Sassoon started well, but with his mind more on poetry than Jurisprudence, progress was slow and interest declined. What lay at the heart of the problem was, as he had already discovered at New Beacon School and Marlborough, his total inability to engage in what he counted as academic aridity. There was nothing dramatic or imaginative in the subject and he was, to say the least, disenchanted. The portrait he paints of himself at this time is of a young man determined to discover and enjoy his own world, the world of the imagination; he was a daydreamer, though fully aware that disaster in the Tripos would be the inevitable consequence of his mental meandering. Life lived on one’s own terms was the guiding principle. He wanted to be a poet, not a lawyer. At the suggestion of his senior tutor, W. L. Mollison, Sassoon switched to History: ‘I tackled the History Tripos with a spurt of unmethodical energy. I had found Law altogether too inhumane and arid, but History was bound to be much more lively and picturesque.’
Not so. The underlying discipline necessary for success in his latter subject was the same as that required for the former. Soon he was equally in trouble with his History and was duly warned by his tutor. ‘“You really must put in some solid work on the struggle between the Empire and the Papacy,” he remarked. To which I dutifully agreed and spent most of the next day reading The Earthly Paradise in a punt under a pollard willow with a light breeze ruffling the bend of the river and bringing the scent of bean-fields, while Cambridge, a mile or two away, dozed in its academic afternoon.’
William Morris, another Old Marlburian, was offering him an ‘imaginative experience which provided an ideal escape from commonplace actualities’ such as tutorials and essays. Mollison, his tutor, was long-suffering and sympathetic to the earnest young poet. Sassoon was writing an epic blank-verse poem on Joan of Arc, in what he described as a ‘state of rapt afflatus – a sort of first-love affair with blank verse. I really was bursting with poetic energy that year, though so immature.’ He had also been bursting with golf – on the Mildenhall and Royston courses, among other diversions. Would ‘Molly’ have been so tolerant had he known? Sassoon was also working on an anthology of his favourite poems: ‘Swinburne was the main influence at that time. I loved Tennyson but was incapable of imitating his distinctness. Dante Rossetti also, and I’d imbibed quite a lot of Browning, Saul being my prime favourite.’ As for his own poems, he was collating them for a slim volume which, after much thought, he decided to publish in a private edition.
Publishing small private volumes of his work became his chosen method, of which Sir Rupert Hart-Davis has written: ‘I think the explanation lay in a lifelong dichotomy in his nature. He longed for praise and recognition, but he was instinctively reclusive, so unsure of his gifts and afraid of making a fool of himself, that he preferred his poems to appear first in small and expensive editions, a sort of safeguard to prove their worth and test readers’ reactions.’ Sassoon admits to another reason, his total lack of experience with which to judge his work and awareness of its derivative quality, if not of content then certainly in style. His reticence did not prevent him sending occasional poems, which were accepted for publication in Granta, the university magazine. The poems selected for inclusion in the small volume were dense with metaphors, a good number of them of the mixed variety, and combinations of conflicting feelings expressing life’s ups and downs in florid style. Occasionally there is a promising opening line. One of which he was particularly proud, as he confessed a half century later, declares boldly, ‘Doubt not the light of Heaven upon the soul.’ ‘Not a bad start!’ was his comment. If there is an underlying component in the collection, it is of life as pilgrimage, of seeking after some providential purpose. Sassoon spent the summer putting finishing touches to the proposed volume and on 20 September sent it to the Athenaeum Press. Within two weeks the first proofs arrived, with a second set in early November.
Having returned to Cambridge he was more than ever out of sympathy with his studies and was minded to go down without completing his degree. Theresa, he was confident, would support this; he might even have suggested it to her during the summer. She saw no point in her son pursuing matters in which he was not interested. Uncle Hamo took the opposite view and wrote urging him to persist. As a possible diversionary tactic, he suggested that his nephew enter for the Chancellor’s Medal. The subject was Edward I and, although Sassoon thought it a strong theme for an epic poem, he became disillusioned with his efforts. Eventually he struck on a possible treatment and sent in the finished work. Convinced he would not win the prize, he went home to Weirleigh for Christmas. The 18th December was a red-letter day. Fifty copies of the presentation volume arrived. He noted in the proudest terms, ‘no one knew about it, not even my mother’. Theresa was splendidly surprised with her Christmas gift.
In the New Year Sassoon had a slight chill which, turning into a mild case of flu, delayed his return to university till March, another of those convenient illnesses which enabled him to postpone the evil day. Uncle Hamo may have suspected as much and, unlike his sister, felt regret that his nephew would not complete his degree. Writing to his friend Edmund Gosse, he said that Siegfried jibbed at the idea of work and was determined to follow a line of his own; that he had his mother’s support in this and must go his own way. He also appealed to Gosse to have a word with Theresa. Nothing came of his efforts. His idea of the Chancellor’s Medal, or the Chancellor’s Muddle as Theresa called it, also met with failure – his nephew did not win. Sassoon’s undergraduate days at Cambridge came to an end. Well aware that his uncle was disappointed, he wrote to him on 19 May 1907:
Dear Uncle Hamo,
Cheque received: I must screw myself up to inform you that I intend to give up Cambridge. I see no use in staying there three years and not getting a degree, and am sure I should never pass the exams. I expect you will be very sick with me about it, but I don’t think I should ever do anything there. I admit it appears rather idiotic, but I have quite made up my mind about it.
Your not at all truculent nephew
S.S.
Not truculent! And accompanied by a slice of imperiousness in the final sentence. Uncle Hamo accepted defeat, knowing that his nephew would be 21 that September and free to follow his own course. A few weeks before the birthday, Sassoon went in a semi-apologetic spirit to Uncle Hamo’s studio. The trepidation he felt as he approached was dissolved by the ever charitable and gentle uncle, who showed himself quite reconciled to the decision. He was working on a statue of Tennyson and he encouraged his nephew to try on the Laureate’s cloak and hat. It was something of a coronation, with Uncle Hamo’s commendation of his nephew’s work and faith in his future. ‘Let us hope that some day you will have no need to borrow the mantle of greatness, old man. Let your thoughts ring true; and always keep your eye on the object while you write.’ The advice was sound, though unfortunately Tennyson’s outsize hat had slipped down to cover Sassoon’s eyes.
Sassoon at 21 began to settle into the life of poet, sportsman and country gentleman with an income of £400 a year. He took possession of the upstairs floor of the Studio where his father had once played the violin, painted and browsed through his library. Sassoon’s own library was begun during his frequent absences from Marlborough