i enjoyed eton from the first moment i arrived. the surprise and the relief at finding one was treated like a grown-up person, that nobody minded if one had a sister called susan or not, that all the ridiculous petty conventions of private-school life counted for nothing, were inexpressibly great.
directly i arrived i was taken up to my tutor in his study, which was full of delightful books. he took me to the matron, miss copeman, whom we called medame. i was then shown my room, a tiny room on the second floor in one of the houses opposite to the school-yard. as i sat in my room, boy after boy strolled in, and instead of asking one idiotic questions they carried on rational conversation.
the next day i met broadwood, who was at another house, and we walked up to windsor in the afternoon. he told me all the things i had better know at once; such as not to walk on the wrong side of the street when one went up town; never to roll up an umbrella or to turn down the collar of one’s greatcoat; how to talk to the masters and how to talk of them; what shops to go to, and what were the sock-shops that no self-respecting boy went to. there were several such which i never entered the whole time i was at eton, and yet i suppose they must have been patronised by someone.
the day after that came the entrance examination, in which i did badly indeed, only taking middle fourth. my tutor said: “you have been taught nothing at all.” i was in the twenty-seventh division—the last division of the school but three, and up to mr. heygate. i was in the french division of m. hua, who directly he put me on to read saw that i knew french, a fact which i had concealed during the whole time i was at my first private school. i messed with milton and[88] herbert scott, and after the first fortnight i became one of the two fags apportioned to heywood-lonsdale.
the captain of the house was charlie wood, lord halifax’s eldest son, and his younger brother, francis, was a contemporary of mine and in the same house, but francis, who was the most delightful of boys and the source and centre of endless fun, died at eton in the lent half of 1889.
fagging was a light operation. one had to make one’s fagmaster tea, two pieces of toast, and sometimes boil some eggs, show that one’s hands were clean, and that was all. then one was free to cook buttered eggs or fry sausages for one’s own tea.
on my first sunday at eton i had breakfast with arthur ponsonby, who was at cornish’s, and i was invited to luncheon at norman tower, windsor, where the ponsonbys lived. there i found my uncle henry, my aunt m’aimée, my cousins, betty and maggie and johnny, and the mildmay boys, who were also at eton then.
in the afternoon we went for a walk in the private grounds of the home park with johnny, and he took us to a grotto called the black hole of calcutta, which was supposed to represent the exact dimensions of that infamous prison. it had a small, thick, glazed glass window at the top of it. on the floor was a heap of stones. johnny suggested our throwing stones at the window, and soon a spirited stone-throwing competition began. the window was already partly shattered when warning was given that someone was coming. we thought it might be the queen, and we darted out of the grotto and ran for our lives.
the whole of my eton life was starred with these sundays at the norman tower, which i looked forward to during the whole week. maggie would take us sometimes into the library and the state rooms, and we used sometimes to hear the approaching footsteps of some of the royal family, and race for our life through the empty rooms.
one day we came upon the empress frederick, who was quietly enjoying the pictures by herself.
sometimes in the afternoon betty would take me up to her room and read out books to me, but that was later.
our house played football with evans’, radcliffe’s, and ainger’s. we had to play four times a week, and though i was[89] always a useless football player, i thoroughly enjoyed these games, especially the changing afterwards (when we roasted chestnuts in the fire as we undressed), and the long teas. milton, my mess-mate, was an enthusiastic, but not a skilful chemist, and one day he blew off his eyebrows while making an experiment.
at the end of my first half we had a concert in the house, in which i took part in the chorus. i had organ lessons from mr. clapshaw, and during my first half i once had the treat of hearing jimmy joynes preach in lower chapel. he had been lower master for years, and had just left eton; he came down to pay a visit, and this was the last time he ever preached at eton. his sermons were of the anecdotal type, full of quaint, pathetic, and dramatic stories of the triumph of innocence. they were greatly enjoyed by the boys. in the evening, after prayers, my tutor used to come round the boys’ rooms and talk to every boy. he used to come into the room saying: “qu’est-ce que c’est que ci que ?a?” my friends were dunglass, herbert scott, milton, stewart, and brackley. after eton days i never saw stewart again till 1914, when the war had just begun. i met him then in paris. he was in the intelligence. he had been imprisoned in germany before the war, and he was killed one day while riding through the town of braisne on the aisne.
dunglass was peculiarly untidy in his clothes, and his hat was always brushed round the wrong way. my tutor used to say to him: “you’re covered with garbage from head to foot,” and sometimes to me: “if your friends and relations could see you now they would have a fit.”
in the evenings the lower boys did their work in pupil room. boys in fifth form, when they were slack, did the same as a punishment, and this was called penal servitude. while they prepared their lessons or did their verses, my tutor would be taking older boys in what was called private; this in our case meant special lessons in greek. one night these older boys were construing xenophon, and a boy called rashleigh could not translate the phrase, “το?? πρ?? ?μ? λ?γοντα?.”[3] my tutor repeated it over and over again, and then appealed to us lower boys. i knew what it meant, but when i was asked i repeated[90] exactly what rashleigh had said, like one hypnotised, much to my tutor’s annoyance.
sometimes when my tutor was really annoyed he would say: “do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think what a ghastly fool you are?” another time he said to a boy: “you’ve no more manners than a cow, and a bad cow, too.” when the word δ?ναμαι occurred in greek, my tutor made a great point of distinguishing the pronunciation of δ?ναμαι and δυν?μει. δ?ναμαι he pronounced more broadly. when we read out the word δ?ναμαι we made no such distinction, and he used to say, “do you mean dunam? or dunamai?” it was our great delight to draw this expression from him, and whenever the word δ?ναμαι occurred we were careful to accent the last syllable as slightly as possible. it never failed.
we did verses once a week. a little later most of these were done in the house by a boy called malcolm, who had the talent for dictating verses, on any subject, while he was eating his breakfast, with the necessary number of mistakes and to the exact degree of badness needed for the standard of each boy, for if they were at all too good my tutor would write on them, “who is the poet?” in return for this i did the french for him and a number of other boys. latin verses both then, and until i left eton, were the most important event of the week’s work. when one’s verses had been done and signed by one’s tutor one gave a gasp of relief. sometimes he tore them up and one had to do them again. i was a bad writer of latin verse. the kind of mistakes i made exasperated my tutor to madness, especially when i ventured on lyrics which he implored me once never to attempt again. in spite of the trouble verses gave one, even when they were partly done by someone else, one preferred doing them to a long passage of latin prose, which was sometimes a possible alternative. it is a strange fact, but none the less true, that boys can acquire a mechanical facility for doing latin verse of a kind, with the help of a gradus, without knowing either what the english or the latin is about.
the subjects given for latin verse, what we called sense for verses, were sometimes amusing. the favourite subject from the boys’ point of view was spring. it was a favourite subject among the masters, too. it afforded opportunities for innumerable clichés, which were easy to find. one of the masters[91] giving out sense for verses used to say: “this week we will do verses”—and then, as if it were something unheard of—“on spring. take down some hints. the grass is green, sheep bleat, sound of water is heard in the distance—might perhaps get in desilientis aqu?.”
