Poems, Letters and Memories of Philip Sidney Nairn
E. R. Eddison
A poignant memoir and tribute to the Oxford poet Nairnby the author who went on to create The Worm Ouroborosand the groundbreaking Zimiamvia fantasy trilogy.Eric Rucker Eddison’s first book, originally published privately in hardback during the First World War, is a poignant memoir and tribute to the Oxford poet Philip Sidney Fletcher Nairn, whose work was so inspired by his Scottish ancestry, life in the Lake District, and his subsequent travels across Asia.This first official paperback edition includes a poignant and evocative biography, a dozen photographs, and more than 50 of Nairn’s poems, and marks the centenary of his untimely death in Kuala Lumpur in May 1914, aged just 30 years old.
POEMS, LETTERS, AND MEMORIES OF PHILIP SIDNEY NAIRN
ARRANGED BY
E. R. EDDISON
Late of Trinity College, Oxford
PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION
LONDON, 1916
Copyright (#ub59c4ee2-2843-54ee-883f-c4b8239eb63e)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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Copyright © E. R. Eddison 1916
Jacket illustration © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 2014
E. R. Eddison asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Source ISBN: 9780007578078
Ebook Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780007578085
Version: 2014-12-16
P. S. F. NAIRN IN 1907.
[From, a photograph by Martin Jacolette.]
CONTENTS
Cover (#u55b3df15-c6f1-5516-9d5a-81b14348cc58)
Title Page (#ud709fd43-a713-501b-935f-e3c30ddb27d3)
Copyright
List of Illustrations
Preface
I. Introduction
II. Family, Birth, and School Life
III. Oxford and Stettin
IV. Kelantan and the Federated Malay States
V. Life and Literature
POEMS
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS:
Exile
To J. C.
Desiderium
To E. R. E. (on receiving a certain letter)
To Miss M. H.
In the Buchheide
The Dawn of Love
Retrospect
A Fallen Socrates
Reverie
Rejected Verse
Blore’s
To Smudge – my Dog
To my German Class
To Mrs Honey
For Jess
For Miss E. S.
To Phoebus Apollo
For Barbara
For Miss E. Brown
For Miss M. Brown
Advance, Australia!
‘Altogether Piffle’
Why Not?
At Parting
To the Unknown Goddess
To J. M. C.
Off Malacca
Sundown in the Rains
To E. R. E. (on news of his engagement)
Fragment
Trois Ans Après
Hélas
F. M. S. DITTIES:
To my Nearest Neighbour
The Point of View
Mischievous
The Volunteer Dance
‘He slumbered in Carcosa’s stead’
Metamorphosis
Upon the Troublesome Times
The Seats of the Mighty
Day-dreams or Nightmare?
Furious Driving
Still the Everlasting ‘Dreadnought’
Some Quatrains from the Selangor Golf Club
TRANSLATIONS:
Near to my Love
Night
Late Summer
The Asra
Anacreon’s Grave
To my Absent Love
Ultimus Cursus Vitae
Appendix I
Appendix II
Footnotes
Also by E. R. Eddison
About the Publisher
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#ub59c4ee2-2843-54ee-883f-c4b8239eb63e)
1 (#litres_trial_promo). P. S. F. Nairn in 1907
2 (#litres_trial_promo). Five Years Old
3 (#litres_trial_promo). At the Foot of Wastwater, April 1906
4 (#litres_trial_promo). At Oxford, on the Cherwell
5 (#litres_trial_promo). Nairn’s Bungalow at Kota Bharu
6 (#litres_trial_promo). A Garden Party at the Residency
7 (#litres_trial_promo). Group on the Tennis Lawn
8 (#litres_trial_promo). Nairn with his Sikhs
9 (#litres_trial_promo). Proclamation of King George V at Kuala Pilah
10 (#litres_trial_promo). Two Scenes on the Straits of Malacca
11 (#litres_trial_promo). The District Officer’s Quarters at Port Dickson
PREFACE (#ub59c4ee2-2843-54ee-883f-c4b8239eb63e)
The verses which form the original and essential part of this book are somewhat overshadowed in bulk by the introductory Memoir. The justification of this (to my mind a complete justification) is that it is due not (at least I hope not) to prolixity on the part of the editor, but to the inclusion of long quotations from Nairn’s letters and from his diary. Some of the poems are undoubtedly worthy, in themselves and for their own sake, to be preserved. But their author wrote himself down less vividly and unmistakably in these essays in finished art than in his less studied writings, and any lasting value possessed by this compilation will, in my opinion, rest chiefly on such success as it may have in snatching from oblivion some living traits of a personality which has far more than a personal interest.
Of the defects of my share in the book I am painfully aware. It has been written in time of war, on Sundays or on late evenings, in such moments of leisure as could be found amid urgent official duties. In more favourable circumstances the area of correspondence covered might have been widened, and the balance of the whole better adjusted.
In my estimate of Nairn’s character I do not pretend to be judicial. I have, however, kept a watchful eye on the pardonable leanings of a friend’s judgment towards mere eulogy. I have made no statement which has not been weighed, nor any which I do not believe to be true.
