THE DUNCE’S PROGRESS
After that first brilliant year at school, when I got so many prizes
without taking any trouble, there ensued two extremely lean years,
during which I took just as much trouble as before, and got nothing at
all. For just as, physically, growing children spurt and are quiescent
again, storing force for the next expansion, so mentally they have in
the intervals of development periods of utter stagnation. I had swept, a
prodigious infant, through all the other forms, leaving Geege and Davy
and Daubeny mere dim fixed stars across the path of the comet, and then
the unfortunate comet gave one faint “pop” and went completely out.
Other boys straggled and struggled up to the first form, which I had so
easily stormed, and I continued sinking through them, like a drowned
rag, to my appointed place at the bottom. Agitated letters were
exchanged between Waterfield and my father, of which I found the other
day several of Waterfield’s; he clung to a certain forlorn optimism
about me, but seemed puzzled to know why without positively neglecting
my work I invariably did it worse than anybody in the form. He still
believed me not to be stupid. In that quiescent period I could not
assimilate any more; all that I was fed with merely gave me indigestion,
and the mental stuffing was liberally supplied to the poor goose, for at
the end of that year I was to try for an Eton scholarship, with regard
to which my prospects grew ever less encouraging. A drawer in
Waterfield’s study adjoining the room where the first class was tutored
was entirely devoted to the dreadful copies of Greek and Latin prose and
Latin elegiacs which I produced. Week after week these grew and
collected there, each of them thickly scored by Waterfield’s red ink. Of
one of them I can recall the image now; scarcely a word remained that
was not underscored in red. But I gather that Waterfield must have
concluded that some blight other than carelessness and inattention was
responsible for my failures, for he never threatened me with rulers or
birchings for them. Mentally, during those three atrocious terms, the
only thing in which I can remember taking the slightest interest was
hearing him read out the piece of English verse which it was our task to
turn into Latin elegiacs. His reading was altogether beautiful; often
his voice broke, as when he read us “Home they brought her warrior
dead,” and, though he quite failed to instil in me the desire to put
such verses into beautiful Latin, he intensely kindled my love of
beautiful English. Similarly, when the Sunday divinity lesson was over
and such storms as had raged round St. Paul’s missionary journey were
stilled, he would tell us all to make ourselves comfortable, and for the
rest of the hour entranced us with _The Pilgrim’s Progress_. His
delightful voice melodiously rose and fell; he asked us no inconvenient
questions to probe the measure of our attention; his object, in which he
strikingly succeeded, was to let us hear magnificent English
magnificently read, and to leave us to gather our own honey.
A great event of the summer term was Waterfield’s birthday. The whole
school subscribed to give him a birthday present, which must have been
of some value, for the sum of five shillings or ten shillings (I forget
which) was charged up to every boy’s bill. But we certainly got that
back again, for the birthday, kept as a whole holiday, was celebrated by
everybody being taken to the Crystal Palace for the day and furnished
with half a crown to spend as he pleased, so decidedly Waterfield was
not “up” on the transaction. A few of the more favoured were invited to
spend the day on the Thames with him and his family; they embarked on a
steam launch at Richmond and had luncheon in some riverside wood. Now,
above all things in the world I longed to see the Crystal Palace, of
which I had formed the image as of some ineffable glittering
constellation, a piece of real fairyland fallen from the sky and now at
rest on Sydenham Hill, and it was with a black despair that I received
the distinction of being bidden to the family picnic instead. But a _dea
ex machina_ came to the rescue in the person of Mrs. Waterfield, who
quite ironically said to me, “I suppose you would much sooner go to the
Crystal Palace?” Throwing “tac” and politeness to the winds, I
unhesitatingly told her that I certainly would, and I was given my
half-crown and joined the proletariat.... Or was Mrs. Waterfield’s
enquiry not ironical at all, but a piece of supreme “tac”? Had some hint
reached her that I really wanted to go to the Crystal Palace? I cannot
decide. In any case, that kind-hearted woman would have been rewarded
for making the suggestion, could she have realized with what rapture I
beheld that amazing edifice glittering in the sun, and went through its
Palm Court and its Egyptian Court and its Assyrian Court, and beheld all
that the Prince Consort had done to educate the love of beauty in these
barbarous islanders. All day I wandered enchanted, and laid out most of
the half-crown in a glass paper-weight with a picture of the Crystal
Palace below, and the remainder in a small nickel ornament in the shape
of an ewer, undoubtedly made in Germany. Indeed, I was wise to fasten on
the opportunity given me by Mrs. Waterfield, for thus I secured the
wonderful experience of being absolutely bowled over by the beauty of
the Crystal Palace, which has not happened to everybody. All the same, I
suffered a few years later a crushing and double disillusionment, for I
was taken there again to hear _Israel in Egypt_ at the Handel Festival.
On that occasion my main impression was that I thought the Crystal
Palace a very suitable place for that monstrous performance. The scale
on which the one was built and on which the other was performed served
not to conceal but to accentuate the essential meanness of each....
