SEVENTY YEARS
AMONG SAVAGES
SEVENTY YEARS
AMONG SAVAGES
BY
HENRY S. SALT
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD.
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C. 1
_First published in 1921_
(_All rights reserved._)
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. THE ARGUMENT 7
II. WHERE IGNORANCE WAS BLISS 16
III. LITERÆ INHUMANIORES 36
IV. THE DISCOVERY 50
V. CANNIBAL’S CONSCIENCE 67
VI. GLIMPSES OF CIVILIZATION 73
VII. THE POET-PIONEER 90
VIII. VOICES CRYING IN THE WILDERNESS 101
IX. A LEAGUE OF HUMANENESS 121
X. TWENTIETH-CENTURY TORTURES 135
XI. HUNNISH SPORTS AND FASHIONS 151
XII. A FADDIST’S DIVERSIONS 169
XIII. HOOF-MARKS OF THE VANDAL 185
XIV. THE FORLORN HOPE 200
XV. THE CAVE-MAN RE-EMERGES 219
XVI. POETRY OF DEATH AND LOVE 231
XVII. THE TALISMAN 239
INDEX 249
Seventy Years Among Savages
I
THE ARGUMENT
A strange lot this, to be dropped down in a world of barbarians--Men
who see clearly enough the barbarity of all ages except
their own!--ERNEST CROSBY.
The tales of travellers, from Herodotus to Marco Polo, and from Marco
Polo to the modern “globe-trotter,” have in all ages been subject,
justly or unjustly, to a good deal of suspicion, on the ground that
those who go in quest of curious information among outlandish tribes are
likely in the first instance to be imposed on themselves, and in the
sequel to impose on their readers. No such doubt, however, can attach to
the following record, for I am myself a native of the land whose customs
are described by me. I cannot think that my story, true as it is, and
admitting of corroboration by the similar witness of others, is any the
less adventurous on that account; for, like previous writers who have
recorded certain startling discoveries, I, too, have to speak of
solitudes and remotenesses, vast deserts and rare oases, inextricable
forests and dividing gulfs; and such experiences are none the less
noteworthy because they are not of the body but of the mind. At any
rate, the tale which I have to tell deals with incidents which have had
a very real significance for myself--quite as real as any of those
related by the most venturesome of voyagers.
The seventy years spent by me among savages form the subject of this
story, but not, be it noted, seventy years of _consciousness_ that my
life was so cast, for during the first part of my residence in the
strange land where I was born, the dreadful reality of my surroundings
was hardly suspected by me, except now and then, perhaps, in a passing
glimmer of apprehension. Then, by slow degrees, incident after incident
brought a gradual awakening, until at last there dawned on my mind the
conviction which alone could explain and reconcile for me the many
contradictions of our society--that we were not “civilized” but
“savages”--that the “dark ages,” far from being part of a remote past,
were very literally present.
And here, in explanation of my long blindness to an unwelcome truth, it
must be remarked that there is a fixed and almost insuperable
superstition among my savage fellow-islanders--and, indeed, among all
the surrounding nations--that they are a cultured and highly civilized
race, living in an age which has wholly emerged from the barbarism of
their forefathers, the “good old times” to which some of them even
affect to look back with feelings of pious regretfulness. It was this
delusion, to which I was at first fully subject, that made it so
difficult for me to see things in their true light, and still makes it
wellnigh impossible to communicate the truth to others, except to those
whose suspicions have in like measure been aroused. In reality, it will
be seen, the difference between the earlier “barbarism” and the later
so-called “civilization” is, in the main, a mere matter of the absence
or presence of certain intellectual refinements and mechanical sciences,
which, while largely altering and complicating the outward conditions of
life, leave its essentially savage spirit almost entirely untouched.
It was not till I was over thirty years of age that I felt any serious
concern as to the manners and customs with which I was familiar, and
which I had unquestioningly accepted from childhood as part of the
natural order. I had heard and read of “savages,” but felt the more
satisfaction to know that I was a native of a land which had for
centuries enjoyed the blessings of civilization and of religion, which
it was anxious to disseminate as widely as possible throughout the
earth. Why the diet of my countrymen should have been the first thing to
set me pondering, I am unable to say, for as my later discoveries
convinced me, the dietetic habits of these people are not more
astonishing than many kindred practices which I still regarded without
mistrust. But it was so; and I then found myself realizing, with an
amazement which time has not diminished, that the “meat” which formed
the staple of our diet, and which I was accustomed to regard--like
bread, or fruit, or vegetables--as a mere commodity of the table, was in
truth dead flesh--the actual flesh and blood--of oxen, sheep, swine, and
other animals that were slaughtered in vast numbers under conditions so
horrible that even to mention the subject at our dinner-tables would
have been an unpardonable offence.
Now, when I began to put questions to my friends and acquaintances about
this apparently glaring inconsistency in our “civilization,” I could not
help observing, novice though I was in such discussion, that the answers
by which they sought to parry my awkward importunities were extremely
evasive and sophistical--reminding me of the quibbling explanations
which travellers have received from cannibals when they inquired too
closely into certain dietetic observances; and from this I could not but
suspect that, as far as diet was concerned, we differed in degree only
from the savages whom we deemed so debased.
