“It is my business to teach students to write. I’ve given my life to that, and I think I know something about it. But you think you know more than I do. That’s all.”
And so they parted. Thyrsis kept a vivid recollection of this interview, for the reason that at a later stage of his career he came into contact with Prof. Osborne again, and got another glimpse of the authoritarian attitude towards the art of letters.
Section 15. Thyrsis had not many friends at college, and none at all at the university. He had no time to make any; and besides, there was a certain facetious senior who had caught him hurrying through the corridors one day, declaring in excitement that—
“Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow!”
But he had long ago ceased to hope for a friend, or to care what anybody thought about him; it was clear to him by this time that he had made himself into a poet, and was doomed to be unhappy. His mother had given up all hope of seeing him a bishop, and they had compromised upon a judgeship; but here at the university there was a law-school, and he met the students, and saw that this, too, could not be. These “lawyers” were not seeking knowledge for the love of it—they were studying a trade, by which they could rise in the world. They were not going out to do battle for truth and justice—they were perfecting themselves in cunning, so that they might be of help in money-disputes; they were sharpening their wits, to make them useful tools for the opening of treasure-chests. And this attitude to life was written all over their personalities; they seemed to Thyrsis a coarse and roistering crew, and he shrunk from them in repugnance.
He went his own impetuous way. He stayed at the university until he had taught himself French and Italian, as well as German, and had read all the best literature in those languages. And likewise he heard all the best music, and went about full of it day and night. By this time he had definitely beaten his devils, and had come to be master of himself; and though nobody guessed anything about it, there was a new marvel going on within him—he had, in a spiritual sense, become pregnant.
There were many signs by which this state might have been known. He went quite alone, and spoke to no man; he was self-absorbed, and walked about with his eyes fixed on vacancy; he was savage when disturbed, and guarded his time unscrupulously. He had given up the very last of the formalities of life—he no longer attended any lectures, or wore cuffs, and he would not talk at meal-times. He took long walks at impossible hours, and he was fond of a certain high hill where the storms blew. These things had been going on for a year; and now the book that had been coming to ripeness in his mind was ready to be born.
It had its origin in the reading of history, and the fronting of old tyranny in its cruel forms. Thyrsis had come to hate Christianity for many things by that time, but most of all he hated it because it taught the bastard virtue of Obedience. Thyrsis obeyed no man—he lived his life; and the fiery ardor with which he lived it was taking form in his mind as a personality. He was dreaming a hero who should be Resistance incarnate; the passionate assertion of man’s right and of man’s defiance.
It was in the days of ferocity in Italy, the days of the despot and the bravo; and Thyrsis’ hero was a minstrel, a mighty musician whose soul was free. And he sung in the despot’s hall, and wooed the despot’s daughter. This was the minstrel of “Zulieka”—-
“His ladder of song was slight,
But it reached to her window’s height;
Each verse so frail was the silken rail,
From which her soul took flight.”