The Master’s campaign to get Roy elected did not make much progress. All decisions in the college had to be taken by a vote of the fellows, who in 1934 numbered thirteen, including the Master himself: and most formal steps, such as electing a fellow, needed a clear majority of the society, that is seven votes.
For various reasons, the Master was not finding it easy to collect seven votes for Roy. First, one old man was ill and could not come to college meetings. Second, the Master was not such a power in the college as in the university; his intimate sarcasms had a habit of passing round, and he had made several irreconcilable enemies, chief among them the Bursar, Winslow, a bitter disappointed man, acid-tongued in a fashion of his own. Third, the Master, fairminded in most ways, could not conceal his dislike and contempt for scientists, and had recently remarked of one deserving candidate “What rude mechanical are we asked to consider now?” The comment had duly reached the three scientific fellows and did not dispose them in favour of the Master’s protégé.
As a result, the political situation in the college was more than usually fluid. For most questions there existed – though no one spoke of it – a kind of rudimentary party system, with a government party which supported the Master and an opposition whose leader was Winslow. When I first arrived, the government party generally managed to find a small majority, by attracting the two or three floating votes. In all personal choices, particularly in elections to fellowships, the parties were not to be relied on, although there were nearly always two hostile cores: the remainder of the college dissolved into a vigorous, talkative, solemn anarchy. It was an interesting lesson in personal politics, which I sometimes thought should be studied by anyone who wanted to take a part in high affairs.
Through the last half of 1934 Winslow and his allies devoted themselves with some ingenuity to obstruction, for which the college statutes and customs gave considerable opportunity. Could the college afford another fellow? If so, ought it not to discuss whether the first need was not for an official rather than a research fellowship? If a research fellowship, was not the first step to decide in which subject it should be offered? Did the college really need another fellow in an out-of-the-way subject? Could it really afford such luxuries, when it did not possess an engineer?
“Fellowships” occurred on the agenda for meeting after meeting in 1934. By the end of the year, the debate had scarcely reached Roy by name. This did not mean that gossip was not circulating against him at high table or in the combination room. But even in private, arguments were phrased in the same comfortable language: “could the college afford…?” “is it in the man’s own best interests…?” It was the public face, it was the way things were done.
Meanwhile, nothing decisive was showing itself in Roy’s life. The months went by; the grammar was published, highly thought of by a handful of scholars; he tired himself each day at the liturgy. He saw Rosalind sometimes in Cambridge, oftener in London; she persuaded him to take her to Pallanza in September, but she had got no nearer marrying him. There were other affairs, light come, light go.
He became a greater favourite with Lady Muriel as the months passed, was more often at the Lodge, and had spent a weekend at Boscastle.
He knew this roused some rancour in the college, and I told him that it was not improving his chances of election. He grinned. Even if he had not been amused by Lady Muriel and fond of her, the thought of solemn head-shaking would have driven him into her company.
Yet he wanted to be elected. He was not anxious about it, for anxiety in the ordinary sense he scarcely knew: any excitement, anything at stake, merely gave him a heightened sense of living. At times, though, he seemed curiously excited when his fortunes in this election rose or fell. It surprised me, for he lacked his proper share of vanity. Perhaps he wanted the status, I thought, if only to gratify his father: perhaps he wanted, like other rich men, to feel that he could earn a living.
At any rate, it mattered to him, and so I was relieved when Arthur Brown took control. The first I heard of the new manoeuvres was when Brown invited me to his rooms on a January evening. It was wet and cold, and I was sitting huddled by my fire when Brown looked in.
“I suppose,” he said, “that you don’t by any chance feel like joining me in a glass of wine? I might be able to find something a bit special. I can’t help feeling that it would be rather cheering on a night like this.”
I went across to his rooms, which were on the next staircase. Though he lived in domestic comfort with his wife and family, those rooms in college were always warm, always welcoming: that night a fire was blazing in the open grate, electric fires were glowing in the corners of the room, rich curtains were drawn, the armchairs were wide and deep. The fire crackled, and on the windows behind the curtains sounded the tap of rain. Brown brought out glasses and a bottle.