I desire to thank my friend Mr Henry Nairn for the compliment he has paid me in asking me to undertake this work, and for the assistance and information which he has ungrudgingly placed at my disposal. Also my old friend Captain M. H. Woods, for permitting me to take his name in vain. For the local and historical particulars of Kelantan I am chiefly indebted to Mr W. A. Graham’s book, which is, I believe, still the chief authority on that State. I must finally record my obligations to the Editors of the Pall Mall Gazette and the Malay Mail, who have kindly consented to the reproduction of poems which appeared originally in their publications. Two sonnets, Exile and In the Buchheide, appeared in the Pall Mall Magazine, now incorporated with Nash’s Magazine. Finally, it may be noted of the pictures that Nairn appears in all of them.
E. R. E.
November, 1915.
CHAPTER I (#ub59c4ee2-2843-54ee-883f-c4b8239eb63e)
INTRODUCTION (#ub59c4ee2-2843-54ee-883f-c4b8239eb63e)
There are men and women of such vitality of spirit, in whom the roots of thought, of action, and of affection seem so firmly set, so safely and naturally engrafted on those abiding principles of reason, efficiency, and goodness which are the starting-point and the goal of all sane philosophy, that the mere calling of them to mind seems to question the finality of death. The barriers of the grave at the passage of such souls, put off, after the first bitterness of sorrow, their irrefragable and inexorable darkness, shrinking to a reality more tolerable and more transient; as, in Meredith’s romance, the palace of Rabesqurat, Mistress of Illusions, was dissipated in the light of the Lily. This instinctive sense of death as transition, not dissolution, is a rare consolation left by such personalities to relatives and friends bereaved. It is independent of all creeds and philosophies: a conviction to be fostered if we are wise, if only because it is productive of a saner and truer habit of mind in thinking of our friend. That for the term of this life we have lost him, that in the height of his youth and promise his career has been cut short, is hard enough. But it is treason to the memory of one who had in his whole nature nothing akin to death to think of him as annihilated; a condition, moreover, the possibility of which is an assumption as arbitrary and as repugnant to the developed consciousness as the crudest myth of primitive society. There is deep truth and justice underlying the saying of the dear old Abbé Jérôme Coignard: ‘Votre crapaud à tête de chat n’est pas plus véritable que la Nymphe de monsieur que voici; et de plus, c’est une invention dégoûtante.’
Of such a quality of vital power and being was Philip Sidney Fletcher Nairn. And I have said so much to explain why in writing of my friend I will not use the tone of a funeral oration. According to medical authority, death came to him suddenly and painlessly on that May evening on the coast of Negri Sembilan. Changing his clothes for dinner after a motor drive, he was seized by an attack of haemorrhage, and in half a minute all was over. He was spared the misery of an illness. It would have been difficult for those who loved him to wish him a more merciful ending. Nor is there any gain in dwelling on this last momentary sad scene of a full and happy life. To name him calls up his image in settings far different: his fine athletic figure at work in the ‘scrum’, or braced against the wind on the Pikes of Scafell, or dark against the sunset on the level summit of the Pillar; or deep in a big armchair reading aloud perhaps, Webster, Meredith, or Omar, talking of books or plays, spinning yarns, guessing at the riddles of the Sphinx, in some of our rooms at Trinity on one of those noctes ambrosiana, sacred to youth and friendship, redolent of tobacco-smoke and wine; or on some wilder nox Neroniana, when the bonfire shamed the stars, and as night grew old the ‘Alpine Club’, of which he was no obscure member, went secretly forth to new conquests. Or, most familiar to those who were with him in the East, the picture of him that belongs to the last seven years of his life, living the free active life that he loved, laying in able, thorough, and human administration the foundations of a career that promised to be of high distinction and Imperial value.
In person, Nairn was what the sagas call mikill ok sterkr – a big man and a strong. In height he was over 6ft 3in., and 13 stone in weight. Unlike many tall men, he was well knit and well proportioned. His complexion was very fair, until the tropics tanned it; his hair very fair, his features well cut, his eyes blue. He was short-sighted and always wore pince-nez. His voice was pleasant, strong, and expressive; his laugh big and merry, and of a quality to make others laugh with him. At rest, his expression was grave and alert, but the humorous lines were always ready to show themselves at the corners of his mouth and eyes. His manner to strangers had a certain courtliness, but he could at need be truculent enough. He was quick-tempered, but not a bearer of malice. He was a good observer and a judge of men. It was well said of him that his friends prized his friendship the more because he did not suffer fools gladly. The whole effect of his presence was singularly buoyant and sunny. With his intimate friends he adopted, when in good spirits, a tone half mocking, half hectoring, and entirely delightful. The nearest thing to it I can think of in literature is the jesting bravado of Mercutio. Its charm is incommunicable, except in so far as it may be caught in certain passages of his diary and private letters reproduced in this volume.
Such letters and such extracts I make no apology for having introduced freely and fully, and with the least possible mutilation. A heavy responsibility must always attach to the giving of private letters to the general public. The justification for so doing lies in their value from a literary and biographical point of view. That expurgation, in the case of a document of real merit, means emasculation, is an axiom which Nairn always joined me in upholding; and I am concerned rather to present a true and lovable portrait of him to those who can appreciate it, than to perpetuate a washed-out travesty which shall appeal to the susceptibilities of persons whose opinion is negligible. Most of all I would not dim the impression of a spirit, which, had it encountered like misfortune, would have lived up to the example of that McPherson sung by Burns:
Sae rantingly, sae wantonly,
Sae dauntingly gaed he;
He played a spring and danced it round
Below the gallows tree.
