Читать книгу Stalky's Reminiscences - Lionel Charles Dunsterville - Страница 10

Table of Contents

I must now deal with the first year of my school career, a rather trying period of life for any boy, but especially so for me under peculiar circumstances.

To begin with, I was much the youngest boy in the school. There were a few not much older than I was, but the majority began at the usual public-school age of fourteen. As the college had no preparatory school at this period and my father was anxious to send me as soon as possible to any school where I would get well smacked and kept in order, I was launched to begin the battle of life—in a rather literal way—at the early age of ten.

We numbered about 200, and, as I have mentioned, among the elder boys there were several who had started elsewhere, but had come to us because their previous institutions had not regarded them as particularly desirable.

I had no previous knowledge of the little points of etiquette common to all schoolboys. I was not altogether a ‘little innocent’, but I was extraordinarily ignorant of boys’ ways—coming as I did straight from the mild tutelage of sisters and governesses.

I dare say Christian names are no longer ‘taboo’. I seem to hear them used sometimes among modern schoolboys. But at Westward Ho we guarded ours with jealous secrecy.

My ignorance of this, and my fat cheeks, were the chief causes of my early sorrows.

I was a ‘fat little beast’ or a ‘bloated mass of blubber’ to scornful elders, and these epithets caused me great agony of mind.

My first recollection of events on the day of my arrival begins with my appearance in the corridor on a wet, cold, dark afternoon. Details of my journey from London up to that point have faded from my mind. I seemed to have dropped from the skies into a howling pandemonium.

A new boy always excites some little interest and I soon found myself surrounded by a group of boys clamouring to know my name. To their appeal I responded ‘Lionel’.

This was received with delighted applause and yells of derision. I could not see why. And being again appealed to I once more responded ‘Lionel’, which seemed as unaccountably humorous as my previous reply.

After a little of this I began to realize that I was not the object of spontaneous popularity but that I was having my leg pulled, and my brain suggested to me that perhaps my surname would be a more correct answer.

So in reply to a new-comer in the rapidly increasing crowd, who asked me ‘What’s your name?’ I replied ‘Dunsterville’. But this only earned me a cuff on the head and the repetition of the question ‘What’s your name, you fat little beast?’ And cuffs were administered in increasing intensity until at last I gave once more the ridiculous reply ‘Lionel’, whereupon my interlocutor left me with a parting kick, to give place to another of the same kindly nature.

This went on for several days, at the end of which I had begun to loathe the sound of ‘Lionel’.

During the first two or three years of my school life I naturally formed lasting friendships which helped to balance the very rough side of life. I think none of these earlier companions are now alive.

Life was certainly very rough, and bullying was rampant. It was bound to be so in a school such as I have described, and although the Head was aware of it, and did all in his power to put it down, it was a good many years before it was reduced to reasonable limits.

As the smallest boy in the school I was an easy prey, and the life of perpetual suspense that I led during those harrowing years, probably taught me a great deal of cunning.

In addition to the blows and kicks that inevitably accompanied the bullying, I suffered a good deal from the canes of the masters, or the ground-ash sticks of the prefects. I must have been perpetually black and blue.

That always sounds so dreadful. Witnesses in court say that the victim had black and blue bruises, and tears fill the eyes of listeners.

But the truth of the matter is, any slight blow produces a bruise. A cane, however lightly applied, must always leave a blue-black mark. It in no way indicates the severity of the blows. And, with one or two savage exceptions, I am sure that the blows I received as a result of bullying or legitimate punishment were harmless enough. They certainly did me no injury, and may have done me good.

Kicks and blows I minded little, but the moral effect was depressing. Like a hunted animal I had to keep all my senses perpetually on the alert to escape from the toils of the hunter—good training in a way, but likely to injure permanently a not very robust temperament. I was robust enough, I am glad to say, and possibly benefited by the treatment.

It would serve no useful purpose to dwell at length on the various forms of bullying, but it may be interesting to give one or two examples.

One amusement for elder boys was to hold the little ones out of the top-storey windows by their ankles. As the buildings were five stories high this was rather a terrifying performance.

Another cheerful game was ‘hanging’, which was carried out from the top landing of the staircase which wound round a sort of square well so that over the top banisters one could look straight down to the bottom floor.

