534
PARTISAN REVIEW
them to wear kilts in their ancestral tartan instead of the school
uniform, and even christened her youngest child by a Gaelic name.
Ostensibly we were supposed to admire the Scots because they were
"grim" and "dour" ("stem" was perhaps the key word), and
ir–
resistible on the field of battle. In the big schoolroom there was
a
steel engraving of the charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo, all
looking as though they enjoyed every moment of it. Our picture of
Scotland was made up of bums, braes, kilts, sporrans, claymores,
bagpipes, and the like, all somehow mixed up with the invigorating
effects of porridge, Protestantism and a cold climate. But underlying
this was something quite different. The real reason for the cult
of Scotland was that only very rich people could spend their sum–
mers there. And the pretended belief in Scottish superiority was a
cover for the bad conscience of the occupying English, who had
pushed the Highlands peasantry off their farms to make way for
the deer forests, and then compensated them by turning them into
servants. Bingo's face always beamed with innocent snobbishness
when she spoke of Scotland. Occasionally she even attempted a
trace of Scottish accent. Scotland was a private paradise which a few
initiates could talk about and make outsiders feel small.
"You going to Scotland this hols?"
"Rather! We go every year."
"My pater's giving me a new gun for the twelfth. There's jolly
good black game where we go. Get out, Smith! What are you
listening for? You've never been in Scotland. I bet you don't know
what a black-cock looks like."
Following on this, imitations of the cry of a black-cock, of
the roaring of a stag, of the accent of "our ghillies," etc. etc.
And the questionings that new boys of doubtful social origin
were sometimes put through- questionings quite surprising in their
mean-minded particularity, when one reflects that the inquisitors
were only twelve or thirteen!
"How much a year has your pater got? What part of London
do you live in? Is that Knightsbridge or Kensington? How many
bathrooms has your house got? How many servants do your people
keep? Have you got a butler? Well, then, have you got a cook?
Where do you get your clothes made? How many shows did you
go to in the hols? How much money did you bring back with you?"
etc., etc.
