Some scenes were acted from the Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the same scenes we had acted at Membland, but I took no part in them. Then came the unutterable joy of going home for the holidays, which were spent at Membland. When I arrived and had my first schoolroom tea I was rather rough with the toast, and Chérie said: “Est-ce là les manières d’Ascot?” At the end of the holidays I spent a few days in London, and was taken to the play, and enjoyed other dissipations which made me a day or two late in going back to school. The holiday task was Bulwer Lytton’s Harold, which my mother read out to me. As soon as I arrived at school I was given the holiday-task paper and won the prize, a book called Half-hours in the Far South, which I have never read, but which I still possess and respect.
During the Lent term we had athletic sports: long jump, high jump, hurdle, flat and obstacle races. I won a heat in a hurdle race and nearly got a place in the final, the only approach to an athletic achievement in the whole of my life. A curious drama happened during this term. A boy called Phillimore was the chief actor in it. He was in the first division. One day the Headmaster went up to London. During his absence a message was sent round in his name by one of the undermasters. The message was brought by one of the boys to the various divisions. It was to the effect that we were allowed or not allowed to do some specific thing. When the boy, who was new and inexperienced, brought the message into the first division, Phillimore said to him, “Ask Mr. So-and-so with my compliments whether the message is genuine.” “Do you really want me to ask him?” asked the boy. “Yes, of course,” said Phillimore. The little boy went back to the master, who happened to be the severest of all the masters, and said: “Phillimore wants to know whether the message is genuine.” As soon as the Headmaster returned the whole school was summoned, and the Headmaster in his black gown told us the dreadful story of Phillimore’s unheard-of act. Phillimore was had up in front of the whole school, and told to explain his conduct. He said it was a joke, and that he had never dreamt that the boy would deliver the message. The explanation was not accepted, and Phillimore was stripped of his first division privileges. The privileges of the first division were various: they were allowed to dig in a place called the wilderness, which was a sand-heap through which ran a light truck railway without an engine. They went on special expeditions.
These expeditions need an explanation. Sometimes they consisted merely of walks to Bagshot or Virginia Water, and perhaps a picnic tea. Sometimes, as in the case of the first division expeditions or the choir expedition, they were far more elaborate, and consisted of a journey to London with sight-seeing, or to places as far off as Bath and the Isle of Wight.
During my first term the choir went to Swindon to see the Great Western Works, to Reading to see the Biscuit Factory, and to Bath in one day, and we got home late in the night. During my second term we spent a day in London inspecting the Tower, the Mint, and other sights, and had tea at the house of one of the boys’ parents, Colonel Broadwood, who lived in Eccleston Square.
These expeditions were recorded in the school Gazette, and when my mother heard of our having had tea with Colonel Broadwood, she said: “Why should not the choir, next time they came to London, have luncheon at Charles Street?” The idea made me shudder, although I said nothing. The idea of having one’s school life suddenly brought into one’s home life, to see the Headmaster sitting down to luncheon in one’s home, seemed to me altogether intolerable. My mother thought I would perhaps be ashamed of the food for not being good enough, and said: “If we had a very good luncheon.” But that wasn’t the reason. It never happened. Anything more miserable than the appearance of Broadwood when we had tea in his father’s house cannot be imagined.
Nothing was more strange at this school than the sudden way in which either a treat or a punishment descended on the school. The treats, too, were of such a curious kind, and involved so much travelling. Sometimes the first division would be taken up en masse to a matinée. Sometimes they would be away for nearly twenty-four hours. The punishments were equally unexpected and curious. One boy was suddenly flogged for cutting off a piece of his hair and keeping the piece in his drawer. In the second division the boys were punished by electricity. The division was made to join hands, and a strong electric shock was passed through it. This went on until one day one boy, smarting from an overcharge of electricity, took the battery and threw it at the master’s head, inflicting a sharp wound. Nothing was said about this action, to the immense astonishment of the boys, who thought it jolly of him not to sneak.
We lived in an atmosphere of complete uncertainty. We never knew if some quite harmless action would not be construed into a mortal offence. Any criticism, explicit or implicit, of the food was considered the greatest of crimes. The food was good, and the boys had nothing to complain of, nor did they, but they were sometimes punished for looking as if they didn’t like the cottage pie.
One day I heard a boy use the expression “mighty good.” The next day I said at breakfast that the porridge was mighty good. The master overheard me and asked me what I said. I answered, “I said the porridge was very good.” “No,” said the master, “that is not exactly what you said.” I then admitted to the use of the word mighty. This was thought to be ironical, and I was stopped talking at meals for a week.
Another time a message was passed up to me to stop talking at luncheon. This was frequently done; a message used to be passed up saying: “Baring and Bell stop talking,” but sometimes the boys used to be inattentive, and if one sat far up table the message had a way of getting lost on the way. This happened to me. I was stopped talking and the message never reached me, and I went on talking gaily. Afterwards the master sent for me and said, “You’ll find yourself in Queer Street.” I was not allowed to remonstrate. I didn’t even know what I was accused of at the time, and I was stopped talking for a week.
The Headmaster was a virulent politician and a fanatical Tory. On the 5th of November an effigy of Mr. Gladstone used to be burnt in the grounds, and there was a little note in the Gazette to say there were only seven Liberals in the school, the least of whom was myself. The Gazette went on to add that “needless to say, the school were supporters of the Church and the State.” One day somebody rashly sent the Head a Liberal circular. He sent it back with some coppers inside, so that the recipient should have to pay eightpence on receipt of it, and the whole school was told of his action. One day there was a by-election going on hard-by. All the school were taken with blue ribbons on their jackets except the unfortunate seven Liberals, who were told to stay at home and work.
One year Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was burnt in effigy, as he was then a Radical, and the effigy held in its hands a large cardboard cow with three acres written on it. It was a bad time for the Liberals, as the foreign policy of the Liberal Government was at that time particularly weak, and it was impossible to defend Mr. Gladstone’s Egyptian policy, still less Lord Granville. So the Head smiled in triumph over the renegades, one of whom I am glad to say was Basil Blackwood. He took the matter very calmly and drew offensive caricatures of the Conservative politicians.
During the summer the rage the boys had for keeping caterpillars in breeding cages, for collecting butterflies, and keeping live stock was allowed full play. The Head himself had supplies of live animals brought to the school, among which were salamanders and Italian snakes. I myself invested