boy vigorously caned with a sickening extremity of horror. I
recollect a "school licking" being given to an ill-conditioned boy
for a nasty piece of bullying. The boys ranged themselves down the
big schoolroom, and the culprit had to run the gauntlet. I can see
his ugly, tear-stained face coming slowly along among a shower of
blows. I joined in with a will, I remember, though I hardly knew
what he had done. I remember a few afternoons spent at the houses
of friendly masters; but otherwise it was all a drab starved sort
of level, a life lived by a rule, with no friendships, no
adventures; I marked off the days before the holidays on a little
calendar, simply bent on hiding what I was or thought or felt from
everyone, with a fortitude that was not in the least stoical. What
I was afraid of I hardly know; my aim was to be absolutely
inoffensive and ordinary, to do what everyone else did, to avoid
any sort of notice. I was a strange mixture of indifference and
sensitiveness. I did not in the least care how I was regarded, I
had no ambitions of any kind, did not want to be liked, or to
succeed, or to make an impression; while I was very sensitive to
the slightest comment or ridicule. It seems strange to me now that
I should have hated the life with such an intensity of repugnance,
for no harm or ill-usage ever befell me; but if that was life,
well, I did not like it! I trusted no one; I neither wanted nor
gave confidences. The term was just a dreary interlude in home
life, to be lived through with such indifference as one could
muster.
I spent two years there; and remember my final departure with my
brother. I never wanted to see or hear of anyone there again--
masters, servants, or boys. It was a case of good-bye for ever, and
thank God! And I remember with what savage glee and delicious
anticipation I saw the last of the high-walled house, with its
roofs and wings, its great gate-posts and splendid cedars. I could
laugh at its dim terrors on regaining my freedom; but I had not the
least spark of gratitude or loyalty; such kindnesses as I received
I had taken dumbly, never thinking that they arose out of any
affection or interest, but treating them as the unaccountable
choice of my elders;--we stopped for an instant at the little
sanatorium--that had been a happy place at least--and I was
tearfully hugged to Louisa's ample bosom, Louisa alone being a
little sorry that I should be so glad to get away.
I do not think that the life there, sensible, healthy, and well-
ordered as it was, did me much good. I was a happy enough boy in
home life, but had little animal spirits, and none of the
boisterous, rough-and-tumble ebullience of boyhood. I was shy and
sensitive; but I doubt if it was well that interest, enjoyment,
emotion, should all have been so utterly starved as they were. It
made me suspicious of life, and incurious about it; I did not like
its loud sounds, its combative merriment, its coarse flavours; the
real life, that of observation, imagination, dreams, fancies, had
been hunted into a corner; and the sense that one might incur
ridicule, enmity, severity, dislike, harshness, had filled the air
with uneasy terrors. I came away selfish, able--I had won a
scholarship at Eton with entire ease--innocent, childish,
bewildered, wholly unambitious. The world seemed to me a big,
noisy, stupid place, in which there was no place for me. The little
inner sense of which I have spoken was hardly awake; it had had its
first sight of humanity, and it disliked it; it was still solitary
and silent, finding its own way, and quite unaware that it need
have any relation with other human beings.
3
Then came Eton. Into which big place I drifted again in a state
of mild bewilderment. But big as Eton is--it was close on a
thousand boys, when I went there--at no time was I in the least
degree conscious of its size as an uncomfortable element. The truth
is that Eton runs itself on lines far more like a university than a
school: each house is like a college, with its own traditions and
its own authority. There is very little intercourse between the
younger boys at different houses, and there is an instinctive
disapproval among the boys themselves of external relations. The
younger boys of a house play together, to a large extent work
together, and live a common life. It is tacitly understood that a
boy throws in his lot with his own house, and if he makes many
friends outside he is generally unpopular, on the ground that he is
thought to find his natural companions not good enough for him.
Neither have boys of different ages much to do with each other;
each house is divided by parallel lines of cleavage, so that it is
not a weltering mass of boyhood, but a collection of very clearly
defined groups and circles.