the same master said one day, to a boy who had done some verses on charles ii., “castus et infelix is hardly an appropriate epithet for charles ii.” once we had a lyric on a toad. “avoid the gardener, a dangerous man,” was one of the hints which i rendered:
“fas tibi sit bufo custodem fallere agelli.”
the whole of my first half was like paradise, and i came back to membland for the holidays quite radiant.
when i went back for my second half i was in the upper fourth in the lower master’s division. the lower master was austen leigh and the boys called him the flea. i started, when i was up to him, the fiction that i could scarcely write, that the process was so difficult to me that a totally illegible script was all that could be expected from me. this was completely successful throughout the half, but in trials i did well. i had started off by getting the holiday task prize, the holiday task being the lord of the isles, and as i had read a great part of it in the train going back, and as none of the other boys had read any of it, i got the prize.
those holidays chérie took susan and myself to paris. we stayed at the h?tel normandy in the rue de l’échelle, and i started from eton the day before the result of trials was declared. the day we arrived in paris a blue telegram came telling us the result. it ran as follows: “brinkman divinity prize, distinction in trials, trial prize.” this meant that for the distinction, one had a cross next to one’s name in the school list for the rest of one’s eton career. the trial prize meant one was first in trials in the division. it was a complete triumph, and the lower master wrote in my report: “had i known what i discovered at the end of the half that he could write perfectly well, i would have torn up every scrap of his work during the half.” but it was an idle regret, as he did not discover it until too late. we spent the whole of the holidays in paris and enjoyed it wildly.
looking at a letter which i wrote from paris (march 1888)[92] at this time, i see we did some strenuous sight-seeing. we went to notre dame des victoires, to the musée grévin, to sainte geneviève, la foire de jambon, the jardin d’acclimatation, and the bois de boulogne; we breakfasted at the café de paris, with anisette at the end of the meal; went to hear “la belle musique sacrée” at the chatelet, where mademoiselle kraus sang and mounet sully recited; we visited the panthéon, saw victor hugo’s tomb, the musée cluny; had breakfast at foyod’s, and saw the archbishop of paris officiate at notre dame, and went to the louvre. all this was in holy week.
the next week we went to versailles, the sainte chapelle, and the invalides; saw reichemberg and samary act in the le monde ou l’on s’ennuie at the théatre fran?ais and michel strogoff at the chatelet.
on monday, 2nd april, i wrote home: “nous allons jeter une plume et la suivre.” we also saw a play of georges ohnet’s at the porte saint martin called la grande marnière and le prophète at the opera, with jean de reske singing the part of the false messiah. we saw this from a little box high up in the fourth tier, and when we arrived we found a lady and a gentleman in our seats. we had expressly paid for the front seats. chérie was indignant, and had it out with the gentleman, who gave way under protest. “vous voyez,” said the lady, “monsieur vous cède sa place.” “c’est ce qu’un monsieur doit faire,” said chérie. “on rencontre des gens,” said the lady, shrugging her shoulders.
we did not go to see l’abbé constantin, as chérie said it was “une pièce de carême.”
on our last night in paris we went to see a farce called cocart et bicoquet at the renaissance. this play had been recommended to chérie by a french friend of hers, who thought we did not understand french enough to follow dialogue. after the first act, chérie became uneasy, and no sooner was the second act well under way than chérie took us away. it was, she said to me, no play for susan. she added that whenever she had tried to distract susan’s attention from the more scabrous moments by saying, “regarde cette manche,” and by calling her attention to interesting details in the toilettes of the audience, i had recalled susan’s attention to the play by my only too well-timed laughter.
the year after this, 1889, we again went to paris—chérie,[93] susan, and myself—and this year hugo came with us. great preparations were being made for the exhibition. it was not yet open, but the eiffel tower was finished, and we saw the reconstruction of the le vieux paris and a representation of latude escaping from the bastille.
we also saw ma?tre guérin performed at the théatre fran?ais, with got worms, baretta, and pierson in the cast. got’s performance as the old, infinitely cunning, and scheming notaire, who is finally deserted by his hitherto submissive wife, was said to be the finest thing he ever did.
we saw two melodramas—robert macaire and la porteuse de pain; zampa at the opéra comique and belle maman, sardou’s comedy at the gymnase; and chérie and i went to see sarah bernhardt in perhaps the worst play to which she ever lent her incomparable genius, and which, i imagine, she chose simply to give herself the opportunity of playing a quiet death scene. it was an adaptation of the english novel, as in a looking-glass. bad or good, i enjoyed it, and wrote home a detailed criticism of the play. this is what i wrote: “the adaptation of the book is bad. they evidently think you are perfectly acquainted with the book, and the sharp outline and light and shade of character is not sufficiently marked. in the first act you see about a dozen people who come in and who don’t let you know who they are, and who never appear again, and you do not arrive at the dramatic part till the last act.
“the story is briefly thus: léna is staying with mrs. broadway, very sainte nitouche! everyone admiring her and all the octogenaires in love with her. she (whose passé is not sans tache) is under the power of a certain jack fortinbras, who forces her, under the penalty of unveiling her past, to marry a certain lord ramsey. léna has in her possession a letter which ramsey wrote to a lady dower, whose name is also léna, and the letter is in very affectionate terms. ramsey is engaged to beatrice, and léna shows this letter to beatrice and says it was to her! of course, beatrice thinks ramsey un lache and leaves the house, saying her marriage is impossible, and leaving a letter for ramsey to that effect. act ii. is in léna’s house. fortinbras comes and plays cards with a young man and cheats. ramsey sees this, and fortinbras is turned out of the house.
“act iii., monte carlo.—léna is staying there with ramsey,[94] with whom she is now desperately in love. fortinbras appears and asks for money, which she gives. ramsey comes in and asks why she is agitated. she says she is helpless, alone. he confesses his love for her, and she, in a nervous excitement, says, “je t’adore,” and so scheming to marry for money, she finds she is dreadfully in love with him.
“act iv.—they are married and in scotland. fortinbras appears tracked by detectives and asks for 200,000 (pounds or francs?) at once, or he tells of her passé. then sarah bernhardt was superb. it was quite impossible for her to get the money, and she is so happy with her husband. at this crisis ramsey comes in and half strangles fortinbras, who, when let go, reveals all léna’s past. at the words, ‘cette femme m’aimait une fois,’ léna jette un cri d’angoisse, i would have given anything for you to have seen her act that scene. ramsey hears it all, and, when given the proofs that are in letters, throws them into the fire, and fortinbras is given to the detectives and ramsey is alone with léna and tells her that he really believes what the man said. she cannot deny it, and confesses the whole thing. her acting was supreme, and ramsey says to her, ‘et m’avez vous jamais aimé?’ then she gives way and bursts into sanglots, and implores him to believe her, and that she adored him. he refuses to believe her and goes out. then all is pantomime. she takes up a knife, throws it down, gets a little bottle of ‘morphine,’ drinks it, sits down with ramsey’s photograph in her hand; then come seven minutes of silence. all pantomime, but what pantomime; she quietly dies. i have never seen such a splendid bit of acting. it was lovely. as she is dying, ramsey tries to come in, but the door is locked. he comes in at the window in an agony of grief and forgives her. just when he is at the door she stretches out her hand and falls back épuisée. it was beautiful.”
