Читать книгу Long Before Forty - Cecil Louis Troughton Smith - Страница 8

Table of Contents

So it was settled that I was to go to Christ’s Hospital. For seven years I was to be fed and clothed and taught for nothing, and by the end of that time I would have the other advantages of having attended a good-class public school in addition. My father, returning on leave, rewarded my success with a golden half sovereign, more money than I had ever possessed before, which I lavished away during the weeks of the summer holidays in luxurious living. Those August days are memorable to me because during them I had only to put my hand in my pocket to find money there—a glorious state of affairs when a penny would buy a quarter of a pound of good sweets, and halfpennies and even farthings were capable of buying things.

There was neither exultation nor depression at the thought of going away to school, and wearing the long blue coat and white bands and yellow stockings. It was my destiny, settled years back. I no more thought of questioning it than a French girl thinks of questioning the desirability of the marriage her parents arrange for her. The regulation amount of underclothing and football gear was bought (the school provided neither of those) and packed up in the regulation wicker basket. September came, and with my father and mother I went up to the offices somewhere near Holborn for the final formalities. There was an additional medical examination to go through, and papers to sign, and various other minor formalities to complete before we went to catch the school train in the afternoon.

The medical examination was soon finished, but the other formalities seemed to take an extraordinary long time. I sat with my mother in the waiting room while my father was interviewing governors or whoever it was had to be interviewed. The other mothers had long ago drifted away with their offspring—my school-fellows to be, presumably—and still we sat and waited. The room was overheated, I remember, and had a clock with a noisy tick.

At last, when my mother was really beginning to be anxious as to whether we should have time to catch the train, my father came into the room. His entry is one of my clearest memories, for he was furiously angry and his face was as white as his military moustache.

‘It’s closed,’ he said. ‘The scholarship’s closed.’

It took some time for us to realise that at this very moment, five minutes before we were to leave to catch the train to school, the governors had made up their minds not to allow me a scholarship.

Their decision (though not the time they chose to announce it) was perfectly justified. By the terms of Edward VI’s foundation the school was dedicated to the education of the poorer boys of London, and anyone knowing the size of my father’s income could instantly deduce the fact that I was not to be included in that class; my father was considerably wealthier than he had been eight years before when my second brother won a similar scholarship. It was anomalous, all the same (as I believe my father had pointed out with some heat) that by the system of ‘presentations’ and ‘nominations’ the children of friends of the governors should be admitted with no strict inquiry into either education of circumstances while I, selected from twenty thousand candidates, should be discarded.

I think I bore the blow far more calmly than my parents. Presumably I believed that my own extreme importance in the world’s affairs would see to it that I came out all right whatever happened. I left them struggling with their disappointment while I went off to the Oval to watch the last two hours of the last match of the season. It was the champion county versus England, particularly to be remembered because it was the only time when I saw G. L. Jessop bat. He came in about seventh wicket down and made twenty or so by terrific hitting before he was caught in the long field at the foot of the sight screen.

By the time I reached home my father had decided what to do with me—it was an awkward moment for him because he had only one day’s more leave in England, and during that time he had to find a school for me and settle me in it. Naturally it was agreed that if there was room for me I should go to the extremely good secondary school (nominally now a public school) at which my other brother had been educated, and thither I went with my father next morning.

The headmaster received us affably. He would be glad to have me in the school—had not my brother that very year qualified in medicine at the phenomenal age of twenty, and was I not the winner of a Christ’s Hospital scholarship which marked me as one of the cleverest children in London? But—and this was a very grave but, as I gathered from the serious way in which my father and the headmaster discussed the matter—there was only one vacancy in the whole school; the term had begun several days before. This vacancy was in the fourth form, among boys of thirteen and fourteen. Was I equal, in the first place, to the standard of work of the fourth, and, secondly, would I be able to hold my own among the big boys? The headmaster looked at my stunted figure and pale spectacled face with doubts which were obvious even to me. I was consulted in the matter, I remember, and expressed no apprehensions—my egoism was of that kind. The form master of 4A was called in—that was my first encounter with the dear kindly man—and took me off for a lightning examination. Naturally I passed that with flying colours—thanks to the elementary school I could do that sort of algebra and arithmetic without stopping to think. Then I was taken off to the French master (the Englishman who taught French, not the sweet incompetent Belgian who also taught there, and who was to die of a broken heart when he heard of the destruction of Louvain) and that individual, confronted in the middle of a class with the demand that he should ascertain immediately whether my French was of Fourth Form standard, asked the inevitable question.

‘Parlez vous Français?’ he demanded. That was a favourite gambit of the old lady who talked French to us at the elementary school.

‘Oui, monsieur, un peu,’ I replied.

