Years of Plenty

by Ivor John Carnegie Brown

II

If Baedeker treated of Oxford colleges as he treats of Continental hotels the visitor would probably be informed that King's is 'well spoken of.' King's is small and comfortable but plainly in the first grade. No taint of specialism mars its charming mediocrity. It is not, like Balliol, aggressively successful, cornering the university scholarships and claiming half the important people in Europe as its alumni, nor does it, like New College, combine a gentle attachment to the humaner letters with supremacy on the river. It does not aspire to royalty or rugger Blues. Most class lists contain one or two firsts from King's and the King's eight never falls from the top division. The college has two excellent quads, a garden, a pleasing chapel, and some astonishing beer. Its port, however, is the worst in Oxford.

King's men were essentially Public School men. Few rich young men from Eton came to a foundation which was neither particularly notable nor particularly notorious. Wealth is not scrupulous as to which of those types it favours, but it abhors the mean. Nor did the Grammar Schools or the colonies supply more than a tithe of the college, which drew mainly upon the middle rank of Public Schools. Herein lay both its strength and its weakness. Its strength lay in its freedom from cranks and bores, its weakness lay in its uniformity: a house which is not divided in itself may stand firm, but it is likely to be a dull and gloomy mansion.

Martin would have preferred to go to Balliol or New College, but as he was paid eighty pounds a year to go to King's there was no profit in grumbling. And so he set to work to find company, in which respect he was indeed fortunate. While many of the freshers turned out to be good men and dull, some even bad men and dull, the scholars were all interesting. The uniformity of Public School tone naturally drove the more critical together, and in Martin's year the house was saved from gloom by at least a partial cleavage. Necessity aided inclination in forming the Push.

The Push consisted of five men and contained a governing trinity. These were Martin, Lawrence and Rendell. Rendell, the first classical scholar, was attached to what the others called the ineffable effs—Fabianism, Feminism and Faith. His god was paradoxical, but not so exciting as Mr Chesterton's, and more interested in Social Reform and Municipal Trading than in beer and ballads.

Rendell managed to entertain his various faiths without becoming a prig or a Puritan. During his first months of emancipation from school he had shown a suspicious hankering after beans and djibba-clad women, but Martin and Lawrence suppressed such tendencies with a firm hand. Rendell, though not pliable on the subject of religion, yielded on this point and soon declared his complete contempt for the eating of vegetables and drinking of ginger ale.

Lawrence was primarily noticeable for size. He was six foot three and broad in proportion: he had a ruddy and cheerful countenance and prodigious hands and feet. Essentially he believed in violence. He didn't care twopence, he declared, for Fabianism or Construction Policies and professed an intense desire to smash things, especially religion and the social system. He called himself a Neo-Nietzschean, but he certainly could not have distinguished between Neo- and Palæo-Nietzscheans. To tell the truth, he had, like many followers of that great dyspeptic, never read a word of him. Lawrence hated music, except the Marseillaise (for its associations) and the Barcarole (for its effects) but he was taught at Oxford to like Sullivan. He read the poems of John Davidson and the philosophy of Georges Sorel. In smoking, eating and drinking he did all that might be expected of him, and he could play rugger amazingly well when he was not too lazy to turn out.

The trinity talked to each other all day and all night, and there were soon very few problems of the universe which had not been satisfactorily settled.

The need for a new point of view became apparent.

"Let's have that fellow Chard in," suggested Martin.

"Coffee in my rooms?" said Lawrence.

"Right-o! To-morrow night, if he'll come."

"Oh, he'll come," said Rendell. "He's rather sick of life. Isolated, you know. He only talks to Davenant."

"Shall we have Davenant too?" suggested Martin.

"The ass with the ties?" said Lawrence; "and the cloak! Oh, not him. Oscar Wilde is a bit played out by now."

"He's no fool," said Rendell. "I had a long conversation with him about Pointillism. He knows some of the Camden Town school."

"Post-Impressionism is less rot than most art," Lawrence growled, "so have him in."

Thus the Push was formed.

Chard was the son of a political K.C. and patently marked out for the acquisition of similar honours in the shortest possible space of time: for he believed firmly in the Liberal Party and himself, a quite irresistible combination in these democratic days. He held no opinion on religion or art, because they were not concerned with his career except in so far as an open declaration of atheism was unwise.

