“You are going far away, far away, from poor Jeanette,There’s no one left to love me now, and you will soon forget;”
“You are going far away, far away, from poor Jeanette,There’s no one left to love me now, and you will soon forget;”
“You are going far away, far away, from poor Jeanette,There’s no one left to love me now, and you will soon forget;”
“You are going far away, far away, from poor Jeanette,
There’s no one left to love me now, and you will soon forget;”
of which the refrain was:
“Oh, if I were Queen of France,Or still better Pope of Rome,I would have no fighting men abroad,No weeping maids at home.”
“Oh, if I were Queen of France,Or still better Pope of Rome,I would have no fighting men abroad,No weeping maids at home.”
“Oh, if I were Queen of France,Or still better Pope of Rome,I would have no fighting men abroad,No weeping maids at home.”
“Oh, if I were Queen of France,
Or still better Pope of Rome,
I would have no fighting men abroad,
No weeping maids at home.”
Membland was always full of visitors. There were visitors at Easter, visitors at Whitsuntide, in the autumn for the shooting, and a houseful at Christmas: an uncle, General Baring, who used to shoot with one arm because he had lost the other in the Crimea; my father’s cousin, Lord Ashburton, who was particular about his food, and who used to say: “That’s a very good dish, but it’s notveau à la bourgeoise”; Godfrey Webb, who always wrote a little poem in the visitors’ book when he went away; Lord Granville, who knew French so alarmingly well, and used to ask one the French for words like a big stone upright on the edge of a road and a ship tacking, till one longed to say, like the Red Queen inAlice in Wonderland: “What’s the French for fiddle de dee?”; Lord and Lady Lansdowne, Mr. and Mrs. Percy Wyndham—Mr. Wyndham used to take me out riding; he was deliciously inquisitive, so that if one was laughing at one side of the table he would come to one quietly afterwards and ask what the joke had been about; Harry Cust, radiant with youth and spirits and early success; Lady de Clifford and her two daughters (Katie and Maud Russell), she carrying an enormous silk bag with her work in it—she was a kind critic of our French plays; Lady Airlie, and her sister, Miss Maude Stanley, who started being a vegetarian in the house, and told me that HenryVIII.was a much misunderstood monarch; Madame Neruda, and once, long before she married him, Sir Charles Hallé. Sir Charles Hallé used to sit down at the pianoforte after dinner, and nothing could dislodge him. Variation followed variation, and repeat followed repeat of the stiffest and driest classical sonatas. And one night when this had been going on past midnight, my father, desperate with impatience and sleep, put out the electric light. I am not making an anachronism in talking of electric light, as it had just been put in the house, and was thought to be a most daring innovation.
We had a telegraph office in the house, which was worked by Mrs. Tudgay. It was a fascinating instrument, rather like a typewriter with two dials and little steel keys round one of them, and the alphabet was the real alphabet and not the Morse Code. It was convenient having this in the house, but one of the results was that so many jokes were made with it, and so many bogus telegrams arrived, that nobody knew whether a telegram was a real one or not.
Mr. Walter Durnford, then an Eton House master, and afterwards Provost of King’s, in a poem he wrote in the visitors’ book, speaks of Membland as a place where everything reminded you of the presence of fairy folk, “Where telegrams come by the dozen, concocted behind the door.”
Certainly people enjoyed themselves at Membland, and the Christmas parties were one long riot of dance, song, and laughter. Welcome ever smiled at Membland, and farewell went out sighing.
As I got nearer and nearer to the age of ten, when it was settled that I should go to school, life seemed to become more and more wonderful every day. Both at Membland and in Charles Street the days went by in a crescendo of happiness. Walks with Chérie in London were a daily joy, especially when we went to Covent Garden and bought chestnuts to roast for tea. The greatest tea treat was to get Chérie, who was an inspired cook, to make something she calledla petite sauce. You boiled eggs hard in the kettle; and then, in a little china frying-pan over a spirit lamp, the sauce was made, of butter, cream, vinegar, pepper, and the eggs were cut up and floated in the delicious hot mixture. A place of great treats where we sometimes went on Saturday afternoons was the Aquarium, where acrobats did wonderful things, and you had your bumps told and your portrait cut out in black-and-white silhouette. The phrenologist was not happy in his predictions of my future, as he said I had a professional and mathematical head, and would make a good civil engineer in after-life.
Going to the play was the greatest treat of all, and if I heard there was any question of their going to the play downstairs, and Mr. Deacon, my father’s servant, always used to tell me when tickets were being ordered, I used to go on my knees in the night nursery and pray that I might be taken too. Sometimes the answer was direct.
One night my mother and Lord Mount Edgcumbe were going to a pantomime together by themselves. Mr. Deacon told me, and asked me if I was going too, but nothing had been said about it. I prayed hard, and I went down to my mother’s bedroom as she was dressing for dinner. No word of the pantomime was mentioned on either side. She then, while her hair was being done by D., asked for a piece of paper and scribbled a note and told me to take it down to my father.
I did so, and my father said: “Would you like to go to the pantomime, too?” The answer was in the affirmative.