The condemned criminal—myself or another—was taken to the top floor and the sentence of death was read out as he stood by the banisters. His eyes were then blindfolded, and a rope with a slip-knot placed under his arms. A certain amount of slack was allowed for the first ‘drop’, to give an uncomfortable jerk. With this preparation he was launched into space, and after the first check at the end of the slack he was lowered slowly down till he got near to the bottom floor. Here an assistant hangman was placed, whose duty it was to inform the Chief Executioner above when to let go the rope.

He calculated by eye how much ‘drop’ you would be likely to stand and then gave the signal, when you fell to the floor with a resounding thud. He over-calculated on one occasion, when a boy broke his leg, and that led to the discovery of this innocent pastime, which ceased to exist from that time. It was not a pleasant performance for the victim, but at the same time not painful, though perhaps a little unnerving to a beginner.

Criminal lunatics must have been boys once and consequently one may assume that among any large group of boys there must be some embryo criminal lunatics. On no other assumption could one account for forms of bullying that are just sheer infliction of pain.

There were not many who revelled in these forms of torture; their expedients were simple enough and I need only give one example of a particularly refined form of cruelty. The assistant held your ear up against the thin wooden panel of a form-room door, and informed his master, the bully, when you were in position. The latter had a hammer in his hand and with this he struck a violent blow on his side of the panel.

The result to the victim was a sort of sensation of a bomb exploding in his head; this was followed by a headache which soon passed off.

How wonderfully we human beings are made! It is hard to imagine anything more delicate than the tympanum of the ear, and my ear was frequently subjected to this horrible treatment. Yet, at the present day, my hearing is extraordinarily acute.

Learning to swim was not quite the same as being bullied, because one realized that it was well meant. But it was just as terrifying.

There were two methods. The first and the only orthodox one was as follows. The school sergeant had a sort of fishing-rod with a canvas belt at the end of the line. You were fixed up in the belt and pushed into six feet of water, while he was supposed to half-support you by taking some of your weight on the rod, and to encourage you with kindly words of advice.

This usually started quite well, but presently old Cory the bath-man would come along and get into conversation with the sergeant, and while they discussed the chances of the next Derby, or some such eternally engrossing topic, I was left to sink to the bottom. Then the sergeant, feeling an unusual drag on the pole, would look round, grasp the situation, haul me out half-drowned and leave me to empty myself of the gallon or two of salt water that I had imbibed.

But when the sergeant was not there, some of the elder boys kindly took his place, applying unorthodox methods.

I hear, even now, people putting forward the theory that as the action of swimming is a natural one, if you throw a child into deep water he will quickly learn to swim by inherited instinct.

This was the theory they put into practice.

I was thrown into the deep end and allowed to sink once or twice—in the belief that a person always rises three times to the surface before he sinks for the last time—and then they had an amusing competition, to save the drowning man. So I was eventually ‘saved’, and as before allowed to empty myself of the salt water I had swallowed.

I learned to swim all right somehow, but I do not think that either of these methods helped me very much.

We were very well fed on good wholesome food, but being boys we were insatiable and I was always hungry, and devising expedients (honest or otherwise) for filling up the blank spaces.

A favourite subject of correspondence in the papers to-day is the question of diet for boys at public schools.

Parents fret more about their children now than they used to do.

When the average size of a family varied from six to twelve, parental supervision was wholesomely diluted and the children were all the better for it. I don’t think my father knew anything about ‘vitamins’, or wanted to. A diet of meat, vegetables and bread and butter, was good enough for his son, and I suppose that these, with various additions, contained all that was necessary for a growing boy even including the then undiscovered ‘vitamins’.

Our supper would be considered a quaint one in these days. Hunks of bread and chunks of cheese, washed down with plenty of flat but wholesome beer. We had this just before going to bed and I slept very well on it.

Some boys had parents who sent them frequent tips which enabled them to fill themselves out at ‘Keytes’, the school tuck-shop. I had very little in this way and my weekly pocket-money of sixpence was a sum of considerable importance to me.

Pocket-money was given out by one of the masters at the dinner table. He was supposed to be provided with the requisite number of sixpences, but sometimes he ran short and he would then hand over a two-shilling piece to the biggest boy of four, with instructions to change it and pass on their shares to the other three.

