Читать книгу The Puppet Show of Memory - Baring Maurice - Страница 14

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I enjoyed Eton from the first moment I arrived. The surprise and the relief at finding one was treated like a grown-up person, that nobody minded if one had a sister called Susan or not, that all the ridiculous petty conventions of private-school life counted for nothing, were inexpressibly great.

Directly I arrived I was taken up to my tutor in his study, which was full of delightful books. He took me to the matron, Miss Copeman, whom we called MeDame. I was then shown my room, a tiny room on the second floor in one of the houses opposite to the school-yard. As I sat in my room, boy after boy strolled in, and instead of asking one idiotic questions they carried on rational conversation.

The next day I met Broadwood, who was at another house, and we walked up to Windsor in the afternoon. He told me all the things I had better know at once; such as not to walk on the wrong side of the street when one went up town; never to roll up an umbrella or to turn down the collar of one’s greatcoat; how to talk to the masters and how to talk of them; what shops to go to, and what were the sock-shops that no self-respecting boy went to. There were several such which I never entered the whole time I was at Eton, and yet I suppose they must have been patronised by someone.

The day after that came the entrance examination, in which I did badly indeed, only taking Middle Fourth. My tutor said: “You have been taught nothing at all.” I was in the twenty-seventh division—the last division of the school but three, and up to Mr. Heygate. I was in the French division of M. Hua, who directly he put me on to read saw that I knew French, a fact which I had concealed during the whole time I was at my first private school. I messed with Milton and Herbert Scott, and after the first fortnight I became one of the two fags apportioned to Heywood-Lonsdale.

The captain of the House was Charlie Wood, Lord Halifax’s eldest son, and his younger brother, Francis, was a contemporary of mine and in the same house, but Francis, who was the most delightful of boys and the source and centre of endless fun, died at Eton in the Lent half of 1889.

Fagging was a light operation. One had to make one’s fagmaster tea, two pieces of toast, and sometimes boil some eggs, show that one’s hands were clean, and that was all. Then one was free to cook buttered eggs or fry sausages for one’s own tea.

On my first Sunday at Eton I had breakfast with Arthur Ponsonby, who was at Cornish’s, and I was invited to luncheon at Norman Tower, Windsor, where the Ponsonbys lived. There I found my Uncle Henry, my Aunt M’aimée, my cousins, Betty and Maggie and Johnny, and the Mildmay boys, who were also at Eton then.

In the afternoon we went for a walk in the private grounds of the Home Park with Johnny, and he took us to a grotto called the Black Hole of Calcutta, which was supposed to represent the exact dimensions of that infamous prison. It had a small, thick, glazed glass window at the top of it. On the floor was a heap of stones. Johnny suggested our throwing stones at the window, and soon a spirited stone-throwing competition began. The window was already partly shattered when warning was given that someone was coming. We thought it might be the Queen, and we darted out of the grotto and ran for our lives.

The whole of my Eton life was starred with these Sundays at the Norman Tower, which I looked forward to during the whole week. Maggie would take us sometimes into the Library and the State Rooms, and we used sometimes to hear the approaching footsteps of some of the Royal Family, and race for our life through the empty rooms.

One day we came upon the Empress Frederick, who was quietly enjoying the pictures by herself.

Sometimes in the afternoon Betty would take me up to her room and read out books to me, but that was later.

Our house played football with Evans’, Radcliffe’s, and Ainger’s. We had to play four times a week, and though I was always a useless football player, I thoroughly enjoyed these games, especially the changing afterwards (when we roasted chestnuts in the fire as we undressed), and the long teas. Milton, my mess-mate, was an enthusiastic, but not a skilful chemist, and one day he blew off his eyebrows while making an experiment.

At the end of my first half we had a concert in the house, in which I took part in the chorus. I had organ lessons from Mr. Clapshaw, and during my first half I once had the treat of hearing Jimmy Joynes preach in Lower Chapel. He had been lower master for years, and had just left Eton; he came down to pay a visit, and this was the last time he ever preached at Eton. His sermons were of the anecdotal type, full of quaint, pathetic, and dramatic stories of the triumph of innocence. They were greatly enjoyed by the boys. In the evening, after prayers, my tutor used to come round the boys’ rooms and talk to every boy. He used to come into the room saying: “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ci que ça?” My friends were Dunglass, Herbert Scott, Milton, Stewart, and Brackley. After Eton days I never saw Stewart again till 1914, when the war had just begun. I met him then in Paris. He was in the Intelligence. He had been imprisoned in Germany before the war, and he was killed one day while riding through the town of Braisne on the Aisne.