i remember a doctor saying, as we went out of the theatre: “mais ce n’est pas comme cela qu’on meurt de la morphine,”—upon which someone else answered: “alors, ceux qui ont dit: voilà une mort réaliste ont dit une sottise. pourtant elle a été dite.”
we went to the cemetery of the père lachaise, and the tombs that i cited in a letter are those of hélo?se and abelard, balzac, alfred de musset, bizet, and géricault.
i went back to eton for my first summer half, which is[95] said to be the most blissful moment of eton life, and i think in my case it was. the first thing one had to do was to pass swimming. i had learnt to swim at eastbourne, and i swam as well as i ever did before or afterwards, but to pass, one had to swim in a peculiar way. the passing was supervised by my tutor, and i failed to pass twice, chiefly, i think, owing to the curious nature of my dive from the boat, which took the form of a high leap into the air and a descent on all-fours into the water. “swim to the bank,” said my tutor, much to my disappointment. the second time i failed again, but there was soon a third trial, and i passed. i at once hired an outrigged gig with another boy, and then a period of unmixed enjoyment began: rows up to surley every afternoon and ginger-beer in the garden there, bathes in the evening at cuckoo weir, teas at little brown’s, where one ordered new potatoes and asparagus, or cold salmon and cucumber, gooseberries and cream, raspberries and cream, and every fresh delicacy of the season in turn. little brown’s, the school sock-shop next to ingalton drake’s, the stationer’s, which we still called williams’, was then controlled by brown, who was a comfortable lady rather like the pictures of the queen of hearts in alice in wonderland. she was assisted by ph?be, who kept order with great spirit, in a seething mass of unruly boys, all shouting at the top of their voices and clamouring to be served first. brown’s was open before early school, and if one had the energy, one got up in time to go and have a coffee and a bun there. it was well worth the effort, for the buns were slit open and filled with butter, and then, not toasted, but baked in the oven, and were crisp, hot, and delicious. brown and ph?be had the most marvellous memory for faces i have ever come across. they would remember a boy years afterwards, and when i was at eton i used often to hear brown say to ph?be, as some very middle-aged man passed the window, “there’s mr. so-and-so.”
there was a pandemonium in the front of the shop; in the little room at the back of the shop only swells went. there was another sock-shop called rowland’s, near barnes pool, which had a garden and an arbour, and sold scalloped prawns in winter and wonderful strawberry messes in the summer. then farther up town there was califano, who was celebrated for his fiery temper, and in windsor there was[96] leighton’s. but brown’s was the smallest and cosiest of all the sock-shops, and nothing at any of the others could vie with her hot buns in the early morning.
i was now in remove, and once more under the tuition of mr. heygate. we no longer translated greek stories and epigrams from the delightful collection called sertum, which was used in the fourth form. this book is now out of print, but i fortunately possess a copy. it is a most delightful anthology of short anecdotes and poems. on the other hand, we did sidgwick’s greek exercises, a book of very short english stories, which have to be translated into greek. it is one of the most charming books ever written, and even now i can read it when i can’t read anything else.
i can’t remember what we read in school that half, but i remember reading monte cristo out of school. my mother had given me an illustrated edition of it on my birthday. on the afternoon of a whole school day i was reading of dantès’ escape from the chateau d’if, and i became oblivious of the passage of time. the school clock chimed the quarters, but i heeded them not. just before the school hour was ended the boys’ maid came in and told me i was missing school. i flung away my book and ran breathless to upper school, where i found the boys just going out. i had missed school, an unheard-of thing to do, which meant probably writing out endless exercises of bradley’s latin prose. each division had what was called a prepostor, a boy who kept a book in which he was supposed to note all boys who were absent, and to find out if they were staying out, which meant staying out of lessons, that is to say, staying indoors on account of sickness, in which case the dame of the house had to sign a statement to that effect in the prepostor’s book, and add also whether they were excused lessons; if they were not excused lessons they had to do written work in the house. on this day the prepostor had not noticed my absence, nor had mr. heygate, and i joined the crowd of boys running downstairs as if i had been there all the time.
there were two sorts of masters at eton—those who could keep order and those who couldn’t. with those who could, there was never any question of ragging. boys knew at once what was impossible and accepted it. they also knew in a moment when it was possible, and they lost no minute of their opportunities, and at once began to harass the wretched master[97] with importunate, absurd, and impertinent questions, seeing how far they could go in veiled insolence without overstepping the line of danger. it was the masters who taught mathematics and french who had the worst time, with the exception of monsieur hua, who was an admirable teacher and stood no nonsense.
in remove we did science. there were three science masters—mr. porter, mr. drew, and mr. hale (badger). i was taught by them all in turn. mr. drew used to produce a mysterious and rather dirty-looking bit of stony metal or metallic stone, and say in a confidential whisper: “do you know what that is? it’s quartz.” badger hale had only one experiment. it was a split football which was made to revolve by turning a handle, and proved, but hardly to our satisfaction, the centrifugal tendency of the earth. mr. porter’s science lectures, on the other hand, were fraught with excitement. apparatus after apparatus was brought in, and experiment after experiment was attempted, sometimes involving explosions. sometimes they failed. sometimes, just at the critical moment we would laugh. mr. porter would say: “i have been three days trying to get this experiment ready, and now you have spoilt it all.” “please, sir, we were not laughing,” we would say. “you were looking as if you were laughing, and that disturbs me just as much,” mr. porter would answer. it was no use accusing us of laughing, because we always denied it at once, and after a time he would always say: “write out the verbs in mi for looking as if you were laughing.” at the end of the half, mr. porter gave what was called a “good boys’ lecture,” at which the first nine boys of all the various sets he taught attended, if their work had been satisfactory throughout the term. i went to three of these or more. they were lectures with coloured magic-lantern slides, showing views of places all over the world, from indus to the pole. never have i enjoyed anything more. there was a slide of vesuvius in eruption, and slides of venice and new zealand, which were entrancingly beautiful. but one half, the good boy lecture was confined to mr. porter’s holiday trip to the isle of skye, and the slides were not coloured. this lecture was a disappointment, and i am afraid, from the boys’ point of view, a failure. another remarkable lecture mr. porter gave was on soap-bubbles. films of soap bubble were projected by some device on to a screen, so that you saw the prismatic colours enlarged and as vivid as rainbows. while this was going on,[98] a boy called harben, who had a fruity alto voice, sang a sentimental song into a tube; the vibrations of the sound had a strange effect on the soap-bubble films, and made them change rapidly into a multitude of kaleidoscopic shapes and gyrations and symmetrical patterns. so mr. porter was the precursor of skriabin’s symphony, in which the music is assisted by visible colour.
