A UNIVERSITY IN FICTION

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24914, 29 June 1946, Page 5

A UNIVERSITY IN FICTION

(By MORLEY STUART.] I It is probably true that Oxford and

Cambridge figure more largely in fic- , tion than any other towns in Britain. I A distinguished Don once told me that many more novelists send their heroes to Cambridge than to the “other place." The other day I was reading i “This England,” a book about shires and counties, and at the end of the ; section devoted to Cambridge I noticed a list of “Books which may be read.” There were three about Cambridge University—A. C. Benson’s “Beside Still Waters” was one—and three j novels, two by E. Benson, “The I Babe, B-A.” and “David of King’s.” 1 The other was a volume familiar to British schoolboys of past and present generations, “Frank . Fairleigh,” by Frank Smedley. | Archibald Marshal], like E. F. Benson, returned to the scene of his early attempts at fiction after a score of other novels. Having written “Peter Binney” in his youth, he later turned his attention again to his old University and produced “The Education of Anthony Dare.” Inventing Colleges Why is it, I wonder, that so many novelists, like Thackeray in “Pendennis," are afraid to give the’ correct name of the University with which their heroes are associated? In a lecture at Cambridge on Thackeray Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch once dropped “a long hoarded curse” upon this trick of Victorian novelists in sending their heroes to “Oxbridge” or “Camford.” But novelists still do it and, what is more, they persist in inventing colleges of their own. I have a list of enough fictitious foundations to start another University. Another Cambridge book which I enjoyed reading is Sir Hugh Walpole’s “Prelude to Adventure,” a study of an undergraduate whose life in Cambridge is darkened by the memory of an undiscovered crime. The titie of the story and the ending suggested a sequel, but there never was one. Sir Hugh Walpole, whom I met in the Lake District, told me he meant the story to be a prelude. “I was influenced at the time,” he said, “by a now forgotten novel of Oxford life, ‘Koddy,’ which I still think the best of all university novels.” I searched long and anxiously for it. at last finding a copy in a second-hand book shop. It is a good story, but I still prefer Walpole’s. The Wife Wins Most Cambridge novels deal with the lives of undergraduates, but Humfrey Jordan’s “Carmen and Mr Dryasdust” is about a Don whose life is bound up with the University, where he wants his son to succeed him. and his wife who demands a life of action, free from 4 the University atmosphere. The wife wins! There are three or four historical novels in my collection. One of the most ambitious is Rose Macaulay’s Were Defeated.” which takes us back to the days of Milton and Cromwell. A. Tresidder Sheppard, in “Queen Dick,” tells the story of Crom-.-well’s son and successor. Richard. Another little book about the early Cromwell period is “The Chorister,” by S. Baring Gould. There are many stories by women (Alan St. Aubyn wrote four), the most recent being “Cambridge Blue.” A more serious work is “Thirty Million Gas Masks.” In recent years there has been a spate of mystery stories bearing such titles as “Trouble at College.” “Murder at the Varsity,” “The Boat Race Murder,” ""The May Week Murders,” and “The Cambridge Murders." (There are two under this last title.) In spite of all the books I have mentioned and many others it seems to be generally agreed that the really great University novel still remains to be written. As one young author put it. “Cambridge provides the spectacle and characters. The trouble is with plot.”