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

by E. F. Benson

The performance rose to the level of excellence, and Cassandra maintained it, but Clytemnestra——the pens of the critics failed before Clytemnestra. They couldn’t, they confessed, do her justice. She was a creation, a revelation, an incarnation; she was wonderful, marvellous, stupendous, gorgeous, inimitable, irresistible, unapproachable, inexplicable. She held the mirror up to Nature, the κἁτοπτρον up to art, and the speculum up to drama—this was a little involved, and Dr. Propert is responsible. A shaggy student from Heidelberg who represented his university, thought she was a woman, and, heedless of Agamemnon’s doom, fell in love with her on the spot, and was disposed to take it as a personal insult that the Babe was of the sex that Nature made him. However, as marriage was out of the question, he wrote an appreciative article in the Heidelberg Mittheilungen on Clytemnestrismos (made in Germany), contrasting it with Agamemnonismos, with a great deal about the standpoint of the subjective Ego, in the presence of objective archaism. She held the house, she entranced the audience, she dominated their imaginations; she tore away the veil of realism from in front of idealism (whatever that may mean); she gilded Æschylus’s conception, and enriched his execution. She was Clytemnestra. And then they began all over again with variations.

Every night at the fall of the curtain, the Babe was called back again and again, every night the whole house rose at him like one man, and the florist outside the theatre must have realised a competence for the rest of his days. It had been a rather dull and uneventful term, the University wanted something to go mad about, and stark staring mad it went. If Cambridge had not been in a Christian country, it would have had a Babe-cult on the spot. His photograph, taken at the great moment when he came out with “murder beaming from every line of his countenance” as the Cambridge Daily News finely observed, and slowly wrung his hands free of the blood that dripped from them, was in half the shops in the town. For the second time—a unique distinction—he was in authority in the “Granta,” and the Cambridge Review had a long article entirely about him, beginning, “It must surely have occurred to any thoughtful critic.” Night after night the cry of “Speech”—what could have been less appropriate than that Clytemnestra should make an English speech after a Greek play?—went up from a crowded house, and as regularly the Babe bowed and smiled and shook his black-wigged head, and gracefully declined. Once—it was most indecorous and improper—he went so far as to whistle to Sykes who was always in attendance, and made him bark, but otherwise the attempt to get a speech from the Babe was as unprofitable as trying to get water out of a stone. And his performance was the more remarkable in that he did not repeat himself slavishly: acting was an instinct with him, and each night he acted as his mood prompted him. For instance, his manner of entry after the murder, changed every night. Once he stood at the palace door quite silent for nearly a couple of minutes, until Dr. Propert turned quite pale with the thought that perhaps the prompter might think that he wanted prompting, and spoil the moment, wiping his hands slowly, and smiling a ghastly smile at the chorus; once he came out quickly and threw the axe away from him and plunged into his speech; once, and an audible horror ran round the house as he did it, he broke into the silence by a mirthless laugh as he fondled the axe with which he had done the deed, like a mother nursing her child. In a word, he made it clear, that Æschylus was a most excellent dramatist, and that he was a most excellent actor.

XVI.—After Lunch.

I shall be by the fire, suppose.
Browning.

There were only three weeks more to the end of the term, but as soon as the play was over, the Babe at once settled down again to his social and historical duties. With December a hard frost had set in, and football for a time was at a standstill. But next to football as an after lunch amusement, the Babe preferred above everything else a warm room, a large chair, and congenial company. With these objects in view he asked Reggie and Ealing to lunch with him one day, and entirely refused to go out afterwards. Reggie, who had a sort of traditional notion that people always went out after lunch, or else they were ill, was overruled by the Babe, who sent his gyp out to order muffins for tea, and drew his chair close up to the fire.

KING’S PARADE AND CAIUS COLLEGE.

“But it’s such a jolly day, Babe,” said Reggie, who was only half persuaded.

The Babe looked out of the window and shuddered.