mr. porter gave a series of lectures on electricity out of school. i and a boy in my house, francis egerton, applied to go to these. mr. porter somewhat reluctantly and suspiciously allowed us to come. they were rather stiff and advanced lectures, involving a good deal of formula writing on the blackboard with pi and other mysterious signs, but there were also experiments. we did not understand one word of it, but soon a difficult experiment was begun, which mr. porter said had taken him days to prepare. he was doubtful whether it would succeed. this was a rash remark. egerton and i rocked with laughter. we laughed till we cried. there was no question of looking as if we were laughing. we were not allowed to go to any more lectures on electricity. there was an assistant masters’ prize given for science, and it was either that or the following year that the subject was physiography. i went in for this prize, staying out the whole sunday before so as to have time to read the book on which we were to be examined, a short book by huxley. i competed and won the prize. when it came to choosing a book for my prize, i chose the epic of hades, by lewis morris. i had to go to mr. cornish, who was not yet vice-provost, to have my name written in it. he was disgusted with my choice, and he advised me to change the book. but i was obdurate. i had chosen the book for its nice smooth binding, and nothing would make me reconsider my decision. “it’s poor stuff,” said mr. cornish; “it’s like boys’ latin verses when they’re very good.”
there were two other french masters besides m. hua—m. roublot and m. banck. m. banck was sublimely strict, but m. roublot was easygoing, good-natured, but lacking in authority. during his lesson we used to read the newspapers and write our letters, but we liked him too much to rag. we used to bring in all our occupations for the week, and stacks of writing-paper. one day when this was happening, and every boy was pleasantly but busily engaged in some occupation of his own, who should[99] walk in but the headmaster, dr. warre. the newspapers and the writing-paper and envelopes disappeared as by magic, and m. roublot at once put on the safest boy to construe. dr. warre, who had grasped the situation, told us that our conduct was disgraceful.
he often made sudden visits to divisions, and stood up by the master’s desk while the work went on. these visits were always alarming, and one day, when he had just gone out of the room, one of the boys said: “lord, how that man makes me sweat!” but there was one other french master who was not french, but far more formidable than all the rest, and this was mr. frank tarver. mr. tarver was a perfect french scholar, and when he explained what the word bock meant, and said: “when you go to a café in paris you sit down and say, ‘gar?on, un bock,’” one felt that one had before one a perfect man of the world. but sometimes there were no bounds to his anger, especially if he found that one had not looked out words in the dictionary, or if one translated encore by again. one day i remember his being in such a passion that he took a drawer from his desk and flung it on the ground. it is a great thing to be able to do this effectually. the boys quaked. most of us liked him very much all the same; but to some he was a terror.
mathematical lessons were always a difficulty in my case. i should never have passed trials in mathematics had it not been for euclid, which counted together with arithmetic and algebra. fortunately i could do euclid without difficulty, so i always got enough marks in that subject to make up for getting none at all in the two other branches of the science.
every week we had a task called an extra-work to do out of school, which was meant to represent an hour’s work of mathematics, and consisted of sums in arithmetic and algebra. it generally took me more than an hour, and i never managed to get a sum right. when we used to get into hopeless arrears with our work, and everything was in an inextricable tangle, there was always one solution, and that was to stay out; but to be excused lessons one had to go to bed, and for that it was necessary to catch cold. but just an ordinary attack of friday fever was enough to stay out. we complained of a bad headache and incipient insomnia, and miss copeman let us stay out at once, thinking it might be the beginning of measles, and we sat in her sitting-room reading a novel till the crisis was over.
[100]
at the slightest sign of a real streaming cold my tutor used to pack us off to bed and keep us there till it was gone, and we were allowed bound volumes of the illustrated london news from the boys’ library, and my tutor would lend us books from his own library.
each boy in a division had to be prepostor for the division for a week at a time in turn. with the prepostor’s book one marked in the boys who were absent, either from school or chapel. one had a list of the boys’ names at the end of the book and ticked them off as they walked into chapel. this sounds a simple thing to do, but as the boys used to come in at the last minute and all together, and one had to take up the book to a master before chapel began, i found it flustering to a degree, and never knew if i had marked everyone in or not. i had to go to the headmaster once for losing the prepostor’s book, and he said i had played fast and loose with a position of grave responsibility, and gave me three exercises of bradley’s prose to write out.
after the summer half i was in arthur benson’s division. we read passages from the odyssey, virgil, and horace’s odes, the second book, and for the first time i enjoyed some latin. i thought horace’s odes delightful. arthur benson used to make us draw pictures illustrating episodes in greek history, and he would stick them up on the wall if they were good. one of the subjects suggested was the bridge of boats that xerxes threw across the sea, and i remember drawing a magnificent picture, with the hills of the chersonese in the background, copied from some illustrations of the crimean war, and a realistic flat bridge made of planks placed on broad punts. he was delighted with the picture and put it up at once, and sometimes he used to take older boys to see it.
there was not much religious instruction at eton. we construed the greek testament on monday mornings, but this was a greek lesson like any other; and sunday was made hideous by an exercise called sunday questions, which had to be done on that day, and which we always put off doing to the last possible moment. these were questions on historical points in the old testament, and entailed finding out the answers from some such book as maclear’s old testament history, and writing four large sheets of mss. the questions were sometimes puzzling, and we used to consult miss copeman,[101] and sometimes, as a last resort, my tutor, who used to say: “i can’t think what mr. benson”—or whoever it might be—“can mean.” i have still got a copy of sunday questions done at eton. in this set we were told to give the probable dates showing the duration of the kingdoms of israel and judah, and what was going on in any other countries. another question is: “why was pharaoh necho against judah? how did he treat their successive kings?” and the last question (there were several others) was: “distinguish carefully between jehoiakim and jehoiakin.” i seem to have answered these questions rather evasively, but i got seven marks out of ten.
besides this, boys got their religion from the sermons in chapel, of which they were highly critical. they enjoyed a good preacher, and some of the masters and guests were good preachers, but the boys were merciless critics of a bad or ludicrous preacher, and there were many of these. one of the masters preached symbolic sermons about the meaning of the four beasts. another used to begin his sermons by saying: “the story of the prodigal son is too well known to repeat. we all know how?” and then elaborately retell what was supposed to be too well known to tell at all. before boys were confirmed they received special tuition on religious and moral topics from their tutor, but i missed it by having measles. so i was confirmed in the holidays, and just before my confirmation it struck my mother that i was singularly unprepared, so she sent me to see my uncle henry ponsonby’s brother, who was a clergyman. we called him uncle fred; his sister had married one of my uncles. he had a great sense of humour, and was rather shy. he was also extremely high church. when i arrived with a note from my mother, in which he was asked to examine me in theology, he was embarrassed, and he said: “well, i will ask you your catechism, what is your name, n. or m.?” and then he laughed and said, “i think that will do.” when i told my mother this, she sent me to another clergyman who did talk, but confined the conversation to moral generalities, and said no word about the catechism. so i may say i had no religious instruction at school during all my school-time, for which i have always been profoundly grateful.
music lessons became a difficulty and a stumbling-block as time went on. i had organ lessons, and they were, of course, given out of school, and these lessons and the necessary practice[102] took up a lot of one’s spare time, besides having to give way to work. mr. joseph barnby, the organist and the head of the music masters, said: “your parents pay for your music lessons just as they pay for your latin lessons, and so you ought to take just as much trouble about them.” this was quite true, but the other masters did not see the matter in the same light. they couldn’t be expected to take music lessons seriously, and said that music must in all cases always give way to work.
