The masters laughed at me mercilessly for my pronunciation of English. I don’t know what was wrong with it, except that I said yallow, aint for aren’t, and ant for aunt, but I did my best to get out of this as soon as possible. Apart from idiosyncrasies of pronunciation, my voice seemed to them comic, and they used to imitate me by speaking through their noses whenever I said anything. The boys at first entirely ignored one, simply telling one to shut up if one spoke, but the boys in my own division soon became friendly, especially an American boy called Hamilton Fish the third. He was the first man to be killed in the American-Spanish War in Cuba. There was no bullying. One boy, although he was in the first division, was charming, and treated one like a grown-up person. This was Basil Blackwood. Even then he drew pictures which were the delight of his friends. Another boy who was friendly was Niall Campbell. Dreadful legends were told about Winston Churchill, who had been taken away from the school. His naughtiness appeared to have surpassed anything. He had been flogged for taking sugar from the pantry, and so far from being penitent, he had taken the Headmaster’s sacred straw hat from where it hung over the door and kicked it to pieces. His sojourn at this school had been one long feud with authority. The boys did not seem to sympathise with him. Their point of view was conventional and priggish.
Every morning there was a short service in the pitch-pine school chapel, and every morning an interval between lessons called the hour, in which the boys played nondescript games, chiefly a game called IT. If you were IT you had to catch someone else, and then he became IT. On Sunday afternoon we went for a walk. On Sunday evening the Headmaster read out a book called The Last Abbot of Glastonbury, which I revelled in. After the first week I had got more or less used to my new life. In a fortnight’s time I was quite happy and enjoying myself; but every now and then life was marred and made hideous for the time being by sudden and unexpected dramas. The first drama was that of the Spanish chestnuts. There were some Spanish chestnuts lying about in the garden. We were told not to eat these. Some of the boys did eat them, and one boy gave me a piece of something to eat on the end of a knife. It was no bigger than a crumb, and it turned out afterwards to be a bit of Spanish chestnut, or at least I thought it might have been. One afternoon at tea the Head rapped on his table with his knife. There was a dead silence. “All boys who have eaten Spanish chestnuts are to stand up.” Nobody stood up, and there was a long pause. I think the boys were puzzled, and did not know they had been eating Spanish chestnuts. I certainly did not know a Spanish chestnut by sight. I had no chestnut on my conscience. After a very long pause the Headmaster made some rather facetious remarks, which I thought were meant to encourage us, but the other boys, knowing him better, knew that they were ironical and portended dreadful things. One boy stood up. Then, after a slight pause, another; about four or five boys followed suit. I suddenly remembered the incident of the penknife in the gymnasium three days before. Could it have been that I had eaten a Spanish chestnut? Was that little bit of white crumb on the end of the knife a part of a Spanish chestnut? I had not seen a whole Spanish chestnut anywhere. In any case I had better be on the safe side, and I stood up. The Headmaster made a cutting comment on boys who were so slow to own up. A few more stood up, and that was all. The Head then delivered a serious homily. We had been guilty of three things: greed, disobedience, and deceit. We would all do two hours’ extra work on a half-holiday.
There was electric light in the school, and the electric light was oddly enough supposed to be under the charge of one of the boys, who was called the Head Engineer. Clever and precocious as this boy was, I cannot now believe that his office was a serious one, although we took it seriously indeed at the time. However that may be, nobody except this boy was allowed to go into the engine-shed or to have anything to do with the electric light. We were especially forbidden to touch any of the switches in the house or ever to turn on or off the electric light ourselves. Electric light in houses at that time was a new thing, and few private houses were lighted with it. One day one of the boys was visited by his parents, and he could not resist turning on the electric light in one of the rooms to show them what it was like. Unfortunately the Head saw him do this through the window, and directly his parents were gone the boy was flogged. Every week the school newspaper appeared. It was edited by two of the boys in the first division, and handed round to the boys at tea-time. This was a trying and painful moment for some of the boys, as there were often in this newspaper scathing articles on the cricket or football play of some of the boys written by one of the masters, and all mentioning them by name; and as parents took in the newspaper it was far from pleasant to be pilloried in this fashion. Just before half-term another drama occurred. I was doing a sum in short division, and another boy was waiting for me to go out. He was impatient, and he said, “That’s right; don’t you see the answer is 3456,” or whatever it was. I scribbled it down, but unfortunately had left a mistake in the working, so the answer was right and the sum was partly wrong. This was at once detected, and I was asked if I had had any help. I said “Yes,” and I was then accused of having wanted to get marks by unfair means, and of having cheated. We did not even know these particular sums received marks. The Division Master bit his knuckles, and said he would report the matter to the Headmaster. When I went into chapel from the vestry, robed in a white surplice, he pinned a piece of paper with cheat on it, on to my back. I was appalled, but as nothing happened immediately I began to recover, and on the following Sunday when we were writing home the master told me I could put in my Sunday letter that I had done very well, and that I was his favourite boy. This was only his fun, but I took it quite seriously, and I did not put it in my letter, because I thought the praise excessive. On Monday morning there was what was called “reading over.” The boys sat in the hall, grouped in their divisions. The Headmaster in a silk gown stood up at a high desk, the three undermasters sat in a semicircle round him, also in gowns, and one division after another went and stood up in front of the desk while the report of the week’s work was read out. When the fourth division went up, the news was read out that Duckworth and Baring had been guilty of a conspiracy, and had tried to get marks by unfair means. Duckworth was blamed even more severely than I was, being an older boy.
We were told this would be mentioned in our report, and that if anything of the kind occurred again we would be flogged. When this was over, the boys turned on Duckworth and myself and asked us how we could have done such a base act. We were shunned like two cardsharpers, and it took us some time to recover our normal position. The half-term report was about nothing else, and my father was dreadfully upset. My mother came down to see me, and I told her the whole story, and I think she understood what had happened. I got through the rest of the term without any fresh dramas, and did well in trials at the end of the term.
One day my sister Susan unwittingly caused me annoyance by writing to me and sealing the letter with her name, Susan. The boys saw the seal and called out, “He’s got a sister called Susan; he’s got a sister called Susan.” Sisters should be warned never to let their Christian names come to the knowledge of their brother’s schoolfellows. This kind of thing is typical of private-school life. The boys were childish and conventional, but they did not bully. It was the masters who every now and then made life a misery. In spite of everything, the boys were happy—in any case, they thought that was happiness, as they knew no better.
In the afternoons we played Rugby football, an experience which was in my case exactly what Max Beerbohm describes it in one of his Essays: running about on the edge of a muddy field. The second division master pursued the players with exhortations and imprecations, and every now and then a good kicking was administered to the less successful and energetic players, which there were quite a number of. The three best Rugby football players were allowed to wear on Sundays a light blue velvet cap with a silver Maltese cross on it, and a silver tassel. I am sorry to say that this cap was not always given to the best players. It was given