Arthur Osborne - A Station Passed Through

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CHANGE OF COURSE

 

 

I never went back to the moors. Life now took a new

course. The beacon ahead to which I steered was an Oxford

scholarship. I have the methodical tenacity in pursuing a goal

which one would expect of a moon in Capricorn. At present

the goal was an idealized Oxford; later it was to be the supreme

goal of Nirvana. Between the two intervened a period with no

envisaged goal, when I tossed adrift on a stormy sea. At present

Oxford seemed like an alabaster city of dreams in the mists

ahead and I aimed steadily at getting there. Not only was it the

gateway to a good career but, in itself, a haven of culture from

the bleak money-cult of the West Riding. In fact, refusal to

accept a materialist world was already working in my mind

and, the true alternative having not yet been descried, an

idealized Oxford served as an imaginary substitute for it.

 

My school trained boys in classics, science and mathematics,

but an enthusiastic history master captured my interest and got

the headmaster’s permission to coach me for a history

scholarship. That was before the day of the welfare state, when a

country grant came automatically to all who obtained entrance

to a university. For me it was a scholarship or nothing.

Side by side with persistent study I found time for other

reading also — philosophical writers like Ruskin and Carlyle,

though not pure philosophy; theology as well, such as the works

of Dean Inge who was then in vogue; also much poetry. My

special delight was when I was left alone in the house and was

able to read poetry aloud. I also enjoyed whatever humour came my

way — Pickwick, the plays of W.S. Gilbert, the Ingoldsby Legends.

 

Except for an occasional humorous novel, I read no fiction. It

seemed a waste of time with so much knowledge to acquire and

philosophy to ponder. Although little enough spending money

came my way, I began to accumulate a small library.

I thought of myself as a future writer. Looking round at

the sunset sky from a windy hill one evening, the conviction

came to me with an intensity of a revelation: “I could write

poems if there were anything important enough to write

about”. Several times in the course of my life I recalled this,

saying: “Surely what I feel now is important enough?” But it

never was.

 

On another occasion, walking across the fields into town,

I had a strange dream that I should some day write a book that

would begin in prose and then, attaining too high a vibration

for prose, continue in poetry, and finally transcend speech

altogether, ending in silence.

 

There were no buses on the roads in those days, and it was

a two-mile walk to school in the morning and back in the

evening; often four times a day when I came home for lunch. I

must have been about sixteen when, as I was walking home one

day, a vivid and intense feeling of the reality of death came over

scholarship. That was before the day of the welfare state, when a

country grant came automatically to all who obtained entrance

to a university. For me it was a scholarship or nothing.

 

Side by side with persistent study I found time for other

reading also — philosophical writers like Ruskin and Carlyle,

though not pure philosophy; theology as well, such as the works

of Dean Inge who was then in vogue; also much poetry. My

special delight was when I was left alone in the house and was

able to read poetry aloud. I also enjoyed whatever humour came my

way — Pickwick, the plays of W.S. Gilbert, the Ingoldsby Legends.

Except for an occasional humorous novel, I read no fiction. It

seemed a waste of time with so much knowledge to acquire and

philosophy to ponder. Although little enough spending money

came my way, I began to accumulate a small library.

 

I thought of myself as a future writer. Looking round at

the sunset sky from a windy hill one evening, the conviction

came to me with an intensity of a revelation: “I could write

poems if there were anything important enough to write

about”. Several times in the course of my life I recalled this,

saying: “Surely what I feel now is important enough?” But it

never was.

 

On another occasion, walking across the fields into town,

I had a strange dream that I should some day write a book that

would begin in prose and then, attaining too high a vibration

for prose, continue in poetry, and finally transcend speech

altogether, ending in silence.

 

There were no buses on the roads in those days, and it was

a two-mile walk to school in the morning and back in the

evening; often four times a day when I came home for lunch. I

must have been about sixteen when, as I was walking home one

day, a vivid and intense feeling of the reality of death came over

part in both. I had read Gitanjali and its sequel, Tagore’s books

of prose poems, and was fascinated by them as the nearest thing

to mystical knowledge I had yet found (though how far distant

from it I was later to understand) and — foreshadowing of

things to come — at one such prayer meeting that I conducted

I read out a poem by Tagore and explained that, although not

a Christian, he had the same faith and understanding. Those

present expressed agreement.

 

The second strong influence on me at that time was Mr.

Lance, my history master. He was a loyal son of Christ Church

and eager that I should go there too. However, the Oxford

colleges were divided into three groups for scholarship purposes,

and in my year the Christ Church group came last of the three.

It would be obviously too reckless to wait for that, so he suggested

my going up to try for a scholarship a year early. The headmaster

agreed that it would be useful for me to have the experience,

not that there was any chance of my getting in. It was, however,

pointed out to me that it was unwise for a boy from a grammar

school like ours to put Christ Church first on his list of

preferences; he would not be chosen anyway, and it would make

the colleges he had put lower down on the list less likely to

accept him. However, I stuck to my guns, or rather to Mr.

Lance’s guns. In the autumn of 1924 I went up to Oxford as a

scholar of Christ Church, just turned eighteen, a year before

my time.

 

taken from MY LIFE & QUEST