It was the stupidest way of doing things that you can well imagine, and was putting a very strong temptation in the way of the elder boy. And the elder boy with whom I was generally bracketed was the sort of boy who needed little tempting. So I often got no sixpence at all, or was glad to compound for twopence and a ball of twine, or a penknife with both blades broken.

So I learnt two valuable lessons. First, to earn money honestly, to be spent in the tuck-shop. Second, to procure eatables from the world at large without expenditure, and honestly—if possible.

I earned money in various ways, little odd jobs rewarded by richer boys with a penny or two. I got half a crown out of a rich youth one Sunday for diving into the swimming-bath in my Sunday clothes with my top-hat on. And I made and sold a great many sets of miniature golf-clubs and balls for use in a popular game of miniature golf played on the floor of the form-room. The clubs were about eight inches long and were accurate models.

I made a little money almost honestly by collecting copper nails, and bits of copper sheeting from pools on the beach, and selling them in Bideford where I got quite a good price for them.

Wrecks were not uncommon in Bideford Bay, and my copper came from sailing ships that had gone to pieces on the bar. I suppose these things belonged in law to ‘the Crown’, but you had to be pretty clever to find them, and I am sure the Crown would never have done it.

The eatables I procured for myself were such things as blackbirds, potatoes, turnips, hens’ eggs, apples, with good fortune a rabbit, and on rare occasions a whole loaf of fresh bread.

With the exception of the bread these were just things that bountiful Nature provided or that farmers and hens had left lying about and that seemed to come my way. The bread, I am afraid, was real theft, but it did not seem to be so to me. It was our own college bread and part of the supply intended for our consumption—but they only gave us slices and I wanted a whole loaf after I had eaten all my slices. And it took some getting, I can assure you.

One had to descend into forbidden regions, and dart from passage to passage with domestics passing backwards and forwards all the time. And there was no escape in flight, because you were known, and to be seen was equivalent to being captured.

I am sure that no parent who reads the above will want to write again to the Headmaster to inquire whether Cuthbert gets enough to eat. Once for all, it is quite certain that he does not. As far as my experience goes, no healthy boy has ever had enough to eat. I have sometimes as a boy had too much, but never once enough.

I know that I am not, and never was, abnormally greedy, and my fat cheeks were purely natural and not in the least due to my large appetite. In my recollection it was always the thinnest boys who ate most, and the fatness of my cheeks brought tears to my eyes when I noticed a sort of living skeleton always eating two to my one.

This food problem not only exercises the minds of parents with regard to boys at school, but a fond mother often betrays the same anxiety for a full-grown man.

During the Great War all sorts of ‘mothers’ darlings’ found themselves unexpectedly in the ranks of the army. A mother of one such lad wrote to me when I was commanding a brigade, asking me if I would assure myself ‘personally’ that her boy had enough to eat.

I hadn’t really time to do that, so I told the Brigade-Major to write to her and advise her to have a good look at the next batch of British soldiers she met, and judge from their prime condition whether army food was ample or not.

I managed to get through a good deal of reading in the intervals of work, games, and being hunted. Like most boys my fancy ran to rather lurid works of fiction. I owe a deep debt of gratitude for many happy dreams of love and adventure to the authors of two splendid books. My first favourite was Ned Kelly, The Ironclad Bushranger, with a thrill in every chapter. The second favourite was Jack Harkaway. I also read most of Fenimore Cooper’s splendid stories of Red Indians, and Captain Marryat’s books of adventures at sea. Another author was ‘Gustave Aimard’, who wrote of Spanish adventures and vendettas. From his books I learnt a whole set of Spanish oaths and imprecations, which still linger in my memory.

Spain is one of the few countries I have not yet been able to visit. I hope to get there some day and try my vocabulary on the inhabitants.

It was about this time that I took to signing in my blood the letters I wrote to my sisters.

I don’t believe that they were much impressed by it, and it was an unpleasant job getting the blood from my arm, and blood is most trying stuff to write with, it congeals very quickly and won’t run off the nib—I doubt if it was worth while.

About my second or third year at school I ran away to sea, during the summer term.

In taking this action I was impelled by many considerations. I had a great love for the sea which has never left me. I never had the least desire to be a soldier, I wanted to be a sailor, but I was never consulted.

I wanted freedom and adventure—something on the lines of being wrecked on a desert island where one found conveniently to hand all the things one needed, not forgetting a parrot and a Man Friday.