What a fever one would be in to start in time and to be there at the beginning on nights when we went to the play! how terribly anxious not to miss one moment! How wonderful the moment was before the curtain went up! The delicious suspense, the orchestra playing, and then the curtain rising on a scene that sometimes took one’s breath away, and how calm the grown-up people were. They would not look at the red light in the background, the pink sky which looked like a real pink sky, or perhaps some moving water. People say sometimes it is bad for children to go to the theatre, but do they ever enjoy anything in after life as much? Is there any such magic as the curtain going up on the Demon’s cave in the pantomime, or the sight in the Transformation scene of two silvery fairies rising from the ground on a gigantic wedding cake, and the clown suddenly breaking on the scene, shouting, “Here we are again!” through a shower of gold rain and a cloud of different-coloured Bengal lights? Is there any such pleasure as in suddenly seeing and recognising things in the flesh one had been familiar with for long from books and stories, such as Cinderella’s coach, the roc’s egg in Sinbad the Sailor, or Aladdin’s cave, or the historical processions of the kings of England, some of whom you clapped and some of whom you hissed? Oh! the charm of changing scenery! a ship moving or still better sinking, a sunset growing red, a forest growing dark; and then the fun! The indescribable fun, of seeing Cinderella’s sisters being knocked about in the kitchen, or the Babes in the Wood being put to bed, and kicking all their bedclothes off directly they had settled down; or best of all, the clown striking the pantaloon with the red-hot poker and the harlequin getting the better of the policeman! Harry Paine was the clown in those days, and he used, in a hoarse voice, to say to the pantaloon: “I say, Joey.” “Yes, master,” answered the pantaloon in a feeble falsetto.
Childhood bereft of such treats I cannot help thinking must be a sad affair; and it generally happens that if children are not allowed to go to the play, so that they shall enjoy it more when they are grown-up, they end by never being able to enjoy it at all.
One great event of the summer was the Eton and Harrowmatch, when Cecil and Everard used to come up from Eton with little pieces of light blue silk in their black coats. John had gone to Cambridge, and I hardly remember him as an Eton boy. We used to go on a coach belonging to some friends, and one year one of the Parkers bowled three of the Harrow boys running.
As Chérie had been with Lord Macclesfield in the Parker family before she came to us, and as this boy, Alex Parker, had either been or nearly been one of her pupils, she had a kind of reflected glory from the event.
Eton was always surrounded with a glamour of romance. John had rowed stroke in the Eton eight, and when Cecil rose to the dignity of being Captain of the Oppidans we were proud indeed. One summer we all went down to Eton for the 4th of June.
We went to speeches and had tea in Cecil’s room, and strawberry messes, and walked about in the playing-fields and saw the procession of boats and the fireworks.
From that day I was filled with a longing to go to Eton, and resented bitterly having to go to a private school first.
Another exciting event I remember was a visit to Windsor, to the Norman Tower in Windsor Castle, where my uncle, Henry Ponsonby, and my Aunt M’aimée lived. This happened one year in the autumn. We stayed a Sunday there. The house was, for a child, fraught with romance and interest. First of all there were the prisons. My aunt had discovered and laid bare the stone walls of two octagonal rooms in the tower which had been prisons in the olden times for State prisoners, and she had left the walls bare. There were on them inscriptions carved by the prisoners. She had made these two rooms her sitting-rooms, and they were full of books, and there was a carpenter’s bench in one of these rooms, with a glass of water on it ready for painting.
Windsor was itself exciting enough, but I think what struck me most then was the toy cupboard of the boys, Fritz, Johnny, and Arthur. All their toys were arranged in tiers in a little windowless room, a tier belonging to each separate boy, and in the middle of each beautiful and symmetrical arrangement there were toys representing a little room with a table and lamp on it. As if all this was not exciting enough, my Cousin Betty told me the story of the Corsican Brothers.
Before I went to school my father had to go to Contrexévilleto take the waters. My father and mother took me with them. I faintly regretted not playing a solo at Mademoiselle Ida’s pupils’ concert, which was to have been part of the programme, but otherwise the pleasure and excitement at going were unmitigated. We started for Paris in July. Bessie Bulteel came with us, and we stopped a night in Paris, at the Hôtel Bristol. My father took me for a walk in the Rue de la Paix, and the next day we went to Contrexéville. I never enjoyed anything more in my life than those three weeks at Contrexéville. There were shops in the hotel gardens calledles Galeries, where a charming old lady, called Madame Paillard, with her daughter, Thérèse, sold the delicious sweets of Nancy, and spoilt me beyond words. The grown-up people played atpetits chevauxin the evening, and as I was not allowed to join in that game, the lady of thepetits chevaux, Mademoiselle Rose, had a kind of rehearsal of the game in the afternoon at half-price, in which only I and the actresses of the Casino, whom I made great friends with, took part. My special friend was Mademoiselle Tusini of the Eldorado Paris Music Hall. She was a songstress.
One day she asked me to beg Madame Aurèle, thedirectriceof the Theatre, to let her sing a song at the Casino which she had not been allowed to sing, and which was called “Les allumettes du Général.” Mademoiselle Tusini said it was her greatest success, and that when she had sung it at Nancy, nobody knew where to look. I pleaded her cause; but Madame Aurèle said, “Un jour quand il n’y aura que des Messieurs,” so I am afraid the song can hardly have been quite nice. When we went away, Mademoiselle Tusini gave me a large photograph of herself in the rôle of acommère, carrying a wand. Chérie was slightly astonished when she saw it, and when I described the great beauty and the wonderful goodness of Mademoiselle Tusini, she was not as enthusiastically sympathetic as I could have wished.
There were a great many French children at Contrexéville, and I was allowed to join in their games. There was a charming old curé who I made friends with in the village, and his church was the first Catholic church I ever entered.
My mother and father used to go to the Casino play every night. I was allowed to go once or twice, as Mademoiselle Tusini had threatened to strike if I left Contrexéville without seeing her act, so I was taken toMonsieur Choufleury restera chez lui, a harmless farce, which is, I believe, often acted by amateurs.
