Читать книгу Stalky's Reminiscences - Lionel Charles Dunsterville - Страница 6

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Although this book is not intended to be a serious attempt at autobiography, still it may be well to begin on orthodox lines, and I may therefore record the fact that I was born at Lausanne in Switzerland on November 9, 1865.

My family name speaks for its Norman origin, being included in the Roll of Battle Abbey, and the somewhat unusual fact exists that it has never been shared by others than ourselves.

Up till 1300 we held large estates in Wiltshire, that of Castle Combe, near Chippenham, being the ‘caput Baronæ’.

In later years the family found themselves in Devonshire, my great-great-great-grandfather having settled in Plymouth.

My grandfather, who was the last to reside in Plymouth, started his military career, in which he attained high rank, in the service of the East India Company in those palmy days when the pagoda-tree stood so invitingly on India’s coral strand, awaiting just the gentlest shake to pour its golden fruit into the lap of fortune-hunters. The fact that he died possessed of very moderate means seems remarkable.

Few surnames are capable of being converted into anagrams, but ours is one of the few, and it makes

‘NEVER SIT DULL.’

I do not remember when I first had this pointed out to me, certainly I knew nothing of it in childhood or early manhood. It is peculiar, therefore, that my outlook on life has been in exact keeping with the excellent advice of the anagram.

At the time of my birth my father had returned to India, leaving my mother and five sisters at Lausanne, where we remained for a year or two. As he continued to serve in India till after I had entered the army, I saw little of him, and my mother died when I was ten years old, so that I missed in childhood the advantages of a settled home.

My Swiss birthplace has often been a source of trouble to me. Families like ours spread their birthplaces all over the world. My father was born in India, my mother at the Cape, my wife in England, myself in Switzerland, and my eldest son in China.

The Swiss authorities were puzzled as to the correct manner of registering my birth, and eventually put me down as a Swiss subject, son of an African and an Indian; but the English authorities have never got over it, and seem to be in a perpetual state of perplexity.

In filling up certain forms for one of the Government Offices three years ago on behalf of my eldest son, I had to make the usual statements relating to age, parentage, etc. The fact that I was a Major-General in the Indian Army and that my father and grandfather had also attained the same rank in that service did not at all convince them that I was quite the genuine article—English for 857 years.

They wanted to know if I had been ‘naturalized’! I had some difficulty in convincing them that it was quite all right and that I spoke English with no foreign accent.

I did not remain long in the land of my birth, as the family migrated from Switzerland to Jersey when I was about two years old, and from there we moved, a few years later, to the Isle of Wight.

I remember little of my early years and few of my childish recollections and small adventures are worth recording; but I have one very happy memory in connection with rum-and-eggs that my mind likes to dwell on. I absorbed this delicious drink for quite a long time—it was a special diet for an invalid sister who hated it, and I, on the contrary, liked it very much.

Fate has been good to me in this way. In schoolboy days I had an anæmic friend whose parents paid extra for him to have a small bottle of stout at night. Of course he didn’t like it, and of course I did, so I helped him out of his difficulty. This pleasant state of affairs lasted for several terms. He got thinner and thinner, while I got fatter and fatter—in fact, I might attribute my later robust health chiefly to the consumption of this nourishing beverage.

Another unfading memory is that of the luscious smell of a frowsty hotel. That must have been when we left Jersey, when I was about seven, and we stayed at an hotel in Southampton. A warm smell of bacon, coffee, and cigar-smoke. I frequently encounter this well-known mingled perfume nowadays, and I would naturally hate it, but childhood’s memories make it sweeter to me than the fragrance of flowers in spring.

It is well that I should not dwell too much on the years of my early childhood, as I have no doubt in my own mind that I was an exceptionally unpleasant infant. Like most men, I have had bad periods in my life, and I believe that my first seven years were probably the worst.

I did not bother to think why I thought and behaved as I did, but looking back on it now I dare say it was partly the longing for assertion of a very small male, surrounded at all times by seven females, all of whom were, in greater or less degree, in a position of authority towards this helpless little creature.

My mother being to a great extent an invalid, my early training was chiefly in the hands of my five sisters, and whatever I am to-day must be regarded as the result of their methods. I express my gratitude to them. I needed a strong hand, and I got five pair of strong hands. Bless them.

But they went wrong on one point. That was not their fault, they were not old enough to know. Fifteen years ago after a scene of trouble with one of my sons aged six, it occurred to me to explain to him that there are, and must be, two separate sets of laws (though based on unchanging principles) for grown-ups and children.

This was never explained to me, with the result that I hated all grown-ups with a hatred that no words can express. They were just so many unreflecting tyrants, and the world was full of them.

Whatever I did or wanted to do, I was promptly told to ‘don’t’.

As a parent myself I know how unfortunately necessary this is, because, in keeping with the theory I have expounded above, whatever children want to do is what they should not: but a wise parent withholds some of the ‘don’ts’ for fear of driving the child into the state of mutiny in which I found myself.

I cannot at all account for the vileness of my temper in childhood’s days. It disappeared entirely with manhood and at my present age I find it very hard to get angry with anyone about anything. My fierce outbursts of rage were succeeded by long periods of sulks which made them worse.

In these days some kind-hearted faddist would prove that all the evil of my nature proceeded from the fact of something pressing on my brain, and a timely operation might suddenly endow me with the temper of an angel.

But in the Dark Ages when I was a boy, they thought it was just my wickedness (so did I), and they treated me on that assumption with no more serious operation than the frequent wielding of a slipper or a cane.

At Ventnor, when I was about eight years old, I decided to commit suicide. I was very miserable, and I attributed none of this misery to my own abominable temperament, but laid it all to the blame of the grown-ups, and suicide seemed to fill two necessary conditions—escape from my own misery, and inflicting misery on grown-ups in their turn.

