Anglo-Saxon Attitudes Read online

  ANGLO-SAXON ATTITUDES

  Angus Wilson

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published by Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd 1956 Published in Penguin Books 1958 15 17 19 20 18 16

  Copyright 1956 by Angus Wilson All rights reserved

  Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic Filmset in Bembo

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  FOR CHRIS AND PAT

  'What curious attitudes he goes into!'

  'Not at all,' said the King. 'He's an Anglo-Saxon Messenger - and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He only does them when he's happy.'

  Through the Looking-Glass

  CHARACTERS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE

  Gerald Middleton: Professor Emeritus of early medieval history.

  Rose Lorimer: Senior lecturer in medieval history.

  Clarissa Crane: A novelist.

  Professor Clun: Professor of medieval history.

  Mrs Clun: His wife.

  Theo Roberts: Assistant lecturer in history.

  Jasper Stringwell-Anderson: Lecturer in history.

  Sir Edgar Iffley: President of the Historical Association of Medievalists.

  Professor Pforzheim: Professor of medieval history in the University of Halle.

  Mrs Salad: Former ladies' cloakroom attendant and ex-charlady of Gerald Middleton.

  Frank Rammage: Property owner in Earl's Court.

  Vin Salad: A waiter, grandson of Mrs Salad.

  Larrie Rourke: An Irish boy.

  Elvira Portway: Secretary to John Middleton and mistress of Robin

  Middleton. Granddaughter of Lilian Portway.

  John Middleton: A radio celebrity and journalist, younger son of Gerald Middleton.

  Robin Middleton: A company director, elder son of Gerald Middleton.

  Marie Hélène: His wife.

  Timothy: Their son.

  Lilian Portway: An ex-actress and suffragette, grandmother to Elvira.

  Stéphanie Houdet: Companion to Lilian Portway and aunt of Marie Hélène Middleton.

  Yves Houdet: Her son.

  Mr Barker: Once coachman and chauffeur to Lilian Portway and her brother-in-law, Canon Portway.

  Alice Cressett: His daughter.

  Harold Cressett: Her husband. A market-gardener.

  Maureen Kershaw: His daughter by his first marriage.

  Derek Kershaw: Her husband. A former naval petty officer, now a garage proprietor.

  Ingeborg Middleton: Wife of Gerald Middleton.

  Kay Consett: Their daughter.

  DONALD CONSETT: Her husband. A sociologist.

  LARWOOD: Gerald Middleton's chauffeur.

  MRS LARWOOD: His wife. Housekeeper to Gerald Middleton.

  DOLLIE STOKESAY: Widow of Gilbert Stokesay, formerly mistress of Gerald Middleton.

  CUSPATT: A museum expert.

  M. SARTHE: A biographer.

  MRS JEVINGTON: A sculptress.

  CAROLINE JEVINGTON: Her daughter, in love with Timothy Middleton.

  OLD EMMIB: A friend of Mrs Salad.

  CHARACTERS ALREADY DEAD BEFORE THE ACTION OF THE BOOK

  EORPWALD: Seventh-century Christian missionary at the court of King

  Aldbert of the East Folk.

  ALDWINE: Eighth-century Christian missionary to Heligoland.

  PROFESSOR STOKESAY: Regius Professor of English history.

  GILBERT: His son. Essayist and poet.

  CANON PORTWAY: A noted Churchman and antiquarian.

  DR WINSKILL: A young general practitioner.

  CHARACTERS OFF STAGE

  MR PELICAN: A civil servant.

  MR GRIMSTON: A small manufacturer.