I weave this into a digression not unconnected with the first of these
lean years. Though mentally, as regards the metres of foreign verse and
the inexorable grammar of Greek and Latin, I was as idle “as a painted
ship upon a painted ocean,” I gorged myself not only on the readings of
Waterfield, but on music. That frail widow, Mrs. Russell, is probably
unknown to fame as a teacher of the piano, but I owe her an undying debt
of gratitude. I begged to be released from the study of such works as
those of Mr. Diabelli, whom I had long ago judged and found wanting, and
from “arrangements” of the _Barber of Seville_, and even from the
sugared melodies of “Songs without Words” (over which, especially No. 8,
an occasional tear used to drop from Mrs. Russell’s eyes), and to be
allowed to entrap my awkward fingers in Bach, whom I had heard rendered
by the “Farmer Society” at Lincoln. My request was granted, and I was
permitted to make a rapturous hash of slow Sarabands and more rapid
Gavottes and Minuets out of the _Suites Anglaises_. Never was there so
enthralled a bungler; for I could hear (this I positively affirm),
through the crash of my awkwardness, what was meant. Bach then and there
and ever afterwards was my gold standard in the innumerable coinage of
music. There was good silver, there was good copper, there was
promissory paper. All these, in a loose metaphor, might temporarily be
depreciated in the exchange of my mind, or might have a rise, but Bach
remained gold. Out of my “taste,” whatever that was, I was quite
prepared to put Beethoven (in slow movements) in his place, and to give
Mozart, as judged by his “Variations on a Theme in A,” a very
distinguished position, and to concede a neatness to “The Harmonious
Blacksmith.” Brahms I had never heard of. But all these, then as now,
were, at the most, distinguished gentlemen, equerries or grooms or
chamberlains in attendance round about the court, and having speech with
the King.
By the time I heard _Israel in Egypt_ at the Handel Festival, I had also
heard the _St. Matthew Passion_ at St. Paul’s, and I quite definitely
compared them. Probably it is a mistake ever to compare one achievement
with another even if they are built on an appeal to the same sense: it
is no more use comparing Handel with Bach than it is comparing a sunset
with the view of the Bernese Oberland. But, taken by itself, that
performance of _Israel in Egypt_ seemed to me a monstrous attempt to
cover up a common invention by inflating it with noise. The fact that
there were four thousand (or perhaps four million) singers all bawling,
“He gave them hailstones for rain,” did not essentially make the
hailstorm one whit the stormier, though the immensity of the row
pleasantly stunned the senses. It would be as unreasonable to take a
carte-de-visite photograph of a man with a stupid mouth and a
chin-beard, and hope to make it impressive by enlarging it to the size
of the Great Pyramid. Indeed, the bigger the enlargement, the sorrier
would be the result. But by that time I had the sense to see how
delicate and delightful an artist is Handel when he confines himself to
the limits of his true territory. For sweetness and neatness of melody,
in the violin sonata in A, the piano sonatas, and songs from countless
operas, I knew he had no rival--in the silver standard. But no one, with
the one exception of Bach, has ever defeated the awful limitations of
the “form” of oratorio, and, as a rule, the larger the orchestra, the
more stupendous the body of voice, the more shaky becomes the credit of
the composer. Indeed, the very fact that so gigantic a representation as
a Crystal Palace Handel Festival was ever desired or enjoyed postulates
not only a complete want of musical perception on the part of the
public, but a corresponding want of musical achievement on the part of
Handel. No one would deny that the “Hailstone Chorus” sounds better when
a huge band and an immense chorus all produce the utmost noise of which
they are capable. We all like hearing a quantity of voices and a
Nebuchadnezzar-band thundering out commonplace melodies, because a loud
and tuneful noise has a stimulating effect on the nerves, and because we
like our ears (occasionally) to be battered into a hypnotized
submission. But we submit not to the magic of the music, but to the
overpowering din of its production. And when “the feast is over and the
lamps expire,” when we have had “the louder music and the stronger
wine” of noise, our hearts steal back to the spell of Cynara....
Soon after that first enthralling day at the Crystal Palace came the
scholarship examination at Eton, which, as far as I was concerned,
produced no prize whatever. I spent a delightful three days there,
basking in the effulgence of Arthur, then just eighteen and
demi-godlike, and came back to Temple Grove after a pleasant outing. And
at the end of that term Waterfield retired, and I went back in September
to be tutored again for more scholarships.
The new headmaster, Mr. Edgar, previously conducted a boarding-house,
and was hitherto distinguished for a very long clerical coat, two most
amiable daughters, a gold-rimmed eyeglass which he used to clean by
inserting it in his mouth and then wiping it on his handkerchief, and
the most remarkable hat ever seen. The nucleus of it, that is to say the
part he wore on his head, was of hard black felt, like the ordinary
bowler, but it was geometrically, quite round, so that he could put any
part of it anywhere. That I know because I have so often tried it on
myself. Outside that circular nucleus came an extremely broad black felt
rim, far wider than that of the shadiest straw hat, and turning upwards
on all sides in what I can only describe as a “saucy” curve. As worn by
Edgar, it produced an impression of indescribable levity, just as if he
was, say, Mr. George Robey posing as a parson. His amiability was
unbounded, and his driving-power that of a wad of cotton-wool. Indeed,
he was so pleasant that for his sake it became the fashion to fall in
love with either of his two daughters, whose mission was to influence us
for good. They gave us strawberries, and tried to get between us and
the soft spring-showers of their father’s disapproval, like unnecessary
umbrellas.
