The World According to Bertie - Alexander Hanchett Smith [48]
‘We were walking along South College Street when she said this. The others were slightly ahead, engaged in conversation of their own, while la McDowall and I trailed a bit behind. It had rained, and the stone setts paving the road glistened in the street-lights. I felt exhilarated by the operatic beauty of our surroundings: the dark bulk of the Old College to our left, the high, rather dingy tenement to our right. At any moment, I thought, a window might open in the tenement above and a basso profondo lean out and break into song. That might happen in Naples, I suppose, but not Edinburgh; still, one might dream.
‘La McDowall then launched into an explanation of the name McDowall and her ancestry. Have you noticed how these people are often obsessed with their ancestry? What does it matter? We’re most of us cousins in Scotland, if you go far enough back, and if you go even further back, don’t we all come from five ur-women in Western Europe somewhere? Isn’t that what Professor Sykes says in his book?
‘Talking of Professor Sykes, do you know that I met him, Matthew? No, you don’t. Well, I did. I happened to be friendly with a fellow of All Souls in Oxford. Wonderful place, that. Free lunch and dinner for life – the best job there is. Anyway, this friend of mine is an economic historian down there – Scottish historians, you may have noticed, have taken over from Scottish missionaries in carrying the light to those parts. And we’ve got some jolly good historians, Matthew – Ted Cowan, Hew Strachan, Sandy Fenton, with his old ploughs and historic brose, Rosalind Marshall, who’s just written this book about Mary’s female pals, Hugh Cheape, who knows all about old bagpipes and suchlike, and any number of others. Anyway, I knew this chap when he was so-high, running around Perthshire in funny breeks like Wee Eck’s. He invited me down for a feast, as they call it, and I decided to go out of curiosity. I was put up in a guest room in All Souls itself – no bathroom for miles, of course, and an ancient retainer who brought in a jug of water and said something which I just couldn’t make out. Some strange English dialect; you know how they mutilate the language down there.
‘The feast was quite extraordinary, and it reaffirmed my conviction that the English are half mad when they think nobody’s looking. They’re a charming people – very tolerant and decent at heart – but they have this distinct streak of insanity which comes out in places like Oxford and in some of the London clubs. It’s harmless, of course, but it takes some getting used to, I can tell you.
‘We had roast beef and all the trimmings – roast tatties, big crumbling hunks of Stilton and ancient port. They did us proud. There were a couple of speeches in Latin, I think, and of course we kicked off with an interminable grace which, among other things, called down the Lord’s fury on the college’s enemies. That one was in English, just in case the Lord didn’t get the point. This brought lots of enthusiastic amens, and I realised that these people must be feeling the pressure a bit, what with all this talk of relevance and inclusiveness and all those things. And I couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for them, you know, Matthew. Imagine if you had fixed yourself up with a number like that and then suddenly the winds of change start blowing and people want to stop you having feasts and eating Stilton. It can’t be easy.
‘Of course, it’s foolishness of a high order to destroy these things. The Americans would sell their soul just to get something vaguely approximating to All Souls – they really would. It’s such a pity, because they would have such fun in places like that. The Canadians, of course, have got something