CHAPTER II (#ub59c4ee2-2843-54ee-883f-c4b8239eb63e)
FAMILY, BIRTH, AND SCHOOL LIFE (#ub59c4ee2-2843-54ee-883f-c4b8239eb63e)
Mr Henry Nairn, who has taken some pains to investigate the early history of the Scottish house to which he belongs, has been led to the conclusion that all of the name of Nairn or Nairne are probably of common descent, going back to one Michael de Nairne, who lived at the end of the fourteenth century. This Michael signed as a witness, in his capacity of Shieldbearer to the Regent Albany, the compact of battle between the rival Clan Quhele and Clan Chattan before their fight described by Scott in his Fair Maid of Perth. The line has been carried back yet further, though with less certainty, to one Murdochus Nairne whose son, Hercules, witnessed a charter in 1211. It is matter for speculation whether the origin of the family was Keltic or Italian. Whatever may be the truth as to this, it is certain that the family is ancient, began with considerable dignity, and flourished for some centuries. Later it fell on evil days, and most of the estates passed into the female line.
The branch which concerns us made its home in Northumberland. William Nairn, the son of William Nairn who was Baillie of Dalkeith, appears to have left Scotland and settled in the parish of Kirkwhelpington, a remote village in the Cheviots near the Scottish border, in or before 1737. In the following generations the family moved to Rothbury and thence to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where, about the year 1800, was established the commercial firm well known in the North for over half a century as Philip Nairn & Sons, shipowners and corn importers. Philip Nairn of Waren, the son of the founder of this firm, was a man of distinguished personality, well known, popular, and respected by all classes of people with whom he came into contact in Northumberland, where for many years he enjoyed the distinction of being the largest farmer and the largest grain merchant between the Forth and the Tyne. In politics a Whig of the old school, he was a powerful supporter of Lord Grey when Prime Minister, of his son Lord Howick, and of Sir George Grey of Falloden. This political connection created an intimacy with the many sons of the Prime Minister, all of whom were frequent guests at the Waren dinner parties, which Mr Nairn’s lavish hospitality and the charm, intellectuality, and social gifts of his wife made famous throughout the county. Nor were the guests at these dinners limited to his own political party. He practically kept open house; nobody, whatever his rank or position, left Waren without partaking of its well-known hospitality, and the servants’ hall was rarely empty. In the early fifties a series of disastrous losses of uninsured property, combined with the effect of the introduction of telegraphy which militated against the somewhat old-world methods of Philip Nairn & Sons, and nullified the advantage hitherto enjoyed by Mr Nairn as indisputably one of the best judges of corn in England, brought an end to this prosperity. He moved to Wetheral, near Carlisle, where he died somewhat suddenly in 1859. His son, Mr Henry Nairn, moved to London to take up the clerkship in the Government Service which he held for over forty-two years.
One point, perhaps the most interesting of all, must be mentioned before I pass to the main subject. The descent of the Nairns of Northumberland from William Nairn, Baillie of Dalkeith, though it rests on the strongest circumstantial evidence, probably could not be proved in a court of law. If, however, as seems reasonable, this descent is taken as established, it connects the family by direct succession in the female line with William Drummond of Hawthornden, the poet and friend of Ben Jonson, and one of the most brilliant men of letters of the late Elizabethan times. If this be so, the poetical gifts which produced the verses which form this volume may reasonably be attributed to heredity throwing back in the ninth generation to Drummond of Hawthornden.
Philip Sidney Fletcher Nairn was born at Bromley, Kent, on December 11th, 1883: the only son and youngest child of Mr Henry Nairn, late of H.M. Civil Service. His mother died when he was only seven years old. She was a woman of singular charm, beloved by all who came into contact with her. From her, her son inherited the charming personality which made him so popular with all who knew him, and also his linguistic talent; for, born in Naples and educated in Germany, she spoke with equal facility English, French, German, and Italian. Through her he descended from a branch of the Campbell family. His great-grandfather, an officer in a Highland regiment, on retiring from the Service settled at Naples, and married a Sicilian lady. Much of the Sicilian blood showed itself in Nairn in his childhood; from the earliest age he gave signs of those dramatic, poetic, and imitative powers which there is little doubt descended to him from that histrionic race. His home was at Wimbledon from the time of his mother’s death until he left England sixteen years later for the East.
FIVE YEARS OLD.
[From a photograph by Lavender, of Bromley, Kent.]
At the age of seven he went to a dame’s preparatory school at Wetheral, and two years later to Rokeby School, The Downs, Wimbledon, an excellent preparatory school managed by Mr C. D. Olive, M.A., of Christchurch, Oxford. In 1896 he obtained a Foundation and a House Scholarship at the King’s School, Canterbury. This is the oldest school in the British Empire, founded in the sixth century in the time of St Augustine, and ideally situated in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral.