Dunglass was peculiarly untidy in his clothes, and his hat was always brushed round the wrong way. My tutor used to say to him: “You’re covered with garbage from head to foot,” and sometimes to me: “If your friends and relations could see you now they would have a fit.”

In the evenings the Lower boys did their work in pupil room. Boys in fifth form, when they were slack, did the same as a punishment, and this was called penal servitude. While they prepared their lessons or did their verses, my tutor would be taking older boys in what was called private; this in our case meant special lessons in Greek. One night these older boys were construing Xenophon, and a boy called Rashleigh could not translate the phrase, “Τοὺς πρὸς ἐμὲ λέγοντας.”[3] My tutor repeated it over and over again, and then appealed to us Lower boys. I knew what it meant, but when I was asked I repeated exactly what Rashleigh had said, like one hypnotised, much to my tutor’s annoyance.

Sometimes when my tutor was really annoyed he would say: “Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think what a ghastly fool you are?” Another time he said to a boy: “You’ve no more manners than a cow, and a bad cow, too.” When the word δύναμαι occurred in Greek, my tutor made a great point of distinguishing the pronunciation of δύναμαι and δυνάμει. δύναμαι he pronounced more broadly. When we read out the word δύναμαι we made no such distinction, and he used to say, “Do you mean dunamẏ or dunamai?” It was our great delight to draw this expression from him, and whenever the word δύναμαι occurred we were careful to accent the last syllable as slightly as possible. It never failed.

We did verses once a week. A little later most of these were done in the house by a boy called Malcolm, who had the talent for dictating verses, on any subject, while he was eating his breakfast, with the necessary number of mistakes and to the exact degree of badness needed for the standard of each boy, for if they were at all too good my tutor would write on them, “Who is the poet?” In return for this I did the French for him and a number of other boys. Latin verses both then, and until I left Eton, were the most important event of the week’s work. When one’s verses had been done and signed by one’s tutor one gave a gasp of relief. Sometimes he tore them up and one had to do them again. I was a bad writer of Latin verse. The kind of mistakes I made exasperated my tutor to madness, especially when I ventured on lyrics which he implored me once never to attempt again. In spite of the trouble verses gave one, even when they were partly done by someone else, one preferred doing them to a long passage of Latin prose, which was sometimes a possible alternative. It is a strange fact, but none the less true, that boys can acquire a mechanical facility for doing Latin verse of a kind, with the help of a gradus, without knowing either what the English or the Latin is about.

The subjects given for Latin verse, what we called sense for verses, were sometimes amusing. The favourite subject from the boys’ point of view was Spring. It was a favourite subject among the masters, too. It afforded opportunities for innumerable clichés, which were easy to find. One of the masters giving out sense for verses used to say: “This week we will do verses”—and then, as if it were something unheard of—“on Spring. Take down some hints. The grass is green, sheep bleat, sound of water is heard in the distance—might perhaps get in desilientis aquæ.”

The same master said one day, to a boy who had done some verses on Charles II., “Castus et infelix is hardly an appropriate epithet for Charles II.” Once we had a lyric on a toad. “Avoid the gardener, a dangerous man,” was one of the hints which I rendered:

“Fas tibi sit bufo custodem fallere agelli.”

The whole of my first half was like Paradise, and I came back to Membland for the holidays quite radiant.

When I went back for my second half I was in the Upper Fourth in the Lower Master’s Division. The Lower Master was Austen Leigh and the boys called him the Flea. I started, when I was up to him, the fiction that I could scarcely write, that the process was so difficult to me that a totally illegible script was all that could be expected from me. This was completely successful throughout the half, but in Trials I did well. I had started off by getting the holiday task prize, the holiday task being the Lord of the Isles, and as I had read a great part of it in the train going back, and as none of the other boys had read any of it, I got the prize.

Those holidays Chérie took Susan and myself to Paris. We stayed at the Hôtel Normandy in the Rue de l’Échelle, and I started from Eton the day before the result of Trials was declared. The day we arrived in Paris a blue telegram came telling us the result. It ran as follows: “Brinkman divinity prize, distinction in Trials, Trial Prize.” This meant that for the distinction, one had a cross next to one’s name in the school list for the rest of one’s Eton career. The Trial prize meant one was first in Trials in the division. It was a complete triumph, and the Lower Master wrote in my report: “Had I known what I discovered at the end of the half that he could write perfectly well, I would have torn up every scrap of his work during the half.” But it was an idle regret, as he did not discover it until too late. We spent the whole of the holidays in Paris and enjoyed it wildly.