Under Edgar’s beneficent sway, I managed to get into the most
complicated row that ever schoolboy found himself immersed in, for I
committed three capital (or rather fundamental) offences in one joyous
swoop. In the first place, I concealed five shillings of sterling silver
about my person, though all cash derived from “tips” had to be given up
to the matron, and by her doled out as she thought suitable. This
clandestine millionaire thereupon bribed a fellow-conspirator to break
bounds and go into Richmond, there to spend four of those shillings in
Turkish delight, and keep the fifth for his trouble. He got back safely,
and three friends had a wonderful feast in the dormitory that night, all
sitting on my bed, and cloying ourselves and the bedclothes with that
delicious sweetmeat. Unfortunately there was amongst those midnight
revellers one stomach so effete and spiritless that it revolted at the
administration of these cloying lumps, and, prostrated with sickness,
the owner of it confessed to an unusual indulgence, while the state of
my sheets completed the evidence. The chain went back link by link from
his sickness to my bed, and from my bed to the finding of the empty
Turkish delight box, and from the Turkish delight to the place it came
from, and from the place it came from to the money wherewith it was
purchased, so that I was left in as the unrivalled culprit in the
reconstructed story. But though I should have swooned with anxiety and
probably confessed all, had Waterfield been the Sherlock Holmes, I never
gave a moment’s thought to Edgar’s unravelling. He said I had been very
naughty, and sucked his eyeglass, and hoped I wouldn’t be naughty again.
It was all very polite and pleasant, and I knew I had nothing to fear
from him. But even at the time I had a secret misgiving as to the
Judgment Book that should soon be opened at this page. The best thing,
probably, that I could have done would have been to write home instantly
and tell my father all about it, for that would certainly have seemed to
him the proper course, and also he would have blown off part of his
displeasure in a letter. But I continued to procrastinate, and before
many weeks the term mildly ebbed away. Then with a sudden _crescendo_ my
misgivings increased, and it was a very unholiday-minded urchin who went
back that December for Christmas at Truro.
About now my fear of my father was at its perihelion, and morning by
morning I used to come downstairs, a quarter of an hour before breakfast
time, to look at the post which had arrived, and see if among the
letters for him there was one with the Mortlake postmark and the “Temple
Grove” inscription on its flap. Some morning soon, I knew, my report on
the term’s work and my conduct generally would come, and in it, no
doubt, would be an allusion to this escapade. Edgar had treated it so
lightly that it was still just possible that he would not allude to it
in his report, but that possibility was not seriously entertained.
Morning by morning I turned over the letters, while my father was at
early service, and then one day, while Christmas was nearly on us, I saw
with a sinking of the heart that the fatal letter had arrived. What
added to the terror of it was that my father was in a fit of black
depression.
He did not open his letters at breakfast, and afterwards I went out into
the garden in pursuit of an entrancing game just invented, that
concerned a large circular thicket of escalonia which grew near the
front door. There was an “It,” who at a signal started in pursuit round
the bush to catch Hugh and me, and “It” on this occasion was Nellie. She
came running round the curve of the bush and set us flying off in the
opposite direction, still keeping, by the rule of the game, close to the
bush. Then, when she had got us really moving, she would double back
with the design that we should still, running in that direction, rush
into her very arms and be caught. Full speed astern was the only thing
that could save us.... In the middle of this out came the butler, who
said that my father wanted to see me at once. “Come out again quickly,”
called Nellie.
My father was sitting in his study with an open letter in his hand. I
think he gave it me to read; in any case, Mr. Edgar had been
sufficiently explicit, and in all my life I have never been so benumbed
with fear.... Had I committed the most heinous of moral crimes my father
could not have made a blacker summing-up. He said that he would not see
me among the rest of his children. I was to have my meals alone and
disgraced upstairs, and to take no part in their games or in their
society, and away I went battered and yet inwardly rebelling against
this appalling sentence. Then I think my mother or Nellie must have
pleaded, for I was allowed to go out for a walk with Nellie alone that
afternoon, but was segregated from the others. I was still bewildered
with the fierceness of my father’s displeasure, and took it for granted
that I must have done something unintelligibly wicked, for I asked
Nellie if she had ever done anything so dreadful as the crime of which I
had been guilty. She said she had not, so I drew the inference that her
theft of dried plants from my collection (which, after all, was a
violation of one of the commandments) was venial. But it was precious on
that black afternoon to receive sympathy at all, which certainly she
gave me, and I did not risk the loss of it by enquiring about the
comparative wickedness of the “Affair Turkish delight” and theft.