The Dean of Canterbury when Nairn was at school there was the well-known writer, Dr Farrar. As an old Headmaster the Dean took a great interest in the King’s School, of which, in his capacity of head of the Cathedral Chapter, he was principal Governor, and it was his custom always to have one of the sixth form boys to act as his unofficial and part-time private secretary and assist him in his correspondence. On Nairn’s entering the sixth form he was selected by the Dean for this post. The Dean took a great personal interest in him, and often asked him to meet his distinguished guests at the Sunday morning breakfasts which were a feature of the Deanery hospitality. It was good for him intellectually, as well as entertaining, to listen to the conversation between his host and the celebrated divines, politicians, writers, and statesmen who were present on these occasions.
Nairn was very happy at Canterbury, where, as elsewhere, he was successful in his studies and in his games. He rose to be Head Monitor, and was also Captain of the Rugby Fifteen and Champion Swimmer and Diver. Cricket he never excelled in, because of his defective eyesight. He was Vice-Captain of the school, and just missed becoming Captain.
His summer holidays were generally spent abroad – principally in Normandy – with his father and sisters, and were thoroughly enjoyed. In this way he came to know most of the north of France, besides parts of Belgium and Germany. His visits to Lindenfels and Eppstein in Germany covered the Odenwald and Bergstrasse, Frankfurt, and the Rhine from Rotterdam to Mayence; from Éprave and Hastière he journeyed over all the Forest of Ardennes, and visited Dinant, Brussels, and Bruges; while his holidays in Normandy at Arromanches, Langrune, St Pierre, and at St Jacut and elsewhere in Brittany, made him acquainted with nearly the whole country, including the ‘Suisse Normande’.
CHAPTER III (#ulink_29f0ad65-f061-533a-bd9d-65fc7851027e)
OXFORD AND STETTIN (#ulink_29f0ad65-f061-533a-bd9d-65fc7851027e)
Nairn came up to Trinity College, Oxford, in October 1902, and by virtue of being a Scholar (he had won two Exhibitions at Trinity, the Ford and the Rose) was given rooms in College at once, an advantage which is denied to many freshmen. He first had rooms on the Bell staircase in the Chapel Quad, and later in Kettle Hall, where he was a near neighbour to certain of the elect of the year immediately senior to his own, who had, according to compact, made their quarters in the New Buildings in close proximity, and among whom he was to form some of the most valued friendships of his Oxford days.
’Varsity life is a peculiar and precious growth of English soil – it were truer to say of Oxford and Cambridge soil. It is easy to miss getting from it the full measure of what it has to give, and these golden four years between boyhood and manhood may be wasted not less by undue application to study than by over-addiction to those distractions which abound by day and by night in and about our universities. Happy the man who can so spend those halcyon days as to feel, looking back in later years, regret indeed that they are past, but no remorse for lost opportunities, whether grave or gay, of storing his youth with experiences, associations, discoveries, enthusiasms, friendships, that bear with them into the soberer years of after-life a flavour and a fragrance not elsewhere to be gathered. Nairn had, as not many men have, I think, this happiness, this power of high-spirited enjoyment of every side of life, guarded by the saving principle of μηδὲν ἄγαν.
After all, the purpose of Oxford is education: to it belongs the last step in that process before the tables are set for the serious game of life, where no false move can be recalled. And lectures and texts form but a small, and not perhaps the most important, part of the fountain of learning which an Oxford life affords. To the official side of the curriculum Nairn paid so much attention as to obtain a Third Class in Honour Mods, and a Second in History – a degree which would be in itself a credit to a man of moderate parts. To this it may be added that he played Rugby football for his college, and on one occasion played for the ’Varsity, though he did not obtain his blue. But the main part of his life at Trinity, and that to which I know he looked back with pleasure and affection, was represented by those social and intellectual activities which lie outside the rut of what is, after all, schoolboy work and play. I include under this head river excursions, motor drives, walks in the parks or the surrounding country, midnight symposiums, philosophic and unphilosophic, andante piacevole and presto con fuoco, wherein he took part not perhaps always wisely yet seldom too well; activities, let me add (if any over-serious reader haply of the fairer sex should scent herein matter of offence), entailing no incident of which he or any sensible person need feel ashamed. Dulce est desipere in loco. It is to be set down to his wisdom and the soundness of his character in these merry opening years of manhood that these adventurous or Anacreontic interludes never reached the point of embroiling him seriously with the College authorities and imperilling his continued residence at that seat of learning. So far as I remember, the gravest charge he was called upon to answer was when he and certain jolly companions were haled before the Proctors and fined £2 apiece for paying their respects at a late hour to some attractive young ladies, not unconnected with the musical comedy stage, who happened to be staying a few days in Paradise Square.
Trinity at this time was in danger of becoming a somewhat ‘cliquey’ college. It had, three or four years earlier, been rescued from a threatened anarchy of rowdyism by its new Dean, Mr Michael Furse, now Bishop of Pretoria; and a tendency had become apparent among a certain section of the undergraduates to look upon themselves as the peculiar guardians of the corporate welfare. Among the freshmen of the year 1901 there grew up a group of friends, including many of the scholars and one or two of the best rowing men and football players of the year, between whom and the just persons of the senior years there arose a degree of estrangement based, no doubt, on mutual misunderstanding. This lack of good fellowship was doubtless very silly, very unjust, very unnecessary on both sides, as plenty out of each camp have since discovered. It was pronounced, however, when Nairn came up in 1902.