Looking at a letter which I wrote from Paris (March 1888) at this time, I see we did some strenuous sight-seeing. We went to Notre Dame des Victoires, to the Musée Grévin, to Sainte Geneviève, la Foire de Jambon, the Jardin d’Acclimatation, and the Bois de Boulogne; we breakfasted at the Café de Paris, with anisette at the end of the meal; went to hear “la Belle musique sacrée” at the Châtelet, where Mademoiselle Kraus sang and Mounet Sully recited; we visited the Panthéon, saw Victor Hugo’s tomb, the Musée Cluny; had breakfast at Foyod’s, and saw the Archbishop of Paris officiate at Notre Dame, and went to the Louvre. All this was in Holy Week.

The next week we went to Versailles, the Sainte Chapelle, and the Invalides; saw Reichemberg and Samary act in the Le Monde ou l’on s’ennuie at the Théâtre français and Michel Strogoff at the Châtelet.

On Monday, 2nd April, I wrote home: “Nous allons jeter une plume et la suivre.” We also saw a play of Georges Ohnet’s at the Porte Saint Martin called La Grande Marnière and Le Prophète at the opera, with Jean de Reske singing the part of the false Messiah. We saw this from a little box high up in the fourth tier, and when we arrived we found a lady and a gentleman in our seats. We had expressly paid for the front seats. Chérie was indignant, and had it out with the gentleman, who gave way under protest. “Vous voyez,” said the lady, “Monsieur vous cède sa place.” “C’est ce qu’un Monsieur doit faire,” said Chérie. “On rencontre des gens,” said the lady, shrugging her shoulders.

We did not go to see L’Abbé Constantin, as Chérie said it was “une pièce de carême.”

On our last night in Paris we went to see a farce called Cocart et Bicoquet at the Renaissance. This play had been recommended to Chérie by a French friend of hers, who thought we did not understand French enough to follow dialogue. After the first act, Chérie became uneasy, and no sooner was the second act well under way than Chérie took us away. It was, she said to me, no play for Susan. She added that whenever she had tried to distract Susan’s attention from the more scabrous moments by saying, “Regarde cette manche,” and by calling her attention to interesting details in the toilettes of the audience, I had recalled Susan’s attention to the play by my only too well-timed laughter.

The year after this, 1889, we again went to Paris—Chérie, Susan, and myself—and this year Hugo came with us. Great preparations were being made for the Exhibition. It was not yet open, but the Eiffel Tower was finished, and we saw the reconstruction of the Le Vieux Paris and a representation of Latude escaping from the Bastille.

We also saw Maître Guérin performed at the Théâtre français, with Got Worms, Baretta, and Pierson in the cast. Got’s performance as the old, infinitely cunning, and scheming notaire, who is finally deserted by his hitherto submissive wife, was said to be the finest thing he ever did.

We saw two melodramas—Robert Macaire and La Porteuse de Pain; Zampa at the Opéra Comique and Belle Maman, Sardou’s comedy at the Gymnase; and Chérie and I went to see Sarah Bernhardt in perhaps the worst play to which she ever lent her incomparable genius, and which, I imagine, she chose simply to give herself the opportunity of playing a quiet death scene. It was an adaptation of the English novel, As in a Looking-Glass. Bad or good, I enjoyed it, and wrote home a detailed criticism of the play. This is what I wrote: “The adaptation of the book is bad. They evidently think you are perfectly acquainted with the book, and the sharp outline and light and shade of character is not sufficiently marked. In the first act you see about a dozen people who come in and who don’t let you know who they are, and who never appear again, and you do not arrive at the dramatic part till the last act.

“The story is briefly thus: Léna is staying with Mrs. Broadway, very Sainte Nitouche! everyone admiring her and all the octogenaires in love with her. She (whose passé is not sans tache) is under the power of a certain Jack Fortinbras, who forces her, under the penalty of unveiling her past, to marry a certain Lord Ramsey. Léna has in her possession a letter which Ramsey wrote to a Lady Dower, whose name is also Léna, and the letter is in very affectionate terms. Ramsey is engaged to Beatrice, and Léna shows this letter to Beatrice and says it was to her! Of course, Beatrice thinks Ramsey un lâche and leaves the house, saying her marriage is impossible, and leaving a letter for Ramsey to that effect. Act II. is in Léna’s house. Fortinbras comes and plays cards with a young man and cheats. Ramsey sees this, and Fortinbras is turned out of the house.