Moreover, in my own time there was no building at Eton which could
hold the whole school, so that on no occasion did I ever see the
school assembled. There were two chapels, the schoolrooms were
considerably scattered; even on the occasions when the headmaster
made a speech to the school, he did not even invite the lower boys
to attend, while there was no compulsion on the upper boys to be
present, so that it was not necessary to go, unless one thought it
likely to be amusing.
I was myself on the foundation, one of the seventy King's Scholars,
as we were called; we lived in the old buildings; we dined together
in the college hall, a stately Gothic place, over four centuries
old, with a timbered roof, open fireplaces, and portraits of
notable Etonians. We wore cloth gowns in public, and surplices in
the chapel. It was all very grand and dignified, but we were in
those days badly fed, and very little looked after. There were many
ancient and curious customs, which one picked up naturally, and
never thought them either old or curious. For instance, when I
first went there, the small boys, three at a time, waited on the
sixth form at their dinner, being called servitors, handing plates,
pouring out beer, or holding back the long sleeves of the big boys'
gowns, as they carved for themselves at the end of the table. This
was abolished shortly after my arrival as being degrading. But it
never occurred to us that it was anything but amusing; we had the
fun of watching the great men at their meal, and hearing them
gossip. I remember well being kindly but firmly told by the present
Dean of Westminster, then in sixth form, that I must make my
appearance for the future with cleaner hands and better brushed
hair!
We were kindly and paternally treated by the older boys; I was
assigned as a fag to Reginald Smith, now my publisher. I had to
fill and empty his bath for him, make his tea and toast, call him
in the morning, and run errands. In return for which I was allowed
to do my work peacefully in his room, in the evenings, when the
fags' quarters were noisy, and if I had difficulties about my work,
he was always ready to help me. So normal a thing was it, that I
remember saying indignantly to my tutor, when he marked a false
quantity in one of my verses, "Why, sir, my fagmaster did that!" He
laughed, and said, "Take my compliments to your fagmaster, and tell
him that the first syllable of senator is short!"
We lived as lower boys in a big room with cubicles, which abutted
on the passage where the sixth form rooms were. It was a noisy
place, with its great open fireplace and huge oak table. If the
noise was excessive, the sixth form intervened; and I remember
being very gently caned, in the company of the present Dean of St.
Paul's, for making a small bonfire of old blotting-paper, which
filled the place with smoke.
The liberty, after the private school, was astonishing. We had to
appear in school at certain hours, not very numerous; and some
extra work was done with the private tutor; but there was no
supervision, and we were supposed to prepare our work and do our
exercises, when and as we could. There were a few compulsory games,
but otherwise we were allowed to do exactly as we liked. The side
streets of Windsor were out of bounds, but we were allowed to go up
the High Street; we had free access to the castle and park and all
the surrounding country. On half holidays--three a week--our names
were called over; but it left one with a three-hour space in the
afternoon, when we could go exactly where we would. The saints'
days and certain anniversaries were whole holidays, and we were
free from morning to night. Then there was a delightful room, the
old school library, now destroyed, where we could go and read; and
many an hour did I spend there looking vaguely into endless books.
I well remember seeing the present Lord Curzon and one of the
Wallops standing by the fireplace there, and discussing some
political question, and how amazed I was at the profundity of their
knowledge and the dignity of their language.
But in many ways it was a very isolated life; for a long time I
hardly knew any boys, except just the dozen or so who entered the
place with me. I knew no boys at other houses, except a few in my
school division, and never did more than exchange a few words with
them. One never thought of speaking to a casual boy, unless one
knew him; and there are many men whom I have since known well who
were in the school with me, and with whom I never exchanged a
syllable.
Though there was a master in college, who read evening prayers,
gave leaves and allowances, and was consulted on matters of
business, he had practically nothing to do with the discipline.
That was all in the hands of the sixth form, who kept order, put up
notices, and were allowed not only to cane but to set lines. No one
ever thought of appealing to the master against them, and their
powers were never abused. But there was very little overt
discipline anywhere. The masters could not inflict corporal
punishment. They could set punishments, and for misbehaviour, or
continued idleness, they could send a boy to the headmaster to be
flogged. But the discipline of the place was instinctive, and
public opinion was infinitely strong. One found out by the light of
nature what one might do and what one might not, and the dread of
being in any way unusual or eccentric was very potent. There were
two or three very ill-governed houses, where things went very wrong
indeed behind the scenes; but as far as public order went, it was
perfect. The boys managed their own games and their own affairs; a
strong sense of subordination penetrated the whole place, and the
old Eton aphorism, that a boy learned to know his place and to keep
it, held good without any sense of coercion or constraint.