It was in 1901, and among what I may call the Caesarean as opposed to the Pompeian party, that the exclusive and august body known as the A.C. was founded. There were, I think, five original members, and the membership never went far beyond this. The initials stood for ‘Alpine Club’, the object of the society being primarily climbing in and out of Trinity and other colleges in the small hours. To the jaundiced eye, however, of second-year virtue the letters signified ‘Alcoholic Club’. That the principles of the body were anti-alcoholic I am certainly not so hardy as to allege. Its memory is enshrined in the famous Mitre Cup, the existence of which is due to Mr Raper: a name that few Trinity men – not I, at least – can pronounce without a feeling of the warmest admiration and affection. The cup commemorates the unexplained appearance one morning in the Garden Quad at Trinity of a stone mitre, an architectural feature of St John’s College, and its equally unexplained disappearance and return to its age-long abode during the following night. Nairn was elected to the A.C. soon after becoming a member of the college, and took no mean share in some of its most successful enterprises. I think he was there when the President missed his hold in the dark on a certain fall-pipe high aloft on the ‘overland route’, and had to be extricated from Balliol with a sprained ankle by means of sheets let down from a first-floor window looking on to Trinity quad. Other incidents are mentioned in his letters. In 1904 he writes:
‘The Alpine Dinner was a vast success, and also the flash-light photo thereof, but — and —, with their accustomed celerity, have not yet sent it me. To solemnise the occasion we lit an enormous bonfire in the middle of the Parks, which created intense scandalismos, and an unfortunate rencontre with a copper, suspicious of our numbers and presence at 4 a.m.’
In 1906 he writes:
‘I suppose you saw all about l’affaire Maurice. It may interest you to hear that I wasn’t in it (though I damned nearly was). Most of Trinity and no small part of the ’Varsity still think I was, however. So that spurious notoriety is descending upon me in my reprobate old age.’
Whether the Club survived into later years or ended its existence with the going down of those who constituted it in its prime, history relates not, nor is it relevant to this narrative.
Though his particular friends were identified with what has been referred to as the Caesarean camp, Nairn was persona grata with all sections of the College. His membership of the Rugby fifteen and of several of the college literary and debating societies, such as the Griffin (the official debating society of Trinity) and the Gondoliers (founded originally for the study of Gilbertian opera, but extending its patronage to a much wider range of dramatic literature), kept him in touch with the more orthodox elements. But the chief reason lay in his sunny and sociable disposition, the power of which no one who came into contact with him could long resist. Even the inner camp of irreconcilables unbent towards Nairn. In later years chance brought him into close relationship and good fellowship with some of those from whom college cliquishness had divided him at Oxford.
If the fascination of pleasant memories has trapped me into dwelling on the more ‘unbuttoned’ side of the Oxford days, it must not be thought that he neglected their quieter gifts. He was a great reader, and no term or vacation passed without adding a number – sometimes a dozen, sometimes a score – of entries to the list he kept of books read: a long and catholic list, dating back to his preparatory school-days when he was only ten years of age. The short stories of Guy de Maupassant, Swinburne’s Poems and Ballads, Meredith’s Shaving of Shagpat, and various plays of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists were among his favourite books first read during his ’varsity days. Many of these we discovered jointly, and read aloud together: some at Trinity on lazy afternoons, others at Mrs Honey’s among the Borrowdale mountains. He possessed the accomplishment, very rare because never taught, of reading aloud well, without monotony or affectation; and it was equally delightful to listen to his rendering of the musical cadences of lyric poetry, or to his declamation, in a swashbucklering style that was peculiarly his own, of the thunder-charged dialogue of Edward II or The Duchess of Malfi.
His literary tastes and accomplishments are matter for a later chapter. The name of Borrowdale brings me to two vacations spent at the Lakes, in the springs of 1905 and 1906. Our headquarters were at Green Bank, a house standing back on the hillside behind the farm of High Lodore, half a mile or so from the head of Derwentwater and the same distance from the little hamlet of Grange and the Gates of Borrowdale. Here, fortified by the hospitality and good cheer of Mrs Honey, we put in four hours’ reading at our text-books each morning, supplemented by a less defined period in the evenings, and spent the rest of the day in exploring the high fells between Skiddaw and Scafell. The charm of the Lake mountains cast its spell on Nairn. He writes in 1909 from Kota Bharu:
‘I’ve been thinking of you in the tail-end of this year, up at Mrs Honey’s, when the vile tourists have left only their traces behind on the fells and visitors’ books, and one can roam unoffended in the solitudes. Jucundum fuerit! Even in a glorious country like this, with the mountains all round, and the distant forests blue on the hillsides, or sailing on the sea in an open boat by night, with the stars reflected in the waters, and a cool breeze swelling the big sail – no, there is no moment like that on the high fells when the mists swirl and lift, and the dales appear in the sunlight below.’
