For Madeleine Descargues
Despite his gammy leg and stick, the College’s senior fellow succeeded in walking from King’s Cross to the hospital and arrived at the dying man’s bedside just after eleven a.m.
Two emeritus professors of French and one of Italian were already there. He nodded to them.
The Queen’s Professor of Spanish lay with a hand on the coverlet and his silver-bearded head jerked upwards to one side. A young nurse was attending to something attached to his other arm. Before anyone could say anything, a nurse in a darker uniform stopped at the foot of the bed and said:
‘Has he had his little visit, nurse?’
‘Yes,’ the first replied. ‘At six o’clock this morning.’
The senior fellow looked at his old colleagues and raised his eyebrows. When both nurses had gone, Byng, the Haberdashers Professor of French, said:
‘It’s an old wives tale. They believe that someone can’t die until they’ve been “visited” by a dead person they knew.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said the senior fellow. He pondered who, in this particular case, it might be. Sancho Panza?
He bent over the long, gaunt form of the Queen’s Professor, touched his hand, and whispered:
‘Jim, it’s Sandy here… George Sandison from Cambridge. I’ve come to say goodbye.’
There was absolutely no reaction.
‘He flickered his eyelids when we first arrived,’ said the Haberdashers Professor, ‘but nothing since.’
‘Hm…’ The senior fellow looked from face to face.
…Les parties blanches de barbes jusque-là entièrement noires rendaient mélancolique le paysage humain de cette matinée, comme les premières feuilles jaunes des arbres alors qu’on croyait encore pouvoir compter sur un long été…
Sandison had never been a professor, but his knowledge of Proust was encyclopaedic. He was very popular in his college, where he was also famous for having had a cat that had to be registered as ‘Dog’ to conform with the Statutes.
Between pauses, the four standing figures exchanged one-liners.
Suddenly a Bach harpsichord sonata, subdued and strangely Platonic, was extruded from some hidden source. They looked at each other, but another nurse appeared and began to draw the curtain round the bed.
‘We had better go,’ said the other Professor of French, and having each touched the Queen’s servant’s hand they went out into the corridor. There, the Professor of Italian said:
‘Well, gentlemen, I don’t know when we shall see each other again, in Paradiso I suppose!’
‘Yes, in Paradiso… In Paradiso!’ they agreed.
…toute mort est pour les autres une simplification d’existence…
The senior fellow hobbled back to King’s Cross and was in Cambridge well in time to attend his sixty-first college modern linguists graduand buffet.
It was a radiant May Week day, but too hot and steamy for him really, the exertions of the morning and the lunch were telling on him. He crossed the college lawn to the stone steps up to his rooms, but as he drew himself onto the first step he lurched and clipped his head on the wall. It was nothing, he would be all right once he got in and could subside into his reclining chair in front of the French window. First, however, he took a bottle of Meursault from the fridge and poured himself a large glass. He shuffled to the window, opened both leaves fully, and lay down.
Ah…how appropriate that simple Aligoté of Castor’s was with those superb slipper soles in aspic that the College did so well…perhaps he should not have had so many glasses of Chablis to follow, but soddit…and those young people were so lovely…their conversation was so fresh and invigorating…
He looked down at the river and across to the college gardens. The sunlight was brilliant, the river sparkled, and young people were punting slowly past there, like every summer he could remember. The university year was over again, quiet college life and Pimms parties would descend once more, even if that morning his bedder had jarringly reminded him that ‘the organs will soon be up’, meaning the candidates for organ scholarships… ‘The organs’! Dreadful woman, but it was still paradise, paradise…
He loosened his tie and sipped the chill Meursault. The Master’s Garden below was a vision of pink lavatera… The undergraduate at the back of that punt, complete with boater, had a cheeky little bum, and was full of grace…though nothing to compare with dear Adrian… ‘A young Apollo, golden-haired’ indeed… Les vrais paradis sont les paradis qu’on a perdus… No no, not that ghastly quote again…
He heaved a deep sigh. Girls’ laughter and voices reached him from the river, but he drifted into a dazed sleep… Then he gradually became aware of someone looking at him from above the trees beyond the river. He opened his eyes and started.
‘It’s Ginger, my old cat!’
He threw his arms up towards the great feline head, and passed over.
© 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.