We stayed there three weeks, and I left in sorrow and tears. We went on for aNachkurto a place in the Vosges called Géradmer, which is near a lake. One day we drove to a place called theSchlucht, and saw the stone marking the frontier into Alsace, which was, of course, Germany. It was suggested that we should cross over, but I, mindful of Chérie, refused to set foot on the stolen and violated territory.
On the way back we stayed a day and night in Paris, and bought presents for all those at home. In the evening we went to the Théâtre français and saw no less an actor than Delaunay in Musset’s play,On ne badine pas avec l’Amour. Delaunay had a voice like silver, and his diction on the stage was incomparable. I remember Count Benckendorff once saying about him that whereas one often bewailed the failure of an actor to look the part of agrand seigneur, when one saw Delaunay one wished anyone off the stage could be half as distinguished as he was on the stage.
My father took me to the Louvre and showed me theMona Lisaand Watteau’s large picture of a Pierrot: “Gilles” and theGalérie d’Apollon, and late in the afternoon we drove to the Bois de Boulogne.
Chérie had always told us of theMagasin du Louvre, where as children went out they were given, as George, in the poem, when he had been as good as gold, an immense balloon. This balloon had always been one of my dreams, and we went there, and the reality was fully up to all expectations.
We bought somenonnettesin the Rue St. Honoré and a great many toys at theParadis des Enfants.
The next time I went to Contrexéville I was at school. I wore an Eton jacket and a top hat in Paris; this created a sensation. A man said to me in the Rue de Rivoli, “Monsieur a son Gibus.” I also remember receiving a wonderful welcome in theGaleries.
With the end of the first visit to Contrexéville I will end this chapter, for it was the end of a chapter of life, the happiest and most wonderful chapter of all. New gates were opened; but the gate on the fairyland of childhood was shut, and for ever afterwards one could only look through the bars, but never more be a free and lawful citizen of that enchanted country, where life was like a fairy-tale that seemed almost too good to be true, and yet so endlessly long and so infinitely happy that it seemed as if it must last for ever.
I went to school in September 1884. On the 7th of September John came of age, and we had a large party in the house and a banquet for the tenants in the tennis court, at which I had to stand up on a chair and make a speech returning thanks for the younger members of the family. I travelled up to London with my mother and Mr. Walter Durnford, and was givenFrank Fairleighto read in the train, but it was too grown-up for me, and I only pretended to read it. We stayed a night in Charles Street. I was given a brown leather dispatch case with my name stamped on it and a framed photograph of my father and mother and of Membland, and a good stock of writing-paper, and the next afternoon we started for my school, which was near Ascot. I didn’t cry either on leaving Membland or at any moment on the day I was taken to school.
We arrived about tea-time. The school was a red brick building on the top of the hill, north of Ascot Station, and looking towards the station, situated among pine trees. The building is there now and is a girls’ school. We were shown into a drawing-room where the Headmaster and his wife received us with a dreadful geniality. There was a small aquarium in the room with some goldfish in it. The furniture was covered with black-and-yellow cretonne, and there were some low ebony bookcases and a great many knick-knacks. Another parent was there with a small and pale-looking little boy called Arbuthnot, who was the picture of misery, and well he might look miserable, as I saw at a glance that he was wearing a made-up sailor’s tie. Two days later the machinery inside this tie was a valuable asset in another boy’s collection. Conversation was kept up hectically until tea was over. They talked of a common friend, Lady Sarah Spencer. “What acharming woman she is!” said the Headmaster. How sensible he seemed to charm! How impervious to all amenities he revealed himself to be later! Then my mother said good-bye to him, and we were taken upstairs by the matron to see my cubicle, a little room with pitch-pine walls, partitioned off from the next cubicle by a thin wooden partition that did not reach the ceiling, so that you could talk to the boy in the next cubicle. Boys were not allowed to go into each other’s cubicles. We hung my solitary picture up, and my mother interviewed the matron, Mrs. Otway, in her room and gave her a pound as she went away; then we went out into the garden for a moment. My mother said good-bye to me and left me alone. I wandered about the garden, which was not a garden but grass hill leading down to a cricket-field. Half-way down the hill was a gymnasium, and a high wooden erection with steps. I wondered what it was for. The boys had not yet arrived. Two boys presently appeared on the scene; they looked at me, but took no great notice. Then after a little time one of them approached me, holding in his hand a small pebble surrounded with cotton-wool, and asked me if I would like a cuckoo’s egg. I did not know whether I was supposed to pretend that I thought it was a real egg or not. It was so unmistakably a stone. I smiled and said nothing. Presently a Chinese gong sounded somewhere out of doors. The two boys ran into the house. I followed them. On the ground floor of the house there was a large hall with a table running down it, a fireplace at one end, and at the other end an arch opening on to the staircase draped with red curtains with black fleur-de-lys stamped on them. There were windows on one side of the room and a cupboard with books in on the other. This hall was now full of boys talking and laughing. Nobody took the slightest notice of me. They then trooped through a passage into the dining-room, a large room with tables round three sides of it and a small square table in the middle where the Headmaster, his wife, and one of the other masters sat. We sat down. I was placed nearly at the end of the last table. More boys—those of the first division, who were a race apart—came in from another door. Then the Headmaster entered, rapped on his table with a knife, and said grace. We had tea; large thick slabs of bread and butter, with the butter spread very thinly over them.