“Act III., Monte Carlo.—Léna is staying there with Ramsey, with whom she is now desperately in love. Fortinbras appears and asks for money, which she gives. Ramsey comes in and asks why she is agitated. She says she is helpless, alone. He confesses his love for her, and she, in a nervous excitement, says, “Je t’adore,” and so scheming to marry for money, she finds she is dreadfully in love with him.

“Act IV.—They are married and in Scotland. Fortinbras appears tracked by detectives and asks for 200,000 (pounds or francs?) at once, or he tells of her passé. Then Sarah Bernhardt was superb. It was quite impossible for her to get the money, and she is so happy with her husband. At this crisis Ramsey comes in and half strangles Fortinbras, who, when let go, reveals all Léna’s past. At the words, ‘Cette femme m’aimait une fois,’ Léna jette un cri d’angoisse, I would have given anything for you to have seen her act that scene. Ramsey hears it all, and, when given the proofs that are in letters, throws them into the fire, and Fortinbras is given to the detectives and Ramsey is alone with Léna and tells her that he really believes what the man said. She cannot deny it, and confesses the whole thing. Her acting was supreme, and Ramsey says to her, ‘Et m’avez vous jamais aimé?’ Then she gives way and bursts into sanglots, and implores him to believe her, and that she adored him. He refuses to believe her and goes out. Then all is pantomime. She takes up a knife, throws it down, gets a little bottle of ‘morphine,’ drinks it, sits down with Ramsey’s photograph in her hand; then come seven minutes of silence. All pantomime, but what pantomime; she quietly dies. I have never seen such a splendid bit of acting. It was lovely. As she is dying, Ramsey tries to come in, but the door is locked. He comes in at the window in an agony of grief and forgives her. Just when he is at the door she stretches out her hand and falls back épuisée. It was beautiful.”

I remember a doctor saying, as we went out of the theatre: “Mais ce n’est pas comme cela qu’on meurt de la morphine,”—upon which someone else answered: “Alors, ceux qui ont dit: Voilà une mort réaliste ont dit une sottise. Pourtant elle a été dite.”

We went to the cemetery of the Père Lachaise, and the tombs that I cited in a letter are those of Héloïse and Abelard, Balzac, Alfred de Musset, Bizet, and Géricault.

I went back to Eton for my first summer half, which is said to be the most blissful moment of Eton life, and I think in my case it was. The first thing one had to do was to pass swimming. I had learnt to swim at Eastbourne, and I swam as well as I ever did before or afterwards, but to pass, one had to swim in a peculiar way. The passing was supervised by my tutor, and I failed to pass twice, chiefly, I think, owing to the curious nature of my dive from the boat, which took the form of a high leap into the air and a descent on all-fours into the water. “Swim to the bank,” said my tutor, much to my disappointment. The second time I failed again, but there was soon a third trial, and I passed. I at once hired an outrigged gig with another boy, and then a period of unmixed enjoyment began: rows up to Surley every afternoon and ginger-beer in the garden there, bathes in the evening at Cuckoo Weir, teas at Little Brown’s, where one ordered new potatoes and asparagus, or cold salmon and cucumber, gooseberries and cream, raspberries and cream, and every fresh delicacy of the season in turn. Little Brown’s, the school sock-shop next to Ingalton Drake’s, the stationer’s, which we still called Williams’, was then controlled by Brown, who was a comfortable lady rather like the pictures of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland. She was assisted by Phœbe, who kept order with great spirit, in a seething mass of unruly boys, all shouting at the top of their voices and clamouring to be served first. Brown’s was open before early school, and if one had the energy, one got up in time to go and have a coffee and a bun there. It was well worth the effort, for the buns were slit open and filled with butter, and then, not toasted, but baked in the oven, and were crisp, hot, and delicious. Brown and Phœbe had the most marvellous memory for faces I have ever come across. They would remember a boy years afterwards, and when I was at Eton I used often to hear Brown say to Phœbe, as some very middle-aged man passed the window, “There’s Mr. So-and-so.”

There was a pandemonium in the front of the shop; in the little room at the back of the shop only swells went. There was another sock-shop called Rowland’s, near Barnes Pool, which had a garden and an arbour, and sold scalloped prawns in winter and wonderful strawberry messes in the summer. Then farther up town there was Califano, who was celebrated for his fiery temper, and in Windsor there was Leighton’s. But Brown’s was the smallest and cosiest of all the sock-shops, and nothing at any of the others could vie with her hot buns in the early morning.