“I hope you like marsala on a cold night,” he said. “I’m rather given to it myself as a change. I find it rather fortifying.”
He was a broad plump well-covered man, with a broad smooth pink face. He wore spectacles, and behind them his eyes were small, acute, dark, watchful and very bright. He was the junior of the two tutors, a man of forty-four, though most of the college, lulled by his avuncular kindness, thought of him as older.
He was a man easy to under-estimate, and his colleagues often did so. He was hospitable, comfort-loving, modestly self-indulgent. He disliked quarrels, and was happy when he could compose one among his colleagues. But he was also a born politician. He loved getting his own way, “running things”, manipulating people, particularly if they never knew.
He was content to leave the appearance of power to others. Some of us, who had benefited through his skill, called him “Uncle Arthur”: “the worthy Brown,” said Winslow contemptuously. Brown did not mind. In his own way, deliberate, never moving a step faster than he wanted, talking blandly, comfortably, and often sententiously, he set about his aims. He was by far the ablest manager among the Master’s party. He was a cunning and realistic, as well as a very warm-hearted, man. And in the long run, deep below the good fellowship, he possessed great obstinacy and fortitude.
We drank our wine, seated opposite each other across the fireplace.
“It is rather consoling, don’t you think?” said Brown amiably, as he took a sip. He went on to talk about some pupils, for most of the young men I supervised came into his tutorial side.
He was watching me with his intent, shrewd eyes and quite casually, as though it were part of the previous conversation, he slipped in the question: “You see something of our young friend Calvert, don’t you? I suppose you don’t feel that perhaps we ought to push ahead a bit with getting him considered?”
I said that I did.
Brown shook his head.
“It’s no use trying to rush things, Eliot. You can’t take these places by storm. I expect you’re inclined to think that it could have been better handled. I’m not prepared to go as far as that. The Master’s in a very difficult situation, running a candidate in what people regard as his own subject. No, I don’t think we should be right to feel impatient.” He gave a jovial smile. “But I think we should be perfectly justified, and we can’t do any harm, if we push a little from our side.”
“I’m ready to do anything,” I said. “But I’m so relatively new to the college, I didn’t think it was wise to take much part.”
“That shows very good judgment,” said Brown approvingly. “Put it another way: it’ll be a year or two before you’ll carry as much weight here as some of us would like. But I believe you can dig in an oar about Calvert, if we set about it in the right way. Mind you, we’ve got to feel our steps. It may be prudent to draw back before we’ve gone too far.”
Brown filled our glasses again.
“I’m inclined to think, Eliot,” he went on, “that our young friend could have been elected last term if there weren’t some rather unfortunate personal considerations in the background. He’s done quite enough to satisfy anyone, even if they don’t believe he’s as good as the Master says. They’d have taken him if they’d wanted to, but somehow or other they don’t like the idea. There’s a good deal of personal animosity somehow. These things shouldn’t happen, of course, but men are as God made them.”
“Some of them dislike the Master, of course,” I said.
“I’m afraid that’s so,” said Brown. “And some of them dislike what they’ve heard of our young friend Calvert.”
“Yes.”
“Has that come your way?” His glance was very sharp.
“A little.”
“It would probably be more likely to come to me. Why, Chrystal–” (the Dean, usually Brown’s inseparable comrade in college politics) – isn’t completely happy about what he hears. Of course,” said Brown steadily, “Calvert doesn’t make things too easy for his friends. But once again men are as God made them, and it would be a damned scandal if the college didn’t take him. I’m a mild man, but I should feel inclined to speak out.”
“What do you think we should do?”
“I’ve been turning it over in my mind,” said Brown. “I can’t help feeling this might be an occasion to take the bull by the horns. It occurs to me that some of our friends won’t be very easy about their reasons for trying to keeping him out. It might be useful to force them into the open. I have known that kind of method take the edge off certain persons’ opposition in a very surprising way. And I think you can be very useful there. You’re not so committed to the Master’s personal way of looking at things as some of us are supposed to be – and also you know Getliffe better than any of us.”