It must be understood, however, that here, and in other references to
“savages,” I use that term in its natural and inoffensive meaning, as
implying simply a lack of the higher civilization and not any personal
cruelty or bloodthirstiness. What I write is just a friendly account of
friendly savages (by one of them); and I would emphasize the fact that
the kindliness and good nature of my fellow-countrymen are in one
direction quite as marked features of their character as their savagery
is in another. In their own families, to their own kith and kin, to
their personal friends--to all those whom fortune has placed within,
instead of without the charmed circle of relationship--their conduct, in
the great majority of cases, is exemplary; it is only where custom or
prejudice has dug a gulf of division between their fellow-creatures and
themselves that they indulge in the barbarous practices to which I
refer.
It may be convenient if I here speak briefly of their other customs
under two heads: first, those that relate to human beings; and,
secondly, those that relate to the so-called lower animals. In few ways,
perhaps, is the barbarism of these islanders more apparent than in their
wars and in their preparation for wars. For what they call “peace” is,
in fact, only an armed truce--an interval between two outbreaks of
hostility--during which, so far from being at genuine peace with their
neighbours, they are occupied in speculating where the next attack shall
be delivered, or, rather (for they love to depict themselves as always
standing on pious self-defence against the wanton aggressiveness of
others), how they shall repel the next attack from abroad. It is their
custom always to have, for the time being, some bugbear among
neighbouring tribes, whose supposed machinations against the richer
portions of their empire give them constant cause for unrest, and prompt
them to cement undying, but equally transitory, alliances with other
nations, so that their very friendships are based less on the spirit of
amity than on that of distrust. Under pretence of believing in an
unbelievable and, indeed, wholly ridiculous maxim--_Si vis pacem, para
bellum_ (”If you wish for peace, prepare for war”)--they keep their
minds for ever set on wars and rumours of wars, with the result that,
in spite of all their profession of benevolence and brotherhood, the
trade of _killing_ is that which is above all others respected by them.
Is money required for purposes of national welfare, such as education or
the relief of the poor? Every difficulty is at once put in the way of
such expenditure for such ends. But let there be the least suspicion,
however irrational, of some foreign slight to “the flag,” and there is
scarce a savage in the island who is not willing that the public
treasury should be depleted in pursuance of a childish revenge. To
remonstrate against such folly is to incur the charge of being
“unpatriotic.”
But comical as their foreign policy is, their social system is still
more so, for under the guise of “charity” and “philanthropy” there
exists, in fact, a civil war, in which each individual, or group of
individuals, plays a remorseless game of “Beggar my neighbour” and
“Devil take the hindmost” in mad scramble for wealth; whence results, of
course, a state of gross and glaring inequality, under which certain
favoured persons wallow in the good things of life, while others pass
their years in the pinch of extremest poverty. Thus, in due course, and
by an unerring process, is manufactured what they call “the criminal
class”--that is, the host of those who are driven by social injustice to
outlawry and violence. And herein, perhaps, more than in any other of
their customs, is shown the inherent savagery of their natures, for,
instead of attempting to eradicate the _cause_ of these evils by the
institution of fairer and juster modes of living, my fellow-islanders
are almost to a man in favour of “punishing” (that is the expression)
these victims of their own foolish laws by the infliction of barbarous
sentences of imprisonment, or the lash, or, in extreme cases, the
gallows. To inculcate habits of honesty they shut a man in prison, and
render him more than ever incapable of earning an honest livelihood. As
a warning against robbery with violence, they give a lesson in official
violence by flogging the criminal; and, by way of teaching the sanctity
of human life, they judicially murder the murderer. Many a grotesque
absurdity is solemnly and deliberately enacted in their so-called
“courts of law”; and any one who ventures to suggest that this is the
case is regarded as a fool and reprobate for his pains.
But it is when we turn to their treatment of the non-human races that we
find the surest evidences of barbarism; yet their savagery, even here,
is not wholly “naked and unashamed,” for, strange to say, these curious
people delight to mask their rudeness in a cloak of fallacies and
sophisms, and to represent themselves as “lovers” of those very
creatures whom they habitually torture for “sport,” “science,” and the
“table.” They actually have a law for the prevention of cruelty to
animals, under which certain privileged species, classed as “domestic,”
are protected from some specified wrongs, though all the time they may,
under certain conditions, be subjected with impunity to other and worse
injuries at the hands of the slaughterman or the vivisector; while the
wild species, though presumably not less sensitive to pain, are regarded
as almost entirely outside the pale of protection, and as legitimate
subjects for those brutalities of “fashion” and “sport” which are
characteristic of the savage mind. Their women go furred and feathered
with the skins of beasts and birds; and so murderous is their millinery
that whole species are sacrificed to this reckless habit. Nothing can
exceed the ferocity of the national pastimes, in which, under the plea
of affording healthful exercise to their tormentors, park-bred deer,
that have been kept in paddocks for the purpose, are turned out before a
mob of men and dogs to be baited and worried; foxes, otters, and hares
are hunted and “broken up”; bagged rabbits are “coursed” in small
enclosures by yelling savages on the eve of the weekly religious
festival; pheasants and other “preserved” birds are mown down in
thousands in an organized butchery euphemistically known as the
_battue_; pigeons are released from traps in order to be shot by gangs
of ruffians who gamble over the result of their skill; and almost every
conceivable form of cowardly slaughter is practised as “sportsman-like”
and commended as “manly.” All this, moreover, is done before the eyes
and for the example of mere youths and children, who are thus from their
tenderest years instructed in the habit of being pitiless and cruel.