I did not stop to reflect that possibly the disappearance of such a horrid child might not cause widespread misery—I simply had the one thought in my mind, ‘They’ll be sorry when I’m gone, and they’ll repent them of their sins. But—ha, ha—it will be too late.’

I left the house in a raging temper one evening, probably about eight o’clock, and I walked down to the sea to throw myself in. It was bright moonlight, and the fresh night air both cooled my temper and weakened my resolve. What I did I cannot exactly recollect, but I got very wet, and then I must somehow have made up my mind to defer the business to some future occasion, because by about 10 p.m. I found myself back in the town finding life well worth living again.

The reason of this change of outlook on life was due to the fact that, with some other boys, I had found a loose flap in the big circus tent through which we could gaze on the prancing horses and buxom ladies in tights—a glimpse of Paradise.

While engaged in this pastime I felt a heavy hand descend on my shoulder, and, turning, gazed into the stern features of one of the town police—the authorities had been informed of my dramatic disappearance, and the incident terminated with my recapture.

When I was about nine years old my mother went out to India with my elder sisters, while my younger sisters and myself were sent to Woolwich to be under the care of a guardian, an officer’s widow.

We remained under her care for about five years. Here I found my hatred for grown-ups diminishing. My guardian was a charming lady who let us do exactly as we pleased. It was like a fairy-story—I could not have believed there were such people in the world. She had three sons and two daughters, so that I was able to enjoy the society of other boys, another step in emancipation.

I should have rewarded this dear lady guardian for the unrestrained freedom she allowed me to enjoy by saying to myself, ‘Here at last is a good, kind, grown-up who never says “Don’t”. I must be careful never to cause her any pain or worry,’ but instead of this I simply thought ‘Hurrah! Now I can do as I jolly well please.’ And I did so to such effect that on more than one occasion the unfortunate widow was embarrassed by visits from the police.

My younger sisters were as bad as I was, and between us and the guardian’s own children, it is a marvel to me how that dear lady ever survived. I remember one tutor and several governesses who all left in rapid succession declaring that they could do nothing with such depraved children.

In the winter term of 1875, when I was just ten years old, I was sent to school at the United Services College, Westward Ho, in North Devon.

This college was started about the year 1872 on a sort of co-operative principle by a lot of old Admirals and Generals who found themselves like most retired service-men unable, even in those days, to pay the high costs of Public-School education.

With their very limited funds they could not afford a large outlay on school buildings, and they were consequently delighted to find a real bargain waiting for them on the coast of North Devon.

Westward Ho had always been famous as a golf centre, and a company had been formed to turn it into a fashionable seaside resort with the additional attraction of the splendid links. A fine pier was built, swimming baths, hotels, and terraces of houses: but visitors failed to come and the property came into the market.

The founders of the college bought a long terrace of houses at the foot of the high ground facing the sea. These were adapted to form dormitories, class-rooms, and quarters for the masters.

A long corridor was built to enable masters and boys to pass from one class-room to another in bad weather, and it also served under such conditions as a sort of makeshift playground for the boys. A gymnasium and chapel was built on the north side of the terrace, and a fives-court on the south. In this way at a very small expenditure of time and money, the college came into being.

We had a very poor lot of buildings compared with any of the well-known public schools, but as most of us had never seen any of these, no feeling of envy rankled in our bosoms. The locality was perfect, with wild scenery and glorious air, at a distance from any large town and out of the reach of parents.

Bideford was the nearest town, and was of course ‘out of bounds’, which added to its attractions.

My father being one of the founders, I was destined for the school as soon as I reached the age of ten.

As regards the staff and the boys, the former were, I should say, a particularly talented set of men and the latter were a rather unusual collection of rough specimens, all, with very few exceptions, being sons of officers in the navy or army. Kipling was one of the exceptions, his parents having wisely selected the school for him on account of the peculiar merits of the Headmaster—Cormell Price. Cormell Price was a very remarkable and gifted man, and the extraordinary success of the college in its earlier years was entirely due to his personality.

Boys are apt to look on schoolmasters as a sort of brotherhood all pulling together in a more or less successful endeavour to instil some learning—or better still, a love of learning—into youthful minds. It is only later in life that we realize that this team is seldom a team that ‘pulls together’, and I know now that this was the case at Westward Ho. The Headmaster could run the school, but its eventual failure was due to the fact that his ‘team’ were unmanageable.

And when I look back on those days with the proper perspective of old age, I can see what an impossible task he had.

The control of 200 wild lads was an easy matter for a man of his charming personality and intuition. But the control of the widely divergent characters of Crofts, Willes, Campbell, Pugh, Haslam, Green, Stevens, Evans, Bode, and others, not forgetting Messieurs Jacquot and Marner, the French masters who succeeded one another, was beyond the power of mortal man.

Of all the masters Crofts must have been the most impatient of control—he was not the sort of man who would care to accept any other person’s opinion on any subject. He certainly had the great and uncommon gift of imparting instruction as distinct from mere teaching, but he was of a very irritable temperament and gave us the impression that he heartily disliked boys—quite rightly, I dare say, but when one feels like that it is better not to let the boys know it. A keen athlete and a fine swimmer, he was drowned at sea some years after the college had been transferred from North Devon to Harpenden.

Willes, the padré, was a genial, robust type, popular with both masters and boys and possessed of uncommon common sense that enabled him to settle many feuds by friendly arbitration or by kindly hints. Campbell, who preceded him as chaplain, was a very peppery individual, who endeavoured to rule by fear, which does not pay in the long run with boys. I can never recall his face without an expression of ferocity on it, nor his hand without a cane in it.