Under his stately, unhurried deliberations Brown had been getting down to detail – as he would say himself, he had been “counting heads”.
“I suggest those might be our tactics for the time being,” said Brown. “We can wait for a convenient night, when some of the others who don’t see eye to eye with us are dining. Then we’ll have a bottle of wine and see just how unreasonable they’re prepared to be. We shall have to be careful about tackling them. I think it would be safer if you let me make the pace.”
Brown smiled: “I fancy there’s a decent chance we shall get the young man in, Eliot.” Then he warned me, as was his habit at the faintest sign of optimism: “Mind you, I shan’t feel justified in cheering until we hear the Master reading out the statute of admission.”
Brown studied the dining list each day, but had to wait, with imperturbable patience, some weeks before the right set of people were dining. At last the names turned up – Despard-Smith, Winslow, Getliffe, and no others. Brown put himself down to dine, and told the kitchen that I should be doing the same.
It was a Saturday night towards the end of term. As we sat in hall, nothing significant was said: from the head of the table, Despard-Smith let fall some solemn comments on the fortunes of the college boats in the Lent races. He was a clergyman of nearly seventy, but he had never left the college since he came up as an undergraduate. He had been Bursar for thirty years, Winslow’s predecessor in the office. His face was mournful, harassed and depressed, and across his bald head were trained a few grey hairs. He was limited, competent, absolutely certain of his judgment, solemn, self-important and self-assured. He could make any platitude sound like a moral condemnation. And, when we went into the combination room after hall, he won a battle of wills upon whether we should drink claret or port that night.
Brown had been at his most emollient in hall, and had not given any hint of his intention. As soon as we arrived in the combination room, he asked permission to present a bottle, “port or claret, according to the wishes of the company”.
Brown himself had a taste in claret, and only drank port to be clubbable. Francis Getliffe and I preferred claret, but were ready to drink port. But none of the three of us had any say.
We had sat ourselves at the end of the long, polished, oval table; glasses were already laid, sparkling in the light, reflected in the polished surface of the wood; the fire was high.
“Well, gentlemen,” said Despard-Smith solemnly, “our c-colleague has kindly offered to present a bottle. I suppose it had better be a bottle of port.”
“Port?” said Winslow. “Correct me if I am wrong, Mr President, but I’m not entirely certain that is the general feeling.”
His mouth had sunk in over his nutcracker jaw, and his nose came down near his upper lip. His eyes were heavy-lidded, his face was hollowed with ill-temper and strain; but his skin was healthy, his long body free and active for a man of nearly sixty. There was a sarcastic twitch to his lips as he spoke: as usual he was caustically polite, even when his rude savage humour was in charge. His manners were formal, he had his own perverse sense of style.
Most of the college disliked him, yet all felt he had a kind of personal distinction. He had done nothing, had not published a book, was not even such a good Bursar as Despard-Smith had been, though he worked long hours in his office. He was a very clever man who had wasted his gifts. Yet everyone in the college was flattered if by any chance they drew a word of praise from him, instead of a polite bitter snub.
“I’ve always considered,” said Despard-Smith, “that claret is not strong enough for a dessert wine.”
“That’s very remarkable,” said Winslow. “I’ve always considered that port is too sweet for any purpose whatsoever.”
“You would s-seriously choose claret, Bursar?”
“If you please, Mr President. If you please.”
Despard-Smith looked round the table lugubriously.
“I suppose no one else follows the Bursar in pressing for claret. No. I think–” he said triumphantly to the butler – “we must have a bottle of port.”
Francis Getliffe grinned at me, the pleasant grim smile which creased his sunburned face. He was two years older than I, and a friend of mine since we met in a large London house years before. It was through him that, as I explained earlier, I came to the college at all. We were not intimates, but we thought alike in most arguments and usually found ourselves at one, without any need to talk it over, over any college question. He was a physicist, with an important series of researches on the upper atmosphere already published: he was a just, thin-skinned, strong-willed, and strenuously ambitious man.