Then on Christmas Eve, which I think must have been next day, came one
of those unutterable brightnesses which my father always had in store.
Again he sent for me, and I went stiff and resigned, not knowing whether
there was not to be some renewal of his anger.... Instead, he put me in
an armchair close by the fire and wrapped a rug round my knees, and
asked if I was quite comfortable, and shared with me the tea that had
been brought in for him, since he was too busy to come into the nursery
as usual and have it with the rest of us. And then he somehow gave me a
glimpse, sitting tucked up by the fire, of the love that was at the base
of his severity. How, precisely, he conveyed that I cannot tell, but
there was no more doubt about it than there was about the heaviness of
his displeasure.
The remaining two terms at Temple Grove passed along pleasantly. In
school work I continued my slow placid gravitation to the bottom of my
form, as other boys were promoted into it and took their places below
me. I sank gently through them and came calmly to rest at a position
where no fresh sinking was possible. There I went in for a little more
sleep, “a little slumber, a little folding of the hands in sleep,” and
resisted with the passive force of mere inertia any attempt to raise me.
But probably vital forces were beginning to stir again, for I got free
of the successive childish ailments which had been afflicting me--colds,
sore throats, earaches and toothaches--all of which no doubt added their
contribution to
[Illustration: E. F. BENSON, ÆT. 19
[Page 119]
my general apathy, and also I woke to a violent interest in friendship,
steam-engines, and poetry. The last of these I take to have been due to
the fructification of the seed sown by Waterfield’s readings, and, with
Carrington’s translation of the “Æneid” to help, it is a fact that I
produced in an American cloth-covered notebook a complete and rhymed and
rhythmical rendering of the third “Æneid” which we were working at in
school, without caring one jot for the merits of the original Latin.
What I wanted to do was to compose a quantity of English myself, and
compose it I did, glorying in the speed of its production, quite
careless about the faithfulness of the rendering or the accuracy of the
grammar, and the only merit it can possibly have had was that it was a
labour of love. Other poems dashed off in the intervals of this epic
were connected with friendship, for I conceived a violent adoration for
a boy of the same standing as myself, romantic to the highest degree in
that I gave him a whole-hearted devotion, but quite devoid of
mawkishness or sentimentality. To him I addressed rhymed odes, and then
we quarrelled and made it up again, with more odes, for he addressed me
also in flowing stanzas. Then there was a parody of Hood’s “Song of the
Shirt,” held to be a devastatingly comic piece; and not less comic I
suspect was a blank verse lament by a mother over the death of her only
son.
Not very far behind poetry and friendship as objects of existence came
steam-engines, my fellow-engineer sitting next me, bottom but one of the
form. We got illustrated catalogues from the makers of models, and
copied and recopied diagrams of slide-valves, waste pipes, and
eccentrics with a zeal and accuracy which, if devoted to lessons, must
speedily have pulled us out of the humble positions we so contentedly
occupied. A certain geographical jealousy was mixed up in this, since,
though we both condemned the engines on the South-Western, on which line
was Mortlake, as very poor and flimsy mechanisms, he, whose home was
reached by the Great Northern, considered the engines on that line far
superior to anything that the Great Western, which took me to and from
Truro, had to show. He drew pictures of the Great Northern express
engines, and I retorted with sketches of the “Flying Dutchman” (11.45
a.m. from Paddington), which went to Swindon without a stop and ran on a
broad gauge, while the Great Northern was only a narrow gauge. Against
that he set the fact that Peterborough was a mile further from London
than was Swindon.... He was the happy possessor of a model locomotive
with slide-valve cylinders and a waste-pipe going up the chimney, and
though I could not run to that, by dint of saving up and of my mother’s
anticipation of my birthday, I became possessor of another model with a
copper boiler and a brass chassis called the “Dart.” The “Dart” had only
oscillating cylinders, which, as all the world knows, do not discharge
their waste steam up the funnel, but from small holes at their base, and
have this further infirmity, that they only have one steam-driven stroke
in each revolution of their fly-wheel, whereas a slide-valve cylinder
has two. The slide-valve engine, therefore, was of a different class
altogether from the “Dart,” but I found that I could get up a very
powerful head of steam in the “Dart” by stuffing small pellets of
blotting-paper up the safety-valve, so that she held her breath while
her rival was letting off steam. Then, when for fear of a burst boiler I
said the “Dart” was ready, and turned on the tap that conveyed the steam
to the cylinder, she would start off like mad, and for a few yards
easily outrun her more powerful rival. But long before she got to the
end of the open-air cloisters where these races took place she would be
overhauled; and, indeed, the “Dart” usually failed to run a complete
course, and had to be bottled up again to develop fresh energy. But
inferior as the “Dart” was in staying power, it must be accounted unto
her for righteousness that she never burst when her safety-valve was
stopped up. There was also a stationary engine (oscillating cylinder)
belonging to one of us, but we unfortunately burned its bottom out by
neglecting to put any water in the boiler.
