Everybody Wants to Get into the Act
By DESMOND GRAVES (Christ Church, Oxford) FOR undergraduates in Oxford and Cambridge and others who cannot afford to buy the Spectator all the year round, this is the first issue of the Michaelmas Term. Today will find many a budding author rustling through these pages in the hope of seeing his own name. For the undergraduate is not merely writing to amuse a tolerant extra-mural public, nor is he really hoping to catch the eye of Dr. Huxley or Professor Brogan or any of the people that read this journal in the course of a week. He will not swoon at the sight of his name in print, or at the generous fee he receives. He is not even doing it to please mother. No. He is seeking recognition in the University literary world. He wants to be known as " one of those " who have written for the Spectator. Editors—present, aspiring or ejected —presidents of infant societies, men in the street who want to come in out of the rain of anonymity, students with a memoir, a grievance, or a song to sing—all send their copy in a bid for seven days of fame. ..
This week they will all be disappointed. Friends in Oxford will raise their eyebrows, enemies in Cambridge (where the trains are longer) will be nonplussed, and the wide world will be slightly surprised to find that the undergraduate page has this week been filled by a literary hack who hasn't been to Bulawayo or caught a hippopotamus, but simply writes because he enjoys writing. Admirers of the University Spirit and those who read every page of the Spectator on principle will now enjoy a rest and change from the routine of anecdote and theory. This week the page is about me—and you. Me, because I have had the bother of writing it, and you, because you have the trouble of reading it, and finding out whether we have shared the same emotional cycle.
I could have filled this page with a racy description of the fire in St. Michael's at the North Gate last Thursday week, hailed by some as the best Oxford conflagration of the century. Actually it was just like all the other fires you have ever seen— crowds of people, firemen directing hoses at acrid darkness, a pillar of sulphur smoke in the sky—so I am writing about 'Us Instead. My pen is at a jaunty angle, and I haven't a care, or a Lost Cause, in the world. At least, so it appears on the face of it. Behind the façade lurks manifold frustration. For many weeks past I-have opened the Spectator early Friday morning, in search of my article: it just wasn't there. Nobody could tell me why—my articles seemed to meet all requirements: there were the light sketches (" Ho ho ho and a clatter of dentures "), the Viewpoints (" Hammer and Pickle ") and a crowd of Little Incidents (" Brenner Impasse," " Double Bass Camp," " Later On the Room Grew Chilly, etc., etc.) all to size and discreetly para- graphed. But the man in the Spectator, who excels his counter- part in the moon at remoteness, was not to be tempted, so for Terms I have been obliged to go the rounds of the Oxford Magazines—an idea for Cherwell, a free French verse for Oxford Tory, a tilt at the Catholics in Crux, pages of jentacular confabulation in Isis. Beyond this I could not rise, for editors always bested me with the guinea question : Were you in the Spectator ?
Time was when I hated this paper—for its indiscrimination, its bias towards the extraordinary, its approval of my rivals, and most of all for its disapproval of me. I seemed shackled to literary bourgeoisie. In desperation I almost turned to publicity, or selling the Catholic Worker at the corner of Carfax on Saturday morning. Even the immortal Jimmy Dingle— whom no, frost can nip in the bud—seemed more reussi than I. I used to brood over him as he paraded in the streets in full morning dress, white gloves and spats, his banner held triumphantly over the tossing heads of the crowd—free-lance, uninhibited, hand-in-glove with the Arts, recognised as an artist in his own rite by the powers that passed me by on the Other side; unintentionally, of course, but with monotonous regularity. It may be that my articles were just plain bad—but I do not think so. Naturally, my opinion on the matter is not wholly impartial, but even my friends have told me I have more in common with Shakespeare than his birthday. He was a bad actor also, but I do not think this is what they were talking about. However, this will foil them all.
It will also foil the man who only gave me a credit for English in School Certificate; it will also foil Punch, Blackwood's and Woman's Journal, to none of whom am I indebted for per- Mission to print this; it will also foil editors, correspondents and tutors who have told me I cannot write the Queen's English. " Maybe not," I shall reply with a characteristic toss • of the head, " but at least I can rush into print ! "
Rushing into print is what most people hanker after in some form or other. It may be a wedding, a murder or a company dividend; it may only be a small-ad. for a daily help, but we all experience a light,leap in the stomach pit when we see our names in cold print. In Germany, when you die, you get a whole box to yourself—sometimes several, from different mourners. If a copy of the General Anzeiger has been ferried over to you by Herr Charon, you will have the pleasure of seeing your former name printed over and over' again in black letters, catching the reader's eye and telling him why your friends called you Jack Horner. With your name in print, your existence is not only ratified,Thut justified. My name, for instance, looks particularly good in Benbow type, because of the curving simplicity of my initials, whilst jn italics it is horrible—too short, and too many capital letters. You too have a favourite type, I expect: perhaps it is the obe they use for the top of the bill at the Palladium—huge and fluorescent; or maybe you prefer the intellectual baldness of lower case throughout.
Personally, I have always wanted to see my name in heavy type over a page of clearface. I also like people to know my- Oxford College—of which Mr. Eden, the head porter and I are inordinately proud—which is the only One to own a private cathedral. It is one of the reasons I am writing this. So now' I hope you know why I am smiling today, and tossing ..my head at comparative strangers, and promising to pay my landlady. And next week, when we are all back to normal again, you will know why. I am as jealous of the undergrad. in the Spectator 'as ever
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