Davenant looked sublimely down on politics. Art was his sphere. Having been appropriately named Aubrey, he had undertaken from an early age to know all about Beauty. He had learned the names of all the unknown painters and could make great play with them: how much taste or feeling he really possessed no one ever discovered, for he was one of those disconcerting people who mingle acute with ridiculous judgments. At times he affected a vague interest in the Catholic faith and had been known to attend Mass. Concerning the love of women he was at once mysterious and supercilious. He laid claim to a vast knowledge of the sex, and by reason of a Continental year spent since leaving school his boast of Experience demanded some respect. In England, however, he never spoke to women. One night Lawrence, being tolerably drunk, told him he was afraid of women. Whereupon Davenant said he hated rosebuds and liked his flowers faded. Lawrence called him 'an unnachral beas',' and made a long speech about purity, in the middle of which he upset his beer and swore most filthily.

Davenant's evening cloak, wrought of a dark but flashing blue, caused its owner more trouble than joy. Lawrence stole it one Saturday night and, clad in it, went roaming through the town, to the great joy of the Oxford maidens who like that kind of joke. He made great play with it in the cinema and ultimately left it in The Grapes. When Davenant called for it on the next day it had vanished, and he was not sorry. The cloak had been an embarrassment, nor had he even really cared for it.

But they didn't mind his posing so long as he avowedly posed. He was, after all, amusing, and at bottom he had a great fund of human kindness. Martin firmly believed that if he had to ask a friend for help or advice he would rather have appealed to Davenant, the apparently supercilious, than to Rendell, the faithful feministic Fabian.

It must not be supposed that the Push became a Push in a day. They only worked up to friendship by rather heavy conversations. They would begin on politics or literature, talking at first with reticence and slight suspicion, but soon their relative isolation brought them closer together and made way for clearer statements and more liberal confessions about sex and religion. It was astonishing how soon after the final breaking of ice they established complete intimacy. Davenant, who had æsthetic friends in other colleges, was least merged in the joint personality of the Push. But all wise men need an audience, and Davenant was not going to desert them while there were still points on which he could gain a hearing.

On several matters they were in complete agreement. They were all 'damned if they were going to row.' The secretary of the Boat Club turned out to be the Rhodes scholar, Theo. K. Snutch, whose rooms Martin had occupied during the scholarship exam. He pointed out gently that the tradition of the 'cahlege' laid down that all freshers should be tubbed. Davenant managed to persuade Snutch that he had a weak heart and Snutch, taking stock of Davenant, prudently forbore to demand a doctor's certificate. Chard magnificently refused to go near the river and was henceforward ignored by the college athletes: but he did not mind, for none of them had votes at the Union.

"The thing for us," suggested Lawrence to Martin and Rendell, "is that what-you-may-call-'em strike. Grêve perlé or something or other. Stay in and rot the show. Catch a crab every other minute."

"How does one catch a crab?" asked Rendell, but no one could tell him.

Like most of Lawrence's intentions (he was rich in schemes), the idea was never put into practice. What eventually occurred was the appearance of the rugger secretary demanding the assistance of Lawrence 'just to stiffen up his pack' and the speedy release of Martin and Rendell owing to their dismal inefficiency. Snutch was entirely charming and Martin, who had feared a terrific, blustering coach, was agreeably surprised at the experience.

Another point of agreement with the Push was the essential loathliness of Hearties. King's had rather more than its fair share of Hearties and the freshers seemed likely to keep up the supply. All Hearties were religious, but all the religious were not Hearties. The Hearties always shouted at one another in the quad, and banged each other on the back. They always called each other Tom and Bill, and when they were not back-banging, they were making arrangements for mission work. They did much solid work for the college athletics, took seconds and thirds in history, and afterwards became schoolmasters and parsons and went to Switzerland in the winter.

Rendell, who had a passion for classification, insisted on distinguishing between neo-cardiacs and palæo-cardiacs. "Neo-cardiacs," he said, "are more spiritual and more dangerous. They don't shout like the whole-hoggers, but their eyes glitter more and they're keener about the new type of bishop. Look at Steel-Brockley. He's a scholar and a 'mind' and can't swallow all the rot of the old school, but he's more sinister really."

"I suppose that Hodges is the ideal palæo-cardiac," said Martin.

"Yes, Hodges, the great ass."

