Sinister Street by Compton Mackenzie (great books to read TXT) 📕

June and festooned hats of Alexandra or Monarch, of the same pleasant young creatures at an earlier and chubbier age, of the same pleasant young creatures with penciled mustaches and the white waistcoat of Pop. In addition to their individual commemorations the pleasant young creatures would appear again in house groups, in winning house elevens, and most exquisitely of all in Eton Society. Michael always admired the photographs of Pop, for they seemed to him to epitomize all the traditions of all the public-schools of England, to epitomize them moreover with something of that immortality of captured action expressed by great Athenian sculpture. In comparison with Pop the Harrow Philathletic Society was a barbarous group, with all the self-consciousness of a deliberate archaism. Besides the personal photographs in Lonsdale’s room there were studies of grouse by Thorburn; and Michael, remembering Alan’s grouse, felt in accord with Lonsdale and with all that Lonsdale stood for. Knowing Alan, he felt that he knew Lonsdale, and at once he became more at ease with all his contemporaries in Lonsdale’s room. Michael looked at the colored prints of Cecil Aldin’s pictures and made up his mind he would buy a set for Alan: also possibly he would buy for Alan the Sir Galahad of Watts which was rather better than The Soul’s Awakening.

After Lonsdale’s pictures Michael surveyed Lonsdale’s books, the brilliantly red volumes of Jorrocks, the two or three odd volumes of the Badminton library, and the school books tattered and ink-splashed. More interesting than such a library were the glossy new briars, the virgin meerschaum, the patent smoking-tables and another table evidently designed to make drinking easy, but by reason of the complexity of its machinery actually more likely to discourage one forever from refreshment. The rest of the space, apart from the furniture bequeathed by the noisy Templeton-Collins when he moved to larger rooms above, was crowded with the freshmen whom after hall Lonsdale had so hastily gathered together unassorted.

“I ordered coffee for sixteen,” announced the host. “I thought it would be quicker than making it in a new machine that my sister gave me. It just makes enough for three, and the only time I tried, it took about an hour to do that⁠ ⁠… who’ll drink port?”

Michael thought the scout’s prophecies about the superfluity of Lonsdale’s wine were rather premature, for it seemed that everybody intended to drink port.

“I believe this is supposed to be rather good port,” said Lonsdale.

“It is jolly good,” several connoisseurs echoed.

“I don’t know much about it myself. But my governor’s supposed to be rather a judge. He said ‘this is wasted on you and your friends, but I haven’t got any bad wine to give you.’ ”

Here everybody held up their glasses against the light, took another sip and murmured their approval.

“Do you think this is a good wine, Fane?” demanded Lonsdale, thereby drawing so much attention to Michael that he blushed to nearly as deep a color as the port itself.

“I like it very much,” Michael said.

“Do you like it, Wedderburn?” asked Lonsdale, turning to the freshman who had sat in the armchair at the head of the second table.

“Damned good wine,” pronounced Wedderburn in a voice so rich with appreciation and so deep with judgment that he immediately established a reputation for worldly knowledge, and from having been slightly derided at Eton for his artistic ambitions was ever afterward respected and consulted. Michael envied his air of authority, but trembled for Wedderburn’s position when he heard him reproach Lonsdale for his lack of any good pictures.

“You might stick up one that can be looked at for more than two seconds,” Wedderburn said severely.

“What sort of picture?” asked Lonsdale.

“Primavera, for instance,” Wedderburn suggested, and Michael’s heart beat in sympathy.

“Never heard of the horse,” Lonsdale answered. “Who owned her?”

“My god,” Wedderburn rumbled, “I’ll take you to buy one tomorrow, Lonny. You deserve it after that.”

“Right-O!” Lonsdale cheerfully agreed. “Only I don’t want my room to look like the Academy, you know.”

Wedderburn shook his head in benevolent contempt, and the conversation was deflected from Lonsdale’s artistic education by a long-legged Wykehamist with crisp chestnut hair and a thin florid face of dimpling smiles.

“Has anybody been into Venner’s yet?” he asked.

“I have,” proclaimed a dumpy Etonian whose down-curving nose hung over a perpetually open mouth. “Marjoribanks took me in just before hall. But he advised me not to go in by myself yet awhile.”

“The second-year men don’t like it,” agreed the long-legged Wykehamist with a wise air. “They say one can begin to go in occasionally in one’s third term.”

“What is Venner’s?” Michael asked.

“Don’t you know?” sniffed the dumpy Etonian who had already managed to proclaim his friendship with Marjoribanks, the President of the Junior Common Room, and therefore presumably had the right to open his mouth a little wider than usual at Michael.

“I’m not quite sure myself,” said Lonsdale quickly. “I vote that Cuffe explains.”

“I’m not going to explain,” Cuffe protested, and for some minutes his mouth was tightly closed.

“Isn’t it just a sort of special part of the J.C.R.?” suggested the smiling Wykehamist, who seemed to wish to make it pleasant for everybody, so long as he himself would not have to admit ignorance. “Old Venables himself is a ripper. They say he’s been steward of the J.C.R. for fifty years.”

“Thirty-two years,” corrected Wedderburn in his voice of most reverberant certitude. “Venner’s is practically a club. You aren’t elected, but somehow you know just when you can go in without being stared at. There’s nothing in Oxford like that little office of Venner’s. It’s practically made St. Mary’s what it is.”

All the freshmen, sipping their port and lolling back in their new gowns, looked very reverent and very conscious of the honor and glory of St. Mary’s which they themselves hoped soon to affirm more publicly than they could at present. Upon their meditations sounded very loud the blast of a coach-horn from above.

“That’s Templeton-Collins,” said Michael.

“Who’s he?” several demanded.

“He’s the man who