in History and a second-year student in English. She would like some help with the background to her long essay: Arthurianism in Tennyson and his contemporaries. Potter has flipped through his diary (at the same time, let us suppose, discreetly appraising the young Katherine out of one corner of his eye) and said, “Okay. Say three o’clock,Thursday?” And he is the right man to have come to. This is his special field: Victorian idealism and Victorian doubt. One day he will write a book on the subject.
She duly knocks at three. She has not quite broken free of the brittle mould of a clever schoolgirl. One part of her is actually drawn to that moody, broody, neo-chivalric stuff that forms the topic of her essay—all that loss of faith, all that elegiac Romance; another believes that this is what you do, this is what is supposed to happen at modern universities: you throw yourself at clever young lecturers.
What would she have worn for this fateful tête-à-tête? The ubiquitous miniskirt of those days? No, one of those long, ankle-length, slim-waisted, high-necked dresses in some dark, velvety material, which were also, conversely, favoured then and actually evoked the graciously draped women of past ages. Potter would have noticed it (winter light fading beyond his office windows, his desktop and bookshelves in a state of beguiling disorder): the nostalgia for the nostalgia of nostalgia.
Darkness descends. The talk goes on longer than envisaged. No problem, no problem, says our doughty lecturer. He pours more coffee into the trusty coffee mugs. Then at length, the last cup of coffee having gone cold, Potter says, “A drink …? A bite to eat …?”
She seduced him? He seduced her? The latter surely, knowing what we know, now, of Potter. But this Potter of yore was not the Potter of now—this I have on the best authority. The Potter of those days was a serious, forceful, unstudiedly charming young lecturer, with something of a reputation, it’s true, as a campus heartthrob, but only just learning to take advantage of it. They seduced each other? They fell in love? Like Paolo and Francesca over the story of Lancelot? Why not?
Two years later they are married. And three years afterthat, rather later than anticipated, Potter publishes the book that was to have made his name. But this, alas, is not before—in fact, it is almost twelve months after—a certain C—— at the University of Y has published, to considerable attention and praise, a work on much the same subject and incorporating a good deal of the same material.
The trials of the academic life! How the true, chaste scholar is tested. Those years of study and research! Potter the star student, Potter the professor-to-be. It doesn’t matter if people tell him, as many do, that his book is actually better than C——’s, more thorough, more cogent, more perceptive (it’s true: it’s an invaluable aid to my researches—you see the trickiness of my situation). C—— stole the limelight, C—— got the credits. And if he, Potter, hadn’t been seduced by her, by Katherine, by marriage, domesticity, kids, he might have finished it earlier, might have got there first.
So it was she who seduced him? It’s funny how the memory blurs. And as for the kids—there were no kids. Only in the mind. Only the two miscarriages—memory doesn’t mix matters here. Then nothing.
And maybe it’s around this time—the time of the second miscarriage or the time of the publication of his abortive book—that Potter begins to wonder whether, in any case, this scholar’s life is really for him. This contemplative life. This life of the mind. When you are sitting at home by the fire …
It is a well-known fact that the Potter marriage is a façade, of which the relentless people-collecting and opportunity-seeking and throwing of dinner parties are compensatory symptoms. The marriage may have died, but the wake goes on—and how many perfectly thriving couples could
She duly knocks at three. She has not quite broken free of the brittle mould of a clever schoolgirl. One part of her is actually drawn to that moody, broody, neo-chivalric stuff that forms the topic of her essay—all that loss of faith, all that elegiac Romance; another believes that this is what you do, this is what is supposed to happen at modern universities: you throw yourself at clever young lecturers.
What would she have worn for this fateful tête-à-tête? The ubiquitous miniskirt of those days? No, one of those long, ankle-length, slim-waisted, high-necked dresses in some dark, velvety material, which were also, conversely, favoured then and actually evoked the graciously draped women of past ages. Potter would have noticed it (winter light fading beyond his office windows, his desktop and bookshelves in a state of beguiling disorder): the nostalgia for the nostalgia of nostalgia.
Darkness descends. The talk goes on longer than envisaged. No problem, no problem, says our doughty lecturer. He pours more coffee into the trusty coffee mugs. Then at length, the last cup of coffee having gone cold, Potter says, “A drink …? A bite to eat …?”
She seduced him? He seduced her? The latter surely, knowing what we know, now, of Potter. But this Potter of yore was not the Potter of now—this I have on the best authority. The Potter of those days was a serious, forceful, unstudiedly charming young lecturer, with something of a reputation, it’s true, as a campus heartthrob, but only just learning to take advantage of it. They seduced each other? They fell in love? Like Paolo and Francesca over the story of Lancelot? Why not?
Two years later they are married. And three years afterthat, rather later than anticipated, Potter publishes the book that was to have made his name. But this, alas, is not before—in fact, it is almost twelve months after—a certain C—— at the University of Y has published, to considerable attention and praise, a work on much the same subject and incorporating a good deal of the same material.
The trials of the academic life! How the true, chaste scholar is tested. Those years of study and research! Potter the star student, Potter the professor-to-be. It doesn’t matter if people tell him, as many do, that his book is actually better than C——’s, more thorough, more cogent, more perceptive (it’s true: it’s an invaluable aid to my researches—you see the trickiness of my situation). C—— stole the limelight, C—— got the credits. And if he, Potter, hadn’t been seduced by her, by Katherine, by marriage, domesticity, kids, he might have finished it earlier, might have got there first.
So it was she who seduced him? It’s funny how the memory blurs. And as for the kids—there were no kids. Only in the mind. Only the two miscarriages—memory doesn’t mix matters here. Then nothing.
And maybe it’s around this time—the time of the second miscarriage or the time of the publication of his abortive book—that Potter begins to wonder whether, in any case, this scholar’s life is really for him. This contemplative life. This life of the mind. When you are sitting at home by the fire …
It is a well-known fact that the Potter marriage is a façade, of which the relentless people-collecting and opportunity-seeking and throwing of dinner parties are compensatory symptoms. The marriage may have died, but the wake goes on—and how many perfectly thriving couples could
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