Soon after tea we went to bed, and I dreamt I was atMembland, and woke up to find I was in a strange place. The boy in the cubicle next to mine was called Hope. He was in the second division. In another cubicle opposite to mine there was a boy in the first division called Worthington. One could talk to them, and they were both of them friendly.
The next morning after breakfast I was placed in the fourth division for Latin and English, and the fourth set for Mathematics and French, and had my first lesson in Mathematics. The first thing the master did was to take a high three-legged stool from a corner and exhibit it to us. It had a very narrow seat. It was a rickety stool. “This,” he said, “is the stool of penitence. I hope none of you will have to stand on it.” Then some figures were written down on the blackboard, and a sum in short division was set, which I at once got wrong. In fact, I couldn’t do it at all. The master came and sat down by my side, and said: “You’re trembling.” So I was. He corrected the mistakes and went on to something else. He was terrifying to look at, I thought, but perhaps not as frightening as he appeared to be. I was a little bit reassured. Later in the day we had a French lesson. To my surprise I saw he knew but little French, and read out the first page of the elementary accidence, pronouncing the French words as though they were English ones.
After luncheon, we played prisoner’s base, and I at once realised that there is a vast difference between games and play. Play is played for fun, but games are deadly serious, and you do not play them to enjoy yourselves. Everyone was given two blue cards, and every time you were taken prisoner you lost a card. If you lost both you were kicked by the captain of the side, who said we were a pack of dummies. The first week seemed endlessly long, and acute homesickness pervaded every moment of it. Waking up in the morning was the worst moment. Every night I used to dream I was back at home, every morning the moment of waking up was a sharp bewildering shock. Our voices were tried, and I was put in the chapel choir. The chapel choir had special privileges, but also long half-hours of choir practice.
The masters laughed at me mercilessly for my pronunciation of English. I don’t know what was wrong with it, except that I said yallow,aintfor aren’t, andantfor aunt, but I did my best to get out of this as soon as possible. Apart from idiosyncrasiesof pronunciation, my voice seemed to them comic, and they used to imitate me by speaking through their noses whenever I said anything. The boys at first entirely ignored one, simply telling one to shut up if one spoke, but the boys in my own division soon became friendly, especially an American boy called Hamilton Fish the third. He was the first man to be killed in the American-Spanish War in Cuba. There was no bullying. One boy, although he was in the first division, was charming, and treated one like a grown-up person. This was Basil Blackwood. Even then he drew pictures which were the delight of his friends. Another boy who was friendly was Niall Campbell. Dreadful legends were told about Winston Churchill, who had been taken away from the school. His naughtiness appeared to have surpassed anything. He had been flogged for taking sugar from the pantry, and so far from being penitent, he had taken the Headmaster’s sacred straw hat from where it hung over the door and kicked it to pieces. His sojourn at this school had been one long feud with authority. The boys did not seem to sympathise with him. Their point of view was conventional and priggish.
Every morning there was a short service in the pitch-pine school chapel, and every morning an interval between lessons called the hour, in which the boys played nondescript games, chiefly a game called IT. If you were IT you had to catch someone else, and then he became IT. On Sunday afternoon we went for a walk. On Sunday evening the Headmaster read out a book calledThe Last Abbot of Glastonbury, which I revelled in. After the first week I had got more or less used to my new life. In a fortnight’s time I was quite happy and enjoying myself; but every now and then life was marred and made hideous for the time being by sudden and unexpected dramas. The first drama was that of the Spanish chestnuts. There were some Spanish chestnuts lying about in the garden. We were told not to eat these. Some of the boys did eat them, and one boy gave me a piece of something to eat on the end of a knife. It was no bigger than a crumb, and it turned out afterwards to be a bit of Spanish chestnut, or at least I thought it might have been. One afternoon at tea the Head rapped on his table with his knife. There was a dead silence. “All boys who have eaten Spanish chestnuts are to stand up.”Nobody stood up, and there was a long pause. I think the boys were puzzled, and did not know they had been eating Spanish chestnuts. I certainly did not know a Spanish chestnut by sight. I had no chestnut on my conscience. After a very long pause the Headmaster made some rather facetious remarks, which I thought were meant to encourage us, but the other boys, knowing him better, knew that they were ironical and portended dreadful things. One boy stood up. Then, after a slight pause, another; about four or five boys followed suit. I suddenly remembered the incident of the penknife in the gymnasium three days before. Could it have been that I had eaten a Spanish chestnut? Was that little bit of white crumb on the end of the knife a part of a Spanish chestnut? I had not seen a whole Spanish chestnut anywhere. In any case I had better be on the safe side, and I stood up. The Headmaster made a cutting comment on boys who were so slow to own up. A few more stood up, and that was all. The Head then delivered a serious homily. We had been guilty of three things: greed, disobedience, and deceit. We would all do two hours’ extra work on a half-holiday.