I do not think that the educational system was a good one. In my
days there was little taught besides classics and mathematics and
divinity. There was a little French and science and history; but
the core of the whole thing was undiluted classics. We did a good
deal of composition, Greek and Latin, and the Latin verses were
exercises out of which I got much real enjoyment, and some of the
pride of authorship. But it was possible to be very idle, and to
get much contraband help in work from other boys. Most of the
school work consisted of repetition, and of classical books, dully
and leisurely construed. I do not think I ever attempted to attend
to the work in school; and there were few stimulating teachers. I
needed strict and careful teaching, and got some from my private
tutor; but otherwise there was no individual attention. The net
result was that a few able boys turned out very good scholars,
saturated with classics; but a large number of boys were really not
educated at all. The forms were too large for real supervision; and
as long as one produced adequate exercises, and sat quiet in one's
corner, one was left genially alone. It was not fashionable to
"sap," as it was called; and though a few ambitious boys worked
hard, we most of us lived in a happy-go-lucky way, just doing
enough to pass muster. I took not the faintest interest in my work
for a long time; but I read a great many English books, wrote
poetry in secret, picked up a vague acquaintance, of a very
inaccurate kind, with Latin and Greek, but possessed no exact
knowledge of any sort.
Gradually, as I rose in the school, a faint idea of social values
shaped itself. Let me say frankly that we were wholly democratic.
There were many wealthy boys, many with titles; but not the
faintest interest was taken in either. I was surprised to find
later on in my career at school, that boys whose names I had known
by hearsay were peers, though at first I had no idea what the
peerage was. Whatever we were free from, we were at all events free
from snobbishness. Athletics were what constituted our aristocracy,
pure and simple. Boys in the eleven and the eight were the heroes
of the place, and the school club called Pop, to which mainly
athletes were elected, enjoyed an absolute supremacy, and indeed
ran the out-of-doors discipline of the school. In fact, on
occasions like big matches, the boys were kept back behind the
lines, by members of Pop parading with canes, and slashing at the
crowd if they came past the boundaries. All the social standing of
boys was settled entirely by athletics. A boy might be clever,
agreeable, manly, a good game-shot, or a rider to hounds in the
holidays, but if he was no good at the prescribed games, he was
nobody at all at Eton. It was wholesome in a sense; but a bad boy
who was a good athlete might and did wield a very evil influence.
Such boys were above criticism. The moral tone was not low so much
as strangely indifferent. A boy's private life was his own affair,
and public opinion exercised no particular moral sway. Yet vague
and guileless as I myself was, I gratefully record that I never
came in the way of any evil influence whatever at Eton, in any
respect whatever. Talk was rather loose, and one believed evil of
other boys easily enough. To express open disapproval would have
been held to be priggish; and though undoubtedly the tone of
certain houses and certain groups was far from good, there yet ran
through the place a mature sense of a boy's right to be
independent, and undesirable ways of life were more a matter of
choice than of coercion. It was, in fact, far more a mirror of the
larger world than any other school I have ever heard of; and I know
of no school story which gives any impression of a life so
curiously free as it all was. There was none of that electrical
circulation of the news of events and incident that is held to be
characteristic of school life. One used to hear long after or not
at all, of things which had happened. There were rumours, there was
gossip; but I cannot imagine any place where a boy of solitary or
retiring character might be so entirely unaware of anything that
was going on. It was a highly individualistic place; and if one
conformed to superficial traditions, it was possible to lead, as I
certainly did, a very quiet and secluded sort of life, reading,
rambling about, talking endlessly and eagerly to a few chosen
friends, quite unconscious that anything was being done for one,
socially or educationally, entirely unmolested, as long as one was
good-natured and easy-going.
