“Look,” I whispered, “there’s Harold Acton.”
A tall plumpish young man loomed up, whom it was impossible to contemplate as an undergraduate; his umbrella was rolled cane-tight but no snugger than he was, into a long tube of a black overcoat with spilling from under it pleated trousers as wide a skirt. As he advanced out of the swirling mist, it became dear that it was not just the weather, he was doing his own swirling. His advent was a sequence of hobble steps which seemed — his legs were of a good length — to be based on the ritual of some rompish religion; if his walk had not had elegance, it would have been a waddle. He swayed to a standstill; in case his kind soft-coloured features might be mistaken for the face of youth, he had flanked them with a pair of long side-whiskers and topped them with a skittishly curled grey bowler. Bowing with the courtesy of another age and clime, he spoke, an English flawlessly italianated [sic]. “I do most dreadfully beg your pardons this inclement night — though I have been resident a year, I find it too idiotically difficult to find my way about, I have been round Tom like a tee-toe-tum, too too madd-ening — where does our dear Dean hang out?” He thanked me profusely, raised the bowler with a dazzling smile, and propelled himself Deanward, an Oriental diplomat off to leave a jewelled carte de visite. “Jesus,” said Evvers, “what’s that?” “He’s the Oxford aesthete,” I informed him, “a Victorian, his rooms in Meadow are in lemon yellow and he stands on his balcony and reads his poems through a megaphone to people passing, and he belongs to the Hypocrites Club with Brian Howard and Robert Byron and Evelyn Waugh and all that set, they call themselves the Post-War Generation and wear Hearts on their lapels as opposed to the pre-war Rupert Brooke lot who called themselves Souls. They’re supposed to eat new-born babies cooked in wine.” (ch. 20, “Fair Wind”, pp. 260-1 of the 1965 Four Square paperback)
But I had hopes more immediate, which met two rebuffs, gentle but definite. The first was my call on Harold Acton in his lemon room, after I had submitted my Holywell poems to him as editor of Oxford Poetry 1924. No manuscript was ever turned down with more exquisite tact; under the monochromes and Victorian glass and the hanging megaphone, I was wafted on to the antimacassars and sighingly assured that while my work was polished like a jew-el, what he was seeking was the inarticulate soul-gropings of the undergraduate wasn’t it horr-id of him and could he press me to a white la-dy? I left glowing with rejection. (ch. 21, “Love’s Labour Lost, and Won”, pg. 277-8)
[T]he show was retrieved only by individual turns and the gaiety of the numbers. The hit was ‘Jumper Boy’, by Addinsell and Leigh: a skit on a craze which had spread outwards from Harold Acton and his set and had made enough ripples in Mayfair to be currently parodied in Lonsdale’s Spring Cleaning. When Willie, sitting on a table in double-breasted maroon jacket over black turtle-neck, mauve Oxford bags flowing below and hair smarmed down and forward, announced, almost wistfully, a craving for high-necked jumpers ‘in pinks and reds and yellows, just like Ivor Novello’s...’ the number had a bite of professionalism which we badly needed. (ch. 22, “Mirage”, pg. 300)
Vigil was chosen to be included in the Evening of One-Act Plays ... “Marvellous!” said John. “Your first play, my first production!” “Let’s celebrate,” said Martin the seraph, “I’ll take you all to Fluffy Dent-Godalming’s.” “Fluffy Dent-Godalming?” said John, knocking out his pipe, “sounds like a deb turned chorus girl.” “He practically is,” said Martin, “and the poor thing’s in Balliol. He’s got a binge tonight, but hates the word and says he’s giving a small dance. It’s to celebrate the Cherwell number.” “Oh my God,” said John. That week the magazine, handed blithely over to Harold Acton and Brian Howard, had set North Oxford by the ears: ‘ “GIRL-MEN AT CAMBRIDGE” — this sort of slogan in the daily papers must cease; Oxford cannot afford to lose her one claim to public attention. Girl-men are hers, and hers ALONE; for the last six months they have provided three dozen London reporters with their daily bread. Shall Cambridge take this away from us? NEVER!’ Over the page, a sober Acton review of The Picture of Dorian Gray: ‘a charming boy’s book, we would suggest a cheap edition to fit comfortably into the pocket of a school blazer.’ (ch. 23, “Becalmed and Adrift”, pg. 314)
