EARLY WORK IN LONDON
In 1883 my father became anxious to give up teaching boys and to
confine himself more exclusively to the work of a clergyman. With this
in view he contemplated moving to London where he had been offered the
chaplaincy of the huge London Hospital. I remember his talking it over
with me, and then asking if I had any idea what I wanted to do in
life. It came to me as a new conundrum. It had never occurred to me to
look forward to a profession; except that I knew that the heads of
tigers, deer, and all sorts of trophies of the chase which adorned our
house came from soldier uncles and others who hunted them in India,
and I had always thought that their occupation would suit my taste
admirably. It never dawned on me that I would have to earn my bread
and butter--that had always come along. Moreover, I had never seen
real poverty in others, for all the fisher-folk in our village seemed
to have enough. I hated dress and frills, and envied no one. At
school, and on the Riviera, and even in Wales, I had never noticed any
want. It is true that a number of dear old ladies from the village
came in the winter months to our house once or twice a week to get
soup. They used to sit in the back hall, each with a round tin can
with a bucket handle. These were filled with hot broth, and the old
ladies were given a repast as well before leaving. As a matter of fact
I very seldom actually saw them, for that part of the house was cut
off entirely by large double green-baize covered doors. But I often
knew that they must have been there, because our Skye terrier, though
fed to overflowing, usually attended these seances, and I presume,
while the old ladies were occupied with lunch, sampled the cans of
soup that stood in rows along the floor. He used to come along with
dripping whiskers which betrayed his excursion, and the look of a
connoisseur in his large round eyes--as if he were certifying that
justice had been done once more in the kitchen.
While I was in France the mother of my best chum in school had been
passing through Marseilles on her way home from India, and had most
kindly taken me on a jolly trip to Arles, Avignon, and other
historical places. She was the wife of a famous missionary in India.
She spoke eight languages fluently, including Arabic, and was a
perfect "vade mecum" of interesting information which she well knew
how to impart. She had known my mother's family all her life, they
being Anglo-Indians in the army service.
About the time of my father's question, my friend's mother was staying
in Chester with her brother-in-law, the Lord Lieutenant of
Denbighshire. It was decided that as she was a citizeness of the
world, no one could suggest better for what profession my peculiar
talents fitted me. The interview I have long ago forgotten, but I
recall coming home with a confused idea that tiger hunting would not
support me, and that she thought I ought to become a clergyman, though
it had no attraction for me, and I decided against it.
None of our family on either side, so far as I can find out, had ever
practised medicine. My own experience of doctors had been rather a
chequered one, but at my father's suggestion I gladly went up and
discussed the matter with our country family doctor. He was a fine
man, and we boys were very fond of him and his family, his daughter
being our best girl friend near by. He had an enormous practice, in
which he was eminently successful. The number of horses he kept, and
the miles he covered with them, were phenomenal in my mind. He had
always a kind word for every one, and never gave us boys away, though
he must have known many of our pranks played in our parents' absence.
The only remaining memory of that visit was that the old doctor
brought down from one of his shelves a large jar, out of which he
produced a pickled human brain. I was thrilled with entirely new
emotions. I had never thought of man's body as a machine. That this
weird, white, puckered-up mass could be the producer or transmitter of
all that made man, that it controlled our physical strength and
growth, and our responses to life, that it made one into "Mad G." and
another into me--why, it was absolutely marvellous. It attracted me as
did the gramophone, the camera, the automobile.
My father saw at once on my return that I had found my real interest,
and put before me two alternative plans, one to go to Oxford, where my
brother had just entered, or to join him in London and take up work in
the London Hospital and University, preparatory to going in for
medicine. I chose the latter at once--a decision I have never
regretted. I ought to say that business as a career was not suggested.
In England, especially in those days, these things were more or less
hereditary. My forbears were all fighters or educators, except for an
occasional statesman or banker. Probably there is some advantage in
this plan.
The school had been leased for a period of seven years to a very
delightful successor, it being rightly supposed that after that time
my brother would wish to assume the responsibility.
Some of the subjects for the London matriculation were quite new to
me, especially "English." But with the fresh incentive and new vision
of responsibility I set to work with a will, and soon had mastered the
ten required subjects sufficiently to pass the examination with
credit. But I must say here that Professor Huxley's criticisms of
English public school teaching of that period were none too stringent.
I wish with all my heart that others had spoken out as bravely, for in
those days that wonderful man was held up to our scorn as an atheist
and iconoclast. He was, however, perfectly right. We spent years of
life and heaps of money on our education, and came out knowing nothing
to fit us for life, except that which we picked up incidentally.
