Things were beastly dull at Merivale when we went back after the
Christmas holidays, and I believe even the Doctor felt it. Of course,
from our point of view, his life must always be deadly, but I suppose he
gets a certain amount of feeble excitement into it, in ways not known to
us. It's rather interesting to wonder what old people do find worth
doing; yet they must do something to amuse themselves, off and on, or
they'd go mad, I should think, which they seldom do. The amusements of
a very old person must be rather weird, yet they clearly like to be
alive, for when my grandmother died, she was eighty--a time of life when
you'd think there was simply nothing left. Yet, when I went to say
farewell to her, she told me she hoped to see the spring flowers once
more. She didn't; but it shows how fearfully hard-up old people must be
for amusement of any kind; for who on earth would want to see flowers,
spring or otherwise, if practically everything else had not been lost to
them? Myself I would much rather have died years before than eat the
food my grandmother ate, and never go out except in a bath-chair; but
she found it good enough, strange to say. So, no doubt, Dr. Dunston,
who is entirely active, and can eat meat and drink wine and walk rapidly
about, still finds being Head of Merivale School all right.
But the winter term was deadly, what with the bad weather and the slow
progress of the War, and losing most of our football matches, owing to
having a very weak team.
Then old Peacock, of all men--the new master, I mean--got an idea, and
Fortescue thought it was a good one, and Peacock proposed it to the
Doctor, and Dr. Dunston agreed to it.
In fact, he announced it after chapel during the third week of February
in these words:
"Our new friend, Mr. Peacock, has made a proposal to me, and I have
great pleasure not only in agreeing with him, but in congratulating him
on a very happy thought. Suspecting that there may be mute, inglorious
Miltons amongst us--a sanguine hope I cannot share--Mr. Peacock has
thought that it would add an interest to the term and wake a measure of
enthusiasm and energy in the ranks of our versifiers if we initiate a
competition. He suggests a prize poem upon the subject of the War; and
while my heart misgives me, yet I bow to Mr. Peacock's generous
proposal. You are invited, one and all of you, from the greatest to the
least, to write a prize poem on the subject of the War, and if such a
momentous theme fails to produce some notable addition to our war
poetry, then Mr. Peacock's disappointment will be considerable. He
trusts you to enter upon this task in no light spirit, and when I add
that Mr. Peacock proposes to give a prize of one guinea--twenty-one
shillings--to the victorious poet, you will see that a real effort is
needed. You will have a calendar month to prepare and execute your
verses, which must be composed outside the regular school hours; and I
may tell you that unless a certain humble standard of intelligence and
poetic ability is reached, I shall direct Mr. Peacock to withhold his
prize."
Well, there it was; and, of course, a good deal of excitement occurred,
and it was jolly interesting to see who entered for the prize poem and
who did not. No doubt Travers major would have won it without an
effort, being so keen about everything to do with war; but, luckily for
the rest, he had left to go to Woolwich the term before. Travers minor
entered because he was strongly advised to, being a flier at literature
in general and keen about poetry; but he said frankly he should not
praise the War, but slate it, because he utterly disagreed with it and
hated war in general.
Of course, the prize being a guinea made a lot of difference, and many
unexpected chaps decided to write a prize poem, though most of these,
when they sat down with pens and ink to do it, found such a thing quite
beyond them in every way.
I myself--my name is Abbott--was one of these, and after reading a good
many real poems of the War, which Mr. Fortescue, who was a great poet
and much interested in the competition, kindly lent me, I found, on
setting out to do it, that the difficulties were far too great. Rhymes
are easy enough to get, in a way, but when you come to string the poem
together, you generally find your rhymes aren't solemn enough. I
believe I could have written a screamily funny prize poem; but, of
course, that wouldn't have pleased the Doctor, or Peacock either, so it
wasn't any good wasting time being funny. For instance, I wrote the
following poem in less than ten minutes:
The Hun, the Hun, the footling Hun,
Most certainly doth take the bun.
And Blades and several other chaps said it was jolly good. But Blades,
who had also had a shot or two on the quiet, was like me--he could only
make comic poems, and the stanzas of his poem took the form of
Limericks. He said he could invent them with the greatest ease--in
class, or at prayers, or at meals, or going to bed, or getting up, or in
his bath--in fact, at any time when he wasn't playing football. He gave
me an example, which seemed to me so frightfully good that I thought
very likely Peacock would have given him a consolation prize. So he
tried it on Peacock; but Mr. Peacock thought nothing of it, and said
that was not at all the spirit of a prize poem, but belonged to the
gutter-press, whatever that is. It ran like this:
The Kaiser set off for Paree
As if it was only a spree,
But old French's Army,
It soon knocked him barmy,
And now he is melancolee.
He next had a flutter at Nancy,
Though doubtless a little bit chancy;
But his men got a doing,
With plenty more brewing,
So he galloped off, saying, "Just fancy!"
There were hundreds more verses--in fact, you might say the whole
history of the War as far as it had got; and I advised Blades to send it
to _The Times_--to buck it up--or _Punch_, or something; but he
wouldn't, and when Peacock decided it was no use, he gave up writing it,
so a good poem was lost, in my opinion.
