SCHOOL
I went to school in September 1884. On the 7th of September John came
of age, and we had a large party in the house and a banquet for the
tenants in the tennis court, at which I had to stand up on a chair and
make a speech returning thanks for the younger members of the family. I
travelled up to London with my mother and Mr. Walter Durnford, and was
given _Frank Fairleigh_ to read in the train, but it was too grown-up for
me, and I only pretended to read it. We stayed a night in Charles Street.
I was given a brown leather dispatch case with my name stamped on it and
a framed photograph of my father and mother and of Membland, and a good
stock of writing-paper, and the next afternoon we started for my school,
which was near Ascot. I didn’t cry either on leaving Membland or at any
moment on the day I was taken to school.
We arrived about tea-time. The school was a red brick building on the top
of the hill, north of Ascot Station, and looking towards the station,
situated among pine trees. The building is there now and is a girls’
school. We were shown into a drawing-room where the Headmaster and his
wife received us with a dreadful geniality. There was a small aquarium
in the room with some goldfish in it. The furniture was covered with
black-and-yellow cretonne, and there were some low ebony bookcases and
a great many knick-knacks. Another parent was there with a small and
pale-looking little boy called Arbuthnot, who was the picture of misery,
and well he might look miserable, as I saw at a glance that he was
wearing a made-up sailor’s tie. Two days later the machinery inside this
tie was a valuable asset in another boy’s collection. Conversation was
kept up hectically until tea was over. They talked of a common friend,
Lady Sarah Spencer. “What a charming woman she is!” said the Headmaster.
How sensible he seemed to charm! How impervious to all amenities he
revealed himself to be later! Then my mother said good-bye to him, and we
were taken upstairs by the matron to see my cubicle, a little room with
pitch-pine walls, partitioned off from the next cubicle by a thin wooden
partition that did not reach the ceiling, so that you could talk to the
boy in the next cubicle. Boys were not allowed to go into each other’s
cubicles. We hung my solitary picture up, and my mother interviewed the
matron, Mrs. Otway, in her room and gave her a pound as she went away;
then we went out into the garden for a moment. My mother said good-bye to
me and left me alone. I wandered about the garden, which was not a garden
but grass hill leading down to a cricket-field. Half-way down the hill
was a gymnasium, and a high wooden erection with steps. I wondered what
it was for. The boys had not yet arrived. Two boys presently appeared
on the scene; they looked at me, but took no great notice. Then after a
little time one of them approached me, holding in his hand a small pebble
surrounded with cotton-wool, and asked me if I would like a cuckoo’s
egg. I did not know whether I was supposed to pretend that I thought it
was a real egg or not. It was so unmistakably a stone. I smiled and said
nothing. Presently a Chinese gong sounded somewhere out of doors. The
two boys ran into the house. I followed them. On the ground floor of the
house there was a large hall with a table running down it, a fireplace
at one end, and at the other end an arch opening on to the staircase
draped with red curtains with black fleur-de-lys stamped on them. There
were windows on one side of the room and a cupboard with books in on the
other. This hall was now full of boys talking and laughing. Nobody took
the slightest notice of me. They then trooped through a passage into
the dining-room, a large room with tables round three sides of it and a
small square table in the middle where the Headmaster, his wife, and one
of the other masters sat. We sat down. I was placed nearly at the end of
the last table. More boys—those of the first division, who were a race
apart—came in from another door. Then the Headmaster entered, rapped on
his table with a knife, and said grace. We had tea; large thick slabs of
bread and butter, with the butter spread very thinly over them.
Soon after tea we went to bed, and I dreamt I was at Membland, and
woke up to find I was in a strange place. The boy in the cubicle next
to mine was called Hope. He was in the second division. In another
cubicle opposite to mine there was a boy in the first division called
Worthington. One could talk to them, and they were both of them friendly.
The next morning after breakfast I was placed in the fourth division
for Latin and English, and the fourth set for Mathematics and French,
and had my first lesson in Mathematics. The first thing the master did
was to take a high three-legged stool from a corner and exhibit it
to us. It had a very narrow seat. It was a rickety stool. “This,” he
said, “is the stool of penitence. I hope none of you will have to stand
on it.” Then some figures were written down on the blackboard, and a
sum in short division was set, which I at once got wrong. In fact, I
couldn’t do it at all. The master came and sat down by my side, and said:
“You’re trembling.” So I was. He corrected the mistakes and went on to
something else. He was terrifying to look at, I thought, but perhaps
not as frightening as he appeared to be. I was a little bit reassured.