The port went round, Despard-Smith gravely proposed Brown’s health; Brown himself asked one or two quiet, encouraging questions about Winslow’s son – for Winslow was a devoted father, and his son, who had entered the college the previous October, roused in him extravagant hopes: hopes that seemed pathetically extravagant, when one heard his blistering disparagement of others.
Then Brown, methodically twirling his wineglass, went on to ask: “I suppose none of you happen to have thought any more about the matter of electing R C E Calvert, have you? We shall have to decide one way or the other some time. It isn’t fair to the man to leave him hanging in mid-air for ever.”
Winslow looked at him under hooded eyes.
“I take it you’ve gathered, my dear Tutor, that the proposal isn’t greeted with unqualified enthusiasm?”
“I did feel,” said Brown, “that one or two people weren’t altogether convinced. And I’ve been trying to imagine why. On general grounds, I should have expected you to find him a very desirable candidate. Myself, I rather fancy him.”
“I had the impression you were not altogether opposed,” said Winslow.
Brown smiled, completely good-natured, completely undisturbed. “Winslow, I should like to take a point with you. I think you’ll admit that everything we’ve had on paper about Calvert is in his favour. Put it another way: he’s been as well spoken of as anyone can be at that age. What do you feel is the case against him?”
“A great deal of the speaking in his favour,” said Winslow, “has been done by our respected Master. I have considerable faith in the Master as an after-dinner speaker, but distinctly less in his judgment of men. I still remember his foisting O’Brien on us–” It was thirty years since Royce supported O’Brien, and there had been two Masters in between; but O’Brien had been a continual nuisance, and colleges had long memories. I felt all Winslow’s opposition to Roy lived in his antagonism to the Master. He scarcely gave a thought to Roy as a human being, he was just a counter in the game.
“Several other people have written nearly as highly of Calvert,” said Brown. “I know that in a rather obscure subject it’s difficult to amass quite as much opinion as we should all like–”
“That’s just it, Brown,” said Francis Getliffe. “He’s clearly pretty good. But he’s in a field which no one knows about. How can you compare him with a lad like Luke, who’s competing against some of the ablest men in the world? I’m not certain we ought to take anyone in these eccentric lines unless they’re really extraordinarily good.”
“I should go a long way towards agreeing with you,” said Brown. “Before I came down in favour of Calvert, I satisfied myself that he was extraordinarily good.”
“I’m not convinced by the evidence,” said Francis Getliffe.
Despard-Smith intervened, in a tone solemn, authoritative and damning: “I can’t be satisfied that it’s in the man’s own best interests to be elected here. I can’t be satisfied that he’s suited to collegiate life.”
“I don’t quite understand, Despard,” said Brown. “He’d be an asset to any society. He was extremely popular as an undergraduate.”
“That only makes it worse,” said Despard-Smith. “I can’t consider that our fellowships ought to be f-filled by young men of fashion. I’m by no means happy about Calvert’s influence on the undergraduates, if we took the very serious risk of electing him to our society.”
“I can’t possibly take that view,” said Brown. “I believe he’d be like a breath of fresh air.”
“You can’t take Despard’s view, can you?” I asked Francis Getliffe across the table.
“I shouldn’t mind what he was like, within reason,” said Francis, “so long as he was good enough at his stuff.”
“But you’ve met him several times,” I said. “What did you think of him?”
“Oh, he’s good company. But I should like to know what he really values. Or what he really wants to do.”
I realised with a shock, what I should have seen before, that there was no understanding or contact between them. There was an impatient dismissal in Francis’ tone: but suddenly, as though by a deliberate effort of fair-mindedness and responsibility, he turned to Despard-Smith.
“I ought to say,” he remarked sharply, “that I should think it wrong to vote against him on personal grounds. If he’s good enough, we ought to take him. But I want that proved.”
“I cannot think that he’d be an acquisition,” said Despard-Smith. “When he was an undergraduate, I soon decided that he had no sense of humour. He used to come up to me and ask most extraordinary questions. Quite recently he sent me a ridiculous book by an unsatisfactory young man called Udal.”
