The Norfolk Mystery (The County Guides) Read Online Free

Shropshire Lad
. By age sixteen, however, we victim-beneficiaries of Dr Davis’s methods were able to recite large parts of the great works of the English poets, as well as Homer and Dante. We had also, as a side effect, become enemies of authority, our souls spoiled and our minds tainted for ever with bitterness towards serious learning. But no matter. At my interviewer’s prompting I began gladly to recall the beginning of the
Prelude
, as familiar to me as a popular song:
    Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
    A visitant that while it fans my cheek
    Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings
    From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
    These words seemed to please my interviewer – as much, if not more so than they would have done Dr Davis himself – for he leaned forward across the Underwood and joined me in the following lines:
    Whate’er its mission, the soft breeze can come
    To none more grateful than to me; escaped
    From the vast city, where I long had pined
    A discontented sojourner: now free,
    Free as a bird to settle where I will.
    He then fell silent as I continued.
    What dwelling shall receive me? in what vale
    Shall be my harbour? underneath what grove
    Shall I take up my home? and what clear stream
    Shall with its murmur lull me into rest?
    The earth is all before me. With a heart
    Joyous, nor scared at its own liberty,
    I look about; and should the chosen guide
    Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
    I cannot miss my way. I breathe again!
    â€˜Very good, very good,’ pronounced my interlocutor, waving his hand dismissively. ‘Now. Canada’s main imports and exports?’
    This sudden change of tack, I must admit, threw me entirely. I rather thought I had hit my stride with the Wordsworth. But it seemed my interviewer was in fact no aesthete, like our beloved Dr Davis, nor indeed a scrupuland like the loathed Dr Leavis, the man who had quietly dominated the English School at Cambridge while I was there, with his thumbscrewing
Scrutiny
,
and his dogmatic belief in literature as the vital force of culture. Poetry, I had been taught, is the highest form of literature, if not indeed of human endeavour: it yields the highest form of pleasure and teaches the highest form of wisdom. Yet poetry for my interviewer seemed to be no more than a handy set of rhythmical facts, and about as significant or useful as a times table, or a knowledge of the workings of the internal combustion engine. I had of course absolutely no idea what Canada’s main imports and exports might be and took a wild guess at wood, fish and tobacco. These were not, as it turned out, the correct answers – ‘Precious metals?’ prompted my interviewer, as though a man without knowledge of such simple facts were no better than a savage – and the interview took a turn for the worse.
    â€˜Could you give ten three-letter nouns naming food and drink?’
    â€˜Rum, sir?’
    â€˜Rum?’ My interviewer’s face went white, to match his moustache.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Anything else, Sefton – anything apart from distilled and fermented drink?’
    â€˜Cod?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Eel?’
    â€˜Satisfactory, if curious choices,’ my interviewer concluded. ‘You might more obviously have had egg or pea.’
    â€˜Or pig, sir?’
    â€˜A pig, I think you’ll agree, is an animal, Sefton. It is not a foodstuff until it has been butchered and made into joints. A pig is
potential
food, is it not?’
    â€˜Yes, sir.’
    â€˜Tell me, Sefton, are you able to adapt yourself quickly and easily to new sets of circumstances?’
    â€˜I believe I am sir, yes.’
    â€˜And could you give me an example?’
    I suggested that in my work as a schoolmaster I had encountered numerous occasions when I had been required to adapt to circumstances. I did not explain that one such occasion was when I had been found in a compromising