UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Strenuous Liberty
By NEMONE LETHBRIDGE (Somerville College, Oxford).
- a la A nouilh—hungry, workless, without money for my bus- fare VERY much wanted to be broke: not with the gentle _ Franciscan poverty that is in itself richness, but to be broke fare home; la Sauvage, bitter but unbowed. So, with my last offending half-crown, I bought a shiny magazine, and sat down on the steps to look at it. I read : " In this collection, Givenchy has exploited to the full his Rose Theme," and I hated every- body.
It was half-way through the vacation, and at the end of a story which had begun in the first weeks of the previous term; had led me to the sills of Elysium and of-shining Lyonesse- although only to drop the sash on my fingers—and finally, on this choking August afternoon, to Frome, the " little flashy Manchester " of Cobbett's description, where yet another door ' had been slammed for me. It had started when my unenter- prising friends kept telling me how they meant to spend the vacation with their parents in uninteresting places, such as Cowes and the Riviera, while I, listening sympathetically, would say : " I'm sure that you'll find it quite blissful—but, of course, I like to be a bit independent. I'm getting a job abroad somewhere. I have so many contacts."
I was going to Venice. I had even written to a certain Signora, telling her that I intended to take charge of her small daughter. The fare was heavy; so I decided to walk, cadging lifts wherever I could find them. I had planned my route— Dover to Calais, and Calais to Paris, where, at midnight, I would go to Les Halles, and, pushing my way between the frowsy hydrangeas and the aromatic crates of oranges, would find a strong-armed lorry-driver with one bright gold tooth, who would take me as far as Marseilles and the wine-dark Mediter- ranean. From Marseilles I should go to Turin, by way of the curling coast road, which, for mile upon mile, plays hide-and- seek between that aromatic sea and the nuzzling headlands. Turin, Milan, Verona, across the umber plains and past the gentian hills of Northern Italy; here begging a cup of milk from a shy peasant, and there a lift from a passer-by, who would praise my courage while deploring my temerity; stepping aside to drop one dark red rose on to the waters of Lake Garda, for Catullus's sake, and, feeling the sinews of my soul grow hale, know myself for Rome's inheritor. Arrived, at Venice, among cypresses and nightingales, I should rest, brown and wise and weary and wearing a dress of white broderie anglaise; and gaze, a little sadly perhaps, past long flights of steps and balustrades as smooth as the finest icing-sugar, across a sea more effervescent than champagne, into a Claude Lorraine sunset.
The lady in Venice did not answer my letter. Somehow I was not surprised. I now know that nothing so substantial as ink and paper could ever come out of that iridescent bubble. Modestly I changed my plans, and decided to go to France. I put an advertisement into the Continental edition of a famous American newspaper, meaning to catch the family of some prosperous French business-man cannily watching the prices on Wall Street. The answers came—but they were from tatty students in St. Germain des Pres who wanted coaching, but did not specify in what subject; from a Vietnamese gentleman who wanted his two fillettes taught to speak German; from parsimonious housewives who wanted cheap domestic labour, and from a lonely G.I. in Orleans, who wrote: " I would very much like to have an English-speaking companion out here. I am six feet tall and have wavy fair hair and blue eyes : I would send you a snap but I don't have any. Please send me a snap of yourself. Tell me how much you need to get out here and I will send it right on to you. If you come I will care for you as if you were my own wife or Sister." Although I was sorely tempted by the parsimonious house- wives, I finally decided to answer the letter of a certain Madame V., who asked me to teach her two small sons to speak English. I could see her clearly in my mind's eye as I stuck the four blue stamps on to the envelope, with her strong- boned face, her fine white teeth and her dark hair swept severely back from her forehead. I could see, too, the little boys, rather shy at first, with limbs as frail as sticks of golden barley-sugar and great caramel-soft eyes.
The address was not Combray, but I was well content. I knew that there would be a church crowned with a tower of rusty lace, arid narrow streets, where another Aunt Leonie would watch the world from an upper window, another pathetic Eulalie would avoid the eye of an indomitable Fran- wise, of whom, coming out of the dazzled square at midday, I might catch a glimpse, standing just inside the cavern of a cool dark hall, heavy with the scent of lilac, silent, in her cap of spun sugar. There would be a glass-clear river, lazing through fat meadows fringed with white hawthorns more piercing and more virginal than any that ever grew along the Meseglise way; and, a mile or two removed, a muffled chateau, dim with ever- lasting autumn, where the rain, like gentle tears, would drop unceasingly from the dark leaves of the rhododendrons; and where, nursing a secret sorrow, among his threadbare tapestries and peeling pictures, would brood my dark-eyed Marquis.
I would give him tea in my room at Madame V.'s, my warm bright bourgeois room, full of crisp chrysanthemums and dragons in Chinese lacquer. We would talk of le desamour, and I would assuage a little his deep melancholy; or, driving down the long straight roads when the country is taking breath in the first cool of evening, we would watch, leaping up from behind the horizon and marching towards us across the darken- ing -plain, the noble spires of Normandy. Ah, Madame la Marquise. Madame V. replied in the most charming manner. She said that, judging from the tone of my letter, she was sure that we should be the greatest friends, and that she was looking forward to having a young girl of some cultural aspirations in her house. I would, of course, have to pay my own fare, provide my own pocket-money, and find myself two meals a day, but otherwise she would tend-me like a mother. " Oh Marquis, how am I ever going to find you ? " I cried, as I threw Maclaine V.'s letter into the waste-paper basket and started out for the Labour Exchange.
" But even this has possibilities," I mused, leaning my head back against the distempered wall, as I waited in the queue to present my petition to the young lady in the purple hand-knit enthroned behind the counter playing patience with a card- index. " We must postpone Madame la Marquise for the time being, and see what we can do with Jane Cade. . . ." In the seventh month of the strike, when the union funds have long since been exhausted, a young girl, pale and thin with hunger, but with the light of battle burning in her eyes, and wearing a neat tailor-made boiler-suit of broderie anglaise, will detach herself from the listless crowd at the closed gates of the factory; and, seeing the works-manager approaching in his fortieth attempt at conciliation, will address him arrogantly, thus : " ' My good man, I see no reason for your presence here.
You know our conditions. We shall never go back until we have won for ourselves, and for our children after us, our legitimate and indisputable rights: the four-day week and pensions at twenty-five. We are not afraid of you. We have the whip hand.' Then, turning to her faithful men, amid growing murmurs of approval and encourage- ment: ' Who is here so base that would be a blackleg ? ' " But they had nothing for me at the Labour Exchange.
I threw down my shiny magazine, and sat on the steps like a disgruntled demi-god on Olympus, watching the shifting kaleidoscope of the market below me. With a kind of added desire for complete martyrdom, I was glad when it started to rain—fat slow drops sliding out of a thundercloud darker than the ripe grapes in the vineyards which I might not see. And la Sauvage, saddled with her strenuous liberty, thought of bondage with ease at Cowes or on the Riviera with a jealousy far greener than the meadows of Meseglise.
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