Almost a Rhodes Scholar: A Personal Reminiscence
Author(s): William Styron
Source: South Atlantic Bulletin , May, 1980, Vol. 45, No. 2 (May, 1980), pp. 1-6
Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3199137
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Almost A Rhodes Scholar:
A Personal Reminiscence
WILLIAM STYRON
T IS A PLEASURE and an honor to be a guest of the South Atlantic
Modern Language Association, and certainly it's a pleasure to return to
Atlanta after my first and only visit thirty-two years ago. When I use the word
"visit" I do not mean occasional rest stops at the Atlanta airport. It would
seem that no one in America can travel by air more that a hundred miles or so
without enduring the Atlanta airport; consequently, like most people I have
passed through that extraordinary terminal numberless times. But over three
decades have gone by since I stayed in the city of Atlanta, and since that visit
has at least a peripheral bearing on this venerable hostelry where we are now
gathered, I thought it might be interesting to describe ny earlier sojourn.
Also, since this episode has to do with the agonies of mortal anticipation, with
ambition, frustration, human destiny, drunkenness and several other matters,
it also might provide a perspective-albeit a miniscule perspective-on these
significant things.
In the winter of 1947 it appeared that I was on my way to becoming a
Rhodes Scholar. During the period after World War II, when I went back to
continue my studies at Duke University, I had applied myself with consider-
able passion to what was then, as now, known-I think unhappily-as
"creative writing," and it became about the only academic descipline in which
there was descried that I had any talent at all. However, my promise was such
that my late teacher, Professor William Blackburn-God bless him-determined that it might be a good idea to apply for a Rhodes scholarship on the
basis of my writing ability. I was a graduating senior, an English major,
impoverished, with nothing much looming on the horizon in the way of a
livelihood after my mid-year graduation a month or so hence. Professor
Blackburn-who had himself been a Rhodes Scholar-was, like most Rhodes
Scholars, an ardent Anglomaniac, and was able to beguile me with visions of
all the delights that a year or two at Oxford might offer: studying Old Norse
and Middle English in the damp and draughty rooms at Merton College--a
place which, he said, one grew fond of; reading Keats and Hardy under the
tutelage of Edmund Blunden; drinking sherry and eating scones, or picnicking on plovers' eggs and champagne, as the pale lads did in novels by Aldous
Huxley; having one's own fag-whatever that meant; going down to London
for week-ends; enjoying summer vacations in Normandy or boating along the
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2 William Styron
Rhine. Another attraction: one would be paid a reasonable stipend. Whatev
its defects (and I could not see many), it mostly sounded perfectly wonderfu
and so I was quite acquiescent when Professor Blackburn urged me to try
for the preliminary competition-that of the state of North Carolina, held
Chapel Hill. I was a little apprehensive; my grades had not really be
outstanding throughout my academic career, and I had been under
impression that "Rhodes Scholarship" and "outstanding" were virtua
synonymous. No matter, said Professor Blackburn; the new policy of t
Rhodes selections placed much less emphasis on scholarly achievement th
previously; candidates were beginning to be chosen far more for their prom
as creative talents, and therefore I stood a very good chance. Well, it turn
out that he was right. I submitted the manuscripts of several short stories.
