I’ll start with a gigantic understatement. There are many lacunae in my education.
For instance I’ve only read one book written by a member of the Bloomsbury Set – a circle of insufferable snobs so much in and out of each others’ orifices that only a veteran Boy Scout might hope to get them unknotted. I once had to study Howard’s End and resisted the instruction to connect.
But, amongst a treasury of gems in Robert Graves’s superb “Goodbye To All That” is the story of Lytton Strachey’s appearance before a Military Tribunal as a conscientious objector. (Graves, unlike Strachey,was not a member of the Bloomsbury Set. nor did he share Strachey’s predelictions)
“Asked by the chairman the usual question: ‘I understand, Mr Strachey, that you have a concientious objection to war?’ he replied (in his curiousfalsetto voice): ‘Oh,no, not at all, only to this war.’ And to the chairman’s other stock question, which had previously never failed to embarrass theclaimant: ‘Tell me, Mr Strachey, what would you if you saw a German soldier trying to violate your sister?’ he replied with an air of noble virtue: ‘I would try to get between them’. ”
I owe the following quotation from another of the Bloomsbury Set to Brendan Behan’s “Borstal Boy” –
“One crew of young watermen or postboys……roared and shouted the lewdest tavern songs, as if in bravado,and were dashed against a tree and sunkwith blasphemies on their lips.An old nobleman -for such his furred gown and golden chain of office proclaimed him – went down not far from where Orlando stood, calling vengeance upon the Irish rebels, who, he cried with his last breath, had plotted this devilry……”
– ORLANDO: Virginia Woolf
I had borrowed and enjoyed “BORSTAL BOY” in Dublin, where it was banned, and bought it on my first visit to London. Returning to Dun Laoghaireon the Mail Boat I tucked it, covered with an Irish Press, under my oxter. At the Customs it was confiscated. I’ve reread it a few times since. It ends on an ironic note, which I find doubly Ironic.
When Behan was released from Borstal and expelled from Britain he returned to Dun Laoghaire and also faced an officer of the State –
” ‘Passport,travel permit or identity document,please’ said the immigration man beside me. He read it, looked at it and handed it back to me. He had a long educated countryman’s sad face, like a teacher, and took my hand. ‘Cead mile failte sa bhaile romhat – A hundred thousand welcomes home to you. I smiled and said, ‘Go raibh maith agat.’ – Thanks.
He looked very serious and tenderly enquired, ‘Caithfidh go bhuil se go hiontach bheith sair’. It must be wonderful to be free.
‘Caithfidh se go bhuil’ – ‘It must’, said I, walked down the gangway, past a detective, and got on the train to Dublin.
There’s one misspelling there, but it’s a printed in the book.
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