Laudator Temporis Acti

Charles Tennyson, Cambridge from Within (London: Chatto & Windus, 1913), pp. 74-81:

The Don escapes the narrowness and self-sufficiency which are the schoolmaster's especial danger. The circumstances of academic study and the intercourse with "men" who are, at least in their own estimation, his equals, compel him to broader views. But the devotion to abstract studies, undisturbed by the constraining influences of ordinary social life, still provoke here and there the strangest antics of mind.

The days of one are absorbed in the study of Greek lyric measures. He lives and thinks in Greek. It is told of such a one that on falling seriously ill and realising the strange world to which the best years of his soul had been devoted, he took to his bed and sent his "gyp" to borrow the complete works of Shakespeare, feeling that it would be criminal to die ignorant of Hamlet, Lear, and Macbeth—that only thus could he make his peace with modernity. The life of such an enthusiast loses all consideration of time and place. His rooms are covered ankle-deep in papers, pamphlets, letters, chapel lists, circulars, proof-sheets, notes for his colossal work on the fragments of Bacchylides, which has been announced in the Press nineteen times during the past ten years, and is likely to remain another ten "in preparation." The cold beef and pint of beer brought for dinner are eaten at midnight or breakfast-time next morning or in any other suitable intermittence of inspiration, and when they are finished he will probably go to bed and stay there till the hour of the night or day at which he happens to wake. If he is put down to lecture it is ten to one that he forgets or mistakes the hour. If an unwary freshman sends him in a copy of verses for correction, it passes inevitably to the deposit on the floor, and ceases from that moment to have an independent existence. It is an act of hardihood for any but an intimate to attempt to call on him. He starts up with blank eyes to which intelligence slowly climbs from the abyss of thought. Consciousness once secure on her throne, he asks, in the anguished tone of Don Juan confronting the statue, "What do you want?" You explain as discreetly as you can that you have come to call on him. For a moment he seems genuinely pleased, and with a childlike courtesy fetches two straight-backed chairs which he plants in a clear space of floor exactly under the electric light.You sit down facing one another at eighteen inches, like cats on a wall. Blankness overwhelms him again. You realise the hopelessness of the struggle, and make an inglorious retreat.

Yet when the cloud lifts no man can be more charming. He enjoys a day with the hounds, or a wild innings at a long vacation cricket-match as much as any freshman. He travels, observes and can remember what he sees. He has an astonishing acquaintance with the humorous literature of all countries, including Fliegende Blätter and the Sporting Times, to both of which he has long been a regular subscriber. His knowledge of the comedians of the variety stage is extensive and discriminating. And above all, for those who have the privilege of his friendship, he is a teacher whose every word is an inspiration—to other teachers as an archangel to a temperance lecturer. Yet his actual lectures are beyond despair. He will hurry into the room ten minutes late, open his Aeschylus apologetically at the knottiest of choruses, which he will start reading rather rapidly in the original Greek, saying nervously from time to time: "Of course you all know what that means" or, "All plain enough, I think." Reaching the end of the chorus he beams round on a score or so of blank faces. But we are too far gone to ask questions—some of us are playing noughts and crosses, some drawing scurrilous pictures for circulation among the benches, some have novels under the desk, some are asleep, some complacently demolishing arrears of correspondence. "And then" we hear him say, evidently pleased with the result of his scrutiny: "Er—you see—er——" A messenger comes in and he says: "Ah—um——" and off we go again into a sea of Greek, upon the ebb of which he sails in great relief back to his rooms and his Bacchylides. Another hermit is engaged in the pursuit of the higher mathematics. He never teaches—nor, as far as the undergraduates are concerned, does he ever speak. Indeed, I doubt if any of us even fully realise his existence. Now and then we become dimly aware of a rather tall, spare man with a colourless face, in colourless clothes, with a soft black hat on the back of his head and an armful of papers, flitting silently round a corner of the court, but the impression is too fleeting to provoke inquiry. Indeed, no one knows how he really spends his time. No work from his pen has ever reached the stage of publication, though it is rumoured that his ambition is to concentrate the fruit of his vast knowledge and long years of study on a single sheet of cardboard, which is to be a summary of (mathematical) wisdom. Unfortunately, each step in his continual advance makes an amendment necessary. So that it seems extremely doubtful whether even this work will ever reach completion. The opinion among us lesser lights is that, even if it does, no one else will be able to understand it, so we at least contrive to wait in patience for its conclusion.

It is perhaps shyness, exaggerated a hundred-fold by years of isolation, which most contributes to this species of eccentricity. As the shrinking from human society withdraws the mind more and more from common preoccupations, the master passion seizes the deserted outposts, and in the process of time the citadel is cut off altogether. Indeed, it is strange how almost universal this disease of shyness is in combination-room society. There is hardly one who does not seem to feel himself always confronted by hostile elements, perpetually surrounded and perpetually vigilant, able to relax guard only on rare occasions in the company of one or two congenial and intimate friends. Some are saved from the extremity of isolation by the necessities of a college office which brings them continually into contact with other interests and other points of view. These remain in the world, though one may conjecture that the condition affords them but little satisfaction. Occasionally, however, one comes across a character whose eccentricity seems in no way attributable to any disinclination for human society. It is impossible to say of such a one whether it is Cambridge that has bred his peculiarities, or whether it is their existence that has driven him to Cambridge. If the latter be the case, she has, one may be sure, at least increased them. A character of this sort is often extremely fond of society - the masculine society of the University, that is—and shows an extraordinary adaptability and power of handling it. In spite of decided oddities of dress and appearance, he seems able to enlist the interest and sympathy of the most diverse characters. His hospitality is lavish, and his interest in the arts of the table attains an almost religious intensity. His conferences with the college cook are pontifical in their gravity, and each succeeding year suspends a votive fold beneath his chin. He is immersed in every kind of college business, and despatches all with the greatest zest and punctuality. He may even become the centre of political intrigue, and this, too, he conducts with the greatest perspicacity and success, though the principles which animate him are hardly as modern as his practice. For he is a staunch and convinced Jacobite, and nightly drinks the King over the water with due solemnity. In matters religious he moves in the most rarefied atmosphere of High Churchmanship. He can endure no music later than Palestrina, for whom he always professes a profound and truly orthodox esteem. His spare hours are devoted to the elucidation of the Greek novelists, of whom he is preparing a comprehensive edition, with translation, introduction, bibliography, and notes critical, philological, and sociological, and a battery of cross references huge enough to affright even the learned. In addition he is a complete Russian scholar, and has spent much time at St. Petersburg, instructing himself in the dogmas and practices of the Greek Church and engaging the aristocracy at games of hazard in which he was invariably successful, for he plays with a combination of nerve and recklessness which it is almost impossible to withstand. He still maintains a profound and intricate correspondence with patriarchs, and encyclopaedias in distress upon a point of orthodoxy never apply to him in vain.

Hat tip: Eric Thomson, who wonders if Tennyson "was thinking of Richard Jebb, whose Bacchylides was published in 1905. 'In addition, he is a complete Russian scholar' might be an allusion to the Trinity Latinist J. D. Duff, who started learning Russian in his forties (he was forty in 1900) and went on to translate ... Alexander Herzen's great autobiography Childhood, Youth & Exile (My Past and Thoughts parts I & II)." It is tempting to hazard more identifications. Could the mathematician be Bertrand Russell? Or G.H. Hardy?