We reached our destination at about 4 a.m. and slept on the floor of a mill belonging to the Beales’ uncle, who had a beard. His name was Percy and he was, I think, a weaver. Then, quite late the next morning, after mugs of tea and chunks of bread and jam, John and I got on our bikes and rode together into the future.
Well, we didn’t exactly ride together. John was seventeen and a proper cyclist. I was thirteen and beginning to be a bit overweight, so he tended to be a long way in front of me, getting impatient. My rucksack was heavy and my gas mask case banged against my leg. We stayed at ‘bed and breakfast’ houses and at a cafe´ we heard the wireless say ‘… no such undertaking has been received and that consequently this country is at war with …’
Then, one sunny morning, we rode up the long leafy drive to Dartington Hall, the grand medieval house and estate that was the great centre of art and progress. Entering the ancient courtyard through the arch, I felt as if I was stepping into a film about knights in armour and maidens locked in towers. I expected a richly caparisoned white horse to ride up to us, bearing a bearded serjeant-at-arms on its broad back. In fact a young man in corduroy trousers and sandals came and asked if he could help us. He directed us to Kay Starr’s office, which was through the Great Hall.
The Great Hall was amazing. It was huge and echoey but bright with sunlight flooding in through the tall windows. The walls were hung with bright banners and the floor strewn with rush mats. It smelled sweetly of beeswax and flowers, and had clearly just been made ready for the arrival of a king.
We knocked on a door in the far corner. A voice said, ‘Come in.’ We stepped down into Kay Starr’s office: a tall rather embarrassed-looking youth and a shorter, fattish one, who grinned, both quite grimy and dishevelled.
Kay was a tall, tidy, tweedy stick of a lady, very upright, clean and exact. I shall never forget the look on her face when she saw us. It was dismay, but a dismay so intense and overwhelming that for a few seconds she couldn’t speak.
Then she said: ‘Oh, so you’ve arrived, have you?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, still grinning.
VI. Progressive Education.
When I told people I might be going to Dartington Hall School they would sometimes go ‘Ooooh!’ and look at me coyly, as if there was something slightly risqué about the idea, because Dartington Hall was what was called a ‘progressive’ school. They had heard tell, they said, that there was no uniform and people sometimes went about with nothing on! From some I heard that there were no rules and no proper classes, that the pupils were in charge of the staff and there was fun and freedom all the time. From others I heard that it was licentious, and surely a sink of sin. Everything that was said about the school was charged with strong feeling. It may seem a bit odd today but in 1939 the very idea of educating people in an unconventional way was slightly outrageous.
Now it was the first day of term and as I rode down the hill towards the school I realised that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to find when I arrived. It might of course be a quite ordinary place like Woodhouse School, with uniforms, prefects and an Assembly. I think I was rather hoping it would be.
I couldn’t see anywhere to put my bike so I leaned it against the wall, opened the front door and looked in.
I heard a lot of noise and saw a lot of people milling about. They weren’t all children, some of them seemed to be grown-ups but none of these were wearing academic gowns. In fact they were dressed in all sorts of different clothes and were just chattering away together and looking at notices.
I stepped in and stood just inside the door. People smiled at me as they brushed past but didn’t say anything. After a few minutes of standing about I realised that nobody was coming to find me, so I had better find somebody myself. I moved along a corridor to the right and saw a door marked ‘Office’. I knocked but nobody answered. So in the end I pushed the door open and walked in. A lady was sitting at a typewriter.
‘Hallo,’ she said, ‘I’m Sarah.’
‘Postgate,’ I said, ‘Oliver Postgate. I am here.’
‘Yes, I can see. What can I do for you?’
I’m sorry. I don’t know what to do.’
Sarah sighed with resignation, arose and led me back into the foyer. There she pointed to a gigantic timetable. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you’re in C Group. In half an hour you have Art.’
‘Yes, but what do I do?’
‘Why, whatever you like! You are free, absolutely free! Aren’t you lucky!’ She lifted her arms in joyful freedom and swirled away, back to her office.
I stood there, stunned. I looked at the board. I turned and looked at the doors. I looked at the people milling busily about, oblivious of my existence. I have never felt quite so lonely and baffled in my life.
How long I stood there I don’t know. I remember finding a man looking out of a window and asking him if he knew where Art was. He must have told me because I came at last to the Art Room. It was deserted. I sat at a table.
After about twenty minutes a large girl in trousers walked in. She dumped her things on a table and said: ‘ ’Lo, who’re you?’
‘Postgate,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Postgate.’
‘Poached egg? You a poached egg?’
‘No …’
Four or five more people came in, all dressed differently; then a thin young man wearing a brown jersey.
‘Hallo,’ he said in quite a friendly tone, ‘I’m Mark. Who are you?’
‘He’s a poached egg!’ shouted the girl.
‘No, I’m not,’ I whispered.
The Art class didn’t seem to begin at any particular moment. Some people had rummaged around and found paper and powderpaints but the rest just chatted. The teacher chatted with them. Nobody spoke to me so I found a piece of paper and a crayon and drew a fish. The class must have ended at some point because everybody left.
For the rest of the day I kept my head down and did my best to follow on behind the others. I clung on to the hope that somebody official would come along to acknowledge my existence, but it didn’t happen.
Late in the afternoon I noticed that people were going into the dining room to eat. I wondered whether I was supposed to join them. I didn’t know who to ask so I went to the Office to ask the typing lady if it would be all right to go home. The Office was locked, so, feeling cold with misery, I got on my bike and rode back to Kay Starr’s house.
John had had a different but equally daunting time. Notice had been taken of him and he had been told to wait for some sort of ‘tutor’, who simply didn’t turn up. So where I was feeling baffled and lost, he was healthily angry. He noted in his diary that it was a silly school and he asked to be taken away from it as soon as possible. Very soon he was staying with our uncle Richmond in Exeter and going to a school there.
*
My first day at Dartington Hall School had not only been very different from my first day at Woodhouse School, it had been quite different from anything I had been able to imagine. In all my conjectures about what Dartington might be like I had always wondered what sort of school it would be, how we, the pupils, would be controlled and directed. It had never occurred to me that there mightn’t be a school there at all, that I would have no desk, no place to go, and that nobody would tell me what to do next. But that’s how it was.
From the moment I had arrived at Woodhouse School, I had been fully involved