I wanted to get away from the tyranny of masters and boys, to get out into the wide world, to make my own way in life, to find possibly a gold mine, and return in a few years and say ‘Ha, ha!’

My effort ended in complete failure. I sought employment with the small coasting brigs and schooners, but they laughed at me and told me to go back to school. It worried me that they should spot so easily that I was a schoolboy when I had taken, as I thought, great pains to disguise myself.

I must have been away about three days and two nights, getting a crust of bread here and there at farms, a turnip or two from the fields, and sleeping concealed in the thick Devon hedges at night. At last hunger compelled me to surrender and I made my way back to school to give myself up. As I crossed the football field I was spotted by various people, who ‘captured’ me, and rather boasted of their capture. This annoyed me more than anything. To be regarded as a ‘capture’ when one was really a ‘surrender’—quite a different thing.

I was taken before the Head, who showed considerable tact in his treatment of me.

Although I had failed in my endeavour to go to sea, I had had an interesting time, and the excitement caused by my recapture helped me to feel somewhat of a hero. I was, on the whole, rather pleased with myself. The fact that I should have to undergo a severe licking and perhaps be expelled, did not worry me in the least. I was very, very hungry and the thought uppermost in my mind was that whatever they did, they would have to give me food!

So I was full of assurance as I was marched by Sergeant Schofield into the awful presence of the Head. I expected him to leap from his desk and do or say something dramatic, but to my pained surprise, he continued writing and seemed barely aware of our presence.

The silence was very unnerving. Nothing beyond the sound of my own breathing, and the ticking of the clock.

At last the sergeant ventured to attract attention by clearing his throat, on which the Head asked him what he wanted, without even turning round.

My assurance was trickling out of me fast.

It trickled out to the last drop when I heard the Head say ‘Dunsterville? Dunsterville. Oh yes, now I remember. The boy that ran away.’

Then turning suddenly round and facing me he asked, ‘And what do you want?’

‘What did I want?’ This was quite a new proposition. I had thought that it was they who wanted me, but the Head assured me that that was not so at all. Having run away, my name had just been erased from the rolls and that settled it. I no longer belonged to the college and so ‘What did I want?’

Visions of cups of hot tea, and plates of nice meat and bread, faded from my mind, as I burst into tears. No amount of beating or reproaches could have made me weep like that, or made me feel such a crushed worm.

To cut a long story short, the Head saw that, like a condemned criminal, I was given plenty of good things to eat. Then there was a public licking before the whole school in solemn assembly, which somewhat restored my assurance. And there the matter ended.

The net result of this escapade was distinctly advantageous—it gave me a sort of status in the school and enabled me to shake off finally my sense of inferiority.

My life still remained sufficiently exciting, and I had my little adventures frequently enough to save me from a feeling of stagnation.

One of these was perhaps serious enough to merit being placed on record. Among my many rambles in forbidden places my favourite haunt was the quarries where men were at work blasting the rocks.

I soon found out where they stored their blasting powder (black) and also found how to get at the store and help myself to the precious substance unobserved. With this I used to carry out very interesting experiments in small blasting operations on my own.

Somehow or another—I cannot remember how—I became possessed of some fine grain black sporting powder. This I proceeded to use in the same way as my blasting powder, but of course it burnt much more rapidly; in fact, with the short trail I laid, the explosion was almost instantaneous. I hadn’t time to jump out of the way before the charge went off practically in my face.

It is an extraordinary thing how quickly one’s nerves move by instinct. In the fiftieth part of a second, I suppose, I must have shut my eyes and so saved my sight. But my eyebrows and eyelashes were burnt off, and my face was as black as a nigger’s. It hurt a good deal, but it hurt much more having to wash the black off my scorched skin in salt water on the beach. But it had to be done. To have returned to school with that face would have been to confess my sins.

I had to be treated in hospital, but was soon all right again. In explaining the extraordinary condition of my face I invented some plausible tale in connection with the burning of a newspaper while drawing up the fire in one of the class-rooms. It went down all right. At any rate they kindly accepted that version of the affair and said no more about it.

I had some conscience even at that early age and I tried to persuade that censorious part of my make-up that I had not really told a proper lie because the damage had been caused by fire—in a sort of way—and my skin was really burnt—in a manner of speaking.