I was now in Remove, and once more under the tuition of Mr. Heygate. We no longer translated Greek stories and epigrams from the delightful collection called Sertum, which was used in the Fourth Form. This book is now out of print, but I fortunately possess a copy. It is a most delightful anthology of short anecdotes and poems. On the other hand, we did Sidgwick’s Greek exercises, a book of very short English stories, which have to be translated into Greek. It is one of the most charming books ever written, and even now I can read it when I can’t read anything else.

I can’t remember what we read in school that half, but I remember reading Monte Cristo out of school. My mother had given me an illustrated edition of it on my birthday. On the afternoon of a whole school day I was reading of Dantès’ escape from the Chateau d’If, and I became oblivious of the passage of time. The school clock chimed the quarters, but I heeded them not. Just before the school hour was ended the boys’ maid came in and told me I was missing school. I flung away my book and ran breathless to upper school, where I found the boys just going out. I had missed school, an unheard-of thing to do, which meant probably writing out endless exercises of Bradley’s Latin prose. Each division had what was called a Prepostor, a boy who kept a book in which he was supposed to note all boys who were absent, and to find out if they were staying out, which meant staying out of lessons, that is to say, staying indoors on account of sickness, in which case the Dame of the house had to sign a statement to that effect in the prepostor’s book, and add also whether they were excused lessons; if they were not excused lessons they had to do written work in the house. On this day the prepostor had not noticed my absence, nor had Mr. Heygate, and I joined the crowd of boys running downstairs as if I had been there all the time.

There were two sorts of masters at Eton—those who could keep order and those who couldn’t. With those who could, there was never any question of ragging. Boys knew at once what was impossible and accepted it. They also knew in a moment when it was possible, and they lost no minute of their opportunities, and at once began to harass the wretched master with importunate, absurd, and impertinent questions, seeing how far they could go in veiled insolence without overstepping the line of danger. It was the masters who taught mathematics and French who had the worst time, with the exception of Monsieur Hua, who was an admirable teacher and stood no nonsense.

In Remove we did science. There were three science masters—Mr. Porter, Mr. Drew, and Mr. Hale (Badger). I was taught by them all in turn. Mr. Drew used to produce a mysterious and rather dirty-looking bit of stony metal or metallic stone, and say in a confidential whisper: “Do you know what that is? It’s quartz.” Badger Hale had only one experiment. It was a split football which was made to revolve by turning a handle, and proved, but hardly to our satisfaction, the centrifugal tendency of the earth. Mr. Porter’s science lectures, on the other hand, were fraught with excitement. Apparatus after apparatus was brought in, and experiment after experiment was attempted, sometimes involving explosions. Sometimes they failed. Sometimes, just at the critical moment we would laugh. Mr. Porter would say: “I have been three days trying to get this experiment ready, and now you have spoilt it all.” “Please, sir, we were not laughing,” we would say. “You were looking as if you were laughing, and that disturbs me just as much,” Mr. Porter would answer. It was no use accusing us of laughing, because we always denied it at once, and after a time he would always say: “Write out the verbs in mi for looking as if you were laughing.” At the end of the half, Mr. Porter gave what was called a “Good Boys’ Lecture,” at which the first nine boys of all the various sets he taught attended, if their work had been satisfactory throughout the term. I went to three of these or more. They were lectures with coloured magic-lantern slides, showing views of places all over the world, from Indus to the Pole. Never have I enjoyed anything more. There was a slide of Vesuvius in eruption, and slides of Venice and New Zealand, which were entrancingly beautiful. But one half, the Good Boy Lecture was confined to Mr. Porter’s holiday trip to the Isle of Skye, and the slides were not coloured. This lecture was a disappointment, and I am afraid, from the boys’ point of view, a failure. Another remarkable lecture Mr. Porter gave was on soap-bubbles. Films of soap bubble were projected by some device on to a screen, so that you saw the prismatic colours enlarged and as vivid as rainbows. While this was going on, a boy called Harben, who had a fruity alto voice, sang a sentimental song into a tube; the vibrations of the sound had a strange effect on the soap-bubble films, and made them change rapidly into a multitude of kaleidoscopic shapes and gyrations and symmetrical patterns. So Mr. Porter was the precursor of Skriabin’s Symphony, in which the music is assisted by visible colour.

