THE NEW MACHIAVELLI

2

It was our affectation to be a little detached from the main stream

of undergraduate life. We worked pretty hard, but by virtue of our

beer, our socialism and suchlike heterodoxy, held ourselves to be

differentiated from the swatting reading man. None of us, except

Baxter, who was a rowing blue, a rather abnormal blue with an

appetite for ideas, took games seriously enough to train, and on the

other hand we intimated contempt for the rather mediocre,

deliberately humorous, consciously gentlemanly and consciously wild

undergraduate men who made up the mass of Cambridge life. After the

manner of youth we were altogether too hard on our contemporaries.

We battered our caps and tore our gowns lest they should seem new,

and we despised these others extremely for doing exactly the same

things; we had an idea of ourselves and resented beyond measure a

similar weakness in these our brothers.

There was a type, or at least there seemed to us to be a type-I'm a

little doubtful at times now whether after all we didn't create it-

for which Hatherleigh invented the nickname the "Pinky Dinkys,"

intending thereby both contempt and abhorrence in almost equal

measure. The Pinky Dinky summarised all that we particularly did

not want to be, and also, I now perceive, much of what we were and

all that we secretly dreaded becoming.

But it is hard to convey the Pinky Dinky idea, for all that it meant

so much to us. We spent one evening at least during that reading

party upon the Pinky Dinky; we sat about our one fire after a walk

in the rain-it was our only wet day-smoked our excessively virile

pipes, and elaborated the natural history of the Pinky Dinky. We

improvised a sort of Pinky Dinky litany, and Hatherleigh supplied

deep notes for the responses.

"The Pinky Dinky extracts a good deal of amusement from life," said

some one.

"Damned prig! " said Hatherleigh.

"The Pinky Dinky arises in the Union and treats the question with a

light gay touch. He makes the weird ones mad. But sometimes he

cannot go on because of the amusement he extracts."

"I want to shy books at the giggling swine," said Hatherleigh.

"The Pinky Dinky says suddenly while he is making the tea, 'We're

all being frightfully funny. It's time for you to say something

now.'"

"The Pinky Dinky shakes his head and says: 'I'm afraid I shall never

be a responsiblebeing.' And he really IS frivolous."

"Frivolous but not vulgar," said Esmeer.

"Pinky Dinkys are chaps who've had their buds nipped," said

Hatherleigh. "They're Plebs and they know it. They haven't the

Guts to get hold of things. And so they worry up all those silly

little jokes of theirs to carry it off."…

We tried bad ones for a time, viciously flavoured.

Pinky Dinkys are due to over-production of the type that ought to

keep outfitters' shops. Pinky Dinkys would like to keep outfitters'

shops with whimsy 'scriptions on the boxes and make your bill out

funny, and not be snobs to customers, no!-not even if they had

titles."

"Every Pinky Dinky's people are rather good people, and better than

most Pinky Dinky's people. But he does not put on side."

"Pinky Dinkys become playful at the sight of women."

"'Croquet's my game,' said the Pinky Dinky, and felt a man

condescended."

"But what the devil do they think they're up to, anyhow?" roared old

Hatherleigh suddenly, dropping plump into bottomless despair.

We felt we had still failed to get at the core of the mystery of the

Pinky Dinky.

We tried over things about his religion. "The Pinky Dinky goes to

King's Chapel, and sits and feels in the dusk. Solemn things! Oh

HUSH! He wouldn't tell you-"

"He COULDN'T tell you."

"Religion is so sacred to him he never talks about it, never reads

about it, never thinks about it. Just feels!"

"But in his heart of hearts, oh! ever so deep, the Pinky Dinky has a

doubt-"

Some one protested.

"Not a vulgar doubt," Esmeer went on, "but a kind of hesitation

whether the Ancient of Days is really exactly what one would call

goodform… There's a lot of horrid coarseness got into the

world somehow. SOMEBODY put it there… And anyhow there's no

particular reason why a man should be seen about with Him. He's

jolly Awful of course and all that-"

"The Pinky Dinky for all his fun and levity has a clean mind."

"A thoroughly clean mind. Not like Esmeer's-the Pig!"

"If once he began to think about sex, how could he be comfortable at

croquet?"

"It's their Damned Modesty," said Hatherleigh suddenly, "that's

what's the matter with the Pinky Dinky. It's Mental Cowardice

dressed up as a virtue and taking the poor dears in. Cambridge is

soaked with it; it's some confounded local bacillus. Like the thing

that gives a flavour to Havana cigars. He comes up here to be made

into a man and a ruler of the people, and he thinks it shows a nice

disposition not to take on the job! How the Devil is a great Empire

to be run with men like him?"

"All his little jokes and things," said Esmeer regarding his feet on

the fender, "it's just a nervous sniggering-because he's afraid…

Oxford's no better."

"What's he afraid of?" said I.

"God knows!" exploded Hatherleigh and stared at the fire.

"LIFE!" said Esmeer. "And so in a way are we," he added, and made a

thoughtful silence for a time.

"I say," began Carter, who was doing the Natural Science Tripos,

"what is the adult form of the Pinky Dinky?"

But there we were checked by our ignorance of the world.

"What is the adult form of any of us?" asked Benton, voicing the

thought that had arrested our flow.