I now followed my father to London, and found every subject except my
chemistry entirely new. I was not familiar with one word of botany,
zoology, physics, physiology, or comparative anatomy. About the
universe which I inhabited I knew as little as I did about cuneiform
writings. Except for my mathematics and a mere modicum of chemistry I
had nothing on which to base my new work; and students coming from
Government free schools, or almost anywhere, had a great advantage
over men of my previous education; I did not even know how to study
wisely. Again, as Huxley showed, medical education in London was so
divided, there being no teaching university, that the curriculum was
ridiculously inadequate. There were still being foisted upon the world
far too many medical men of the type of Bob Sawyer.
There were fourteen hospitals in London to which medical schools were
attached. Our hospital was the largest in the British Isles, and in
the midst of the poorest population in England, being located in the
famous Whitechapel Road, and surrounded by all the purlieus of the
East End of the great city. Patients came from Tilbury Docks to
Billingsgate Market, and all the river haunts between; from Shadwell,
Deptford, Wapping, Poplar, from Petticoat Lane and Radcliffe Highway,
made famous by crime and by Charles Dickens. They came from Bethnal
Green, where once queens had their courts, now the squalid and crowded
home of poverty; from Stratford and Bow, and a hundred other slums.
The hospital had some nine hundred beds, which were always so full
that the last surgeon admitting to his wards constantly found himself
with extra beds poked in between the regulation number through sheer
necessity. It afforded an unrivalled field for clinical experience and
practical teaching. In my day, however, owing to its position in
London, and the fact that its school was only just emerging from
primeval chaos, it attracted very few indeed of the medical students
from Oxford and Cambridge, who are obliged to come to London for their
last two or three years' hospital work--the scope in those small
university towns being decidedly limited.
Looking back I am grateful to my alma mater, and have that real
affection for her that every loyal son should have. But even that does
not conceal from me how poor a teaching establishment it was. Those
who had natural genius, and the advantages of previous scientific
training, who were sons of medical men, or had served apprenticeships
to them, need not have suffered so much through its utter
inefficiency. But men in my position suffered quite unconsciously a
terrible handicap, and it was only the influences for which I had
nothing whatever to thank the hospital that saved me from the
catastrophes which overtook so many who started with me.
To begin with, there was no supervision of our lives whatever. We were
flung into a coarse and evil environment, among men who too often
took pride in their shame, just to sink or swim. Not one soul cared
which you did. I can still remember numerous cases where it simply
meant that men paid quite large sums for the privilege of sending the
sons they loved direct to the devil. I recall one lad whom I had known
at school. His father lavished money upon him, and sincerely believed
that his son was doing him credit and would soon return to share his
large practice, and bring to it all the many new advances he had
learned. The reports of examinations successfully passed he fully
accepted; and the non-return of his son at vacation times he put down
to professional zeal. It was not till the time came for the boy to get
his degree and return that the father discovered that he had lived
exactly the life of the prodigal in the parable, and had neither
attended college nor attempted a single examination of any kind
whatever. It broke the father's heart and he died.
Examinations for degrees were held by the London University, or the
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, never by the hospital
schools. These were practically race committees; they did no teaching,
but when you had done certain things, they allowed you to come up and
be examined, and if you got through a written and "viva voce"
examination you were inflicted on an unsuspecting public "qualified to
kill"--often only too literally so.
It is obvious on the face of it that this could be no proper criterion
for so important a decision as to qualifications; special crammers
studied the examiners, their questions, and their teachings, and luck
had a great deal to do with success. While some men never did
themselves justice in examinations, others were exactly the reverse.
Thus I can remember one resident accoucheur being "ploughed," as we
called it, in his special subject, obstetrics--and men to whom you
wouldn't trust your cat getting through with flying colours.
Of the things to be done: First you had to be signed up for attending
courses of lectures on certain subjects. This was simply a matter of
tipping the beadle, who marked you off. I personally attended only two
botany lectures during the whole course. At the first some practical
joker had spilled a solution of carbon bisulphide all over the
professor's platform, and the smell was so intolerable that the
lecture was prorogued. At the second, some wag let loose a couple of
pigeons, whereupon every one started either to capture them or stir
them up with pea-shooters. The professor said, "Gentlemen, if you do
not wish to learn, you are at liberty to leave." The entire class
walked out. The insignificant sum of two and sixpence secured me my
sign-up for the remainder of the course.
Materia medica was almost identical; and while we had better fortune
with physiology, no experience and no apparatus for verifying its
teachings were ever shown us.
Our chemistry professor was a very clever man, but extremely
eccentric, and his class was pandemonium. I have seen him so
frequently pelted with peas, when his head was turned, as to force him
to leave the amphitheatre in despair. I well remember also an
unpopular student being pushed down from the top row almost on to the
experiment table.
There was practically no histology taught, and little or no pathology.
Almost every bit of the microscope which I did was learned on my own
instrument at home. Anatomy, however, we were well taught in the
dissecting-room, where we could easily obtain all the work we needed.
But not till Sir Frederick Treves became our lecturer in anatomy and
surgery was it worth while doing more than pay the necessary sum to
get signed up.