the result was one scamped one’s practice and shirked one’s music lesson on every possible opportunity. matters came to such a pitch that i was sent for by mr. barnby. the situation was aggravated because dunglass and i had unwittingly offended the violin master, and had gone into his room while he was giving a lesson to another boy, and had then shut the door rather more violently than was necessary. mr. barnby was indignant. my brother john had been one of his best pupils. he said our conduct was scandalous. i had employed base subterfuges to shirk music lessons, and i and dunglass had insulted dear kind mr. morsh. we apologised to mr. morsh, and things went more smoothly; but i gave up the organ and had lessons on the pianoforte instead. mr. barnby was quite right, but he got no sympathy from the other masters, who continued to treat music as an utterly unimportant side issue which must give way to everything else. the result being, of course, that directly boys found that music lessons made it more difficult for them to get through their work, they gave up learning music. i have never stopped meeting people in after life who are naturally musical, and bitterly regretted not having been taught music seriously as boys; and if parents were wise they would insist on music being taken seriously, if they pay for music lessons for their boys. but as yet parents have done no such thing. besides music lessons, there was the musical society, which consisted of an orchestra and a chorus, and performed a cantata at the school concert at the end of the half. i belonged to this later, and we sang parry’s setting to swinburne’s eton “ode” at the eton tercentenary concert in june 1891. mr. barnby used to conduct, and had an amazing knack of discovering someone who was not singing, or singing a wrong note. the concerts were, i used to think, intensely enjoyable. there was an atmosphere of triumph about them when the swells used to walk in at the[103] beginning in evening clothes, and coloured scarves, which stood for various achievements either on the river, the cricket or the football field. as each hero walked in there were thunders of applause. then a treble or an alto used to sing a song that reduced the audience to tears: “lay my head on your shoulder, daddy,” or “the better land.” there was a boy called clarke, who used to sing year after year till his voice broke. he had a melting voice. during my last half at eton there was a boy called herz, who sang “si vous n’avez rien à me dire,” with startling dramatic effect, exactly like a french professional. but the best moment of all was when the captain of the boats sang the solo in the eton boating song, whether he had got a voice or not, and then the whole school sang the “carmen etonense” at the end. what an audience it was! how they yelled and roared when a song pleased them! i used sometimes to go to st. george’s chapel at windsor, and sir walter parratt used to let me sit in the organ loft. i heard bach’s “passion music of st. matthew” in this way, and sir walter said: “you must be as still as a mouse.”
i have said there were two kinds of masters: those who were ragged and those who were not. the master who was most ragged was a mathematical master called mr. mozley. he punished, but could never stop the stream of impertinent comment that went on through the hours of his instruction. one day we got a boy called studd to practise “god save the queen” at his open window. his window looked out on to a yard, and mr. mozley’s schoolroom was on the ground floor of the house next door to ours and looked out on to the same yard. the windows were open. it was a hot summer’s afternoon, and the strains of “god save the queen” came in through mr. mozley’s window. every time the tune began we stood up. “sit down,” cried the mo, or ikey mo, as he was called. “national anthem, sir,” we said; “we must stand up.” there was a short pause. then the tune began again. again we all stood up. mr. mozley rushed to the window, but there was no sign of any violinist. for ten minutes there was no interruption, and then, just when mr. mozley, by a shower of punishments, thought he had got the division in hand once more, the tune began again, and again we all stood up with plaintive, resigned faces, as though nobody minded the interruption more than we did.
[104]
another master who was mercilessly ragged was mr. bouchier,[4] who was deaf, and afterwards a famous times correspondent at sofia—a man who could do what he liked with the bulgars, but who could not manage a division of eton boys. the boys took mice into his schoolroom, and ultimately he had to go away.
there were masters who were stimulating teachers and roused the interest of boys in topics outside the ordinary routine of work, and others who kept scrupulously to the routine. the latter were the fairest, for when outside topics were discussed probably only a minority of the boys listened. it was above the heads of many. arthur benson kept scrupulously to the routine; he made it as interesting as he could, but rarely diverged on to stray topics, and never on to such topics that would only interest a few of the boys. edward lyttelton did exactly the opposite. when i was in his division there were about half a dozen boys who were advanced, and had got shoved up into his division by a rapid rise. the others were solid, stolid dunces. edward lyttelton devoted his time to the intelligent, and spent much time in conversation on such topics as ritual in church, the reign of charlemagne, and the acting at the comédie fran?aise. he carried on teaching by asking a quantity of questions which entailed a great deal of interesting comment and argument. in the meantime the dunces ragged. i was good at answering his questions, but i joined in the ragging, nevertheless, partly from a sense of loyalty to raggers in general. the result was that at the end of the half i was top of his division for the school-time, but i forfeited the prize owing, as he said in my report, to my incorrigible babyishness. my tutor thought this unfair, and gave me a book instead of the prize. mr. rawlins, who was afterwards lower master and then vice-provost, was a good teacher, but his chief hobby was grammar, and he talked far above our heads. i startled him one day. we were construing an ode of horace, where a phrase occurred mentioning the difficulty of removing her cubs from, i think, a g?tulan lioness.[5] he said, “there is a parallel to that in french poetry.” i[105] said, “yes,” and quoted the lines from hernani i had known for so long:
“il vaudrait mieux aller au tigre même
arracher ses petits qu’à moi celui que j’aime.”
he was dumbstruck.
i was two years a lower boy, and reached the lower division of fifth form by september 1889. hugo arrived at eton, and we shared a room together. we messed together with dunglass, who had an order at little brown’s of a shilling a day. every day on the sideboard of the passage a large plate used to await us in a brown paper parcel containing eggs and bacon or sausages or fish. my tutor changed his house, and we exchanged the convenient house opposite the school-yard for a house that was once marindin’s, on the etonwick road. it was far to go, and one had to get up early if one wished for coffee and a bun at little brown’s before early school.
dunglass and i used to read a good many books. rider haggard and edna lyall were our favourite authors; stevenson got a second or third place; but jane eyre and ben hur were approved of, and monte cristo got the first prize of all. after rider haggard and edna lyall, i had a passion for marion crawford’s books and read every one i could get hold of. i have still got a list of the books i read in the year 1889, marked according to merit. it is as follows:
name of author. name of book. remarks.
edna lyall donovan worth reading.
” we two ”
” in the golden days exciting.
” won by waiting very good.
” knight errant worth reading.
” the autobiography of a slander very good.
” derrick vaughan, novelist worth reading.
shorthouse john inglesant excellent.
” the countess eve not worth reading.
rider haggard king solomon’s mines excellent.
” she thrilling.
” jess worth reading.
” allan quatermain exciting.
” mr. meeson’s will trash.
” maiwa’s revenge trash.
alphonse daudet tartarin de tarascon very good.
alexandre dumas le comte de monte cristo perfect book.
[106]” la dame de monsoreau worth reading.
halévy l’abbé constantin very good.
octave feuillet le roman d’un jeune homme pauvre very good.
lord lytton the last days of pompeii excellent.
marion crawford mr. isaacs worth reading.
” dr. claudius ”
” zoroaster ”
” a roman singer ”
” a tale of a lonely parish very good.
” saracinesca worth reading.
” paul patoff exciting.
” marzio’s crucifix worth reading.
” greifenstein thrilling.