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  APPENDIX

  COLUMN IN THE TIMES

  November 1912

  It is now possible to make a tentative statement about the extensive archaeological excavations undertaken this summer in the former kingdom of the East Folk. The work was originally carried out by the East Coast Antiquarian Association under the direction of the well-known antiquary the Rev. Reginald Portway, who is Secretary of the Association. The later stages of the excavation were supervised by Professor Stokesay. Excavations were carried out at many sites on the marshy tracts of land near the coast between Bedbury and Melpham. Apart from traces of a pagan Anglo-Saxon cemetery near Bedbury, the outstanding discovery was the tomb of Bishop Eorpwald in the grounds of Melpham House, five miles outside the village of Melpham. The whereabouts of this tomb have long been an historical mystery. Eorpwald, who died in 695, was buried at Sedwich. In 867, when the Norsemen were approaching, the monks of Sedwich carried away his coffin and buried it elsewhere. Tradition spoke of Melpham or Bedbury. The excavation, of course, reveals this long-hidden secret. The stone coffin has inscriptions and ornaments of great interest to historians of the seventh century. The most remarkable discovery, however, is undoubtedly that of a wooden fertility figure. Similar Saxon figures have been found twice before, preserved in the marshy bogs of Jutland and Friesland. But this discovery is unique in English archaeology. Its presence in the coffin of Bishop Eorpwald has given rise to a number of theories among historians of the period. A satisfactory solution must wait upon the publication of the reports of Professor Stokesay and the Rev. Portway. At a coroner's inquest the tomb and its contents were found to be the property of the owners of Melpham Hall - the Rev. Portway and his sister-in-law, Mrs T. Portway, well known to the public as Miss Lilian Portway, the actress. It is understood that negotiations are in progress for the sale of the objects between the owners and the Trustees of the British Museum.

  For further documents relating to the Melpham burial see the Appendix at the end of this book.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER I

  GERALD MIDDLETON was a man of mildly but persistently depressive temperament. Such men are not at their best at breakfast, nor is the week before Christmas their happiest time. Both Larwood and Mrs Larwood had learned over the years to respect their employer's melancholy moods by remaining silent. They did so on this morning. The house in Montpelier Square was as noiseless as a tomb. Mrs Middleton had rung up from her house in Marlow as early as eight o'clock to inquire what arrangements her husband had made for his annual Christmas visit to her. Would he, she asked, arrange to bring down their son John? Mrs Larwood had tactfully refused to wake Professor Middleton; she would see that he phoned Mrs Middleton during the morning, she said. The message was placed with the letters and newspapers beside Gerald's plate.

  The prospect of speaking to his wife on the telephone and, even more, of the family Christmas party greatly heightened his depression. He decided not to open his letters until he had read the news or to open The Times until he had softened his spirits with the more popular daily newspaper
which always accompanied it. It was an unwise decision: the optimistic presentation of decidedly bad news on the front page turned his passive gloom into active irritation. On the middle page was a lengthy article by his son John. He always swore that he would not read John's articles, yet he always did so. Their cocksure and sentimental tone at least lent justification to his hearty dislike of his younger son, particularly if he accompanied his reading by a mental image of his wife's cooing admiration of their son's talent.

  'Once more,' he read, 'John Middleton investigates fearlessly a case of tyranny and injustice in this overgoverned England of ours. In each investigation that he undertakes, John Middleton goes directly to the centre of the ill, exposes the canker, and proposes its remedy. He is at once physician, surgeon, and healer, of the serious illnesses which threaten the freedom and decent living of everyone of us in England today, of you and me and of every ordinary citizen. The Daily Blank does not share John Middleton's political views. He describes himself as an independent radical. The Daily Blank is not a radical newspaper, but because it believes that any man who is prepared to fight these deadly evils without fear of person, office, or party is a friend of England, it is proud to publish these courageous articles. John Middleton showed himself a friend of freedom as a Labour Member of Parliament: he showed himself even more so when he resigned from the Labour Party and die House of Commons to fight your battle without the restraints of red tape. If you have grievances, if you know of neighbours suffering under the injustice of government tyranny, big or small, send your problems to John Middleton. He will investigate your case without fear or favour.'