There was electric light in the school, and the electric light was oddly enough supposed to be under the charge of one of the boys, who was called the Head Engineer. Clever and precocious as this boy was, I cannot now believe that his office was a serious one, although we took it seriously indeed at the time. However that may be, nobody except this boy was allowed to go into the engine-shed or to have anything to do with the electric light. We were especially forbidden to touch any of the switches in the house or ever to turn on or off the electric light ourselves. Electric light in houses at that time was a new thing, and few private houses were lighted with it. One day one of the boys was visited by his parents, and he could not resist turning on the electric light in one of the rooms to show them what it was like. Unfortunately the Head saw him do this through the window, and directly his parents were gone the boy was flogged. Every week the school newspaper appeared. It was edited by two of the boys in the first division, and handed round to the boys at tea-time. This was a trying and painful moment for some of the boys, as there were often in this newspaper scathing articles on the cricket or football play of some ofthe boys written by one of the masters, and all mentioning them by name; and as parents took in the newspaper it was far from pleasant to be pilloried in this fashion. Just before half-term another drama occurred. I was doing a sum in short division, and another boy was waiting for me to go out. He was impatient, and he said, “That’s right; don’t you see the answer is 3456,” or whatever it was. I scribbled it down, but unfortunately had left a mistake in the working, so the answer was right and the sum was partly wrong. This was at once detected, and I was asked if I had had any help. I said “Yes,” and I was then accused of having wanted to get marks by unfair means, and of having cheated. We did not even know these particular sums received marks. The Division Master bit his knuckles, and said he would report the matter to the Headmaster. When I went into chapel from the vestry, robed in a white surplice, he pinned a piece of paper withcheaton it, on to my back. I was appalled, but as nothing happened immediately I began to recover, and on the following Sunday when we were writing home the master told me I could put in my Sunday letter that I had done very well, and that I was his favourite boy. This was only his fun, but I took it quite seriously, and I did not put it in my letter, because I thought the praise excessive. On Monday morning there was what was called “reading over.” The boys sat in the hall, grouped in their divisions. The Headmaster in a silk gown stood up at a high desk, the three undermasters sat in a semicircle round him, also in gowns, and one division after another went and stood up in front of the desk while the report of the week’s work was read out. When the fourth division went up, the news was read out that Duckworth and Baring had been guilty of a conspiracy, and had tried to get marks by unfair means. Duckworth was blamed even more severely than I was, being an older boy.
We were told this would be mentioned in our report, and that if anything of the kind occurred again we would be flogged. When this was over, the boys turned on Duckworth and myself and asked us how we could have done such a base act. We were shunned like two cardsharpers, and it took us some time to recover our normal position. The half-term report was about nothing else, and my father was dreadfully upset. My mother came down to see me, and I told her the whole story, and I think she understood what had happened. I gotthrough the rest of the term without any fresh dramas, and did well in trials at the end of the term.
One day my sister Susan unwittingly caused me annoyance by writing to me and sealing the letter with her name, Susan. The boys saw the seal and called out, “He’s got a sister called Susan; he’s got a sister called Susan.” Sisters should be warned never to let their Christian names come to the knowledge of their brother’s schoolfellows. This kind of thing is typical of private-school life. The boys were childish and conventional, but they did not bully. It was the masters who every now and then made life a misery. In spite of everything, the boys were happy—in any case, they thought that was happiness, as they knew no better.
In the afternoons we played Rugby football, an experience which was in my case exactly what Max Beerbohm describes it in one of his Essays: running about on the edge of a muddy field. The second division master pursued the players with exhortations and imprecations, and every now and then a good kicking was administered to the less successful and energetic players, which there were quite a number of. The three best Rugby football players were allowed to wear on Sundays a light blue velvet cap with a silver Maltese cross on it, and a silver tassel. I am sorry to say that this cap was not always given to the best players. It was given to the boys the Headmaster liked best. What I enjoyed most were the readings out by the Headmaster, which happened on Sunday afternoons and sometimes on ordinary evenings. He read out several excellent books:The Moonstone, theLeavenworth Case, a lot ofPickwick, and, during my first term,Treasure Island. The little events, the rages for stamp collecting and swopping, stag-beetle races, aquariums, secret alphabets, chess tournaments, that make up the interests of a boy’s everyday life outside his work and his play, delighted me. I was a born collector but a bad swopper, and made ludicrous bargains. I made great friends with a new boy called Ferguson, and taught him how to play Spankaboo. We never told anyone, and the secret was never discovered. We used to find food for the game in bound copies of theIllustrated London News. We had drawing lessons and music lessons, and I was delighted to find that my first school piece was agigueby Corelli that I had heard my mother play at the concert at Stafford House, which I have already described.At the end of the term came the school concert, for which there were many rehearsals. I did not take any part in it, except in the chorus, who sang “Adeste Fideles” in Latin at the end of it.
Some scenes were acted from theBourgeois Gentilhomme, the same scenes we had acted at Membland, but I took no part in them. Then came the unutterable joy of going home for the holidays, which were spent at Membland. When I arrived and had my first schoolroom tea I was rather rough with the toast, and Chérie said: “Est-ce là les manières d’Ascot?” At the end of the holidays I spent a few days in London, and was taken to the play, and enjoyed other dissipations which made me a day or two late in going back to school. The holiday task was Bulwer Lytton’sHarold, which my mother read out to me. As soon as I arrived at school I was given the holiday-task paper and won the prize, a book calledHalf-hours in the Far South, which I have never read, but which I still possess and respect.
During the Lent term we had athletic sports: long jump, high jump, hurdle, flat and obstacle races. I won a heat in a hurdle race and nearly got a place in the final, the only approach to an athletic achievement in the whole of my life. A curious drama happened during this term. A boy called Phillimore was the chief actor in it. He was in the first division. One day the Headmaster went up to London. During his absence a message was sent round in his name by one of the undermasters. The message was brought by one of the boys to the various divisions. It was to the effect that we were allowed or not allowed to do some specific thing. When the boy, who was new and inexperienced, brought the message into the first division, Phillimore said to him, “Ask Mr. So-and-so with my compliments whether the message is genuine.” “Do you really want me to ask him?” asked the boy. “Yes, of course,” said Phillimore. The little boy went back to the master, who happened to be the severest of all the masters, and said: “Phillimore wants to know whether the message is genuine.” As soon as the Headmaster returned the whole school was summoned, and the Headmaster in his black gown told us the dreadful story of Phillimore’s unheard-of act. Phillimore was had up in front of the whole school, and told to explain his conduct. He said it was a joke, and that hehad never dreamt that the boy would deliver the message. The explanation was not accepted, and Phillimore was stripped of his first division privileges. The privileges of the first division were various: they were allowed to dig in a place called the wilderness, which was a sand-heap through which ran a light truck railway without an engine. They went on special expeditions.