In the second place we had to attend in the dispensary, actually to
handle drugs and learn about them--an admirable rule. Personally I
went once, fooled around making egg-nogg, and arranged with a
considerate druggist to do the rest that was necessary. Yet I
satisfied the examiners at the College of Physicians and Surgeons,
those of the London University at the examinations for Bachelor of
Medicine--the only ones which they gave which carried questions in any
of these subjects.
In the athletic life of the University, however, I took great
interest, and was secretary in succession of the cricket, football,
and rowing clubs. I helped remove the latter from the old river Lea to
the Thames, to raise the inter-hospital rowing championship and start
the united hospitals' rowing club. I found time to row in the
inter-hospital race for two years and to play on the football team in
the two years of which we won the inter-hospital football cup. A few
times I played with the united hospitals' team; but I found that their
ways were not mine, as I had been taught to despise alcohol as a
beverage and to respect all kinds of womanhood. For three years I
played regularly for Richmond--the best of the London clubs at the
time--and subsequently for Oxford, being put on the team the only term
I was in residence. I also threw the hammer for the hospital in the
united hospitals' sports, winning second place for two years. Indeed,
athletics in some form occupied every moment of my spare time.
It was in my second year, 1885, that returning from an out-patient
case one night, I turned into a large tent erected in a purlieu of
Shadwell, the district to which I happened to have been called. It
proved to be an evangelistic meeting of the then famous Moody and
Sankey. It was so new to me that when a tedious prayer-bore began with
a long oration, I started to leave. Suddenly the leader, whom I
learned afterwards was D.L. Moody, called out to the audience, "Let us
sing a hymn while our brother finishes his prayer." His practicality
interested me, and I stayed the service out. When eventually I left,
it was with a determination either to make religion a real effort to
do as I thought Christ would do in my place as a doctor, or frankly
abandon it. That could only have one issue while I still lived with a
mother like mine. For she had always been my ideal of unselfish love.
So I decided to make the attempt, and later went down to hear the
brothers J.E. and C.T. Studd speak at some subsidiary meeting of the
Moody campaign. They were natural athletes, and I felt that I could
listen to them. I could not have listened to a sensuous-looking man, a
man who was not a master of his own body, any more than I could to a
precentor, who coming to sing the prayers at college chapel
dedication, I saw get drunk on sherry which he abstracted from the
banquet table just before the service. Never shall I forget, at the
meeting of the Studd brothers, the audience being asked to stand up if
they intended to try and follow Christ. It appeared a very sensible
question to me, but I was amazed how hard I found it to stand up. At
last one boy, out of a hundred or more in sailor rig, from an
industrial or reformatory ship on the Thames, suddenly rose. It seemed
to me such a wonderfully courageous act--for I knew perfectly what it
would mean to him--that I immediately found myself on my feet, and
went out feeling that I had crossed the Rubicon, and must do something
to prove it.
[Illustration: OXFORD UNIVERSITY RUGBY UNION FOOTBALL TEAM
W.T. Grenfell at left of bottom row]
We were Church of England people, and I always attended service with
my mother at an Episcopal church of the evangelical type. At her
suggestion I asked the minister if I could in any way help. He offered
me a class of small boys in his Sunday School, which I accepted with
much hesitation. The boys, derived from houses in the neighbourhood,
were as smart as any I have known. With every faculty sharpened by the
competition of the street, they so tried my patience with their pranks
that I often wondered what strange attraction induced them to come at
all. The school and church were the property of a society known by the
uninviting title of the "Episcopal Society for the promotion of
Christianity among the Jews." It owned a large court, shut off from
the road by high gates, around which stood about a dozen houses--with
the church facing the gates at one end of a pretty avenue of trees. It
was an oasis in the desert of that dismal region. It possessed also an
industrial institution for helping its converts to make a living, when
driven out of their own homes; and its main work was carried on for
the most part by superannuated missionaries. One was from Bagdad, I
remember, and one from Palestine, both themselves Jews by extraction.
These missionaries were paid such miserable salaries that in their old
age they were always left very poor.
One instance of a baptism I have never forgotten. I was then living in
the court, having hired a nice separate house under the trees after my
father had died and my mother had moved to Hampstead. In such a
district the house was a Godsend. One Sunday I was strolling in the
court when the clergyman came rushing out of the church and called to
me in great excitement, "The church is full of Jews. They are going to
carry off Abraham. Can't you go in and help while I fetch the police?"
