Читать книгу Autobiography of a Cad - A. G. Macdonell - Страница 6

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I greatly enjoyed Eton. I was a wet-bob, of course. Cricket never appealed to me very much and even in those Edwardian days, when the Harrow eleven was dimly perceptible on the field at Lord’s—it has not been visible to the naked eye since 1910—I could never muster up any enthusiasm for it, even as a spectator on a fashionable coach. Indeed it always seemed to me that the cricket was the great drawback to the annual school outing at Lord’s. Our other annual school treats were not thus compulsorily marred, St. Andrew’s Day being in midwinter, and on the 4th of June the cricket matches being easily avoidable. It is true that every second year we were invaded by the Winchester boys, quiet, gentlemanly lads with their eyes fixed, even at that early age, upon the various branches of the Civil Service. They came to encourage their cricket eleven, but as there was no social importance attached to the game very few of us were in the habit of attending the match. It was, in fact, an ideal opportunity for a quiet day with a book on the river.

The advantages of being a wet-bob were great. So long as one did not become hypnotized by the competitive fetish which is such a tiresome part of an English education, there was no necessity to row in a boat with other lads. Thus the team spirit could be successfully side-stepped. So far as I remember, I never once rowed in a boat with more than a single companion, and then only with one whose friendship I valued for one reason or another. This preservation of individuality, so infinitely precious, can only be achieved at Eton by non-competitive wet-bobs, and it allows complete scope for the two main activities of any rational Etonian, the cultivation of friends likely to be useful in after life and the avoidance of Collegers.

There was only one serious worry in my school career at Eton, and that was the fear that my father’s eccentricities might become public property. Several times sons of our neighbours, who were in the School, threw them up in my teeth in a way that gravely alarmed me at the moment, but on each occasion I succeeded in minimizing the damage by a judicious outlay of my very handsome allowance—for I will say this of Father: whatever his faults, and he had many, poor old fellow, he was always generous to me about money. My assiduous work with the beagles also helped me to tide over several awkward incidents, and of course I was a perfervid Unionist in our Debating Society, seldom missing an opportunity of scourging the wretched Campbell-Bannerman or lashing the miserable Asquith. Those were the days before the 1906 election, when the Unionist cause was being unscrupulously attacked by the Radical propagandists, and it was the duty of every right-thinking man, of whatever age, to rally to the defence of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain.

I remember how astonished I was at my father’s apparent indifference to my conversion to Toryism during my first half at Eton. “Everyone must think for himself,” he said mildly, and he added: “Somehow I never thought you would stick to Radicalism. That is why I sent you to Eton.”

“Are you sorry?” I remember asking.

He shrugged his shoulders and changed the subject. Looking back on it, I cannot help coming to the conclusion that he was not a particularly intelligent man. Presumably he hoped to gain something by sticking to his political opinions. Where else would be the point of sticking to them? But to my knowledge he never did gain anything, and he certainly lost a great deal.

George Bedford went to one of those lesser public schools which have always seemed to me to possess no merit whatsoever except that they provide some sort of education for people like George. I have no idea what the school was like, because I never encouraged George to talk about it in the holidays. Not that George ever displayed any particular desire to talk about it after a few abortive attempts in the earlier holidays. On the contrary, he preferred listening to my accounts of the wide, Athenian, cultured life of Henry the Sixth’s great old foundation. At first I had some scruples about describing scenes and customs and dignified amenities which could not fail, I thought, to arouse wistful regrets and even, perhaps, secret envy. But though George was an eager listener, he never once allowed even a sigh of sadness to escape him.

The truth, of course, was that George then, as always, knew his station in life. He was the son of one of our servants, and it was as the son of one of our servants that he listened to my descriptions and did my holiday task for me every holiday. It is, I think, and at that time also thought that it was, somewhat to my credit that I never discussed politics with George during those old days. I was independent and could afford to think, as Father said, for myself. George was an offshoot of a family that was paid to believe that death-duties and health-insurance and land-taxes were good things. He could not afford to think otherwise so long as Father was alive. I could not help admiring his reticence about his beliefs. I kept silent about them out of tact, but George kept silent because he was determined, I am certain, to be ready to switch across to the right side when the time came. For it was obvious to every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the estate that the moment the Vicar had said his “dust to dust, ashes to ashes” stuff over Father, there would be some pretty drastic changes at Grantly Puerorum. Everyone knew it, and George was no stupider than his neighbour. He had the hereditary gift, at least I gave him the credit for having it, of spotting the difference between the side of a piece of bread which has been buttered and the, so to speak, virgin side. So George, dear good fellow that he always was, held his tongue about controversial matters and listened to my views on current politics without the least attempt to argue.

It was in these unhappy surroundings that the early days of my life were passed. Cut off as I was from the society of the neighbourhood, condemned to choose between solitude mitigated only by George Bedford’s company and the sons of Midhamptonshire haberdashers, unable to discuss world affairs in a rational way with my Father, I was probably as unlucky a boy as it is possible to imagine.

But the dice have not always fallen against me, for on my eighteenth birthday I was elected to Pop at Eton, and within an hour received a telegram to say that Father and Mother had been killed in a railway accident while on their way to open a Liberal bazaar and jumble sale at Wolverhampton.

It was naturally a terrible blow to me. To lose both one’s adored parents on the same day is a pretty grim shock when one is only eighteen. It cuts away one’s sheet-anchor. It sets one adrift upon rough, uncharted seas without a navigator.

