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

Michael left Viner with a sense of the pathetic sameness of the mission-priest’s existence. He had known so well before he went that, because it was Monday, he would find him sitting in that armchair, smoking that pipe, reading that novel. Every other evening he would be either attending to parochial clubs in rooms of wood and corrugated iron, or his own room would be infested with boys who from year to year, from month to month, never changed in general character, but always gave the same impression of shrill cockney, of boisterous familiarity, of self-satisfied election. Tomorrow morning he would say Mass to the same sparse congregation of sacristan and sisters-of-mercy and devout old maids. The same red-wristed server would stump about his liturgical business in Viner’s wake, and the same coffee pot put in the same place on the same table by the same landlady would await his return. There was a dreariness about the ministrations of this Notting Hill Mission which had been absent from the atmosphere of Burgos Cathedral. No doubt superficially even at Burgos there was a sameness, but it was a glorious sameness, a sameness that approximated to eternity. Long ago had the priests learned subordination. They had been absorbed into the omnipotence of the church against which the gates of hell could not prevail. Viner remained, however much as he might have surrendered of himself to his mission work, essentially an isolated, a pathetic individual.

As usual, Michael met Alan at Paddington, and he was concerned to see that Alan looked rather pale and worried.

“What problems have you been solving this vac?” Michael asked.

“Oh, I’ve been swatting like a pig for Mods,” said Alan hopelessly. “You are a lucky lazy devil.”

Even during the short journey to Oxford Alan furtively fingered his textbooks, while he talked to Michael about a depressing January in London.

“Never mind. Perhaps you’ll get your Blue next term,” said Michael. “And if you aren’t determined to play cricket all the Long, we’ll go away and have a really sporting vac somewhere.”

“If I’m plowed,” said Alan gloomily, “I’ve settled to become a chartered accountant.”

Michael enjoyed his second Lent term. With an easy conscience he relegated Rugby football into the limbo of the past. He decided such violent exercise was no longer necessary, and he was getting to know so many people at other colleges that the cultivation of new personalities occupied all his leisure. After Maurice and Wedderburn came back from Spain, they devoted much of their time to painting, and The Oxford Looking-Glass became a very expensive business on account of the reproduction of their drawings. Moreover, the circulation decreased in ratio with the increase of these drawings, and the five promoters who did not wish to practice art in the pages of their magazine convoked several meetings of protest. Finally Maurice was allowed to remain editor only on condition that he abstained from publishing any more drawings.

Nigel Stewart’s meeting of the De Rebus Ecclesiasticis together with the visit to Spain induced Michael to turn his attention to that side of undergraduate life interested in religion. He went to see Canon Harrowell, and even accepted from him an invitation to a breakfast at which he met about half a dozen Klebe men who talked about bishops. Afterward Canon Harrowell seemed anxious to have a quiet talk with him in the library, but Michael made an excuse, not feeling inclined for self-revelation so quickly on top of six Klebe men and the eggs and bacon. He went to see Father Pallant at Cowley, but Father Pallant appeared so disappointed that he had brought him no scientific problems to reconcile with Catholic dogma, and was moreover so contemptuous of Dom Cuthbert Manners, O.S.B. and Clere Abbey that Michael never went to see him again. He preferred old Sandifer, who with all the worldly benefits of good wine, good food, and pleasant company, offered in addition his own courtly Caroline presence that added to wit and learning and trenchant theology made Michael regret he had not called upon him sooner.

Nigel Stewart took Michael to a meeting of De Rebus Ecclesiasticis, at which he met not only the six Keble men who had talked about bishops at Canon Harrowell’s breakfast, but about twenty more members of the same college, all equally fervid and in his opinion equally objectionable. Michael also went with Nigel Stewart to Mass at St. Barnabas’, where he saw the same Keble men all singing conspicuously and all conveying the impression that every Sunday they occupied the same place. By the end of the term Michael’s aroused interest in religion at Oxford died out. He disliked the sensation of belonging to a particular school of thought within a university. The ecclesiastical people were like the ampelopsis at Trinity: they were highly colored, but so inappropriate to Oxford, that they seemed almost vulgar. It was ridiculous they should have to worship in Oxford at a very ugly modern church in the middle of very ugly modern slums, as ridiculous as it was to call in the aid of American creepers to cover up the sins of modern architects.

Yet Michael was at a loss to explain to himself why the ecclesiastical people were so obviously out of place in Oxford. After all, they were the heirs of a force which had persisted there for many years almost in its present aspect: they were the heirs after a fashion of the force that kept the Royal Standard flying against the Parliament. But they had not inherited the spirit of medieval Oxford. They were too self-conscious, too congregational. As individuals, perhaps they were in tone with Oxford, but, eating bacon and eggs and talking about bishops, they belonged evidently to Keble, and Michael could not help feeling that Keble like Mansfield and Ruskin Hall was in Oxford, but not in the least of Oxford. The spirit of medieval Oxford was more typically preserved in the ordinary life of