ETON
I enjoyed Eton from the first moment I arrived. The surprise and the
relief at finding one was treated like a grown-up person, that nobody
minded if one had a sister called Susan or not, that all the ridiculous
petty conventions of private-school life counted for nothing, were
inexpressibly great.
Directly I arrived I was taken up to my tutor in his study, which was
full of delightful books. He took me to the matron, Miss Copeman, whom we
called MeDame. I was then shown my room, a tiny room on the second floor
in one of the houses opposite to the school-yard. As I sat in my room,
boy after boy strolled in, and instead of asking one idiotic questions
they carried on rational conversation.
The next day I met Broadwood, who was at another house, and we walked up
to Windsor in the afternoon. He told me all the things I had better know
at once; such as not to walk on the wrong side of the street when one
went up town; never to roll up an umbrella or to turn down the collar of
one’s greatcoat; how to talk to the masters and how to talk of them; what
shops to go to, and what were the sock-shops that no self-respecting boy
went to. There were several such which I never entered the whole time I
was at Eton, and yet I suppose they must have been patronised by someone.
The day after that came the entrance examination, in which I did badly
indeed, only taking Middle Fourth. My tutor said: “You have been taught
nothing at all.” I was in the twenty-seventh division—the last division
of the school but three, and up to Mr. Heygate. I was in the French
division of M. Hua, who directly he put me on to read saw that I knew
French, a fact which I had concealed during the whole time I was at
my first private school. I messed with Milton and Herbert Scott, and
after the first fortnight I became one of the two fags apportioned to
Heywood-Lonsdale.
The captain of the House was Charlie Wood, Lord Halifax’s eldest son, and
his younger brother, Francis, was a contemporary of mine and in the same
house, but Francis, who was the most delightful of boys and the source
and centre of endless fun, died at Eton in the Lent half of 1889.
Fagging was a light operation. One had to make one’s fagmaster tea, two
pieces of toast, and sometimes boil some eggs, show that one’s hands were
clean, and that was all. Then one was free to cook buttered eggs or fry
sausages for one’s own tea.
On my first Sunday at Eton I had breakfast with Arthur Ponsonby, who was
at Cornish’s, and I was invited to luncheon at Norman Tower, Windsor,
where the Ponsonbys lived. There I found my Uncle Henry, my Aunt M’aimée,
my cousins, Betty and Maggie and Johnny, and the Mildmay boys, who were
also at Eton then.
In the afternoon we went for a walk in the private grounds of the Home
Park with Johnny, and he took us to a grotto called the Black Hole of
Calcutta, which was supposed to represent the exact dimensions of that
infamous prison. It had a small, thick, glazed glass window at the top
of it. On the floor was a heap of stones. Johnny suggested our throwing
stones at the window, and soon a spirited stone-throwing competition
began. The window was already partly shattered when warning was given
that someone was coming. We thought it might be the Queen, and we darted
out of the grotto and ran for our lives.
The whole of my Eton life was starred with these Sundays at the Norman
Tower, which I looked forward to during the whole week. Maggie would take
us sometimes into the Library and the State Rooms, and we used sometimes
to hear the approaching footsteps of some of the Royal Family, and race
for our life through the empty rooms.
One day we came upon the Empress Frederick, who was quietly enjoying the
pictures by herself.
Sometimes in the afternoon Betty would take me up to her room and read
out books to me, but that was later.
Our house played football with Evans’, Radcliffe’s, and Ainger’s. We had
to play four times a week, and though I was always a useless football
player, I thoroughly enjoyed these games, especially the changing
afterwards (when we roasted chestnuts in the fire as we undressed), and
the long teas. Milton, my mess-mate, was an enthusiastic, but not a
skilful chemist, and one day he blew off his eyebrows while making an
experiment.
At the end of my first half we had a concert in the house, in which I
took part in the chorus. I had organ lessons from Mr. Clapshaw, and
during my first half I once had the treat of hearing Jimmy Joynes preach
in Lower Chapel. He had been lower master for years, and had just left
Eton; he came down to pay a visit, and this was the last time he ever
preached at Eton. His sermons were of the anecdotal type, full of quaint,
pathetic, and dramatic stories of the triumph of innocence. They were
greatly enjoyed by the boys. In the evening, after prayers, my tutor used
to come round the boys’ rooms and talk to every boy. He used to come into
the room saying: “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ci que ça?” My friends were
Dunglass, Herbert Scott, Milton, Stewart, and Brackley. After Eton days
I never saw Stewart again till 1914, when the war had just begun. I met
him then in Paris. He was in the Intelligence. He had been imprisoned in
Germany before the war, and he was killed one day while riding through
the town of Braisne on the Aisne.
Dunglass was peculiarly untidy in his clothes, and his hat was always
brushed round the wrong way. My tutor used to say to him: “You’re covered
with garbage from head to foot,” and sometimes to me: “If your friends
and relations could see you now they would have a fit.”
In the evenings the Lower boys did their work in pupil room. Boys in
fifth form, when they were slack, did the same as a punishment, and this
was called penal servitude. While they prepared their lessons or did
their verses, my tutor would be taking older boys in what was called
_private_; this in our case meant special lessons in Greek. One night
these older boys were construing Xenophon, and a boy called Rashleigh
could not translate the phrase, “Τοὺς πρὸς ἐμὲ λέγοντας.”[3] My tutor
repeated it over and over again, and then appealed to us Lower boys.
I knew what it meant, but when I was asked I repeated exactly what
Rashleigh had said, like one hypnotised, much to my tutor’s annoyance.
Sometimes when my tutor was really annoyed he would say: “Do you ever
wake up in the middle of the night and think what a ghastly fool you
are?” Another time he said to a boy: “You’ve no more manners than a cow,
and a _bad_ cow, too.” When the word δύναμαι occurred in Greek, my tutor
made a great point of distinguishing the pronunciation of δύναμαι and
δυνάμει. δύναμαι he pronounced more broadly. When we read out the word
δύναμαι we made no such distinction, and he used to say, “Do you mean
_dunamẏ_ or _dunamai_?” It was our great delight to draw this expression
from him, and whenever the word δύναμαι occurred we were careful to
accent the last syllable as slightly as possible. It never failed.
We did verses once a week. A little later most of these were done in the
house by a boy called Malcolm, who had the talent for dictating verses,
on any subject, while he was eating his breakfast, with the necessary
number of mistakes and to the exact degree of badness needed for the
standard of each boy, for if they were at all too good my tutor would
write on them, “Who is the poet?” In return for this I did the French
for him and a number of other boys. Latin verses both then, and until
I left Eton, were the most important event of the week’s work. When
one’s verses had been done and signed by one’s tutor one gave a gasp of
relief. Sometimes he tore them up and one had to do them again. I was a
bad writer of Latin verse. The kind of mistakes I made exasperated my
tutor to madness, especially when I ventured on lyrics which he implored
me once never to attempt again. In spite of the trouble verses gave one,
even when they were partly done by someone else, one preferred doing
them to a long passage of Latin prose, which was sometimes a possible
alternative. It is a strange fact, but none the less true, that boys can
acquire a mechanical facility for doing Latin verse of a kind, with the
help of a gradus, without knowing either what the English or the Latin is
about.
The subjects given for Latin verse, what we called _sense_ for verses,
were sometimes amusing. The favourite subject from the boys’ point of
view was Spring. It was a favourite subject among the masters, too. It
afforded opportunities for innumerable clichés, which were easy to find.
One of the masters giving out sense for verses used to say: “This week
we will do verses”—and then, as if it were something unheard of—“on
Spring. Take down some hints. The grass is green, sheep bleat, sound of
water is heard in the distance—might perhaps get in _desilientis aquæ_.”
The same master said one day, to a boy who had done some verses on
Charles II., “_Castus et infelix_ is hardly an appropriate epithet for
Charles II.” Once we had a lyric on a toad. “Avoid the gardener, a
dangerous man,” was one of the hints which I rendered:
“Fas tibi sit bufo custodem fallere agelli.”