These expeditions need an explanation. Sometimes they consisted merely of walks to Bagshot or Virginia Water, and perhaps a picnic tea. Sometimes, as in the case of the first division expeditions or the choir expedition, they were far more elaborate, and consisted of a journey to London with sight-seeing, or to places as far off as Bath and the Isle of Wight.
During my first term the choir went to Swindon to see the Great Western Works, to Reading to see the Biscuit Factory, and to Bath in one day, and we got home late in the night. During my second term we spent a day in London inspecting the Tower, the Mint, and other sights, and had tea at the house of one of the boys’ parents, Colonel Broadwood, who lived in Eccleston Square.
These expeditions were recorded in the school Gazette, and when my mother heard of our having had tea with Colonel Broadwood, she said: “Why should not the choir, next time they came to London, have luncheon at Charles Street?” The idea made me shudder, although I said nothing. The idea of having one’s school life suddenly brought into one’s home life, to see the Headmaster sitting down to luncheon in one’s home, seemed to me altogether intolerable. My mother thought I would perhaps be ashamed of the food for not being good enough, and said: “If we had a very good luncheon.” But that wasn’t the reason. It never happened. Anything more miserable than the appearance of Broadwood when we had tea in his father’s house cannot be imagined.
Nothing was more strange at this school than the sudden way in which either a treat or a punishment descended on the school. The treats, too, were of such a curious kind, and involved so much travelling. Sometimes the first division would be taken upen masseto a matinée. Sometimes they would be away for nearly twenty-four hours. The punishments were equally unexpected and curious. One boy was suddenly flogged for cutting off a piece of his hair and keeping the piecein his drawer. In the second division the boys were punished by electricity. The division was made to join hands, and a strong electric shock was passed through it. This went on until one day one boy, smarting from an overcharge of electricity, took the battery and threw it at the master’s head, inflicting a sharp wound. Nothing was said about this action, to the immense astonishment of the boys, who thought it jolly of him not to sneak.
We lived in an atmosphere of complete uncertainty. We never knew if some quite harmless action would not be construed into a mortal offence. Any criticism, explicit or implicit, of the food was considered the greatest of crimes. The food was good, and the boys had nothing to complain of, nor did they, but they were sometimes punished for looking as if they didn’t like the cottage pie.
One day I heard a boy use the expression “mighty good.” The next day I said at breakfast that the porridge wasmightygood. The master overheard me and asked me what I said. I answered, “I said the porridge was very good.” “No,” said the master, “that is not exactly what you said.” I then admitted to the use of the wordmighty. This was thought to be ironical, and I was stopped talking at meals for a week.
Another time a message was passed up to me to stop talking at luncheon. This was frequently done; a message used to be passed up saying: “Baring and Bell stop talking,” but sometimes the boys used to be inattentive, and if one sat far up table the message had a way of getting lost on the way. This happened to me. I was stopped talking and the message never reached me, and I went on talking gaily. Afterwards the master sent for me and said, “You’ll find yourself in Queer Street.” I was not allowed to remonstrate. I didn’t even know what I was accused of at the time, and I was stopped talking for a week.
The Headmaster was a virulent politician and a fanatical Tory. On the 5th of November an effigy of Mr. Gladstone used to be burnt in the grounds, and there was a little note in the Gazette to say there were only seven Liberals in the school, the least of whom was myself. The Gazette went on to add that “needless to say, the school were supporters of the Church and the State.” One day somebody rashly sent the Head a Liberal circular. He sent it back with some coppersinside, so that the recipient should have to pay eightpence on receipt of it, and the whole school was told of his action. One day there was a by-election going on hard-by. All the school were taken with blue ribbons on their jackets except the unfortunate seven Liberals, who were told to stay at home and work.
One year Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was burnt in effigy, as he was then a Radical, and the effigy held in its hands a large cardboard cow with three acres written on it. It was a bad time for the Liberals, as the foreign policy of the Liberal Government was at that time particularly weak, and it was impossible to defend Mr. Gladstone’s Egyptian policy, still less Lord Granville. So the Head smiled in triumph over the renegades, one of whom I am glad to say was Basil Blackwood. He took the matter very calmly and drew offensive caricatures of the Conservative politicians.
