The Last Samurai

Now Fraenkel once said in a class that a scholar should be able to look at any word in a passage and instantly think of another passage where it occurred; HC was unperturbed by this remark, but RD took it to heart, and the longer he worked the more any text was like a pack of icebergs each word a snowy peak with a huge frozen mass of cross-references beneath the surface. So that now in addition to Socratic reservations on answering any question was added a conviction that in any linguistic analysis a real scholar would haul up the whole iceberg. Meanwhile HC was horribly bored by the class, he found the business of loading a line with comment excruciatingly boring; he was only able to cheer himself up by remembering that he had only just turned 16.

Five terms passed and it was time for Mods.

The night before the first exam other candidates went over the arguments for and against a single author of the Iliad and Odyssey while HC and RD sat over a chessboard with HC saying Opening middle game end game and RD saying it’s not the same and HC saying 5 minutes.

HC and RD had now come to the part of the course which concentrated on history and philosophy. HC wanted to change courses & study Arabic & dazzle the Oriental Institute, but not only had RD taken to heart the words of Fraenkel and Socrates, he had also taken to heart the words of Wilamowitz, and he said in anguish that Wilamowitz had said that the study of history and philosophy was an essential part of Altertumswissenschaft and what was he to do? HC said they should study Arabic and dazzle the Oriental Institute, but RD said the core of the subject was the exploration of valid modes of reasoning about the subject. Whether this carried weight with HC is not known. He was not one to take things to heart, but he was a sportsman, and he could not bring himself to go into a course where he would have no competition.

Seven terms went by and it was time for Greats, the last exams of the course. RD came to HC’s room. RD felt that having spent two and a half years learning valid methods of argument it was contemptible to cast them aside just as though he were a 19-year-old entrance candidate with no real training in philosophy, and on the other hand he thought he must be missing something since philosophers and historians did after all set the exams and appeared to expect the candidates to take them. He walked up and down talking about Socrates & Wilamowitz & Mommsen waiting for HC to get out the chessboard, & sure enough HC brought out his chessboard.

They began to play without a word. The timer went before RD had made his fifth move. HC set the clock back & began putting the pieces back. RD put his head on his hand.

He said: It’s not the same.

He said: Is there no END to this?

HC said: You’ll never have to take an exam again.

HC said: Well maybe just one.

What? said RD.

All Souls! said HC, who hoped to be the youngest fellow in a hundred years.

RD said: I can’t do this any more. I can’t do this to PHILOSOPHY. I can’t write some piece of rubbish in half an hour and say they MADE me do it.

HC said: Opening middle game endgame.

RD said: I can’t do this anymore. He said in anguish: What am I to do?

HC set out the game. He set the clock. RD raised his head. He stopped saying what am I to do. He played rapidly and confidently. He won in 23 moves and he said

But it’s not the same.

They played, and RD won 10 games out of 10.

He said: But it’s not the same.

5 minutes, said HC.

RD won 10 games out of 10. He did not say But it’s not the same. He did not say What am I to do?

The first exam was the Plato and Aristotle paper.

RD put on a black suit and white tie. He put on his scholar’s gown. The icebergs bore down on him. Socrates stood silent at his shoulder. He looked silently down at the paper.

Looking up he saw that the invigilator was JH, a man who had been working for the last 20 years on a book on Republic X. In those days it was possible for a man to be the finest Platonist of his generation and not publish for 20 years. There was a question on Republic X. Now RD saw what he must do.

He wrote: I am not so presumptuous as to attempt in 40 minutes what Mr. JH has not achieved in 20 years. That took a minute. The implication of the sentence, however, was that Mr. JH had been wrong to set the paper, & it took him 2 hours and 57 minutes to decide that it would be more insulting to spare a philosopher what he believed to be the truth than to hand in the notebook with this sentence on the page.

He spent the rest of the week punting on the Cherwell.

HC got the top first that year, and RD got no degree of any kind.

Now as soon as HC saw the list of vivas he knew that he had got a very good first and RD had not, because RD’s name was not on the list. There were three days of vivas after HC’s: he had three days in which to enjoy his victory.