Nay, in some cases they are even encouraged to take part in such doings,
and on the first occasion when they are “in at the death” are initiated
by being “blooded”--that is, baptized with the blood of the slaughtered
victim of their sport.
Nor are these things perhaps so strange as they might at first appear,
for, in spite of their boasted progress in sciences and arts, my
countrymen are still practically ignorant of the real kinship which
exists between mankind and the other races, and of the duties which this
kinship implies. They are still the victims of that old anthropocentric
superstition which pictures Man as the centre of the universe, and
separated from the inferior animals--mere playthings made for his august
pleasure and amusement--by a deep intervening gulf; and it is probable
enough that if any one of these unthinking savages who “break up” a
hare, or baptize their children in the blood of a butchered fox, were
reminded that he himself is in very truth an “animal,” he would resent
such statement of an established fact as a slight on his religious
convictions and on his personal self-respect. For, as the author of
_Hudibras_ discovered:
There’s nothing so absurd, or vain,
Or barbarous, or inhumane,
But if it lay the least pretence
To piety and godliness,
And zeal for gospel truths profess,
Does sacred instantly commence.
The very scientists themselves, who have in theory renounced the
old-fashioned idea of a universe created for mankind, are inclined in
practice to belie their own biological faith, for they claim the moral
right to devote large numbers of the lower animals, without scruple or
remorse, to the tortures of “research,” just as if the fact of a close
kinship between the vivisector who wields the scalpel and the dog who
lies in the trough were a notion of which Science is unaware!
Is it surprising that, to those of us who have gradually realized that
we are dwelling in a wild land among savages such as these, the
consciousness of the discovery should at times bring with it a sense of
unutterable loneliness and desolation--that we should feel cut off, as
it were, by interminable leagues of misunderstanding from all human
intercourse, and from all possibility of expressing ourselves? What
appeal _can_ be made to people whose first instinct, on seeing a
beautiful animal, full of joyousness and vitality, is to hunt or eat it?
One can only marvel how such sheer, untempered barbarism has come down
to us from the past.
But the facts, though so terrible in their first impression, are capable
of being more hopefully regarded; there is a consolatory, as well as a
discomforting, way of interpreting them. For if these countrymen of ours
are indeed savages (as who can doubt?), have we not at least reason to
rejoice that, being savages, they in many ways conduct themselves so
discreetly, and that, as far as their sense of relationship extends,
they are so civil, so kindly, so law-abiding? Instead, therefore, of too
loudly upbraiding them for hunting or eating their little brethren, the
animals, ought we not, perhaps, to feel and express some gratitude to
them that they do not hunt each other--that they have not eaten _us_?
Their self-restraint in many directions is, perhaps, quite as remarkable
as their self-abandonment in others; and the mere fact of one’s having
_lived_ for many years among savages is in itself a testimony to their
good nature. Looked at in this light, the trouble is not so much that
they are in reality savage, as that they suppose themselves to be
civilized; for it is from the false garb of civilization that the
misapprehension has sprung.
But, however that may be, they are, when the worst is said of them, a
quaint and interesting people, and it is my earnest wish that, by the
publication of this story, I may be the means of drawing to the habits
of my fellow-islanders the closer attention of anthropologists. Surely,
in an age when many wild tribes have been the subject of learned
discourse and of missionary enterprise, it is desirable that a race
which has carried into the twentieth century the primitive customs which
I have described should be critically and exhaustively studied. If such
should indeed be the result of this book, I shall be more than
compensated for whatever pain I may have felt in the writing of these
strange but faithfully recorded experiences.
II
WHERE IGNORANCE WAS BLISS
Thought would destroy their paradise!
No more: where ignorance is bliss
’Tis folly to be wise.
_Gray’s Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College._
If it be true, as scientists tell us, that the period of boyhood
corresponds, in human development, with an early phase of savagery, and
that the individual boy is himself an epitome of the uncivilized tribe,
it may be said with still greater confidence that an English public
school, or “boy-farm,” where life is mostly so ordered as to foster the
more primitive habits of mind, is essentially a nursery of barbarism--a
microcosm of that predatory class whose members, like the hunters of
old, toil not, neither do they spin, but ever seek their ideal in the
twofold cult of sport and soldiership. Certainly the Eton of the
’sixties and ’seventies, whatever superficial show it might make of
learning and refinement, was at heart a stronghold of savagery--a most
graceful, easy-going savagery, be it granted; for savages, as we know,
are often a very pleasant people.
