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Authors: Amanda Cross
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think, and a country like ours should have a college for those who have gained wisdom and decided on a later, different college, or on a chance for a second life.”
“Miss Fansler, could your University College have produced Auden?”
“No. And neither could your college, Professor Clemance.” (Kate, as an inheritance from days when children were “brought up,” found she could not bring herself to call Clemance “Frederick,” a difficulty which Reed, who had never had a governess, thought preposterous.) “Oxford didn’t produce Auden, even if it did allow him luncheon parties; neither did his doctor father, from whose books Auden used to learn the facts of life he diagrammed on the school-room blackboards, nor his mother, whom he loved and resembled. What produces an Auden? Having a friend like Isherwood when you are young?”
“Wouldn’t you like it if Auden were to dedicate one of his poems to you?”
“I’ve given up daydreaming. No, I should always be so hideously frightened, with Auden, of being a bore or a hideola. Imagine afterward; one would have to drown oneself to avoid the memories.”
“He’s not as forbidding as all that; he’s a superb teacher, you know.”
“All I know about his teaching is another peculiarity we have in common: we are the only two teachers of literature who have ever admitted in class that we have never read
Don Quixote
through to the end.”
“It is a good thing I didn’t know that before I voted for your tenure.”
“Professor Clemance, I have often wished for the opportunity to tell you that you taught me more—about literature, something I can only call morality, and about the honor of the profession of letters—than anyone else in the University. But you seemed to wish only for young male followers, and I did not wish to burden you with an older female disciple. Surely you must know, however, that no teacher knows where his influence reaches.”
“I remember that you did a paper on
Portrait of a Lady.
I have never especially cared for women students. I think perhaps I was wrong in that. Perhaps there are Isabel Archers at University College.”
Kate looked at him for a time. “Perhaps there are,” she said. “I hope there isn’t anything terribly wrong—with you, I mean?”
“But there is,” he said. “My heart is broken. I have a pain in it.” Kate remembered how he was always able to say dramatic things simply, as though emotion did not frighten him. “This student revolution hasn’t broken your heart, hasn’t affected your love for the University?”
“No,” Kate said. “Much as I loved the rose petals in the finger bowls, I know my brothers too well. I have never cared for playboys or reactionaries, and they wereproduced by the same process that produced the finger bowls. I love talent, but do not care for privilege which takes itself for granted. To put it another way, I do not care for a society which has a place for Oblonsky, but none for Anna and Vronsky.”
“What about Levin?”
“Levin without his estate and serfs would have been Anna. We are all Anna now.”
Clemance sat silent for a time. “There is a Departmental meeting on Monday,” he finally said. “No doubt the whole matter,” he waved his hand in a familiar gesture, “will come up.”
“No doubt.”
“Jeremiah Cudlipp and Robert O’Toole feel very strongly about it; very strongly.”
“So I have heard,” she said. “Professor Clemance, let me tell you some non-University news: I’m to be married.”
“Are you indeed? I am glad. It is good ‘to be reborn, reneighbored in the Country of Consideration.’ ”
“The Country of Consideration: what a lovely definition of marriage.”
“Yes,” Clemance said. “If one considers it in the middle years, the best definition I know.”
When Kate had parted from Clemance outside the Faculty Club, she walked for a time around the campus; the autumn was her favorite season, she was to have dinner with
“Miss Fansler, could your University College have produced Auden?”
“No. And neither could your college, Professor Clemance.” (Kate, as an inheritance from days when children were “brought up,” found she could not bring herself to call Clemance “Frederick,” a difficulty which Reed, who had never had a governess, thought preposterous.) “Oxford didn’t produce Auden, even if it did allow him luncheon parties; neither did his doctor father, from whose books Auden used to learn the facts of life he diagrammed on the school-room blackboards, nor his mother, whom he loved and resembled. What produces an Auden? Having a friend like Isherwood when you are young?”
“Wouldn’t you like it if Auden were to dedicate one of his poems to you?”
“I’ve given up daydreaming. No, I should always be so hideously frightened, with Auden, of being a bore or a hideola. Imagine afterward; one would have to drown oneself to avoid the memories.”
“He’s not as forbidding as all that; he’s a superb teacher, you know.”
“All I know about his teaching is another peculiarity we have in common: we are the only two teachers of literature who have ever admitted in class that we have never read
Don Quixote
through to the end.”
“It is a good thing I didn’t know that before I voted for your tenure.”
“Professor Clemance, I have often wished for the opportunity to tell you that you taught me more—about literature, something I can only call morality, and about the honor of the profession of letters—than anyone else in the University. But you seemed to wish only for young male followers, and I did not wish to burden you with an older female disciple. Surely you must know, however, that no teacher knows where his influence reaches.”
“I remember that you did a paper on
Portrait of a Lady.
I have never especially cared for women students. I think perhaps I was wrong in that. Perhaps there are Isabel Archers at University College.”
Kate looked at him for a time. “Perhaps there are,” she said. “I hope there isn’t anything terribly wrong—with you, I mean?”
“But there is,” he said. “My heart is broken. I have a pain in it.” Kate remembered how he was always able to say dramatic things simply, as though emotion did not frighten him. “This student revolution hasn’t broken your heart, hasn’t affected your love for the University?”
“No,” Kate said. “Much as I loved the rose petals in the finger bowls, I know my brothers too well. I have never cared for playboys or reactionaries, and they wereproduced by the same process that produced the finger bowls. I love talent, but do not care for privilege which takes itself for granted. To put it another way, I do not care for a society which has a place for Oblonsky, but none for Anna and Vronsky.”
“What about Levin?”
“Levin without his estate and serfs would have been Anna. We are all Anna now.”
Clemance sat silent for a time. “There is a Departmental meeting on Monday,” he finally said. “No doubt the whole matter,” he waved his hand in a familiar gesture, “will come up.”
“No doubt.”
“Jeremiah Cudlipp and Robert O’Toole feel very strongly about it; very strongly.”
“So I have heard,” she said. “Professor Clemance, let me tell you some non-University news: I’m to be married.”
“Are you indeed? I am glad. It is good ‘to be reborn, reneighbored in the Country of Consideration.’ ”
“The Country of Consideration: what a lovely definition of marriage.”
“Yes,” Clemance said. “If one considers it in the middle years, the best definition I know.”
When Kate had parted from Clemance outside the Faculty Club, she walked for a time around the campus; the autumn was her favorite season, she was to have dinner with
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