One expedition stands out clearly in my recollection. After our morning’s work we set out, with the traditional change of stockings and a toothbrush, to climb Gable and the Pillar, descending to Wastdale Head, where we were to spend the night, and return by way of Eskdale next day. It was late spring and snow lay on the high mountains; the wind had blown the ice on a post planted in the cairn on Gable into feathers some inches long. Breasting the ridge of Greyknotts we encountered a hail-storm that whipped our right cheeks to the hue of the rowan berry, and as the storm passed the clouds divided and revealed the Pillar, dark and wild against a white mist, the teeth and edges of his black crags picked out with snow, the sky leaden above him, and a rainbow thrown across cloud and hill. It was then, I think, that Nairn fell in love with the Pillar, which he considered the finest of the Lake mountains. We stood on the top of it at sunset, looking down to the vast bulk of the Pillar Stone and the shadowy depths of Ennerdale far below it, and westward to Ennerdale Water coloured with the sunset. It was dark by the time we had descended the abrupt grassy sweeps of the Black Sail, and we stumbled among many walls and stony water-courses before we reached the inn at Wastdale Head, where, since we had beards and no luggage and were plainly dirty, we felt ourselves something less than honoured guests.
AT THE FOOT OF WASTWATER, APRIL 1906.
Next day, after visiting the foot of Wastwater, we crossed by Burnmoor Tarn to Eskdale, and after a substantial tea at the Woolpack Inn started up the dale at 4.45. After passing Esk Falls, where two streams join and above which is a steep ascent into the wilds of Upper Eskdale, we found ourselves driven more and more to the left, being unable to cross the beck, which was greatly swollen by rain. Foreseeing the approaching alternative of an ignominious return to the Woolpack or a night spent on the inhospitable flanks of Scafell, we finally leapt, not without risk, the steep and rocky watercourse and gained the higher levels of the valley, desolate and grand beneath the savage buttresses of Scafell and the Pikes. But the way was longer than we had reckoned; much time had been wasted in seeking a crossing-place; and we had to run a race with the daylight to ensure our finding the track on Esk Hause before dark. We sped like chamois (but scarcely with chamois’ speed or sureness of foot) along the huge and insecure boulders that cover the Eskdale slope of Esk Pike, halting at whiles to imbibe new energy from the brandy-flask, and reached Esk Hause as the deep crimson of the sunset was dying in the gap between Gable and the precipices of Great End, while Venus hung like a splendid jewel above it. The descent of Sty Head by starlight was slow. Once on the level we swung down the well-known road at five miles an hour. It was ten o’clock when we reached Mrs Honey’s. She had prepared roast duck, most succulent, for our supper. We ate it – I had almost said, the head with the legs and the appurtenances thereof. We slept a profound and dreamless sleep. Such feats can the digestion do in Borrowdale.
One day at Seathwaite, the little cluster of houses that lies highest in the main arm of Borrowdale on the way to Sty Head, we were late coming down from Bowfell: too late, in Nairn’s opinion, for tea. He was for pressing on to Rosthwaite and beer; I, mindful of the excellence of the tea at Seathwaite, was for tea first and beer afterwards. The tea was ordered, but Nairn refused to share it, sitting over against me while I ate and drank, and heaping opprobrium upon me in picturesque and lurid terms, much to the consternation of the farmer’s daughter. For drinking tea out of the saucer I was likened, with imprecations, to an old woman in a third-class railway refreshment-room. After tea we walked some few hundred paces in a thunderous silence (he told me afterwards that it was with difficulty that he refrained from striking me); then, at the same moment, we both burst out laughing, and there was peace again. Such and of such importance was this our most serious quarrel.
Other vacations he spent at home, or visiting friends, or travelling on the continent. In the Long Vacation of 1904, after staying up at Oxford for ‘Commem.’, the Alpine dinner, and Trinity ball, he spent six or seven weeks coaching a man for Smalls, and most of the rest of the time at Wimbledon, where he reported himself as ‘slaving away at History, but it is devilish hard working at home, with various attractions.’ He stayed with a friend at Seaview in the Isle of Wight for Cowes Week that summer. ‘As my friend has a small yacht,’ he wrote before going, ‘and is a bit of a mariner, as well as an old rowing blue (Oxon), I am rather fancying myself doing a slight Lipton touch.’ The following letter shows what he was doing in the Long of 1905:
‘LlNDISFARNE, ELM GROVE, WlMBLEDON.
‘August 3rd, 1905.
‘O Most Excellent One,
‘How much more excellent thou art than the unworthy writer of these lines, lo! thy two admirable but unanswered letters attest.
‘I really feel that I owe you some apology for not writing – especially after your excessive research in the matter of Swiss hotels. My Guvnor was thinking of going over there, but has changed his mind and is going to Brittany. However, I expect the information will be of use another year.
‘How went the viva? 1 am anxious to see the lists. I suppose you saw — staggered creation by taking a 3rd in law?
‘All my cubbing hopes and prospects have been cruelly dashed – it’s a way these things have. My French Marquis was already bagged, and a billet in Cumberland at — Hall, that seemed a snip, fizzled out at the last moment, as Lady — was too “broke” to afford such a luxury as myself. This was the real reason, the pretext being that her cubs were paying visits to friends.
‘Another billet in Somerset also “ran amok”, so I got bored and decided to go to Germany, and master (or at any rate acquaint myself superficially with) its uncouth Teutonic tongue.
‘By the bye, on the strength of my Gallic scion of the nobility it was reported in Wimbledon that I was going out to India as tutor with a young English Duke – “Sic fama volat et crescit eundo.”
