The Casual Ward: Academic and Other Oddments

This happens when you draw Yourself.
Or—I should say—it happens when
Such portraits are essayed by Men:
For presently a Lady came
And did substantially the same.
(Let everyone peruse this sequel
Who dreams that Man is Woman’s equal),—
She with a hand divinely free
Drew what she thought herself to be:
It did not much resemble Her
In moral strength or mental stature—
Yet did the critics all aver
It simply teemed with Human Nature!

* * * * *

Pots are long and life is fleeting;
Artists, when their subjects treating,
Should be very, very far
Carefuller than now they are.

When by efforts literary you might scale the summits airy
   Which the eminent in fiction are ascending every day,
Why obscurely crawl and grovel?—I will write (I said) a Novel!
   So I started and I planned it in the ordinary way.

I’d a Heroine—a creature of resplendent form and feature,
   With a spell in every motion and a charm in every look:
I’d a Villain—worse than Nero,—I’d a most superior Hero:
   And the host of minor persons which is needed in a book:

What a wealth of meaning inner in the things they said at dinner!
   How their conversation sparkled (like the ripples on the deep),
Half disclosing, half concealing a Profundity of Feeling
   Which would move the gay to laughter and incite the grave to weep!

There they stood in grace and vigour, each imaginary figure,
   Each a masterpiece of drawing for the world to wonder at:
There was really nothing more I had to find but just the story,
   Nothing more, but just the story—but I couldn’t think of that.

How a Barrie or a Kipling guides the maiden and the stripling
   Till they’re ultimately landed in the matrimonial state,—
And they die, or else they marry (in a Kipling or a Barrie)
   Just as if the thing was ordered by unalterable Fate,—

While with me, alas! to balance my innumerable talents,
   There’s a fatal imperfection and a melancholy blot:
All the forms of my creating stand continually waiting
   For a charitable person to provide them with a Plot!

Hail, Terminology! celestial Maid!
Portress of Science, Guide to Art and Trade!
I see Democracy—an ardent Band
Who fain would read yet wish to understand—
Compell’d that Goal in alien Tongues to seek,
Fly for Relief to Necessary Greek,
Claim as their Right (advised by Mr. Snow)
The sweet Simplicity of ὁ ἡ τό,—
While Dons con English till they’re pale and lean,
And Candidates in Mods do English for Unseen!

Relate, my Muse, the fame of him
   Whose calling and peculiar mission
It was to wage with courage grim
   A battle ’gainst effete Tradition!
When Movements moved, with holy zest
   He scaled the breach and led the stormers,—
And was among the first and best
   Of Educational Reformers.

He saw the Boy at Public Schools
   Regard his books with fear and loathing,
From Latin’s arbitrary rules
   Deriving practically nothing:—
He said,—“O bounding human Boys,
   Of all the fare whereon you batten,
What chiefly mars your simple joys?”
   With one accord they answered “Latin!”

They sought for Scientific Truth,
   And pedagogues with books and birches
Guided the faltering steps of Youth
   In biological researches:
The infant in his nurse’s care
   In Science’ terms was taught to stammer:
They practised vivisection where
   They used to cut their Latin grammar;

’Twas all in vain—the Human Boy
   Remained unalterably chilly:
Still less than Virgil’s tale of Troy
   He liked compulsory bacilli!
Much grieved the Zealot was thereat:—
   “We’ll try,” he said, “a course of Spelling” . . .
But O, the way they hated that
   Quite overcomes my power of telling!

“Within the Boy’s aspiring brain
   For Study still there lies a craving,
And what is won against the grain
   Is never really worth the having;
This boasted Categorical
   Imperative is clearly vicious,—
Pastors and masters, one and all,
   Must ascertain their pupils’ wishes!”

And now those simple human Boys,—
   All, to a boy, for Culture yearning,—
No pedagogues with idle noise
   Impede upon the path of Learning:—
Released from books and teachers both,
   No intellectual pastures feed ’em;
And, if they lose in mental growth,
   Think how they gain in moral freedom!

Of a Cheerful Hope.

Whene’er you do to Meetings go, as many such there be
(And few and far those persons are who home return to tea),
Then take with you this principle, to cheer you on your way—
The less there is to talk about, the more there is to say.

Of an Exordium.

Consult your hearers’ happiness, and state for their relief
That you’ll avoid prolixity and study to be brief:
For if you can’t be brief at once, ’twill comfort them to know
That you’ll arrive at brevity in half an hour or so.

Should e’er the Chairman censure you, as Chairmen oft will do,
And tell you that you miss the point, and bid you keep thereto,
(Though points are things, by Euclid’s law, that always must be missed—
They have no parts or magnitude, and therefore don’t exist)—
Obey at once the Chairman’s hest (because, as you’re aware,
It is a most improper thing to argue with the Chair),
Accept his ruling patiently, without superfluous fuss,
And state the things you might have said—unless he’d ruled it thus.

Of a Peroration.

