The Groves of Academe: A Novel (Transaction Large Print Books) (28 page)

J
OCELYN’S MOOT POETRY CONFERENCE
opened on a fine Friday afternoon in April with the usual difficulties of transportation. Like so many small colleges, Jocelyn had preserved its historic atmosphere at the price of having been passed over by the railroads, the nearest main station being in Harrisburg, twenty-eight miles away. This fact having been made known to the poets, an afternoon train was named, which could be conveniently met by the official welcomers after the last class hour and before the appointed baptism of cocktails at the President’s house—this arrangement, as was pointed out in an official purple hectographed schedule issuing from the President’s office, would give the men poets plenty of time to “get acquainted” with the department and the lady poets time to “wash up.”

Yet the poets, as usual at such affairs, elected to display their individualism and their freedom from the trammels of the academic by ignoring the train suggested and arriving by diverse routes and at different hours of the day. Some came by car too late for the cocktail party, and also for dinner in commons, having stopped, so they said, to explore the cloisters at Ephrata, so that some faculty-wives in their dinner dresses were obliged to turn to and make sandwiches and coffee. One deaf old poet appeared in the morning and spent the whole day wandering about the campus, lonely as a cloud. One, taking unfair advantage of the provision for expenses, arrived by plane in Pittsburgh, whence he telephoned collect for somebody to come and get him; one came on Saturday morning; one did not come at all. The poet of the masses hitchhiked and was picked up on the highway by some students, who carried him off to Gus’s. The English poet arrived in York, unannounced, having discovered a local train that no one else knew existed. One old freedom-loving poet descended from a parlor-car with his wife, who had not been specified in the invoice; this produced a momentary upheaval in the sleeping arrangements, for it had been planned to create a men’s dormitory in Howard Furness’ upstairs and a women’s dormitory at Miss Rejnev’s. The problem was solved at the last moment by Mrs. Fortune’s offer to vacate her apartment—after a number of beds had already been hauled about by members of the baseball team. In short, of the eleven poets who accepted (representing, in many cases, a second choice on the part of the committee, since a number of the original invitees had to decline, citing prior commitments to attend several other poetry conferences being held the same week on The Contemporary Neglect of Poetry), only one, a woman lyricist, arrived at the proper time and place, and this, as it turned out, proved most inconvenient, requiring two special trips on the part of Considine Van Tour in his new red convertible, which could not travel more than twenty miles an hour, for he had failed to recognize, at first blush, in the large woman with the grip, whom he took for one of the church-workers so prevalent in the neighborhood, the subject of the Cecil Beaton photograph that appeared on the back jacket of her books.

Yet in this large, comfortable woman, with tight-drawn bands of black hair and a Sunday-meeting hat, who alighted at long last soughing on Miss Rejnev’s doorstep, he had found much sharp discrimination and a worldly understanding of life. They had had a most rewarding conversation on the trip back, concerning the various factional struggles within the department, which he felt it his duty to apprise her of, lest she be made the victim of a deception; she listened with great acuteness to what he himself feared was a rather confused account of the outrageous behavior of Henry Mulcahy and Herbert Ellison, whom he did not hesitate to warn her against by name; and it pleased him to be able to turn her over to Domna with the assurance, “I leave you
in good hands,
” and see her nod in return, a great, calm, capable nod, like a wink of the universe, that accepted the reliability of her landlady in supra-mundane matters. Meanwhile, other poets, riding perilously in Mulcahy’s swaying old Plymouth, were also “getting to know” the department, an experience they took quite calmly, since it happened to them at every college.