My friend and I therefore rushed in as directed to a narrow alleyway
between high box pews which led into the vestry, into which "Abraham"
had been spirited. The door being shut and our backs put to it, it was
a very easy matter to hold back the crowd, who probably supposed at
first that we were leading the abduction party. There being only room
for two to come on at once, "those behind cried forward, and those in
front back," till after very little blood spilt, we heard the police
in the church, and the crowd at once took to flight. I regret to say
that we expedited the rear-guard by football rather than strictly
Christian methods. His friends then charged Abraham with theft,
expecting to get him out of his place of refuge and then trap him, as
we were told they had a previous convert. We therefore accompanied him
personally through the mean streets, both to and fro, spoiling for
more fun. But they displayed more discretion than valour, and to the
best of my belief he escaped their machinations.
My Sunday-School efforts did not satisfy me. The boys were few, and I
failed to see any progress. But I had resolved that I would do no work
on Sundays except for others, so I joined a young Australian of my
class in hospital in holding services on Sunday nights in half a dozen
of the underground lodging-houses along the Radcliffe Highway. He was
a good musician, so he purchased a fine little portable harmonium, and
whatever else the lodgers thought of us, they always liked the music.
We used to meet for evening tea at a place in the famous Highway known
as "The Stranger's Rest," outside of which an open-air service was
always held for the sailors wandering up and down the docks. At these
a number of ladies would sing; and after the meetings a certain number
of the sailors were asked to come in and have refreshments. There were
always some who had spent their money on drink, or been robbed, or
were out of ships, and many of them were very fine men. Some were
foreigners--so much so that a bit farther down the road a Norwegian
lady carried on another similar work, especially for Scandinavians.
A single story will illustrate the good points which some of these men
displayed. My hospital chief, Sir Frederick Treves, had operated on a
great big Norwegian, and the man had left the hospital cured. As a
rule such patients do not even know the name of their surgeon. Some
three weeks later, however, this man called at Sir Frederick Treves's
house late one dark night. Having asked if he were the surgeon who had
operated on him and getting a reply in the affirmative, he said he had
come to return thanks, that since he left hospital he had been
wandering about without a penny to his name, waiting for a ship, but
had secured a place on that day. He proceeded to cut out from the
upper edge of his trousers a gold Norwegian five-kronen piece which
his wife had sewed in there to be his stand-by in case of absolute
need. He had been so hungry that he had been tempted to use it, but
now had come to present it as a token of gratitude--upon which he
bowed and disappeared. Sir Frederick said that he was so utterly taken
aback that he found himself standing in the hall, holding the coin,
and bowing his visitor out. He said he could no more return it than
you could offer your teacher a "tip," and he has preserved it as a
much-prized possession.
The underground lodging-house work did me lots of good. It brought me
into touch with real poverty--a very graveyard of life I had never
surmised. The denizens of those miserable haunts were men from almost
every rank of life. They were shipwrecks from the ocean of humanity,
drifted up on the last beach. There were large open fireplaces in the
dens, over which those who had any food cooked it. Often while the
other doctor or I was holding services, one of us would have to sit
down on some drunken man to keep him from making the proceedings
impossible; but there was always a modicum who gathered around and
really enjoyed the singing.
We soon found that there were no depths of contemptible treachery
which some among these new acquaintances would not attempt. We became
gradually hardened to the piteous tales of ill luck, of malignant
persecution, and of purely temporary embarrassments, and learned soon
to leave behind us purses, and watches, and anything else of value,
and to keep some specially worn clothing for this service.
There was always a narrow passage from the front door to the staircase
which led down into those huge underground basements. The guardians
had a room inside the door, with a ticket window, where they took five
or possibly eight cents from the boarders for their night's lodging.
At about eleven o'clock a "chucker out" would go down and clear out
all the gentlemen who had not paid in advance for the night. This was
always a very melancholy period of the evening, and in spite of our
hardened hearts, we always had a score against us there. That,
however, had to be given in person, for there were plenty among our
audiences who had taken special courses in imitative calligraphy.
I.O.U.'s on odd bits of paper were a menace to our banking accounts
till we sorrowfully abandoned that convenient way of helping often a
really deserving case.
In those houses, somewhat to my astonishment, we never once received
any physical opposition. We knew that some considered us harmless and
gullible imbeciles; but the great majority were still able to see that
it was an attempt, however poor, to help them. Drink, of course, was
the chief cause of the downfall of most; but as I have already said,
there were cases of genuine, undeserved poverty--like our sailor
friend, overtaken with sickness in a foreign port. We induced some to
sign the pledge and to keep it, if only temporarily, but I think that
we ourselves got most out of the work, both in pleasure and uplift. I
recall one clergyman, one doctor, and many men from the business world
and clerk's life in the flotsam and jetsam.
One poor creature, in the last stage of poverty and dirt, proved to be
an honours man in Oxford. We looked up his record in the University.
He assured us that he intended to begin again a new life, and we
agreed to help start him. We took him to a respectable, temperance
lodging-house, paid for a bed, a bath, and a supper, and purchased a
good second-hand outfit of clothing for him. We were wise enough only
to give this to him after we had taken away his own while he was
having a bath in the tub. We did not give him a penny of money,
fearing his lack of control. Next morning, however, when we went for
him, he was gone--no one knew where. We had the neighbouring saloons
searched, and soon got track of him. Some "friend" in the temperance
house had given him sixpence. The barman offered him the whiskey; his
hands trembled so that he could not lift the glass to his mouth, and
the barman kindly poured it down his throat. We never saw him again.