Mr. Porter gave a series of lectures on electricity out of school. I and a boy in my house, Francis Egerton, applied to go to these. Mr. Porter somewhat reluctantly and suspiciously allowed us to come. They were rather stiff and advanced lectures, involving a good deal of formula writing on the blackboard with pi and other mysterious signs, but there were also experiments. We did not understand one word of it, but soon a difficult experiment was begun, which Mr. Porter said had taken him days to prepare. He was doubtful whether it would succeed. This was a rash remark. Egerton and I rocked with laughter. We laughed till we cried. There was no question of looking as if we were laughing. We were not allowed to go to any more lectures on electricity. There was an assistant masters’ prize given for science, and it was either that or the following year that the subject was physiography. I went in for this prize, staying out the whole Sunday before so as to have time to read the book on which we were to be examined, a short book by Huxley. I competed and won the prize. When it came to choosing a book for my prize, I chose The Epic of Hades, by Lewis Morris. I had to go to Mr. Cornish, who was not yet Vice-Provost, to have my name written in it. He was disgusted with my choice, and he advised me to change the book. But I was obdurate. I had chosen the book for its nice smooth binding, and nothing would make me reconsider my decision. “It’s poor stuff,” said Mr. Cornish; “it’s like boys’ Latin verses when they’re very good.”

There were two other French masters besides M. Hua—M. Roublot and M. Banck. M. Banck was sublimely strict, but M. Roublot was easygoing, good-natured, but lacking in authority. During his lesson we used to read the newspapers and write our letters, but we liked him too much to rag. We used to bring in all our occupations for the week, and stacks of writing-paper. One day when this was happening, and every boy was pleasantly but busily engaged in some occupation of his own, who should walk in but the Headmaster, Dr. Warre. The newspapers and the writing-paper and envelopes disappeared as by magic, and M. Roublot at once put on the safest boy to construe. Dr. Warre, who had grasped the situation, told us that our conduct was disgraceful.

He often made sudden visits to divisions, and stood up by the master’s desk while the work went on. These visits were always alarming, and one day, when he had just gone out of the room, one of the boys said: “Lord, how that man makes me sweat!” But there was one other French master who was not French, but far more formidable than all the rest, and this was Mr. Frank Tarver. Mr. Tarver was a perfect French scholar, and when he explained what the word bock meant, and said: “When you go to a café in Paris you sit down and say, ‘Garçon, un bock,’ ” one felt that one had before one a perfect man of the world. But sometimes there were no bounds to his anger, especially if he found that one had not looked out words in the dictionary, or if one translated encore by again. One day I remember his being in such a passion that he took a drawer from his desk and flung it on the ground. It is a great thing to be able to do this effectually. The boys quaked. Most of us liked him very much all the same; but to some he was a terror.

Mathematical lessons were always a difficulty in my case. I should never have passed Trials in mathematics had it not been for Euclid, which counted together with arithmetic and algebra. Fortunately I could do Euclid without difficulty, so I always got enough marks in that subject to make up for getting none at all in the two other branches of the science.

Every week we had a task called an extra-work to do out of school, which was meant to represent an hour’s work of mathematics, and consisted of sums in arithmetic and algebra. It generally took me more than an hour, and I never managed to get a sum right. When we used to get into hopeless arrears with our work, and everything was in an inextricable tangle, there was always one solution, and that was to stay out; but to be excused lessons one had to go to bed, and for that it was necessary to catch cold. But just an ordinary attack of Friday fever was enough to stay out. We complained of a bad headache and incipient insomnia, and Miss Copeman let us stay out at once, thinking it might be the beginning of measles, and we sat in her sitting-room reading a novel till the crisis was over.

At the slightest sign of a real streaming cold my tutor used to pack us off to bed and keep us there till it was gone, and we were allowed bound volumes of the Illustrated London News from the boys’ library, and my tutor would lend us books from his own library.

Each boy in a division had to be prepostor for the division for a week at a time in turn. With the prepostor’s book one marked in the boys who were absent, either from school or chapel. One had a list of the boys’ names at the end of the book and ticked them off as they walked into chapel. This sounds a simple thing to do, but as the boys used to come in at the last minute and all together, and one had to take up the book to a master before chapel began, I found it flustering to a degree, and never knew if I had marked everyone in or not. I had to go to the Headmaster once for losing the prepostor’s book, and he said I had played fast and loose with a position of grave responsibility, and gave me three exercises of Bradley’s Prose to write out.