” with the immortals worth reading.
” sant’ ilario ”
charles kingsley two years ago ”
george eliot silas marner very good.
” adam bede perfect book.
” romola very good.
” the mill on the floss perfect book.
whyte-melville katerfelto very good.
” the white rose worth reading.
” the gladiators ”
lew wallace ben hur excellent.
graham ne?ra worth reading.
mrs. humphry ward robert elsmere ”
wilkie collins the woman in white very good.
a. c. gunter that frenchman thrilling.
charles reade foul play worth reading.
r. l. stevenson treasure island perfect book.
” kidnapped excellent.
” dr. jekyll and mr. hyde thrilling.
” new arabian nights very good.
” the dynamiter ”
” the master of ballantrae excellent.
julian hawthorne mrs. gainsborough’s diamonds very good.
charlotte bront? jane eyre
charles kingsley westward ho!
the reason the last two have no comments was probably because the red ink in which the comments were made had run out. i remember being particularly thrilled by jane eyre, and so was dunglass, who read it at the same time.
the 4th of june was an excitement for boys who were just beginning their eton career, but older boys were most blasé about it and preferred short leave. we made great preparations[107] for my first 4th of june; grease spots were ironed out of the tablecloth, everything that looked untidy was put away; the window-box, which did duty for a garden, was prepared and decked. i struck out a bold note in my window-box by having a fountain in it, made by mr. duffield of high street, according to my instructions. there was a square tin basin and a fountain in the middle of it, which was fed from a tank which was hung high up by the side of the window. the fountain worked successfully, but made a great mess, and the boys’ maid had no patience with it. when my tutor came round in the evening, the night before the 4th of june, he said the room looked like a whited sepulchre. i had visitors on the 4th of june. chérie came, and i forget which other members of the family.
once every half the headmaster used to ask hugo and myself to breakfast. this we enjoyed; it was an excellent breakfast, with lots of sausages. the headmaster used to look at the times, comment on the house of commons, quote horace, and ask after john and cecil. other masters asked one to breakfast as well, and i think few things gave the boys so much pleasure. they used to discuss every detail of the breakfast with the other boys afterwards, and retail everything the master had said. i enjoyed my breakfasts with mr. impey most; he used to tell me about books, and we used to discuss rider haggard and stevenson. i greatly preferred rider haggard, and i had just read king solomon’s mines, and had one night sat up late reading she.
long leave and short leave were two great excitements. when i went for short leave i used to go by the earliest possible train and arrive at my sister margaret’s house long before breakfast. when long leave came about, we always went to a play on saturday night, and i remember seeing captain swift at the haymarket, and coquelin in l’étourdi. for my long leave of the summer of 1889, i had been looking forward for days to going to see sarah bernhardt in la tosca, but when i came up to london, i found to my horror that chérie and my mother had both been told it was too horrible a play to go and see. my eloquent advocacy overcame chérie’s scruples. “vraiment,” she said, “tu serais un superbe avocat.” and she, margaret, and i went off to the lyceum and thoroughly enjoyed sarah’s harrowing and electric performance. while we were[108] having dinner, before starting, someone who was there said that two men who had been to see the play had come out in the middle. chérie, who by that time had decided we were to go, said they must have been des poules mouillées.
i think it was in 1890 that queen victoria opened the new schools at eton and made a speech. and one summer while i was at eton, the german emperor inspected the eton volunteers. while he was doing this on horseback, a boy called cunliffe let off his rifle and the german emperor’s horse bolted into the playing fields.
well-known people used to come and lecture at the literary society sometimes, but the only famous man i heard while i was at eton was mr. gladstone, who lectured at the literary society in march 1891, on artemis, as revealed in homer. i was fortunate enough to get a ticket for this lecture. the boys, abstruse as the subject was, were spellbound. there was only one joke in the lecture, and that would have been better away. it was this: “some of you may have heard the old story of the moon being made of green cheese.” pause for laughter and a dead silence. “the moon might just as well,” continued mr. gladstone, “be made of green cheese for all the purposes she serves in homer.”
at the end of the lecture the provost returned thanks, and then mr. gladstone leapt to his feet and made an impassioned speech on classical education. the last sentence of his peroration was as follows: “but this, mr. provost, i venture to say, and say with confidence, and it is not a fancy of youth nor the whim of the moment, but the conviction forced upon me even more by the experience of life than by any reasoning quality, that if the purposes of education be to fit the human mind for the efficient performance of the greatest functions, the ancient culture, and, above all, the greek culture, is by far the best and strongest, the most lasting, and the most elastic instrument that could possibly be applied to it.”
as he said these words his eyes flashed, he opened and raised his arms, and his body seemed to expand and grow tall. he seemed like the priest of culture speaking inspired words. his voice rolled out in a golden torrent, and as he said the words, “the best and strongest, the most lasting, the most elastic,” they seemed to come to him with the certainty of happy inspiration and with the accent of the unpremeditated. with these[109] words his voice reached its highest pitch of crescendo, and then, slightly dying down, melodiously sank into silence.
this little speech showed me what great oratory could be.
at the end of my first year there was a prize called the headmaster’s prize for french, for lower boys. i competed for this. it was always rather difficult to get a french prize at eton, as there was usually a french or a canadian boy who spoke and knew the language like a native. there was a special examination paper for this prize. i and a french boy, whose name i have forgotten, both got 95 marks out of 100. then the papers were looked through again, and it was found that i had translated the french word h?te by host, when it should have been guest, so the other boy was given the prize, but my tutor gave me a book as a consolation. the following year i competed for the headmaster’s french prize for boys in fifth form, and that time i won it, much to the delight of chérie and of everyone at membland.
in fifth form we learnt german as an extra. german was taught by mr. ploetz, who knew the language; and by other masters, who didn’t. during the lessons of the latter, one paid no attention, and attended to one’s private affairs. mr. ploetz was an excellent, stimulating teacher, but most unpopular with the other masters. the boys liked him; he was a book collector, and had a fine library. he taught me a great deal, not of german, as i paid no attention to the regular work, but i picked up from him a mass of miscellaneous information. it was the fashion to rag during his lessons, and i outdid everyone in ingenious interruption during mr. ploetz’ lessons. it was not that he couldn’t keep order. he was extremely strict and competent, but one knew, with the fiendish intuition of boys, that his complaints would not be taken seriously by the other masters, or by one’s tutor. this was indeed the case. there were three forms of punishment at eton. first of all, one could get a yellow ticket, which meant one had to do a punishment of some written kind and get the ticket signed by one’s tutor. we did not much like leaving out the yellow ticket in a prominent place for my tutor to see when he came round in the evening. if matters went further, one was reported to the headmaster and received a white ticket. the white ticket was in force for a week. during that week leave was stopped, and if the slightest complaint was made by anyone, it meant[110] being complained of to the headmaster a second time and a flogging by the headmaster. i was complained of by mr. ploetz to the headmaster. as i guessed, the other masters took this far from seriously. “what have you been doing to mr. ploetz?” said my tutor. what i had been guilty of was overt rowdyism, combined with prolonged and unbearable impertinence, which if done to any other master would have been taken very seriously indeed. “what have you been doing to mr. ploetz?” said another master to me, with a laugh, when he met me in the street. i received a white ticket, but i got through the week without further complaints, and i was never complained of again.
