder whether he is a human being at all,” Templer said. “He certainly doesn’t move like one.”

We passed beyond the railway line to pasture, where Templer lit up his horrible stubby pipe, and argued as we walked along about the age of the Dolly Sisters, one of whom Stringham held to be the mother of the other. The sun was too hot to make our way straight across the grass, so that we moved along by hedges, where there was some little shade. Templer was still vigorously contesting Stringham’s theory of relationship, when we came through some trees and faced a low bank, covered with undergrowth, which stood between us and the next field. The road was by this time fairly far away. Stringham and Templer now ceased to discuss the Dolly Sisters, and both took a run at this obstacle. Stringham got over first, disappearing down the far side: from which a sort of cry, or exclamation sounded. As Templer came to the top of the mound of grass, I noticed him snatch his pipe from his mouth and jump. I came up the slope at my leisure, behind the other two, and, reaching the crest, saw them at the foot of the bank. There was an unexpectedly deep drop to the ground. In the field below, Stringham and Templer were talking to Le Bas, who was reclining on the ground, leaning on one elbow.

Stringham was bending forward a little, talking hard. Templer had managed to get his pipe back into his pocket, or was concealing it in his hand, because when I reached the level of the field, it had disappeared: although the rank, musty odour of the shag which he was affecting at that period swept from time to time through the warm air, indicating that the tobacco was still alight in the neighbourhood. Le Bas had in his hand a small blue book. It was open. I saw from the type face that it contained verse. His hat hung from the top of his walking stick, which he had thrust into the ground, and his bald head was sweating a bit on top. He crouched there in the manner of a large animal — some beast alien to the English countryside, a yak or sea-lion — taking its ease: marring, as Stringham said later, the beauty of the summer afternoon. However, Le Bas appeared to be in a moderately good humour. He was saying to Stringham: “I don’t know why I should tolerate this invasion of my favourite spot. Cannot you all understand that I come here to get away from people like you and Jenkins and Templer? I want peace and quiet for once: not to be surrounded by my pupils.”

“It is a nice place, sir,” said Stringham, smiling, though not in the least committing himself by too much friendliness all at once.

Le Bas turned without warning to his book, and, picking it up from the ground, began to read aloud in his guttural, controlled voice:“‘Ah! leave the smoke, the wealth, the roar

Of London, and the bustling street,

For still, by the Sicilian shore,

The murmur of the Muse is sweet,

Still, still, the suns of summer greet

The mountain-grave of Helike,

And shepherds still their songs repeat,

Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea.“‘Theocritus! thou canst restore

The pleasant years, and over-fleet;

With thee we live as men of yore,

We rest where running waters meet:

And then we turn unwilling feet

And seek the world — so must it be –

We may not linger in the heat

Where breaks the blue Sicilian sea!’”

He shut the book with a snap, and said: “Now can any one of you tell me who wrote that?”

We made various suggestions — Templer characteristically opting for Shakespeare — and then Stringham said: “Matthew Arnold.”

“Not a bad shot,” said Le Bas. “It is Andrew Lang as a matter of fact. Fine lines, you know.”

Another fetid whiff of Templer’s shag puffed its way through the ether. It seemed impossible that Le Bas should remain much longer unaware that a pipe was smoking somewhere near him. However, he seemed to be getting into his stride on the subject of poetry. He said: “There are descriptive verses by Arnold, somewhat similar in metre that may have run in your head, Stringham. Things like:“‘The clouds are on the Oberland,

The Jungfrau’s snows look faint and far;

But bright are those green fields at hand,

And through those fields comes down the Aar.’

“Rather a different geographical situation, it is true, but the same mood of invoking melancholy by graphic description of natural features of the landscape.”

Stringham said: “The Andrew Lang made me think of:“‘O singer of Persephone

In the dim meadows desolate

Dost thou remember Sicily?’

“Do you know that, sir? I don’t know how it goes on, but the lines keep on repeating.”

Le Bas looked a little uneasy at this. It was evident that Stringham had displeased him in some way. He said rather gruffly: “It is a villanelle. I believe Oscar Wilde wrote it, didn’t he? Not a very distinguished versifier.”

Quickly abandoning what had apparently been taken as a hostile standpoint, Stringham went on: “And then Heraclitus —”

The words had an instantaneous effect. Le Bas’s face cleared at once, and he broke in with more reverberance even than before:‘Still are thy pleasant voices, the nightingales awake,

For Death he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.’

“I think you are right, Stringham. Good. Very Good. In fact, alpha plus. It all has the same note of nineteenth-century nostalgia for a classical past largely of their own imagining.”

Le Bas sighed, and, removing his spectacles, began in his accustomed manner to massage his eyelids, which appeared to be a trifle less inflamed than normally.

“I looked up Heraclitus in the classical dictionary, sir,” said Stringham, “and was rather surprised to find that he fed mostly on grass and made his house on a dung-hill. I can quite understand his wanting to be a guest if that is how he lived at home, but I shouldn’t have thought that he would have been a very welcome one. Though it is true that one would probably remember him afterwards.”

Le Bas was absolutely delighted at this remark. He laughed aloud, a rare thing with him. “Splendid, Stringham, splendid,” he said. “You have confused the friend of Callimachus with a philosopher who lived probably a couple of centuries earlier. But I quite agree that if the other Heraclitus’s habits had been those you describe, he would not have been any encouragement to hospitality.”