But youth is resilient. Youth is buoyant. No one, I am certain, will misunderstand me when I say that my overwhelming grief was made just faintly possible to bear by the knowledge that the world must go on. My loss was irreparable, but my duty was to the future and not to the past. Passionate weeping would not set back the hands of time. Like the leaves of the forest, said Diomedes, so are the generations of men, and there was nothing to be gained by pretending that Father and Mother had not outstayed their utility. There is nothing macabre in the saying that youth will be served; it is simply the Law of Nature. One may revere Old Age without necessarily thinking that it should last for ever. And so, when I received the calamitous telegram on that summery day at Eton, I retired quietly to my room and shed a tear or two, and mused a little upon the past, and upon the dear old days that never, never would return. Then I dried my tears, and squared my shoulders, and went out to face the world, and that afternoon celebrated my election to the Eton Society with a surreptitious champagne party—a party remarkable in Etonian annals for the circumstance that of the nineteen guests, my fellow-members of Pop, eleven were peers or heirs of peers and seven were sons of bankers and the nineteenth was an American millionaire. After the party had come to a hilarious conclusion, I hastily bought a black armband, obtained special leave, and hurried home to see what William Bedford was doing with the estate, and to stop him from doing it.

I think that that was one of the most wonderful days of my life. At last I was my own master. And not only that, I was master of Grantly Puerorum as well. The servants were all drawn up in a row when I arrived at the Manor in the brougham. They were pale and frightened, as if they did not know what was going to happen. Some were weeping—mostly of the housemaid type, I fancy—obviously trying to create the impression that they were mourning the death of my parents. Young though I was, I was not to be bamboozled by flagrant histrionics of that sort. Either they were acting their tears, or they were crying with fear at the prospect of having a real true-blue, landed-gentry master at last. If the former, they were obviously worthless anyway. If the latter, they had at least the merit of being good judges, for they would have been right. I was face to face with the first of the important decisions in my life. I was at a cross-roads. I had to make up my mind, at the age of eighteen, suddenly, whether I was going to accept the tyranny of ancient, pampered, covertly insolent servants, or whether I was going to assert myself and be master in my own house. Remember, I was barely eighteen and, unless I showed a bold and decided front at once, I might easily have slipped under the domination of “old retainers.” It did not take me long to decide. As soon as we all returned to the Hall from the cemetery, I instructed the entire staff to attend me in the library—William Bedford was there too, and also the Vicar, the Reverend Ernest Blythe, whose future was now to all intents and purposes in my keeping—where it was my intention to entertain them with a glass apiece of the cheaper sherry which my father had injudiciously bought in 1901.

After a short speech in which I welcomed them into my service and promised that I would do my best to be a good master to them, adding that the details of certain small changes in their conditions of employment which I proposed to make could be discussed on some future occasion, I instructed the two footmen to hand round the sherry.

Everything fell out as I had expected. Banks, the butler, an elderly man who had been with us for nearly twenty years, declined his glass. He was a pillar of the local Rechabites and a Good Templar, and was, in fact, one of those cranky busybodies who miscall Prohibition by the name of Temperance and try to force their views and habits into the lives of other citizens. He used to speak at Prohibition meetings on his evenings off, and often used to distribute leaflets for the Salvation Army in Midhampton. I had always disliked Banks. There was a smugness about his self-righteousness that had annoyed me from the earliest moment that I could distinguish smugness as a nasty quality. Also he was on far too friendly a basis with Father. Whether it was Mother who infected Father with the germ of undignified intimacy with the staff, or vice versa, I do not know. But just as she used to spend hours gossiping about second teethings and whooping-cough and such-like drearinesses with the wives, so used Father to talk to Banks as if he was an ordinary human being. Indeed he went even further and used to consult him about local politics and the feeling in the village on matters connected with the parish council. On several occasions, during my third and fourth years at Eton, Father actually asked Banks for his advice after I had already given him my own.

On that afternoon when we all stood in the library after the funeral, I faced my crisis, and, with a full consciousness of what I was doing, I raised my glass and said, “I bid you drink to a happy and harmonious future in our relations.” The domestics respectfully murmured “Hear, hear, sir,” and nervously sipped at their glasses, with the exception of the two footmen, who swallowed theirs at one gulp, and Banks, who set his glass down untasted.

“You are not drinking, Banks,” I said quietly.

“I warmly subscribe to the sentiment,” he replied in that unctuous diction which is so common among Liberal politicians, and which I fancy he had learnt from Father.

“But you are not drinking,” I repeated.

“No, sir,” he answered.

“It is my wish that we all should drink this toast,” I said, raising my voice a little.

The upshot was as I had foreseen. The man refused and I discharged him on the spot with a month’s wages instead of notice, and, as he had not been in my employment for more than a few minutes, I could not in common honesty towards Society in general give him a character. Few actions are so dishonest and so cowardly as the action of the employer who lets an employee loose upon the world with a “character” to which he could not subscribe on oath in a court of law. As I had expected, the parson raised his voice in protest and I was able to deliver a neat little speech which I had prepared beforehand.

“So long as I am patron of your living, Vicar,” I said, “I will not interfere in your pulpit, and I must ask you to return the courtesy and not interfere in my house.”

He started to say something but, happily for the dignity of his cloth, thought better of it and retired from the field.

Later in the afternoon the cook, who had been with us for eighteen years, and the senior parlour-maid, who had completed twelve years, came to see me with a request from the whole staff that I would reinstate Banks. This request they were foolish enough to support with a suggestion that the whole staff might possibly tender their resignations if it was not granted, so I took the opportunity of discharging them all on the same terms as I had discharged Banks. I then ordered William Bedford to provide a new staff before the next holidays, and returned, cheerful and triumphant, to Eton.