And when you’ve spent your arguments yet somehow still go on
(It shows a want of enterprise to stop because you’ve done),
Don’t search about for topics new or vex your weary brain,
But take what someone else has said and say it all again.

And when at last your speech is o’er, be careful if you can
That none may hint—a horrid charge—that you’re a Party Man:
So speak for this and speak for that as blithely as you may,
But keep your mental balance true, and
            Vote the other Way.

Two youths there were in days of yore
   Called Jones and Robinson.
Jones had abilities galore,
   While Robinson had none.

They met with corresponding fates:
   And Jones, that genius proud,
Obtained in time a First in Greats:
   While Robinson was ploughed.

Jones hoped that mental gifts like his
   Might gain a Fellowship:
But ah! full many a slip there is
   Between the cup and lip:

“You have a brain,” the College said,
   “Which unassisted soars:
’Tis not for Colleges to aid
   Abilities like yours!

He tried the Press: he tried the Bar:
   But still the Bar and Press
Said, “Not for him our openings are
   Whose gifts ensure success:

Such posts are meant (’tis justice plain)
   For those unhappy chaps
(Like Robinson) whom lack of brain
   Unfairly handicaps!”

And now—yet check the rising tear:
   It seems that long ago
Those Founders whom we all revere
   Meant it to happen so—

Some lack of necessary food,
   All in a garret lone,
Has ended Jones.  I thought it would.
   But Robinson’s a Don.

By Lambda Minus

A rumour and rumbling volcanic
   Is heard in the Radical Press,
And Presidents tremble in panic
   And Wardens their terrors confess:
How each with anxiety shivers,
   The Dean with his fines and his gates,
The ruffian who ragged me in Divvers,
   The pedant who ploughed me in Greats!

The doctrines degrading they taught, and
   The Progress they nipped in the bud:
The things that they did when they oughtn’t
   And failed to perform when they should:
The Questions prevented from burning,
   The Movements forbidden to move,
Recoil on their centres of learning,
   Their Parks and the System thereof!

And now when the Party of Labour,
   Asserting its virtuous sway,
Annexes the wealth of its neighbour
   In Labour’s traditional way,—
When purged of its various abuses
   By Birrell’s beneficent rule,
This haunt of the obsolete Muses
   Is changed to a charity school,—

When Fellows and bloated Professors
   Their stipends are forced to disgorge,
(Obeying the fiat of Messrs.
   Keir Hardie and Burns and Lloyd George)
Deprived by the wrath of the Nation
   Of all their unmerited aids,
Perhaps to escape from starvation
   They’ll take to respectable trades!

(“Education differs from technical training.”—Expert opinion in a letter to the Times.)

Not in vain with quaint devices
   Infants of the age of four
Build their mimic edifices
   All upon the nursery floor;
Neither is the presage missed
By the Educationist,
When he doth the fact recall
How that Balbus built a wall!

Thus I mused on such-like theses,
   While my errant fancy swam
Through the circumambient breezes
   To the silver streams of Cam,—
There observed with pleased surprise
Ancient Universities
Still in touch at every stage
With the Progress of the Age;

There they tell their College Porters
   Not to think it strange or odd
When a load of bricks and mortar’s
   Dumped within the College quad;
No indignant Tutor hauls
Him who scales the College walls,—
Plying on that airy perch
Architectural Research!

Thus I sang: I seemed to see an
   Epoch made, the Future’s guide;
But my glad exultant pæan
   Was not wholly justified:
Men whose names we all revere,
Stars in Architecture’s sphere,
Phrases used which don’t imply
Any genuine sympathy:

What! and must a thwarted Nation
   Draw the obvious inference?
What! a Liberal Education
   Doesn’t mean the quest of pence?
(Really, this extremely crude
Obscurantist attitude
Isn’t quite what one expects
From distinguished Architects!)

Here’s another dear illusion
   Reft away and wholly gone:
O the spiritual confusion
   Of the pained progressive Don!
If the facts are quite correct
As regards the Architect,
Comes the question, plain and clear,
How about the Engineer?

Now is the time when everything is glad,
Their vernal greenery the fields renew,
   Each feathered songster chants with livelier tone,
And lambkins leap and cloudless skies are blue,
   And all is gay and cheerful:—I alone
         Am singularly sad;
Mine erstwhile happiness and calm content
   Yields to a sense of sorrowful surprise:
   Things that I thought were thus, are otherwise:
And all is grief, and disillusionment.

Where is it, Comrades! in this direful day—
That noble zeal for academic lore,
   That reverence due for discipline, in which
He used to shine conspicuously o’er
   The Brainless Athlete and the Idle Rich?
      O, does he now display
That ample breadth of calm impartial view,
   That sober judgment and that balanced mind,
   Which we were taught that we should always find,
O R---skin College, domiciled in you?

I have a Pupil: when his mental food
Fails (as it will) his appetite to sate,
   What! does that patient much-enduring elf
Proclaim a strike? set pickets at my gate?
   Boycott my lectures? give them for himself?
      (Full oft I wish he would:)
Nay—when he finds those lectures dull and flat,
   He asks no other: new ones might be worse:
   Too well he knows that Cosmos’ ordered course
Meant him to hear, and me to talk like that.

