'Now,' the Dean began. 'Have you been to a public school?'
'Yes.'
'Your people can afford the fees and that sort of thing?'
'I believe so.'
'You play rugby, I suppose?'
'Yes, sir.'
The Dean began to look interested.
'What position?' he asked.
'Wing three-quarter.'
He drew a pad of paper towards him and pencilled fifteen dots on it in rugby formation.
'Threequarter…' he murmured to himself. 'How old are you?' he asked sharply.
'Almost eighteen, sir.'
'Umm. First fifteen at school?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
The Dean traced lines through his dots, crossed other out, and rustled through a sheaf of typewritten papers beside him. He jerked back in his chair and inspected me closely all over.
'You're rather thin, aren't you,' he announced. 'I suppose you've got the speed?'
'I've got cups for the hundred,' I told him eagerly.
'Well, you may shape well. Lucky you're a three. The hospital's full of forwards,' he added in disgust.
He frowned at his paper pad for a few seconds. His face suddenly lightened, and I saw he had come to a decision: my hands gripped the arms of the chair as I waited to receive it. Rising, he shook me briskly by the hand and told me he had pleasure in admitting me to St. Swithin's.
I wondered for some time afterwards how he had been able to discover from these questions that I had the attributes of a successful doctor, but I later found out that even this brief interview was superfluous, as the Dean always took the advice of his old secretary and told applicants this man disliked the look of that there were no vacancies.
2
The medical school of St. Swithin's hospital was an offshoot of the main buildings and had its own entrance on the main road. It was a tall, gloomy structure that held three floors of laboratories, an anatomical dissection room, a lecture theatre that was clothed in perpetual dusk, and the smelliest lavatories in the district.
The school had been built by the richest brewer in London, who was happily knocked over by a hansom outside the hospital gates one slippery winter's morning in 1875. He was restored to health and normal locomotion in the wards, and to show his gratitude he purchased his peerage the following year by founding the school. The place was now far too old, dark, and small for the requirements of the students, but as the hospital could see little prospect of the accident being repeated it was impossible to tear it down.
At the beginning of October thirty new students collected there for a lecture of welcome and introduction by the Dean. Carrying a new and shiny loose-leaf folder under my arm, I walked up the stone steps for the first time and into the dingy, small entrance hall. The brewer's name was carved in stone over the doorway to indicate the hospital's enduring gratitude, and was reflected in green and gold across the face of the King George public house opposite. Below his chiselled title were the serpents entwined round the winged staff, the doctors' universal trademark, and below that Hippocrates' discouraging aphorism 'The Art is Long.'
The hall, which was painted in yellow and green, contained a small kiosk bearing the word 'Enquiries' in which a porter had firmly shut himself by pulling down the glass window, turning his back on it, and reading the _Daily Mirror_ with undistractable attention. There was a short row of clothes-hooks as heavy as an orchard in August, and a long notice board thickly covered by overlapping sheets of paper.
I glanced at the board as I passed, feeling some faint obligation to do so. The notices were an untidy jumble of typewritten official instructions about lectures, examinations, and so forth, and scraps of paper torn from notebooks scrawled with students' writing. These indicated the pathetic undercurrents of medical school life as much as the agony column of _The Times_ reflects those below the existence of the middle class. The first to catch my eye was in green ink, and said angrily 'Will the gentleman (underlined four times heavily) who took my umbrella from the physiology lab last Thursday bring it back? How can I afford a new one?' Next to it was a faded invitation for two students to make up a party to dissect an abdomen in Edinburgh during the vacation, adding temptingly 'Digs and abdomen fixed up. Good pubs.' There were lists of text-books for sale, triumphantly set up by men who had passed their examinations and therefore had no necessity to learn anything else; several small earnest printed appeals for support of the local Student Christian Association; and a number of unfulfilled wants, from a disarticulated foot to a cheap motor-bike.
A hand on the wall pointed upwards 'To the Lecture Theatre.' The way was by a thin iron spiral staircase that ended in darkness. I mounted it, and found myself against a dull brown door attached to a spring that creaked violently as it opened.
The door led to the back of a steep tier of narrow wooden benches rising from the lecturer's desk like a football stand. Behind the desk were three large blackboards screwed to the walls, which were otherwise panelled with stained perpendicular planks. The roof was lost in a criss-cross of thin iron girders through which half a dozen electric globes were suspended to supplement the thin light that filtered through the windows under the eaves.
I sat down shyly at the extreme end of the last row of benches. Most of the new students had already arrived, and had scattered themselves here and there in the tier of seats. A few seemed to know one another and were conversing softly among themselves. The rest were isolated and silent and looked blankly at the blackboards ahead of them, like a congregation in church waiting for the service.
We were as variegated as a bunch of conscripts. Most of the students were my own age, but in the row immediately below me a middle-aged bald-headed man was scribbling some private notes with a pencil in an exercise book; every now and then he jumped, looked round him anxiously, and fidgeted like a schoolgirl. The only other occupant of my row was a pale youth with untidy ginger hair who appeared to be about fifteen, and was reading The Origin of Species with alarming concentration.
The clock on the wall above the lecturer's desk reached twenty past ten: the Dean was late again. We later found that this was a common occurrence as he emphasized his complete superiority over the students in his appointments by being scrupulously unpunctual. I was still staring expectantly at the blackboards when the door behind me groaned and another student entered.
'I say, do you mind if I squeeze in?' the newcomer asked. 'I hate being far from the exit.'
I shifted along the hard bench hastily. The new man seemed so much at ease in his surroundings it appeared he was senior to the rest of the waiting class. He was certainly more distinctive in his appearance. He was a tall, good-looking young man with thick black hair and a small moustache. He wore a long brown hacking jacket, narrow corduroy trousers, a green shirt, and a yellow silk square instead of a tie. He set down on the floor beside him a polished black walking-stick, and taking a monocle from his breast pocket surveyed his companions through it with blatant disgust.
'Good God,' he said.
He then opened a copy of _The Times_ and began reading it.
The abashed silence in the room was maintained for another ten minutes, broken only by my new neighbour noisily turning over the pages. At ten thirty, half an hour late, a small door behind the desk opened and the Dean bounced in. He was all smiles and geniality. He stood for a moment and beamed at the class like a bishop inspecting his confirmation candidates.
The Dean was not only late but in a tearing hurry. He briefly welcomed us to St. Swithin's, made a few remarks about its history and traditions, rapidly ran through the ethics of the medical profession, and explained that in future we would be bound by professional secrecy, and forbidden to make love to our patients' wives, do abortions, or walk on the grass in the hospital courtyard. He flung a few final remarks of encouragement at his listeners and shot off. His address had lasted seventeen minutes, and the only acknowledgment that the student next to me had made of his presence was folding his paper twice over and reading it under cover of the man in front.