Question, question, question. I give you no answers.
But not this time, for this Q had a name. A Q that didn't belong to me or anybody, (not even Mr Ramsay), but only to himself. And oh, maybe to his wife, his son and daughter, and his pupils, and readers, [Hmm, my starting point is flawed already.], including one very important reader (later writer, then recognised author) Helene Hanff. [Hint: 84, Charing Cross Road and its sequel The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. Futura published both in one volume.] She, I think, was my introduction to Q...or was it made through Daphne du Maurier? [She completed his last unfinished novel Castle Dor, the recreation of the legend of Tristan and Iseult.]
Well, however it was done, Mr Ramsay's philosophic alphabetical musings reminded me of him, and so, like any book-lover does I turned to my books, a very modest collection, to see what I could find (if anything!) of him. And Q gave me H. A set of Helene Hanff paperbacks published by Futura, and amongst them was Q's Legacy, which is essentially a thank you letter to him, this mysterious and literary Q, a Q she never met though she did get to take tea in his Common Room and sit in his armchair.
Q? Who is this Q?
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. A Cornish man (born there in 1863), a Cornish writer (of popular novels), a professor of English Literature at Jesus College, Cambridge, where he was known to his pupils (not students) as simply 'Q'.
Helene Hanff [would it be disrespectful, do you think, if from here on in I called her Helene? Perhaps Miss Hanff would be more appropriate.] restarted her education with a volume of Q's lectures: On the Art of Writing, and from Miss Hanff's perusal of that I learned I too prefer Jargon to good English prose i.e. long fancy words, and lots of them, [You may have noticed.] when the sentence could be made plainer. Miss Hanff was shocked. I was shocked. Q was disappointed.
Yet Q had reeled Miss Hanff in; with him she was going to improve her mind. She set about it studiously [Q would have been proud.], saving for books and borrowing books from libraries [a lady after my own heart.] and made slow but rewarding progress. Q arrived at the right time, and stayed, supported her from her orange-crate bookshelves while she journeyed on. [I in reading this have developed (lock-down) bookcase envy, not of orange-crates but of shelves and shelves of books, of rooms lined with books.]
But how did Miss Hanff end up in Q's [the man who it is said Kenneth Grahame attributed Ratty to] Common Room, years after Q had died? By invitation, that's how. From his biographer's widow. An invitation Miss Hanff accepted on her third [or second? It's unclear] tour of England in 1975, persuaded by that and other fan mail to take in literary sights. That she did, and I for a second time went with her.
What followed on this whistle-stop two-week tour, amongst meeting familiar and not so familiar faces, was literary sightseeing (Q, it appears, the last stop) and history lessons. I learnt a lot I hadn't known and then had forgotten, and so had to relearn it all over again. Like what? Like...Thomas and Jane Carlyle's living arrangements (Thomas' overwhelming need for quiet and Jane's determination [some might say forbearance] to achieve this. Like...Oliver Cromwell (the Lord Protector) does not reside peacefully in this grave; his decomposing corpse was publicly disembowelled on the orders of Charles II, whose father Cromwell had beheaded. Like... the private royal executions on Tower Green. Like... the relationship between George VI and Mrs Fitzherbert, a Catholic widow, and his passion for architecture. Like..the difference between a don and a fellow [Othello, get it?]
But the one q. I wanted answered Miss Hanff did not answer: she sat in Q's seat in front of a grey stone fireplace, she held Q's dark brown bowler hat (on her lap), but did she take a biscuit from (actually put her hand inside) Q's tobacco jar?
Picture credit: Photo of Arthur Quiller Couch (source: Wikipedia).
See Q's Legacy by Helene Hanff.
Written June 2020.
