We had long known that Mr Beer’s death would be a happy release, but now, in that cheerful snowscape, we stood and wondered if we ought to go on with our tobogganing. The slide was in splendid condition, and it might thaw by tomorrow; and after all we hadn’t seen Mr Beer since about 1897. Hamo suggested tossing up, but none of us had got a coin, so we resumed operations, feeling sorry for Auntie Rachel and rather hoping we shouldn’t have to attend the funeral. We did; and the house in Chesterfield Gardens, never a festive one, seemed as though it had been waiting all its life for this mournful event. Auntie Rachel, when we got a glimpse of her, was murmurously distraught, and seemed to have ordered a vast quantity of white flowers which no one knew what to do with. Very few people were there, and most of them were strangers to us. There was a subdued grimness about the ceremony which made me unable to relax into feeling reverent. I knew that Auntie Rachel had been behaving very oddly. Since he died she had been continually telling my mother that Mr Beer wasn’t dead, and at intervals she had protested against his being buried at all. My mother had been through a very trying time since the telegram was handed to her over the hedge.
Auntie Rachel’s odd behaviour was due to her having been infected by the syphilis inherited by her husband. She would endure a long decline into dementia.
At the end of January, Theresa and her son took the train from Paddington to Marlborough. Sassoon felt ‘pleased and rather important’ at becoming a pupil of so illustrious a school, but at 15 he also felt quite capable of reaching any destination on his own. At the back of his mind, too, was the knowledge of Theresa’s tenacity and eccentricity. Her suspicions of educational establishments, particularly their domestic and catering arrangements, would lead, he feared, to the unrelenting interrogation of those in charge. His fears were more than justified. Arriving at the school ‘unpunctually early’, Theresa proceeded to do her motherly duty via the headmaster, the Revd George Bell; the housemaster of Cotton House, Mr George Gould; and the matron, Mrs Bolt, to whom she handed extra blankets for Siegfried. Her son felt ‘rather like a milksop’.
Whatever his feelings of exasperation, once they returned to the railway station Siegfried became conscious of impending separation. ‘I believe I was my mother’s favourite. She used to refer to me as her second self.’ No relationship went deeper than his relationship with Theresa: he adored her. The pain of separation from his mother was something for which he was quite unprepared. ‘My devotion to her was so comprehensive that I had never given any thought to it.’ Returning to the college, pausing at the gates, he reaffirmed his strategy for survival: ‘The safest thing to do, I thought, was to try and be as silent and inconspicuous as possible.’ It proved an effective plan, so much so that he records with no small pride: ‘By the time I was almost halfway through my first term I felt that I was getting on much better than I’d expected. No one seemed to have taken an active dislike to me and I was in Mr Gould’s good books.’
There is something revealing in the desire to avoid being disliked, as opposed to any mention of active friendship, and his continued need to be on good terms with the adult world in the person of his housemaster. He worked hard and showed great application in order to achieve good results. Theresa had arranged special tuition in music and he threw himself into sporting activities. Given time and a little good fortune he might be, if not a distinguished Marlburian, at least a creditable one. So it might have been had not circumstances intervened.
Six weeks after arriving at Marlborough, Sassoon went down with measles, which developed into double pneumonia. The contagion had affected Cotton House and the rest of the school. Without being asked, Theresa hurried to Marlborough to nurse her son. No doubt her prejudices against public schools were confirmed by this calamity. Sassoon was in a serious condition and, according to Mr Gould, would have died but for the intervening hand of Theresa and her special brew of beef tea. Sassoon recalled in a letter that his mother’s attendance at his bedside was ‘considered a bit infra dig by the authorities. Parents of apparently good social position didn’t do such things as a rule.’ It was another triumph for Theresa’s originality. Three weeks before the end of term he was well enough to go home to Weirleigh to convalesce. This was the first of many interruptions to his time at Marlborough. In the next autumn term he suffered heart strain and remained at Weirleigh until the following May. The following January of 1903 it was decided he should stay at home for the whole of the term lest another outbreak of measles at the school cause him to suffer a recurrence, perhaps a fatal one, of pneumonia. Out of a possible eight terms he should have completed between 1902 and the summer of 1904, he managed only four and a further six weeks of another two terms.
These absences inevitably impeded his chances of attaining academic credibility and the commendation of the masters. Marlborough was an uphill struggle, redeemed only by his talent as a cricketer. Mr Gould seemed suspicious of Sassoon’s seriousness and application, accusing him of being a bit of a dodger who took soft options such as organ lessons instead of hockey. Despite his vow to keep his head down and avoid pitfalls, Siegfried walked straight into a situation which further reduced his standing in the eyes of Mr Gould. The pupil who usually played the piano at evening prayers cried off with a cut finger and asked Siegfried to take his place. The boy chose an easy hymn for the desperately nervous substitute. Mr Gould announced the hymn number and, without a modicum of confidence, Siegfried struck the opening chord, followed by a few bars and then came a deluge of boys’ voices. It was unfortunate for Siegfried that he had not checked the words of the hymn. Its five verses lent themselves to ‘facetious interpretation’ and inferences about Mrs Bolt the Matron:
How blest the matron who endued
With holy zeal and fortitude,
Has won through grace a saintly frame,
And owns a dear and honoured name.
The remaining verses are a litany of anatomical allusions: ‘As I struck the first chord for verse 2 (which began “Such holy love inflamed her breast”), I could only confusedly suppose that I had somehow blundered when Mr Gould practically bellowed “Let the music cease!”’ Although later Mr Gould was heard to chuckle, it was from such incidents he divined Siegfried to be ‘irresponsible and deficient in solidity of character’. His final report contained the crushing remark: ‘lacks power of concentration; shows no particular intelligence or aptitude for any branch of his work; seems unlikely to adopt any special career’. It was a harsh judgement, made even worse when Mr Gould’s last goodbye was accompanied by the words, ‘Try and be more sensible.’ Siegfried, however, took a more philosophical view of his time at Marlborough: ‘moderately pleasant, but mentally unprofitable’.
Marlborough did one good thing for him, though: it nurtured the re-emergence of his poetic vocation. One of his masters, Mr O’Regan, encouraged the appreciation of poetry among his pupils and as a spur would occasionally offer a half-crown as prize for the best poem. The opposition was not fierce and Siegfried invariably won. Not that the editor of the school paper recognised any merit in his poetic endeavours – he rejected every poem submitted by Siegfried. Lying at home during his enforced absence from school in the spring of 1903, Siegfried composed what he called a parody, inspired by a debate current at the time about altering the height of the wicket, and sent it off to Cricket magazine. Entitled ‘The Extra Inch’, and having a Gilbert and Sullivan atmosphere and style, it appealed to the editor, Mr Bettesworth, who printed it.
O batsman, rise and go and stop the rot,
And go and stop the rot.
(It was indeed a rot,
Six down for twenty-three).
The batsman thought how wretched was his lot,
And all alone went he.
The bowler bared his mighty, cunning arm,
His vengeance-wreaking arm,
His large yet wily arm,
With fearful powers endowed.