In some reminiscences, _Eton under Hornby_, published in 1910, I gave a
description of the public-school education of fifty years ago, a system
probably not much worse than that of to-day; and the conclusion reached
was that as Eton never really changes, it is best to regard her, as she
regards other institutions, in a mood of good-natured unconcern, and as
a subject less for argument than for anecdote. Eton has been
pre-eminently the school “where ignorance is bliss,” and in a much wider
sense than that intended by the poet Gray in his famous ode “On a
Distant Prospect of Eton College.” For, if it be true of schoolboys that
“thought would destroy their paradise”--that is, the thought merely of
the personal ailments of mature age--how much more disturbing would be
the contemplation of the vast social wrongs that fill the world with
suffering! Of such sombre thought Eton knew nothing, but basked content
in the warmth of her own supreme self-satisfaction; and the Eton life
was probably the most enjoyable of all hitherto invented forms of
heedless existence. It is, then, of the pleasures of Eton that I would
speak, and of some of the more distinguished of her sons with whom it
was my privilege to be acquainted.
Long before I was admitted to Eton as a King’s Scholar, I had a personal
link with the school in the fact that John Moultrie, the friend of
Praed, and contributor to that most noteworthy of school magazines, the
_Etonian_--himself a Colleger at Eton from 1811 to 1819--was my
great-uncle. At Eton and Cambridge, Moultrie’s career had been a
brilliant one; he was the “Gerard Montgomery” of the _Etonian_--in
Praed’s words “the humorous Moultrie, and the pathetic Moultrie, the
Moultrie of ‘Godiva,’ and the Moultrie of ‘My Brother’s Grave,’”--but
his later career did not fulfil the promise of his youth. The vivid and
extravagant fancy of his early poems was succeeded by a more homely and
sober style, and the pastor-poet in his “Dream of Life” even referred
apologetically to the levities of his youthful muse.[1] Yet he still
retained in some measure the poet’s vision; and when Rector of Rugby he
was famous for the powerful interpretation which he gave to Shakespeare
in his reading of the Plays. Him I remember at his rectory in the early
’sixties, a dignified, kindly old man, with a quaint mixture of humour
and pathos, of ruggedness and gentleness, in his manner. Many stories
were current in Rugby of his eccentricities and absent-mindedness; on
one occasion when he had brought a lengthy sermon to an end, he is said
to have startled his congregation by substituting for the usual formula
the equally familiar post-prandial one: “For what we have received, the
Lord make us truly thankful.”
It was from this Etonian worthy that I first heard of Eton; and though I
little foresaw that nearly twenty years of my life would be spent there
as boy and master, it thus came about that in the summer of 1866 I found
myself being “coached” for an Eton scholarship by the Rev. C. Kegan
Paul, formerly “Conduct” (Chaplain) at Eton, who held the Eton living of
Sturminster Marshall in Dorsetshire.
Mr. Paul, afterwards founder of a well-known publishing firm, was then a
radical parson of very “broad” views, a friend of Frederick Denison
Maurice, Charles Kingsley, and many other Liberals. A man of fine taste,
he also possessed a large fund of vivacity and spirits, which, with his
unvarying kindness, made him very popular among his pupils; indeed, only
at Eton itself could there have been a more delightful life, regarded
from the boyish point of view, than that which we led in those summer
months, fishing, bathing, bird’s-nesting. The one cloud on our horizon
was the impending rite of Confirmation, which some of us had to undergo
at Blandford, and for which Mr. Paul prepared us. I have always felt
grateful to him for the simplicity of his method, which was free from
the morbid inquiries then common in schools. I think he asked me only
one question: “Is it wrong to doubt?” This was a problem in which I felt
no sort of concern; making a bold shot, I replied “No,” and was
gratified to find that I had answered correctly.
At Eton my tutor was Mr. Francis Warre Cornish, one of the gentlest and
most accomplished of men, the very antithesis of the bullying,
blustering schoolmaster of the good old type which even then was not
wholly superseded. Much loved by those of his pupils who learnt to know
him intimately, Mr. Cornish was a good deal hampered in his dealings
with boys by his shyness and diffidence; he lacked that gift of
geniality which is essential to a successful teacher. This I discovered
at an early date, when, in the course of the entrance examination, I was
told to show him the rough copy of my Latin verses. It was to these, as
it turned out, that I mainly owed my election; but it somewhat depressed
me when my prospective tutor, after reading the lines with a sad and
forlorn expression, handed them back to me with no more cheering remark
than: “Too many spondees.” Years afterwards, when Mr. Cornish, competing
for a headmastership, was described in a testimonial as “trembling on
the brink of poetic creation” (an odd certificate for such a post), I
remembered his criticism of my youthful verses, and could not help
thinking that his own poetic genius would also have benefited by a
larger infusion of the sprightly or dactylic element. His nature was
decidedly spondaic; but he was a kind and courteous gentleman, in the
best sense of the word, and in a less rough environment than that of a
public school his great abilities would have found ampler scope.