my astonishment, out of a field of more than twenty I was one of two stude
to win the competition from North Carolina. The field had been loaded w
hotshots, too: straight-A scholars from Davidson and Chapel Hill, an accr
dited genius from Wake Forest, a magnificently proficient German lingu
from Duke. What a heady and vainglorious triumph I felt-and wha
victory it was for the creative spirit! I was so exhilarated that day when I he
the good news that many hours passed before sober reflection set in, an
began to wonder just how much of my success had been determined by the f
that Professor Blackburn, my beloved and idealistic mentor, had b
chairman of the selection committee. Anyway-
The regional competition for the Southeastern states was held a few da
later here in Atlanta-indeed, within the very bowels of this hotel where
are all meeting. I was twenty years old and the trip marked several "firsts"
me. The era of air travel, for instance, had not then really arrived in all of
dynamic and stupendous actuality; it was not yet really part of the matri
our national existence. I had flown several times on military planes in
Marine Corps, but my trip to Atlanta from Durham was my first experie
with a commercial aircraft. It was an Eastern DC-3, and I got slightly airs
though my malaise may have been compounded by the truly visceral exci
ment which now agitated my every waking hour; I was racked with visions
Oxford in the mists of Fall, of pubs and golden yards of foaming ale, of pre
Scottish lasses with that weather-rouged flush on their creamy cheeks, and
myself, winning my honors with a thrilling exegesis of The Faerie Queen. B
then-Atlanta! Down through the clouds our plane made its descent. An
here was an airport-Imagine!--about the size of the Greyhound bus stati
in Goldsboro, North Carolina, and then, a leisurely, halting taxi drive by w
of a bumpy two-lane highway through a sleepy Southern city where Peacht
Street was thronged with Negro vendors and the air was still haunted by
ghosts of Sherman's departed legions, and finally, the Atlanta Biltmore,
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SAB 3
lobby filled with potted palms, cuspidors and s
Moultrie and Al-benny.
There was also something intangibly sinister
that troubled me even as I went through the c
last I realized what the problem was: behind nearl
portal and exit, there lurked a uniformed firema
this detail does not cast a shadow over the presen
was due to a terrible catastrophe which had struc
my arrival. In one of the worst fires in Ameri
conflagration in Georgia since the burning of
Winecoff, only a few blocks away, had been dest
hundred lives. The presence at the Biltmore of
caused me to seek for a striking metaphor, but I
and rather imperfect one of the barn door being
away; so many firemen should have allayed ce
nocturnal safety (I'm not exaggerating too much
to be firemen enough around for one to spend th
guest), but their presence inexplicably made me m
went to bed in a deep unease, worrying about my
waking hourly to the smell of imagined combu
The next day-the day of the interviews-was n
I recall, from very early in the morning until
During those long hours I had time to sit and f
couches on the Biltmore mezzanine, to read, to ch
so competitors and, in doing so, to take stock of
intimidated. These young men comprised t
super-elite-of all the colleges and universities
sessed, I was certain, staggeringly high I.Q.'s, h
midnight oil to achieve scholastic mastery. They
their generation, and win or lose, I was proud
Hooray for Cecil Rhodes! Hooray for Oxford! I
on. Even in some of the darkest trials of my of
Corps I did not suffer such suspense, such spas
mixed with forlorn hope. How sweet it would be,
ham and cheese sandwich, to row for old Ball
whatever is swung at cricket for Oriel or All
Country, Cornwall, Westminster Abbey. I can r
interview, only that I seem to have acquitted my
I think it must have lasted half an hour or more
fatigued with the bonestiffening fatigue that on
induce, we sat and watched a committee mem
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4 William Styron
emerge from the conference room and slowly read the names of the dozen
winners. My name was not among them. The relief-no matter how painful
the undergirding of disappointment-was immediate, almost blissful. And I
felt some small twitch of solace-albeit solace mixed with puzzlementwhen, after extending routine thanks to all, the committee member singled
me out, requesting that I stay behind after the other candidates had dispersed,
What on earth was this? I wondered, with a deft surge of hope. Was I to be
given some secret, heretofore unrevealed and unannounced consolation prize?
A watch? A Bible? A set of the OED?
I sat there alone for a long while on the nearly deserted, stale-smelling
mezzanine, stranded in my bafflement. Finally, only a single fireman shared
my solitude. At last out of the conference room shambled the tired but
friendly-looking chairman of the committee, a doctor of divinity who was also
the distinguished Chancellor of Vanderbilt University. His name was Harvie
Branscomb. He was a good man. He extended his hand and offered his
condolences, and then sat down beside me on the couch. As I may have
known, he said, he had been a close friend of Bill Blackburn's when they had
both taught at Duke several years before; because of this connection it was all
the more difficult for him, personally, to have had to pass me over.
"It was because of you that we took so long," he said in his fatherly, friendly
voice. "We argued and argued about you for at least an hour. You see-your
writing, those stories-they really were very impressive, we all thought,
but-" He paused, then said: "We did want a creative person, but-" And
then he halted.
