_Your snail is your only right house-builder_; _for he builds his
house out of the stuff of his own vitals_, _and therefore wherever he
travel he carries his own roof above him_. _But I have known men_,
_spacious in the possession of bricks and mortar_, _who have not so
much made their houses as their houses have made them_. _Turn such an
one out of his home_, _and he is a bare_ "_O without a figure_,"
_counting for nothing in the sum of things_. _He only is truly
himself who has nature in him_, _when the old shell is cracked_, _to
build up a new one about him out of the pith and substance of
himself_.
Ten days after the reconnaissance described in the last chapter, the
pioneers of the school were again upon the ground.
On Monday, March 27th, a goods train of eighteen trucks, chartered by the
Uppingham masters, was unloading three hundred bedsteads, with their
bedding, on Borth platform. These were to be distributed among the
quarters of their respective owners, in some dozen different houses,
which we had engaged in addition to the hotel. The workmen were mostly
Welshmen, anxious to be doing, but understanding imperfectly the speech
of their employers. With the eagerness of their temperament, they went
at the trucks, and Babel began. Amid a confused roar of contradictory
exhortations, with energetic gesture, and faces full of animation and
fire, they were hauling away, to any and every place, the ton-loads of
mattresses, and the fragments of unnumbered bedsteads. It was time for
the owners to interpose; and those of the school party who were present,
knowing that time was very precious, and that example is better than
precept, especially precept in a foreign language, put their own hands to
the work, the Headmaster being foremost, and earned a labouring man's
wage at unloading the trucks and carrying the goods to their billets.
Some of our new acquaintances watched the scene with a shocked surprise
that authorities should share in the manual labour, instead of looking on
and paying for it. But their feelings at last determined to admiration.
"Why, sirs," they exclaimed, "you get it done as if you were used to move
every three weeks." But, in fact, there was so much to be done, and so
few days to do it in, that the exigencies of the work spared neither age,
sex, nor degree of our party. None were exempt, and those who were not
employed in porterage and rough carpentry might be found shifting
furniture, or stitching curtains, or jointing together bedsteads.
Meanwhile, workmen in and round the hotel were as busy as
stage-carpenters preparing a transformation scene. First, by the
elimination of carpets and furniture, the interior was reduced to a
_tabula rasa_. Then, in the somewhat weather-beaten top story,
plastering and surface-washing went briskly on. Our hosts assured us no
hands could be found for this work, but the Headmaster made a descent
upon Aberystwith and returned with the required number. A contractor was
fitting the large coffee-rooms, the billiard-room and others, and the
ground-floor corridor from end to end, with long narrow tables--plain
deal boards on wooden trestles--for the accommodation of three hundred
diners. Outside, the stables were converted into the school carpentery,
and the coach-house into a gymnasium. Above all, a wooden school-room,
eighty-three feet by twenty, had been designed, and its site marked out
on the north side of the enclosure behind the hotel.
Then there was the care of providing supplementary house-room for many
purposes: rooms for music practice, and for the boys' studies (of which
we shall have more to say), and for hospital uses. Ordinary "sick-room"
accommodation was soon obtained by paying for it, but a fever hospital
was also a requirement which, with our experiences, we were not likely to
forget, and this was less easy to secure. We had to scour the
neighbourhood, knocking at the door of many a farmhouse and country
homestead, before we were provided.
The house-room being secured, came the labour of furnishing; the
distribution of tables, benches, bookshelves, &c, for the class-rooms,
and of furniture (in many cases a minimum) for the needs of masters and
their families; the ticketing of the bed-room doors, the beds, the chests
of drawers, and each drawer in them, with the name of the occupant--with
many like minutiae, which it took longer to provide than it does to
detail them. The task was not rendered easier by being shared in part
with our hosts, who had hardly taken the measure of our requirements. It
became necessary at the last moment to telegraph to the Potteries for a
large consignment of bed-room ware, which, in spite of protestations, had
been laid in only in half quantities. The world of school has marched
forward since the days when three or four basins sufficed for the toilet
of a dozen boys.
While the elementary needs of the colony were being attended to, its more
advanced wants were not neglected. There were those whom the anxiety of
providing for the school amusements, and in particular its cricket,
suffered not to sleep. We believe that the first piece of school
property which arrived on the scene was the big roller from the cricket-
field. Resolved to gather no moss in inglorious ease at home, it had
mounted a North-Western truck, and travelled down to Bow Street station,
where it was to disembark for action. It cost the Company's servants a
long struggle to land it, but once again on terra firma it worked with a
will and achieved wonders, reducing a piece of raw meadow land in a few
weeks' space to a cricket-field which left little to be desired. This
meadow lay within a few hundred yards of Bow Street station, four miles
by rail from Borth. It is the property of Sir Pryse Pryse, of Gogerddan,
who gave the school the use of it at a peppercorn rent.
This was but one of the many acts of unreserved generosity shown by this
gentleman to the school. It is not often that the opportunity offers of
winning so much and such hearty gratitude as our neighbour of Gogerddan
has won by his prompt liberality; still less often is the opportunity
occupied with such thoughtful and ungrudging kindness.
We had help in the same kind from the Bishop of St. David's, who put at
our service a field close to the hotel; a rather wild one, but in which
little plots and patches for a practising wicket were discovered by our
experts. The firm sands to the north were reported to yield an excellent
"wicket;" with the serious deduction, however, that the pitch was worn
out and needed to be changed every half-dozen balls.
Among such cares the week rolled away only too speedily, and brought the
day of the school's arrival upon us. If we have failed, as we have, to
convey a true impression of the serious labour and anxieties which
crowded its hours, we will quote the summary of a writer who described it
at the time, and knew what he was describing: "It was like shaking the
alphabet in a bag, and bringing out the letters into words and sentences;
such was the sense of absolute confusion turned into intelligent shape."
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