Led upstairs by Domna, to the larger bedroom, the lady poet tried the bed, approved it, asked for a medicine glass, a saucer, an extra pillow and a shoelace; she loosened her corset, looked out the window, inquired the age of the house, the local agricultural product, remarked that she had been born on a farm, and that she would like to press out a skirt—if it were not too much trouble—before the evening session. She then took off the skirt she was wearing, revealing a pair of long pink bloomers, and allowed Domna to persuade her to take a nap while her evening apparel was being ironed. Domna being a slow ironer, and the evening skirt being long and wide, they arrived at the President’s house at seven-fifteen, just as the last poet was leaving; Esther Hoar hastily telephoned commons to save some hot food and a table for four, and to Switchboard to post a notice that the lecture would be fifteen minutes late. The President in his dinner-jacket appeared somewhat distrait, but the guest politely ignored this; she was accustomed to find small colleges on her arrival in a state of tension and disorder, like some small mountainous country on the verge of a revolution. Over the remains of the Christian Brothers’, they leisuredly discussed train schedules, botany, Mennonite customs, agricultural patterns, the Pullman Company, a conversation which tortured the President with the idea that he was being patronized, as though by some stately fellow-passenger in a parlor-car, as they glided into the alien West. It was a peculiarity of this woman poet that she turned her whole body slowly from the waist when addressed by a new interlocutor, as though she were an obliging ear-trumpet maneuvering into position to take account of some strange new noise reaching her from afar; and her discourse also had something of this measured adjustment or focusing. As one of her old friends took pains to assure a group of students later, this was not really a sign of condescension on Harriette’s part, but only a trick of her corseting. Nevertheless, the President, early in the conference, had developed feelings of inferiority; as he sat there, glancing at his wrist-watch, the terrible sensation that he was something infinitely small, at the other end of a telescope, or a very faint, pre-verbal noise assailed him.

What troubled him even more, however, was the fact that the poets, as he observed them gathered together this first night in commons, showed no inclination to discuss poetry. He had imagined something very different—a two-day Platonic banquet of the mind, from which the students might gather the crumbs at the public sessions—but all he could pick up, when he and his party finally took their places in the dining room, was a clamor of personal allusions that made him fear for his eardrums, a good deal of profanity from the younger members, and several unflattering references to members of his own faculty. The only similarity he could detect to Plato’s banquet was that some of the poets seemed to be tipsy, or “high,” as he preferred to call it, genially, and this, despite the fact that acting on Furness’ advice he had decided to serve only sherry, which had elicited, according to Esther, several very rude comments from the corduroy-clad youth element. It occurred to him that some of the poets must have a bottle in their rooms.

Yet, in spite of his apprehensions, which he tried to mute even to himself, believing, as he did, in every man’s right to regulate his own behavior, once he reached the age of discretion, that is, when he graduated from college—so long, he silently stipulated, as the other fellow was not injured—the first or Friday night session went off on the whole pretty well. Alma Fortune was mistress of ceremonies; she wore a low-necked black beaded dress and black jet earrings that served to bring out more worldly gleams in her twinkling personality than the college generally saw. Under her sharp eye, a contingent of youths from Ellison’s Verse-writing who were lounging against one wall slowly took seats toward the rear, where their comments, at any rate, were inaudible, thanks to the overhang of the gallery. In Alma’s introduction, she showed to great advantage, thought the President, that gift for the local allusion that was her strong point as a teacher. A light reference to the mishaps of the afternoon, to the saga of missed connections, led her back to the early history of the college, to the frontier, and thence to the Epic, the topic around which the poets had been asked to frame their remarks. She hoped—with a side-twinkle for the students, to whom this was a twice-told tale—that the hex signs on the neighboring barns would serve to ward off all evil influences from the vicinity and not, as the ignorant sometimes thought, to attract them or indicate their presence. With a glancing hint at the dual function of poetry—as black and white magic—, at the role of the daemonic in art (the Mann students pricked up their ears), and at the witchery of Miss Harriette Mansell’s verse, she gaily sat down, tucked her skirt under her and turned her bright, wizened face, dancing with a thousand expectations, up to Miss Mansell, who strode toward the podium. Miss Mansell was wearing a very high-necked black heavy crepe blouse encrusted with sequins and a long black crepe skirt. There was a patter of applause from the poets, who were seated on benches that gave the effect of choir-stalls on the right-hand side of what had once been an altar and now served as a stage. Several of the poets leaned over to tap a shoulder or whisper in an ear and receive a quick nod in reply, as though in confirmation—it was apparent that Mrs. Fortune’s speech had given satisfaction. The poets, in fact, indicated that they were agreeably surprised by it, a thing which they made no attempt to hide from the audience: they would not, they rudely pantomimed, have expected to find such tactful literacy here. Having thus consulted with each other, like birds on a telephone wire, they unanimously folded their arms and settled down to listen to Miss Mansell’s talk, which proved to be on Virgil.

