It's Too Late Now

by A. A. Milne

  This was in 1897. It was in the previous summer, when I was fourteen, that we first found our own lodging for the night. We were riding from Westgate to Weymouth, and came into Brighton at about six o’clock. Brighton has never lacked hotels, but most of them suited neither our pockets nor our clothes. We went into a fruit-shop, made a small purchase of plums by way of introduction, and asked the proprietress if she knew of anybody who could put us up. ‘Well now,’ she said, ‘I wonder. I should think my friend Mrs Green could just do you nicely. George, take these young gentlemen round to Mrs Green. She’ll look after you nicely, it’s only just round the corner.’ We followed George, pushing our bicycles. We turned the corner. We read: ‘H. Green, Chimney Sweep.’ We didn’t hesitate. Stammering that we had left our luggage at the station, we jumped on our bicycles, and rode madly away. We ended up at a pastrycook’s, where we had high tea, bed and breakfast for three shillings each. That was our usual price. Those were the days.

  4

  In June 1892 Ken went in for the Challenge at Westminster, as the examination for election into College is called. Unfortunately he wore knicker-bockers, which may not have affected the result, but gave all the trousered little boys from the preparatory schools a good deal of amusement. There was never the least hope or intention that he should get a scholarship. He went in for ‘practice.’ In the following January there was a by-election into College for four vacancies, and Ken, profiting by his practice, wore trousers. He got the last place. It was a surprise, and something of a shock, to his family. It was a surprise to Ken, and would have been more of a shock if he had been given time to think about it. But there were only two days in which to turn him into a complete public schoolboy. Inventory in hand, Mama rushes him from tailor to hatter, from hatter to bootmaker, from bootmaker to hosier, from hosier to trunk-maker. They end up at the photographer’s. Here, in cap and gown and spectacles, and still about three hours behind it all, Ken is clamped into a chair. The photographer, seeing at once that the property telescope is not going to be right this time, is inspired to put a book in his hands. The moment chosen for the photograph is that when Ken looks up from his book and says to the camera: ‘Personally I think Plotinus is wrong in his major assumption.’ Unfortunately Ken is wrong too. He is wearing, natur-ally enough, his Eton collar outside his coat, little knowing, as he will know to-morrow, that Queen’s Scholars at Westminster wear their collars inside. The photographs are wasted, we can never circulate them now. But one copy is preserved in the family album.

  Poor old Ken. If only it could go on like this: being exciting, and going into shops with Mama, and having telegrams, and showing Alan his gown, and trying on the new trousers, and reading his name in the papers again. But now to-morrow is here. No Alan with him on this new adventure. He has never left home before, he has never known a school which was not also a home, he has never been by himself. He feels very small and lonely. ‘Good-bye,’ he gulps. ‘Good-bye. I say, thanks awfully. Good-bye. Yes, I hope so; I mean I expect so, I mean I’m sure to. Good-bye.’ And he is alone in the dark four-wheeler with Papa, and desperately unhappy. Oh, if it could be yesterday again, and always yesterday: in those bright shops with Mama, dear Mama, so warm, so friendly and so safe.

  Poor old Ken.

  5

  We realized now how lucky we were that Ken had got into College at a by-election, for this meant that he would be only two terms away from me. There was never the least doubt in my mind about the June Challenge. Even if I had known then that I should have to be the youngest scholar ever elected, I should still have taken it for granted that it would happen. If ever in my life I said, ‘I can do it,’ I said it then. I worked in those next five months as I have only worked (over any length of time) twice in my life since.

  Meanwhile Ken came home at week-ends. Under his tuition I learnt all the rules and customs of College, all the strange words. ‘Bag’ was milk and ‘beggar’ was sugar, and ‘blick’ was ball: and the coat you wore up-Fields, whether it was a house blazer or just an ordinary coat, was a ‘shag’; and you always said ‘up’ for everything—up-Fields and up-School and up-Sutts (Sutts was the food shop), and you were a Junior your first year, and then a Second Election and then a Third Election and then a Senior, and they didn’t call ‘Fag!’ as they did in Tom Brown, they called ‘Lee!’ which was short for election, and if you forgot anything, you got ‘tanned,’ which was four with a very thick cane as hard as they could hit, but he hadn’t forgotten anything yet, only there was such an awful lot to remember. Oh, and Juniors weren’t allowed to wear gowns in College, and Second Elections had to, and Third Elections could get leave from Seniors not to, and Seniors did what they liked. And when the Headmaster crossed the Yard to go up-School in the afternoon, you had to be standing outside College door, if it was your turn, and then shout ‘Rutherford’s coming’ down College, spreading it out as long as you could, like this, and you had to remember when it was your turn, because if you forgot, you got tanned. And then in the morning—

  Nothing about work ‘up-School’; nothing about games ‘up-Fields’; only this meaningless, artificial life in College in which all morality was convention. Never ‘That must be wrong because it’s silly;’ always ‘That must be right, because people have been doing it for three hundred years.’

