them at the library and read them in as many nights. I was always sure he would produce something fine, but I never expected it would be as fine as that. In his last year here — I don't know what's the matter with this cat, she does not seem to know milk all of a sudden.'
In his last Cambridge year Sebastian worked a good deal; his subject — English literature — was a vast and complicated one; but this same period was marked by his sudden trips to London, generally without the authorities' leave. His tutor, the late Mr Jefferson, had been, I learnt, a mighty dull old gentleman, but a fine linguist, who insisted upon considering Sebastian as a Russian. In other words, he drove Sebastian to the limit of exasperation by telling him all the Russian words he knew — a nice bagful collected on a journey to Moscow years ago — and asking him to teach him some more. One day, at last, Sebastian blurted out that there was some mistake — he had not been born in Russia really, but in Sofia. Upon which, the delighted old man at once started to speak Bulgarian. Sebastian lamely answered that it was not the special dialect he knew, and when challenged to furnish a sample, invented a new idiom on the spur of the moment, which greatly puzzled the old linguist until it dawned upon him that Sebastian —
'Well, I think you have drained me now,' said my informant with a smile. 'My reminiscences are getting shallower and sillier — and I hardly think it worth while to add that Sebastian got a first and that we had our picture taken in full glory — I shall try and find it some day and send it to you if you like. Must you really leave now? Would you not like to see the Backs? Come along and visit the crocuses, Sebastian used to call them "the poet's mushrooms", if you see what he meant.'
But it was raining too hard. We stood for a minute or two under the porch, and then I said I thought I'd better be going.
'Oh, look here,' called Sebastian's friend after me, as I was already picking my way among the puddles. 'I quite forgot to tell you. The Master told me the other day that somebody wrote to him asking whether Sebastian Knight had really been a Trinity man. Now, what was the fellow's name? Oh, bother.... My memory has shrunk in the washing. Well, we did give it a good rinsing, didn't we? Anyway, I gathered that somebody was collecting data for a book on Sebastian Knight. Funny, you don't seem to have — '
'Sebastian Knight?' — said a sudden voice in the mist. 'Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight?'
6
The stranger who uttered these words now approached — Oh, how I sometimes yearn for the easy swing of a well-oiled novel! How comfortable it would have been had the voice belonged to some cheery old don with long downy ear-lobes and that puckering about the eyes which stands for wisdom and humour.... A handy character, a welcome passer-by who had also known my hero, but from a different angle. 'And now,' he would say, 'I am going to tell you the real story of Sebastian Knight's college years.' And then and there He would have launched on that story. But alas, nothing of the kind really happened. That Voice in the Mist rang out in the dimmest passage of my mind. It was but the echo of some possible truth, a timely reminder: don't be too certain of learning the past from the lips of the present. Beware of the most honest broker. Remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the tale. Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight? repeats that voice in my conscience. Who indeed? His best friend and his half-brother. A gentle scholar, remote from life, and an embarrassed traveller visiting a distant land. And where is the third party? Rotting peacefully in the cemetery of St Damier. Laughingly alive in five volumes. Peering unseen over my shoulder as I write this (although I dare say he mistrusted too strongly the commonplace of eternity to believe
In his last Cambridge year Sebastian worked a good deal; his subject — English literature — was a vast and complicated one; but this same period was marked by his sudden trips to London, generally without the authorities' leave. His tutor, the late Mr Jefferson, had been, I learnt, a mighty dull old gentleman, but a fine linguist, who insisted upon considering Sebastian as a Russian. In other words, he drove Sebastian to the limit of exasperation by telling him all the Russian words he knew — a nice bagful collected on a journey to Moscow years ago — and asking him to teach him some more. One day, at last, Sebastian blurted out that there was some mistake — he had not been born in Russia really, but in Sofia. Upon which, the delighted old man at once started to speak Bulgarian. Sebastian lamely answered that it was not the special dialect he knew, and when challenged to furnish a sample, invented a new idiom on the spur of the moment, which greatly puzzled the old linguist until it dawned upon him that Sebastian —
'Well, I think you have drained me now,' said my informant with a smile. 'My reminiscences are getting shallower and sillier — and I hardly think it worth while to add that Sebastian got a first and that we had our picture taken in full glory — I shall try and find it some day and send it to you if you like. Must you really leave now? Would you not like to see the Backs? Come along and visit the crocuses, Sebastian used to call them "the poet's mushrooms", if you see what he meant.'
But it was raining too hard. We stood for a minute or two under the porch, and then I said I thought I'd better be going.
'Oh, look here,' called Sebastian's friend after me, as I was already picking my way among the puddles. 'I quite forgot to tell you. The Master told me the other day that somebody wrote to him asking whether Sebastian Knight had really been a Trinity man. Now, what was the fellow's name? Oh, bother.... My memory has shrunk in the washing. Well, we did give it a good rinsing, didn't we? Anyway, I gathered that somebody was collecting data for a book on Sebastian Knight. Funny, you don't seem to have — '
'Sebastian Knight?' — said a sudden voice in the mist. 'Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight?'
6
The stranger who uttered these words now approached — Oh, how I sometimes yearn for the easy swing of a well-oiled novel! How comfortable it would have been had the voice belonged to some cheery old don with long downy ear-lobes and that puckering about the eyes which stands for wisdom and humour.... A handy character, a welcome passer-by who had also known my hero, but from a different angle. 'And now,' he would say, 'I am going to tell you the real story of Sebastian Knight's college years.' And then and there He would have launched on that story. But alas, nothing of the kind really happened. That Voice in the Mist rang out in the dimmest passage of my mind. It was but the echo of some possible truth, a timely reminder: don't be too certain of learning the past from the lips of the present. Beware of the most honest broker. Remember that what you are told is really threefold: shaped by the teller, reshaped by the listener, concealed from both by the dead man of the tale. Who is speaking of Sebastian Knight? repeats that voice in my conscience. Who indeed? His best friend and his half-brother. A gentle scholar, remote from life, and an embarrassed traveller visiting a distant land. And where is the third party? Rotting peacefully in the cemetery of St Damier. Laughingly alive in five volumes. Peering unseen over my shoulder as I write this (although I dare say he mistrusted too strongly the commonplace of eternity to believe
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