"I appreciate what you tried to do," I said. "I'll always be grateful for that."
"I guess you know why we finally felt that we had to pass you over-"
"My grades-" I interrupted.
"Yes," he went on, "it's not that you just flunked Physics. Even the Rhodes
scholarship doesn't demand perfection. One or two of the winners today had
rather-well, shaky areas in their academic records. It was-"
"You don't have to tell me," I put in.
The Chancellor said: "Yes, to flunk Physics not just once but four times in a
row. And that final exam grade, the last semester: thirty-eight. We couldn't
overlook that." He hesitated, then gave a rueful smile. "One of the committee
members said that you seemed to demonstrate a 'pertinacity in the desire to
fail.' We had to consider how such a trait might appear to the people at
Oxford-"
I could say nothing. Finally, after a bit of a silence, the Chancellor said:
"You know, son, maybe this is really for the better. I mean, I was at Oxford
over twenty-five years ago, and I've watched hundreds of Rhodes Scholars
come back to America and begin their careers and I'll be dogged if I can name
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SAB 5
a single writer-a single poet or playwright or
that came out of the entire huge crowd. Oh, a lo
of brilliant careers in many fields-but no
description. Funny thing, Oxford-it's a wond
finest place of its kind in the world, and yet it
people, to fit them into a mold. If you really wa
that if we had chosen you it may have been the
ambitions to be a writer. Most probably, you w
doggone good teacher, you understand, but n
looked out over the deserted mezzanine with i
"A good teacher, mind you," he insisted again, a
"I'm sure you would have come back and beg
University of Virginia or Sewanee or someplace.
been truly distinguished-but you surely wou
The Chancellor's eyes, glazed with a terrible t
remote distance and I have wondered recently w
if, in his touching and truly generous concern
brooding upon other possibilities in the theoreti
ity in a desire to fail' had caused him and his
me: that is, for example, membership in the S
Association, which thirty-odd years later, in
very hotel, ready for the familiar annuity of ce
tedium, painful politics and the saving balm o
But the Chancellor and I bade each other goodb
stay in Atlanta with another dubious "first."
adolescence an imbiber of beer and beer alone;
to be a beverage I could handle. But this nigh
station, I bought a bottle of Old Grand-Dad b
precisely, a full half pint, which was a prodigiou
man of twenty-at least, I know, for me. I
Southern Railway local that rattled its way all n
gazing out at the bleak moondrenched wintry fi
deliverance. The Chancellor, bless his soul, had
off the bitter defeat I had initially felt there
better for me not to go to Oxford, I told m
Anglophobic injunctions: the food you wouldn't
the men were prancing homosexuals, the wome
moribund civilization. "Screw Oxford," I rem
yours, Cecil Rhodes!" Next year, instead of shive
carrel, instead of-and "Get this, old fellow!"
stead of writing a paper on the hexameters of
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6 William Styron
Victorian nanny, I would be in New York, beginning my first novel. It was
with this fantasy in mind that I slipped off into a bourbon-heavy slumber,
sleeping past Durham and waking up with a stupefying headache in Norlina,
practically on the Virginia border, feeling (despite this dislocation and my
hangover) amazingly happy.
TEXTUAL NOTE: The South Atlantic Modern Language Association
is pleased to publish Mr. Styron's remarks in response to numerous
requests by members attending the General Session of the annual meeting in
Atlanta, November 1, 1979. His address preceded a reading from his latest
novel, Sophie's Choice (Random House, 1979). In that novel, Styron's autobiographical persona, Stingo, journeys to New York in 1947 to begin work on his
first novel. There Stingo meets Sophie, a Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz. Though Stingo is not Styron in literal detail, Styron's undergraduate
experiences described in his SAMLA remarks revealing his beginnings as a
novelist provide a suitable preface to a reading of Sophie's Choice. Indeed, much
of the success of Mr. Styron's reading at the annual meeting can be attributed
to the smoothness with which the two narratives become one.
Philip W. Leon, The Citadel
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