‘I am starting for Germany – Frankfurt a/M. – on Monday via the Hook, and expect to stay there about seven weeks. I am going to friends – a very jolly old house – about three miles out, and as there will be a lot doing in Frankfurt (including myself) I ought to make things lively. My greatest pang is that, when last I went to Germany, I never set eyes on a girl whom I did not do my best to forget at once. Still, the gods may be kinder now.
‘By the bye, “She” is coming to stay in Oxford again in October – you will doubtless gather to whom I am referring, if you found me as unbearable about Eights Week as Ridley and other cold-blooded prosaics appear to have done.
‘However, enough of myself, e’er you are quite nauseated by my egotism. What are you going to do? How about the fair one in Paris?
‘By the bye, if you have not yet read Diana, do so at once – it is very fine. I am going to take several Meredith with me to read in Germany.
‘I have been working (more or less) for the past month, and playing tennis nearly every day, but am getting very bored with England and anxious to get away. I saw Jim Gilkison the other day. His people have taken a shooting up in Forfar, and he wants me to go up and shoot the wily grouse (or at any rate pose as your murderous sportsman), but I had to refuse as I shall not be back.
‘My address in Frankfurt will be: c/o Herr Bartmann-Lüdicke, Riederhöfe, Frankfurt a/M., in case you feel magnanimous enough to answer this letter.
‘Ever thine,
‘PHILIP NAIRN.’
The lady of Eights Week was more than a transient attraction. It were unprofitable, besides impertinent, to speculate on what might have been. She inspired the most perfect of his poems.
Three weeks later he writes from Frankfurt:
‘August 24th, 1905.
‘As you have, in a spirit of just retaliation, not deigned to answer the letter of your grovelling friend, I do myself the pain of writing to you yet again.
‘I am fairly well satisfied with Germany, there are many worse places. I got fairly well fed up by my journey here. I had eleven hours in the train feeling like a bottle of medicine, ‘ to be well shaken while being taken.’ This is a very jolly old house of twelfth century, with a ripping garden, about two miles out of Frankfurt. The Palmengarten here and the Opera are bully – I saw Verdi’s Aida the other night, well sung and staged. I should go every night if the Germans did not habitually turn in by 10 p.m., and we are out about three miles from the Operahaus. I was over at Homburg the other day, in the Taunus Mountains, no end of a flick place. Beauty is rare. However, I met a rather jolly girl yesterday, who is staying an hour’s walk from here across the country, and I find I can always learn a foreign tongue better from a pretty girl. Ireland is, however, in no danger. I am making vast progress in German, and shall be quite sorry to leave here, which I do in about a month. Where are you?
‘Ever yours,
‘P. S. N.’
The next two letters belong to the beginning of his fourth year, when most of his friends of the year senior to his own had gone down:
‘21, MICHAEL ST.
‘Friday, October 20th, 1905.
‘My Dear Old Man,
‘What the blazes can have happened to you? Where are you and what are you doing? Moreover, when are you taking your degree and why have you not written to me? Are you at Wren’s or are you in love?
‘These are just a few of the questions I should like answered.
‘Here I am in Oxford once more, where the cold is damnable, and the place deserted by most of those tried old friends whose footsteps resounded erstwhile on the paving of Cornmarket Street.
‘Pot and MacB. were here a day or two ago, previous to a three-months sojourn in Hanover – tomorrow I believe they are contemplating giving a 21ster (pray note the gibe) to the marine denizens of the North Sea.
‘Milly is reported due here tonight at 8.10.
‘Sid Field is reported assiduously polishing a high stool in a Leamington office. Duggy Graham is once more here (at Marcon’s Hall) and Maurice ably adorns the Presidential Chair.
‘The G— is married and H— (my God!) I still detest.
‘Ever yours,
‘PHILIP S. NAIRN.’
‘OXFORD UNION SOCIETY.
‘November 5th, 1905.
‘My Dear Herrick,
‘I am rejoiced to hear that we meet again at Philippi on the 9th inst. Can’t you make it more than a flying visit? Of course you understand that you will put up at the hotel – 21, Michael St – so many people drop in that we have had to christen the diggs “St Michael’s Hotel” – less charitable people may designate it – the pub.
‘I suppose you are working very hard; so am I. One H— don and I are at loggerheads, and from rather doubtful collections he is piling on the weekly tale of essays, in the idea that I am more ignorant than I should be – a year off schools. A sublime error on his part, except in the matter of constitutional history, which makes me inclined to spew up the little knowledge of it I possess.
‘P. is chucking slice-eating: a good thing for him, as he was acquiring fresh vices in Chichester – a most banausic spot, in which the only society to be found was in the local bars. He and W— are going in for the consular service. I am going to have a slap at the Egyptian Civil, but doubt whether I have any chance, as they will probably plough me over eyes.
‘Do you know Ernest Dowson’s poems? John Long has just brought out a new 5s. edition. I like his poems immensely.
‘I went with Duggy Graham to hear Yvette Guilbert last night. She is magnificent – if you have a chance, don’t fail to see her. I wish to heaven I could hear her sing that portion of her repertoire which I fear did not pass the Vice-Chancellor’s blue pencil.
