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DECLINE AND FALL
EVELYN WAUGH
To
HAROLD ACTON
in Homage and
Affection
PRELUDE
Mr Sniggs, the Junior Dean, and Mr Postlethwaite, the Domestic Bursar, sat alone in Mr Sniggs' room overlooking the garden quad at Scone College. From the rooms of Sir Alastair Digby‑Vane‑Trumpington, two staircases away, came a confused roaring and breaking of glass. They alone of the senior members of Scone were at home that evening, for it was the night of the a
It is not accurate to call this an a
'The fines! said Mr Sniggs, gently rubbing his pipe along the side of his nose. 'Oh my! the fines there'll be after this evening!
There is some highly prized port in the senior commonroom cellars that is only brought up when the College fines have reached £50.
'We shall have a week of it at least, said Mr Postlethwaite, 'a week of Founder's port.
A shriller note could now be heard rising from Sir Alastair's rooms; any who have heard that sound will shrink at the recollection of it; it is the sound of the English county families baying for broken glass. Soon they would all be tumbling out into the quad, crimson and roaring in their bottle‑green evening coats, for the real romp of the evening.
'Don't you think it might be wiser if we turned out the light? said Mr Sniggs.
In darkness the two dons crept to the window. The quad below was a kaleidoscope of dimly discernible faces.
'There must be fifty of them at least, said Mr Postlethwaite. 'If only they were all members of the College! Fifty of them at ten pounds each. Oh my!
'It'll be more if they attack the Chapel, said Mr Sniggs. 'Oh, please God, make them attack the Chapel.
'I wonder who the unpopular undergraduates are this term. They always attack their rooms. I hope they have been wise enough to go out for the evening.
'I think Partridge will be one; he possesses a painting by Matisse or some such name.
'And I'm told he has black sheets on his bed.
'And Sanders went to di
'And Rending can afford to hunt, but collects china instead.
'And smokes cigars in the garden after breakfast.
'Austen has a grand piano.
'They'll enjoy smashing that.
'There'll be a heavy bill for to‑night; just you see! But I confess I should feel easier if the Dean or the Master were in. They can't see us from here, can they?
It was a lovely evening. They broke up Mr Austen's grand piano, and stamped Lord Rending's cigars into his carpet, and smashed his china, and tore up Mr Partridge's sheets, and threw the Matisse into his waterjug; Mr Sanders had nothing to break except his windows, but they found the manuscript at which he had been working for the Newdigate Prize Poem, and had great fun with that. Sir Alastair Digby‑Vane‑Trumpington felt quite ill with excitement, and was supported to bed by Lumsden of Strathdrummond. It was half‑past eleven. Soon the evening would come to an end. But there was still a treat to come.
Paul Pe
Little suspecting the incalculable consequences that the evening was to have for him, he bicycled happily back from a meeting of the League of Nations Union. There had been a most interesting paper about plebiscites in Poland. He thought of smoking a pipe and reading another chapter of the Forsyte Saga before going to bed. He knocked at the gate, was admitted, put away his bicycle, and diffidently, as always, made his way across the quad towards his rooms. What a lot of people there seemed to be about! Paul had no particular objection to drunke
Out of the night Lumsden of Strathdrummond swayed across his path like a druidical rocking‑stone. Paul tried to pass.
Now it so happened that the tie of Paul's old school bore a marked resemblance to the pale blue and white of the Bollinger Club. The difference of a quarter of an inch in the width of the stripes was not one that Lumsden of Strathdrummond was likely to appreciate.
'Here's an awful man wearing the Boller tie, said the Laird. It is not for nothing that since pre‑Christian times his family had exercised chieftainship over unchartered miles of barren moorland.
Mr Sniggs was looking rather apprehensively at Mr Postlethwaite.
'They appear to have caught somebody, he said. 'I hope they don't do him any serious harm.
'Dear me, can it be Lord Reading? I think I ought to intervene.
'No, Sniggs, said Mr Postlethwaite, laying a hand on his impetuous colleague's arm. 'No, no, no. It would be unwise. We have the prestige of the senior common-room to consider. In their present state they might not prove amenable to discipline. We must at all costs avoid an outrage.
At length the crowd parted, and Mr Sniggs gave a sigh of relief.
'But it's quite all right. It isn't Reading. It's Pe
'Well, that saves a great deal of trouble. I am glad, Sniggs; I am, really. What a lot of clothes the young man appears to have lost!
Next morning there was a lovely College meeting.
'Two hundred and thirty pounds, murmured the Domestic Bursar ecstatically, not counting the damages! That means five evenings, with what we have already collected. Five evenings of Founder's port!