Much the same must be said of Dr. J. J. Hornby, who succeeded the rigid
Dr. Balston in the headmastership of Eton in 1868. It was a marvel that
a man who loved leisure and quietude as he did, and who seemed always to
desire to doff rather than to don the formalities of high office, should
have deliberately sought preferment in a profession which could not have
been very congenial to him. Not that he lacked the reputed qualities of
a ruler: he had a stately presence, a most courteous manner, a charming
sense of humour, and the rare power of interesting an audience in any
subject of which he spoke. But, behind these external capabilities, he
had a fatal weakness--slackness, perhaps, is the proper term--which
loosened the reins of authority, and made his headmastership a period of
which Eton had no reason to be proud. “Idleness holds sway everywhere,”
wrote an Eton boy at that time, “and _such_ idleness! As a man who has
never had dealings with the Chinese can have but a faint idea of what
swindling is, so a man who has never been at Eton has but a poor
conception of what idleness is.”[2] What wonder, when the headmaster was
himself as unpunctual as a fourth-form boy?
Hornby was too retiring, too sensitive, to govern a great school. I was
in his Division for two years, almost at the beginning of his
headmastership; and I can see him still as he sat at his oak table in
the middle of the sixth-form room, toying with a pencil, and looking at
us somewhat askance, as if to avoid either scrutinizing or being
scrutinized, for he was not of the drill-master kind, who challenge
their class and stare them down. We liked him the better for it, but
divined that he was not quite at ease; and it occurred to one of us that
he was aptly described in that terse phrase which Tacitus applied to a
Roman emperor: _Capax imperii nisi imperâsset_ (“Every inch a ruler--if
only he had not ruled”). There was a certain maladroitness, too, about
him which at times set us wondering; until some one suggested that we
should look up the cricket records, and see how he had acquitted himself
in that supreme criterion of greatness, the Eton and Harrow match. We
did so, and found that he had hit his own wicket. Thus all was
explained, our worst misgivings confirmed.
The want of discipline in some of the classrooms was appalling. My first
term was spent in the “lag” Division of Fifth Form, a very rowdy one,
then taken by a most accomplished classical scholar known as “Swage,” or
“Swog,” and a more unpleasant introduction for a new boy could hardly
have been devised. So great was the uproar, and so frenzied the attempts
of the unfortunate “Swage” to suppress it, that it was as dangerous to
be a member of the class as it is for a well-disposed citizen to be
mixed up in a street-riot; for among so many tormentors there was no
security against being mistaken for a ringleader. “Swage’s” schoolroom
was on the ground floor and close to the road; and one of the first
scenes I witnessed was a determined attempt on the part of some of the
bigger boys to drive a stray cow into the room; they got her to the
doorway, but there she was met and headed back by “Swage” himself,
shouting at the top of his voice and flourishing his large door-key.
That was the sort of game that went on almost daily. It was currently
reported, and I believe with truth, that “Swage” once set a punishment
to a bird. To sing and to whistle were common practices in his Division;
and when a bird perched near the window and chirruped in an interval of
the din, he rounded on it blindly with a cry of “A hundred lines.”
There was a story, too, that a letter which he once wrote to the
headmaster, complaining of one of his private pupils who persisted in
knocking loudly on his study door, bore a brief after-cry more eloquent
than many words: “_P.S._ He is knocking still.”
To fall into the hands of boys, as this ill-fated master had done--and
his lot was shared by several others--was to be a captive among savages:
they did not kill and eat him, it is true, but that was the extent of
their tender mercies, and every day he was brought out afresh to be
baited and worried.
Such was the state of affairs when Hornby was made headmaster; and it
became worse rather than better under his lax and listless regime. Yet
no one who has any knowledge of the history of corporal punishment will
be surprised to hear that he was a frequent wielder of the rod. Seldom
did a day pass without a visit from the Sixth Form Præpostor to one or
more of the Divisions, to bid some culprit “stay after school”; and on
those occasions the conduct of the class was a good indication of the
light in which the punishment was regarded. As the fatal hour
approached, the eyes of all would be riveted on the offender, who
maintained a dauntless demeanour to the last; pantomimic gestures would
indicate the nature of the penalty which he was shortly to undergo;
watches would be held up to emphasize the dreadful fact that, as in the
case of Dr. Faustus, time was on the wing; and there would be audible
surmises as to “how many” he would get. The victim’s friends, indeed,
were hardly so considerate and sympathetic as the circumstances might
have been expected to demand.
Flogging is an old institution which has found mention in every book
written about the school, and which could never be omitted from any
discourse upon Eton. It used to be the custom, in the holidays, for
parties of Windsor trippers to be shown over the school buildings under
the leadership of a woman--the wife, presumably, of one of the College
servants--who gave an oral explanation of the “sights.” When the
headmaster’s room was reached, the guide of course drew attention to
that awful emblem of authority, the “block”; and after pointing out the
part which it played in the correction of offenders, she would add, in a
croaking voice befitting the solemnity of the subject: “They receive the
punishment upon their seats.” That was a true, but rather inadequate
description of a practice which only a very barbarous society could
tolerate. A flogging was a disgusting sight even to the two “lower boys”
who then had to act as “holders-down”; still more so to the Sixth Form
Præpostor whose duty it was to be present; most of all, one would
suppose, to the headmaster. It has been described as “an operation
performed on the naked back by the headmaster himself, who is always a
gentleman, and sometimes a high dignitary of the Church.”[3]
The Lower Master, at the time of which I am speaking, was the Rev. F. E.