The whole of my first half was like Paradise, and I came back to Membland
for the holidays quite radiant.
When I went back for my second half I was in the Upper Fourth in the
Lower Master’s Division. The Lower Master was Austen Leigh and the boys
called him the Flea. I started, when I was up to him, the fiction that
I could scarcely write, that the process was so difficult to me that a
totally illegible script was all that could be expected from me. This was
completely successful throughout the half, but in Trials I did well. I
had started off by getting the holiday task prize, the holiday task being
the _Lord of the Isles_, and as I had read a great part of it in the
train going back, and as none of the other boys had read any of it, I got
the prize.
Those holidays Chérie took Susan and myself to Paris. We stayed at the
Hôtel Normandy in the Rue de l’Échelle, and I started from Eton the day
before the result of Trials was declared. The day we arrived in Paris a
blue telegram came telling us the result. It ran as follows: “Brinkman
divinity prize, distinction in Trials, Trial Prize.” This meant that for
the distinction, one had a cross next to one’s name in the school list
for the rest of one’s Eton career. The Trial prize meant one was first in
Trials in the division. It was a complete triumph, and the Lower Master
wrote in my report: “Had I known what I discovered at the end of the half
that he could write perfectly well, I would have torn up every scrap
of his work during the half.” But it was an idle regret, as he did not
discover it until too late. We spent the whole of the holidays in Paris
and enjoyed it wildly.
Looking at a letter which I wrote from Paris (March 1888) at this time,
I see we did some strenuous sight-seeing. We went to Notre Dame des
Victoires, to the Musée Grévin, to Sainte Geneviève, la Foire de Jambon,
the Jardin d’Acclimatation, and the Bois de Boulogne; we breakfasted at
the Café de Paris, with anisette at the end of the meal; went to hear “la
Belle musique sacrée” at the Châtelet, where Mademoiselle Kraus sang and
Mounet Sully recited; we visited the Panthéon, saw Victor Hugo’s tomb,
the Musée Cluny; had breakfast at Foyod’s, and saw the Archbishop of
Paris officiate at Notre Dame, and went to the Louvre. All this was in
Holy Week.
The next week we went to Versailles, the Sainte Chapelle, and the
Invalides; saw Reichemberg and Samary act in the _Le Monde ou l’on
s’ennuie_ at the Théâtre français and _Michel Strogoff_ at the Châtelet.
On Monday, 2nd April, I wrote home: “Nous allons jeter une plume et la
suivre.” We also saw a play of Georges Ohnet’s at the Porte Saint Martin
called _La Grande Marnière_ and _Le Prophète_ at the opera, with Jean de
Reske singing the part of the false Messiah. We saw this from a little
box high up in the fourth tier, and when we arrived we found a lady and a
gentleman in our seats. We had expressly paid for the front seats. Chérie
was indignant, and had it out with the gentleman, who gave way under
protest. “Vous voyez,” said the lady, “Monsieur vous cède sa place.”
“C’est ce qu’un Monsieur doit faire,” said Chérie. “On rencontre des
gens,” said the lady, shrugging her shoulders.
We did not go to see _L’Abbé Constantin_, as Chérie said it was “_une
pièce de carême_.”
On our last night in Paris we went to see a farce called _Cocart et
Bicoquet_ at the Renaissance. This play had been recommended to Chérie
by a French friend of hers, who thought we did not understand French
enough to follow dialogue. After the first act, Chérie became uneasy, and
no sooner was the second act well under way than Chérie took us away.
It was, she said to me, no play for Susan. She added that whenever she
had tried to distract Susan’s attention from the more scabrous moments
by saying, “Regarde cette manche,” and by calling her attention to
interesting details in the toilettes of the audience, I had recalled
Susan’s attention to the play by my only too well-timed laughter.
The year after this, 1889, we again went to Paris—Chérie, Susan, and
myself—and this year Hugo came with us. Great preparations were being
made for the Exhibition. It was not yet open, but the Eiffel Tower was
finished, and we saw the reconstruction of the _Le Vieux Paris_ and a
representation of Latude escaping from the Bastille.
We also saw _Maître Guérin_ performed at the Théâtre français, with Got
Worms, Baretta, and Pierson in the cast. Got’s performance as the old,
infinitely cunning, and scheming _notaire_, who is finally deserted by
his hitherto submissive wife, was said to be the finest thing he ever did.
We saw two melodramas—_Robert Macaire_ and _La Porteuse de Pain;
Zampa_ at the Opéra Comique and _Belle Maman_, Sardou’s comedy at the
Gymnase; and Chérie and I went to see Sarah Bernhardt in perhaps the
worst play to which she ever lent her incomparable genius, and which,
I imagine, she chose simply to give herself the opportunity of playing
a quiet death scene. It was an adaptation of the English novel, _As in
a Looking-Glass_. Bad or good, I enjoyed it, and wrote home a detailed
criticism of the play. This is what I wrote: “The adaptation of the
book is bad. They evidently think you are perfectly acquainted with the
book, and the sharp outline and light and shade of character is not
sufficiently marked. In the first act you see about a dozen people who
come in and who don’t let you know who they are, and who never appear
again, and you do not arrive at the dramatic part till the last act.
“The story is briefly thus: Léna is staying with Mrs. Broadway, very
_Sainte Nitouche!_ everyone admiring her and all the _octogenaires_ in
love with her. She (whose _passé_ is not _sans tache_) is under the
power of a certain Jack Fortinbras, who forces her, under the penalty
of unveiling her past, to marry a certain Lord Ramsey. Léna has in her
possession a letter which Ramsey wrote to a Lady Dower, whose name is
also Léna, and the letter is in very affectionate terms. Ramsey is
engaged to Beatrice, and Léna shows this letter to Beatrice and says it
was to her! Of course, Beatrice thinks Ramsey _un lâche_ and leaves the
house, saying her marriage is impossible, and leaving a letter for Ramsey
to that effect. Act II. is in Léna’s house. Fortinbras comes and plays
cards with a young man and cheats. Ramsey sees this, and Fortinbras is
turned out of the house.
“ACT III., _Monte Carlo_.—Léna is staying there with Ramsey, with whom
she is now desperately in love. Fortinbras appears and asks for money,
which she gives. Ramsey comes in and asks why she is agitated. She says
she is helpless, alone. He confesses his love for her, and she, in a
nervous excitement, says, “Je t’adore,” and so scheming to marry for
money, she finds she is dreadfully in love with him.
“ACT IV.—They are married and in Scotland. Fortinbras appears tracked by
detectives and asks for 200,000 (pounds or francs?) at once, or he tells
of her _passé_. Then Sarah Bernhardt was superb. It was quite impossible
for her to get the money, and she is so happy with her husband. At this
crisis Ramsey comes in and half strangles Fortinbras, who, when let go,
reveals all Léna’s past. At the words, ‘Cette femme m’aimait une fois,’
Léna _jette un cri d’angoisse_, I would have given anything for you to
have seen her act that scene. Ramsey hears it all, and, when given the
proofs that are in letters, throws them into the fire, and Fortinbras is
given to the detectives and Ramsey is alone with Léna and tells her that
he really believes what the man said. She cannot deny it, and confesses
the whole thing. Her acting was supreme, and Ramsey says to her, ‘Et
m’avez vous jamais aimé?’ Then she gives way and bursts into _sanglots_,
and implores him to believe her, and that she adored him. He refuses to
believe her and goes out. Then all is pantomime. She takes up a knife,
throws it down, gets a little bottle of ‘morphine,’ drinks it, sits down
with Ramsey’s photograph in her hand; then come seven minutes of silence.
All pantomime, but what pantomime; she quietly dies. I have never seen
such a splendid bit of acting. It was lovely. As she is dying, Ramsey
tries to come in, but the door is locked. He comes in at the window in
an agony of grief and forgives her. Just when he is at the door she
stretches out her hand and falls back _épuisée_. It was beautiful.”
