UNDERGRADUATE PAGE

Candide in the Castle

By G. A. HOLMES (St. John's College, Cambridge)

THERE was once a young undergraduate whom, for the sake of simplicity and a certain Central European flavour, we will

call X. His integrity and intelligence were normal, and like most of us he was pursued through life by a group of ghosts. Like all our ghosts they were both decisive and elusive, but we can trace some of them, with a certainty which any sociologist might envy, to the conditions of his upbringing. X had been reared in that suburban stratum where life may be economically precarious but is invariably socially secluded. The dustman, the postman and the bus-conductor were visitants from another universe.

For years this was swallowed up in the childhood mists of other worlds, and it was only when he began to define the geography of his situation, through a career of morbid reading which began with Lawrence of Arabia and rose to the heights of Dostoevsky and the Dadaists, that he was appalled by his own isolation. "We must live for the delight of experience," said the sensualist. "True poetry is born out of the rhythm of labour," said the Marxist. "This is the age of the Common Man," said someone else who could not even be accused of peculiarity. X was certain, if of nothing else, that he was a most uncommon man and quite without experience. And here were all the prophets, from Marx to his favourite modern poets, proclaiming his own incompleteness, until the sense of it became positively oppressive. He had serious fears of living for ever in an imposed seclusion, a living death of remoteness from real life. He began to despise the aesthetes and the scholars, to be mortally afraid of barmcn and shopgirls, and most of all to pity himself.

It is therefore not surprising that, when he received notice one morning to report for military service, he accepted the news with no common resentment, but with a feeling of gratitude to a benevolent Government which had perceived his needs so accurately. Here was an unexpected escalator into the underworld of common men and experience, and he walked through his college that day with the expression of conscious but placid determination common to the moments when we are taking a new step towards perfection. In the course of his normal business X was able to discuss his prospects with a comforting gravity. One of the dons even felt constrained to write him a letter which ended, "For Heaven's sake be careful. Do not let your mind be swamped by the tide of unreason. You cannot imagine how dangerous it is for a young man of your promise to be removed for a period from this refined academic atmosphere. I have even known some men become married in the army."

After reading this, X felt for a time that his career was slipping away from him. I believe he considered quite seriously -the possi- bilities of conscientious objection, until he met a reassuring archaeologist who had no doubt that experience, in moderation, was good for everyone and that his work in the Board of Inland Revenue had given him an invaluable insight into Babylonian local administra- tion. X's confidence was completely restored, however, only by his conversation with the Professor of Comparative Sociology. " X," he said, "you will have leisure for a year or two to do those things for which we can never find time in this harassed life. There are so many things I have always wanted to read—Des Kapital, The Golden Bough, Shakespeare, the Bible. How I should enjoy them! But look at my position! With two lectures a week to prepare on the history of culture, how can I ever hope to have time for anything but specialised reading ? Make the most of it, my boy." This was a new, attractive facet which had scarcely occurred to X. He accepted it with enthusiasm. At the same time he did not forget his original high purpose. If he should one evening chance to read The Golden Bough, it would be with a new sense of understanding and reality.

The first months of his military career were/ absorbed by adjust- ments to the new life. He was tired out by long days of unaccustomed exertion, and, after his work, he could only toy for an hour or so with a volume of The Golden Bough before falling asleep. But, as soon as he became acclimatised, he lost no time in pursuing

his vital purpose by earnest enquiries into the psychology of those representatives of an alien culture around him.

For us, who arc interested only in the turning points, it would be tedious to describe all his adventures in this period. Suffice it to say that he was almost despairing of success when one morning he was informed of his unsuitability to be a normal infantryman and the decision to turn him into an educational instructor. Three stripes were put on his arm, and he was despatched to one of those outposts

of the British Empire several hours by train from London. He arrived to take up his duties with a new sense of mission. He felt

that he had surely discovered the proper way to attain his purpose, and he went for the first interview with his new commander with a resolute smile on his face.

"You will have comparatively little to do," said the Major, "except on Saturday mornings. On Saturday mornings the whole camp is engaged on latrine-cleaning and floor-scrubbing. We usually find that the bulk of this work is finished by 11.30. From 11.30 to 12.30 we have two platoons to spare, and you will give them a lecture. What do you want to talk about ? "

"Well, sir," said X—he was a little taken aback but still determined —" perhaps I could give them a talk about some aspect of con- temporary civilisation, perhaps Russia, describing the changes of thc last thirty years and indicating—this was a subject to which he had given much thought—that Russia is much the same now as it was before the revolution." The Major, whose intellectual curiosity was not over-developed, indicated that though he had always heard it was different, he was prepared to be broad-minded on details of this sort. Nevertheless, X had better stick to something simple, like town councils or the Budget.

And so X began his new life of contact with mankind. From 11.30 to 12.30 every Saturday he spoke, in the tired academic manner which we all adopt when treating of things which do not interest us, to sixty men, less academic but infinitely more tired. For the rest of the week he occupied himself in his office with masses of papers and with counting and recounting the buckets and shovels on his charge. He made rapid progress in arithmetic, typewriting and theft, but he felt no nearer his object, though for a time he expected great things of his clerk, whose illiteracy was superficially fascinating and seemed on further investigation to extend to the very depths of mind. In despair he turned to his leisure hours and in particular to the Sergeants' Mess, where every day he sat in a row of gnarled faces which seemed to have grown older than the Mona Lisa with vice and manual labour. Once he had bridged the inevitable gulf that lay between him and such men—he was still possessed by this curious fantasy—he would find new worlds opened up to him. His delight therefore was almost unrestrained when one evening he managed to engage in conversation one of the more weather-beaten and articulate of his companions. This man was only too willing to recount in horrific detail the stories of his Mediterranean experiences, and eventually arrived at a highly embellished description of nocturnal adventures in Athens. X was delighted. At last Hemingway, if not William Morris, was about to be satisfied. He hastened to loosen the Sergeant's tongue by offering him beer or anything else he liked. The reply hit him like a blow. "Never touch it." said the Sergeant. "The wife wouldn't like it."

We may say that this incident was the turning-point in X's intel- lectual life. He became finally convinced that the object of his enquiry could only elude him like the philosophical problems which had interested his earlier years. As the Warrant Officers with their beer assimilated themselves more and more to the shapes of pro- fessors at sherry parties, he gave less and less attention to his old purpose. Surprisingly, he did not even read The Golden Bough, but found his only pleasure in lying for hours on his bed. Eventually, on account of his general efficiency, he was offered a commission, which he accepted, believing rightly that the beds in the Officers' Mess were softer.

At the end of his military service, he returned to his university. I am told that he lives now clothed in the disillusions of his wasted years, and has long decided, like a more famous predecessor in the art of social observation, to cultivate his own garden. For the la't eighteen months he has been reading The Golden Bough.