Durnford, nicknamed “Judy,” described in _Eton under Hornby_ as “a
strange, laughable, yet almost pathetic figure, with whimsical puckered
visage and generally weather-beaten aspect, like a sort of Ancient
Mariner in academic garb.” He, too, used the birch freely in his domain
of Lower School, but his castigations were of a more paternal kind, and
between the strokes of the rod he would interject moral reproofs in his
queer nasal voice, such as: “You nahty, nahty boy!” It was said that
during the punishment he would even enter into conversation with the
offender, especially when he knew his “people” personally, and that on
one occasion he was overheard to inquire of a boy on the block: “Have
you seen your uncle lately?” a question which, in the circumstances,
would at first sight seem irrelevant, but was probably intended to
awaken repentance in the criminal by directing his thoughts to some
pious and respected relative. To the upper boys, “Judy” Durnford was a
never-failing amusement; his every gesture was noted by them; as when,
in correcting exercises, if some word or phrase eluded his memory, he
would sit scratching his temples vigorously, and exclaiming: “It runs in
me head.”
Among Dr. Hornby’s assistant masters were several others whose
eccentricities have been a fruitful subject of anecdote and legend.
Russell Day, a quiet and insignificant-looking little man, had a mordant
wit and gift of ready epigram, which caused him to be dreaded alike by
master and boys. “Friend, thou hast learned this lesson with a crib: a
crib is a thing in which thou liest,” was his remark in the course of a
Theocritus lesson to a member of his Division, from whom I heard the
story full forty years later. There were two boys of the name of Bankes,
one known afterwards as a distinguished K.C., the other a lazy youth who
never knew his lessons and was wont to mumble the Greek or Latin very
slowly in order to postpone the moment of discovery. On one of these
occasions Day leaned back in his chair and said in his drawling tones:
“Bankes, Bankes, you remind me of the banks where the bees suck and with
their murmuring make me sleep.” I remember how a friend and schoolfellow
of mine named Swan, who was a pupil of Day’s, showed me a copy of his
Latin verses which had drawn the following annotation: “_Olor!_ You
_cycnus_.” Not less characteristic was Day’s curt dismissal of a youth
named Cole (report says it was the future director of the Bank of
England): “Then, Cole, you may scuttle.” Nor did he hesitate to turn his
wit against his colleagues or himself. He called his pony “Lucifer,”
because, as he said, “When you see him coming, it announces the approach
of Day.”
A still more remarkable teacher was William Johnson, author of “Ionica,”
who afterwards took the name of Cory, a man of real genius, whose
enforced departure from Eton (for he did not leave, as was currently
supposed, from some sudden whim of his own) was the tragedy of his
lifetime, a “strange wounding,” as he calls it in one of his published
letters. Of “Billy Johnson” many descriptions have been written. Here is
a passage from one of them:
“In appearance, as in everything else, he was unlike the typical
schoolmaster: his thoughtful, handsome, somewhat sensuous features
were altogether out of the common; and owing to his short sight he
had a dreamy, mystic, inquiring way of looking at you which was
sometimes a little disquieting to the schoolboy mind. There were
occasions, too, when we dreaded his tart sayings (the very school
books written by him bristled with epigrams), and listened with
some anxiety to his sharp, staccato utterances, or watched him
during those ‘accusing silences’ by which, hardly less than by his
barbed speeches, he could awe the most unruly class. His blindness
led to a prevalent story (apocryphal, I believe, as it was told
also of other persons at different times) that he had been seen
pursuing a hen down Windsor Hill, and making futile grabs at her,
under the belief that she was his hat; but it is certain that he
was sometimes seen standing stock-still in School Yard, or some
open space, apparently unconscious of all observers or passers-by,
and wrapt in a profound daydream. Singular he undoubtedly was, to a
degree that was inconvenient to a schoolmaster; and there were
queer anecdotes of certain too generous suppers that he gave to his
favourites among the boys, when he began by politely overlooking
that they were getting drunk, and ended by unceremoniously kicking
them downstairs.”[4]
“Formerly wise men used to grow beards. Now other persons do so.” This
sentence in _Nuces_, an exercise-book of William Johnson’s compilation,
was supposed by us to be aimed at another assistant master, a bearded
clergyman, bluff, honest, mannerless, and universally disliked, who went
by the name of “Stiggins.” He had a detestable habit of standing at
right angles to any one with whom he was conversing, while he looked
straight away in front of him, his long red beard streaming down to his
waist, and when he spoke, he jerked his words at you, as it were, from
round the corner. His rudeness was a by-word; and the attempt sometimes
made to excuse it, on the ground that it “was not intended,” did not
appeal very strongly I think, either to masters or to boys: and justly,
for surely the only sort of rudeness which can be pardoned is that which
_is_ intended. There are occasions, rare, but real, when it is necessary
and wholesome to be rude; but to be rude without knowing it is the very
acme of ill manners, and that was precisely the kind of discourtesy in
which “Stiggins” was unequalled.
The story of how “Stiggins” was once nearly thrown into Barnes Pool, a
by-water of the Thames, by a riotous troop of boys, has been told in
more than one of the books about Eton; it was a curious coincidence that
he should have almost shared the fate of his reverend predecessor in
_Pickwick_, who was dipped in a horse-trough by the infuriated Mr.