It was the night for the slate-blue sweater with the maroon tie, and I flapped smartly past the poor devils dawdling in to Hall dinner, then once more through the invisible townees thronging the Corn, and up the George steps. As I entered the glittering twittering flower-scented pleasure-dome, beyond the palms the orchestra was playing ‘I want to be Happy’. The other three already shone at the table, John conservative in bow-tie, Charles quiet and brushed and amused, Martin in green shirt and flowing poet’s tie, his hair trained down into one eye. The punkah started to whir. “Martin,” I said, “you look like a sinister choir-boy of fourteen.” “So glad, I was aiming at fifteen. When I’m sent down I shall apply for a job as punkah-coolie at the George.” I sipped my gin-and-French; it tasted more like medicine than medicine did. “Martin,” said John, lighting a Balkan Sobranie, “which is Muriel?” “Standing behind Mark Ogilvie-Grant and Ketton-Cremer and serving Harold Acton if you know what I mean — cigarette? Miranda’s dream, rather good.” I took my first puff, and savoured my medicine; the lights and the music and the talk were closing deliciously around me like a great buzzing bubble. “I asked her to marry me,” drawled Martin, “but she was engaged to either Plunkett-Greene or Robert Byron she couldn’t remember which.”
Then he told us how last vac, waiting for a bus in Piccadilly, he had been drawn into conversation by a Nonconformist parson — “one of his big non-conforming days...” “Martin,” said John as we pooled for gin-and-Frenches and ordered more, “now we’re boozing tell us all — are you or aren’t you?” “Well,” said Martin, pursing his lips to make a smoke-ring while he weighed the question, “yes and no — I’m bi, I suppose.” “Bi?” I said, at sea. “Sexual,” said Martin, blowing a kiss to Muriel. “They do say,” said John, winking at me and Charles, “that at school you were no better than you should be.” “Do they?” said Martin, beaming, “tell them I can’t take too much credit, if there’d been any girls about I might have got through clean as a whistle. It was really faute de Muriel.” We all laughed so much that even Brian Howard’s table turned round. (ch. 23, “Becalmed and Adrift”, pg. 316)
I lurched across — “my dear my ankle” — and into the bedder. Four people were perched on the single bed, three drinking and listening to the fourth, Harold Acton, his trousers draped to look like a lilac-coloured hobble-skirt. On a low dressing-table lay a box of Papier Poudré Phul-Nana and a lip-stick. I watched Fluffy sit before the mirror, take up the lipstick, peer, put on his spectacles, apply it with care, put it down, whip off the spectacles and scamper back to the dance. I took his place, drained a tiny glass, green stuff tasting like sweets, and cocked an ear to the bed. “But if one finds the words, my dears, there is beau-ty in a black-pudding!” (ch. 23, “Becalmed and Adrift”, pp. 318-9)
During rehearsals, somebody suggested that mine being a big room, why not a bottle party, and charge everybody their gate-money? This was so successful that it became a weekly event; each time after the last guest was gone, I donned a scout’s apron and put the room to rights. Daily I expected a polite note from Professor Lindemann, and it is typical of the impersonality of Oxford life, certainly at Christ Church then, that it never occurred to me that somebody might notice my weekly battel dropsically swollen with gate-money, and so get wind of the fact that I was running a night-club. And nobody ever did.
There were no incidents, and though spirits were high the dancing stayed as stately as ever. The only chequered night was after I met Brian Howard in Peck and he said, “We’re dining first, shall we bring Cara?” “Do,” I said, thinking that he meant some Italian undergraduate; I was halfway to Meadow when I remembered that Cara was Oxford’s own siren — but they couldn’t bring a girl, they’d be stopped at the gate... They weren’t, for in mid-party Brian slipped in with Fluffy and a white wisp of a boy in Oxford bags, long scarf and green pork-pie hat; she passed among the crowd and danced from here to there, so Eton-cropped that her hair was often shorter than her partner’s. Setting out for Tom Gate, Brian was unperturbed, “I’ll put her between Fluffy and Sandy and the porter won’t bat an eyelid.” It was next morning before I contemplated the consequences for me if the porter had. (ch. 24, “Towards the Rocks”, pg. 325)