‘Tonight I am going to the Ouds to hear one of the “Follies” at a smoking concert. I am going as my Twin’s guest. It is quite useful his being on the Ouds.
‘Ever yours,
‘P. S. N.’
Nairn, like most of his friends, worked prodigiously hard in the months preceding his schools, but he also kept up a wonderfully good average of reading both in term time and in the vacation for a man of such varied interests and so sought by, and seeking, society. It had been Dean Farrar’s wish that he should become a schoolmaster, a calling for which he considered him peculiarly fitted; and this was the career that Nairn had in mind when he came up to Oxford. In the event, however, his degree was not destined to prove a sufficiently brilliant one to give him the best start for an academic life. Moreover, he did not look forward to such a life with any lively pleasure. And so it was that some time before his History finals were in sight he was contemplating a preferable alternative in the Egyptian Civil Service, the posts in which were to be filled for the first time by a system of limited competition wherein mere ‘bookish theoric’ was to count for less than the qualities of leadership and savoir faire which he possessed in so marked a degree.
‘I am working like hell – eight hours a day,’ he writes early in 1906, ‘and also putting in for the Egyptian touch, but as there are about eighty applicants from either ‘Varsity and about twelve berths, the chances of success are not rosy. I spent a very merry ten days with the Fields at Leamington. The rest of the vac. I did about four hours a day.’
A little later he writes:
‘UNION SOCIETY, OXFORD.
‘Sunday, March 11th, 1906.
‘Dear Ric,
‘Thanks frightfully for your frequent letters. I’m sorry I have not answered them before.
‘I suppose you have fixed it up all right with Mrs Honey? I am looking forward to it very much. I go down to Pains wick (Glos.) on 17th, immediately after collections, to stop with Brucie for a few days, but I shall be home before 30th.
‘How goes it with you? Your letters tell me so little about yourself. H— and I are almost amicable
now, as I took a pure a on a collection of Stubbs’s Charters. We have two more at end of term, one on my Foreign Period, which I know, and the other on my Special Period, which it will take all the cunning I possess to survive, without betraying the fact that my knowledge of it, if not elementary, is still very superficial.
‘I have been rather North-Oxfording it this term: progressive bridge, whist, etc. Result – acquaintance with one really nice girl, but she, alas! has now departed for Portugal.
‘Adieu,
‘Yours ever,
‘P. S. N.
‘P.S. My application for E.C.S. is now awaiting consideration. Pray for me.’
Nairn did not obtain the Egyptian appointment. On coming down from Oxford, in order to occupy his time profitably and improve his knowledge of German, pending his entering on a definite career, he went, under an arrangement then in force between the British and the German Education Departments, as English master to the Schiller Gymnasium at Stettin in Prussia, where he was to learn German in exchange for English. Here he spent many pleasant months, and here as elsewhere he was popular with the professors and the students. The following extracts from his diary kept in 1907 give a picture of his life in Germany. They cover the last six weeks or so of his time there:
‘January 3rd. – Bundled out of the train [at Berlin] at 5.30 this morning feeling very sleepy. This wore off after a cup of coffee at the station. Drove to “Hotel Stadt London”, deposited my bag, and then explored Berlin in the half-light. Night was like day. Berlin life is continually looping the loop; it is like a cat chasing its own tail. Visited the market early. Very interesting. Then came back, shaved, dressed and washed. Saw the Schloss, Dom, statuary, and modern pictures before lunch, which I had “Unter den Linden” about 3. Later went to Café Opera: good music. Met a very decent German – travelled, and dressed in London – with whom I spoke for about two hours. Then went to Kleine Theatre, and saw Oscar Wilde’s “Idealer Gatte” very fairly well played – 150th time. Had supper “Unter den Linden” and then walked in Friedrich Strasse for some time. At about two turned in. Feeling tired.
‘January 4th. – Made a thundering good breakfast, and then armed with a map sallied forth to see the sights. In evening went to Winter Gardens – a huge music-hall with a starred room which made one feel one was à la belle étoile. Met a very decent American here, a full head taller than myself, an opera-singer anxious to learn German, very travelled, and the last ten years in Italy. Afterwards we went to the Westminster Café, excellent music. Then I had supper at Scandinavia, and eventually turned in about 3 a.m. In true British fashion the American and I never exchanged names, though we were together for about three hours.
‘January 5th. – Had my chocolate rather late. Then went to the Friedrich Museum, and saw the Dutch, Spanish, and Italian Masters, staying there till closing time at 3. A really grand collection. At about 4 I then lunched at the Luitpold Restaurant in the Friedrich Strasse.
‘Left by the 7.30 train for Stettin, reaching there at 9.30. Frau — like an owl had lighted no fire. It was cold and cheerless. I had some supper in my diggs, and not feeling very well went to bed soon.
‘A city where one does not know a soul is no better than a desert, and I was glad to get away. It is so dreary to walk unendingly through a crowd of unknown faces.
‘January 6th (Sunday). – After lunch I slept for the first time since I’ve been here, conforming to the general German custom. In the evening went to Sauft’s where they jumped all over me.
‘January 9th. – This morning I received a letter from Edith, enclosing one from the Editor of the Pall Mall Magazine. He has accepted my Sonnet “In the Buchheide” and offers me £l 1s.
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