Part 11 (1/2)
Martin loathed and dreaded these hours. Not only did his recent experiences as a prefect compel him to sympathise with the impotent wielder of authority, but he had been attracted by Finney from the first. Finney worked in earnest and without pose or pretension, a fact which set him, in Martin's estimation, on a plane far above Foskett.
He worked for Finney as he never worked for Foskett, and consulted him about his reading: naturally Finney liked Martin and did all he could to help him. On several Sundays Martin went to lunch at the cottage and met Mrs Finney, a pleasant little woman whose beauty was somewhat marred by an expression of perpetual surprise. She was, like her husband, a slight and unimposing figure, and she shrank from the society of the college ladies with their continual ”shop” conversation, partly from shyness and partly from boredom. When she was not looking after her baby she used to play the violin and read _The Bookman_ and _The Studio_. For several hours every week she struggled with accounts and wondered how things would work out: she managed well, and somehow, miraculously, but persistently, they did work out.
She also liked Martin and he would come often to them. In a world that was hard and unsympathetic he was graciously different; he was essentially someone in whom interest could and should be taken, and this was what the Finneys needed. They saw and, after a time, understood his limitations, realising how his intellectual solitude was narrowing his outlook and how his heretical views about politics and life in general were left crude and immature because he dared not p.r.o.nounce them openly and demand criticism. Criticism he lacked, and it was criticism they gave him, not the best perhaps, for the Finneys erred occasionally on the side of excessive culture and preciosity, but such criticism as would turn violence into strength and reveal possibilities of reason and feeling where he had seen before nothing but ignorance and sentimentality.
As Martin was destined for Oxford Finney thought it wise to introduce him to the writing of Belloc. ”You'll get heaps out of him,” he said.
”Of course he goes to extremes, but his criticism of Socialism is the only sane one and worth a million of Mallock and c.o.x and that gang.
And his arguments about religion aren't all nonsense. I don't agree with him” (Finney attended school chapel regularly and was a party Liberal), ”but it's a point of view. And he can write.”
Martin had never considered this outlook on the world before, and, though at times he was angry, he began to read Belloc eagerly, especially the verses. He had often heard his uncle talking about Belloc, but so far he had never troubled to investigate the matter further: now he was glad.
After lunch on Sunday afternoons he would walk with Finney on the downs, and sometimes they would talk about the Public Schools. At first Finney was reticent on their subject, but later he spoke with growing freedom and intimacy.
”It's odd how we get chucked into it,” Finney used to say. ”Everyone says teaching is the most important thing in the world, and they chatter away about training and so on: and yet when it comes to the point they allow their precious boys to be taught by men who are quite untrained for this profession. No master at a Public School has had any technical training or been taught how to see and shape things. He just clears out of the varsity with some debts and a little despair and then starts casually to do what is perhaps the most difficult and important thing in the world. And they don't get the pick of the varsities either: the standard keeps going down. The best men won't do it if they can keep out.”
Finney could not, in the presence of a pupil, finish his indictment as he wished. Had it been possible he would have added: ”The salaries are contemptible and are kept low by the bribe of a house: which in reality means that we have to pinch and sc.r.a.pe now because, if we are lucky, we may be able to make a thousand a year at forty if we don't overfeed our boys.”
”And yet,” suggested Martin, ”don't you think it's rather refres.h.i.+ng to find something left to common-sense. Everything gets into the hands of faddists now. I once met an old lady who spent her life in teaching children how to play. Imagine the cheek of it! You put me on to Belloc and I think he's right about that sort of thing. We don't want too much of the bureaucratic specialist.”
”I quite agree,” said Finney. ”That's the tragedy. Just where spontaneity really does matter, as in children's games, they go blundering in and knock imagination out of their victims, or give them someone else's, which is about the same thing. But just where training might be of some use, they do nothing. The superst.i.tion that a man can teach because he has taken a first in Cla.s.sics at the varsity is childish. I don't claim to know very much now, but when I started my work I was hideously ignorant about the working of boys' minds: I never knew when I was being obvious or when I got beyond them. Of course one picks things up by experience, but it might be done so much better....”
”And then the narrowness,” he rambled on, for he found a good audience in Martin. ”You'll get a first in Mods, if you take the trouble, and by the time you're twenty or twenty-one you'll know all about Athenian law-courts and what the Greek is for a demurrer or a counter-claim, and you'll know all the hard words in Homer and be able to translate Cicero's jokes. You'll cram up a lot of variant readings for your special play and collect a nice set of texts with all the difficult pa.s.sages marked. And when it's all over you'll thank G.o.d and imagine that you've done with it, only to find out that Greats is rather worse and means spotting the words for Egyptian bogwort in Herodotus and getting up the most meaningless bits of gibberish in Thucydides. It's the same all along. A schoolmaster wants to make some money, a don wants to make a name, so out comes a new reading, a new conjecture, a new edition and a thousand other straws of pedantry to be piled on the back of a poor old camel that collapsed years ago.”
”It sounds pretty rotten,” said Martin. ”But I suppose at Oxford one can read and talk freely and follow up the things one likes?”
”Yes, you must do that. Don't get worried about Mods. Are you thinking of the Civil Service?”
”Yes, I suppose so.”
”Well Mods won't matter much. So take up anything you really care for.
That's the only thing in life worth doing, and it may be about the only time in your life when you're able to do it.”
Of course Finney never spoke to Martin about school discipline, but it was not hard for Martin to see that he was very much depressed. His sufferings with the Fourth he might have expected: but that the Upper Sixth should rag childishly was a cruel blow. He was so keenly anxious to take an interest in his work and to make those hours of rapid translation valuable: but everything seemed to go against him.
He went through some Tacitus and Juvenal and Pindar at a great pace amid considerable amus.e.m.e.nt. For Tacitus gave facilities for journalese, Juvenal for obscenity, and Pindar for colossal bathos. In despair Finney turned to the sixth book of the aeneid, ”Just to help your hexameters.” They surely wouldn't rag that.
Yet trouble did break out. One Cartwright, a large, genial, athletic person who expected to get an exhibition at Cambridge for his games, was always to the fore when there seemed any opportunity of baiting Finney. To him fell the Daedalus pa.s.sage at the beginning of the book: his rendering was picturesque and contained such gems as 'Intrepid aeronaut' and 'Bird-man.'
”That's not English and it isn't in the Latin,” said Finney sharply.
”I don't know, sir,” said Cartwright weightily. ”'Praepetibus pennis ausus'--note of daring. Intrepid. Intrepid aeronaut. Why not, sir?
And then 'levis super ast.i.tit'--note of hovering over. Bird-man. Why not, sir?”
Finney paused in silence. The Upper Sixth were t.i.ttering like infants of twelve, with the exception of Martin, who stared self-consciously at his desk, hating every moment and dreading what was to come.
Fortunately Finney controlled his temper and said quickly:
”Don't be childish, Cartwright. Translate, Warren.”