  Poor old Ken with all this to learn. Lucky young Alan, who knew it all before he got there; and thought it must be right because Ken had been doing it for six months.

  He came home on Saturday afternoon. He got a shilling a week pocket-money now, given to him on Saturday morning. Somehow my weekly threepence had to be made into a shilling by Saturday so that I could keep on equal terms with him. Somehow it was. Perhaps a penny wheedled out of Davis, perhaps tuppence for holding wool for Mama to wind, perhaps sixpence from Papa for a problem in trigonometry which he had been certain I couldn’t do. Each of us had his shilling, and together we would go up the High Road to that shop on the right-hand side just before you get to Brondesbury. And there would we sit and eat ices and more ices, while Ken went on telling me about Westminster; which meant, only and always, about College. College: where I would be in September. It was the one utterly certain thing in the world.

  6

  There was once a young man who went in for a Divinity Examination. Having heard that the examiners were likely to be interested in the Kings of Israel and Judah, he made a list of the Kings of Israel and Judah and committed it to memory. He now felt confident of answering one question anyhow. However, when he got into the examination room he was horrified to discover that there was absolutely no demand for the only information which he could supply. Luckily Question 8 asked: ‘Who were the Minor Prophets?’ He replied with dignity: ‘Far be it from me to make invidious distinctions among the prophets. Rather let us turn to the Kings of Israel and Judah. As follows.’

  I was mathematical. I knew, as I have disclosed, the Greek for fountain. That was about all the Greek I did know. There was nothing about fountains in the Greek Composition; no running water at all. I searched the Greek Unseen for πηγη, but in vain. Well, one can but do one’s best. I contented myself with turning all the χαις into ‘ands,’ and leaving blanks in between; so that an extract from Xenophon looked like this ‘. . . and . . . and . . . and . . .,’ while a more intricate passage from Herodotus looked like this ‘. . . and . . . and . . . and . . . and . . .’ In the Greek Composition I put the ‘ands’ back into χαις. This, I always think, is more difficult. However, I did it.

  At Latin I fancied myself rather more. I had actually begun Latin Verse. I have written a good deal of English Verse since, and some of it has been published and paid for. It is time that my Latin Verse was published. I can only remember one line of it, but I shall publish that now. A pentameter, no less.

  Persephone clamant; nonne pericla times?

  As one sees, a perfectly straightforward statement of a question (expecting the answer ‘Yes’
) addressed to Persephone. But poetry.

  This question of Greek and Latin Verse has always interested me. At school and at Cambridge one would hear of a ‘marvellous set of Latin Verses’ by which Snooks had won a scholarship, and the ‘brilliant Greek epigram’ with which Crooks had won a gold medal; and one knew Snooks and Crooks, those ‘brilliant’ Classical scholars; and one knew that Snooks hadn’t a line of poetry in him, and that Crooks was utterly devoid of wit. In their own language they make no stir; but with the help of a dictionary Snooks teaches himself to sing and build the lofty rhyme, and with the help of a lexicon Crooks beats his pate and fancies wit will come. Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee, thou art translated!

  What would an ancient Roman have thought of Snooks’ scholarship verses? Would they have been good enough for the school magazine? Perhaps. And Crooks’ prize epigram? An end-of-term house-rag? Possibly. It’s all very strange to a professional writer and a mathematician. Let us go back to the Challenge.

  I was eleven, and I had ‘done’ Algebra, Euclid, Trigonometry, Geometrical Conics, Analytical Conics, Statics and Dynamics. When I say I had done them, I mean I had begun them, and got sufficiently far to answer all the questions on them in the Higher Mathematics paper. I mention this without any complacence, because I had now nearly reached my zenith as a mathematician. When I was twelve, everybody thought I was going to be a Senior Wrangler. But at twelve I stopped working. I no longer thought mathematics grand.

  I was by myself in the playground when the result came out. Afternoon school was engaging the attention of everyone else, but I was free; for from now on, said Papa, I was to do just as much or as little work as I liked. He meant this to apply to the rest of the summer term, but it really applied to the rest of my life. I was half-way up the gymnasium rope when they waved a telegram at me from the sitting-room window. ‘Good,’ I thought to myself, ‘now we’re all right,’ and slid down.

  7

  We are now to say good-bye to Papa and Mama. Public-shoolboys do not have papa and mamas, they have fathers and mothers. It is a little awkward making the change, but if you write for a whole term to ‘Dearest Father,’ and end up with ‘Give my love to darling Mother,’ then by the holidays you are almost ready for it. Papas and mamas are dying out anyhow. They sink into the Victorian sunset as period pieces, to rise brightly with the new century as real daddies and mummies. Meanwhile the youngest Queen’s scholar in history (or so they say) writes twice a week to his dearest father. And, when he wants some more food, to his darling mother.

