If Paul McCartney was a celebrity hero who left me feeling tongue-tied, today I am thinking of another hero of mine, one who had the opposite effect. I’ve written previously about having started my BA in English Studies in my thirties and about how I wondered what on earth I was doing amongst all the youngsters and hipsters. One of the people who inspired me to achieve the things I went on to achieve was a tall, gangly professor of Victorian Literature called Chris Brooks.
In my first year I did not know him particularly well as I did not take any of his classes. But I knew from the lectures he gave on Marxism and on the Industrial Revolution that here was a towering intellect. In my second year I was rather disappointed not to have been placed in his class for my Nineteenth Century Literature module. That year, however, saw the first occurence of the respiratory problems which have dogged me on and off ever since. I missed so many weeks of class that in the end it was agreed that I should take the rest of the academic year off and retake my second year. This was another of those instances which seemed like a disaster at first but in the end turned out to be the making of my academic career. One of my first two classes when I came back to retake the year was a module on 20th century literature which I had already virtually completed apart from the final examination (and thus I was very familair with all the reading and actually found time to read extra material and increase my knowledge). The other class was 19th Century Lit, again, and this time I was taught by Chris Brooks.
From the very first moment I sat in his classroom I knew I’d been right to feel disappointed the previous year. Unlike some of his colleagues he did not suffer fools gladly and if a student gave a ridiculous or ill-considered answer to a question he would not indulge them and say “That’s interesting. Would you care to tell us a little more?” Instead he would be more likely to shake his head disapprovingly and say “No!” before moving on to someone less flippant.
He was also a walking encyclopedia of historical events, of literature and literary quotes. I began to play a little game: I would look up obscure nineteenth century poets or novellists before class and somehow try and work a quote in from them when I spoke to him. I never caught him out, he always either finished the quote before I did (as he was well aware of my game) or he knew exactly where it had come from, what year it had been written, what colour socks the author had been wearing on the day, and the size of their pupil dilation when the sunshine hit their face after breakfast. Well, maybe not quite all of that information but you get the idea.
It did not take me long to realize that Chris was something of a hero to me. I was surprised, in a way, having given up on heroes after John Lennon had been shot some twenty years earlier. But I had to admit that here was a man I wanted to emulate, someone whose abilities I wished to assimilate, and whose personality inspired me to work even harder at my own studies. Despite his example, however, I found I was struggling midway through that first term back after so long away with illness. While I had been unwell I had been focusing on returning to university as the moment my life would click back into order and the difficult days would be behind me. But it was not quite so simple. I had to make a whole new group of friends as my initial year were obviously a step ahead of me now, and I was uncertain whether my emerging dreams of working towards a doctorate in Literature were sensible or attainable for someone who came into the academic game so late.
One afternoon I knocked on Chris’s office door and told him about how I’d been hanging my hopes and my sanity on returning to university for months and yet now I was back I was not sure quite where I belonged any more. We shoved an ashtray towards me, as he always did when fellow smokers entered his office, and we produced plumes of blue smoke while he pondered my concerns. Then, dedicated Marxist that he was, he phrased his response in the following terms:
“Capitalist society forces the individual to behave in ways which are contrary to his own better conscience.” he said, and then listed various ways in which capitalism had placed certain expectations upon me, as it does upon everyone. People in their 30s are not supposed to go off chasing academic dreams, they’re supposed to be slogging their guts out in some career in which they’ve already begun to climb the ladder. What I was feeling, he continued, was the pressure of society to do what I am supposed to do rather than what I choose to do.
“Don’t ever blame yourself. It’s those buggers out there!” He was shouting and pointing through the window by this stage and for an instant I felt as though he was cross with me. Then I understood that he was angry with capitalism, with Western society for trying to make us worship one thing only – money – and to behave according to unspoken rules in pursuit of that thing. His was an anger that he’d clearly felt all his life. And here he was experiencing it on my behalf too. I left his office that day not only more assured that I should allow myself to pursue my academic dreams but also certain that I had made a new and wonderful friendship.
I have never forgotten Chris’s words that day, nor the fact that he wanted me to liberate myself fully from the shackles of societal expectations, something he wished for everyone. His words would have stayed with me throughout my life anyway but they have been etched indelibly upon my brain because of events that took place a couple of months later. It was the beginning of the second semester and I had my exam results back. My 19th century result had been my worst one – the only examination in which I did not quite achieve a 1st (I was short by three marks). I’d written a note to myself to go and have a chat with Chris to see if I could work out where I’d fallen short of the mark, and I went into my first lecture of a new module. The lecturer was about to begin when the head of school entered. She spoke to our lecturer in whispers for a few moments and it was clear something was wrong. Then she came to the rostrum and announced that Chris Brooks had died suddenly over the weekend.
I was absolutely destroyed. I sat through the lecture but, unusually for me, did not make a single note, did not actually hear a word that was being said. All I could hear were the words of Chris Brooks, from seminars and lectures and conversations in his office or over coffee. There was a film screening after the lecture but I and several others who had been close to Chris skipped it and went to the nearest cafe to try and make sense of our feelings. So many people were affected. A little later I walked into the English department, almost hoping to bump into Chris and disprive this nonsense about him being dead. The departmental secretary, who shared a birthday with Chris, had placed a single daffodil on his office door (Wordsworth being one of his favourite poets, he had won a school prize as a boy for his reading of ‘Daffodils’ in front of his school). The flower somehow made this impossible news seem finally real and I cried as I walked along the corridor.
When his funeral service was announced a few days later the head of school asked that undergraduates please respect that it was a service for his family and to therefore stay away rather than flood the small crematorium. His postgraduate students were allowed to attend however. Unbeknown to me until the following day, a plea had been made on my behalf and on behalf of Pele, another undergraduate Chris was close to, that we be allowed to attend the service. I felt truly honoured. It did not lessen the leaden sensation in the pit of my stomach that had arrived with the news of Chris’s death. But it made me feel close to him once more, inspired once more. In many ways my academic achievments after that time are testament to the grounding Chris gave me and to the belief he showed in me and enabled me to find in myself. It will soon be eight years since his demise. I still miss him and wish I could talk through life’s hills and dales with him. In my mind’s eye he is dancing with the daffodils somewhere beyond space and time.
I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud
- That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
- A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
- And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch’d in never-ending line
- Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
- Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
- In such a jocund company:
I gazed — and gazed — but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
- In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
- Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
William Wordsworth