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Cubhunting

To Mr Errington Guthrie, Hotel Ste Louise, Geneva, Switzerland 18--

My Dear Guthrie, 

I write to you with misery pressing such sharp claws against my breast that my anguish must find expression, or else choke the very breath from my lungs. Yet I write knowing that all the world envies my good fortune. Alas, Guthrie - would that you were at my side to make me laugh, or at least to point up some crumb of comfort in my new circumstances! Let me only unfold to you my swathes of melancholy, dear friend, and share with you my new and all-consuming grief.

Do you recall, from the time when you used to visit me at the College, a bright, engaging boy named Apperley? When he used to sing solos in chapel, even the bloods would hold their peace and listen, and the diligence with which he conned his Hesiod and composed his hexameters was remarkable. He was no muff, either, but played games with gusto. Once I saw him take 132 runs in a match against Coleford’s, and the other boys roared huzzas till curfew. Oh, Guthrie, we schoolmasters have all known some brutes, yet the rough underbelly of vile boyhood occasionally throws up a youth whose rare promise, like a cleansing fire, burns away a little of the vice in which, otherwise, we should all maunder for evermore. Ah, such was Apperley.

Although I had observed the beneficial influence he exerted, it was not until he was in the fifth form that I really came to know him. On Shrove Tuesday, we at St Edgar’s always have a hare and hounds run. This year, the boys had chosen Apperley for a hare, knowing him to be fast and brave. Just as he was about to set off, I caught sight of him from the Library casement –I had been going over the Georgics with a boy who’d got behind – and it was like a vision of a saint. A shaft of early afternoon sun had reached into the Quadrangle and lit his brow, giving him a look of such radiance it made me catch my breath. Beatus puer, I murmured as I sat reluctantly down, and the lout whom I was coaching ran his dull eyes up and down the page and asked which line it came from. 

But Apperley met with catastrophe. Leaping a brook when he was still some distance from the College, he missed his footing and landed awry so as to crush his left leg against the rocks on the stream’s bank. Since I was the duty master that day, it was to me that the others brought him. They had improvised a stretcher from branches and put their singlets on it to soften the rough timber. Poor boy, he was near fainting with pain.

Since the doctor who treated him insisted that he lie as still as possible, he spent the next three months in my rooms to enable his fractured bones knit together. You will smile to think of me as his nurse, but I tell you no woman ever cared for a child in her care with the tenderness I bestowed upon young Apperley. In every spare hour of my time I read to him, diverted him with chess, measured his laudanum to ensure that he might enjoy some hours of untroubled slumber each night and prayed over him while he slept. If I had liked the boy before, those months when he lay in my ante chamber increased my affection a thousand fold. He was so grateful, so appreciative of everything I did for him, be it a matter of writing to the doctor to request him to increase the nightly dosage of opiate or drawing the curtains to shield his eyes from the fierce afternoon light. There never was so mannerly and winning a patient. 

‘Thank you, dear Mr Litton,’ he would breath, his hair bright brown against the white sheets, his eyes glowing. Yet I could not wish for any delay in his recovery. Helplessness disfigured him, like the dismemberment of a Grecian statue. With all my heart, I yearned to see him hale again. 

At last a day came when his mother took him home to seal his recovery. Given the scrupulousness of his nature, I knew he would never forget my little kindnesses and, sure enough, not only did Apperley shake my extended hand with true manly fervour, but his mamma suggested that I might care to spend a few days with them towards the end of the summer. In his letters the boy must have mentioned my love of field sports, for she promised me fine fishing in their neighbourhood, besides the chance of going after grouse and joining in the early cubhunting. As you may suppose, this invitation pleased me. I thanked the lady for her generosity and pledged to accept her hospitality. My spirits, languid upon parting, lifted immeasurably at the prospect of having the boy’s company once more. 

It was the cubhunting, Guthrie, that brought me to my present straits. Young Apperley and I rose before dawn to hack to the meet and helped one another dress because Mrs Apperley did not want her household servants disturbed. It gave me rueful delight to find myself obliged to borrow a pair of the boy’s breeches having omitted to pack my own. But Apperley and I were not alone, for with us rode his twin sister, Belinda. 

Although she had been present throughout my stay, it was only as we mounted our horses that chill morning that I became aware of her appearance. In the grey light the resemblance between her brother and herself was remarkable. Her hair was lighter than his and her eyes blue rather than ochre, but she shared his wide brow, straight nose and warm mouth. You will sigh for my stupidity, but at that moment I mused that were I to wed her, it would be like possessing the boy and being able to feast my senses upon his charms for evermore. 

‘You ride well,’ said I to initiate conversation with her. 