I remember a doctor saying, as we went out of the theatre: “Mais ce n’est
pas comme cela qu’on meurt de la morphine,”—upon which someone else
answered: “Alors, ceux qui ont dit: Voilà une mort réaliste ont dit une
sottise. Pourtant elle a été dite.”
We went to the cemetery of the Père Lachaise, and the tombs that I cited
in a letter are those of Héloïse and Abelard, Balzac, Alfred de Musset,
Bizet, and Géricault.
I went back to Eton for my first summer half, which is said to be the
most blissful moment of Eton life, and I think in my case it was. The
first thing one had to do was to pass swimming. I had learnt to swim at
Eastbourne, and I swam as well as I ever did before or afterwards, but
to pass, one had to swim in a peculiar way. The passing was supervised
by my tutor, and I failed to pass twice, chiefly, I think, owing to the
curious nature of my dive from the boat, which took the form of a high
leap into the air and a descent on all-fours into the water. “Swim to
the bank,” said my tutor, much to my disappointment. The second time I
failed again, but there was soon a third trial, and I passed. I at once
hired an outrigged gig with another boy, and then a period of unmixed
enjoyment began: rows up to Surley every afternoon and ginger-beer in
the garden there, bathes in the evening at Cuckoo Weir, teas at Little
Brown’s, where one ordered new potatoes and asparagus, or cold salmon and
cucumber, gooseberries and cream, raspberries and cream, and every fresh
delicacy of the season in turn. Little Brown’s, the school sock-shop next
to Ingalton Drake’s, the stationer’s, which we still called Williams’,
was then controlled by Brown, who was a comfortable lady rather like
the pictures of the Queen of Hearts in _Alice in Wonderland_. She was
assisted by Phœbe, who kept order with great spirit, in a seething mass
of unruly boys, all shouting at the top of their voices and clamouring
to be served first. Brown’s was open before early school, and if one
had the energy, one got up in time to go and have a coffee and a bun
there. It was well worth the effort, for the buns were slit open and
filled with butter, and then, not toasted, but baked in the oven, and
were crisp, hot, and delicious. Brown and Phœbe had the most marvellous
memory for faces I have ever come across. They would remember a boy
years afterwards, and when I was at Eton I used often to hear Brown say
to Phœbe, as some very middle-aged man passed the window, “There’s Mr.
So-and-so.”
There was a pandemonium in the front of the shop; in the little room
at the back of the shop only swells went. There was another sock-shop
called Rowland’s, near Barnes Pool, which had a garden and an arbour, and
sold scalloped prawns in winter and wonderful strawberry messes in the
summer. Then farther up town there was Califano, who was celebrated for
his fiery temper, and in Windsor there was Leighton’s. But Brown’s was
the smallest and cosiest of all the sock-shops, and nothing at any of the
others could vie with her hot buns in the early morning.
I was now in Remove, and once more under the tuition of Mr. Heygate.
We no longer translated Greek stories and epigrams from the delightful
collection called _Sertum_, which was used in the Fourth Form. This book
is now out of print, but I fortunately possess a copy. It is a most
delightful anthology of short anecdotes and poems. On the other hand, we
did Sidgwick’s Greek exercises, a book of very short English stories,
which have to be translated into Greek. It is one of the most charming
books ever written, and even now I can read it when I can’t read anything
else.
I can’t remember what we read in school that half, but I remember reading
_Monte Cristo_ out of school. My mother had given me an illustrated
edition of it on my birthday. On the afternoon of a whole school day
I was reading of Dantès’ escape from the Chateau d’If, and I became
oblivious of the passage of time. The school clock chimed the quarters,
but I heeded them not. Just before the school hour was ended the boys’
maid came in and told me I was missing school. I flung away my book and
ran breathless to upper school, where I found the boys just going out.
I had missed school, an unheard-of thing to do, which meant probably
writing out endless exercises of Bradley’s Latin prose. Each division
had what was called a Prepostor, a boy who kept a book in which he was
supposed to note all boys who were absent, and to find out if they were
staying out, which meant staying out of lessons, that is to say, staying
indoors on account of sickness, in which case the Dame of the house had
to sign a statement to that effect in the prepostor’s book, and add also
whether they were excused lessons; if they were not excused lessons they
had to do written work in the house. On this day the prepostor had not
noticed my absence, nor had Mr. Heygate, and I joined the crowd of boys
running downstairs as if I had been there all the time.
There were two sorts of masters at Eton—those who could keep order and
those who couldn’t. With those who could, there was never any question
of ragging. Boys knew at once what was impossible and accepted it. They
also knew in a moment when it was possible, and they lost no minute of
their opportunities, and at once began to harass the wretched master
with importunate, absurd, and impertinent questions, seeing how far they
could go in veiled insolence without overstepping the line of danger. It
was the masters who taught mathematics and French who had the worst time,
with the exception of Monsieur Hua, who was an admirable teacher and
stood no nonsense.
In Remove we did science. There were three science masters—Mr. Porter,
Mr. Drew, and Mr. Hale (Badger). I was taught by them all in turn. Mr.
Drew used to produce a mysterious and rather dirty-looking bit of stony
metal or metallic stone, and say in a confidential whisper: “Do you know
what that is? It’s quartz.” Badger Hale had only one experiment. It was
a split football which was made to revolve by turning a handle, and
proved, but hardly to our satisfaction, the centrifugal tendency of the
earth. Mr. Porter’s science lectures, on the other hand, were fraught
with excitement. Apparatus after apparatus was brought in, and experiment
after experiment was attempted, sometimes involving explosions. Sometimes
they failed. Sometimes, just at the critical moment we would laugh. Mr.
Porter would say: “I have been three days trying to get this experiment
ready, and now you have spoilt it all.” “Please, sir, we were not
laughing,” we would say. “You were looking as if you were laughing, and
that disturbs me just as much,” Mr. Porter would answer. It was no use
accusing us of laughing, because we always denied it at once, and after
a time he would always say: “Write out the verbs in _mi_ for looking as
if you were laughing.” At the end of the half, Mr. Porter gave what was
called a “Good Boys’ Lecture,” at which the first nine boys of all the
various sets he taught attended, if their work had been satisfactory
throughout the term. I went to three of these or more. They were lectures
with coloured magic-lantern slides, showing views of places all over
the world, from Indus to the Pole. Never have I enjoyed anything more.
There was a slide of Vesuvius in eruption, and slides of Venice and New
Zealand, which were entrancingly beautiful. But one half, the Good Boy
Lecture was confined to Mr. Porter’s holiday trip to the Isle of Skye,
and the slides were not coloured. This lecture was a disappointment, and
I am afraid, from the boys’ point of view, a failure. Another remarkable
lecture Mr. Porter gave was on soap-bubbles. Films of soap bubble were
projected by some device on to a screen, so that you saw the prismatic
colours enlarged and as vivid as rainbows. While this was going on,
a boy called Harben, who had a fruity alto voice, sang a sentimental
song into a tube; the vibrations of the sound had a strange effect on
the soap-bubble films, and made them change rapidly into a multitude
of kaleidoscopic shapes and gyrations and symmetrical patterns. So Mr.
Porter was the precursor of Skriabin’s Symphony, in which the music is
assisted by visible colour.
Mr. Porter gave a series of lectures on electricity out of school. I and
a boy in my house, Francis Egerton, applied to go to these. Mr. Porter
somewhat reluctantly and suspiciously allowed us to come. They were
rather stiff and advanced lectures, involving a good deal of formula
writing on the blackboard with _pi_ and other mysterious signs, but there
were also experiments. We did not understand one word of it, but soon a
difficult experiment was begun, which Mr. Porter said had taken him days
to prepare. He was doubtful whether it would succeed. This was a rash
remark. Egerton and I rocked with laughter. We laughed till we cried.