  We are also to say good-bye to Henley House. At the end of my first term at Westminster we moved, leaving the mineral-collection, the remains of the toad, threepence, the gymnasium and the goodwill of the school to Papa’s successor. Papa (for he shall not make the great change until the next chapter) had been uneasy about Kilburn for some years. The ‘neighbourhood’ was ‘going down.’ Moreover, he was becoming convinced that there was no future for his sort of private school. The only privately-owned school which could now succeed was the preparatory school for boys under fourteen. For the last year or two he had been looking about for a suitable house in the country. He generally took me with him on these excursions. Wishing to be unhampered in his preliminary conversations and negotiations with the railway company, he would deposit me in the waiting-room of some strange station in some strange part of London, and then leave me, for, I suppose, a few minutes, but minutes which seemed like hours. The only unreasoning fear I can remember feeling as a child came over me on these occasions. I knew that Papa would not wilfully abandon me; I was almost sure (but not quite) that he wouldn’t forget about me; I had no certainty at all that he wouldn’t have an accident, and be unable to return to me. Two together are so much braver than twice one. Ken and I would have been completely happy in those waiting-rooms, hoping against hope that Papa wouldn’t come back, and that we should have to do something exciting about it. What we did would not be his brave action, nor my brilliant plan, but an intimacy of collaboration which could not go wrong. Alone I felt lost. Papa never had the least suspicion of my fears, but I begged Mama once to ask him to let Ken come next time. She said that he couldn’t afford to take more than one of us. I think that this was my first realization that we were poor: so poor that, for want of a few shillings, I had to endure these agonies. Papa found the house at Westgate-on-Sea. It was an old house and a long unlived-in house; it had seven acres of grounds, and the rent was £٣50 a year. Papa had his thousand-pound legacy. When the day-boys were gone, and the boarders over the age of fourteen discarded, he had ten boys left. Thanet was full of prosperous and fashionable schools, whose headmasters, if not, as often, Blues or Firsts, were at least Oxford or Cambridge. Papa (B.A.(Lond.)) having nothing to guide him in the conduct of a preparatory school but his own good sense and geniu­s for teaching, took his ten boys to Streete Court, and made enquiries as to the best tradesmen. The best tradesmen, who had already made enquiries about him, gave him three years. In three years Streete Court would be empty again. . . .

  Farewell, Papa, with your brave, shy heart and your funny little ways: with your humour and your wisdom and your never-failing goodness: from now on we shall begin to grow out of each other. I shall be impatient, but you will be patient with me; unloving, but you will not cease to love me. ‘Well,’ you will tell yourself, ‘it lasted until he was twelve; they grow up and resent our care for them, they form their own ideas, and think ours old-fashioned. It is natural. But oh, to have that little boy again, whom I used to throw up to the sky, his face laughing down into mine—’ And once, when he did this, his elbow, which he had put out at cricket, went out as he threw, and he had to catch me with one arm, and he told us the story, how often, and Ken and I would nudge each other, how often, and feel mocking and superior, as if we had never told a story more than once. But still, you had me until I was twelve, Papa, and if there was anything which you ever liked in me or of which you came to be proud, it was yours. Thank you, dear.

  SCHOOLBOY

  1893–1900

  Chapter Six

  1

  In the summer holidays of 1893 I read Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico, and learnt by heart a poem of William Allingham’s. (Yes, that one.) This, I had discovered, was the holiday-task for the Upper Remove at Westminster. Ken had spent his first term in the Upper Remove, therefore I should; so I reasoned; and I proposed to endear myself to my form-master by learning a holiday-task which made no official claim on me whatever. I discovered at once that voluntary work got you nowhere. Nobody asked me to recite, nobody wanted to share my knowledge of Mexico. But I was not discouraged. Nothing could discourage me until I had got on level terms with Ken. Ken was in the form above me, the Under Fifth. The Upper Remove was the top form of the Lower School, so that, until I was out of it, I couldn’t even share a mathematical set with him. I doubled to and fro among the Classics; Ken marked time; and in January I joined him. As far as work was concerned, I was now to spend my happiest term at Westminster. I was in the Upper School, and in the top mathematical set. For the first time in my life (perhaps because we were doing Martial, a much more amusing writer than Caesar, if not such good general) I really enjoyed Latin. Even in Greek I was adding happily to my knowledge of fountains. Possibly the weather was good too: I can’t remember. But there was a sunny air about that form-room in the spring of 1894. The air seemed still sunnier at the end of the term when we both got removes. In those days the only report of his son’s progress which came through to a parent was the Headmaster’s brief summing-up. Mine said ‘Keen, intelligent and improving fast,’ and I don’t see how anybody could say fairer than that. Ken’s said, in effect, ‘About time too,’ but said it in a nice sort of way. Father, who took our reports seriously, being himself a headmaster, had his happiest holiday. We bicycled gaily up and down Kent.