Many fell out before the appointed day for sending in the prize poems;
but many did not, and though it was natural that a good few chaps
chucked it, the extraordinary thing was the number of chaps who kept on
to the bitter end, so to speak, and sent in poems. Almost the most
amazing was Mitchell. He certainly had made a rude poem once in a
moment of rage, but as to real poetry, a cabbage might just as well have
tried to make a poem as him. He was only keen about one thing in the
world, and that was money; and, of course, that was why he entered the
competition. He said to me: "I'd do much worse things than make a prize
poem, if anybody offered me a guinea. If it had been one of the Doctor's
wretched prizes, I wouldn't have attempted it; but a guinea is a guinea,
and as nobody here can make poetry for nuts, I'm just as likely to bring
it off as anybody else. It's taking a risk, in a way, but I've got my
ideas about the War, just as much as Travers minor or Sutherland, and,
if I don't win, I shall get a bit of fun out of it, anyway."
He was a mean beast always, but cunning and frightfully crafty; and as
he had never had a decent idea in his life, let alone a poetical one, we
were all frightfully interested in Mitchell's poem on the War.
The chap Sutherland he had mentioned was regarded as having a chance,
for he knew a lot about the War, and had two cousins in it, one in
France and one with the Fleet. He got letters without stamps on them
from these chaps, but there was never much in them. Thwaites also
entered, and he was known to write poetry and send it home; but it had
not been seen, and Thwaites, being delicate and rather fond of art and
playing the piano and such like piffle, we didn't regard him as having
warlike ideas. Besides, once, when Blades suddenly pulled out one of
his teeth in class and bled freely over Thwaites, who sat next to him,
Thwaites fainted at the sight of blood; which showed he couldn't
possibly write anything worth mentioning on such a fearful subject as
war; because, you may say, a war is blood or nothing.
Only one absolute kid entered, and this was Percy minimus, who had sent
a Christmas pudding to the Front, and had the photograph of a "Tommy"
back. So he wrote a prize poem which he let his friends see, and Forbes
minimus said it was good, as far as he could say to the contrary. No
doubt it appeared so to a squirt like Forbes minimus, but, of course, it
could not be supposed to stand against the work of Travers minor, or
Sutherland, or Rice.
I always rather thought myself that Rice might pull it off, being Irish
and a great fighter by nature. Unfortunately, he didn't know anything
whatever about poetry; yet his fighting instinct made him enter, and
though he wasn't likely to rhyme very well, or look after the scanning
and the feet and the spondees and dactyls, and all that mess, which, no
doubt, would count, yet I hoped that, for simple warlike dash, Rice
might bring it off. I asked him about it, and he said a good many
things had gone wrong with it, but here and there were bits that might
save it.
He said:
"I believe I shall either win the guinea right bang off, or get
flogged." Which interested me fearfully, but didn't surprise me,
because it was rather the way with Rice to rush at a thing head-long and
come out top--or bottom. He only really kept cool and patient and never
ran risks when he was fighting; but at everything else, which he
considered less important, he just dashed. He had dashed at the prize
poem--very different from Tracey, who was always cool about everything,
and wouldn't have gone to the Front himself for a thousand pounds.
Tracey was great at satire--in fact, satire was a natural gift with
him--and though, of course, it didn't always come off, owing to being so
satirical that nobody saw it, still he often did get in a nasty one; and
sometimes got licked for doing so.
He told me his prize poem was all pure satire, and I said:
"I doubt if the Doctor or Peacock will see it."
And Tracey said:
"I can't help that. Poetry is art, and I can't alter my great feeling
for satire to please them. It will come out; and even though old Dunston
and Peacock don't see it, I know jolly well the Kaiser and the Crown
Prince would, if they read it."
Well, there it was, and that was about the lot worth mentioning who had
a shot at Mr. Peacock's guinea. The calendar month passed, and one day,
when classes began, the Doctor appeared, supported by Peacock,
Fortescue, and Brown.
Everybody was summoned into the chapel, and the Doctor, who dearly likes
a flare-up of this kind, told us that the prize poems had been judged
and were going to be read.
"I may tell you," he said, "that the prize has been won, contrary to my
fear that none would prove worthy of it. But we are agreed that there
is a copy of verses on the solemn subject set for discussion that
disgraces neither the writer nor Merivale. Indeed, I will go further
than that, and declare that one poem reflects no small credit on the
youthful poet responsible for it; and Mr. Peacock and Mr. Fortescue,
than whom you shall find no more acute and critical judges, share my own
pleasure at the effusion."
The Doctor then began to read the prize poems, and he started with that
of Percy minimus, much to Percy's confusion.
"The views of Percy minimus on the War are elementary, as we should
expect from a youth of his years," said old Dunston. "I may remark,
however, that he rhymes with great accuracy, and if he shows an
inclination to be didactic, and even give Lord Kitchener a hint or two,
I frankly pardon him for the sake of his concluding line. This reveals
in Percy minimus a flash of elevated feeling which does him infinite
credit. One can only hope that his pious aspiration will be echoed by
those great nations doomed to defeat in the appalling catastrophe which
they have provoked."
Then he gave us the poem.