In this lodging-house work a friend, now a well-known artist and
successful business man, often joined us two doctors.
My growing experience had shown me that there was a better way to the
hearts of my Sunday-School boys than merely talking to them. Like
myself, they worshipped the athlete, whether he were a prize-fighter
or a big football player. There were no Y.M.C.A.'s or other places for
them to get any physical culture, so we arranged to clear our
dining-room every Saturday evening, and give boxing lessons and
parallel-bar work: the ceiling was too low for the horizontal. The
transformation of the room was easily accomplished. The furniture was
very primitive, largely our own construction, and we could throw out
through the window every scrap of it except the table, which was soon
"adapted." We also put up a quoit pitch in our garden.
This is no place to discuss the spiritual influences of the "noble art
of boxing." Personally I have always believed in its value; and my
Sunday-School class soon learned the graces of fair play, how to take
defeat and to be generous in victory. They began at once bringing
"pals" whom my exegesis on Scripture would never have lured within my
reach. We ourselves began to look forward to Saturday night and Sunday
afternoon with an entirely new joy. We all learned to respect and so
to love one another more--indeed, lifelong friendships were developed
and that irrespective of our hereditary credal affiliations. The
well-meaning clergyman, however, could not see the situation in that
light, and declining all invitations to come and sample an evening's
fun instead of condemning it unheard, or I should say, unseen, he
delivered an ultimatum which I accepted--and resigned from his school.
My Australian friend was at that time wrestling with a real ragged
school on the Highway on Sunday afternoons. The poor children there
were street waifs and as wild as untamed animals. So, being
temporarily out of a Sunday job, I consented to join him.
Our school-room this time owed no allegiance to any one but
ourselves, and the work certainly proved a real labour of love. If the
boys were allowed in a minute before there was a force to cope with
them, the room would be wrecked. Everything movable was stolen
immediately opportunity arose. Boys turned out or locked out during
session would climb to the windows, and triumphantly wave stolen
articles. On one occasion when I had "chucked out" a specially
obstreperous youth, I was met with a shower of mud and stones as I
passed through a narrow alley on my return home. The police were
always at war with the boys, who annoyed them in similar and many
other ways. I remember two scholars whose eyes were blacked and badly
beaten by a "cop" who happened to catch them in our doorway, as they
declared, "only waiting for Sunday School to open." Old scores were
paid off by both parties whenever possible. My own boys did not stay
in the old school long after I left, but came and asked me to keep a
class on Sunday in our dining-room--an arrangement in which I gladly
acquiesced, though it involved my eventually abandoning the ragged
school, which was at least two miles distant.
With the night work at the lodging-houses, we used to combine a very
aggressive total abstinence campaign. The saloon-keepers as a rule
looked upon us as harmless cranks, and I have no doubt were grateful
for the leaflets we used to distribute to their customers. These
served admirably for kindling purposes. At times, however, they got
ugly, and once my friend, who was in a saloon talking to a customer,
was trapped and whiskey poured into his mouth. On another occasion I
noticed that the outer doors were shut and a couple of men backed up
against them while I was talking to the bartender over the counter,
and that a few other customers were closing in to repeat the same
experiment on me. However, they greatly overrated their own stock of
fitness and equally underrated my good training, for the scrimmage
went all my own way in a very short time.
If ever I told my football chums (for in those days I was playing
hard) of these adventures in a nether world, they always wanted to
come and cooperate; but I have always felt that reliance on physical
strength alone is only a menace when the odds are so universally in
favour of our friend the enemy. At this time also at St. Andrew's
Church, just across the Whitechapel Road from the hospital, the
clergyman was a fine athlete and good boxer. He was a brother of Lord
Wenlock, and was one night returning from a mission service in the
Highway when he was set upon by footpads and robbed of everything,
including the boots off his feet. Meantime "Jack the Ripper" was also
giving our residential section a most unsavoury reputation.
My long vacations at this time were always taken on the sea. My
brother and I used to hire an old fishing smack called the "Oyster,"
which we rechristened the "Roysterer." This we fitted out,
provisioned, and put to sea in with an entirely untrained crew, and
without even the convention of caring where we were bound so long as
the winds bore us cheerily along. My brother was always cook--and
never was there a better. We believed that he would have made a mark
in the world as a chef, from his ability to satisfy our appetites and
cater to our desires out of so ill-supplied a galley. We always took
our departure from the north coast of Anglesea--a beautiful spot, and
to us especially attractive as being so entirely out of the run of
traffic that we could do exactly as we pleased. We invariably took our
fishing gear with us, and thus never wanted for fresh food. We could
replenish our bread, milk, butter, and egg supply at the numerous
small ports at which we called. The first year the crew consisted of
my brother and me--skipper, mate, and cook between us--and an Oxford
boating friend as second mate. For a deckhand we had a young East
London parson, whom we always knew as "the Puffin," because he so
closely resembled that particular bird when he had his vestments on.