During the summer the rage the boys had for keeping caterpillars in breeding cages, for collecting butterflies, and keeping live stock was allowed full play. The Head himself had supplies of live animals brought to the school, among which were salamanders and Italian snakes. I myself invested in a green lizard, which although it had no tail, was in other respects satisfactory, and ate, so a letter of mine of that date says, a lot of worms. I also had a large, fat toad, which was blind in one eye, but for a toad, affectionate. But the ideal of the boys was to possess a Natterjack toad, whatever that may mean or be. We were allowed to go out on the heath during the summer and catch small lizards and butterflies, and altogether natural history was encouraged; so was gardening. Boys who wished to do so might have a garden, and a prize was offered for the garden which was the prettiest and the best kept throughout the summer term. I won that prize. My garden contained four rose trees, several geraniums, some cherry pie, and a border of lobelias. It was a conventional garden, but there was a professional touch about it, and I tended it with infinite care. The prize was a ball of string in an apple made of Lebanon wood. Sometimes we were allowed into the strawberry beds, and could eat as many strawberries as we liked. During this term I made great friends with Broadwood. We were both in the third division, and decided that we would write a pantomime together some day. One day we werelooking on at a cricket match which was being played against another school. I have told what happened in detail elsewhere in the form of a story, but the sad bare facts were these. The school was getting beaten, the day was hot, the match was long and tedious, and Broadwood and another boy called Bell and myself wandered away from the match; two of us climbed up the wooden platform, which was used for letting off fireworks on the 5th of November. Bell remained below, and we threw horse-chestnuts at him, which he caught in his mouth. Presently one of the masters advanced towards us, biting his knuckles, which he did when he was in a great rage, and glowered. He ordered us indoors, and gave us two hours’ work to do in the third division schoolroom. We went in as happy as larks, and glad to be in the cool. But at tea we saw there was something seriously amiss. The rival eleven who had beaten us were present, but not a word was spoken. There was an atmosphere of impending doom over the school charged with the thunder of a coming row. After tea, when the guests had gone, the school was summoned into the hall, and the Head, gowned and frowning, addressed us, and accused the whole school in general, and Broadwood, Bell, and myself in particular, of want of patriotism, bad manners, inattention, and vulgarity. He was disgusted, he said, with the behaviour of the school before strangers. We were especially guilty, but the whole school had shown want of attention, and gross callousness and indifference to the cricket match (which was all too true), and consequently had tarnished the honour of the school. There was to have been an expedition to the New Forest next week. That expedition would not come off; in fact, it would never come off; and the speech ended and the school trooped out in gloomy silence and broke up into furtive whispering groups. That night in my cubicle I said to Worthington that I thought Campbell minor, who had been scoring during the match, had certainly behaved well all day, and didn’t he deserve to go to the New Forest? “No,” said Worthington; “he whistled twice.” “Oh,” I said, “then of course he can’t go.”
But the choir had an expedition that term, nevertheless. We went to Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, where we bathed in the sea and got back after midnight.
My mother took my sister Elizabeth to the Ascot racesthat year. Elizabeth was just out, and they came and fetched me and took me too, as boys were allowed to go to the races. A little later another drama happened, in which I was unwillingly to play the chief part. We were all playing on the heath one morning, and I had just found a lizard and was utterly absorbed in this find when I got a summons that I was wanted by the Head. I found the Head in the Masters’ Common Room enjoying a little collation. It was half-past ten. “A telegram has come,” said the Head, “that you have been especially invited to a children’s garden-party at Marlborough House by the Princess of Wales, and you are to go up to London at once. Are you,” said the Head ironically, “a special friend of the Princess of Wales?” Half excited, half fearful, and not without forebodings, I changed into my best clothes, and ran off to catch the train. I was to come back that evening. I arrived in time for luncheon, and after luncheon went to the garden-party with Hugo, where we spent a riotous afternoon. There were performing dogs and many games. My father was not there. He was in Devonshire. When we got home it was found that I had missed the train I was supposed to go back by, and my mother thought I had better stay the night. She sent off a telegram to the Head, and asked if I might do so. I thought this was a rash act. The answer came back just before dinner that if I did not come back that night I was not to come back at all. Everyone was distraught. There was only one more train, which did not get to Ascot till half-past twelve.
My mother was incensed with the Headmaster, and said if my father was there she knew he would not let me go back. I remained neutral in the general discussion and absolutely passive, while my fate hung in the balance, but I wanted to go back, on the whole. Both courses seemed quite appalling: to go back after such an adventure, or not to go, and face a new school. At first it was settled that on no account should I go, but finally it was settled that I should go. D. took me. We arrived late. There were no flys at the station and we had to walk to the school. We did not get there till half-past one in the morning. D. said she would sleep at the hotel, but the matron who opened the door for us insisted on giving her a bedroom. The next morning I got up at half-past six to practise the pianoforte, as usual, and D. looked into the room and said good-bye, and then I felt I had to begin to live down this appallingepisode. But to my surprise it was not alluded to. The truth being, as I afterwards found out, that not only my father and mother, but Dr. Warre of Eton, had written to the Headmaster to tell him he had behaved foolishly, and shortly afterwards, to make amends, I was sent up to London to the dentist. But oh, parents, dear parents, if you only knew what stress of mind such episodes involve, you would not insist on such favours, nor ever forward invitations of that kind, not even at the bidding of the King.
D. paid me one other visit while I was at Ascot, and brought with her a large bunch of white grapes from Sheppy. We were not allowed hampers, nor were we allowed to eat any food brought by strangers or relations in the house, and when I saw that bunch of white grapes I was terrorstruck. I made D. hide it at once. I was afraid that even its transient presence in the house might be discovered, nor did I eat one grape.