There was no question of looking as if we were laughing. We were not
allowed to go to any more lectures on electricity. There was an assistant
masters’ prize given for science, and it was either that or the following
year that the subject was physiography. I went in for this prize, staying
out the whole Sunday before so as to have time to read the book on which
we were to be examined, a short book by Huxley. I competed and won the
prize. When it came to choosing a book for my prize, I chose _The Epic
of Hades_, by Lewis Morris. I had to go to Mr. Cornish, who was not yet
Vice-Provost, to have my name written in it. He was disgusted with my
choice, and he advised me to change the book. But I was obdurate. I had
chosen the book for its nice smooth binding, and nothing would make me
reconsider my decision. “It’s poor stuff,” said Mr. Cornish; “it’s like
boys’ Latin verses when they’re very good.”
There were two other French masters besides M. Hua—M. Roublot and M.
Banck. M. Banck was sublimely strict, but M. Roublot was easygoing,
good-natured, but lacking in authority. During his lesson we used to
read the newspapers and write our letters, but we liked him too much
to rag. We used to bring in all our occupations for the week, and
stacks of writing-paper. One day when this was happening, and every boy
was pleasantly but busily engaged in some occupation of his own, who
should walk in but the Headmaster, Dr. Warre. The newspapers and the
writing-paper and envelopes disappeared as by magic, and M. Roublot at
once put on the safest boy to construe. Dr. Warre, who had grasped the
situation, told us that our conduct was disgraceful.
He often made sudden visits to divisions, and stood up by the master’s
desk while the work went on. These visits were always alarming, and one
day, when he had just gone out of the room, one of the boys said: “Lord,
how that man makes me sweat!” But there was one other French master who
was not French, but far more formidable than all the rest, and this was
Mr. Frank Tarver. Mr. Tarver was a perfect French scholar, and when he
explained what the word _bock_ meant, and said: “When you go to a café
in Paris you sit down and say, ‘Garçon, un bock,’” one felt that one had
before one a perfect man of the world. But sometimes there were no bounds
to his anger, especially if he found that one had not looked out words
in the dictionary, or if one translated _encore_ by _again_. One day I
remember his being in such a passion that he took a drawer from his desk
and flung it on the ground. It is a great thing to be able to do this
effectually. The boys quaked. Most of us liked him very much all the
same; but to some he was a terror.
Mathematical lessons were always a difficulty in my case. I should never
have passed Trials in mathematics had it not been for Euclid, which
counted together with arithmetic and algebra. Fortunately I could do
Euclid without difficulty, so I always got enough marks in that subject
to make up for getting none at all in the two other branches of the
science.
Every week we had a task called an extra-work to do out of school, which
was meant to represent an hour’s work of mathematics, and consisted
of sums in arithmetic and algebra. It generally took me more than an
hour, and I never managed to get a sum right. When we used to get into
hopeless arrears with our work, and everything was in an inextricable
tangle, there was always one solution, and that was to stay out; but to
be excused lessons one had to go to bed, and for that it was necessary
to catch cold. But just an ordinary attack of Friday fever was enough to
stay out. We complained of a bad headache and incipient insomnia, and
Miss Copeman let us stay out at once, thinking it might be the beginning
of measles, and we sat in her sitting-room reading a novel till the
crisis was over.
At the slightest sign of a real streaming cold my tutor used to pack us
off to bed and keep us there till it was gone, and we were allowed bound
volumes of the _Illustrated London News_ from the boys’ library, and my
tutor would lend us books from his own library.
Each boy in a division had to be prepostor for the division for a week at
a time in turn. With the prepostor’s book one marked in the boys who were
absent, either from school or chapel. One had a list of the boys’ names
at the end of the book and ticked them off as they walked into chapel.
This sounds a simple thing to do, but as the boys used to come in at the
last minute and all together, and one had to take up the book to a master
before chapel began, I found it flustering to a degree, and never knew
if I had marked everyone in or not. I had to go to the Headmaster once
for losing the prepostor’s book, and he said I had played fast and loose
with a position of grave responsibility, and gave me three exercises of
Bradley’s Prose to write out.
After the summer half I was in Arthur Benson’s division. We read passages
from the _Odyssey_, Virgil, and Horace’s _Odes_, the Second Book, and
for the first time I enjoyed some Latin. I thought Horace’s _Odes_
delightful. Arthur Benson used to make us draw pictures illustrating
episodes in Greek history, and he would stick them up on the wall if
they were good. One of the subjects suggested was the bridge of boats
that Xerxes threw across the sea, and I remember drawing a magnificent
picture, with the hills of the Chersonese in the background, copied from
some illustrations of the Crimean War, and a realistic flat bridge made
of planks placed on broad punts. He was delighted with the picture and
put it up at once, and sometimes he used to take older boys to see it.
There was not much religious instruction at Eton. We construed the Greek
Testament on Monday mornings, but this was a Greek lesson like any other;
and Sunday was made hideous by an exercise called Sunday Questions, which
had to be done on that day, and which we always put off doing to the
last possible moment. These were questions on historical points in the
Old Testament, and entailed finding out the answers from some such book
as Maclear’s _Old Testament History_, and writing four large sheets of
MSS. The questions were sometimes puzzling, and we used to consult Miss
Copeman, and sometimes, as a last resort, my tutor, who used to say: “I
can’t think what Mr. Benson”—or whoever it might be—“can mean.” I have
still got a copy of Sunday Questions done at Eton. In this set we were
told to give the probable dates showing the duration of the kingdoms of
Israel and Judah, and what was going on in any other countries. Another
question is: “Why was Pharaoh Necho against Judah? How did he treat their
successive kings?” And the last question (there were several others) was:
“Distinguish carefully between Jehoiakim and Jehoiakin.” I seem to have
answered these questions rather evasively, but I got seven marks out of
ten.
Besides this, boys got their religion from the sermons in Chapel, of
which they were highly critical. They enjoyed a good preacher, and
some of the masters and guests were good preachers, but the boys were
merciless critics of a bad or ludicrous preacher, and there were many of
these. One of the masters preached symbolic sermons about the meaning
of the Four Beasts. Another used to begin his sermons by saying: “The
story of the Prodigal Son is too well known to repeat. We all know how⸺”
and then elaborately retell what was supposed to be too well known to
tell at all. Before boys were confirmed they received special tuition
on religious and moral topics from their tutor, but I missed it by
having measles. So I was confirmed in the holidays, and just before my
confirmation it struck my mother that I was singularly unprepared, so she
sent me to see my Uncle Henry Ponsonby’s brother, who was a clergyman. We
called him Uncle Fred; his sister had married one of my uncles. He had
a great sense of humour, and was rather shy. He was also extremely High
Church. When I arrived with a note from my mother, in which he was asked
to examine me in theology, he was embarrassed, and he said: “Well, I will
ask you your catechism, What is your name, N. or M.?” And then he laughed
and said, “I think that will do.” When I told my mother this, she sent me
to another clergyman who did talk, but confined the conversation to moral
generalities, and said no word about the catechism. So I may say I had no
religious instruction at school during all my school-time, for which I
have always been profoundly grateful.
Music lessons became a difficulty and a stumbling-block as time went on.
I had organ lessons, and they were, of course, given out of school, and
these lessons and the necessary practice took up a lot of one’s spare
time, besides having to give way to work. Mr. Joseph Barnby, the organist
and the head of the music masters, said: “Your parents pay for your
music lessons just as they pay for your Latin lessons, and so you ought
to take just as much trouble about them.” This was quite true, but the
other masters did not see the matter in the same light. They couldn’t be
expected to take music lessons seriously, and said that music must in all
cases always give way to work.
The result was one scamped one’s practice and shirked one’s music lesson
on every possible opportunity. Matters came to such a pitch that I was
sent for by Mr. Barnby. The situation was aggravated because Dunglass
and I had unwittingly offended the violin master, and had gone into his
room while he was giving a lesson to another boy, and had then shut the
door rather more violently than was necessary. Mr. Barnby was indignant.
My brother John had been one of his best pupils. He said our conduct was
scandalous. I had employed base subterfuges to shirk music lessons, and
I and Dunglass had insulted dear kind Mr. Morsh. We apologised to Mr.
