To HAROLD ACTON in Homage and Affection
PRELUDE
Mr Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, sat alone in Mr Sniggs' room overlooking the garden quad at Scone College. From the rooms of Sir Alastair Digby‑Vane‑Trumpington, two staircases away, came a confused roaring and breaking of glass. They alone of the senior members of Scone were at home that evening, for it was the night of the annual dinner of the Bollinger Club. The others were all scattered over Boar's Hill and North Oxford at gay, contentious little parties, or at other senior common‑rooms, or at the meetings of learned societies, for the annual Bollinger dinner is a difficult time for those in authority.
It is not accurate to call this an annual event, because quite often the Club is suspended for some years after each meeting. There is tradition behind the Bollinger; it numbers reigning kings among its past members. At the last dinner, three years ago, a fox had been brought in in a cage and stoned to death with champagne bottles. What an evening that had been! This was the first meeting since then, and from all over Europe old members had rallied for the occasion. For two days they had been pouring into Oxford: epileptic royalty from their villas of exile; uncouth peers from crumbling country seats; smooth young men of uncertain tastes from embassies and legations; illiterate lairds from wet granite hovels in the Highlands; ambitious young barristers and Conservative candidates torn from the London season and the indelicate advances of debutantes; all that was most sonorous of name and title was there for the beano.
'The fines! said Mr Sniggs, gently rubbing his pipe along the side of his nose. 'Oh my! the fines there'll be after this evening!
There is some highly prized port in the senior commonroom cellars that is only brought up when the College fines have reached £50.
'We shall have a week of it at least, said Mr Postlethwaite, 'a week of Founder's port.
A shriller note could now be heard rising from Sir Alastair's rooms; any who have heard that sound will shrink at the recollection of it; it is the sound of the English county families baying for broken glass. Soon they would all be tumbling out into the quad, crimson and roaring in their bottle‑green evening coats, for the real romp of the evening.
'Don't you think it might be wiser if we turned out the light? said Mr Sniggs.