  Gerald tried to tell himself that he should be fair to John. The purpose surely was a good one, if the manner was necessarily nauseating. He had no right to judge his son's career by his knowledge of his popularity-seeking character, his histrionic, self-deceiving temperament. Never, after all, had he himself been prepared to face the truth in life, either in his family or in his profession; he had less than no right to judge the manner in which his son did what he had not the courage to do. He settled himself to read this particular case. A Mr Harold Cressett, a market-gardener of outer London, had suffered expropriation of his land by a Ministry which wished to build a government factory on the site. After months of delay, in which Mr Cressett had dismantled his greenhouses, ceased trading, and so on, a curt letter informed him that the land was not needed and that the compensation money must be repaid. The simplicity, the decency, the bewilderment of Mr Cressett and his wife were painted in glowing colours; the tragedy of old Mr Barker, Mrs Cressett's paralysed father, was dwelt upon. He had, it seemed, been a coachman of the old school - a school long vanished. Only at the end of the article were the villains named. Bureaucratic clerks in all their hideous, inhuman behaviour were charged with the deed; but they were only the instruments of tyranny. The real villain was the head of the department - a highly esteemed administrative civil servant named Pelican. Did Mr Pelican, John asked, know the minutiae of his department as his reputation for thoroughness demanded? If so, he had erred by commission. Was he ignorant of his clerks' and executives' incompetence? Then he had erred by omission. Much play was made with Mr Pelican's name. While we all loved the pelicans in St James's Park, it was said: let them suffice. We needed no more pelicans in Whitehall. It was not, it seemed, upon the blood of his own breast that Mr Pelican fed his bureaucratic young, but upon the life-blood of hard-working citizens like Harold Cressett, etc.

  Gerald's first reaction was to decide that Mr Pelican must be a charming man and Mr Cressett a rogue. Then angrily he told himself that he knew nothing of the world around him; he had no right to judge. Who was he to dismiss John's stories of bureaucratic tyranny? A man with large enough private means to scorn complaints against taxation as vulgar and irresponsible; a family man who had had neither the courage to walk out of the marriage he hated, nor the resolution to sustain the role of father decently. An ex-professor of medieval history who had not even fulfilled the scholarly promise of studies whose general value he now doubted. A sensualist who had never had the courage of his desires; an aesthete who could not even add to his collection of drawings without pangs of conscience about his money or his neglected historical studies. A sixty-year-old failure, in fact, and of that most boring kind, a failure with a conscience.

  His heavy, handsome dark face flushed with disgust at the tediously repetitive chain of self-recrimination at which he had once more arrived. Before he opened his letters, he set himself resolutely to refresh his depressed spirits. For all the boredom of this evening's meeting of the Historical Association, for all the wretched prospect of Christmas at Inge's, today promised to be really a very pleasing one. The new catalogue of the Gruntvig collection had arrived. There was nothing to prevent him spending all day on it - to vary the pleasure of his own Johns and Daumiers and Cotmans with memories of Leonardos and Raphaels that would never be his. There was the pleasant prospect of trying to persuade old Grantham to part with that Fuseli this evening. But he felt no more cheered. He thought of that girl in Asprey's who had sold him Inge's Christmas present yesterday - he dwelt slowly upon the pleasures of her bust, her hips, the easy movement of her thighs. He could remember only that he was sixty-four, could wonder only whether his growing lust was a simple case of enlarged prostate that would 'have to be dealt with'. His spirits remained depressed.

  He turned to the two letters that lay beside his plate. The handwriting of the one he recognized as Sir Edgar's; the other was unknown. He preferred the unknown.