"Of course he's out to set up a kingdom of heaven upon earth," said Lawrence. "And can't you imagine his idea of it? It'll be stiff with people like himself, all blustering round and organising things. Football, Rich v. Poor. Of course there will still be rich and poor, for our Hodges is a Tory, but there'll be a spirit of fellowship oozing everywhere."

"'Running things' is all these chaps really care about," said Davenant, intervening. "I don't believe they care a straw about their summer camps and boys' brigades as far as the boys go. They like to be in charge of clubs and canteens and order kids about and tell them what a good thing discipline is and how wicked Trades Unions are."

"Those are the neos," added Rendell quickly. "The old ones like to rag about, and there's something to be said for that. Hodges likes ragging. Of course he is an ass, but he's not a dangerous ass. On the whole, we may call him a dear old thing and let him go on shouting. But the bad men are Steel-Brockley's gang. They all suffer from bossing fever and can't live unless they're running something. And they're desperately fair-minded and don't believe in party, which simply means that they are Tory agents, and tell the boys what a sin it is to be discontented with five or six bob for a seventy-hour week."

"And they're dragging in the freshers," said Lawrence. "Ought to be strangled."

So in private they settled the business of the Hearties. But in public, partly because they were freshers and partly because they had not the courage of their convictions, they found themselves being quite polite to these good young men.

Religion had an ever-living appeal for the Push, because it is one of the few subjects about which argument is as fascinating as it is futile. Chard, it is true, couldn't be bothered with metaphysics: he was a history scholar, and his line was a first in history and then the Bar. But the discussions were never metaphysical in the technical sense and it amused him to listen and sum up with an epigram. Davenant used to murmur that he thought Christ rather a beautiful figure and that the Church had saved Art in the Middle Ages, but he did not receive much attention. It became more and more the custom to regard Davenant as a picturesque background to conversations, except when artistic matters were under discussion. Then he held the floor, or rather he stood gracefully before the fire and spoke slowly between puffs of smoke.

They met most often in Lawrence's rooms, which were large and conveniently situated on the ground floor. He had added to the dilapidated furniture some new cushions and a really good arm-chair, and, having no money, he started a colossal bill at Blackwell's, so that his shelves were soon piled with books which he rarely read. But he was not the man to care deeply for his rooms, as did Davenant, who believed in Gordon Craig and used to mess about in the afternoons, putting the light in remote corners or hanging up curtains of a new colour. It was well that Lawrence cared little for his rooms, as he became invariably drunk on Saturday nights, and when drunk he was violent. He would lie on the floor kicking and declaiming Limericks until someone put him to bed: even then he was known to rise again and break things.

Lawrence swilling beer in his rooms was a great spectacle. Usually blasphemous and always obscene, he did everything on such a generous scale and with such a childish innocence and honesty that he was always attractive and rarely repelled even one so fastidious as Davenant.

It was on Sunday nights that the Push talked about religion. Lawrence would pull out the sofa and build up a roaring fire: then with the aid of pipes and much swallowing of beer they would set about it. Every Sunday Rendell was pilloried, but the victim never objected and always returned to the combat. The great point about religious discussion is that you can never be beaten. They treated either with the truth of Christianity or the value of its practical results. In the latter case Lawrence would boom about bishops with fifteen thousand a year, and Martin would demonstrate with irrefutable logic that religion had always resisted freedom and education and had made the world the hole it is. As they both talked interminably Rendell had little opportunity of answering.

One night Lawrence rushed into his rooms shortly after dinner and found the Push assembled.

"My god!" he said, plunging into the sofa.

"I thought you hadn't one," said Chard.

"Don't be obvious. I'm angry, my god, I'm angry."

He was asked to explain.

"Steel-Brockley asked me to go to coffee in his rooms and when I got there I found he had provided a lecturer gassing about the value of faith for us."

"Well," said Davenant, "that was very considerate of our Brockley."

"Exactly. But he might have warned me. It didn't matter. I couldn't stick it long."

"I should think not. It's barely a half-an-hour since dinner now."

"What happened?" asked Martin.

"It was like this," began Lawrence. "Brockley produced a battered chap from the colonies, all pockmarks and freckles, you know the type. Of course he began, as they always do, by saying that he had seen men die in all parts of the world and they all died the better for their faith. None of them seemed to live, or else he had a morbid mind and likes death. I don't know. Anyhow he had the cheek to say that King's spiritual life wasn't as strong as it had been. He was deeply concerned about us. He whined about us. He thought we were all going to the devil because the scholars have taken to cutting chapel. Just imagine a little tick like that coming here to tell us, whom he doesn't know, that we're not so soulful as the clean young men out West. Thank god we're not. I gave him about ten minutes and cleared out."

There was a murmur of delight.

"I suppose no one heard you leave the room," said Martin, but Lawrence never rose to jests about his bulk and gait.

"And there were all Brockley's gang," he went on, "sitting with all the light of grace in their eyes. And when the pock-marked chap got busy in the impressive line you could fairly hear them thinking, 'God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world.'"

"And a very good thought," said Rendell.

Lawrence would always rise to the religious bait.

"Just the kind of thought that you would expect from a well-fed Liberal poet."

Lawrence opened violently a bottle of Munich beer and drained the contents. Then he gave a vast sigh of relief, pulled out his pipe and stood expansively before the fire, exposing, unconsciously, a large gap of shirt between his waistcoat and the grey flannel trousers whose sole support lay in their tightness.

"It isn't God that matters," he declared. "It's the Godites. They're worse than ever."

"They've at least begun to move with the times."

"Exactly," said Martin, coming in as usual to assist Lawrence. "They swallow everything new and say they meant it all the time. I don't mind good old burn-the-devil bigots, but this up-to-date Interpreting and Restatement and Revaluation and Earnest Wash, it makes me sick. Why can't they give up their tribal deity and do something sensible?"

"You're so beastly crude," answered Rendell. "Oxford isn't exactly a brainless place, and it's full of religion."

"It's full of a washed-out, watery, emasculate ghost of a faith," said Martin. "They daren't say what they really do mean for fear of giving the show away. So they talk about Evolution and the Unknowable and 'may be something in it.'"

"The religion of the Oxford don," said Chard magnificently from his corner, "is the sickly bastard of nervousness and inertia."

"I'll give you a quid to say that at the Union," said Martin. But Chard valued his career at more than a sovereign.

"Aren't you men a little out of date?" interrupted Davenant. "Chivvying priests and kings was about 1870, wasn't it?"

"Exactly," Rendell cried in triumph. "You've done for priests and kings. Nobody believes in them any more. They've collapsed, and by collapsing become infinitely stronger. Bradlaugh's brigade never foresaw that, when you take away nominal power, you begin to create real power. The weakest side always wins in the end."

"Don't talk Chestertonian drivel," growled Lawrence. "Nobody believes it."

"It's quite true. Religion is stronger than ever just because it's weaker."

"The last flicker," said Martin.

Then the conversation, having reached an impasse, turned of necessity and they were off once more upon matters episcopal.

"I don't see why a bishop should get thousands a year while the curates are half starved," said Lawrence.

"They don't spend it on themselves," retorted Rendell.

"Only on palaces and motors and flummery. No, my boy, it's all bunkum. Look at the fortunes they leave." Lawrence had collected a list of episcopal fortunes which he read with glee upon every possible occasion. It was an excellent array of figures, starting well up in the hundred thousands.

"Oh, chuck it," said Rendell. "We've heard all this before."

But Lawrence read irrepressibly on.

"What about your needle's eye now?" he roared.

"Oh, don't be a child," said Rendell.

"That's all you ever say. Childish! You with your Athanasian Creed and incense and swindling priests. Ever been to Notre Dame and seen the advertisements? Forty days' purgatory remitted in return for so many prayers! And you call me childish!" Lawrence had a fine flow of metaphors and expletives. He had been known to continue one sentence for ten minutes, his oratorical method being to substitute copulas for full stops. He began jerkily, it is true. But once the lumbering coach was set moving nothing could withstand its impetus.

Rendell yielded and began to discuss with Davenant the personality of Christ. Lawrence continued roaring at no one in particular. At last he sat heavily down in his arm-chair, so heavily that one of its legs gave way. He tore off the broken member and brandished it wildly, as a symbol of his attitude to all things episcopal.

As usual it was Chard who closed the discussion.

"Davenant's faith," he said, "makes me think of a mendicant professor of æsthetics and Rendell's of the first secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (Nazareth branch). I move the question be put."

His advice was taken.

"Beer," said Lawrence. "My god, more beer."

And so the evenings would begin.