After the summer half I was in Arthur Benson’s division. We read passages from the Odyssey, Virgil, and Horace’s Odes, the Second Book, and for the first time I enjoyed some Latin. I thought Horace’s Odes delightful. Arthur Benson used to make us draw pictures illustrating episodes in Greek history, and he would stick them up on the wall if they were good. One of the subjects suggested was the bridge of boats that Xerxes threw across the sea, and I remember drawing a magnificent picture, with the hills of the Chersonese in the background, copied from some illustrations of the Crimean War, and a realistic flat bridge made of planks placed on broad punts. He was delighted with the picture and put it up at once, and sometimes he used to take older boys to see it.

There was not much religious instruction at Eton. We construed the Greek Testament on Monday mornings, but this was a Greek lesson like any other; and Sunday was made hideous by an exercise called Sunday Questions, which had to be done on that day, and which we always put off doing to the last possible moment. These were questions on historical points in the Old Testament, and entailed finding out the answers from some such book as Maclear’s Old Testament History, and writing four large sheets of MSS. The questions were sometimes puzzling, and we used to consult Miss Copeman, and sometimes, as a last resort, my tutor, who used to say: “I can’t think what Mr. Benson”—or whoever it might be—“can mean.” I have still got a copy of Sunday Questions done at Eton. In this set we were told to give the probable dates showing the duration of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and what was going on in any other countries. Another question is: “Why was Pharaoh Necho against Judah? How did he treat their successive kings?” And the last question (there were several others) was: “Distinguish carefully between Jehoiakim and Jehoiakin.” I seem to have answered these questions rather evasively, but I got seven marks out of ten.

Besides this, boys got their religion from the sermons in Chapel, of which they were highly critical. They enjoyed a good preacher, and some of the masters and guests were good preachers, but the boys were merciless critics of a bad or ludicrous preacher, and there were many of these. One of the masters preached symbolic sermons about the meaning of the Four Beasts. Another used to begin his sermons by saying: “The story of the Prodigal Son is too well known to repeat. We all know how⸺” and then elaborately retell what was supposed to be too well known to tell at all. Before boys were confirmed they received special tuition on religious and moral topics from their tutor, but I missed it by having measles. So I was confirmed in the holidays, and just before my confirmation it struck my mother that I was singularly unprepared, so she sent me to see my Uncle Henry Ponsonby’s brother, who was a clergyman. We called him Uncle Fred; his sister had married one of my uncles. He had a great sense of humour, and was rather shy. He was also extremely High Church. When I arrived with a note from my mother, in which he was asked to examine me in theology, he was embarrassed, and he said: “Well, I will ask you your catechism, What is your name, N. or M.?” And then he laughed and said, “I think that will do.” When I told my mother this, she sent me to another clergyman who did talk, but confined the conversation to moral generalities, and said no word about the catechism. So I may say I had no religious instruction at school during all my school-time, for which I have always been profoundly grateful.

Music lessons became a difficulty and a stumbling-block as time went on. I had organ lessons, and they were, of course, given out of school, and these lessons and the necessary practice took up a lot of one’s spare time, besides having to give way to work. Mr. Joseph Barnby, the organist and the head of the music masters, said: “Your parents pay for your music lessons just as they pay for your Latin lessons, and so you ought to take just as much trouble about them.” This was quite true, but the other masters did not see the matter in the same light. They couldn’t be expected to take music lessons seriously, and said that music must in all cases always give way to work.