Morsh, and things went more smoothly; but I gave up the organ and had
lessons on the pianoforte instead. Mr. Barnby was quite right, but he got
no sympathy from the other masters, who continued to treat music as an
utterly unimportant side issue which must give way to everything else.
The result being, of course, that directly boys found that music lessons
made it more difficult for them to get through their work, they gave up
learning music. I have never stopped meeting people in after life who are
naturally musical, and bitterly regretted not having been taught music
seriously as boys; and if parents were wise they would insist on music
being taken seriously, if they pay for music lessons for their boys. But
as yet parents have done no such thing. Besides music lessons, there
was the musical society, which consisted of an orchestra and a chorus,
and performed a cantata at the school concert at the end of the half. I
belonged to this later, and we sang Parry’s setting to Swinburne’s Eton
“Ode” at the Eton Tercentenary Concert in June 1891. Mr. Barnby used to
conduct, and had an amazing knack of discovering someone who was not
singing, or singing a wrong note. The concerts were, I used to think,
intensely enjoyable. There was an atmosphere of triumph about them when
the swells used to walk in at the beginning in evening clothes, and
coloured scarves, which stood for various achievements either on the
river, the cricket or the football field. As each hero walked in there
were thunders of applause. Then a treble or an alto used to sing a song
that reduced the audience to tears: “Lay my head on your shoulder,
Daddy,” or “The Better Land.” There was a boy called Clarke, who used
to sing year after year till his voice broke. He had a melting voice.
During my last half at Eton there was a boy called Herz, who sang “Si
vous n’avez rien à me dire,” with startling dramatic effect, exactly like
a French professional. But the best moment of all was when the Captain
of the Boats sang the solo in the Eton Boating Song, whether he had got
a voice or not, and then the whole school sang the “Carmen Etonense” at
the end. What an audience it was! How they yelled and roared when a song
pleased them! I used sometimes to go to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor,
and Sir Walter Parratt used to let me sit in the organ loft. I heard
Bach’s “Passion Music of St. Matthew” in this way, and Sir Walter said:
“You must be as still as a mouse.”
I have said there were two kinds of masters: those who were ragged and
those who were not. The master who was most ragged was a mathematical
master called Mr. Mozley. He punished, but could never stop the stream of
impertinent comment that went on through the hours of his instruction.
One day we got a boy called Studd to practise “God save the Queen” at
his open window. His window looked out on to a yard, and Mr. Mozley’s
schoolroom was on the ground floor of the house next door to ours and
looked out on to the same yard. The windows were open. It was a hot
summer’s afternoon, and the strains of “God save the Queen” came in
through Mr. Mozley’s window. Every time the tune began we stood up. “Sit
down,” cried the Mo, or Ikey Mo, as he was called. “National Anthem,
sir,” we said; “we must stand up.” There was a short pause. Then the tune
began again. Again we all stood up. Mr. Mozley rushed to the window,
but there was no sign of any violinist. For ten minutes there was no
interruption, and then, just when Mr. Mozley, by a shower of punishments,
thought he had got the division in hand once more, the tune began again,
and again we all stood up with plaintive, resigned faces, as though
nobody minded the interruption more than we did.
Another master who was mercilessly ragged was Mr. Bouchier,[4] who was
deaf, and afterwards a famous _Times_ correspondent at Sofia—a man
who could do what he liked with the Bulgars, but who could not manage
a division of Eton boys. The boys took mice into his schoolroom, and
ultimately he had to go away.
There were masters who were stimulating teachers and roused the interest
of boys in topics outside the ordinary routine of work, and others who
kept scrupulously to the routine. The latter were the fairest, for when
outside topics were discussed probably only a minority of the boys
listened. It was above the heads of many. Arthur Benson kept scrupulously
to the routine; he made it as interesting as he could, but rarely
diverged on to stray topics, and never on to such topics that would only
interest a few of the boys. Edward Lyttelton did exactly the opposite.
When I was in his division there were about half a dozen boys who were
advanced, and had got shoved up into his division by a rapid rise. The
others were solid, stolid dunces. Edward Lyttelton devoted his time to
the intelligent, and spent much time in conversation on such topics as
ritual in Church, the reign of Charlemagne, and the acting at the Comédie
française. He carried on teaching by asking a quantity of questions
which entailed a great deal of interesting comment and argument. In the
meantime the dunces ragged. I was good at answering his questions, but I
joined in the ragging, nevertheless, partly from a sense of loyalty to
raggers in general. The result was that at the end of the half I was top
of his division for the school-time, but I forfeited the prize owing, as
he said in my report, to my incorrigible babyishness. My tutor thought
this unfair, and gave me a book instead of the prize. Mr. Rawlins, who
was afterwards Lower Master and then Vice-Provost, was a good teacher,
but his chief hobby was grammar, and he talked far above our heads. I
startled him one day. We were construing an Ode of Horace, where a phrase
occurred mentioning the difficulty of removing her cubs from, I think,
a Gætulan lioness.[5] He said, “There is a parallel to that in French
poetry.” I said, “Yes,” and quoted the lines from _Hernani_ I had known
for so long:
“Il vaudrait mieux aller au tigre même
Arracher ses petits qu’à moi celui que j’aime.”
He was dumbstruck.
I was two years a lower boy, and reached the lower division of fifth form
by September 1889. Hugo arrived at Eton, and we shared a room together.
We messed together with Dunglass, who had an order at Little Brown’s
of a shilling a day. Every day on the sideboard of the passage a large
plate used to await us in a brown paper parcel containing eggs and bacon
or sausages or fish. My tutor changed his house, and we exchanged the
convenient house opposite the school-yard for a house that was once
Marindin’s, on the Etonwick road. It was far to go, and one had to get up
early if one wished for coffee and a bun at Little Brown’s before early
school.
Dunglass and I used to read a good many books. Rider Haggard and Edna
Lyall were our favourite authors; Stevenson got a second or third place;
but _Jane Eyre_ and _Ben Hur_ were approved of, and _Monte Cristo_ got
the first prize of all. After Rider Haggard and Edna Lyall, I had a
passion for Marion Crawford’s books and read every one I could get hold
of. I have still got a list of the books I read in the year 1889, marked
according to merit. It is as follows:
NAME OF AUTHOR. NAME OF BOOK. REMARKS.
Edna Lyall _Donovan_ Worth reading.
” _We Two_ ”
” _In the Golden Days_ Exciting.
” _Won by Waiting_ Very good.
” _Knight Errant_ Worth reading.
” _The Autobiography of a
Slander_ Very good.
” _Derrick Vaughan, Novelist_ Worth reading.
Shorthouse _John Inglesant_ Excellent.
” _The Countess Eve_ Not worth reading.
Rider Haggard _King Solomon’s Mines_ Excellent.
” _She_ Thrilling.
” _Jess_ Worth reading.
” _Allan Quatermain_ Exciting.
” _Mr. Meeson’s Will_ Trash.
” _Maiwa’s Revenge_ Trash.
Alphonse Daudet _Tartarin de Tarascon_ Very good.
Alexandre Dumas _Le Comte de Monte Cristo_ Perfect book.
” _La Dame de Monsoreau_ Worth reading.
Halévy _L’Abbé Constantin_ Very good.
Octave Feuillet _Le Roman d’un jeune homme
pauvre_ Very good.
Lord Lytton _The Last Days of Pompeii_ Excellent.
Marion Crawford _Mr. Isaacs_ Worth reading.
” _Dr. Claudius_ ”
” _Zoroaster_ ”
” _A Roman Singer_ ”
” _A Tale of a Lonely Parish_ Very good.
” _Saracinesca_ Worth reading.
” _Paul Patoff_ Exciting.
” _Marzio’s Crucifix_ Worth reading.
” _Greifenstein_ Thrilling.
” _With the Immortals_ Worth reading.
” _Sant’ Ilario_ ”
Charles Kingsley _Two Years Ago_ ”
George Eliot _Silas Marner_ Very good.
