“Prescott, you—”
“That’s William Shakespeare. He was a playwright. Not bad, actually. Nor do we teach seminars on Charles Dickens or Jane Austen. They wrote books. Cracking good ones.”
“They are all covered in the core module. And by the way, Prescott, the Hogwarts course is oversubscribed this term.”
“I have no doubt. But that shouldn’t mean—”
“This university must move with the times, Prescott. And so must you, or you will be left behind. Do I make myself clear?”
“There was a time,” said Arthur, “when universities led the culture rather than followed it.”
“There was also a time,” barked Slopes, “when the Committee on Curriculum Expansion met. And that time was eight o’clock. Now, if you miss one more meeting, I will have to report you to the Committee on Faculty Disciplinary Affairs.”
And no doubt they, thought Arthur as Slopes stomped off, will report my actions to the Committee on Flushing British Culture Down the Loo.
Yes, Arthur would have been happier in an earlier generation. It was a cruel trick of fate that had landed him in a century when universities had “core modules” and taught courses on “anagnorisis” to students who couldn’t be bothered to read books they hadn’t already read in childhood. The irony was, thought Arthur as he squeezed into his cubicle of an office, that he liked the Harry Potter books. He had read them last summer. But he didn’t think they belonged in a university curriculum.
The day that had begun with so little promise continued in that vein for Arthur through two lectures and a tutorial—populated by three students whom he insisted on calling Mr. Crawley, Miss Stanhope, and Miss Robarts, in spite of the fact that they called him “Arthur.” The tutorial was part of the dreaded core module and so Arthur had anticipated with pleasure an introductory discussion of Jane Austen. Instead he had to endure a diatribe from Miss Stanhope—meekly supported by Mr. Crawley, who was clearly trying to ingratiate himself with her in the hope of future sexual favors—in which Austen was taken to task for not being “enough of a feminist.” Arthur listened for a half hour, doing his best to focus his mind on a P. G. Wodehouse story he had read on the bus that morning, but eventually he could take no more.
“Jane Austen never married,” he said in frustration. “She entered the male-dominated field of novel writing and her female heroines are strong, independent characters. Just what do you imagine a feminist in a rural English village in the late eighteenth century looks like?”
“Oh, Arthur,” said Miss Stanhope with an exasperated sigh, “you are such a man.”
—
“You can’t deny the accusation,” said Gwyn as she and Arthur took their regular twice-weekly walk around the water meadows the next morning.
“Yes, but she said it with such disdain,” said Arthur, stooping to pick up a drool-covered tennis ball that one of the dean’s chocolate-colored spaniels had deposited at his feet. Arthur could never tell the two dogs, Mag and Nunc, apart, but he flung the ball as far as he could and they both bounded off after it. He loved these early morning walks with Gwyn. They meant his Tuesdays and Thursdays, at least, could start off on a civilized note.
Gwyneth Bowen had been dean of Barchester Cathedral for almost six years. Arthur had shaken hands with her after Evensong shortly after she was installed, but the two cannot be said to have genuinely met until a few weeks later, when they happened to fall in together while walking in the water meadows outside the cathedral close one foggy morning. They had had a long and heated debate about the nature of faith; Arthur had liked her immediately.
The argument that had engrossed them on their first meeting had gone something like this: The dean did not understand how Arthur could come to services at the cathedral nearly every day yet profess he didn’t actually believe in the doctrines of the Christian church. Arthur argued that the dean should be pleased to have nonbelievers in her pews—what better place for nonbelievers? Arthur guessed her argument stemmed not so much from the apparent inconsistency of his beliefs and his actions as from her assumption that a nonbeliever in the pews was a rare bird. But Arthur suspected it was not nearly as rare as Gwyn thought, or perhaps wished. He imagined that any number of regular attendees, especially at the main Sunday morning service, if put to the test about their reasons for darkening the doors of the cathedral on a regular basis, might say all sorts of things about music and preaching and architecture and fellowship, but would very carefully skirt around the issue of faith.
Since that first day, they had met twice a week during term time, more often during holidays, immediately after seven o’clock Morning Prayer, for an hour-long walk across the broad expanse of the water meadows, along the riverside path, and back to the cathedral close, where the gardens came down to the river just across from Arthur’s cottage. Whatever the weather, when they made the turn at the far end of the meadow, and emerged from a row of trees to catch sight of the cathedral, Arthur always felt as if he were in a Constable painting. On some days they continued the debate that had begun that first morning; more often they engaged on different topics—some found them in agreement; others led to spirited jousting, which Arthur quite enjoyed.
When Gwyn’s husband had died a year ago, the walks had continued for a time in a more somber vein, but they had never missed a Tuesday or Thursday that entire term. “I need this,” Gwyn had said when Arthur had suggested a hiatus. “I may not be the first woman dean in the Anglican Church, but I believe I am the first who is the single mother of two small children, grieving for her husband, and trying to manage the finances of Britain’s poorest cathedral. Sometimes I think our walk is my only hour of sanity in the day.” So Arthur listened to her troubles and she listened to his and by the time they reached the river they were more often than not deep into an argument that took them each away from their work on the other side of the water meadows.
“And I don’t see why the students have to call the faculty by their first names,” said Arthur, continuing his complaint about the previous afternoon’s tutorial. “We aren’t their mates; we’re their instructors. Would it be so awful to be shown a little respect?”
“Come now, Arthur. You don’t call me the Very Reverend Bowen.”
“That’s because we are peers—practically.”
“We’re nothing of the sort. I’m a dean and you’re a layman.”
They walked in unusual silence for a few minutes, Arthur again throwing the tennis ball when Mag (or perhaps Nunc) dropped it at his feet. “Something’s bothering you,” he said at last.
“Some bad news this morning, I’m afraid,” said Gwyn.