Later in the day we had a French lesson. To my surprise I saw he knew but
little French, and read out the first page of the elementary accidence,
pronouncing the French words as though they were English ones.
After luncheon, we played prisoner’s base, and I at once realised that
there is a vast difference between games and play. Play is played for
fun, but games are deadly serious, and you do not play them to enjoy
yourselves. Everyone was given two blue cards, and every time you were
taken prisoner you lost a card. If you lost both you were kicked by the
captain of the side, who said we were a pack of dummies. The first week
seemed endlessly long, and acute homesickness pervaded every moment of
it. Waking up in the morning was the worst moment. Every night I used
to dream I was back at home, every morning the moment of waking up was
a sharp bewildering shock. Our voices were tried, and I was put in the
chapel choir. The chapel choir had special privileges, but also long
half-hours of choir practice.
The masters laughed at me mercilessly for my pronunciation of English. I
don’t know what was wrong with it, except that I said y_a_llow, _aint_
for aren’t, and _ant_ for aunt, but I did my best to get out of this as
soon as possible. Apart from idiosyncrasies of pronunciation, my voice
seemed to them comic, and they used to imitate me by speaking through
their noses whenever I said anything. The boys at first entirely ignored
one, simply telling one to shut up if one spoke, but the boys in my own
division soon became friendly, especially an American boy called Hamilton
Fish the third. He was the first man to be killed in the American-Spanish
War in Cuba. There was no bullying. One boy, although he was in the first
division, was charming, and treated one like a grown-up person. This was
Basil Blackwood. Even then he drew pictures which were the delight of
his friends. Another boy who was friendly was Niall Campbell. Dreadful
legends were told about Winston Churchill, who had been taken away from
the school. His naughtiness appeared to have surpassed anything. He had
been flogged for taking sugar from the pantry, and so far from being
penitent, he had taken the Headmaster’s sacred straw hat from where
it hung over the door and kicked it to pieces. His sojourn at this
school had been one long feud with authority. The boys did not seem to
sympathise with him. Their point of view was conventional and priggish.
Every morning there was a short service in the pitch-pine school chapel,
and every morning an interval between lessons called the hour, in which
the boys played nondescript games, chiefly a game called IT. If you
were IT you had to catch someone else, and then he became IT. On Sunday
afternoon we went for a walk. On Sunday evening the Headmaster read out
a book called _The Last Abbot of Glastonbury_, which I revelled in.
After the first week I had got more or less used to my new life. In a
fortnight’s time I was quite happy and enjoying myself; but every now and
then life was marred and made hideous for the time being by sudden and
unexpected dramas. The first drama was that of the Spanish chestnuts.
There were some Spanish chestnuts lying about in the garden. We were told
not to eat these. Some of the boys did eat them, and one boy gave me a
piece of something to eat on the end of a knife. It was no bigger than
a crumb, and it turned out afterwards to be a bit of Spanish chestnut,
or at least I thought it might have been. One afternoon at tea the Head
rapped on his table with his knife. There was a dead silence. “All boys
who have eaten Spanish chestnuts are to stand up.” Nobody stood up,
and there was a long pause. I think the boys were puzzled, and did not
know they had been eating Spanish chestnuts. I certainly did not know a
Spanish chestnut by sight. I had no chestnut on my conscience. After a
very long pause the Headmaster made some rather facetious remarks, which
I thought were meant to encourage us, but the other boys, knowing him
better, knew that they were ironical and portended dreadful things. One
boy stood up. Then, after a slight pause, another; about four or five
boys followed suit. I suddenly remembered the incident of the penknife
in the gymnasium three days before. Could it have been that I had eaten
a Spanish chestnut? Was that little bit of white crumb on the end of
the knife a part of a Spanish chestnut? I had not seen a whole Spanish
chestnut anywhere. In any case I had better be on the safe side, and
I stood up. The Headmaster made a cutting comment on boys who were so
slow to own up. A few more stood up, and that was all. The Head then
delivered a serious homily. We had been guilty of three things: greed,
disobedience, and deceit. We would all do two hours’ extra work on a
half-holiday.
There was electric light in the school, and the electric light was oddly
enough supposed to be under the charge of one of the boys, who was called
the Head Engineer. Clever and precocious as this boy was, I cannot now
believe that his office was a serious one, although we took it seriously
indeed at the time. However that may be, nobody except this boy was
allowed to go into the engine-shed or to have anything to do with the
electric light. We were especially forbidden to touch any of the switches
in the house or ever to turn on or off the electric light ourselves.