We sailed first for Ireland, but the wind coming ahead we ran instead
for the Isle of Man. The first night at sea the very tall
undergraduate as second mate had the 12 P.M. to 4 A.M. night watch.
The tiller handle was very low, and when I gave him his course at
midnight before turning in myself, he asked me if it would be a breach
of nautical etiquette to sit down to steer, as that was the only
alternative to directing the ship's course with his ankles. No land
was in sight, and the wind had died out when I came on deck for my 4
A.M. to 8 A.M. watch. I found the second mate sitting up rubbing his
eyes as I emerged from the companion hatch.
"Well, where are we now? How is her head? What's my course?"
"Don't worry about such commonplace details," he replied. "I have made
an original discovery about these parts that I have never seen
mentioned before."
"What's that?" I asked innocently.
"Well," he replied, "when I sat down to steer the course you gave
brought a bright star right over the topmast head and that's what I
started to steer by. It's a perfect marvel what a game these heavenly
bodies play. We must be in some place like Alice in Wonderland. I just
shut my eyes for a second and when next I opened them the sun was
exactly where I had left that star--" and he fled for shelter.
It is a wonder that we ever got anywhere, for we had not so much as a
chronometer watch, and so in spite of a decrepit sextant even our
latitude was often an uncertain quantity. However, we made the port of
Douglas, whence we visited quite a part of the historic island. As our
parson was called home from there, we wired for and secured another
chum to share our labours. Our generally unconventional attire in
fashionable summer resorts was at times quite embarrassing.
Barelegged, bareheaded, and "tanned to a chip," I was carrying my
friend's bag along the fashionable pier to see him off on his homeward
journey, when a lady stopped me and asked me if I were an Eskimo,
offering me a job if I needed one. I have wondered sometimes if it
were a seat in a sideshow which she had designed for me.
We spent that holiday cruising around the island. It included getting
ashore off the north point of land and nearly losing the craft; and
also in Ramsey Harbour a fracas with the harbour authorities. We had
run that night on top of the full spring tide. Not knowing the
harbour, we had tied up to the first bollard, and gone incontinently
to sleep. We were awakened by the sound of water thundering on top of
us, and rushing up found to our dismay that we were lying in the mud,
and a large sewer was discharging right on to our decks. Before we had
time to get away or clean up, the harbour master, coming alongside,
called on us to pay harbour duties. We stoutly protested that as a
pleasure yacht we were not liable and intended to resist to the death
any such insult being put upon us. He was really able to see at once
that we were just young fellows out for a holiday, but he had the last
word before a crowd of sight-seers who had gathered on the quay above
us.
"Pleasure yacht, pleasure yacht, indeed!" he shouted as he rode away,
"I can prove to any man with half an eye that you are nothing but one
of them old coal or mud barges."
The following year the wind suited better the other way. We were
practically all young doctors this time, the cook being a very
athletic chum in whose rooms were collected as trophies, in almost
every branch of athletics, over seventy of what we called silver
"pots." As a cook he proved a failure except in zeal. It didn't really
interest him, especially when the weather was lively. On one occasion
I reported to the galley, though I was the skipper that year, in
search of the rice-pudding for dinner--Dennis, our cook, being
temporarily indisposed. Such a sight as met my view! Had I been
superstitious I should have fled. A great black column the
circumference of the boiler had risen not less than a foot above the
top rim, and was wearing the iron cover jauntily on one side as a
helmet. It proved to be rice. He had filled the saucepan with dry
rice, crowded in a little water, forced the lid on very tight and left
it to its own devices!
Nor, in his subsequent capacity as deckhand, did he redeem in our eyes
the high qualities of seamanship which we had anticipated from him.
Our tour took us this time through the Menai Straits, _via_ Carnarvon
and the Welsh coast, down the Irish Channel to Milford Haven. In the
region of very heavy tides and dangerous rocks near the south Welsh
coast, we doubled our watch at night. One night the wind fell very
light, and we had stood close inshore in order to pass inside the
Bishop Rocks. The wind died out at that very moment, and the heavy
current driving us down on the rocky islands threatened prematurely to
terminate our cruise. The cook was asleep, as usual when called, and
at last aroused to the nature of the alarm, was found leaning forward
over the ship's bows with a lighted candle. When asked what he was
doing, he explained, "Why, looking for those bishops, of course."
