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