  Dear Sir [he read], I am preparing a Ph.D. thesis for the London University School of English Literature. My subject is "The Intellectual Climate of England at the Outbreak of the First World War'. As you may imagine, I am anxious to concentrate on what posterity has shown to be really vital in that age rather than on the conventional aspect - Shaw, Wells, Galsworthy, etc. Whilst, therefore, paying some attention to the foundations of the Bloomsbury school in the Cambridge thought of the early years of the century, I am devoting the major part of my thesis to D. H. Lawrence and Wyndham Lewis. In relation to the latter, I am investigating the careers of such less-known figures as T. E. Hulme and Gilbert Stokesay. I believe that you were a close friend of Stokesay's, and I should be glad of any personal information you may care to provide me with upon this neglected and important young poet and essayist, whose work in retrospect appears, to my generation at any rate, to reflect a seriousness and a final significance which criticism today teaches us is the only true criterion of literary merit. In particular I would be glad of any light you can throw upon his relations with his father, the historian Lionel Stokesay, and, in particular, upon the part Gilbert Stokesay played in the Anglo-Saxon excavations made at Melpham, East Folk, in 1912. I believe that his practical association with art historians may throw valuable light on his aesthetic themes.

  I have already corresponded with his widow, but she is not able to provide me with any information of importance. You may wish to know my qualifications for carrying out this task. I am a graduate of Minnesota University and North-Western University. I have majored in aesthetics, music, and literature, paying special attention to the metaphysical poets. I have attended courses in creative writing given by such eminent poets as ...

  Gerald laid aside the letter without reading the signature. He had long ago decided that he had nothing to say about Gilbert Stokesay which could interest these many young people who so admired his work. He had never been able to get through any single thing that Gilbert had written.

  So Dollie, he reflected with amusement, had been able to provide no information. She was probably drunk when she got the letter. He pushed her image out of his mind. He had long vowed that he would not think of her, and yet every day he did so. She had after all been the one really happy passion of his life, and, through his ineptitude and cowardice, he had ruined that happiness.

  This brash young American little knew what sore places he was invading with his clumsy fingers. D
ollie and Melpham! The two forbidden subjects of his thoughts, the constant underlying preoccupations of his depressions. If he were to tell what he sometimes believed to be Gilbert's real part in the Melpham excavations, he would indeed throw light on his dead friend's aesthetic theories.

  He turned to Sir Edgar's letter in desperation.

  Dear Middleton, I should be glad of a word with you before Pforzheim's lecture tonight. You will find me in the ante-room. It is possible that Association business may come up at the end of the lecture, if Pforzheim doesn't go on for too long. If it does, we may be sure that the question of the editorship of the History will be raised. While I do not in any way want to force you into a premature decision, I should be glad to have some idea of what you intend. I have already told you how deeply I, and not only I, but the great majority of your colleagues, hope that you will accept the editorial duties, but we cannot for too long postpone our decision. In any case, some intimation of your feelings before the lecture would be a helpful guide to me in my direction of any discussion that may arise.

  Yours sincerely, Edgar Iffley.

  They already knew his decision, Gerald thought angrily; he had made it as plain as he could that he did not intend to become editor. It was sheer sentimentality their asking him, a refusal to give up the belief of 'promise' in a man over sixty. If they did not want Arthur Clun, and he could well understand that they might not, then let them have the courage to say so and appoint some younger man. The trouble was that, through fear of Clun's appointment, all the younger people - Roberts, Stringwell-Anderson, and the rest - had made him their candidate.

  Well, he would not be bullied into it by the affection of old-stagers like Sir Edgar or the fears of his ex-pupils like Roberts. As to 'intimations of his feelings' - his feelings were his own affair. If he were to tell them, it would be that he had long felt that detailed scholarship such as Clun favoured was insufficient, disreputable, crossword-puzzle work, and historical generalizations were an equally disreputable pseudo-philosophic moralizing of the kind that old Stokesay had indulged in at the end of his life. All this seeking for the truth of the past should be in abeyance until we had reached some conclusions about the truth of the present. In any case, who was he to dabble in truth-telling when he had evaded the truth, past and present, for most of his life? If they chivvied him, he would raise the red herring of his projected work on England under Edward the Confessor. The long-promised work to succeed his book on Cnut was by now an old enough chestnut to embarrass any of them if he brought it up.