Weller. This incident was, perhaps, the greatest of the many scandals
that occurred at Eton during Dr. Hornby’s headmastership.
It has often struck me as strange that I should owe to such a plain and
unadorned barbarian as “Stiggins” my first introduction to Keats’s
poems: he gave me, as a prize, Moxon’s edition of the works. He also
“sent me up for good” (for Latin verses), an honour of which I was
rather unpleasantly reminded, some twenty or more years afterwards, when
he had retired from Eton to a country parsonage; for in order to raise
funds for a proposed “restoration” of his church, he conceived the idea
of soliciting “for the glory of God,” as he expressed it, a subscription
from every Old Etonian who in bygone days had been “sent up for good” in
his Division. There was a naïve effrontery about this proposal which was
quite characteristic of its author.
The writing of Latin verse, so highly regarded at Eton, was a curious
accomplishment. It was said by Coleridge in his _Table Talk_ that
Etonians acquired the art “by conning Ovid and Tibullus”: my
recollection is that we read Ovid but rarely, and Tibullus not at all.
Some of us certainly became proficient in making Latin verses of a kind;
but our models were the renderings of English poems in such collections
as the _Arundines Cami_ or the _Sabrinæ Corolla_, rather than any Latin
originals; and though we could turn out “longs and shorts” with
facility, and even with neatness, I hardly think our productions would
have passed muster in the Augustan age. Still, the versifier’s art, such
as it was, brought us a certain gratification; and in the summer, when,
as we all felt, the time of the leading cricketers was of inestimable
value to the school, we were glad to turn our skill to good account by
composing for them their weekly copy of verses, and so releasing them,
as it were, from a frivolous for a serious task. On “verse days” members
of the Eleven would often come up into College, where each would find
for himself a poet; and thus valuable time would be saved for practice
at the nets. It was but little we could do in so great a cause, but we
did it with willingness; and I remember the honest pride which I felt
when dictating to the Captain of the Eleven a copy of verses, made up
largely of old tags and stock phrases, which he copied down with much
satisfaction and without the least understanding. His ignorance of the
meaning of what purported to be his own composition would lead to no
trouble; for tutors and division-masters alike were aware that they must
not press a good cricketer too hard. A blue cap covered a multitude of
sins.
But that we were savages, who, looking back on those bygone times, can
doubt? _Non angeli, sed Angli._ “It was an era,” as Mr. Ralph Nevill has
well remarked in his _Floreat Etona_, “when the sickening cant of
humanitarianism, born of luxury and weakness, had not yet arisen, to
emasculate and enfeeble the British race.” The hunting and breaking up
of hares then, as now, was one of the recognized pastimes; indeed, even
as late as the headmastership of Dr. Balston (1857-68), it had been
permitted to the boys, as a variation from the hare-hunt, to pursue with
beagles a mutilated fox deprived of one of his pads.[5] In the hundreds
of sermons which I have heard preached in Eton College Chapel, never was
a word spoken on the subject of cruelty. And no wonder; for Eton had
always been a home of cruel sports.
There was the less excuse for these miserable practices, because an
abundance and superabundance of the nobler sports was within reach of
the Eton boy: nowhere else could river and playing-field offer such
attractions. Thrilling beyond all else, and crowning the glories of the
summer school-time, was the great annual cricket match between Eton and
Harrow at “Lord’s,” a drama of such excitement as nothing in mature life
could ever equal. Who, for example, that witnessed the match of 1869--C.
J. Ottaway’s year, when Eton broke a long series of defeats by a
single-innings victory--can have forgotten the delirious scene at the
close? I can still see Dr. Goodford, the venerable Provost of Eton,
dancing ecstatically, hat in hand, before the pavilion, and looking very
much as “Spy” once pictured him in a famous cartoon in _Vanity Fair_.
Athletics, of course, took precedence of all intellectual pursuits. The
_Etonian_, in our time, was but a dim legend of the past, and the genius
of Praed and Moultrie had left no direct line of succession;
nevertheless among the upper boys there was not an entire dearth of
literary aspiration, and we had a school magazine, the _Adventurer_,
which existed from the later ’sixties for about five years. One of its
editors, a Colleger named C. C. Thornton, was the author of some
extremely good verse; and among other contributors, towards the latter
part of the _Adventurer’s_ career, were Arthur A. Tilley, now a Fellow
of King’s College, Cambridge; E. C. Selwyn, afterwards headmaster of
Uppingham School; J. E. C. Welldon, the popular Dean of Durham; Herbert
W. Paul; George Campbell Macaulay; J. C. Tarver; and Sir Melville
Macnaghten, who wrote as M^{2}; also, if I mistake not, the _nom de
plume_ of “Tom” covered some early poems of Mr. F. B. Money-Coutts, now
known as Baron Latymer. One of the best essays in the _Adventurer_ was
that on “Arbitration as a Substitute for War,”[6] by Mr. Herbert Paul.
Another noteworthy contribution, which has some historical interest for
Etonians of that period, was a poem by Bishop Welldon, entitled
“Adventurer Loquitur”[7] in which the Magazine was represented as giving
some description of the several members of its “staff,” whether in
recognition of their services or in reproof of their remissness. Among
those clearly indicated, though unnamed, were A. A. Tilley, R. C.
