You know how, in any town which is given up to a University, even the bald-faced old women with hair like charwomen’s, who stamp through their social duties with the corsetless aplomb of the born moralizer, are recognized as forming a sort of aristocracy in keeping with the spirit of the place. But here all the academic flowers, good and bad alike, are looked upon as interlopers. I have heard many of the vieillesse dorée of Millport lump them together indiscriminately as “peculiar” and “too clever for us.” If I had my way I would make it criminal libel to apply the word “clever” to any persons but those who have been found guilty of attempted intelligence. The Romans are spoken of in history books as having brought the blessing of education to the untutored savages of ancient Britain. But I can imagine the snuffy look on the faces of the female aristocracy in woad when the high-browed matrons of Rome landed among them, armed with copy-books. You may see the same look spread over a party of Millport Druids and their wives when the University is mentioned.
I don’t think that everybody by nature likes being educated. Improvement is forced on some by others who have an inherent morbid craving for it, and when the victims have been compelled to accept it, they behave as the fox who was accidentally deprived of his tail behaved to his friends who had escaped the misfortune. The foxes of Millport are, one by one, losing their tails. The old-fashioned appendages of fat and fur no longer command general respect among the neighbours; yet the fashion dies hard. All the same, how pleasant a few little feathery tails, sewn with sequins, would be in Oxford or Cambridge, would they not? It is so tiresome when people insist on all trying to be one particular thing.
But to go on with the luncheon-party. The fat elderly fox was invited to lead the way to the dining-room, and she gave the impression that if she had not been asked to lead the way she would have led it of her own accord. She has such an expressive back; it seems to be waiting impatiently for other people to do right, yet almost hoping they won’t, so that she may have the pleasure of correcting them. Mrs. County followed next, with the good-natured politeness of a Prime Minister sent in to dinner behind a knight; the French squirrel smiled at us and went after them, and Miss Darling and I scuffled amiably in the doorway over Mrs. Merchant’s toes.
The hostess’s task was a difficult one, but she showed wonderful tact. She was conscious of having at her table two persons who represented the established authority of commerce and landed property (even if it is only a couple of fields and a carriage sweep for flies to drive up). Opposed to these were two others, one of whom (myself) belonged to a community whose wildness and eccentricity, it was rumoured, knew no bounds, while the other (from the University) was associated with certain unintelligible heathens who were said to “poke fun” at the idols of Mrs. Bushytail, Mrs. County and herself. Miss Darling, she knew, could be relied upon to interpose her soft form as a cushion if anybody took to throwing anything: still it was anxious work.
“The trees are quite losing their leaves, are they not?” began Miss Darling, unfolding her napkin. It was like the tuning up of the violins before the rise of the curtain. I tried to tune up too, but no words would come. Do you remember how Dick told us that he sometimes could think of nothing to say but, “Do you wear drawers in autumn?” The trees reminded me of it.
“Yes, aren’t they, dreadfully?” said Mrs. Merchant. “It is quite sad.” We had some more tuning up, Mrs. Bushytail (I still refuse to give you their real names because you and Bessie are too unreliable) taking the part of the drum.
“Ahem! B-r-r-r-r-r-um!” she coughed. “It is quite impossible to count on the seasons at all in these days. They are all at sixes and sevens. Such warm weather at this time of year cannot be healthy.”
Mrs. County gave us a few languid runs on the French horn, foreshadowing her leit motif, the West Cheddar pack, with whom she hunts now and then. She said that frosts were of no value to anyone except plumbers, and that now everybody found Christmas such a bore, it seemed hardly worth while having snow and all that sort of thing, except that it made an occupation for the poor wretches in town to shovel it away. It kept them in the fresh air instead of stewing at home all day.
Perhaps Mrs. Merchant thought that the tuning up was getting too discordant, for she collected us with her eye and gave out the hymn of Literature. You see, literature is such a good subject, because it can never get hackneyed (with so many books coming out each year), and everybody is sure to have read something. Sooner or later Mrs. Bushytail’s voice makes itself heard above any babel. She had the upper hand of us in a moment, and discussion lay dead beside her plate. One would suppose that the raison d’être of human speech was to further exchanges of opinion, but Mrs. Bushytail pursues this intention with relentless ferocity as if were moral vermin.