SIGNING RENT BOOKS
I
Upfield’s last school, with the exception of the ‘crammer’, was the High School, then a modem innovation of higher degree than the National Schools. The building was airy and exceedingly well equipped. All the masters held degrees, and all wore caps and gowns. The mistresses, for it was a mixed school, also wore caps and gowns. The children who passed to this school encountered an entirely new atmosphere.
For one thing, contact between master and scholar was not as close. Corporal punishment in public, administered by every teacher, was at this school something of a rite, and smacked of refined torture. The delinquent was ordered to report to the headmaster. He had to stand outside the door of the headmaster’s study, and as the head often took a class in English Literature the offender might stand outside that door for anything up to an hour, more often than not being joined by fellow criminals.
They would wait and twist and nudge and wait. This waiting was especially trying for boys possessed of imagination. To see the headmaster appear at the end of the corridor, approaching with mortar- board set straight and gown flowing, was to see a figure which in later years was to become known as Dracula.
One master really loved was the science teacher. He was short, sharp-voiced, and a Welshman. He was old-fashioned and human. He gave his class to understand that there were only so many minutes to this period and certain work must be done. The work could be accomplished quickly, and were it so, a supplementary experiment would be permitted. As the supplementary was the manufacture of a new stink, or a new method of creating an explosion, the set work was invariably completed well ahead of time.
The little Welshman never sent a boy to the headmaster for punishment, save for something really serious. He would confront the offender, saying: “So you would delay us! So you would distract our attention!” And with that, his palm across one’s cheek would cause it to burn for hours.
The universal opinion was that the greatest bore was English Literature, this being the subject name on the curriculum. The examples of English Literature chosen by the headmaster were taken from Scott, Lamb, Shakespeare, and the boys had, in turn, to stand and read aloud. There was no information imparted about the authors, which might have given a human interest to the study of their works. There sat the headmaster on his dais, aloof, impersonal. He created a gulf across which he never met his pupils, and they could not reach him. Without doubt he was an extremely successful chief executive, yet a junior teacher at a National School could achieve better results. It is safe to say that Scott, Lamb, and even Shakespeare were never read by any boy after leaving that school.
Arthur attended the High School for three years. He entered at Form IV, and he left when in Form IV. During his second and third years he topped the class in History and Geography, and was invariably at the bottom in every other subject. Set him a paper on the Battle of Agincourt, and he would still be writing enthusiastically when the bell went. Check the dates, and more often than not they would be wrong. Ask him a fool question such as: “If a man walks ten miles at ten miles an hour, and has a fit in the third and seventh miles, how long will it take him to walk round Trafalgar Square?” he would occupy the allotted time with noughts and crosses. But all would be well if he had to draw a map and outline Drake’s First Voyage.
During this period, when fourteen and fifteen years of age, there grew and was completed a hand-written manuscript of some 400 foolscap pages. It was properly set out in paragraphs and chapters, punctuation was reasonably accurate, and the total wordage worked out at 120,000.
Of course, the subject of the story was fantastic, being a voyage to Mars. The mechanics were crude, the grammar was a maze, and the spelling worse. There wasn’t the faintest possibility of its ever being published. But it wasn’t a task, it was a joy. It was not compiled, all 120,000 words of it, with anything in the author’s mind but the joy of accomplishment, the necessity of giving out generated by the fire within.
Once when he was convalescing from bronchitis, the father walked into his son’s room, about eleven at night, and found him writing by candle-light. The doctor visited him and found him writing. The father kindly urged the boy to go to bed; the doctor picked up several sheets, read, looked strangely at the patient before making the usual examination. The brothers knew about the book. They listened to each chapter as completed.
But the schoolmasters knew nothing. One or more of them would have sought for the cause of his contempt for spelling. The little Welshman would have talked to him about that tremendous writing effort, would have read it, and pointed out that to become a real author Arthur would have to tackle spelling seriously. Most of the boys entered the dockyard as artificers. Many joined the Navy, where the demand for intelligence was ever increasing. Some went on to a ‘crammer’ and sat for the Civil Service. One there was, the son of a poor widow, who eventually became a famous naval architect, and another became a draughtsman in the offices of the famous yacht builders, Camper & Nicholson. Two boys were aces. They topped the entire school. They acquired knowledge with the ease of master minds. They went up like rockets; and at the age of eighteen or nineteen they fell back like sticks. It is the tortoise that arrives.
2
There was an uncle who looked like Mr. Pickwick, or would have done had he shaved regularly. When Uncle Charles strode on to the stage where young Upfield was beginning to strut, the imitation Mr. Pickwick was retired from his business of manufacturing flags, and had developed a great passion for exploring historical places and pubs.
Arthur was deputed to be his guide and general informant. It was assumed that as Arthur’s school reports invariably placed him as a student of history he must know everything of historical interest in Portsmouth and Gosport. Still, as Uncle Charles’s guardian he learned a great deal of history not mentioned in the books.
The first expedition had, of course, to be to the Victory, Nelson’s flagship moored off the Gosport shore of the harbour.
To make the voyage it was necessary to engage a wherry, an open boat manned by an old salt, duly licensed and waiting in all weather. An ex-Navy man around eighty years old was introduced to Uncle Charles. He had a remarkable growth of short whiskers reminding one of a baby’s bib. He wore a shiny peaked hat, and it was his habit to remove this headgear and run a forearm across the peak as though to polish it.
“Is that boat safe?” asked Uncle Charles, and this was futile, because there were at least twenty boats exactly alike.
“Sir, as safe as the old Victory herself,” replied the ancient. “Now you just step down into her and sit yourself on this here cushion, and you’ll fancy yourself aboard the Victoria and Albert.”
“Hey there, Jude,” shouted a ferry captain. “Don’t you forget to bring the top-’at back.”
This brought a long tirade from Mr. Jude, who sat resting on the oars and obviously enjoying himself. Uncle Charles produced a note-book, and proceeded to jot down the salient points. It was a purple performance, and when done, the wherry owner calmly lit his pipe, took up the oars and rowed with stately rhythm.
The harbour this day was particularly busy. A battleship was on its way down the Channel, two destroyers were coming up from the entrance, an Isle of Wight steamer was circling from the railway pier. And hither and yon sped the small steam ferries. What with all this and Nelson’s mighty flagship looming ever higher over the tiny wherry, it could be expected that Uncle Charles would not think to ask and record the answers to the following questions.
“How old are you?”
“Eighty-one,” replied the wherryman.
“You have been a wherryman all your life?”
“Exceptin’ those times I served in the Navy, mostly in furrin’ ‘parts.”
“How long have you had this boat?”
“Well now.” The mariner rested to spit on one horny palm and then the other. “Well now, it must be nigh on twenty-seven years.”
“Then