” _Adam Bede_ Perfect book.
” _Romola_ Very good.
” _The Mill on the Floss_ Perfect book.
Whyte-Melville _Katerfelto_ Very good.
” _The White Rose_ Worth reading.
” _The Gladiators_ ”
Lew Wallace _Ben Hur_ Excellent.
Graham _Neæra_ Worth reading.
Mrs. Humphry Ward _Robert Elsmere_ ”
Wilkie Collins _The Woman in White_ Very good.
A. C. Gunter _That Frenchman_ Thrilling.
Charles Reade _Foul Play_ Worth reading.
R. L. Stevenson _Treasure Island_ Perfect book.
” _Kidnapped_ Excellent.
” _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ Thrilling.
” _New Arabian Nights_ Very good.
” _The Dynamiter_ ”
” _The Master of Ballantrae_ Excellent.
Julian Hawthorne _Mrs. Gainsborough’s Diamonds_ Very good.
Charlotte Brontë _Jane Eyre_
Charles Kingsley _Westward Ho!_
The reason the last two have no comments was probably because the red
ink in which the comments were made had run out. I remember being
particularly thrilled by _Jane Eyre_, and so was Dunglass, who read it at
the same time.
The 4th of June was an excitement for boys who were just beginning their
Eton career, but older boys were most blasé about it and preferred short
leave. We made great preparations for my first 4th of June; grease spots
were ironed out of the tablecloth, everything that looked untidy was
put away; the window-box, which did duty for a garden, was prepared and
decked. I struck out a bold note in my window-box by having a fountain in
it, made by Mr. Duffield of High Street, according to my instructions.
There was a square tin basin and a fountain in the middle of it, which
was fed from a tank which was hung high up by the side of the window.
The fountain worked successfully, but made a great mess, and the boys’
maid had no patience with it. When my tutor came round in the evening,
the night before the 4th of June, he said the room looked like a whited
sepulchre. I had visitors on the 4th of June. Chérie came, and I forget
which other members of the family.
Once every half the Headmaster used to ask Hugo and myself to breakfast.
This we enjoyed; it was an excellent breakfast, with lots of sausages.
The Headmaster used to look at the _Times_, comment on the House of
Commons, quote Horace, and ask after John and Cecil. Other masters
asked one to breakfast as well, and I think few things gave the boys so
much pleasure. They used to discuss every detail of the breakfast with
the other boys afterwards, and retail everything the master had said.
I enjoyed my breakfasts with Mr. Impey most; he used to tell me about
books, and we used to discuss Rider Haggard and Stevenson. I greatly
preferred Rider Haggard, and I had just read _King Solomon’s Mines_, and
had one night sat up late reading _She_.
Long leave and short leave were two great excitements. When I went for
short leave I used to go by the earliest possible train and arrive at
my sister Margaret’s house long before breakfast. When long leave came
about, we always went to a play on Saturday night, and I remember seeing
_Captain Swift_ at the Haymarket, and Coquelin in _L’Étourdi_. For my
long leave of the summer of 1889, I had been looking forward for days to
going to see Sarah Bernhardt in _La Tosca_, but when I came up to London,
I found to my horror that Chérie and my mother had both been told it was
too horrible a play to go and see. My eloquent advocacy overcame Chérie’s
scruples. “Vraiment,” she said, “tu serais un superbe avocat.” And she,
Margaret, and I went off to the Lyceum and thoroughly enjoyed Sarah’s
harrowing and electric performance. While we were having dinner, before
starting, someone who was there said that two men who had been to see the
play had come out in the middle. Chérie, who by that time had decided we
were to go, said they must have been _des poules mouillées_.
I think it was in 1890 that Queen Victoria opened the New Schools at Eton
and made a speech. And one summer while I was at Eton, the German Emperor
inspected the Eton Volunteers. While he was doing this on horseback, a
boy called Cunliffe let off his rifle and the German Emperor’s horse
bolted into the playing fields.
Well-known people used to come and lecture at the literary society
sometimes, but the only famous man I heard while I was at Eton was
Mr. Gladstone, who lectured at the literary society in March 1891, on
Artemis, as revealed in Homer. I was fortunate enough to get a ticket for
this lecture. The boys, abstruse as the subject was, were spellbound.
There was only one joke in the lecture, and that would have been better
away. It was this: “Some of you may have heard the old story of the moon
being made of green cheese.” Pause for laughter and a dead silence. “The
moon might just as well,” continued Mr. Gladstone, “be made of green
cheese for all the purposes she serves in Homer.”
At the end of the lecture the Provost returned thanks, and then Mr.
Gladstone leapt to his feet and made an impassioned speech on classical
education. The last sentence of his peroration was as follows: “But
this, Mr. Provost, I venture to say, and say with confidence, and it
is not a fancy of youth nor the whim of the moment, but the conviction
forced upon me even more by the experience of life than by any reasoning
quality, that if the purposes of education be to fit the human mind for
the efficient performance of the greatest functions, the ancient culture,
and, above all, the Greek culture, is by far the best and strongest, the
most lasting, and the most elastic instrument that could possibly be
applied to it.”
As he said these words his eyes flashed, he opened and raised his arms,
and his body seemed to expand and grow tall. He seemed like the priest
of culture speaking inspired words. His voice rolled out in a golden
torrent, and as he said the words, “the best and strongest, the most
lasting, the most elastic,” they seemed to come to him with the certainty
of happy inspiration and with the accent of the unpremeditated. With
these words his voice reached its highest pitch of crescendo, and then,
slightly dying down, melodiously sank into silence.
This little speech showed me what great oratory could be.
At the end of my first year there was a prize called the Headmaster’s
prize for French, for lower boys. I competed for this. It was always
rather difficult to get a French prize at Eton, as there was usually a
French or a Canadian boy who spoke and knew the language like a native.
There was a special examination paper for this prize. I and a French
boy, whose name I have forgotten, both got 95 marks out of 100. Then the
papers were looked through again, and it was found that I had translated
the French word _hôte_ by _host_, when it should have been guest, so
the other boy was given the prize, but my tutor gave me a book as a
consolation. The following year I competed for the Headmaster’s French
prize for boys in fifth form, and that time I won it, much to the delight
of Chérie and of everyone at Membland.
In fifth form we learnt German as an extra. German was taught by Mr.
Ploetz, who knew the language; and by other masters, who didn’t. During
the lessons of the latter, one paid no attention, and attended to one’s
private affairs. Mr. Ploetz was an excellent, stimulating teacher, but
most unpopular with the other masters. The boys liked him; he was a book
collector, and had a fine library. He taught me a great deal, not of
German, as I paid no attention to the regular work, but I picked up from
him a mass of miscellaneous information. It was the fashion to rag during
his lessons, and I outdid everyone in ingenious interruption during Mr.
Ploetz’ lessons. It was not that he couldn’t keep order. He was extremely
strict and competent, but one knew, with the fiendish intuition of boys,
that his complaints would not be taken seriously by the other masters,
or by one’s tutor. This was indeed the case. There were three forms of
punishment at Eton. First of all, one could get a yellow ticket, which
meant one had to do a punishment of some written kind and get the ticket
signed by one’s tutor. We did not much like leaving out the yellow ticket
in a prominent place for my tutor to see when he came round in the
evening. If matters went further, one was reported to the Headmaster and
received a white ticket. The white ticket was in force for a week. During
that week leave was stopped, and if the slightest complaint was made by
anyone, it meant being complained of to the Headmaster a second time and
a flogging by the Headmaster. I was complained of by Mr. Ploetz to the
Headmaster. As I guessed, the other masters took this far from seriously.
“What have you been doing to _Mr. Ploetz_?” said my tutor. What I had
been guilty of was overt rowdyism, combined with prolonged and unbearable
impertinence, which if done to any other master would have been taken
very seriously indeed. “What _have_ you been doing to Mr. Ploetz?”
said another master to me, with a laugh, when he met me in the street.