“I expect he was just showing his respect,” said Brown.
“In that case,” said Despard-Smith, “he should do it in a more sensible fashion. No, I think he would have a l-lamentable effect on the undergraduates. It’s impossible to have a fellow who might attract undesirable notice. He still has women to visit him in his rooms. I can’t think that it would be in his own interests to elect him.”
This was sheer intuitive hostility. Some obscure sense warned the old clergyman that Roy was dangerous. Nothing we could say would touch him: he would stay implacably hostile to the end. Brown, always realistic and never willing to argue without a purpose, gave him up at once.
“Well, Despard,” he said, “we must agree to differ. But I should like to take a point or two with you others.”
“If you please, my dear Tutor,” said Winslow. “I find it more congenial hearing it from you than from our respected Master. Even though you spend a little longer over it.”
Patiently, steadily, never ruffled, Brown went over the ground with them. Neither had shifted by the end of the evening: afterwards, Brown and I agreed that Winslow could only be moved if Roy ceased to be the Master’s protégé, but that Francis Getliffe was fighting a prejudice and was not irretrievably opposed. We also agreed that it was going to be a very tight thing: we needed seven votes, we could see our way to five or six, but it was not certain where the others were coming from.
Through most of the Easter term, Arthur Brown was busy with talks, deliberate arguments, discussions on tactics, and bargains. It became clear that he could count on five votes for certain (the Master, Brown and myself; the senior fellow, who was a very old man; and the Senior Tutor, Jago). Another elderly fellow could almost certainly be relied upon, but he would be abroad all the summer, and votes had to be given in person. In order to get a majority at all, Brown needed either his friend Chrystal or mine, Getliffe; in order to force an issue during the summer, he needed both. There were talks in all our rooms, late into summer nights. Chrystal might come in, reluctantly and ill-temperedly, as a sign of personal and party loyalty: I could not use those ties with Francis Getliffe, who prided himself on his fairness and required to be convinced.
Brown would not be hurried. “More haste, less speed,” he said comfortably. “If we have a misfire now, we can’t bring our young friend up again for a couple of years.” He did not propose to take an official step until he could “see his votes”. By statute, a fellowship had to be declared vacant before there could be any election. Brown could have collected a majority to vote for a vacancy: but it was not sensible to do so, until he was certain it could not be filled by anyone but Roy.
These dignified, broad-bottomed, middle-aged talks went on, seemingly enjoyed by most of those engaged. For they loved this kind of power politics, they knew it like the palm of their hands, it was rich with its own kind of solid human life. It was strange to hear them at work, and then see the subject of it all walk lightly through the college. There was a curious incongruity that he of all men should be debated on in those comfortable, traditional, respectable, guarded words: I felt it often when I looked at him, his white working coat over a handsome suit, reading a manuscript leaf at his upright desk: or watched him leave in his car, driving off to his London flat to meet Rosalind or another: or saw his smile, as I told him Arthur Brown’s latest move – “extremely statesman-like, extremely statesman-like,” mimicked Roy, for it was Brown himself who liked to use the word.
As a research student and ex-scholar, Roy was invited to the college’s summer feast. This took place near the first of June and was not such a great occasion as the two great feasts of the year, the audit and the commemoration of benefactors. The foundation plate was not brought out; nevertheless, on the tables in the hall silver and gold glittered in the candlelight. Well above the zone of candlelight, high towards the roof of the hall, the windows glowed with the light of the summer evening all the time we sat there and ate and drank. The vintages were not the college’s finest, but they were good enough; the food was lavish; as the high windows slowly darkened and the candles flickered down, the faces round one shone out, flushed, bright-eyed, and content.
