Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [98]
‘What’s your generation, Jenkins?’
This was like coming up for sentence at the Last Judgment. I tried to remember, to speak more exactly, tried to decide how best to put the answer clearly to Le Bas.
‘Fetdplace-Jones was captain of the house when I arrived … my own lot… Stringham… Templer …’
Le Bas glared, as if in frank disbelief. Whether that was because the names conveyed nothing, or my own seemed not to belong amongst them, was only to be surmised. It looked as if he were about to accuse me of being an impostor, to be turned away from the Library forthwith. I lost my head, began to recite names at random as they came into my mind.
‘Simson … Fitzwith … Ghika … Brandreth … Maiden … Bischoffsheim … Whitney … Parkinson … Summers-Miller … Pyefinch … the Calthorpes … Widmerpool…’
At the last name Le Bas suddenly came to life.
‘Widmerpool?’
‘Widmerpool was a year or so senior to me.’
Le Bas seemed to forget that all we were trying to do was approximately to place my own age-group in his mind. He took one of several pens lying on the desk, examined it, chose another one, examined that, then wrote ‘Widmerpool’ on the blotting paper in front of him, drawing a circle round the name. This was an unexpected reaction. It seemed to have nothing whatever to do with myself. Le Bas now sunk into a state of near oblivion. Could it be a form of exorcism against pupils of his whom he had never much liked? Then he offered an explanation.
‘Widmerpool’s down here today. I met him in the street. We had a talk. He told me about a cause he’s interested in. That’s why I made a note. I shall have to try and remember what he said. He’s an MP now. What happened to the others?’
It was like answering enquiries after a match – ’Fettiplace-Jones was out first ball, sir’ …’Parkinson kicked a goal, sir’ … ‘Whitney got his colours, sir’. I tried to recollect some piece of information to be deemed of interest to Le Bas about the sort of boys of whom he could approve, but the only facts that came to mind were neither about these, nor cheerful.
‘Stringham died in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.’
‘Yes, yes – so I heard.’
That awareness was unexpected.
‘Templer was killed on a secret operation.’
‘In the Balkans. Somebody told me. Very sad.’
Once more the cognition was unforeseen. Its acknowledgment was followed by Le Bas taking up the pen again. Underneath Widmerpool’s name he wrote ‘Balkans’, drew another circle round the word, which he attached to the first circle by a line. It looked more than ever like some form of incantation.
‘Now I remember what it was Widmerpool consulted me about. Some society he has organized to encourage good relations with one of the Balkan countries. Now which one? Simson was drowned. Torpedoed in a troopship.’
He mentioned Simson as another relevant fact, not at all as if he did not wish to be outdone in consciousness of widespread human dissolution in time of war.
‘What are you doing yourself, Jenkins?’
‘I’m writing a book on Burton – the Anatomy of Melancholy man.’
Le Bas took two or three seconds to absorb that statement, the aspects, good and bad, implied by such an activity. He had probably heard of Burton. He might easily know more about him than did Sillery. Dons were not necessarily better informed than schoolmasters. When at last he spoke, it was clear Le Bas did know about Burton. He was not wholly approving.
‘Rather a morbid subject.’
He had used just that epithet when he found me, as a schoolboy, reading St John Clarke’s Fields of Amaranth. He may have thought reading or writing books equally morbid, whatever the content. To be fair to Le Bas as a critic, Fields of Amaranth