I received a white ticket, but I got through the week without further
complaints, and I was never complained of again.
When I was in fifth form, the school library became a favourite haunt of
mine, and Mr. Burcher, the librarian, a special friend. Mr. Burcher was
a little dapper man, who was pained when we jumped over the tables, a
favourite game of mine, or if we threw the books about. “Is it a joke,”
he would ask plaintively, “or is it an insult?” But in that library,
during my last year at Eton, I made by myself the discovery of English
poetry, and read the works of Shelley in the three little volumes
of the second Moxon edition of 1850, and the poems of Keats in Lord
Houghton’s one-volume edition. On Sundays I used to go, rich with my new
discoveries, to Norman Tower, and compare notes with Betty Ponsonby, who
knew reams of English poetry by heart, and we would read each last new
favourite poem. There is no joy in the world like this to discover these
things for the first time. The shabby little Keats and Shelley, the green
volumes of Tennyson, the three dark volumes of Matthew Arnold—what mines
of fairy treasure they represented!
I made friends, through one of his pupils, with Arthur Benson. I had
been in his division twice, but I had never known him well. One of the
Coventrys, Willie Coventry, was his pupil, and he told Arthur Benson that
I liked books and poetry, and had written a novel called _Elvira_, which
was true (only it had to be destroyed after I had measles), and was going
to write the libretto of an opera of which he, Coventry, was to write
the music. He was not really musical, and did not know a note of music
technically. He also intended, when I first made his acquaintance, to
write a life of Mary Stuart; but this, like the opera, never got far.
Arthur Benson was most kind and interested, and it was arranged that
on Sunday afternoons we should meet in his rooms and read out poetry.
Arnold Ward, Mrs. Humphry Ward’s son, who was in College, joined us. We
read out poetry; if we had written something ourselves, we left it with
Arthur Benson for a week, he told us what he thought about it next time.
I showed him a Fairies’ Chorus from my libretto. He said: “I don’t like
those galloping metres, but I see you have got a good vocabulary.” My
next effort was an Ode on the Tercentenary of Eton College, in which
Fielding was mentioned as “the great wielder of the painting pen.” “Have
you read Fielding?” asked Arthur Benson. I had not read Fielding. “I
see,” said Arthur Benson, “you take him on trust.”
There was at that time a newspaper edited by two of the boys, called the
_Mayfly_. I sent them my poem on Eton College, but they wisely refused
it. The _Mayfly_, edited by Ramsay, was an amusing paper, but not quite
as good as the _Parachute_, which had come out the year before, and was
edited by Carr Bosanquet and others. This was a singularly brilliant
newspaper. It only had three numbers, but they were most successful.
There was at the same time an exceedingly serious newspaper called _The
Eton Review_, edited, I think, by Beauchamp, which had articles about the
Baconian theory, and other rather heavy topics. During my last summer a
newspaper which had twenty editors, but only one number, came out, called
_The Students’ Humour_. There was also a book published in 1891, called
_Keate’s Lane Papers_, in which there is an excellent poem by J. K.
Stephen, which has never been republished, called “The Song of the Scug.”
It begins:
“There was a little scug
Who sat upon a rug,
With a dull and empty brain,
And would show his indecision
In a twopenny division,
With a friend of the same low strain.
And would eat a lot of cherries and see a lot of cricket,
Till his lips and his fingers were as sticky as the wicket,
But at last he came to be a bald old man
Who talked about as wildly as a bald man can.
And he said, by Gad;
When I was a lad,
And the very best dry bob alive,
I should have made a million,
But a man in the Pavilion
Was killed by my first hard drive.”
J. K. Stephen used often to come down to Eton, dressed always in
slippers, a dark blue flannel blazer, and a dirty pink cap on the back of
his head; and thus dressed, and reading a small book, I saw him serenely
and unconsciously walk across the pitch during the Winchester match.
Arthur Benson stimulated our reading tremendously, and we were startled
and interested by his frank heresies. He said he did not care for
Milton’s _Lycidas_. He wished Shakespeare had been a modern and had
written novels. He was indifferent to Shelley. He loathed Byron, but
was none the less impressed, when one Sunday Arnold Ward read out the
description of the battle of Talavera (_Childe Harold_, I. xxxviii.), and
he admitted it was moving. He disliked Carlyle, Ruskin, and Thackeray. On
the other hand, he introduced us to Matthew Arnold, Rossetti, FitzGerald,
and many others, and encouraged us to go on liking anything we did
like. By this time I had read many novels—Thackeray’s _Vanity Fair_,
_Pickwick_, a good deal of Scott (I was given the Waverley Novels for
Christmas 1889), George Eliot’s _Adam Bede_, _The Mill on the Floss_, and
quantities of poetry. Betty Ponsonby gave me Swinburne’s _Atalanta in
Calydon_, but explained to me that the denunciations of God in it only
applied to the Greek gods, and she and my Aunt M’aimée both changed the
subject when I suggested reading Swinburne’s _Poems and Ballads_.
Willie Coventry and I found out that there was a competition going on
at this time in a magazine called _Atalanta_ for who should write the
best essay in 500 words. You were allowed to choose your own subject.
Willie Coventry won it one month by writing an essay on Dr. Schliemann’s
Excavations, a subject suggested to him by Arthur Benson. The next month
I competed, and chose as my subject a poem by Edgar Allan Poe called “For
Annie,” and I won the prize too.
In the summer of 1890 I went to stay at the Coventrys’ place at Croome
Court in Worcestershire, and Willie Coventry came to Membland later in
the same summer. The libretto I was writing for him never got further
than a few lyrics, and his score never got further than a few bars and
a triumphal march, which I composed, and even played at one of Miss
Copeman’s afternoon parties. I can still play it now, if pressed.
I had a faint hope at one time that I might be able to get into the
Boats. Arthur Benson had taken me out one day down stream and advised
me to try. I could row well enough on the stroke side, but not so well
on the bow side of the boat. I put my name down for Novice Eights, in
which boys were tried, and one evening I started out full of hope.
Unfortunately I was told to row bow in the boat. A tall Colleger stood up
in the stern of the boat to coach us. No sooner had we started than there
was a loud call: “Keep time, Bow—keep time, Bow!” and we had not gone
much farther than the Brocas when I caught so violent a crab that the
coach fell into the water, the boat was partially submerged, and we had
to go back, some of us swimming. I was never allowed to row in company
again, and earned the reputation of being the only person who had ever
swamped a Novice Eight.
In the autumn of 1890 Hugo and I went up to London for long leave.
My father and mother were staying at my sister Elizabeth’s house in
Grosvenor Place, and there we heard about the financial crisis in Baring
Brothers, which had nearly ended in a great disaster. When we went
back to Membland at Christmas everything was different. There was no
Christmas party, and the household was going through a process of gradual
dissolution. Chérie was leaving us, the stables were empty, and the old
glory of Membland had gone for ever.
All through the next year I was engrossed with the discoveries I was
making in English literature. In the summer I sent a poem to _Temple
Bar_, then edited by George Smith, and to my great surprise it was
printed, and I received a cheque for a guinea. During that same summer
I had a little book of poems privately printed at Eton, called _Damozel
Blanche_, consisting of ballads and lyrics.
I was now a member of the House Debating Society, in which we used
to have heated discussions on such subjects as whether sports were
brutalising or not, whether conscription was a good thing, whether
General Booth’s scheme was a sound one, and whether Mary Queen of Scots
had been improperly beheaded.
There was another debating society founded before I left Eton, called _Le
Cercle des Débats_, in which we made speeches in French, and I remember
M. Hua making a passionate speech in favour of England relinquishing her
hold upon Egypt. I spoke several times at this debating society, and in
the report on the debate as to whether Monte Carlo should be allowed to
exist, it is recorded that: “M. Baring croyait que c’était un mauvais
endroit mais que cela ne devrait pas être supprimé.”