It was to this feast that the college invited a quota of old members each year, selected at random from the college lists. As junior fellow, I was sitting at the bottom of one of the two lower tables, with an old member on each hand: Roy came next to one of these old members, with a fellow of another college on his left. It seemed that he decided early that the fellow was capable of looking after himself; from the first courses he devoted himself to making the old member happy, so that I could concentrate on the one on my right. With half an ear I kept listening to Roy’s success. His old member was a secondary schoolmaster of fifty, with a sensitive, unprepossessing, indrawn face. One felt that he had wanted much and got almost nothing. There was a streak of plain silliness in him, and failure had made him aggressive, opinionated, demanding. I tried, but he put me off before I could get close: in a few moments, he was giving advice to Roy, as an experienced man to a younger, and there was brilliance in the air. Roy teased him simply, directly, like a brother. It was all spontaneous. Roy had found someone who was naked to life. He laughed at his aggressiveness, stopped him when he produced too many opinions, got him back to his true feeling. Before the end of dinner Roy was promising to visit the school, and I knew he would.
The feast ended, and slowly the hall cleared as men rose and went by twos and threes into the combination room. At my table we were still sitting. Roy smiled at me. His eyes were brilliant, he was gay with wine, he looked at his happiest.
“It’s a pity we need to move, old boy,” he said.
On our way out, we passed the high table on the dais, where a small group was sitting over cigars and a last glass of port. Roy was whispering to me, when Chrystal called out: “Eliot! I want you to meet our guest.”
He noticed Roy, and added: “You too, Calvert! I want you all to meet our guest.”
Chrystal, the Dean, was a bald, beaky, commanding man, and “our guest” had been brought here specially that evening. He was an eminent surgeon to whom the university was giving an honorary degree in two days’ time. He sat by Chrystal’s side, red-complexioned, opulent, self-assured, with protruding eyes that glanced round whenever he spoke to make sure that all were listening. He nodded imperially to Roy and me, and went on talking.
“As I was saying, Dean,” he remarked loudly, “I feel strongly that a man owes certain duties to himself.”
Roy was just sitting down, after throwing his gown over the back of a chair. I caught a glint in his eyes. That remark, the whole atmosphere of Anstruther-Barratt, was a temptation to him.
“And those are?” said Chrystal respectfully, who worshipped success in any form.
“I believe strongly,” said Anstruther-Barratt, “that one ought to accept all the recognition that comes to one. One owes it to oneself.”
He surveyed us all.
“And yet, you wouldn’t believe it,” he said resonantly, “but I am quite nervous about Friday’s performance. I don’t feel I know all there is to be known about your academic things.”
“Oh, I think I should believe it,” said Roy in a clear voice. His expression was dangerously demure.
“Should you?” Anstruther-Barratt looked at him in a puzzled fashion.
“Certainly,” said Roy. “I expect this is the first time you’ve tried it–”
Roy had a grave, friendly look, and spoke as though Anstruther-Barratt was taking an elementary examination.
It was just possible that he did not know that Anstruther-Barratt was receiving an honorary degree. Chrystal must have thought it possible, for, looking on in consternation, he tried to break in.
“Calvert, I suppose you know–”
“Is it the first time?” Roy fixed the bold protruding eyes with a gaze brilliant, steady, acute, from which they seemed unable to escape.
“Of course it is. One doesn’t–”
“Just so. It’s natural for you to be nervous,” said Roy. “Everyone’s nervous when they’re trying something for the first time. But you know, you’re lucky, being a medical – I hope I’m right in thinking you are a medical?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t matter so much, does it? There’s nothing so fatal about it.”
Anstruther-Barratt looked badgered and bewildered. This young man appeared to think that he was a medical student up for an examination. He burst out: “Don’t you think I look a bit old to be–”
“Oh no,” said Roy. “It makes you much more nervous. You need to look after yourself more than you would have done twenty years ago. You oughtn’t to do any work between now and Friday, you know. It’s never worth while, looking at books at the last minute.”
“I wish you’d understand that I haven’t looked at books for years, young man.”
“Calvert,” Chrystal began again.
“You’ve done much more than you think,” said Roy soothingly. “Everyone feels as you do when it comes to the last day.”
“Nonsense. I tell you–”
“You must believe me. It’s not nonsense. We’ve all been through it.” Roy gave him a gentle, serious smile. “You ought to spend the day on the river tomorrow. And don’t worry too much. Then go in and win on Friday. We’ll look out for your name in the Reporter.”