It was therefore a good school for a boy with any toughness of mind
or originality; but it tended in the case of normal and
unreflective boys to develop a conventional type; good-mannered,
sensible, with plenty of savoir faire, but with a wrong set of
values. It made boys over-estimate athletics, despise intellectual
things, worship social success. It gave them the wrong sort of
tolerance, by which I mean the tolerance that excuses moral lapses,
but that also thinks contemptuously of ideas and mental
originality. The idols of the place were good-humoured, modest,
orderly athletes. The masters made friends with them because a good
mutual understanding conduced to discipline, and they were,
moreover, pleasant and cheerful companions. But boys of character
and force, unless they were also athletic, were apt to be
overlooked. The theory of government was not to interfere, and
there was an absence of enthusiasm and inspiration. The headmaster
was Dr. Hornby, afterwards provost, a courteous, handsome,
dignified gentleman, a fine preacher, and one of the most charming
public speakers I have ever heard. We respected and admired him,
but he knew little of his masters, and never made his personal
influence, which might have been great, felt among the boys. He was
a man of matchless modesty and refinement; he never fulminated or
lectured; I never heard an irritable word fall from his lips; but
on the other hand he never appealed to us, or asked our help, or
spoke eagerly or indignantly about any event or tendency. He hated
evil, but closed his eyes to it, and preferred to think that it was
not there. There were masters who in their own houses and forms
displayed more vivid qualities; but the whole tone of the place was
against anything emotional or passionate or uplifting; the ideal
that soaked into the mind was one of temperate, orderly, well-
mannered athleticism.
At the end of my time I rose to moderate distinction. I began to
read the classics privately, I reached sixth form, and even was
elected into Pop. But I was always unadventurous, and in a way
timid. I nurtured a private life of my own on books and talk, and
felt that the centre of life had insensibly shifted from home to
school. But in and through it all, I never gained any deep
patriotism, any unselfish ambition, any visions which could have
inspired me to play a noble part in the world. I am sure that was
as much the result of my own temperament as of the spirit of the
place; but the spirit of the place was potent, and taught me to
acquiesce in an ideal of decorum, of subordination, of regular,
courteous, unenthusiastic life.
Leaving the school was a melancholy business; one's roots were
entwined very deep with the soil, the buildings, the memories, the
happiness of the place--for happy above all things it was--in the
last few weeks there were many strange emotional outbursts from
boys who had seemed conventional enough; and there was a dreary
sense that life was at an end, and would have little of future
brightness or excitement to provide. I packed, I made my farewells,
I distributed presents; and as I drove away, the carriage,
ascending the bridge by the beloved playing-fields, with its lawns
and elms, the gliding river and the castle towering up behind,
showed me in a glance the old red-brick walls, the turrets, the
high chapel, with its pinnacles and great buttresses, where seven
good years had been spent. I burst, I remember, into unashamed
tears; but no sense of regret for failure, or idleness, or vacuous
case, or absence of all fine intention, came over me, though I had
been guilty of all these things. I wish that I had felt remorse!
But I was only grateful and fond and sad at leaving so untroubled
and delightful a piece of life behind me. The world ahead did not
seem to me to hold out anything which I burned to do or to achieve;
it was but the closing of a door, the end of a chapter, the sudden
silencing of a music, sweet to hear, which could not come again.
That was all five-and-thirty years ago! Since that time--I have
seen it unmistakably, both as a schoolmaster and as a don--a
different spirit has grown up, a sense of corporate and social
duty, a larger idea of national service, not loudly advertised but
deeply rooted, and far removed from the undisciplined individualism
of my boyhood. It has been a secret growth, not an educational
programme. The Boer War, I think, revealed its presence, and the
war we are now waging has testified to its mature strength. It has
come partly by organisation, and still more through the workings of
a more generous and self-sacrificing ideal. In any case it is a
great and noble harvest; and I rejoice with all my heart that it
has thus ripened and borne fruit, in courage and disinterestedness,
and high-hearted public spirit.
