In my eyes, at all events, there was a kind of a partnership between
my father and myself from this time onward. Before, there had been
three groups in my scheme of things: upon the one hand, Amelia (or her
successor) and myself, with, latterly, some of the people of the
Putney Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen; in another and quite
separate compartment, my father; and, finally, the rest of the world.
Gradually, now, I came to see things rather in this wise: upon the one
hand, my father and myself, with, perhaps, a few other folk as
satellites; and, on the other hand, the rest of the world.
And at this early stage I began to regard the world--every one outside
our own small camp--in an antagonistic light, as a hostile force, as
the enemy. Life was a battle in which the odds were fearfully uneven;
for it was my father and myself against the world. Needless to say, I
did not put the matter to myself in those words; but at this precise
period I am well assured that I acquired this attitude of mind. It
dated from the admittance into partnership with my father, which was
signalised by the walk and talk among the bracken in Richmond Park.
I ought to say that I had always had a great admiration for my father.
He seemed to me clearly superior in a thousand ways to other men. But
never before the Richmond episode had there been personal sympathy,
nor yet any loyal feeling of fellowship, mingled with this admiration.
I remember very distinctly the pride I felt in my father's personal
appearance. He was not a dandy, I think; but there was a certain quiet
nicety and delicacy about his dress and manner which impressed me
greatly. The hair about his ears and temples was silvery grey; one of
the marks of his superiority, in my eyes. He always raised his hat in
leaving a shop in which a woman served; his manner of accepting or
tendering an apology among strangers was very grand indeed. In
saluting men in the street, he had a spacious way of raising his
malacca stick which, to this day, would charm me, were it possible to
see such a gesture in these rushing times. The photograph before me as
I write proves that my father was a handsome man, but it does not show
the air of distinction which I am assured was his. And, let me record
here the fact that, whatever might be thought of the wisdom or
otherwise of his views or actions, I never once knew him to be guilty
of an act of vulgar discourtesy, nor of anything remotely resembling
meanness.
In these days it is safe to say that the very poorest toiler's child
has more of schooling than I had, and, doubtless, a superior sort of
schooling. I spent rather less than a year and a half at the Putney
Academy, and that was the beginning and the end of my schooling.
Before being introduced to the Academy, I was a fairly keen reader;
and that remained. At the Academy I was obliged to write in a copy-book,
and to commit to memory sundry valueless dates. There may have
been other acquisitions (irrespective of ear-tweakings and various
cuts from a vicious little cane), but I have no recollection of them;
and, to this day, the simplest exercises of everyday figuring baffle
me the moment I take a pencil in my hand. If I cannot arrive at
solution 'in my head' I am done, and many a minor monetary loss have I
suffered in consequence.
I trust I am justified in believing that to-day there are no such
schools left in England as that Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen, in
Putney. As a training establishment it was more suitable, I think, for
the sons of parrots or rabbits. I never even learned to handle a
cricket bat or ball there. Neither, I think, did any of my
contemporaries in that futile place. The headmaster and proprietor was
a harassed and disappointed man, who exhausted whatever energies he
possessed in interviewing parents and keeping up appearances. His one
underpaid usher was a young man of whom I remember little, beyond his
habit of pulling my ears in class, and the astoundingly rich crop of
pimples on his face, which he seemed to be always cultivating with
applications of cotton-wool, plaster, and nasty stuff from a flat
white jar. His mind, I verily believe, was as innocent of thought as a
cabbage. When sent to play outdoor games with us, and instruct us in
them, he always reclined on the grass, or sat on a gate, reading the
_Family Herald_, or a journal in whose title the word 'Society'
figured; except on those rare occasions when his employer came our way
for a few moments. Then, cramming his book into his pocket, the poor
pimply chap would plunge half hysterically into our moody ranks
(forgetful probably of what we were supposed to be playing) with
muttered cries of: 'Now then, boys! Put your heart into it!' and the
like. 'Put your heart into it!' indeed! Poor fellow; he probably was
paid something less than a farm labourer's wage, and earned
considerably less than that.