‘People say I have a very good seat,’ she returned, emphasising the last three words with a pointed smile. She was witty, to be sure, if somewhat racier in her speech than her brother. In holiday mood and ready for adventure, I laughed with her in a whisper as we waited by the coverts and drew alongside her when hounds were running so that we leapt fences together and galloped as a pair. Once the day’s sport was finished, we dismounted by some willow trees to let our horses, unfit and blown after spending all summer at grass, catch their breath. Watching Belinda in her navy habit lean against her chestnut mare’s sweating shoulder looking as valiant as her brother as she flicked the flies away with her whip, I could easily persuade myself I was falling in love with her. Five days later, I had proposed and found myself accepted. 

‘Fool,’ you will say, ‘Post equitem sedet atra Cura.’ I imagine you sipping your seltzer on Lake Geneva’s blue shore as you read my news. Oh, Guthrie, I accept your reproach. How right you were when you warned me that once a woman attaches herself to a man, it takes all the mighty rivers of Hades – Styx, Cocytus, Phlegethon, Acheron and Lethe – to wash him free from her grasp. 

No sooner was I back in my College rooms overlooking the fives court than I perceived the enormity of my mistake. I would scrutinise her portrait for the extraordinary likeness that I had noticed between her brother and herself, and find I could no longer discern it. Marriage, I realised, would strike at the very roots of my happiness here at St Edgar’s. Was I not surrounded by all I hold dear – the delights of scholarship, exhilarating physical exercise, a little religion of an ornamental character, and above all, boys who, when they are clean and sober, are the most engaging creatures in the world -? Yet I was poised to pollute the purity of this idyll by introducing a wife! Oh, Hazeldine would let me keep my accommodation in the school; in fact, he would probably make me a housemaster, but that promotion, I fear, might herald subtle changes in my pupils’ attitude. They would no longer come to me with their confidences; with a woman on hand they’d take their secrets to her. Were I to stay in the preparation room helping them tease out the sense of their construe, some officious know-all would be bound to ask if my wife did not worry about my returning home late. Perhaps she would even come herself, searching the school. In short, I would no longer be a friend to the well-meaning strugglers of the Remove, but would grow by stages distant – a remote pedagogue who barely spoke to them outside lessons. All the old intimacies – you take my meaning, Guthrie - would vanish. 

Bitter was my regret. A thousand times over, I took up pen and paper to explain to Belinda that I could not go through with the course on which we had embarked. Every time, my courage failed me. No sooner would I recall Tom Apperley’s glee on hearing that I was to wed his sister than I would lose heart. The thought of disappointing him was more than I could endure. 

Yet I made one poor effort. About a month ago, Belinda came to St Edgar’s to visit her brother and myself. We shared a picnic luncheon, the three of us, by the river. When we had finished young Apperley, whose discretion is keen as his other virtues, wandered back to College to let Belinda and me converse alone.

‘Dearest,’ I pleaded, ‘are you not very young to take this great step? Do not think that I do not value your devotion – it touches me to the heart – but I am conscious that I am somewhat older than you and that we are moving very fast from polite acquaintance into matrimony.’ 

No sooner had I spoken than her girlish mouth drooped, and she asked with great frankness if I regretted our engagement.

Here was my opening. Would that I had admitted outright that I thought it folly. Instead, being a most arrant coward, I let my chance slip. For a second, I held her slender hand, closing my eyes the better to convince myself it was her brother’s fingers I caressed. I tried to speak out, tried to secure my release, but dread of the shame to which my explanations would give rise stopped my tongue. Instead, in contemptible silken lies, I assured her that her pledge to marry me had made me happy beyond words and she, guileless as any child, believed me. 

So this day, Guthrie, I have passed through a ceremony as numbing as it was picturesque and find myself a married man. No doubt you shall laugh your fill over my letter. Even as I close, my wife is adorning herself and having her hair dressed with flowers. Lady Strange will preside at an elegant dinner table before encouraging us, at an early hour no doubt, to seek our nuptial chamber. Writing to you affords me some respite from the revulsion with which I anticipate the humiliation and toil of my wedding night. You, dear Guthrie, are close enough a companion to act as my father-confessor. Perhaps some splinter of compassion may make you curb the hilarity with which I imagine you reading my tale. Nil mihi rescribas, tu tamen ipse veni! If you can pity me, I beg you to exercise your wits in devising some means by which I may flee the soft, white, perfumed, female embrace that shall all too soon enmesh me.

I remain your affectionate and most unhappy friend,

Horace Litton

Translation notes:

Beatus puer - Blessed boy

Post equitem sedet atra Cura - Dark Care sits behind the horseman (Horace, Odes, III-i-1)

Nil mihi rescribas, tu tamen ipse veni. Do not write back to me, but you yourself come (Ovid, Heroides, I-i-2)