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