The summer of the Eton Tercentenary, 1891, was great fun, especially
the concert, when Hubert Parry’s beautiful setting to Swinburne’s
“Ode” was performed. I sang among the baritones. My mother came down
for the concert, and Hubert Parry conducted himself. There was an
interesting exhibition in the school hall, and it was there that I made
the acquaintance of Mrs. Cornish. My Aunt M’aimée introduced me to her,
and I soon became a great friend of the Cornish family, and was invited
by them to go out on water-parties down stream to the Bells of Ousley
and Runnymede, and to have supper with them afterwards. I enjoyed these
water-parties as much as anything at Eton.
In the summer holidays of 1891 I went to stay with Chérie, who had left
us. She lived with her friend, Miss Charlesworth, in a little house
called Waterlooville, near Cosham, in Hants, and realised the dream of
her life, namely, to have a large garden of her own full of hollyhocks
and sunflowers and sweet peas.
In the Michaelmas half of 1891 I competed for the Prince Consort’s French
prize. I had already done so the last year, but I was then too young
to compete with sixth-form boys, who were much older, and I was not
expected to get a place, but I came out third. This year it was my great
ambition to get the prize. I thought of nothing else. We had to read
several books—Molière’s _L’Avare_, Alfred de Vigny’s _Cinq Mars_, Taine’s
_Voyage aux Pyrénées_, Victor Hugo’s _Ruy Blas_, and Brachet’s _Grammaire
Historique_. Besides this, we were examined in unseen translations from
and into French, and we had to write a French essay. We were examined
by a Monsieur Hammonet. I worked extremely hard for this examination,
and had extra lessons in the evenings from M. Hua. So did the other
competitors. My serious rival was Grand d’Hauteville, who I think was a
French Canadian, and who spoke French fluently. The examination took five
days, and as it went on I became more and more convinced that I had not
done well and could not possibly win the prize. When it was over, there
was a long interval of agonising suspense before the result was made
known.
One afternoon I received a summons from my Uncle Henry Ponsonby to go
and see him at Windsor. I found him, not at Norman Tower, but in a room
somewhere in the Castle, and he told me that the Queen had just received
the news of the result of the Prince Consort’s prize. She was the first
to get this news; the news was that I was first and had got the prize. I
at once sent a telegram to my mother and to Chérie, and walked back to
Eton, drunk with triumph and delight to tell my tutor.
The news was not published for some days, and I told nobody, I think,
except my tutor and Dunglass. But it came out at last, and was published
in the _Times_ and on the board at Eton. My father and mother came down
to see me, and my father gave me his own watch: a _Breguet_, the Demidoff
_Breguet_. It was then settled that I was not to go back to Eton, but
to go to Germany to learn German and prepare for the Diplomatic Service
competitive examination.
Dunglass went on messing with Hugo and myself until I left Eton. We had
three or four fags and they bored us, and we could never find things for
them to do. Dunglass developed into a fine Eton football player, and got
his House Colours and then his Field Colours. He was a new boy the same
half as I was, and our alliance lasted unbroken through my Eton life. One
half we learnt bird-stuffing together, and when our mess funds used to
run short Dunglass used to say: “I’ve marked off an uncle,” and one of
his many uncles used to come down and tip us. Our mess was a lively one,
and when there was a whole holiday on Friday, which necessitated Friday’s
work being done on Thursday, an arrangement which used to be called doing
Friday’s business, we used to sing in a loud chorus a song, the words of
which were:
“Why not to morrow?
Why not to-morrow?
Why, because to-morrow is to-day!”
The greatest excitements of Eton life were, I always thought, the House
football matches for the House Cup. There was the Eton and Harrow match,
of course, but while I was at Eton these matches were unexciting and
Eton never won, and Dunglass and I agreed that there were few things
we enjoyed more than driving away from Lord’s. Nothing surpassed the
excitement of the House matches. One year, I think it was the year
before I left, we were supposed to have a small chance of getting beyond
first ties, but our House played so well together that they got into the
ante-final. They then drew Cornish’s, who had a strong side of powerfully
built boys. An epic match followed. Durnford’s played as if inspired;
they got three rouges to nil, but failed to convert them into goals, and
the game was almost over. Then, in the last five minutes of the game,
Cornish’s scored a rouge, and being far the heavier team converted it
into a goal, and won the match. Never was there a more exciting match.
During my last year my chief friends in the House, besides Dunglass, were
Leslie Hamilton, who went into the Coldstream Guards and was killed in
the war, and Crum; and outside the House, Gerald Cornish. He, too, killed
in the war.
Arthur Benson was my greatest friend among the masters, and I used
constantly to have tea with him, and have long talks about books and
every other sort of thing. My last half I was up to Mr. Luxmoore, who was
to be a lifelong friend.
The last days of my last half were like a dream. I was hardly conscious
of the reality of things, and I did not yet fully realise that my Eton
life was coming to an end. There was no more work to do. The battle for
the Prince Consort’s prize had been fought and won. It was, as Eton
triumphs go, a small triumph—small indeed compared with such glories as
surround those who get the Newcastle, stroke the Eight, or play in the
Field, or at Lord’s in the Eleven; but such as it was, it gave me as much
joy and triumph as my being could hold, and nothing in after life could
ever touch the rapture of the moment when I knew I had got it.
Now there was nothing left to do but to make every moment seem as
long as possible and to say good-bye. Good-bye to the School Library,
my favourite haunt at Eton, the scene of so much hurried, scrambled
work, of such minute consultations of ecclesiastical authorities for
Sunday Questions, or of translations of Virgil and Horace, and the
Greeks; of such long and serious discussions of future and present
plans and literary topics, schemes and dreams, poems, plays, operas,
novels, romances, with Willie Coventry and Gerald Cornish. Good-bye
to the leather tables where numberless poems had been copied out on
the grey Library foolscap paper, which for some reason we used to
call _electric-light_ paper; tables over which we had leapt in wild
steeplechases, while Burcher protested, where so many construes had been
prepared, and so many punishments scribbled, and where the great poets of
England had been surreptitiously discovered, and the accents of Milton
and Keats overheard for the first time, and the visions of Shelley and
Coleridge discerned through the dust of the daily work and above the din
of chattering boys. Good-bye to the playing fields, to South Meadow, the
Field, to Upper School, and to Williams’ inner room, full of prizes and
redolent with the smell of tree-calf and morocco, where I had so often
dreamt of getting prizes and wondered what I should choose if I ever
managed to get the Prince Consort’s prize. Good-bye to the Brocas, to
Upper Hope and Athens and Romney Weir,
“Where the lock-stream gushes,
Where the cygnet feeds,”
and to all the reaches of the river. Good-bye to Windsor and Norman
Tower, and to the chimes of the inexorable school clock; to my little
room with its sock cupboard, bureau, and ottoman, to Little Brown’s and
to Phœbe, and then to one’s friends: to my Dame and to my tutor, and to
Arthur Benson, and the unforgettable readings and talks in his house.
I went to Williams’ to choose my prize, and while I was there Mr. Cornish
strolled in, and seeing what I was doing, he said: “Of course you will
choose a lot of little books—boys always do—but what you ought to do is
to get Littré’s Dictionary or all Sainte Beuve.” This was asking too much
in the way of sense, and I compromised. I chose a Shakespeare in twelve
volumes, bound in tree calf, a Milton in three volumes, and a few other
small books. My tutor gave me two volumes of Ruskin; Mr. Luxmoore gave me
a volume of Ruskin as well. Arthur Benson gave me _Ionica_. Just before
leaving I had the honour of dining with my tutor, which made one feel
already as if one was entering a new world. The hour struck when I was
actually leaving Eton. Up to that last moment all had been excitement
and fun, but when I was actually sitting in the train and crossing the
fifteen arches railway bridge, and Windsor Castle and the trees of the
Brocas came into sight, the whole of the past, the Eton past, surged up
and overwhelmed me like a flood, and I realised in that last fleeting
glimpse of the trees, the river, and the grey Castle all that Eton life
had meant, and what it was that in leaving Eton I was saying good-bye to.