Radcliffe, G. R. Murray, Bernard Coleridge (now Lord Coleridge), H. G.
Wintle, G. C. Macaulay, C. C. Lacaita, J. E. C. Welldon, E. C. Selwyn,
and the writer of these reminiscences. The cause of the _Adventurer’s_
decease was that it ran counter to Etonian sentiment, in acting on the
perilous principle that “it is only those who truly love Eton that dare
to show her her faults.”[8]
Apart from the _Adventurer_, the literary ambition of some of the
Collegers sought irregular expression, in those far-off days, by
supplying the Windsor press, when opportunity occurred, with exaggerated
and absurdly inflated accounts of any exciting incident such as the
outbreak of a fire. Nor was it only the local papers that allured us;
for I remember how G. C. Macaulay and I once had a daring wager as to
which of us should more egregiously hoax the _Field_ with some story of
a rare bird. He tried a too highly coloured anecdote of a bee-eater, and
failed to win credence; while I, with a modest narrative of a supposed
stork in Windsor Park (“can it have been a stork? I shall indeed feel
myself lucky if my supposition be correct”), not only saw my letter
inserted, but drew the gratifying editorial comment: “Most probably it
was a stork.” Thus we made natural history and beguiled the idle hours.
To look upon a group photograph of the Collegers of fifty years ago
brings many memories to the mind. E. C. Selwyn, before we met at Eton,
had been my schoolfellow at Blackheath Proprietary School, of which his
father was headmaster; and our friendly relations were renewed from
time to time till his death in 1919. As I once reminded him, we had but
two quarrels--the first when we were freshmen at Cambridge, about Moses,
in whom I had been rash enough to say that I “did not believe”; and the
second, at a later period, because I _did_ believe in Mr. H. M. Hyndman,
of whose socialist doctrines Selwyn as vehemently disapproved. Long
years afterwards I made what I thought was a fair proposal to him--that
if he would give up Moses, I would give up the other patriarch, and so
our two small disagreements would be mutually adjusted; but his answer
was that, though Moses need no longer delay a settlement, he could not
agree to Mr. Hyndman being given up, because his patriotic conduct
during the Great War had shown him in a new light.
We used to call Selwyn “bishop” in those days, either because of a
distant relationship to Dr. G. A. Selwyn, the well-known Bishop of
Lichfield, or because we thought him almost certainly destined to attain
to episcopal rank: his scholarship, not to mention his defence of Moses,
seemed to warrant no less. J. E. C. Welldon, who _did_ become a bishop,
was another most genial schoolfellow, famous in the football field no
less than in the examination room. I remember running second to him in a
handicap quarter-mile race, in which he was allowed a good many yards’
start, and with that advantage just managed to keep the rest of us in
the rear. Herbert Paul, unlike Welldon or Selwyn, was by no means
designated for a bishopric. I recall him, a sceptic even in boyhood,
standing in Upper Passage, where Collegers often held informal
discussion, as, with thumbs in waistcoat pockets, he would hold forth,
already a fearless disputant, on matters human and divine.
Among other figures in the group are Dr. Ryle, Dean of Westminster; Sir
Richmond Ritchie; Mr. George Campbell Macaulay; Mr. C. Lowry, head of
Tonbridge School; Dr. Burrows, Bishop of Chichester, Dr. Harmer, Bishop
of Rochester; Sir E. Ruggles-Brise, Chairman of the Prison Commission;
Mr. E. C. Tennyson-d’Eyncourt; Rev. J. H. J. Ellison, late Vicar of
Windsor; Sir Lionel Carden, of Mexican fame; and others who in various
ways have become distinguished.
Very provocative of reminiscence, too, are the illustrations, printed in
books about Eton, of the College servants, the College buildings, and
many well-remembered faces and scenes. Take, for example, a picture of
“Old College Servants” in Mr. Ralph Nevill’s _Floreat Etona_.
There stands the old College porter, Harry Atkins, whom, to our
disgrace, we used to bombard on dark winter nights in his little lodge
at the gateway into School Yard, hurling missiles at his door from
behind the pillars of the cloisters under Upper School, and trusting to
our superior fleetness of foot when he was goaded into a desperate
charge. There, too, are Culliford, the butler, and Westbrook, the cook,
who were treated by us with far greater respect than the equally
respectable Atkins, as presiding over departments in which our own
personal comforts were more closely concerned, and from whose hands, on
the occasion of banquets in the College Hall, the smaller Collegers
would try to beg or snatch dainties as they carried them up from the
kitchen. Among the least prominent members of the group is one
Wagstaffe, designated “scullion”; yet, humble though he was in
appearance, his name had become a household word among the boys; for the
somewhat unappetizing dough which formed the base of the puddings served
to the Collegers was then known as “the Wagstaffe,” on the supposition,
presumably, that the under part of the pudding was the creation of the
under-cook. I do not think I could eat that pudding now; but looking on
the worthy Wagstaffe’s image again, I feel that we wronged him in
identifying him, as we did, with an unsavoury composition for which he,
a mere subordinate, was not personally to blame.