Friendship, engines, and poetry, then, were the safety-valves--not
choked with blotting-paper like that of the much-enduring
“Dart”--through which my growing vitality discharged itself, and I used
to lie awake at night, making rhymes and phrases and thinking of the
friend of my heart, and trying to devise some plan by which the “Dart”
should generate a more abundant supply of steam. To these objects of
existence, when the summer term began, was added cricket, but never did
my school work arouse one ounce of latent energy, even though
scholarship time was coming near again. If I can recollect my attitude
rightly, I was entirely without ambition as regards winning a
scholarship, in the sense that I chose to devote myself to Latin and
Greek with a view to subsequently obtaining one. It is true that I
wanted, rather, to go to Eton, and knew that I should not be sent there
unless I got a scholarship, but for that end I did not divert my
energies from friendship, steam-engines, and poetry. I think I am
correct in this recollection, for in all the years that have passed
since then I cannot remember ever being nearly so much interested in the
future as in the present. The actual interest blazing within me (and
there were often several respectable conflagrations going on) has always
seemed to me of far vaster importance than a remoter goal. I do not mean
that I was fitful in my intentions, because I certainly pursued the same
object for years together; only it was not for the ultimate achievement
that I pursued it, but because I was continuously interested in the same
thing. That the opposite line of action is the most effective and brings
the biggest results I do not deny, but, on the other hand, think of the
wild and fugitive acquisitions that fall to the lot of the short-range
strategist.... But I am not defending my conduct, in any case, but
merely describing it.
My own lack of effective ambition must have been terribly disappointing
to the elders who had formed and, in a material sense, directed this
scholarship campaign. Mr. Edgar and my father agreed on a tremendous
programme, which I was to carry out, and the “general idea” was this.
There was a scholarship examination at Marlborough in June or perhaps
early in July, in which there were offered for competition some
half-dozen scholarships, with a great plum at the top called the “House
Scholarship.” The House Scholarship was worth, I think, £80 a year, the
next six £50, and my father in a letter he wrote me shortly before the
event said that he did not think the great plum was out of my reach. His
main desire, I know, was that I should achieve a distinction, but I am
also sure that he felt I ought to do something to help towards the
expenses of my education, since he believed that I was capable of so
doing. He was not a rich man; hitherto his sons Martin and Arthur had
won scholarships which made their education at Winchester and Eton a
matter of small expense, and he did not mean to send me to Eton, as the
event proved, unless I got a scholarship, but to a much cheaper but in
no way less excellent school. I was, therefore, in the examination at
Marlborough to get a scholarship of some sort--the House Scholarship for
choice--and then, a few weeks later, to go up for Eton. If I got a
scholarship there, I was to be sent there instead of Marlborough, but,
failing that, to accept the laurels which Marlborough would no doubt
have offered me.
So first I went off to Marlborough and competed there. I didn’t carry
off the House Scholarship, nor did I carry off any other scholarship,
nor was my name mentioned as having approached to distinction, and so
Eton was given its chance without any back-thought at having wiped
Marlborough’s eye. Once again, therefore, I competed sadly at Eton, and
Eton had precisely the same opinion of me as it had had a year before.
The plan of campaign had completely failed, and it was settled that I
should unconditionally surrender to Marlborough. I did not in the least
want to go there, because I wanted to go to Eton, as far as I wanted
anything at all apart from friendship, steam-engines, and poetry.
Certainly I did not want to remain at Temple Grove any longer, for my
greatest friend had won a scholarship at Winchester, and the
steam-engine friend was off to Harrow, and another person who mattered
had been successful at Eton. But the idea of Marlborough was not without
charm, for a year before another friend had gone there, and I looked
forward with a certain excitement to seeing him again. We had met during
the days of the scholarship examination, and he had aroused in me some
shy sort of adoration. He had grown tall and handsome, and asked
condescendingly about Temple Grove and the odious habit of keeping
stag-beetles, yet with a certain personal interest that he veiled behind
a splendid manly brusqueness. I wondered whether he would appreciate a
short ode, but decided that he would not. But he called me a “decent
little kid,” which I liked as coming from so magnificent a being.
Temple Grove ended very soon after that in a general _dämmerung_ of
failure. _Faute de mieux_ I was to be sent to Marlborough, and throwing
a Latin dictionary carelessly into my locker, I squashed my gigantic
stag-beetle quite flat, and he was as Og the King of Bashan. On the last
day of the term I played cricket against a team of Old Templegrovians
and lost the match by failing to hold the easiest catch ever spooned up
amid a wildly excited circle of contemporaries, having previously got
out first ball (or second). But Mr. Edgar was kind, and said that it
didn’t matter, though his frenzied sucking of his eyeglass and his
dropping it into my lemonade indicated tact rather than sincerity.
* * * * *
So the poor ugly duckling who had failed to accomplish anything went
home to its family of swans, who, dazzlingly white, cut circles in the
air above it on the pinions of their various accomplishments. There was
Arthur, now nineteen, who had got an Eton scholarship at King’s College,
Cambridge, and was going there in October, whose scholastic success was
only equalled by his volleys with an Eton football and his wholly
untakeable service at lawn-tennis. He could do everything with ease, was
listened to by my father with attention when he talked, and yet remained
unconscious of his sovereignty, and was altogether kind and faintly
pitiful to my all-round shortcomings. There was Nellie, who annexed
every distinction that could be annexed at the Truro High School,
except when Maggie butted up against her, who could play Schumann’s
first novelette and had been pronounced to have a “veiled” contralto
voice in which she sang melodies by Marzials and Molloy, and who, on the
occasion of Redruth High School or some inferior congregation of females
challenging Truro High School for a match at cricket, bowled out the
entire side of those misguided young ladies with lobs that cut the
daisies from their stalks and were admired even by the vanquished for
their paralyzing swiftness. Then there was Maggie, who took the rest of
the prizes at the High School and painted ravishly not only in
water-colours, but in oils, with McGuilp (was it?) as a medium, and
tubes that squirted rainbows on to her palette. She was not athletic,
but she had the great physical distinction of having been knocked down
by a cow whose calf had been taken from her, and lying prone on the
ground held on to the animal’s horns and with perfect calmness continued
to scream loudly and serenely until rescued by Parker the butler. After
these dazzling swans there came the ugly duckling, who had failed in
games and in scholarship, who had not achieved the smallest intellectual
distinction, but who in some queer manner of his own was quite as
independent as any of the swans.
And, finally, there was Hugh, on whom at this time my father’s hopes
were centred, for I think he regarded him as the one who was going to
take Martin’s place. If he listened with respect to Arthur, he hung on
Hugh, who, for independence, for knowing what he wanted, and for a
perfectly fearless disregard of other people’s opinions, was, for a boy
of nine, wholly unique. If his reason convinced, he would adopt a plan
different from the one he had chosen, but it was necessary to convince
him first, and no amount of bawling or insistence would make him alter
his mind if he did not agree. He adored Beth, but if he chose to walk
through puddles, neither affection for her, nor respect for her
authority, would make him cease to do so, unless she convinced him of
the greater suitability of the dry places. He was so dreadfully funny
that nobody could possibly be angry with him for long, and when he had
reduced a sister, who was teaching him his lessons, to distraction by
his disobediences and inattention, he would anticipate the final threat
the moment before it came, and, with shut eyes and a face inexpressibly
solemn, would chant, “Mamma shall be told!” Arthur alone out of us all
could deal with him. Once, when in some theatrical rehearsal, Hugh, with
soft paper round a comb, had to supply orchestral accompaniment to the
piano, and wouldn’t stop, Arthur observed in an awful voice, “If the
orchestra isn’t quiet, it shall be sent out of the room with several
hard slaps.”... Hugh had a habit, when things were breezy, of writing
insulting remarks in round hand on a piece of paper, and then doubling
it up and throwing it at the object of his scorn, and while you were
reading it he ran away. A further development of this was that, when
pursuit was hot behind him, he would pull a small ball of paper out of
his pocket and surreptitiously drop it, as if fearing to be caught with
it. Naturally, the pursuer stopped to smooth out the paper and see what
fresh insult was recorded there, and would find a perfectly blank
half-sheet. But by that time Hugh would be at the top end of the garden
path and have had time to conceal himself anywhere. Clad in pasteboard
armour, covered with silver paper, with a shield and a helmet and
greaves, he would hide in the shrubbery and hurl paper lances at you.
Then a hot pursuit followed, until one of the greaves dropped off, and,
still flying, he would pant out “Pax, until I’ve put on my greave
again!” He and I lived in a perpetual high-tension atmosphere of violent
quarrels, swift reconciliations, and indissoluble alliances with secret
signs and mysteries to which even Maggie was not admitted. We had a
cypher language of our own which consisted in substituting for each
vowel the one that came next in the alphabet; it was easy to write, but
difficult to speak and even more difficult to understand when spoken.
What we communicated to each other in it I have no conception, nor can I
now remember the aims and objects of the mystic club called “Mr. Paido.”
One of the rites consisted in walking in the garden with bare feet,
which, after all, was an adventure in itself.
The great excitement of this summer holiday, after which I was to go to
Marlborough, was an expedition to Switzerland. All that any of us knew
about Switzerland was a remarkable picture that hung in the nursery in
which rows of dazzling summits crowned cerulean lakes. Above that
panoramic view, in which the Jungfrau and Mont Blanc somehow appeared
together, were little vignettes, one of a Swiss châlet, one of the
Staubbach, one of the castle at Chillon. We journeyed viâ Southampton
and Havre, five children, Beth, my father and mother, and sat upright in
a second-class carriage all the way from Paris to Berne, by what route I
have no idea. Our objective was a village called Gimmelwald, a few miles
from Murren, and we spent a day and a night at Berne, and from Berne, on
the terrace in front of the church, I had my first glimpse of snow
mountains. Perhaps because I had been sitting bolt upright all night,
perhaps because I had thought that the brilliant blues and dazzling
whites of the pictures in the nursery would be collectively unveiled on
an enormous scale, I was more disappointed than words can fairly convey.
Low on the horizon were a few greyish jagged hills beset with streamers
of mist, and that was all. Nellie drew a long breath and said, “Oh,
isn’t it wonderful!” and I labelled her the most consummate hypocrite.
Next morning we started again, and came out on the lake of Thun, the
shores of which we traversed in some sort of train like an omnibus, with
an open top, and in due proportion to the bitterness of the
disappointment at Berne came that day’s rapture. We passed below the
Niesen, which wore a snow-cap, and my mother told us that the Niesen was
nothing particular. Summits gleamed from the other side of the lake, and
they were nothing particular; but oh! for the lake itself, while we
awaited other incredible developments. It was bluer than the picture in
the nursery, and it was trimmed with a translucent bottle-green that
showed the shallow water, and sharp as the edge of a riband laid against
it came that deep clear blue. From Interlaken we proceeded in carriages,
between meadows tall with gentians, and over them there skimmed Apollo
butterflies with orange spots on each under-wing, and Camberwell
Beauties no less (foreign variety, with a yellow instead of a white
border to their wings). And then we turned a corner (I was on the front
seat), and Nellie opposite said, “Oh!” and I thought she had been a
hypocrite again and didn’t look round, because I was observing a pale
clouded yellow. And then she said, “Oh, look!” and I was kind enough to
forgive her her hypocrisies and look, and there, straight |n front, was
the Jungfrau, and the holy maiden was unveiled white and tall above her
skirt of dark pine woods, and my heart went out to the snow mountains,
and has never yet come back. Much did I suffer at their lovely hands
during the next ten years, for that same Jungfrau treated me to an
excruciating climb of many hours through soft snow; and the Matterhorn
kept his worshipper interminably standing with one foot planted on
exiguous icy steps as each was hewn out by the leading guide and the
fragments went clinking down the precipice; and the Rothorn (Zienal)
gave me a very awkward moment on the edge of a _bergschrund_; and the
Piz Palu came within an ace of causing Hugh to die of syncope owing to
the icy wind with which she enwrapped her arête, and the Matterhorn for
the second time threw a large quantity of boulders at me because I
inconspicuously crossed her eastern face on my way towards the Théodul
Pass; and the Dent Blanche directed so damnable a blizzard at me that I
could not make her further acquaintance. But, as David said, “though all
these things were done against me,” yet has my heart never returned to
me from the keeping of the great mountains, nor yet from the keeping of
the sea which I first saw at Skegness, and if I could choose the manner
of my death it would be that I should, above some eminent ice-wall, fall
asleep in the immaculate purity of starlit frost, or sink in the
sea-caves round about the island of Capri, and, as I sank, see from far
below the glitter of the southern sun above me in the clear dusk of deep
waters.... If God pleases, I will be frozen or drowned when the time
comes for me to have done with this body of mine. I do not covet for its
last moment a comfortable bed, and pyjamas, and a medicine bottle on the
washstand.... Not that it matters; only I should like the other mode of
passage.
We passed the Staubbach somewhere near Lauterbrunnen and came in the
hour of sunset to the little inn at Gimmelwald. And then there was no
more spirit left in me, for Eiger and Monck and Jungfrau and Ebneflu and
Silberhorn were aflame with the salute of the evening. Maggie sat down
to sketch, and was prodigal of rose-madder; but whereas she put
rose-madder on to a drawing-block, it was the sun that dyed the snows.
And we had bilberries and cream at dinner, and cows went home, swinging
bronze bells as they cropped a wayside morsel; and there was a noise of
falling torrents and a scent of pasturage, and the excitement of being
“abroad” and the knowledge that the Jungfrau would be there in the
morning.
I wish I could estimate even in the roughest manner the amount of
luggage which accompanied that month in Switzerland. My father had a
heavy box of books and manuscript, for he was working, then as always,
when he saw leisure ahead of him, on his _Life of St. Cyprian_, which he
began at Wellington and completed only shortly before his death. Cyprian
alone took up a large box, and, apart from that in the way of books,
there must have been a great library. There were certainly half a dozen
copies of Shakespeare, because of an evening after dinner we read
Shakespeare aloud, each taking a character; and there was a quantity of
Dickens, which my mother read to us before dinner. Then each of us had
some kind of a holiday task, except Arthur. Nellie had something about
logic, and Maggie had her political economy, and I had a large Latin
dictionary and a large Greek dictionary to elucidate Virgil and the
“Medea” of Euripides, and Hugh had, at any rate, a Latin grammar and a
volume called “Nuces,” which means “nuts,” and hard they were for him
to crack. Everybody, individually, had a Bible and prayer-book and
hymn-book, and I am sure there must have been some Sunday books as well.
Then the materials for “collections” came along also: there were presses
for each of us in which to receive and to dry the flowers we picked, and
there were killing bottles for butterflies (not chloroform and oxalic
acid any more) containing cyanide of potassium, which killed after you
had screwed the lid on, and when you took it off next morning, they were
all dead bodies, like Sennacherib’s hosts; and setting boards for the
laying out of the slain, and large cork-lined boxes for their
exhibition, and packets of pins for their impalement, and many butterfly
nets for their original capture. Then there were packs of cards for
diversion, and my mother had a great medicine-chest in case of illness.
There were cool clothes for all of us in the blaze of the Alpine day,
and warm clothes for the chill of the Alpine evenings; and each of us
had a paint-box and a “Winsor and Newton” block, and Beth never moved
without rolls of flannel and mustard plasters and cylinders of
cotton-wool. Each one of us had an alpen-stock and huge hob-nailed
boots, and when you consider that there were eight persons, each
marvellously equipped for mental, physical, and artistic enterprises,
you must only wonder that some mode of conveyance, if not all, was not
fit to bear the strain of this transportation. But arrive at Gimmelwald
we did, and while Maggie was prodigal with rose-madder this train of
equipment somehow got inside the inn. Beth swooped on her flannel and
her mustard plasters, my father established his Cyprian library in our
sitting-room, my mother clutched her medicine-chest, and there was left
an enormous pile of books, apparatus for botany, climbing, and
entomology, which remained in a passage and was gradually broken up
between its owners. I think that the last pressing-case for dried
flowers, the last killing-bottle for the extinction of butterflies, can
hardly have been clawed from that common heap before it was time to pack
it all up again.
Of that month certain indelibly vivid impressions remain. One was the
ascent of the Schilthorn, popularly supposed to be 10,000 (ten thousand)
feet in height, and to possess the witching attraction of owning
“everlasting” snow. It was not, unless it has abbreviated itself very
much since, anything near ten thousand feet high, and, as for the
everlasting snow, we climbed through torrid uplands and finished by a
mild rocky ascent without ever setting foot on any snow perishable or
everlasting. True, there were patches of it on the northern face, and
perhaps those may be there still. But it was an enchanting expedition,
for we carried our alpen-stocks and the guide had a rope round his
shoulders, and we started at five in the morning. My father had a
guide-book with a Schilthorn panorama, and we sat on the top and
rejoiced in the fact that we were ten thousand feet up in the air and
that small quantities of everlasting snow were below us, and we followed
his guiding finger as he pointed out the jewels in the crown of
mountains that surrounded us.... We passed through Murren on the way
down, and there saw English people playing lawn-tennis on one of the
hotel courts, and never shall I forget my father’s upraised eyebrows and
mouth of scorn as he said, “Fancy, playing lawn-tennis in sight of the
Jungfrau!”
But if there was some subtle profanity in playing lawn-tennis in sight
of the Jungfrau, I thought it much more blasphemous to study “Medea” and
the “Æneid” in the same sacred presence. I had a considerable spell of
these, because it had been discovered that, although I was going to
Marlborough without a scholarship, there was yet another of those odious
competitions which I could enter for after I had got there. I had fondly
thought that after this trinity of failures I had thoroughly be-dunced
myself and need make no more efforts, but it appeared that I was wholly
mistaken, for next December there would be a chance of going in for
Foundation Scholarships at my new school, and in that there would be
less competition, for they were open only to sons of clergymen. So,
after a few days’ holiday, out came the Greek dictionary and the Latin
dictionary and the “Medea” and the “Æneid,” and I had a couple of hours
every morning under my father’s tuition. I think he was very strict with
me, for he still believed in the existence of my brains, and was
determined that I should use them. But it is impossible to get good
results from a small boy unless somehow interest is kindled, and there
was often despair on the part of the teacher and resentful gloom on the
part of the taught. Things came to a climax on one particular wet
morning, when we were all seated in the sitting-room, Nellie with her
logic, and Maggie with her political economy, and Hugh going swimmingly
with his “nuces” under my mother’s instructions. One by one they all
finished their tasks, and there was I left with a chorus in the “Medea”
which I could not translate at all, getting more muddled and hopeless
every minute, and making fresh mistakes as we went over it again, and my
father getting exasperated with my stupidity. Stupid I was, but my chief
ailment that morning was that I was frightened and addled and dazed with
his displeasure. Right up till lunch time was I kept at my task that
day, and in the afternoon there was a walk in the rain, and I got into
some further disgrace for hitting Hugh with my umbrella in mere
retaliation. I was “done to a turn” by this time, and I think my mother
must have pointed that out, for next morning, anyhow, instead of that
just and terrible thunder-cloud, when I brought up the weary chorus
again for retranslation, my father was enchantingly encouraging, and
slipped in little corrections when I made mistakes, as if I had
corrected myself. There was no allusion to yesterday’s trouble, and
under his approval my wits rallied themselves, and at the end he shut up
the book with a delicious smile and told me that it was the best lesson
I had ever brought him....