The result was one scamped one’s practice and shirked one’s music lesson on every possible opportunity. Matters came to such a pitch that I was sent for by Mr. Barnby. The situation was aggravated because Dunglass and I had unwittingly offended the violin master, and had gone into his room while he was giving a lesson to another boy, and had then shut the door rather more violently than was necessary. Mr. Barnby was indignant. My brother John had been one of his best pupils. He said our conduct was scandalous. I had employed base subterfuges to shirk music lessons, and I and Dunglass had insulted dear kind Mr. Morsh. We apologised to Mr. Morsh, and things went more smoothly; but I gave up the organ and had lessons on the pianoforte instead. Mr. Barnby was quite right, but he got no sympathy from the other masters, who continued to treat music as an utterly unimportant side issue which must give way to everything else. The result being, of course, that directly boys found that music lessons made it more difficult for them to get through their work, they gave up learning music. I have never stopped meeting people in after life who are naturally musical, and bitterly regretted not having been taught music seriously as boys; and if parents were wise they would insist on music being taken seriously, if they pay for music lessons for their boys. But as yet parents have done no such thing. Besides music lessons, there was the musical society, which consisted of an orchestra and a chorus, and performed a cantata at the school concert at the end of the half. I belonged to this later, and we sang Parry’s setting to Swinburne’s Eton “Ode” at the Eton Tercentenary Concert in June 1891. Mr. Barnby used to conduct, and had an amazing knack of discovering someone who was not singing, or singing a wrong note. The concerts were, I used to think, intensely enjoyable. There was an atmosphere of triumph about them when the swells used to walk in at the beginning in evening clothes, and coloured scarves, which stood for various achievements either on the river, the cricket or the football field. As each hero walked in there were thunders of applause. Then a treble or an alto used to sing a song that reduced the audience to tears: “Lay my head on your shoulder, Daddy,” or “The Better Land.” There was a boy called Clarke, who used to sing year after year till his voice broke. He had a melting voice. During my last half at Eton there was a boy called Herz, who sang “Si vous n’avez rien à me dire,” with startling dramatic effect, exactly like a French professional. But the best moment of all was when the Captain of the Boats sang the solo in the Eton Boating Song, whether he had got a voice or not, and then the whole school sang the “Carmen Etonense” at the end. What an audience it was! How they yelled and roared when a song pleased them! I used sometimes to go to St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, and Sir Walter Parratt used to let me sit in the organ loft. I heard Bach’s “Passion Music of St. Matthew” in this way, and Sir Walter said: “You must be as still as a mouse.”

I have said there were two kinds of masters: those who were ragged and those who were not. The master who was most ragged was a mathematical master called Mr. Mozley. He punished, but could never stop the stream of impertinent comment that went on through the hours of his instruction. One day we got a boy called Studd to practise “God save the Queen” at his open window. His window looked out on to a yard, and Mr. Mozley’s schoolroom was on the ground floor of the house next door to ours and looked out on to the same yard. The windows were open. It was a hot summer’s afternoon, and the strains of “God save the Queen” came in through Mr. Mozley’s window. Every time the tune began we stood up. “Sit down,” cried the Mo, or Ikey Mo, as he was called. “National Anthem, sir,” we said; “we must stand up.” There was a short pause. Then the tune began again. Again we all stood up. Mr. Mozley rushed to the window, but there was no sign of any violinist. For ten minutes there was no interruption, and then, just when Mr. Mozley, by a shower of punishments, thought he had got the division in hand once more, the tune began again, and again we all stood up with plaintive, resigned faces, as though nobody minded the interruption more than we did.

Another master who was mercilessly ragged was Mr. Bouchier,[4] who was deaf, and afterwards a famous Times correspondent at Sofia—a man who could do what he liked with the Bulgars, but who could not manage a division of Eton boys. The boys took mice into his schoolroom, and ultimately he had to go away.

There were masters who were stimulating teachers and roused the interest of boys in topics outside the ordinary routine of work, and others who kept scrupulously to the routine. The latter were the fairest, for when outside topics were discussed probably only a minority of the boys listened. It was above the heads of many. Arthur Benson kept scrupulously to the routine; he made it as interesting as he could, but rarely diverged on to stray topics, and never on to such topics that would only interest a few of the boys. Edward Lyttelton did exactly the opposite. When I was in his division there were about half a dozen boys who were advanced, and had got shoved up into his division by a rapid rise. The others were solid, stolid dunces. Edward Lyttelton devoted his time to the intelligent, and spent much time in conversation on such topics as ritual in Church, the reign of Charlemagne, and the acting at the Comédie française. He carried on teaching by asking a quantity of questions which entailed a great deal of interesting comment and argument. In the meantime the dunces ragged. I was good at answering his questions, but I joined in the ragging, nevertheless, partly from a sense of loyalty to raggers in general. The result was that at the end of the half I was top of his division for the school-time, but I forfeited the prize owing, as he said in my report, to my incorrigible babyishness. My tutor thought this unfair, and gave me a book instead of the prize. Mr. Rawlins, who was afterwards Lower Master and then Vice-Provost, was a good teacher, but his chief hobby was grammar, and he talked far above our heads. I startled him one day. We were construing an Ode of Horace, where a phrase occurred mentioning the difficulty of removing her cubs from, I think, a Gætulan lioness.[5] He said, “There is a parallel to that in French poetry.” I said, “Yes,” and quoted the lines from Hernani I had known for so long: