_Gesta ducis celebro_, _Rutulis qui primus ab oris_
_Cambriae_, _odoratu profugus_, _Borthonia venit_
_Litora_; _multum ille et sanis vexatus et aegris_,
_Vi Superum_, _quibus haud curae gravis aura mephitis_:
_Multa quoque et loculo passus_, _dum conderet urbem_
_Inferretque deos Cymris_.
AN EPIC FRAGMENT.
[Greek text].
The careful general who has completed his disposition without one
discoverable flaw, who has foreseen all emergencies, and anticipated
every possible combination, may await the action with a certain moral
confidence of success. But he would be a man of no human fibre, were he
not to feel some disquiet in his inmost soul when he gets upon horseback
with his enemy in sight, and listens for the boom of the first gun. Not
very different, except for the absence of a like confidence in the
completeness of their dispositions, were the emotions of the masters who
manned the platform of Borth Station, when the gray afternoon of Tuesday,
April 4th, drew sombrely towards its close. The station was crowded with
spectators from Aberystwith and Borth itself, curious to watch the entry
of the boys. Expectation was stimulated by the arrival of a train, which
set all the crowd on tip-toe, and then swept through the station--a mere
goods train. Half an hour's longer waiting, and the right train drew up,
and discharged Uppingham School on the remote Welsh platform. It struck
a spark of home feeling in the midst of the lonely landscape, and the
chill of strange surroundings, to see well-known faces at the windows,
and to meet the grasp of familiar hands. But there was no time for
sentiment that stirring evening. The station was cleared with all speed
of boys and spectators, the former turning in to tea at those endless
tables, the latter strolling away to carry home their first impressions
of their invaders. Then one group of masters and servants set to work to
sort the luggage which cumbered the platform, while others received it at
the hotel door, and distributed it to the various billets. Light was
scant, hands were not too numerous, and the work was not done without
some confusion. But it was done; and the tired workers went to their
beds, thankful for what was finished, and full of good hopes for the work
which was yet to be begun.
And the boys--how did they feel? As they stepped out from the railway
carriage into those bare, vasty corridors and curtainless dormitories,
did some little sense of desolateness in the new prospect temper its
excitement? Did some homesickness arise in the exile as he pondered on
the retirement and comfort of the "house" at Uppingham, and his
individual ownership of the separate cubicle, and the study which was
"his castle?" He was a unit now, not of a household, but of a camp.
Small blame to him if life seemed to have lost its landmarks, and things
round him to be "all nohow," as he sat down in some bare hall upon a
schoolfellow's book-box (wondering whether he should ever see his own),
to while away with a story-book the listless interval before bed-time,
under the niggard light of a smoking lamp, or a candle flickering in the
draught. What exactly he felt or thought, however, we do not pretend to
know. We only know that there was not one of them but felt proud to be
out campaigning with his school, and would have counted "ten years of
peaceful life" not more than worth his share in that honourable venture.
There was no work for them next morning (their masters were busy enough
providing for the physical needs of the colony), and they were free to
explore their new country, to ramble up the headlands or along the margin
of the marsh. The arrivals of last night were but the first instalment
of the school, about half the number. The same train brought in a new
freight this evening, and the scene on the platform was similar, but more
tranquil. By a special train after midnight came in a few more from the
most distant homes, and the muster was complete. The number, two hundred
and ninety, fell but slightly below the full complement of the school.
Putting out of account the names of those who would in any case have left
the school that Easter, no more than three, we believe, failed to follow
us down to Borth. So unanimous an adhesion of the school to its leaders
no one had been sanguine enough to reckon on. It increased no doubt at
the moment the difficulties of making provision, but withal it made the
task better worth the effort.
Next morning the school was called together, and the Headmaster addressed
them, feeling, perhaps, somewhat like a general publishing a manifesto to
his troops before a campaign. It was a great experiment, he said, in
which they were sharing; let them do their best to make the result a
happy one for themselves, and for the people among whom they had come.
They were "making history," for this experience was a wholly new one,
which might not impossibly prove helpful some day to others in like
circumstances.
It is pleasant to record that the appeal was not wasted.
At the dinner-hour to-day, the full numbers being now on the spot, the
resources of the commissariat were put to the test. Some anxiety was
relieved when the supply proved sufficient; it would have been small
cause for reproach if the caterers had failed in their estimate on the
first experiment. But of the commissariat we shall say more presently.
The secondary necessities of life, fire and light, were not forthcoming
with quite the same promptness. There was a twilight period in many
houses before lamps were furnished in sufficient abundance. The place of
fuel was supplied by the genial weather of the first week; and perhaps
few were aware of what we were doing without. Next week the east winds
and the coal arrived together.
The hotel laundry found the task it had undertaken beyond its strength.
No wonder. Three hundred sets of _articles de linge_ reach a figure of
which our hosts had hardly grasped the significance. We are sometimes
told that Gaels and Cymry cannot count. At any rate, when the bales of
linen came pouring in upon them, heaping every table and piling all the
floor, and still flowing in faster than room could be found, the
laundresses, brave workers though they were, felt that the game was lost:
They stand in pause where they should first begin,
And all neglect.
One poor nymph was discovered by a compassionate visitor dissolved in
tears over her wash-tub. Such misery could not be permitted; and we
transferred half the task at once to the laundries of Aberystwith.
On the afternoon of this day took place the distribution of "studies."
That is to say, some sixty or eighty boys (a number more than doubled
afterwards), in order to relieve the pressure on our sitting-rooms, were
billeted upon some of the village people, who let their rooms for the
purpose. From two to six boys were assigned to each room according to
its capacity. We shall speak again of these studies. Here we will only
pause to thank our good landladies for the intrepidity with which they
threw their doors open to the invasion, the more so as they mostly
claimed to belong to the category of "poor widows"--a qualification upon
which they were disposed to set a price in arranging their charges. Their
daring proved no indiscretion. The writer, who has the honour of knowing
them all, was the depositary of many and emphatic testimonies on their
part to the cordial relations between them and "the children." This
endearing term was exchanged for another by one good old lady, who
appealed to him against the "very wicked boys," whom she charged with
having "foolished" her. The complication traced to ignorance of one
another's speech (the boys spoke no Welsh, and she would have done more
wisely to speak no English), and a _modus vivendi_ was easily restored.
Poor soul! she took a pathetic farewell of them when their sojourn ended:
"They must forgive her for having a quick temper; she had had much
trouble; her husband and four sons had gone down at sea."
On Friday came a piece of cheering news. Some sympathisers were
intending to appeal to parents of boys in the school for subscriptions to
a fund, which should help to defray the expense incurred by the masters
in moving and resettling the school. The appeal met with a liberal
response in many quarters; a large sum was raised, though from a number
of subscribers smaller than the promoters of the fund expected. Men, who
were feeling the double pressure at once of keen and novel cares, and of
an outlay already large, which no one could see to the end of, will not
forget that well-timed succour. Not least will it be remembered as a
"material guarantee" that the subscribers believed the cause they aided
to be worth a costly effort to save.
The week closed with an old scene on a new stage--a football match on Sir
Pryse's field at Bow Street. It was the last of the house-matches, which
had been interrupted at Uppingham to be played out here. The sight of
the school swarming into the railway carriages, which carried us to the
four-mile-distant ground, and then the mimic war of the red and white
jerseys contrasting the gray Gogerddan woodlands which overhang the
meadow, and the shouts of the English boys blending with the excited but
unintelligible cries of the Welsh rustic children, who were rapt
spectators of the game, brought home to us the piquant contrast between
our unchanged school habits and the novelty of their framework.
The weather of this first week was dry and genial; and it had no
pleasanter moments than those spent on the beach at sunset, whither the
school flocked down after tea for half an hour's leisure in the after-
glow. There is plenty of amusement for them on this broad reach of sand
and shingle. Some are groping for shells or for pebbles, which the
lapidary will transform for a trifle into dazzling jewels; others are
playing ducks and drakes on the waves, or entertaining themselves like
Prospero's elves,
That on the sands, with printless feet,
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back again.
More pensive spirits saunter up and down the grassy terrace which
overlooks the beach, and watch the shifting line of dark figures seen
against the white wall of the breaker, or note the fugitive tints on the
dimpling surface of the water, or the wet margin of the tide. A group of
villagers is clustered round the water-fountain a few yards away; the
children chatter about us as they fill their pitchers; and the old women,
creeping homewards, cast a glance under their bonnets at the boys, and
exchange muttered comments with their gossips. Soon the cliffs of the
southern headland grow duskier and more remote; the sea fades to a cold
uniform gray; the colours of the brown twilight marsh and the violet
hills are lost in one another; and so, with a refreshing breath of
idyllic peacefulness, the stirring week came to an end. "Its evening
closed on a quiet scene of school routine, as if doubt and risk, turmoil
and confusion and fear, weary head and weary hand, had not been known in
the place. The wrestling-match against time was over, and happy dreams
came down on Uppingham by the Sea."