A faint sigh rustled through the faculty. From the point of view of the student-body, the choice was not a happy one. The majority of the students present had never heard of the person being alluded to as the Mantuan; they supposed he was a modern poet whom their faculty had not yet caught up with—a supposition correct in a sense, as Howard Furness, maliciously grinning, remarked in his slippery voice afterwards. A few scowling scholarship students who had not had the good fortune to be educated progressively moved restlessly in their seats, as though fighting being awakened from a dream to the realities of their old Latin teacher and the abhorrent learning-by-rote. There were stifled cries of “Let me out of here,” “This is where I came in,” and boisterous pummelings and punchings, quieted by a glare from a bright Austrian girl named Lise, who was doing her major project on Hermann Broch and
The Death of Virgil.
Lise’s major project, as the news of it spread around the room, evoked instant respect and attention; heads turned to nod at her approvingly, as though some member of her family had just been mentioned from the dais, and Lise sat blushing joyfully, like a bride. Unfortunately, this dark pretty girl did not understand Latin, which was Miss Mansell’s forte; nevertheless, she strained forward, not wishing to miss a word.

Miss Mansell did indeed read beautifully; she made a majestic Dido, and from her flashing orb and classic bust something of passion and tragic nobility did communicate itself even to those who were unable to appreciate her control of the hexameter. At a whispered request from Mulcahy, who darted up to the podium, she read aloud her own recent translation of the Prince-of-peace eclogue and followed this with a free sight translation of Dido’s speech, a real virtuoso performance, which she finished with streaming locks, moistened eye, and flushed cheek, to a salvo of applause from the poets, which informed even the soundest sleeper in the audience that something stirring had taken place. Even to students who had never seen her published photograph, it was suddenly manifest that she had once been very handsome and had loved in the heroic style, just as they felt something of the Augustan amplitude in the tidal swell of the dactyl breaking on the shoal of the caesura. To Maynard and his wife, the reading had been “a rare treat,” as they exclaimed, coming up to Miss Mansell afterwards; they knew, however, that they would have to pay for it later, at the bench of progressive judgment, for they could see, two rows in front of them, the head of the Social Sciences division vigorously conferring with the head of Natural Sciences—to these two Robespierres there could be no question of the President’s connivance in this reactionary coup of the Literature department; and it was a mark of Maynard’s moral courage, therefore, that he went up, publicly, to shake the hand of the victorious Calliope.

Fortunately for the President, there was an irregularity in the solid front of the Social and Natural Sciences. Dr. Muller, the historian, one of the pillars of the college, had listened to the lecture with the greatest approval. “Fine stuff,” he called out to the President, patently holding him responsible also. Dr. Muller, like many historians, had certain regressive tendencies arising from the nature of his subject, which called forth a tolerance for the past, in the same way that some occupations, like sandhogging, give rise to their own occupational diseases. He had just been reading an article in a learned journal which strove to show, by quotation, that Virgil, far from upholding the centralized tyranny of Augustus, had been secretly a republican oppositionist, giving his poetic sympathy, not to Aeneas, but to the conquered and unfortunate, exemplified by Dido. Hence, he had been in the throes of scholarly anticipation from the very first moment of the lecture, so much so that he had paid little heed to the stated theme—the problems of a heightened language raised by the epic form—and had concentrated all his powers of attention on the moment when, after the lecture, he would sequester the handsome Miss Mansell and put to her the question that was throbbing through his brain: Could the Prince-of-peace eclogue, in the light of these discoveries, be now considered spurious or was it to be read, rather, as a powerful example of irony? When in due course, after the lecture, he did have the opportunity of laying the problem before her, he met with a set-back. Perhaps he had spoken too fast, being, like a boy, so full of his spermy question that he crammed it all into one sentence, without consideration for the lady’s slower pace. But either Miss Mansell did not hear him correctly, as she leaned slowly sideward, like a tronometer, to apprehend his presence, or she did not perceive the cogency of his question for the understanding of the phenomenon of imperialism in our own times. Arrested, no doubt, in an historical phase of the development of language, like a magnificent fly in amber, she took him to be offering some new and purely verbal definition of irony and directed him to somebody named Empson—if he caught the name rightly—and his treatment of the pastoral mode. And her answer was so richly complete in itself, so rounded and duly meditated, that he did not have the heart or the temerity to put the question again. He forgave her, very shortly, from the brisk egoism of his nature, as he had learned to forgive other provocative lecturers and fine students who failed to live up to their promise. Indeed, at the next week’s meeting of the Social Science division, he administered a rebuke to his colleagues; granting, as he said, a certain bias in the handling of the poetry conference, an exception had to be made in the case of Miss Mansell, who had shown, he thought, a fine understanding of the vital relation between democratic principles and sanity in art.