No, any education which I received in boyhood must have come to me
from my father; and that entirely without any set form of instruction,
but merely from listening to his talk, and asking him questions. Also,
the books I read were his property; and I do not recall any trash
among them. It was the easiest thing in the world to evade the
'home-work' set me by the usher, and I consistently did so. As a rule, he
was none the wiser, and when he did detect me, the results rarely went
beyond perfunctory ear-pulling; a cheap price for free evenings, I
thought. The usher was frankly sick of us all, and of his employment,
too; and I do not wonder at it, seeing that he was no more equipped
for his work than for administering a state. He never had been trained
to discharge any function in life whatever. How then could he be
expected to know how to train us?
Withal, I somehow did acquire a little knowledge, and the rudiments of
some definite tastes and inclinations, during this period. Recently,
in London, I have once or twice endeavoured to probe the minds of
County Council schoolboys of a similar age, with a view to comparing
the sum of their knowledge with my own in those Putney days. And,
curious though it seems, it does certainly appear to me that the
comparison was never to the advantage of the modern boy; though I am
assured he must enjoy the benefits of some kind of thought-out
educational system. I certainly did not. These things partake of the
nature of mysteries.
I suppose the successive servant maids who chiefly controlled my early
childhood must have been more ignorant than any member of their class
in post-Board School days. Yet it seems beyond question clear to me
that such beginnings of a mind as I possessed at the age of ten, such
mental tendencies as I was beginning to show, were at all events more
hopeful, more rational, better worth having, than those I have been
able to discern in the twentieth-century London office boy, fresh from
his palatial County Council School. I may be quite wrong, of course,
but that is how it appears to me--despite all the uplifting influences
of halfpenny newspapers, and picture theatres, and the forward march
of democracy.
Then there is that notable point, the question of speech; the vehicle
of mental expression and thought transference. Between the ages of one
year and nine years, society for me was confined almost exclusively to
servant girls. From their lips it was that I acquired the faculty of
speech. Yet I am certain that the boy who walked in Richmond Park with
my father in the 'sixties spoke in his dialect, and not in that of
Cockney nursemaids. Why was that? If my father ever corrected my
speech it was upon very rare occasions. I remember them perfectly.
They were not such corrections as would very materially affect a lad's
accent or choice of words.
Having read a good deal more than I had conversed, I was mentally
familiar with certain words which I never had happened to have heard
pronounced. One instance I recall. (It was toward the end of my
Academy period.) I had occasion to read aloud some passage to my
father, and it included the word 'inevitable,' which in my innocence I
pronounced with the accent on the third syllable. Up went my father's
eyebrows. 'Inev_it_able,' he mimicked, with playful scorn. And that
was all. He offered no correction. I recall that I was covered in rosy
confusion, and, guessing rightly, by some happy chance (or unconscious
recollection) hit upon the conventional pronunciation, never to forget
it. But, judged by any scholastic standard I ever heard expounded,
there is no doubt about it, I was, and for that matter am, a veritable
ignoramus.
During all the year which followed the beginning of intimacy between
us, my impression is that my father was increasingly worried and
depressed. Children have a shrewder consciousness of these things than
many of their elders suppose; and I was well aware that things were
not going well with my father. I saw more of him, and missed no
opportunities of obtaining his companionship. He, for his part, saw a
good deal less of other people, I fancy, and lost no opportunity of
avoiding intercourse with his contemporaries. He brooded a great deal;
and was very fitful in his reading, writing, and correspondence. I
began to hear upon his lips significant if vague expressions of his
desire to 'Get away from all this'; to 'Get out of this wretched
scramble'; to 'Find a way out of it all.'
And then with bewildering suddenness came the first big event of my
career; the event which, I suppose, was chiefly responsible also for
its latest episode.