Some days later a happy, and therefore not too likeable, King was explaining to the Reverend John in his own study how effort, zeal, scholarship, the humanities, and perhaps a little natural genius for teaching, could inspire even the mark-hunting minds of the young. His text was the result of his General Knowledge paper on the Augustans and King Lear.
“Howell,” he said, “I was not surprised at. He has intelligence. But, frankly, I did not expect young Corkran to burgeon. Almost one might believe he occasionally read a book.”
“And McTurk too?”
“Yes. He had somehow arrived at a rather just estimate of Swift’s lighter literary diversions. They are contemptible. And in the ‘Lear’ questions—they were all attracted by Edgar’s character—Stalky had dug up something about Aubrey on Tom-a-Bedlams from some unknown source. Aubrey, of all people! I’m sure I only alluded to him once or twice.”
“Stalky among the prophets of ‘English’! And he didn’t remember where he’d got it either?”
“No. Boys are amazingly purblind and limited. But if they keep this up at the Army Prelim., it is conceivable the Class may not do itself discredit. I told them so.”
“I congratulate you. Ours is the hardest calling in the world, with the least reward. By the way, who are they likely to send down to examine us?”
“It rests between two, I fancy. Martlett—with me at Balliol—and Hume. They wisely chose the Civil Service. Martlett has published a brochure on Minor Elizabethan Verse—journeyman work, of course—enthusiasms, but no grounding. Hume I heard of lately as having infected himself in Germany with some Transatlantic abominations about Shakespeare and Bacon. He was Sutton.” (The Head, by the way, was a Sutton man.)
King returned to his examination-papers and read extracts from them, as mothers repeat the clever sayings of their babes.
“Here’s old Taffy Howell, for instance—apropos to Diderot’s eulogy of Richardson. ‘The impassioned Diderot broke forth: “Richardson, thou singular genius!”’”