No holiday anywhere could be better sport than those cruises. There
was responsibility, yet rest, mutual dependence, and a charming,
unconventional way of getting acquainted with one's own country. We
visited Carnarvon, Harlech, and other castles, lost our boat in a
breeze of wind off Dynllyn, climbed Snowden from Pwllheli Harbour, and
visited a dozen little out-of-the-world harbours that one would
otherwise never see. Fishing and shooting for the pot, bathing and
rowing, and every kind of healthy out-of-doors pleasure was indulged
in along the road of travel. Moreover, it was all made to cost just as
much or as little as you liked.
Another amusing memory which still remains with me was at one little
seaport where a very small man not over five feet high had married a
woman considerably over six. He was an idle, drunken little rascal,
and I met her one day striding down the street with her intoxicated
little spouse wrapped up in her apron and feebly protesting.
One result of these holidays was that I told my London boys about
them, using one's experiences as illustrations; till suddenly it
struck me that this was shabby Christianity. Why shouldn't these town
cagelings share our holidays? Thirteen accompanied me the following
summer. We had three tents, an old deserted factory, and an
uninhabited gorge by the sea, all to ourselves on the Anglesea coast,
among people who spoke only Welsh. Thus we had all the joys of foreign
travel at very little cost.
Among the many tricks the boys "got away with" was one at the big
railway junction at Bangor, where we had an hour to wait. They
apparently got into the baggage-room and stole a varied assortment of
labels, which they industriously pasted over those on a large pile of
luggage stacked on the platform. The subsequent tangle of destinations
can better be imagined than described.
Camp rules were simple--no clothing allowed except short blue knickers
and gray flannel shirts, no shoes, stockings, or caps except on
Sundays. The uniform was provided and was as a rule the amateur
production of numerous friends, for our finances were strictly
limited. The knickers were not particularly successful, the legs
frequently being carried so high up that there was no space into which
the body could be inserted. Every one had to bathe in the sea before
he got any breakfast. I can still see ravenous boys staving off the
evil hour till as near midday as possible. No one was allowed in the
boats who couldn't swim, an art which they all quickly acquired. There
was, of course, a regular fatigue party each day for the household
duties. We had no beds--sleeping on long, burlap bags stuffed with
hay. A very favourite pastime was afforded by our big lifeboat, an old
one hired from the National Lifeboat Society. The tides flowed very
strongly alongshore, east on the flood tide and west on the ebb. Food,
fishing lines, and a skipper for the day being provided, the old boat
would go off with the tide in the morning, the boys had a picnic
somewhere during the slack-water interim, and came back with the
return tide.
When our numbers grew, as they did to thirty the second year, and
nearly a hundred in subsequent seasons, thirty or more boys would be
packed off daily in that way--and yet we never lost one of them. If
they had not had as many lives as cats it would have been quite
another story. The boat had sufficient sails to give the appearance
to their unfamiliar eyes of being a sailing vessel, but the real work
was done with twelve huge oars, two boys to an oar being the rule. At
nights they used to come drifting homeward on the returning tides
singing their dirges, like some historic barge of old. There was one
familiar hymn called "Bringing in the Sheaves," which like everything
else these rascals adapted for the use of the moment; and many a time
the returning barge would be announced to us cooking supper in the old
factory or in the silent gorge, by the ringing echoes of many voices
beating with their oars as they came on to the words:
"Pulling at the sweeps,
Pulling at the sweeps;
Here we come rejoicing,
Pulling at the sweeps."
As soon as the old boat's keel slid up upon the beach, there would be
a rush of as appreciative a supper party as ever a cook had the
pleasure of catering for.
An annual expedition was to the top of Mount Snowdon, the highest in
England or Wales. It was attempted by land and water. Half of us
tramped overland in forced marches to the beautiful Menai Straits,
crossed the suspension bridge, and were given splendid hospitality and
good beds on the straw of the large stables at the beautiful country
seat of a friend at Treborth. Here the boat section who came around
the island were to meet us, anchoring their craft on the south side of
the Straits. Our second year the naval division did not turn up, and
some had qualms of conscience that evil might have overtaken them. Nor
did they arrive until we by land had conquered the summit, travelling
by Bethesda and the famous slate quarries, and returning for the
second evening at Treborth. We then found that they had been stranded
on the sands in Red Wharf Bay, so far from shore that they could
neither go forward nor back; had thus spent their first night in a
somewhat chilly manner in old bathing machines by the land wash, and
supped off the superfluous hard biscuit which they had been reserving
for the return voyage. They were none the worse, however, our genial
host making it up to them in an extra generous provision and a special
evening entertainment. One of my smartest boys (a Jew by nationality,
for we made no distinctions in election to our class), in recounting
his adventures to me next day, said: "My! Doctor, I did have some fun
kidding that waiter in the white choker. He took a liking to me so I
let him pal up. I told him my name was Lord Shaftesbury when I was
home, but I asked him not to let it out, and the old bloke promised he
wouldn't." The "old bloke" happened to be our host, who was always in
dress-clothes in the evening, the only time we were at his house.