’Twas all illusion: they would feed you with
Mere talks on Temperance: when your spirit’s wings
   Would soar to Sociology alone,
Whereby will come that blessed state of things
   When none has property to call his own,
      They give you—Adam Smith . . .
These too are fall’n: ah me, that I should live
   To hear our brightest Radicals and best
   By angry Labour in such terms addressed
As might apply to a Conservative!

Yea, if ye scorn our learning overmuch,
Misguided sons of horny-handed toil!
   Yet discontented with your lowly lot
Still pine to burn the sad nocturnal oil
   ’Mid academic culture, or ’mid what
      Describes itself as such—
Go elsewhere, O my brothers! only go
   To Bath, to Birmingham—where’er the Don
   Teaches the sacred art of Getting On,——
—It is not far from here to Jericho.

It is Research of which I sing,
Research, that salutary thing!
None can succeed, in World or Church,
Who does not prosecute Research:
   For some read books, and toil thereat
      Their intellect to waken:
   But if you think Research is that
      You’re very much mistaken.

All in Columbia’s blesséd States
They have no Smalls, or Mods, or Greats,
Nor do their faculties benumb
With any cold curriculum:
   O no! for there the ambitious Boy,
      Released from schools and birches,
   At once pursues with studious joy
      Original Researches:

On books to pore is not the kind
Of thing to please the serious mind,—
I do not very greatly care
For such unsatisfying fare:
   To seek the lore that in them lurks
      Would last ad infinitum:
   Let others read immortal works,—
      I much prefer to write ’em!

When I ponder o’er the pages of the old romantic ages, ere the world grew cold and gray,
When there wasn’t a relation between Oxford and the Nation, or a Movement every day,
How I marvel at the glamour (in these duller days and tamer) which informed those scenes of glee,
At the glamour and the glory of contemporary story, and the Eights as they used to be!

It is obvious that the weather must have differed altogether from the kind that now we know:
I arise from reading Fiction with the permanent conviction that it did not hail, nor snow:
For each fair and youthful charmer had a summer sun to warm her and a bran new frock and hat,—
In the progress of the lustres, when the crowd of Fashion musters it has grown too wise for that.

He could row devoid of training, and (it hardly needs explaining) got a quite unique degree:
With his blushing honours laden, he espoused a lovely maiden at the end of Volume Three:
This alone he had to grieve for—that he’d nothing more to live for, or expect from Fortune’s whim:
For I never could discover, when his Oxford days were over, what the world could hold for him!

O the rapture singlehearted of that Period has departed, with its views ornate of Man,
And I think it won’t come back till we restore the Pterodactyl, or revive the late Queen Anne:
We have grown in mental stature, and we Go Direct to Nature, in these days of stress and strife,
And the hero of a novel in a palace or a hovel is intolerably True to Life:—

* * * * *

   Thus the Hero’s happy fate
Keeps in store a blissful state,
All adown the Future dim,
Nearly worthy e’en of Him!

Dear Youth! whose wealth and lineage high
   Each outward sign denotes,
The highly fashionable tie,
   The latest thing in coats—
Imprinted on whose candid brow
   No gazer could detect
(As e’en your enemies allow)
   The Pride of Intellect—

Who, ’spite your want of mental scope
   And lack of Serious Aim,
Still left us, as we dared to hope,
   More pensive than you came,
And thus at least, while critics vied
   In pointing out our flaws,
For our continuance supplied
   A kind of Final Cause:—

Ah! what avail the things that went
   To build your prosperous lot,
The ample cash, the long descent,
   The athlete’s frequent pot,
The waistcoat bright of ardent red
   Or fascinating green,
The social charm that captive led
   The Provost, and the Dean?

I see the Cherwell’s peaceful flood,
   I see the courts of King’s
Invaded by a student brood
   Which knows all kinds of things—
A crowd with high desires replete,
   Whose recreations are
To sit at Professorial feet
   And join a Seminar:

Lo, where yon undistinguished grave
   Erects its grassy pile on
One who to all Experience gave
   An Alpha or Epsilon!

The world and eke the world’s content,
   And all therein that passes,
With marks numerical (per cent.)
   He did dispose in classes:

Not his to ape the critic crew
   Which vulgarly appraises
The Good, the Beautiful, the True
   In literary phrases:

He did his estimate express
   In terms precise and weighty,—
And Vice got 25 (or less,)
   While Virtue rose to 80.

Bring papers on his grave to strew
   Amid the grass and clover,
And plant thereby that pencil blue
   Wherewith he looked them over!

There, freed from every human ill
   And fleshly trammels gross, he
Lies in his resting-place until
   The final Viva Voce:

So let him rest till crack of doom
   Of mortal tasks aweary,—
And nothing write upon his tomb
   Save β—(?).

the end

printed by william clowes and sons, limited, london and beccles.

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