It was a dark, diluvial, owl-infested night.
Despite the glass of Aquavit that he had downed at two in the morning after filling out, checking and re-checking his mark sheets, he tossed and turned in his bed. There was nothing he could do about it, it was the annual November nightmare.
‘Gratias Deo agamus pro collegio dilectissimo examinatorum…’
Aaaargh…they were processing in, led by the Impactor in black doublet and hose carrying the University Statutes… Turn over, turn over! Another glass of Aquavit…
Whoo-oo-er, whoo-oo-er, wobbled the owl in the tree outside his bedroom window, and was answered by several in the garden.
The chief examiners gathered round the original, six-hundred-year-old oak Board like rooks, or plague doctors, with their gowns – blast it, g-hounes – flapping and covering their hands. There was the abominable Professor ‘Zeus’ Griggs, who always nit-picked junior examiners’ marks…
‘Oculi omnium in vos respiciunt, docti…’
Oh God, were they? Was he sure he was wearing the right gown, the jet-black, sable-trimmed ghoune? (‘We pronounce the ‘h’ in it: g-houne, as they did in 1370.’) The right trousers? The right pants?
He tossed. The owls whoo-oo-ered. Rain lashed the window.
Was he absolutely, absolutely sure he’d got the marks right?
Riley, 25 and a half Composition, 28 Translation, 64 Literature…equals 117 and a half equals 58 and three quarters plus a half, a half, and another half…equals 60 and a quarter, check 12 and three eighths times 5…
And the blessed Hodgkinson, the weakest candidate but the first he’d marked, had he got that right, or had he marked too hard? He must check it…mo-der-ate…
Composition…a half, a half, a half (really?), a half, and a half (definitely), 18 and a half over 40 equals 9 and a quarter times five equals 46 and a quarter…
Fortunately, the real warfare was conducted in English:
‘And now I call upon Dr Robinson to present the marks for the Entrance candidates in Swedish…’
Aaaargh, his opening response still had to be in Latin! Was the text of it firmly stuck inside his mortarboard, was it legible enough, and could he doff the absurd hat and hold it at quite the right angle for no-one to see he was reading from it?
…19 over 40 equals 9 and a half times five equals 47 and a half per cent 23 and three quarters call it 24 over 50…
Aaaaargh! Griggs was interrupting him, peering over his half-moon glasses…
…13 and a half over 40 equals 6 and three-quarters re-check…23 and three-quarters equals 24 over 50 plus 34 over 2, minus a half, a half, a half…
Whoo-oo-er, whoo-oo-er…lash-lash…g-houne…g-houl…goon…
At about four in the morning, the business was concluded. ‘Zeus’ approved his final adjusted marks with a slow, savoury ‘Benedictum’, whereupon all the other rooks round the table cawed:
‘Satis habemus in rationibus doctoris Robinsoni – impinge ei, lictore!’
The great moment of release had come.
He bowed over his examiner’s desk. The Impactor Librorum strode round, stood before him, lifted the tome with both hands, and brought it down on his head…
A sheet of blackness engulfed him, like a billowing ghoune.
© Patrick Miles, 2021
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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Patrick: much enjoyed your nightmarish examiners’ board (right in there with the ‘dark, diluvial owls’), on a rainy Sunday morning in Lille. Any retired academic probably has similar visitations. My more modest nightmares, originating in Manchester (where there were no gowns and no Latin in our English department – and no owls that I can remember, though the owl features in the university’s heraldic crest) had more to do with not having marked a pile of papers by the due date, or having scrambled the marks to such an extent that they could not be communicated. General sense of Not Having Done a Good Job.
I often feel, in fact, that the emotional energy we expend on these retirement nightmares (which include not having looked at our post for weeks, losing a pile of old-style UCCA forms, and, of course, failing to find the loo) are the real justification for the receipt of our pensions. I’m sure there must be a good Freudian argument for keeping these index-linked.
Dear Damian, thank you as ever for your life-experience, wisdom and wit! I should place on record that I never had such cauchemars myself, but on the 400th anniversary of the great Frenchman’s birth it seems appropriate to admit that I was influenced by the burlesque ‘Third Interlude’ of Molière’s immortal Malade imaginaire, beginning ‘Savantissimi doctores’…