I cannot remember that summer holiday, unless it was that summer we went to Contrexéville for the second time, but when I went back to school in September, Hugo went with me and we shared the same room. Games of Spankaboo went on every night. During all my schooltime at Ascot I have already said that I was never once bullied by the boys, but I never seemed to do right either in the eyes of the Headmaster or of the Second Division master. The two other masters were friendly. These two masters, we were one day informed, intended to leave the school and set up a school of their own at Eastbourne. They were both of them friendly to Hugo and myself. The school was to subscribe and give them a bacon dish in Sheffield plate as a parting gift. One day I wrote home and suggested that Hugo and I should go to that school. I did not think this request would be taken seriously. It seemed to me quite fantastic—an impossible, wild fancy. To my intense surprise no answer explaining how impossible such a thing was arrived, and I forget what happened next, but I know that soon the two departing masters discussed the matter with me, and I found out they were actually in correspondence with my mother. The remaining masters used to scowl at us, but the term ended calmly and we left the day before the end of the term, so I was unable to play in the treble in a piece for three people at one pianoforte called “Marche Romaine,” which I was down for on the concert programme, thesecond time I missed performing at a concert in public, and the opportunity of a lifetime missed. When I got to Membland I found it was settled that we were not going back to Ascot, but to the new school, St. Vincent’s, at Eastbourne. The Headmaster was told, and he at first accepted the matter calmly, but a little later he wrote to my father and asked him what reasons he had for taking his sons away if other parents asked him. My father seldom wrote a letter of more than one page. But on that occasion he wrote a letter of four pages, and the Head wrote back to say that he was entirely satisfied with his reasons. My mother and I always wondered what was in that letter. My father when asked said: “I knew what the man wanted to know, and I told him,” but we never knew what that was.
In January Hugo and I went to Eastbourne, and my friend, Broadwood, also left Ascot and followed us. There were only nine boys at first. But the next term there were, I think, twenty, then thirty, and soon the school became almost as big as the Ascot school, where there were forty boys.
Before I left Eastbourne, the Headmaster of my first school died, and I do not know what happened to the school afterwards. Several of the Ascot boys came to Eastbourne later, but the boys at Ascot were not allowed to correspond with us. My cousins, Rowland and Windham Baring, arrived, the sons of my Uncle Mina, who was afterwards Lord Cromer.
At Eastbourne a new life began. There was more amusement than work about it, and everything was different. We played Soccer with another school; we went to the swimming bath, and I learnt to swim; to a gymnasium, and we were drilled by a volunteer sergeant. Broadwood and I gave theatrical performances, one of which represented the Headmaster’s ménage at our first school. It must have been an amusing play to watch, as the point of it was that the Ascot Headmaster discovered his wife kissing her brother, another of the Ascot masters, the villain, and she sang a song composed by Broadwood and myself, of which the refrain was, “What would Herbert say, dear—what would Herbert say?” Herbert being the Ascot Headmaster. Herbert then broke on to the scene and gave way to paroxysms of jealous rage. Another boy who came to this school was Pierre de Jaucourt, the son of Monsieur de Jaucourt, a great friend of my father’s. Pierre was one of the playfellows ofmy childhood. He took part in the dramatic performances organised by Broadwood and myself in the Boot Room, which became more and more ambitious, and in one play the Devil appeared through a trap-door in a cloud of fire.
Broadwood and I were constantly making up topical duets modelled on those of Harry Nicholls and Herbert Campbell in the Drury Lane pantomime. But we were not satisfied with these scratch performances in the Boot Room, although we had a make-up box from Clarkson, and wigs, and we decided to actShe Stoops to Conquer, which was at once put into rehearsal. I was cast for the part of Mr. Hardcastle, Hugo for that of Miss Hastings, Broadwood for that of Marlowe, Bell for that of Miss Hardcastle, and an overgrown boy called Pyke-Nott for the part of Tony Lumpkin. After a few rehearsals it was settled that the play should be done on a real stage, and that parents and others should be invited to witness the performance. Dresses were made for us in London, scenery was painted by Mr. Shelton, our drawing-master, and my father and mother came down to see the play.
Hugo looked a vision of beauty as Miss Hastings. Pyke-Nott was annoyed because he was not allowed to sing a song about Fred Archer in the tavern scene, instead of the real song which is a part of the text. It was thought that a song of which the refrain was, “Archer, Archer up,” would be an anachronism.
The play went off very well, and Hugo played a breakdown on the banjo between the acts, but when he had played three bars the bridge of his banjo fell with a crash, and the solo came to an end.
We kept up the custom of going expeditions, not long ones, but only to places like Pevensey and Hurstmonceux, which were quite close. We also went out riding with a riding-master on the Downs, and in the summer we sailed in sailing boats. Altogether it was an ideal school life. We found the work easy, and we all seemed to get quantities of prizes, but we learnt little. Hugo and I continued to play Spankaboo in our room, and Hugo would do anything in the world if I threatened to refuse to play. So much so, that one of the masters thought I was blackmailing him, and we were told to reveal our strange secret at once. This we both resolutely refused to do, protesting with tears that it was a private matter of no importance, and there the matter was allowed to rest, the master merelysaying that if he ever saw any signs of anything subterranean going on we should be punished.
I remember one curious episode happening. One of the masters found a letter addressed to one of the boys written to him by another boy. This was the text of the letter: “Dear Mister C.,—May I have my sausage next Sunday at breakfast because I am very hungry.”
Mr. C., it was discovered, had been regularly levying a tribute from his neighbour at breakfast for some weeks, and the other boy, a much smaller boy, had had to go without his sausage. Mr. C. was severely flogged in front of the whole school. Boys who went to Scotland for the holidays were allowed to leave a day before the others, and as we had an all day’s journey to Devonshire, we shared the same privilege; so did Pierre de Jaucourt, who went to France. This inspired Broadwood to make the following lampoon, which was good-naturedly but insistently chanted by the rest of the school on the day before we went away: