CC Q 5, AT 80*
By F. BRITTAIN " ANY people," someone said recently, "forget that Q still
lvi finger lists." When this remark reached Q he raised a warning
whispered: " 'Sh! he's dead—but he doesn't want it generally known." The repartee was typical of him, for at the age of 8o he retains all his wit and humour and his ability to laugh at himself. So his old friends find when they revisit him after an absence of decades, and they are not surprised. What does some- times surprise them, however, is the discovery that his annual routine is exactly the same now as it was 30 years ago, each of his years being divided into six parts, spent alternately at Cambridge and Fowey. That Q has sung the praises of Fowey in verse, compiled a
legendary history for it in prose, and also created much of its recent history in reality—all this is well known to thousands who ha-re never seen the place: only those who have been there know that his position in Fowey is unique. When he was mayor in 1938 one heard him addressed as plain "sir," as "Sir Arthur," and as "Your Worship " : one would not have been in the least surprised to hear him addressed as "Your Majesty," for Fowey is a miniature king- dom and Q its king. The relationship between the two is a theme to which only a &ranger could do justice.
A walk with Q along the narrow main street of Fowey is unfor- gettable. Whether he is bound for the barber to get his morning shave, for the Yacht Club to choose the prizes for the annual regatta, or for the Petty Sessions to hear a charge brought against some disciple of Gabriel Foot, he is greeted all the way and stops every few yards to speak to one person or another. They are people of every walk in life, and one cannot help looking at them closely and comparing them in one's mind with Nicky Vro, Caleb Trotter, Simon Colliver, or Miss Marty. Whoder they are, he treats them all with the same grave courtesy and their attitude to him is deferential without being in the least servile. Everyone knows him and he knows everyone—except the holiday-makers who click their cameras as he goes by or call at his house at meal times to ask him to sign copies of The Mayor of Troy, The Astonishing His- tory of Troy Town, or The Delectable Duchy.
Reluctant though he is to leave Fowey and his family, Q has made the journey to Cambridge three times a year for the past 31 years and enjoys academical life to the full as soon as he has settled down for the term. A few days before his arrival a rumour Spreads through Jesus College that his oak is unsported, that the fire is burning in his keeping-room, and that his bedmaker is airing his mattress and pillows.
Next day anyone who peeps into his rooms finds that the dust- sheets have been taken off the book-cases, that the miniature editions of Virgil, Catullus, Horace Walpole, and Rasselas are again piled in a tiny heap in front of the cast of the Hermes of Praxiteles, and that the bedmaker has laid out on the table—each article in- its appointed place—Q's pad of pink blotting-paper, his Silver cigarette-box, his seal at the end of a gold chain, his ivory Paperknife, his big fat stick of red sealing-wax, his inkstand made from a hoof of his son's charger, his note-paper held in place by 'Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch was born on November mt. 1863. a brass Manx cat, and the stout white-metal pen (dating from his undergraduate days) with which he has written all his books since Dead Man's Rock in 1887.
On the third day several big boxes arrive—at least, there were several in peace time. One of them, being full of books, gives some trouble to the porters as they bring it up the sta'rs. On the morning of the fourth day a florist's man arrives with masses of flowers—Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums in October, polyanthus narcissi from the Scilly Isles in January, trumpet daffo- dils and tulips from the Fens in April. A few hours late!' a car drives up to the outer gate of the College: Q steps out and walks up "the Chimney." He is either wearing a grey suit and a grey bowler and carrying a brown bowler in his hand, or he is wearing a brown suit and a brown bowler and carrying a grey one.
Next morning and every morning he can be heard singing as he splashes in the deep square bath in his curious little bathroom. The melody is always the same—one of his own, not yet published. Having finished his bath, he dresses for the morning—without hurrying ; for dressing is to him, like everything he does, a cere- mony which must be carried out properly. No one on earth has ever succeeded in making him rush through anything.
Always the best-dressed man in Cambridge, he is so still. On ordinary mornings he puts on a lounge suit of brighter colours than most men would dare to wear, with a silk handkerchief (of a colour to match the suit) in his breast pocket, a stiff double collar, and a bow tie sown with fairly large white roundels. His dress is much the same on those mornings when he is holding his weekly class on Aristotle's Poetics or the English Moralists. If, however, he is giving one of his less frequent public lectures in the theatre of the Arts School—those lectures which, collected in such volumes as The Art of Reading and The Art of Writing, have carved for them- selves a permanent place in English literature—he puts on dark striped trousers and a tail coat: he is probably the only don in Cambridge who wears full morning dress for lecturing.
The next ceremony is breakfast, which he takes in his rooms. Although he is very particular about the cooking and serving of food, he eats remarkably little at this or any other meal. After breakfast he writes a letter home: throughout 54 years of married life he has written home every day when he has been away. • He then deals with his ordinary correspondence—business letters ; thinly disguised crossword queries ; invitations to criticise poems, to judge competitions, or to write introductions to books ; letters concerned with his magisterial duties at Fowey. Letters of all these kinds arrive in considerable numbers. He answers them all sooner or later, even though he is sometimes moved to refer to their writers as "those devils," and even though once (just before the war began) when he was told that Secret Service agents were opening and reading people's letters he remarked : "They are welcome to read all mine—provided they answer them."
After lunching in Hall he likes to entertain in his rooms anyone else who may have been present at high table. When his guests have gone he reads awhile by the fire, strolls on to the Close to look at a Rugger or cricket match, pays a few calls in the town, takes tea at a café, at the Interim Club, or in his rooms, and then settles down again to reading and writing. Shortly before seven o'clock he changes into a dark suit, regretting meanwhile that dons do not dine in proper evening dress nowadays, goes to Hall, and sets his 'jaw very firmly if the undergraduate who reads the Latin grace is guilty of a false quantity. Unless he has an engagement to keep after dinner he sits for some time in the Combination Room, enter- taining the company with his humour. When he has returned to his rooms, to which his unbounded hospitality invites someone or other almost every evening, a very little persuasion will induce him to talk of his past intimates—of such men as Charles Cannan, Robert Bridges, Thomas Hardy, Kenneth Grahame, and Sir James Barrie. He talks too of gardens, of rowing, and of Fowey—perhaps most of all of Fowey. When the last guest has gone he undresses very slowly in his narrow bedroom, folding each garment methodically and putting it in its proper place. He is soon fast asleep under a framed copy of John Speede's map of Cornwall, with dolphins blowing full-rigged ships along the English Channel home to Fowey.
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