shone. We had a cook in the house in New York and in Nantucket, a laundress who sat for hours at a mangle, maids running up and down the stairs, and finger bowls at dinner with rose petals inthe bottom. My brothers were away at school, and then at war; I had a governess. Does all that matter?”
“It’s very Proustian.”
“So I’ve begun to think. Although the Duchess of Guermantes would always have been strange to me, I could have known Aunt Leonie and the two country walks, and the hawthorn blossoms. Does this have some connection with University College that I don’t understand?”
Clemance sat forward in his chair and pursed his lips in thought, evolving one of his deliberate sentences which would emerge only slowly. “I went to a public high school for bright boys,” he said, “and when I came to the College it was only because I got a partial scholarship and could live at home, and because my parents had carefully saved money over the years so that I might come here rather than to City College. I know that the City College classes of my time and later produced some of the most brilliant men in our country, but there was something here I cherished which I can only call graciousness, and a kind of excellence which was not alone determined by ambition. I find I am offended by the manners, by the lack of culture in the deepest sense of the word, prevalent today. I think in order to give everyone an opportunity, we are sacrificing our gifted people.” Clemance made an impatient gesture with his hand. “I’m rambling,” he said. “I can’t think why I should have imagined you would know what I’m talking about.”
“The instinct was quite correct,” Kate said. “I can’t bear bad manners and being called by my first name by strangers, yet I also realize that superficial good mannersmay cover the most appalling nastiness and hostility. My brothers have excellent manners, but they are basically the rudest men I have ever met. You see, I’m rambling too. My rudest graduate student went through Princeton on a complete scholarship, and as far as I can see he communicates either in dialectics or exponibles, part of a ‘mechanized generation to whom haphazard oracular grunts are profound wisdom.’ Do you suppose the University College students to be ruder than those in your own college? That isn’t my impression.”
“Perhaps I don’t mean to talk about manners. Perhaps I mean to talk about excellence.”
“There I am with you. But Professor Clemance, academic excellence is not that easily measurable. More and more students are getting perfect scores on college entrance tests—my graduate student with the oracular grunts scored very high indeed—but excellence is otherwise measurable, provided one maintains a minimum admissions score. The graduates of University College go on to graduate school in large numbers, astonishingly large numbers if one remembers the average age of the students. I know that some of those older students, especially the older women students, bore the boys in your college if they turn up in the same classes but, to be frank, the boys in your college bore me. I have never found youthful male arrogance, even when combined with great talent, especially appealing, while you, of course, have. In that, I suspect, we don’t agree at all.”
“You are accusing me simply of prejudice.”
“Oh, yes, quite simply. And as to manners, your college boys have fewer of those. They were the original, urinating-on-the-President’s-rug revolutionaries whocalled policemen pigs and the administration a double-barreled epithet I will not embarrass either of us by repeating. What I find difficult to understand is what it is you fear so about the University College—all of you, I mean. Those who are not satisfied to hurl from prep school through college and graduate school into the family law firm or whatever seem to me intelligent; it is surely the better part of wisdom to take time to
“It’s very Proustian.”
“So I’ve begun to think. Although the Duchess of Guermantes would always have been strange to me, I could have known Aunt Leonie and the two country walks, and the hawthorn blossoms. Does this have some connection with University College that I don’t understand?”
Clemance sat forward in his chair and pursed his lips in thought, evolving one of his deliberate sentences which would emerge only slowly. “I went to a public high school for bright boys,” he said, “and when I came to the College it was only because I got a partial scholarship and could live at home, and because my parents had carefully saved money over the years so that I might come here rather than to City College. I know that the City College classes of my time and later produced some of the most brilliant men in our country, but there was something here I cherished which I can only call graciousness, and a kind of excellence which was not alone determined by ambition. I find I am offended by the manners, by the lack of culture in the deepest sense of the word, prevalent today. I think in order to give everyone an opportunity, we are sacrificing our gifted people.” Clemance made an impatient gesture with his hand. “I’m rambling,” he said. “I can’t think why I should have imagined you would know what I’m talking about.”
“The instinct was quite correct,” Kate said. “I can’t bear bad manners and being called by my first name by strangers, yet I also realize that superficial good mannersmay cover the most appalling nastiness and hostility. My brothers have excellent manners, but they are basically the rudest men I have ever met. You see, I’m rambling too. My rudest graduate student went through Princeton on a complete scholarship, and as far as I can see he communicates either in dialectics or exponibles, part of a ‘mechanized generation to whom haphazard oracular grunts are profound wisdom.’ Do you suppose the University College students to be ruder than those in your own college? That isn’t my impression.”
“Perhaps I don’t mean to talk about manners. Perhaps I mean to talk about excellence.”
“There I am with you. But Professor Clemance, academic excellence is not that easily measurable. More and more students are getting perfect scores on college entrance tests—my graduate student with the oracular grunts scored very high indeed—but excellence is otherwise measurable, provided one maintains a minimum admissions score. The graduates of University College go on to graduate school in large numbers, astonishingly large numbers if one remembers the average age of the students. I know that some of those older students, especially the older women students, bore the boys in your college if they turn up in the same classes but, to be frank, the boys in your college bore me. I have never found youthful male arrogance, even when combined with great talent, especially appealing, while you, of course, have. In that, I suspect, we don’t agree at all.”
“You are accusing me simply of prejudice.”
“Oh, yes, quite simply. And as to manners, your college boys have fewer of those. They were the original, urinating-on-the-President’s-rug revolutionaries whocalled policemen pigs and the administration a double-barreled epithet I will not embarrass either of us by repeating. What I find difficult to understand is what it is you fear so about the University College—all of you, I mean. Those who are not satisfied to hurl from prep school through college and graduate school into the family law firm or whatever seem to me intelligent; it is surely the better part of wisdom to take time to
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