when i was in fifth form, the school library became a favourite haunt of mine, and mr. burcher, the librarian, a special friend. mr. burcher was a little dapper man, who was pained when we jumped over the tables, a favourite game of mine, or if we threw the books about. “is it a joke,” he would ask plaintively, “or is it an insult?” but in that library, during my last year at eton, i made by myself the discovery of english poetry, and read the works of shelley in the three little volumes of the second moxon edition of 1850, and the poems of keats in lord houghton’s one-volume edition. on sundays i used to go, rich with my new discoveries, to norman tower, and compare notes with betty ponsonby, who knew reams of english poetry by heart, and we would read each last new favourite poem. there is no joy in the world like this to discover these things for the first time. the shabby little keats and shelley, the green volumes of tennyson, the three dark volumes of matthew arnold—what mines of fairy treasure they represented!
i made friends, through one of his pupils, with arthur benson. i had been in his division twice, but i had never known him well. one of the coventrys, willie coventry, was his pupil, and he told arthur benson that i liked books and poetry, and had written a novel called elvira, which was true (only it had to be destroyed after i had measles), and was going to write the libretto of an opera of which he, coventry, was to write the music. he was not really musical, and did not know a note of music technically. he also intended, when i first made his acquaintance, to write a life of mary stuart; but this, like the opera, never got far.
arthur benson was most kind and interested, and it was[111] arranged that on sunday afternoons we should meet in his rooms and read out poetry. arnold ward, mrs. humphry ward’s son, who was in college, joined us. we read out poetry; if we had written something ourselves, we left it with arthur benson for a week, he told us what he thought about it next time. i showed him a fairies’ chorus from my libretto. he said: “i don’t like those galloping metres, but i see you have got a good vocabulary.” my next effort was an ode on the tercentenary of eton college, in which fielding was mentioned as “the great wielder of the painting pen.” “have you read fielding?” asked arthur benson. i had not read fielding. “i see,” said arthur benson, “you take him on trust.”
there was at that time a newspaper edited by two of the boys, called the mayfly. i sent them my poem on eton college, but they wisely refused it. the mayfly, edited by ramsay, was an amusing paper, but not quite as good as the parachute, which had come out the year before, and was edited by carr bosanquet and others. this was a singularly brilliant newspaper. it only had three numbers, but they were most successful. there was at the same time an exceedingly serious newspaper called the eton review, edited, i think, by beauchamp, which had articles about the baconian theory, and other rather heavy topics. during my last summer a newspaper which had twenty editors, but only one number, came out, called the students’ humour. there was also a book published in 1891, called keate’s lane papers, in which there is an excellent poem by j. k. stephen, which has never been republished, called “the song of the scug.” it begins:
“there was a little scug
who sat upon a rug,
with a dull and empty brain,
and would show his indecision
in a twopenny division,
with a friend of the same low strain.
and would eat a lot of cherries and see a lot of cricket,
till his lips and his fingers were as sticky as the wicket,
but at last he came to be a bald old man
who talked about as wildly as a bald man can.
and he said, by gad;
when i was a lad,
and the very best dry bob alive,
i should have made a million,
but a man in the pavilion
was killed by my first hard drive.”
[112]
j. k. stephen used often to come down to eton, dressed always in slippers, a dark blue flannel blazer, and a dirty pink cap on the back of his head; and thus dressed, and reading a small book, i saw him serenely and unconsciously walk across the pitch during the winchester match.
arthur benson stimulated our reading tremendously, and we were startled and interested by his frank heresies. he said he did not care for milton’s lycidas. he wished shakespeare had been a modern and had written novels. he was indifferent to shelley. he loathed byron, but was none the less impressed, when one sunday arnold ward read out the description of the battle of talavera (childe harold, i. xxxviii.), and he admitted it was moving. he disliked carlyle, ruskin, and thackeray. on the other hand, he introduced us to matthew arnold, rossetti, fitzgerald, and many others, and encouraged us to go on liking anything we did like. by this time i had read many novels—thackeray’s vanity fair, pickwick, a good deal of scott (i was given the waverley novels for christmas 1889), george eliot’s adam bede, the mill on the floss, and quantities of poetry. betty ponsonby gave me swinburne’s atalanta in calydon, but explained to me that the denunciations of god in it only applied to the greek gods, and she and my aunt m’aimée both changed the subject when i suggested reading swinburne’s poems and ballads.
willie coventry and i found out that there was a competition going on at this time in a magazine called atalanta for who should write the best essay in 500 words. you were allowed to choose your own subject. willie coventry won it one month by writing an essay on dr. schliemann’s excavations, a subject suggested to him by arthur benson. the next month i competed, and chose as my subject a poem by edgar allan poe called “for annie,” and i won the prize too.
in the summer of 1890 i went to stay at the coventrys’ place at croome court in worcestershire, and willie coventry came to membland later in the same summer. the libretto i was writing for him never got further than a few lyrics, and his score never got further than a few bars and a triumphal march, which i composed, and even played at one of miss copeman’s afternoon parties. i can still play it now, if pressed.
i had a faint hope at one time that i might be able to get into the boats. arthur benson had taken me out one day down[113] stream and advised me to try. i could row well enough on the stroke side, but not so well on the bow side of the boat. i put my name down for novice eights, in which boys were tried, and one evening i started out full of hope. unfortunately i was told to row bow in the boat. a tall colleger stood up in the stern of the boat to coach us. no sooner had we started than there was a loud call: “keep time, bow—keep time, bow!” and we had not gone much farther than the brocas when i caught so violent a crab that the coach fell into the water, the boat was partially submerged, and we had to go back, some of us swimming. i was never allowed to row in company again, and earned the reputation of being the only person who had ever swamped a novice eight.
in the autumn of 1890 hugo and i went up to london for long leave. my father and mother were staying at my sister elizabeth’s house in grosvenor place, and there we heard about the financial crisis in baring brothers, which had nearly ended in a great disaster. when we went back to membland at christmas everything was different. there was no christmas party, and the household was going through a process of gradual dissolution. chérie was leaving us, the stables were empty, and the old glory of membland had gone for ever.
all through the next year i was engrossed with the discoveries i was making in english literature. in the summer i sent a poem to temple bar, then edited by george smith, and to my great surprise it was printed, and i received a cheque for a guinea. during that same summer i had a little book of poems privately printed at eton, called damozel blanche, consisting of ballads and lyrics.
i was now a member of the house debating society, in which we used to have heated discussions on such subjects as whether sports were brutalising or not, whether conscription was a good thing, whether general booth’s scheme was a sound one, and whether mary queen of scots had been improperly beheaded.
there was another debating society founded before i left eton, called le cercle des débats, in which we made speeches in french, and i remember m. hua making a passionate speech in favour of england relinquishing her hold upon egypt. i spoke several times at this debating society, and in the report on the debate as to whether monte carlo should be allowed to exist, it is recorded that: “m. baring croyait que c’était un mauvais endroit mais que cela ne devrait pas être supprimé.”
[114]
the summer of the eton tercentenary, 1891, was great fun, especially the concert, when hubert parry’s beautiful setting to swinburne’s “ode” was performed. i sang among the baritones. my mother came down for the concert, and hubert parry conducted himself. there was an interesting exhibition in the school hall, and it was there that i made the acquaintance of mrs. cornish. my aunt m’aimée introduced me to her, and i soon became a great friend of the cornish family, and was invited by them to go out on water-parties down stream to the bells of ousley and runnymede, and to have supper with them afterwards. i enjoyed these water-parties as much as anything at eton.
in the summer holidays of 1891 i went to stay with chérie, who had left us. she lived with her friend, miss charlesworth, in a little house called waterlooville, near cosham, in hants, and realised the dream of her life, namely, to have a large garden of her own full of hollyhocks and sunflowers and sweet peas.
in the michaelmas half of 1891 i competed for the prince consort’s french prize. i had already done so the last year, but i was then too young to compete with sixth-form boys, who were much older, and i was not expected to get a place, but i came out third. this year it was my great ambition to get the prize. i thought of nothing else. we had to read several books—molière’s l’avare, alfred de vigny’s cinq mars, taine’s voyage aux pyrénées, victor hugo’s ruy blas, and brachet’s grammaire historique. besides this, we were examined in unseen translations from and into french, and we had to write a french essay. we were examined by a monsieur hammonet. i worked extremely hard for this examination, and had extra lessons in the evenings from m. hua. so did the other competitors. my serious rival was grand d’hauteville, who i think was a french canadian, and who spoke french fluently. the examination took five days, and as it went on i became more and more convinced that i had not done well and could not possibly win the prize. when it was over, there was a long interval of agonising suspense before the result was made known.
one afternoon i received a summons from my uncle henry ponsonby to go and see him at windsor. i found him, not at norman tower, but in a room somewhere in the castle, and he told me that the queen had just received the news of the result[115] of the prince consort’s prize. she was the first to get this news; the news was that i was first and had got the prize. i at once sent a telegram to my mother and to chérie, and walked back to eton, drunk with triumph and delight to tell my tutor.
the news was not published for some days, and i told nobody, i think, except my tutor and dunglass. but it came out at last, and was published in the times and on the board at eton. my father and mother came down to see me, and my father gave me his own watch: a breguet, the demidoff breguet. it was then settled that i was not to go back to eton, but to go to germany to learn german and prepare for the diplomatic service competitive examination.
dunglass went on messing with hugo and myself until i left eton. we had three or four fags and they bored us, and we could never find things for them to do. dunglass developed into a fine eton football player, and got his house colours and then his field colours. he was a new boy the same half as i was, and our alliance lasted unbroken through my eton life. one half we learnt bird-stuffing together, and when our mess funds used to run short dunglass used to say: “i’ve marked off an uncle,” and one of his many uncles used to come down and tip us. our mess was a lively one, and when there was a whole holiday on friday, which necessitated friday’s work being done on thursday, an arrangement which used to be called doing friday’s business, we used to sing in a loud chorus a song, the words of which were:
“why not to morrow?
why not to-morrow?
why, because to-morrow is to-day!”
the greatest excitements of eton life were, i always thought, the house football matches for the house cup. there was the eton and harrow match, of course, but while i was at eton these matches were unexciting and eton never won, and dunglass and i agreed that there were few things we enjoyed more than driving away from lord’s. nothing surpassed the excitement of the house matches. one year, i think it was the year before i left, we were supposed to have a small chance of getting beyond first ties, but our house played so well together that they got into the ante-final. they then drew cornish’s, who had a strong side of powerfully built boys. an epic match[116] followed. durnford’s played as if inspired; they got three rouges to nil, but failed to convert them into goals, and the game was almost over. then, in the last five minutes of the game, cornish’s scored a rouge, and being far the heavier team converted it into a goal, and won the match. never was there a more exciting match.
during my last year my chief friends in the house, besides dunglass, were leslie hamilton, who went into the coldstream guards and was killed in the war, and crum; and outside the house, gerald cornish. he, too, killed in the war.
arthur benson was my greatest friend among the masters, and i used constantly to have tea with him, and have long talks about books and every other sort of thing. my last half i was up to mr. luxmoore, who was to be a lifelong friend.
the last days of my last half were like a dream. i was hardly conscious of the reality of things, and i did not yet fully realise that my eton life was coming to an end. there was no more work to do. the battle for the prince consort’s prize had been fought and won. it was, as eton triumphs go, a small triumph—small indeed compared with such glories as surround those who get the newcastle, stroke the eight, or play in the field, or at lord’s in the eleven; but such as it was, it gave me as much joy and triumph as my being could hold, and nothing in after life could ever touch the rapture of the moment when i knew i had got it.
now there was nothing left to do but to make every moment seem as long as possible and to say good-bye. good-bye to the school library, my favourite haunt at eton, the scene of so much hurried, scrambled work, of such minute consultations of ecclesiastical authorities for sunday questions, or of translations of virgil and horace, and the greeks; of such long and serious discussions of future and present plans and literary topics, schemes and dreams, poems, plays, operas, novels, romances, with willie coventry and gerald cornish. good-bye to the leather tables where numberless poems had been copied out on the grey library foolscap paper, which for some reason we used to call electric-light paper; tables over which we had leapt in wild steeplechases, while burcher protested, where so many construes had been prepared, and so many punishments scribbled, and where the great poets of england had been surreptitiously discovered, and the accents of milton[117] and keats overheard for the first time, and the visions of shelley and coleridge discerned through the dust of the daily work and above the din of chattering boys. good-bye to the playing fields, to south meadow, the field, to upper school, and to williams’ inner room, full of prizes and redolent with the smell of tree-calf and morocco, where i had so often dreamt of getting prizes and wondered what i should choose if i ever managed to get the prince consort’s prize. good-bye to the brocas, to upper hope and athens and romney weir,
“where the lock-stream gushes,
where the cygnet feeds,”
and to all the reaches of the river. good-bye to windsor and norman tower, and to the chimes of the inexorable school clock; to my little room with its sock cupboard, bureau, and ottoman, to little brown’s and to ph?be, and then to one’s friends: to my dame and to my tutor, and to arthur benson, and the unforgettable readings and talks in his house.
i went to williams’ to choose my prize, and while i was there mr. cornish strolled in, and seeing what i was doing, he said: “of course you will choose a lot of little books—boys always do—but what you ought to do is to get littré’s dictionary or all sainte beuve.” this was asking too much in the way of sense, and i compromised. i chose a shakespeare in twelve volumes, bound in tree calf, a milton in three volumes, and a few other small books. my tutor gave me two volumes of ruskin; mr. luxmoore gave me a volume of ruskin as well. arthur benson gave me ionica. just before leaving i had the honour of dining with my tutor, which made one feel already as if one was entering a new world. the hour struck when i was actually leaving eton. up to that last moment all had been excitement and fun, but when i was actually sitting in the train and crossing the fifteen arches railway bridge, and windsor castle and the trees of the brocas came into sight, the whole of the past, the eton past, surged up and overwhelmed me like a flood, and i realised in that last fleeting glimpse of the trees, the river, and the grey castle all that eton life had meant, and what it was that in leaving eton i was saying good-bye to.