XIII
AUTHORSHIP
1
The essay which stands next in this volume, "Herb Moly and
Heartsease," was the subject of a curious and interesting
experiment. It seemed to me, when I first thought of it, to be a
suggestive subject, a substantial idea. One ought not to write a
commentary on one's own work, but the underlying theme is this: I
have been haunted all my life, at intervals, sometimes very
insistently, by the sense of a quest; and I have often seemed to
myself to be searching for something which I have somehow lost; to
be engaged in trying to rediscover some emotion or thought which I
had once certainly possessed and as certainly have forgotten or
mislaid. At times I felt on the track of it, as if it had passed
that way not long before; at times I have felt as if I were close
upon it, and as if it were only hidden from me by the thinnest of
veils. I have reason to know that other people have the same
feeling; and, indeed, it is that which constitutes the singular and
moving charm of Newman's poem, "Lead, kindly Light," where all is
summed up in those exquisite lines, often so strangely
misinterpreted and misunderstood, which end the poem:
"And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."
I wish that he had not written "those angel faces," because it
seems to limit the quest to ecclesiastical lines, as, indeed, I
expect Newman did limit it. But we must not be so blind as to be
unable to see behind the texture of prepossessions that decorate,
as with a tapestry, the chambers of a man's inner thought; and I
have no doubt whatever that Newman meant the same thing that I
mean, though he used different symbols. Again, we find the same
idea in Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality," the
thought that life is not circumscribed by birth and death, but that
one's experience is a much larger and older thing than the
experience which mere memory records. It is that which one has
lost; and one of the greatest mysteries of art lies in the fact
that a picture, or a sudden music, or a page in a book, will
sometimes startle one into the consciousness of having heard, seen,
known, felt the emotion before, elsewhere, beyond the visible
horizon.
Well, I tried to put that idea into words in "Herb Moly and
Heartsease"; and because it was a deep and dim idea, and also
partly because it fascinated me greatly, I spent far more time and
trouble on the little piece than I generally spend.
Then it occurred to me, in a whimsical moment, that I would try an
experiment. I would send out the thing as a ballon d'essai, to see
if anyone would read it for itself, or would detect me underneath
the disguise. Through the kind offices of a friend, I had it
published secretly and anonymously. I chose the most beautiful type
and paper I could find; it cost me far more than the sale of the
whole edition could possibly recoup. I had it sent to papers for
review, and I even had some copies sent to literary friends of my
own.
The result was a quite enchanting humiliation. One paper reviewed
it kindly, in a little paragraph, and said it was useful; another
said that the writer used the word "one" much too frequently; while
only one of my friends even acknowledged it. It is pleasant to
begin at the bottom again, and find that no one will listen, even
to a very careful bit of writing by one who has at all events had a
good deal of practice, and who did his very best!
2
This set me thinking over my literary adventures, and I think
they may be interesting to other authors or would-be authors; and
then I wish to go a little further, and try to say, if I can, what
I believe the writing of books really to be, why one writes, and
what one is aiming at. I have a very clear idea about it all, and
it can do no harm to state it.
I was brought up much among books and talk about books. Indeed, I
have always believed that my father, though he had great practical
gifts of organisation and administration, which came out in his
work as a schoolmaster and a bishop, was very much of an artist at
heart, and would have liked to be a poet. Indeed, the practice of
authorship has run in my family to a quite extraordinary degree. In
four generations, I believe that some twenty of my blood-relations
have written and published books, from my cousin Adelaide Anne
Procter to my uncle Henry Sidgwick. When we were children we
produced little magazines of prose and poetry, and read them in the
family circle. I wrote poetry as a boy at Eton, and at Cambridge as
an undergraduate; and at the end of my time at Cambridge I produced
a novel, which I sent to Macmillan's Magazine, of which Lord Morley
was then editor, who sent it back to me with a kind letter to say
that it was sauce without meat, and that I should not be proud of
the book in later life if it were published.
Then as an undergraduate I began an odd little book called Memoirs
of Arthur Hamilton, a morbid affair, which was published
anonymously, and, though severely handled by reviewers, had a
certain measure of success. But then I became a busy schoolmaster,
and all I did was to write laboured little essays, which appeared
in various magazines, and were afterwards collected. Then I took up
poetry, and worked very hard at it indeed for some years, producing
five volumes, which very few people ever read. It was a great
delight, writing poetry, and I have masses of unpublished poems.
But I do not grudge the time spent on it, because I think it taught
me the use of words. Then came two volumes of stories, mostly told
or read to the boys in my house, with a medieval sort of flavour--
The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset.