The Babe, B.A. : being the uneventful history of a young gentleman at Cambridge University

by E. F. Benson

“I think it’s ‘Your Veneree,’” said the Babe, “on the analogy of referee. Look, he’s talking to the ‘so-called Resurrection.’”

“Then he is probably learning a thing or two,” said Mr. Stewart. “That young man never comes to see me without instructing me on the whole duty of a tutor, which appears to be, to do what one intolerable undergraduate tells him. For he is intolerable, neither more nor less. I think I have never met a young man who inspired me with a more searching abhorrence.”

The Babe looked at his watch.

“I suppose I shall be gated if I don’t go back to Trinity soon,” he said.

“It is not unlikely. I will come with you. I am drunk with impressions, and I want a little moral soda-water. As we walk, Babe, you shall speak to me of Rugby football, and drop kicks. That I hope will restore my equilibrium. I understand now why you play football; hitherto it has been a mystery to me. It must be very calming to the moral nature. So tell me what a Punt is.”

XV.—Clytemnestrismos.

Thy warrior comes in regal state,
What words of welcome for him, wife?
The lips of love, the heart of hate,
The bath, the net, the knife.
Stories of Mycenæ.

Between his own tripos work, which he stuck to steadily and grimly, and found by mere force of routine less disagreeable than he expected, Rugby football, the storm and stress of social duties, as he called them—which meant dining out or having people to dinner five nights out of the seven—and constant rehearsals for the Greek play, the Babe’s time was very fully taken up. Furthermore, on Mr. Gladstone’s principle, though otherwise their principles had nothing in common, he always slept for eight and a half hours every night, and if, as often happened, he did not go to bed till two, the hours of the morning were somewhat curtailed. The Babe, however, did not object to this, as the morning seemed to him the really disagreeable part of the day. There was something crude and raw about the air until lunch-time, which made itself felt, whatever one was doing. It was necessary of course to get through the morning in order to arrive at the afternoon, but the shorter it was made the better, and by breakfasting late and lunching early one could make it very short indeed.

He worked at the Greek play with extraordinary zeal and perseverance. The happy band of directors had begun to see that he knew more about acting than all the rest of them put together, though one had seen two hundred and thirty-seven different French plays, mostly improper, and the Babe was present throughout every rehearsal, sitting in the stalls when he was not on the stage himself, and making suggestions whenever they occurred to him. Mr. Mackay, the second stage director, had very strong and original ideas on the subject of Cassandra, whom he made his special care, and he had mapped out exceedingly carefully the gestures, tones, postures, and faces she was to make as the prophetic afflatus gradually gained possession over her. She was a tall young gentleman with a most lovely girlish face, and about as much knowledge of the dramatic art as of the lunar theory. But Mackay was indefatigable in coaching her. She was to point down with both hands outstretched on the word “blood”; she was to roll her eyes and stare at the centre of the fourth row of stalls at the word “Apollo”; she was to make a noise in her throat resembling gargling on the second “Alas”; she was to stagger on the third, and palpitate on the fourth. She was to gaze with agonised questioning at the Ophicleide when Clytemnestra told her she was mad, as if to ask whether he too agreed with her, and breathe as if she had just come to the surface after a prolonged dive; and from that point onwards she was to cast restraint to the winds. She was mad; let the audience know it. Mad people were incoherent and throaty; what she said was incoherent, let her mode of saying it be as throaty as possible. She must continually gargle, gurgle, mule, puke, croak, creak, hoop, and hawk, and if then she didn’t bring down the house, well,—the fault was not hers.

Cassandra, who at any rate had a good memory, and did blindly what she was told to do, had just been through her part with faultless accuracy, and was a little hoarse after it, and no wonder. She had screamed, croaked, gurgled, gargled with pitiless precision, and on the last word she uttered, her voice, by an entirely unrehearsed effort, had cracked like a banjo string in a hot room. Mackay thought this particularly effective, and when he heard it was unpremeditated, urged her to practise it. He patted her on the back as she came off, and implied that if she acted like that in the performances, they would be very helpful to Æschylus’s reputation. The other two stage directors, it is true, had intermittently indulged in unkind laughter during the performance, but Cassandra had not heard them, and if she had, she would not have cared.