When Max Beerbohm, caricaturist supreme, turned his pencil in for a pen, he came up with this hilarious take on undergraduate life. The time is the golden pre-WWI age when Brittania ruled the waves. The place is Oxford University, a bastion of masculine pride, privilege and prestige epitomized by the Duke of Dorset – the 14th one. Enter Zuleika, a conjurer and toast of Europe and America, who has come to visit her grandfather, the venerable Warden of Judas college, with “eyes which hawks, that nose which eagles . . . envied.”
After one glance at her charming self, men fell in love with Zuleika. Beerbohm has created swains for her: Prince Vierfunfsechs-Siebenachtneun, and the Grand Duke Salamander Salamandrovitch, and in Madrid, “Alvarez, the matador of matadors [who] died with her name on his lips. . . a prettier compliment had never been paid her.”
But despite all this, Zuleika had never been in love, until . . . Enter the Duke who had “an intense horror of unmarried girls. . . that he should be confronted with one of them in Oxford seemed to him sheer violation of sanctuary.” But he too, poor fellow, fell instantly in love, and with a conjurer! But summoning all his will power, the Duke was determined not to show it. And Zuleika fell in love with him, having finally met a man she could look up to, a man who did not immediately become enslaved by her charms.
Read on gentle reader as this tale unfolds. You will be delighted by Beerbohm’s turn of phrase and words such as: disseizin, peripety, vagrom, aseity, ataraxy — all of which this heat has made me too lazy to look up.
[Published in 1911 and still available]
Robert Beerbohm says
I have been collecting as much of the published works of both Max and Herbert for some years now once i deduced we are probably related and I am told I look like Max in bone structure, have a few published variations of Zuleika, not having have yet found the time/inclination to read one of them. Your review has moved me to want to do just that in the near term. Thank you for putting this out there for inspiration.
Joan Smith says
Oh, Mary, how delicious. Can’t wait to read this!!
Maria Wood says
Disseizin: “Recent dispossession”. In English law, it was used to restore possession of lands of which a plaintiff had been disseised, or dispossessed, before going through a lengthy process of discovering whether the plaintiff was the rightful owner.
Peripety: The English form of the Greek “peripeteia”, meaning a sudden turning point or reversal of circumstance.
Vagrom: Vagrant, itinerant, nomad
Aseity: A metaphysical concept meaning a being existing of and from itself (as in the Christian concept of “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was made Flesh”).
Ataraxy: A state of serene calmness.
Thanks for helping me improve my vocabulary!
Mary Wood says
it was Beerbohm who improved your vocabulary, not me. The challenge is to use these words in conversation.GRNL