on his retirement from schoolteaching
Dear Charles,
I’ve had you on my mind this year.
A recent shift into the festive gear
Has meant I’ve seen much more of you, and then
I’ve found myself reading your books again:
One novel, which you say is not your best
But which has passages – for me the test –
That fixed me to my chair, freezing my arms;
Your Dictionary of Literary Terms
(Revised), as good a book for the bedside
As many a novel is; and last, your Guide
To a Jugoslavia scarred with memories
Even in relatively sunlit days.
You raise the question on your opening pages:
How the South Slavs have wrought across the ages
Such violence on each other, and yet face
Strangers with courtesy, tolerance and grace…
Reading I felt at once that the real world
Was there, in those quiet words – and that recalled
School and the way it seemed you never thought
That you were teaching: which is how you taught.
And yes, of course, the other reason why
You’ve occupied my thoughts is, this July,
You leave the school where – dare I let folks know? –
You taught me more than thirty years ago.
The model classroom teacher you were not.
If you’d learnt teaching methods, you forgot
To make much use of them: of talk and chalk,
Your preference was plainly for the talk.
Such talk it was! You would, with text in hand,
In gruffly stylish sentences expand
On what we had to read, at times digress,
Not so much analyse. So you’d address –
In Hopkins, say – morphologies of line,
The erotic love that figures the divine,
Grey falcons stooping, the Ignatian rule,
Forms literary and biological –
All of the things, in short, I wished to know
Or thought I should, once you had sketched them so.
You did your job, then, also coached a team
(Rugby or cricket), but did not ever seem
Quite of the school. Our Führer of a Head
(You wryly told me) used to cut you dead
In the corridor – or else you’d be required
At once to see your barber. I admired
What must have niggled him: your tattered gown,
The perpetual cigarette, and the slight frown
(Not without humour) that told less of care
Than of the mental life you lived elsewhere –
The books and journeys out beyond the gate
At the drive’s end. Indeed, you turned up late
Each autumn term – though just in time to teach –
Tanned like a bather on a southern beach,
Having come (went the rumour) straight to school
From the last sleeper out of Istanbul.
I would not say that you were dissident –
Just that, maybe, a habit of dissent
Showed in your conduct. For you spared the rod
And if, to our surprise, you talked of God,
Yours was a Roman cosmopolitan,
Who made the Chaplain’s by comparison
Seem a provincial… Be that as it may,
For me these sparks ignited in a play:
How well do you remember The Dumb Waiter?
Some consternation in the alma mater
Was caused by your production of it: hard
It seemed in ’62, too avant-garde
And Beckettishly weird. What did it mean?
Was there perhaps a god in that machine?
Did he exact day-labour, light denied?
Were blasphemies like Pinter’s justified
By deeper meanings? Such fatuity
Seemed to your actors – just Steve Gooch and me –
Appalling, though no doubt outraged surprise
Fed our young vanities. You, worldly wise,
Grunted ironically – you would, of course –
And on the last night led us, after hours,
Up to the staff room where your bonhomie
Invited us to share a fine Chablis.
This disinclined us to take much to heart
Those slight distresses which the life of art
Inflicts on its adherents: it’s a test
That poet, novelist and dramatist
Must pass before they ripen. Don’t complain
Of losses, wordsmith; drink deep when you gain.
A wordsmith, Charles. That strikes me as a fair
Description of you, yet I’m well aware
That earlier I spoke of gruffness too.
I mean a reticence I find in you –
Not unbecoming in a soldier’s son –
Which edges all your words. I think of one
Lesson when you contrasted styles of verse.
The note of conversation, plain and terse,
Was what you favoured. The luxuriant –
In music as in sensuous ornament –
You admired too, for richness and for skill,
But had your reservations. I can still
Hear you chastise as facile and as glib
The sort of bard who runs off at the nib.
New to me at that age, the two words stuck
As you had used them, emblems of my luck
In being taught by one whose words were weighed
Like ingots of great price; and this has made
You present in those words whenever, since,
I’ve found them used precisely in that sense.
That, I suppose, is what it is to teach –
Not only how to use words but that speech
Is difficult. We use words to mean things,
And something more than that which soothes and sings
Informs good poems – they are answerable
To fact, which is resistant to the will.
I learnt from you to value stubbornness
And to judge best those works that bear the impress
Of silence in their margins. Can’t you see
How I must fight to ward off fluency? –
For instance in this letter here, which I’ve
Composed in celebration. Believe me,
Clive
1993