‘Quel âge avez-vous?’

‘J’ai dix ans—I mean onze,’ I said—my birthday had come two or three days before.

‘He’ll do. Take him away,’ said the French master.

So then and there I was flung into the middle of things at a big boys’ school, dropped, when the term had just got well under way, into a form where practically everybody was three years older than me and about a foot taller, the only new boy among thirty veterans. Scholarship boys from elementary schools (there were not many of them in those days) were usually put into the Thirds, and had time there to make friends and learn the ways of the school; I was a form higher and a year younger than these holders of junior scholarships.

To this day I still feel qualms when I look back on that first year at school, even though a selective memory has mercifully blurred most of the details. The way of an infant phenomenon at a boys’ school is hard. There was one popular torture known as ‘racking’; Guy Fawkes was racked, although in a different way, but I doubt if he were more hurt. At school the first step when racking anyone is to take off the subject’s necktie—to rack anyone, be it understood, calls for the combined efforts of several bigger boys. Then you take the subject to the railings which divide the asphalt from the playing field, set his back against them, and pass his arms behind him over the rail which is of the most suitable height. Then you take hold of his wrists and bring his arms forward and upward, straining his shoulders back over the railings until his shoulder joints are at the point of dislocation—a little more or less is not of much importance. Then you tie his wrists together behind the back of his neck with his necktie and also to the top rail of the railings, so that he is held fast in this extremely uncomfortable position. Some practitioners (although it is not really essential nor universal) now try poking the subject’s stomach, which protrudes in a most tempting and amusing way as a result of this tying back of his shoulders. Finally (and this is most important) you must undo every single button on the subject’s clothing, pull up or down every garment which is freed by this process, and then leave the subject writhing against the railings and surrounded by an hysterical mob weak with laughing until some prefect responsible for order comes and sets him free.

That is only one way of dealing with an infant phenomenon; there are lots of others. If you sit behind him in class you can do a good deal with pins. You can chew your penholder until it becomes conveniently brushlike, and then use this instrument for painting pictures in ink on the back of his neck. You can smack his head steadily and monotonously with a book, and when his skull becomes inured to this treatment you can use the edge of a ruler instead. Care should be taken that the infant phenomenon not only has someone sitting behind him who dislikes infant phenomena, but people on each side and in front as well of the same way of thinking. Then by an easy rotation of duty monotony can be avoided, and pressure continuously applied to make the infant phenomenon wish not merely that he was not an infant phenomenon but that he had never been born, or that he was a condemned slave in the Siberian saltmines, or that he was roasting in Hell.

One very amusing thing to do in the fleeting minute between lessons is to take off the infant phenomenon’s shoes and drop them out of the window. He has no chance at all, of course, of retrieving them at once. They are picked up by a puzzled porter or gardener and conveyed to the lost property office, whither, at the break, the child must make his way down flights of stairs and along crowded corridors in his stockinged feet to the infinite amusement of all beholders; or with great good fortune he may be called out before the break comes to show up work at the master’s desk or to write something on the blackboard, when, his shoeless condition becoming apparent, everyone enjoys a hearty laugh, and a tedious lesson is shortened by a welcome interval while the puzzled master asks questions. Not even the kindliest master can resist cracking a joke or two in those circumstances.

Looking back on those days I can appreciate the fact that most of the things which were done to me were only done in search of amusement and to relieve the tedium of an otherwise monotonous existence. Of cruelty for cruelty’s sake there was very little. Pain was hardly ever inflicted solely for the sake of inflicting pain. There was nearly always some more human motive at the back of it, even if it were only a scientific interest in the furious rages which could be induced in an inky and tear-stained little boy. At the time, however, I would have found small comfort in this even if I had realised it. There was a black period months long during which I felt more miserable than I have ever done since; during which I debated the idea of suicide quite seriously, and when I would willingly have exchanged my mode of existence for any other the world could offer.

One source of comfort remained—I could usually manage to shut myself up within myself and, heedless of the outer practical world, indulge in the most gratifying fantasies as to what I would do to Anderson and Melville and company if I had them in my power. My mind in those days accepted easily notions which I can only compel myself with an effort to think about now—buckets of flaming coals scientifically applied; the deft insertion of long thin iron spikes; the thoughtful application of melted lead.

Anderson and Melville bulked enormous to my mind. If ever I had been called upon to make life-size models of them I should certainly have made them eight feet tall. I do not think I should have given them horns and tails, but most certainly they would have had cruel hands and mocking laughs. I suppose if I could see them now as they were then they would appear to me to be very ordinary and uninteresting small boys—rather loutish, perhaps, with a precocious tendency to hair oil and creased trousers, but I should certainly not give a second thought to them. Yet in those days they were easily the most important inhabitants of my world, whose whims and fancies were of the most excruciating importance to me.

