The Children's Book

In May 1910 the Kaiser’s uncle, Edward the Caresser, died. He lay in state in Westminster Hall, and Wilhelm, in another splendid uniform, doffing his plumed helmet, stood by the bier, holding the hand of his cousin George. He went back to Windsor, the old family home, “where I played as a child, tarried as a youth and later as a man and a ruler enjoyed the hospitality of Her Late Highness, the Great Queen.” The English cheered him in the streets. He went home, and spoke in Konigsberg of divine right.

“I see Myself as an instrument of the Lord. Without regard for the views or opinions of the day I go My way, which means the whole and sole well-being and peaceful development of our fatherland.”

That winter he added a decoration of real dead birds to the hat he wore to shoot, along with the high, shining yellow boots, and the gold spurs.

In August that year, Griselda Wellwood was working as a research student at Newnham, like Julian Cain, whose study of pastoral was spreading pleasantly, but unconstructively, into Latin, Greek, German, Italian and the possibility of Norwegian, without acquiring order or shapeliness. He earned some money by supervising undergraduates, who liked him. Griselda did not have any teaching, but attended classes with Jane Harrison. She was working steadily on the folktale, starting out from the Grimms. In their work both Julian and Griselda found much overlapping and repetition: motifs of death and grief and springtime and ripeness: motifs of flesh-eating and punishment and exoneration and the triumph of beauty and virtue. Both of them had moods in which the Cambridge weather—the chill winter winds blowing in from the Steppes, the luscious summers with boats and willows and perfect lawns and May Balls—seemed like an enchantment, a spider-web from which they needed to break free in order to taste and touch reality.

They spent time together: they attended some of the same lectures and had coffee afterwards. They attended the Cambridge Fabian Society. They discussed their states of mind. Julian made self-mocking mutterings about wanting to join the army, or make money in the City. Griselda laughed at him and said he had put himself into the story of the parting of the ways, or the story of the choosing of the caskets, gold, silver and lead. He went on making notes on Andrew Marvell, who had written so little and so well. He was improving his Latin. It was much harder to discuss either Griselda’s alternative lives, or what story she was in. You could not—not if you were a man, a young man—ask her if she had rejected marriage to devote herself to scholarship. It was hard for a man and a woman to be friends with no underthought or glimpsed prospect of sex. They wanted to be friends. It was almost a matter of principle. Julian was nevertheless in love with Griselda. She was as intelligent as any Fellow of King’s— though he thought she did not know it—he was in love with her mind as it followed clues through labyrinths. Love is, among many other things, a response to energy, and Griselda’s mind was precise and energetic.

He wanted to make love to her, too. She was now almost too perfectly lovely to be attractive. Her calm, clear face had a carved look, which could easily be read as a cold look. She coiled her pale hair perfectly so that one was led to admire it, rather than to want to ruffle it. He did not detect in her—and he watched her—any flash of the sex instinct. He managed to raise the topic by discussing her London Season as a debutante. She became animated. She said it was horrible. “All that eyeing each other, and pairing off. Like a cattle market. Horrid. I have no small talk and I never met anyone who had anything else. And it was noisy. They bray, the upper classes, about their titillations and curious ceremonies. They shriek. And you have to be dolled up with feathers in your hair. I was rejected and rejecting. Firmly, in both cases.”

He had asked himself if she preferred women. She might. The Newnhamites had passionate friendships and flirtations: they proposed to each other, he had been told. She had been friends with Florence, who had rushed into an odd story he hadn’t been told, and didn’t understand. She was friends with her cousin Dorothy, who had just qualified as a surgeon, which he could not but think of as a male occupation, knives, lancets, commands.

Then she said “I didn’t really mean to get me to a nunnery. I didn’t really mean to live in a world of knitting and gossip and—oh—petty jealousies. I wish I was you.”

“I don’t. I like talking to you.”

And then that silence, that was the end of that conversation, as of others.

He invited her to go with him to see the Marlowe Society, who were reviving their successful production of Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus. The audience consisted mostly of a group of visiting German students, ready to see what Goethe had read. Because it was not term-time there was not only no strict chaperonage, there were women playing female parts—which were admittedly non-speaking and brief. There were no transvestite Kingsmen as queens or temptresses. There were the Fabian Nursery with Brynhild (“Bryn”) Olivier, daughter of Sir Sidney Olivier, founding Fabian, and Governor of Jamaica, playing Helen of Troy, the “face that launched a thousand ships,” in a low-cut dress, her hair powdered with gold. Francis Cornford, the classical scholar, was Faustus, Jacques Raverat (who was eventually to marry Gwen Darwin) was Mephistophilis, and some female Fabians were Deadly Sins. Rupert Brooke was the Chorus looking marvellous, and speaking the verse somewhat squeakily.

Griselda asked if he could get another ticket. A friend was visiting Cambridge—Julian knew him, in fact—he was Wolfgang Stern, from Munich. The Sterns were over in England, planning changes in the puppets and marionettes for the reopening of Tom Underground in the autumn. Julian got the ticket and Wolfgang appeared, looking a little Mephistophelian with a sharp black beard and jutting brow. They sat in the centre, a few rows back. Behind them the Germans commented in German, supposing they were not understood. Wolfgang turned round and told them to be quiet. They laughed, and attended. Griselda sat sedately between Wolfgang and Julian. Behind them were some more Darwins, Jane Harrison and her lovely student, Hope Mirrlees. Harrison must have come to see Francis Cornford, with whom she corresponded daily and rode rapidly about Cambridge on bicycles. There was a party afterwards, at the Darwin house on Silver Street, to which the three were not invited. Julian took them to a restaurant near Magdalene Bridge. It was French and cheerful, with checked tablecloths.

Wolfgang Stern said rather aggressively that the voices he thought were good, but none of these English people knew how to move. They stood like melting candles bending over. Their gestures were polite when something else was required. Griselda said that was most unfair. The Mephistophilis had been quite snaky in his movements. He was French, said Wolfgang, that was why. The English should—was it “stick to”?—tableaux vivants. Charades. He seemed quite cross.

Griselda said placatingly that she meant to ask him—Wolfgang—about an essay she was writing on the differences between the Grimms’ two versions of the Cinderella story—“Aschenputtel” and “Allerleirauh,” Cinderella and the Many-furred. She said she loved the word

“Allerleirauh,” every kind of rough fur. Cinderella was persecuted by a stepmother, but Allerleirauh dealt intelligently with an incestuous father and a cook who threw boots at her. And somehow she was moved by the fact that Allerleirauh, hiding her gold, silver and star-spangling dresses under the skin cloak, became a furry creature—an animal—neutral in German—not an object of desire.

“Until she chose,” said Wolfgang. “And then she blazed out like the sun and the moon—”

“The English and the French have sweetened Cinderella—”

Julian felt an electricity. It sparked and flickered between the other two. Their hands were just too near together. Griselda looked too intently or not at all at the German.

“And what does that mean?” Julian asked himself, and did not quite know.