At Eastbourne a new life began. There was more amusement than work about it, and everything was different. We played Soccer with another school; we went to the swimming bath, and I learnt to swim; to a gymnasium, and we were drilled by a volunteer sergeant. Broadwood and I gave theatrical performances, one of which represented the Headmaster’s ménage at our first school. It must have been an amusing play to watch, as the point of it was that the Ascot Headmaster discovered his wife kissing her brother, another of the Ascot masters, the villain, and she sang a song composed by Broadwood and myself, of which the refrain was, “What would Herbert say, dear—what would Herbert say?” Herbert being the Ascot Headmaster. Herbert then broke on to the scene and gave way to paroxysms of jealous rage. Another boy who came to this school was Pierre de Jaucourt, the son of Monsieur de Jaucourt, a great friend of my father’s. Pierre was one of the playfellows of my childhood. He took part in the dramatic performances organised by Broadwood and myself in the Boot Room, which became more and more ambitious, and in one play the Devil appeared through a trap-door in a cloud of fire.
Broadwood and I were constantly making up topical duets modelled on those of Harry Nicholls and Herbert Campbell in the Drury Lane pantomime. But we were not satisfied with these scratch performances in the Boot Room, although we had a make-up box from Clarkson, and wigs, and we decided to act She Stoops to Conquer, which was at once put into rehearsal. I was cast for the part of Mr. Hardcastle, Hugo for that of Miss Hastings, Broadwood for that of Marlowe, Bell for that of Miss Hardcastle, and an overgrown boy called Pyke-Nott for the part of Tony Lumpkin. After a few rehearsals it was settled that the play should be done on a real stage, and that parents and others should be invited to witness the performance. Dresses were made for us in London, scenery was painted by Mr. Shelton, our drawing-master, and my father and mother came down to see the play.
Hugo looked a vision of beauty as Miss Hastings. Pyke-Nott was annoyed because he was not allowed to sing a song about Fred Archer in the tavern scene, instead of the real song which is a part of the text. It was thought that a song of which the refrain was, “Archer, Archer up,” would be an anachronism.
The play went off very well, and Hugo played a breakdown on the banjo between the acts, but when he had played three bars the bridge of his banjo fell with a crash, and the solo came to an end.
We kept up the custom of going expeditions, not long ones, but only to places like Pevensey and Hurstmonceux, which were quite close. We also went out riding with a riding-master on the Downs, and in the summer we sailed in sailing boats. Altogether it was an ideal school life. We found the work easy, and we all seemed to get quantities of prizes, but we learnt little. Hugo and I continued to play Spankaboo in our room, and Hugo would do anything in the world if I threatened to refuse to play. So much so, that one of the masters thought I was blackmailing him, and we were told to reveal our strange secret at once. This we both resolutely refused to do, protesting with tears that it was a private matter of no importance, and there the matter was allowed to rest, the master merely saying that if he ever saw any signs of anything subterranean going on we should be punished.
I remember one curious episode happening. One of the masters found a letter addressed to one of the boys written to him by another boy. This was the text of the letter: “Dear Mister C.—May I have my sausage next Sunday at breakfast because I am very hungry.”
Mr. C., it was discovered, had been regularly levying a tribute from his neighbour at breakfast for some weeks, and the other boy, a much smaller boy, had had to go without his sausage. Mr. C. was severely flogged in front of the whole school. Boys who went to Scotland for the holidays were allowed to leave a day before the others, and as we had an all day’s journey to Devonshire, we shared the same privilege; so did Pierre de Jaucourt, who went to France. This inspired Broadwood to make the following lampoon, which was good-naturedly but insistently chanted by the rest of the school on the day before we went away:
“The Honourables are going away to-morrow,
And ten to one the Count goes too.
We poor swinies we don’t go,
We poor swinies we don’t go.
The Honourables are going away to-morrow,
And ten to one the Count goes too.”
When we went home for the holidays for the first time from Eastbourne the train stopped at Slough. The St. Vincent’s term had ended a few days before the Ascot term, and there, on the platform of Slough Station, we saw the Headmaster of our Ascot school, surrounded by the first division and evidently enjoying a first division expedition.
“Why don’t you put your head out and say how do you do to them?” said my mother, but Hugo and I almost hid under the seat, and we lay right back from the windows, spellbound, till the train went on.
Broadwood and I used to meet in the holidays in London. Broadwood used to say to his parents that he was having luncheon with me in Charles Street, and I used to say I was having luncheon with Broadwood in Eccleston Square, but what really happened was that we used to go to a bun shop, or have no luncheon at all, as neither of us would be seen at luncheon with a friend in each other’s homes.
Broadwood said that his mother cross-questioned him about our house, and that he gave a most fantastic account of our mode of life.
While we were at school at Eastbourne many eventful things happened at home. In the summer holidays of 1886, Hugo and I went with my father to the Cowes Regatta.
In September of the same year my father, Hugo, and myself went for a long cruise in the Waterwitch. We started from Membland and stopped at Falmouth, and Mounts Bay, and saw over St. Michael’s Mount, and then we sailed to the Scilly Isles, where we spent a day in the wonderful garden of Tresco. At that time of year the sea in the Scilly Isles was as blue as the Mediterranean, especially when seen through the fuchsia hedges and the almost tropical vegetation of the Tresco gardens. We then sailed across the Irish Channel to Bantry Bay and up the Kenmare River and drove in an Irish car right across the mountains to Killarney.
Next year was Jubilee year. Both my eldest sisters were married that year. Hugo and I attended these weddings and the Jubilee procession as well, which we saw from Bath House, Piccadilly, but I don’t remember much about it, except the Queen’s bonnet, which had diamonds in front of it, and the German Crown Prince in his white uniform, but I remember the aspect of London before and after the Jubilee, the Venetian masts, the flags, the crowds, the carriages, the atmosphere of festivity, and the jokes about the Jubilee.
We went on acting a French play every year at Christmas, and it was before Margaret was married that we had our greatest success with a little one-act play by Dumas fils called Comme Elles sont Toutes, in which Margaret and Susan did the chief parts quite admirably, and in which I had a minor part. This was performed at Christmas 1886. After Elizabeth and Margaret were married, Susan and I and Hugo continued to act, and we did three plays in all: Les Rêves de Marguerite (1887); La Souris (1888); l’Amour de l’Art (by Labiche) (1889).
Another home excitement was the building of an organ in the house in Charles Street. It was by way of being a small organ at first, but it afterwards expanded into quite a respectable size, and had three manuals. This gave me a mania for everything to do with organs. I got to know every detail in the process of organ-building and every device, tubular-pneumatic, and otherwise. The organ we had at Membland had been built by Mr. Hele of Plymouth, and when we went back to Membland, when the organ was being built in London, my mother said: “Don’t say anything to Mr. Hele about this, as he will be hurt at our not having employed him.” One day Mr. Hele came to tune the organ, and I disappeared with him, as was my wont, right under the staircase into the very entrails of the organ and watched him at his work. While we were there in the darkness and the confined space, I confessed to him the secret that we were having an organ built in London. When we came out he went straight to my mother and