These holidays were the best lessons of love I could show my boys. It
drew us very closely together; and to make the boys feel it less a
charitable affair, every one was encouraged to save up his railway
fare and as much more as possible. By special arrangement with the
railway and other friends, and by very simple living, the per caput
charges were so much reduced that many of the boys not only paid their
own expenses, but even helped their friends. The start was always
attended by a crowd of relatives, all helping with the baggage. The
father of one of my boys was a costermonger, and had a horse that he
had obtained very cheap because it had a disease of the legs. He
always kept it in the downstairs portion of his house, which it
entered by the front door. It was a great pleasure to him to come and
cart our things free to the station. The boys used to load his cart
at our house, and I remember one time that they made him haul
unconsciously all the way to the big London terminal at Euston half
our furniture, including our coal boxes. His son, a most charming boy,
made good in life in Australia and bought a nice house in one of the
suburbs for his father and mother. I had the pleasure one night of
meeting them all there. The father was terribly uneasy, for he said he
just could not get accustomed to it. All his old "pals" were gone, and
his neighbours' tastes and interests were a great gulf between them. I
heard later that as soon as his son left England again the old man
sold the house, and returned to the more congenial associations of a
costermonger's life, where I believe he died in harness.
The last two years of my stay in London being occupied with resident
work at hospital, I could not find time for such far-off holidays, and
at the suggestion of my chief, Sir Frederick Treves, himself a
Dorsetshire man, we camped by permission of our friends, the owners,
in the grounds of Lulworth Castle, close by the sea. The class had now
developed into a semi-military organization. We had acquired real
rifles--old-timers from the Tower of London--and our athletic clubs
were portions of the Anglesey Boys' Brigade, which antedated the Boys'
Brigade of Glasgow, forerunner of the Church Lads' Brigade, and the
Boy Scouts.
One of the great attractions of the new camping-ground was the
exquisite country and the splendid coast, with chalk cliffs over which
almost any one could fall with impunity. Lulworth Cove, one of the
most picturesque in England, was the summer resort of my chief, and he
being an expert mariner and swimmer used not only very often to join
us at camp, but always gave the boys a fine regatta and picnic at his
cottage. Our water polo games were also a great feature here, the
water being warm and enabling us easily to play out the games. There
are also numerous beautiful castles and country houses all the way
between Swanage and Weymouth, and we had such kindness extended to us
wherever we went that every day was a dream of joy to the lads.
Without any question they acquired new visions and ideals through
these experiences.
We always struck camp at the end of a fortnight, having sometimes
arranged with other friends with classes of their own to step into our
shoes. The present head master of Shrewsbury and many other
distinguished persons shared with us some of the educative joys of
those days. Among the many other more selfish portions of the holidays
none stand out more clearly in my memory than the August days when
partridge and grouse shooting used to open. Most of my shooting was
done over the delightful highlands around Bishop's Castle in
Shropshire, on the outskirts of the Welsh hills, in Clun Forest, and
on the heather-covered Longmynds. How I loved those days, and the
friends who made them possible--the sound of the beaters, the
intelligent setters and retrievers, the keepers in velveteens, the
lunches under the shade of the great hedges or in lovely cottages,
where the ladies used to meet us at midday, and every one used to
jolly you about not shooting straight, and you had to take refuge in a
thousand "ifs."
As one looks back on it all from Labrador, it breathes the aroma of an
old civilization and ancient customs. Much of the shooting was over
the old lands of the Walcotts of Walcott Hall, a family estate that
had been bought up by Earl Clive on his return from India, and was now
in the hands of his descendant, an old bachelor who shot very little,
riding from one good stand to another on a steady old pony. There
were many such estates, another close by being that of the Oakovers of
Oakover, a family that has since sold their heritage.
A thousand time-honoured old customs, only made acceptable by their
hoary age, added, and still continue to add in the pleasures of
memory, to the joys of those days, with which golf and tennis and all
the wonderful luxury of the modern summer hotel seem never able to
compete. It is right, however, that such eras should pass.
The beautiful forest of Savernake, that in my school days I had loved
so well, and which meant so much to us boys, spoke only too loudly of
the evil heirloom of the laws of entail. Spendthrift and dissolute
heirs had made it impossible for the land to be utilized for the
benefit of the people, and yet kept it in the hands of utterly
undeserving persons. Being of royal descent they still bore a royal
name even in my day; but it was told of them that the last, who had
been asked to withdraw from the school, on one occasion when, half
drunk, he was defending himself from the gibes and jeers of grooms and
'ostlers whom he had made his companions, rose with ill-assumed
dignity and with an oath declared that he was their king by divine
right if only he had his dues. Looking back it seems to me that the
germs of democratic tendencies were sown in me by just those very
incidents.