In one respect I was lucky. That school was remarkably clean in tone. It was perfectly possible—I knew several examples of it—for a boy to pass right through the school and emerge as innocent as when he entered it. Only once can I remember an Assistant Tormentor suggesting the introduction of a sexual motive into my course of treatment, and he was instantly overruled. If that kind of thing had intruded itself into my life at that point I might have suffered a good deal of harm; I might have learned to ‘suck up’ to my biggers and betters, and coquette with them in the way which I saw frequently, a year or two later, employed by small boys at other schools, or I might have suffered various moral lesions which it would have taken years to cure.

As it was, a year of bullying did me no harm at all, as far as I can tell, and I honestly believe it did me a great deal of good. I learned a number of lessons of extreme value to a pert small boy. I learned not to use the repartee which came to my lips; I learned to make myself quite inconspicuous continuously as well as on occasions; I learned not to show any emotion of any kind, and especially not to lose my temper—a boy who loses his temper is always more liable to bullying; I learned not to cry out when I was hurt, but to bear it with an absolutely unmoved expression in the certainty that the tormentor would the sooner cease from troubling. I learned that when a small boy plots revenge, and secretly achieves it, the pleasure to be obtained from announcing one’s authorship later is not to be compared with the inevitable pain which follows—and, incidentally, there is a more acute pleasure still in hugging one’s secret to one’s breast and revelling in amused isolation at the black fury of one’s victim. The most valuable lesson, perhaps, was that I learned I was not, to put it mildly, a person of great importance in the affairs of the world.

The effect of those lessons may have worn off by now, perhaps (I fear they have) but while it lasted it was of the greatest advantage to me. Incidentally, it never once occurred to me during that black year to admit to anyone in authority at home or at school that I was in the least unhappy. The school authorities may have guessed it; probably they did (I have reason to think so) but with infinite tact refrained from interference which could only have made things far worse. At home I suppose it was pride; I would never admit to my family that the great, the wonderful, the clever, the inexpressibly marvellous Cecil was thought so little of at school that he was kicked whenever a kickable portion of him came in range of anyone’s boot.

When I say that I believe this year of bullying did me good, I do not wish it to be understood that I am in favour of bullying. Far from it; in the majority of cases I believe it does a great deal of harm, to the bully as well as to the bullied. I have been in close personal touch with two different clever boys who have been reduced to mental impotence, and who have had promising careers ruined in consequence, by intensive bullying—not at the school where I was bullied, though. And I can remember the expression of inane cruelty on the faces of the boys who did the bullying in one of those cases. The bullying to which I was subjected approached much nearer to the ideal of Gilbert’s Mikado; it was humorous as well as lingering; it provided a running river of harmless merriment; it was not blind cruelty—and without a shadow of doubt I deserved a good deal of what I got, for I must have been a most objectionable little boy.

What saved me from the fate of the over-bullied was, first, that I learned to camouflage my objectionableness, and, secondly, that the bullying only lasted a year. For at the end of my first year I stayed down in the Fourth for another year, while Anderson and Melville and the others passed up into the Fifths where they tended to forget about me and where it was not so easy to lay hands on me—the day school bully has far fewer opportunities than has the boarding school bully. It is the fact that the school authorities permitted me to stay two years in one form which makes me think that they were aware of my hard lot, for I was always quite high up in the form order, and it was the most certain cure for the ills to which I had been subjected.

The school work, indeed, gave me no trouble at all. In several subjects I was in advance of the syllabus on my arrival, and it was some time before I threw off the careful habits of work which the elementary school cane had instilled into me. I was in the habit of presenting homework done absolutely right—six sums out of six; French translation with every word looked up in the dictionary and every irregular verb checked; it was long before I could reconcile myself to my natural carelessness and laziness, and to presenting work with the bare fifty per cent or so of exactitude which kept one just out of trouble in the new school. And we were well and sympathetically taught by men (and not by fanatics) who had between them somehow evolved a system—or created an atmosphere—in which we absorbed knowledge without any conscious effort on our part, and, I believe, without very much effort on the part of our masters; the standard of teaching must have been very high indeed; every year some forty boys or so used to enter for London University Matriculation, and only two or three of them used to fail—and this without any exasperated goading or prodding or cramming by the masters and most certainly without any really hard work on the part of the boys. The most usual punishment was to be kept in for half an hour after school; an exceptionally severe one was to be kept in for three hours on Saturday mornings; canings (by the Head Master) were very rare indeed and were never made public. It was with these punishments, extraordinarily mild to a boy who came from the sort of council school where I had spent seven years of my life, that quite good discipline and an extremely high standard of education were maintained.