Electric light in houses at that time was a new thing, and few private
houses were lighted with it. One day one of the boys was visited by his
parents, and he could not resist turning on the electric light in one
of the rooms to show them what it was like. Unfortunately the Head saw
him do this through the window, and directly his parents were gone the
boy was flogged. Every week the school newspaper appeared. It was edited
by two of the boys in the first division, and handed round to the boys
at tea-time. This was a trying and painful moment for some of the boys,
as there were often in this newspaper scathing articles on the cricket
or football play of some of the boys written by one of the masters,
and all mentioning them by name; and as parents took in the newspaper
it was far from pleasant to be pilloried in this fashion. Just before
half-term another drama occurred. I was doing a sum in short division,
and another boy was waiting for me to go out. He was impatient, and he
said, “That’s right; don’t you see the answer is 3456,” or whatever it
was. I scribbled it down, but unfortunately had left a mistake in the
working, so the answer was right and the sum was partly wrong. This was
at once detected, and I was asked if I had had any help. I said “Yes,”
and I was then accused of having wanted to get marks by unfair means, and
of having cheated. We did not even know these particular sums received
marks. The Division Master bit his knuckles, and said he would report
the matter to the Headmaster. When I went into chapel from the vestry,
robed in a white surplice, he pinned a piece of paper with _cheat_ on
it, on to my back. I was appalled, but as nothing happened immediately
I began to recover, and on the following Sunday when we were writing
home the master told me I could put in my Sunday letter that I had done
very well, and that I was his favourite boy. This was only his fun, but
I took it quite seriously, and I did not put it in my letter, because I
thought the praise excessive. On Monday morning there was what was called
“reading over.” The boys sat in the hall, grouped in their divisions. The
Headmaster in a silk gown stood up at a high desk, the three undermasters
sat in a semicircle round him, also in gowns, and one division after
another went and stood up in front of the desk while the report of the
week’s work was read out. When the fourth division went up, the news was
read out that Duckworth and Baring had been guilty of a conspiracy, and
had tried to get marks by unfair means. Duckworth was blamed even more
severely than I was, being an older boy.
We were told this would be mentioned in our report, and that if anything
of the kind occurred again we would be flogged. When this was over, the
boys turned on Duckworth and myself and asked us how we could have done
such a base act. We were shunned like two cardsharpers, and it took us
some time to recover our normal position. The half-term report was about
nothing else, and my father was dreadfully upset. My mother came down
to see me, and I told her the whole story, and I think she understood
what had happened. I got through the rest of the term without any fresh
dramas, and did well in trials at the end of the term.
One day my sister Susan unwittingly caused me annoyance by writing to me
and sealing the letter with her name, Susan. The boys saw the seal and
called out, “He’s got a sister called Susan; he’s got a sister called
Susan.” Sisters should be warned never to let their Christian names come
to the knowledge of their brother’s schoolfellows. This kind of thing is
typical of private-school life. The boys were childish and conventional,
but they did not bully. It was the masters who every now and then made
life a misery. In spite of everything, the boys were happy—in any case,
they thought that was happiness, as they knew no better.
In the afternoons we played Rugby football, an experience which was in
my case exactly what Max Beerbohm describes it in one of his Essays:
running about on the edge of a muddy field. The second division master
pursued the players with exhortations and imprecations, and every now
and then a good kicking was administered to the less successful and
energetic players, which there were quite a number of. The three best
Rugby football players were allowed to wear on Sundays a light blue
velvet cap with a silver Maltese cross on it, and a silver tassel. I am
sorry to say that this cap was not always given to the best players. It
was given to the boys the Headmaster liked best. What I enjoyed most were
the readings out by the Headmaster, which happened on Sunday afternoons
and sometimes on ordinary evenings. He read out several excellent books:
_The Moonstone_, the _Leavenworth Case_, a lot of _Pickwick_, and, during
my first term, _Treasure Island_. The little events, the rages for stamp
collecting and swopping, stag-beetle races, aquariums, secret alphabets,
chess tournaments, that make up the interests of a boy’s everyday life
outside his work and his play, delighted me. I was a born collector but
a bad swopper, and made ludicrous bargains. I made great friends with a
new boy called Ferguson, and taught him how to play Spankaboo. We never
told anyone, and the secret was never discovered. We used to find food
for the game in bound copies of the _Illustrated London News_. We had
drawing lessons and music lessons, and I was delighted to find that my
first school piece was a _gigue_ by Corelli that I had heard my mother
play at the concert at Stafford House, which I have already described.
At the end of the term came the school concert, for which there were many
rehearsals. I did not take any part in it, except in the chorus, who sang
“Adeste Fideles” in Latin at the end of it.
Some scenes were acted from the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_, the same scenes
we had acted at Membland, but I took no part in them. Then came the
unutterable joy of going home for the holidays, which were spent at
Membland. When I arrived and had my first schoolroom tea I was rather
rough with the toast, and Chérie said: “Est-ce là les manières d’Ascot?”
At the end of the holidays I spent a few days in London, and was taken to
the play, and enjoyed other dissipations which made me a day or two late
in going back to school. The holiday task was Bulwer Lytton’s _Harold_,
which my mother read out to me. As soon as I arrived at school I was
given the holiday-task paper and won the prize, a book called _Half-hours
in the Far South_, which I have never read, but which I still possess and
respect.
During the Lent term we had athletic sports: long jump, high jump,
hurdle, flat and obstacle races. I won a heat in a hurdle race and nearly
got a place in the final, the only approach to an athletic achievement
in the whole of my life. A curious drama happened during this term. A
boy called Phillimore was the chief actor in it. He was in the first
division. One day the Headmaster went up to London. During his absence
a message was sent round in his name by one of the undermasters. The
message was brought by one of the boys to the various divisions. It was
to the effect that we were allowed or not allowed to do some specific
thing. When the boy, who was new and inexperienced, brought the message
into the first division, Phillimore said to him, “Ask Mr. So-and-so with
my compliments whether the message is genuine.” “Do you really want
me to ask him?” asked the boy. “Yes, of course,” said Phillimore. The
little boy went back to the master, who happened to be the severest of
all the masters, and said: “Phillimore wants to know whether the message
is genuine.” As soon as the Headmaster returned the whole school was
summoned, and the Headmaster in his black gown told us the dreadful story
of Phillimore’s unheard-of act. Phillimore was had up in front of the
whole school, and told to explain his conduct. He said it was a joke, and
that he had never dreamt that the boy would deliver the message. The
explanation was not accepted, and Phillimore was stripped of his first
division privileges. The privileges of the first division were various:
they were allowed to dig in a place called the wilderness, which was a
sand-heap through which ran a light truck railway without an engine. They
went on special expeditions.
These expeditions need an explanation. Sometimes they consisted merely of
walks to Bagshot or Virginia Water, and perhaps a picnic tea. Sometimes,
as in the case of the first division expeditions or the choir expedition,
they were far more elaborate, and consisted of a journey to London with
sight-seeing, or to places as far off as Bath and the Isle of Wight.
During my first term the choir went to Swindon to see the Great Western
Works, to Reading to see the Biscuit Factory, and to Bath in one day, and
we got home late in the night. During my second term we spent a day in
London inspecting the Tower, the Mint, and other sights, and had tea at
the house of one of the boys’ parents, Colonel Broadwood, who lived in
Eccleston Square.
These expeditions were recorded in the school Gazette, and when my mother
heard of our having had tea with Colonel Broadwood, she said: “Why should
not the choir, next time they came to London, have luncheon at Charles
Street?” The idea made me shudder, although I said nothing. The idea
of having one’s school life suddenly brought into one’s home life, to
see the Headmaster sitting down to luncheon in one’s home, seemed to me
altogether intolerable. My mother thought I would perhaps be ashamed of
the food for not being good enough, and said: “If we had a very good
luncheon.” But that wasn’t the reason. It never happened. Anything
more miserable than the appearance of Broadwood when we had tea in his
father’s house cannot be imagined.
Nothing was more strange at this school than the sudden way in which
either a treat or a punishment descended on the school. The treats, too,
were of such a curious kind, and involved so much travelling. Sometimes
the first division would be taken up _en masse_ to a matinée. Sometimes
they would be away for nearly twenty-four hours. The punishments were
equally unexpected and curious. One boy was suddenly flogged for cutting
off a piece of his hair and keeping the piece in his drawer. In the
second division the boys were punished by electricity. The division
was made to join hands, and a strong electric shock was passed through
it. This went on until one day one boy, smarting from an overcharge
of electricity, took the battery and threw it at the master’s head,
inflicting a sharp wound. Nothing was said about this action, to the
immense astonishment of the boys, who thought it jolly of him not to
sneak.
We lived in an atmosphere of complete uncertainty. We never knew if some
quite harmless action would not be construed into a mortal offence. Any
criticism, explicit or implicit, of the food was considered the greatest
of crimes. The food was good, and the boys had nothing to complain of,
nor did they, but they were sometimes punished for looking as if they
didn’t like the cottage pie.
One day I heard a boy use the expression “mighty good.” The next day
I said at breakfast that the porridge was _mighty_ good. The master
overheard me and asked me what I said. I answered, “I said the porridge
was very good.” “No,” said the master, “that is not exactly what you
said.” I then admitted to the use of the word _mighty_. This was thought
to be ironical, and I was stopped talking at meals for a week.
Another time a message was passed up to me to stop talking at luncheon.
This was frequently done; a message used to be passed up saying: “Baring
and Bell stop talking,” but sometimes the boys used to be inattentive,
and if one sat far up table the message had a way of getting lost on the
way. This happened to me. I was stopped talking and the message never
reached me, and I went on talking gaily. Afterwards the master sent for
me and said, “You’ll find yourself in Queer Street.” I was not allowed to
remonstrate. I didn’t even know what I was accused of at the time, and I
was stopped talking for a week.
The Headmaster was a virulent politician and a fanatical Tory. On the 5th
of November an effigy of Mr. Gladstone used to be burnt in the grounds,
and there was a little note in the Gazette to say there were only seven
Liberals in the school, the least of whom was myself. The Gazette went on
to add that “needless to say, the school were supporters of the Church
and the State.” One day somebody rashly sent the Head a Liberal circular.
He sent it back with some coppers inside, so that the recipient should
have to pay eightpence on receipt of it, and the whole school was told
of his action. One day there was a by-election going on hard-by. All
the school were taken with blue ribbons on their jackets except the
unfortunate seven Liberals, who were told to stay at home and work.
One year Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was burnt in effigy, as he was then a
Radical, and the effigy held in its hands a large cardboard cow with
three acres written on it. It was a bad time for the Liberals, as the
foreign policy of the Liberal Government was at that time particularly
weak, and it was impossible to defend Mr. Gladstone’s Egyptian policy,
still less Lord Granville. So the Head smiled in triumph over the
renegades, one of whom I am glad to say was Basil Blackwood. He took the
matter very calmly and drew offensive caricatures of the Conservative
politicians.
During the summer the rage the boys had for keeping caterpillars in
breeding cages, for collecting butterflies, and keeping live stock was
allowed full play. The Head himself had supplies of live animals brought
to the school, among which were salamanders and Italian snakes. I myself
invested in a green lizard, which although it had no tail, was in other
respects satisfactory, and ate, so a letter of mine of that date says, a
lot of worms. I also had a large, fat toad, which was blind in one eye,
but for a toad, affectionate. But the ideal of the boys was to possess a
Natterjack toad, whatever that may mean or be. We were allowed to go out
on the heath during the summer and catch small lizards and butterflies,
and altogether natural history was encouraged; so was gardening. Boys
who wished to do so might have a garden, and a prize was offered for
the garden which was the prettiest and the best kept throughout the
summer term. I won that prize. My garden contained four rose trees,
several geraniums, some cherry pie, and a border of lobelias. It was a
conventional garden, but there was a professional touch about it, and I
tended it with infinite care. The prize was a ball of string in an apple
made of Lebanon wood. Sometimes we were allowed into the strawberry
beds, and could eat as many strawberries as we liked. During this term I
made great friends with Broadwood. We were both in the third division,
and decided that we would write a pantomime together some day. One day
we were looking on at a cricket match which was being played against
another school. I have told what happened in detail elsewhere in the form
of a story, but the sad bare facts were these. The school was getting
beaten, the day was hot, the match was long and tedious, and Broadwood
and another boy called Bell and myself wandered away from the match;
two of us climbed up the wooden platform, which was used for letting
off fireworks on the 5th of November. Bell remained below, and we threw
horse-chestnuts at him, which he caught in his mouth. Presently one of
the masters advanced towards us, biting his knuckles, which he did when
he was in a great rage, and glowered. He ordered us indoors, and gave
us two hours’ work to do in the third division schoolroom. We went in
as happy as larks, and glad to be in the cool. But at tea we saw there
was something seriously amiss. The rival eleven who had beaten us were
present, but not a word was spoken. There was an atmosphere of impending
doom over the school charged with the thunder of a coming row. After tea,
when the guests had gone, the school was summoned into the hall, and the
Head, gowned and frowning, addressed us, and accused the whole school
in general, and Broadwood, Bell, and myself in particular, of want of
patriotism, bad manners, inattention, and vulgarity. He was disgusted,
he said, with the behaviour of the school before strangers. We were
especially guilty, but the whole school had shown want of attention,
and gross callousness and indifference to the cricket match (which was
all too true), and consequently had tarnished the honour of the school.
There was to have been an expedition to the New Forest next week. That
expedition would not come off; in fact, it would never come off; and
the speech ended and the school trooped out in gloomy silence and broke
up into furtive whispering groups. That night in my cubicle I said to
Worthington that I thought Campbell minor, who had been scoring during
the match, had certainly behaved well all day, and didn’t he deserve to
go to the New Forest? “No,” said Worthington; “he whistled twice.” “Oh,”
I said, “then of course he can’t go.”
But the choir had an expedition that term, nevertheless. We went to
Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, where we bathed in the sea and got back
after midnight.
My mother took my sister Elizabeth to the Ascot races that year.
Elizabeth was just out, and they came and fetched me and took me too,
as boys were allowed to go to the races. A little later another drama
happened, in which I was unwillingly to play the chief part. We were all
playing on the heath one morning, and I had just found a lizard and was
utterly absorbed in this find when I got a summons that I was wanted by
the Head. I found the Head in the Masters’ Common Room enjoying a little
collation. It was half-past ten. “A telegram has come,” said the Head,
“that you have been especially invited to a children’s garden-party at
Marlborough House by the Princess of Wales, and you are to go up to
London at once. Are you,” said the Head ironically, “a special friend
of the Princess of Wales?” Half excited, half fearful, and not without
forebodings, I changed into my best clothes, and ran off to catch the
train. I was to come back that evening. I arrived in time for luncheon,
and after luncheon went to the garden-party with Hugo, where we spent a
riotous afternoon. There were performing dogs and many games. My father
was not there. He was in Devonshire. When we got home it was found that I
had missed the train I was supposed to go back by, and my mother thought
I had better stay the night. She sent off a telegram to the Head, and
asked if I might do so. I thought this was a rash act. The answer came
back just before dinner that if I did not come back that night I was not
to come back at all. Everyone was distraught. There was only one more
train, which did not get to Ascot till half-past twelve.
My mother was incensed with the Headmaster, and said if my father was
there she knew he would not let me go back. I remained neutral in the
general discussion and absolutely passive, while my fate hung in the
balance, but I wanted to go back, on the whole. Both courses seemed quite
appalling: to go back after such an adventure, or not to go, and face a
new school. At first it was settled that on no account should I go, but
finally it was settled that I should go. D. took me. We arrived late.
There were no flys at the station and we had to walk to the school. We
did not get there till half-past one in the morning. D. said she would
sleep at the hotel, but the matron who opened the door for us insisted
on giving her a bedroom. The next morning I got up at half-past six to
practise the pianoforte, as usual, and D. looked into the room and said
good-bye, and then I felt I had to begin to live down this appalling
episode. But to my surprise it was not alluded to. The truth being, as
I afterwards found out, that not only my father and mother, but Dr.
Warre of Eton, had written to the Headmaster to tell him he had behaved
foolishly, and shortly afterwards, to make amends, I was sent up to
London to the dentist. But oh, parents, dear parents, if you only knew
what stress of mind such episodes involve, you would not insist on such
favours, nor ever forward invitations of that kind, not even at the
bidding of the King.
D. paid me one other visit while I was at Ascot, and brought with her a
large bunch of white grapes from Sheppy. We were not allowed hampers, nor
were we allowed to eat any food brought by strangers or relations in the
house, and when I saw that bunch of white grapes I was terrorstruck. I
made D. hide it at once. I was afraid that even its transient presence in
the house might be discovered, nor did I eat one grape.
I cannot remember that summer holiday, unless it was that summer we went
to Contrexéville for the second time, but when I went back to school
in September, Hugo went with me and we shared the same room. Games of
Spankaboo went on every night. During all my schooltime at Ascot I have
already said that I was never once bullied by the boys, but I never
seemed to do right either in the eyes of the Headmaster or of the Second
Division master. The two other masters were friendly. These two masters,
we were one day informed, intended to leave the school and set up a
school of their own at Eastbourne. They were both of them friendly to
Hugo and myself. The school was to subscribe and give them a bacon dish
in Sheffield plate as a parting gift. One day I wrote home and suggested
that Hugo and I should go to that school. I did not think this request
would be taken seriously. It seemed to me quite fantastic—an impossible,
wild fancy. To my intense surprise no answer explaining how impossible
such a thing was arrived, and I forget what happened next, but I know
that soon the two departing masters discussed the matter with me, and
I found out they were actually in correspondence with my mother. The
remaining masters used to scowl at us, but the term ended calmly and
we left the day before the end of the term, so I was unable to play in
the treble in a piece for three people at one pianoforte called “Marche
Romaine,” which I was down for on the concert programme, the second
time I missed performing at a concert in public, and the opportunity of
a lifetime missed. When I got to Membland I found it was settled that we
were not going back to Ascot, but to the new school, St. Vincent’s, at
Eastbourne. The Headmaster was told, and he at first accepted the matter
calmly, but a little later he wrote to my father and asked him what
reasons he had for taking his sons away if other parents asked him. My
father seldom wrote a letter of more than one page. But on that occasion
he wrote a letter of four pages, and the Head wrote back to say that he
was entirely satisfied with his reasons. My mother and I always wondered
what was in that letter. My father when asked said: “I knew what the man
wanted to know, and I told him,” but we never knew what that was.
In January Hugo and I went to Eastbourne, and my friend, Broadwood, also
left Ascot and followed us. There were only nine boys at first. But the
next term there were, I think, twenty, then thirty, and soon the school
became almost as big as the Ascot school, where there were forty boys.
Before I left Eastbourne, the Headmaster of my first school died, and I
do not know what happened to the school afterwards. Several of the Ascot
boys came to Eastbourne later, but the boys at Ascot were not allowed to
correspond with us. My cousins, Rowland and Windham Baring, arrived, the
sons of my Uncle Mina, who was afterwards Lord Cromer.
At Eastbourne a new life began. There was more amusement than work about
it, and everything was different. We played Soccer with another school;
we went to the swimming bath, and I learnt to swim; to a gymnasium, and
we were drilled by a volunteer sergeant. Broadwood and I gave theatrical
performances, one of which represented the Headmaster’s ménage at our
first school. It must have been an amusing play to watch, as the point of
it was that the Ascot Headmaster discovered his wife kissing her brother,
another of the Ascot masters, the villain, and she sang a song composed
by Broadwood and myself, of which the refrain was, “What would Herbert
say, dear—what would Herbert say?” Herbert being the Ascot Headmaster.
Herbert then broke on to the scene and gave way to paroxysms of jealous
rage. Another boy who came to this school was Pierre de Jaucourt, the
son of Monsieur de Jaucourt, a great friend of my father’s. Pierre was
one of the playfellows of my childhood. He took part in the dramatic
performances organised by Broadwood and myself in the Boot Room, which
became more and more ambitious, and in one play the Devil appeared
through a trap-door in a cloud of fire.
Broadwood and I were constantly making up topical duets modelled on those
of Harry Nicholls and Herbert Campbell in the Drury Lane pantomime. But
we were not satisfied with these scratch performances in the Boot Room,
although we had a make-up box from Clarkson, and wigs, and we decided
to act _She Stoops to Conquer_, which was at once put into rehearsal. I
was cast for the part of Mr. Hardcastle, Hugo for that of Miss Hastings,
Broadwood for that of Marlowe, Bell for that of Miss Hardcastle, and an
overgrown boy called Pyke-Nott for the part of Tony Lumpkin. After a few
rehearsals it was settled that the play should be done on a real stage,
and that parents and others should be invited to witness the performance.
Dresses were made for us in London, scenery was painted by Mr. Shelton,
our drawing-master, and my father and mother came down to see the play.
Hugo looked a vision of beauty as Miss Hastings. Pyke-Nott was annoyed
because he was not allowed to sing a song about Fred Archer in the tavern
scene, instead of the real song which is a part of the text. It was
thought that a song of which the refrain was, “Archer, Archer up,” would
be an anachronism.
The play went off very well, and Hugo played a breakdown on the banjo
between the acts, but when he had played three bars the bridge of his
banjo fell with a crash, and the solo came to an end.
We kept up the custom of going expeditions, not long ones, but only to
places like Pevensey and Hurstmonceux, which were quite close. We also
went out riding with a riding-master on the Downs, and in the summer we
sailed in sailing boats. Altogether it was an ideal school life. We found
the work easy, and we all seemed to get quantities of prizes, but we
learnt little. Hugo and I continued to play Spankaboo in our room, and
Hugo would do anything in the world if I threatened to refuse to play. So
much so, that one of the masters thought I was blackmailing him, and we
were told to reveal our strange secret at once. This we both resolutely
refused to do, protesting with tears that it was a private matter of no
importance, and there the matter was allowed to rest, the master merely
saying that if he ever saw any signs of anything subterranean going on we
should be punished.
I remember one curious episode happening. One of the masters found a
letter addressed to one of the boys written to him by another boy. This
was the text of the letter: “Dear Mister C.,—May I have my sausage next
Sunday at breakfast because I am very hungry.”
Mr. C., it was discovered, had been regularly levying a tribute from his
neighbour at breakfast for some weeks, and the other boy, a much smaller
boy, had had to go without his sausage. Mr. C. was severely flogged in
front of the whole school. Boys who went to Scotland for the holidays
were allowed to leave a day before the others, and as we had an all
day’s journey to Devonshire, we shared the same privilege; so did Pierre
de Jaucourt, who went to France. This inspired Broadwood to make the
following lampoon, which was good-naturedly but insistently chanted by
the rest of the school on the day before we went away:
“The Honourables are going away to-morrow,
And ten to one the Count goes too.
We poor swinies we don’t go,
We poor swinies we don’t go.
The Honourables are going away to-morrow,
And ten to one the Count goes too.”
When we went home for the holidays for the first time from Eastbourne
the train stopped at Slough. The St. Vincent’s term had ended a few days
before the Ascot term, and there, on the platform of Slough Station, we
saw the Headmaster of our Ascot school, surrounded by the first division
and evidently enjoying a first division expedition.
“Why don’t you put your head out and say how do you do to them?” said my
mother, but Hugo and I almost hid under the seat, and we lay right back
from the windows, spellbound, till the train went on.
Broadwood and I used to meet in the holidays in London. Broadwood used to
say to his parents that he was having luncheon with me in Charles Street,
and I used to say I was having luncheon with Broadwood in Eccleston
Square, but what really happened was that we used to go to a bun shop, or
have no luncheon at all, as neither of us would be seen at luncheon with
a friend in each other’s homes.
Broadwood said that his mother cross-questioned him about our house, and
that he gave a most fantastic account of our mode of life.
While we were at school at Eastbourne many eventful things happened at
home. In the summer holidays of 1886, Hugo and I went with my father to
the Cowes Regatta.
In September of the same year my father, Hugo, and myself went for a
long cruise in the _Waterwitch_. We started from Membland and stopped at
Falmouth, and Mounts Bay, and saw over St. Michael’s Mount, and then we
sailed to the Scilly Isles, where we spent a day in the wonderful garden
of Tresco. At that time of year the sea in the Scilly Isles was as blue
as the Mediterranean, especially when seen through the fuchsia hedges
and the almost tropical vegetation of the Tresco gardens. We then sailed
across the Irish Channel to Bantry Bay and up the Kenmare River and drove
in an Irish car right across the mountains to Killarney.
Next year was Jubilee year. Both my eldest sisters were married that
year. Hugo and I attended these weddings and the Jubilee procession as
well, which we saw from Bath House, Piccadilly, but I don’t remember
much about it, except the Queen’s bonnet, which had diamonds in front of
it, and the German Crown Prince in his white uniform, but I remember the
aspect of London before and after the Jubilee, the Venetian masts, the
flags, the crowds, the carriages, the atmosphere of festivity, and the
jokes about the Jubilee.
We went on acting a French play every year at Christmas, and it was
before Margaret was married that we had our greatest success with a
little one-act play by Dumas fils called _Comme Elles sont Toutes_, in
which Margaret and Susan did the chief parts quite admirably, and in
which I had a minor part. This was performed at Christmas 1886. After
Elizabeth and Margaret were married, Susan and I and Hugo continued to
act, and we did three plays in all: _Les Rêves de Marguerite_ (1887); _La
Souris_ (1888); _l’Amour de l’Art_ (by Labiche) (1889).
Another home excitement was the building of an organ in the house in
Charles Street. It was by way of being a small organ at first, but
it afterwards expanded into quite a respectable size, and had three
manuals. This gave me a mania for everything to do with organs. I got
to know every detail in the process of organ-building and every device,
tubular-pneumatic, and otherwise. The organ we had at Membland had been
built by Mr. Hele of Plymouth, and when we went back to Membland, when
the organ was being built in London, my mother said: “Don’t say anything
to Mr. Hele about this, as he will be hurt at our not having employed
him.” One day Mr. Hele came to tune the organ, and I disappeared with
him, as was my wont, right under the staircase into the very entrails
of the organ and watched him at his work. While we were there in the
darkness and the confined space, I confessed to him the secret that we
were having an organ built in London. When we came out he went straight
to my mother and said that Messrs. Hele would have been only too glad
to build an organ in London. When my mother asked me how I could have
told Mr. Hele we were having an organ built in London, I said I thought
that as we were right inside the organ, in the dark and in such a narrow
space, that it wouldn’t matter, and that he would forget. When my mother
told Chérie of this episode, Chérie laughed more than I ever saw her
laugh, and I couldn’t understand why; I was, in fact, a little offended.