It's Too Late Now

by A. A. Milne

  I can’t remember what Ken’s next report said, but I know it must have been worse than mine, because it always was. This was accepted by both of us as bearing no sort of relation to our respective labours or relaxations from labour. Ken’s report in the summer of 1894 was definitely worse than mine, and mine said: ‘Has done ill, showing little or no ambition, even in mathematics.’ When he read this, Father turned his face to the wall, and abandoned hope. I, on the other hand, turned my face to the lighter side of life, and abandoned work.

  For (I would point out) I was twelve. I was in the top mathematical set of the school, and in the term’s examinations I had come out top of that set. Nobody could specialize in mathmatics until he reached the Sixth, at which point he diverged into the Mathematical Sixth. At this time there were three boys in the Mathematical Sixth. With the exception of those three boys, aged 16 to 18, I was top of the school in mathematics, at the age of twelve. And I was told that I had ‘done ill.’

  I can remember that report bursting into our happy summer holiday, and Mother’s anxiety at sight of the envelope in case poor old Ken had got another one, and Ken’s reassurance that his wouldn’t be too bad, and my own certainty that mine would be so good that it would be good enough for the two of us . . . and then Father’s stern, set face, as he began to read. I can remember being rather annoyed by mine; an annoyance which changed to bewildered indignation when I discovered that it was not, as I had assumed on a first reading, ‘except in mathematics,’ but ‘even in mathematics.’ It was useless to point out to Father that the report was written before the result of the examinations was known, and that the examinations proved that the report was ridiculously wrong. Headmasters’ reports couldn’t be wrong. If Dr Rutherford said I had done ill, I had done ill.

  Well, that was that. There seemed to be nothing left to work for. In my own subject I had beaten everybody I could beat; I was now permanently with Ken; and Father’s happiness appeared to depend, not on my own efforts, but on an entirely haphazard interpretation of them. I stopped working. It is clear to me now that I never was a mathematical genius, but just a clever little boy who could learn anything which an enthusiast taught him; a mixture of ambition and carelessness; who liked learning chiefly for the victories it brought him. There were neither enthusiasts nor victor-ies in sight. Only Ken. Together we settled down happily to idleness. My ‘education’ had begun.

  2

  It went on. In my French set at this time I had my first experience of ‘cheating.’ To the average boy there are two kinds of cheating: that which gives you the advantage of another boy, and that which enables you to hold your own against a master. The first is not done; the second may have to be done. The master in charge of this set had the longest and most beautiful pair of moustaches (one could only think of them as a pair) which I have seen. He was also, as I discovered later, one of the most delightful of men. But he over-estimated the capacity of his form for absorbing French. At every lesson he would dictate twenty-four questions to which we had to write down the answers. Anybody who got less than twenty correct answers was ‘sent up-School’–which meant that he had to work in the afternoon instead of playing games. To be sent up-School more than fifteen times in a term brought you in danger of a public ‘handing’ (with birch) by the Headmaster. For a Queen’s Scholar to be sent up-School even once a term was considered disgraceful.

  When we had written down our answers, we changed papers with the boy next to us, so that each boy was correcting somebody else’s paper. This, which was supposed to prevent cheating, made cheating more certain, for one was now doing it with an easy conscience on another boy’s behalf. We sat alphabetically, and I was next to a boy called Moon. Leonard Moon was almost then, and was to become, the hero of every Westminster boy. He was just getting into the school elevens; he became a double Blue, made a century against the Australians, played cricket for Middlesex, played football for Corinthians and the South of England, was extraordinarily good-looking, and was, with it all, an extremely modest, charming person. Could I let this paragon, who was even worse at French than I, go up-School? Of course not. Could I, as a loyal Westminster, handicap the school by denying him his cricket and football practice? Unthinkable. When his name was read out, I said ‘Twenty-one’ firmly. And when my own name was read out, and he said ‘Twenty­ two,’ it was equally unthinkable that I should rise in my place and say, ‘Sir, I suspect this charming boy on my left of uttering falsehoods. I doubt very much if I got more than seven answers right. I insist on a re-count.’ Instead I looked modestly down my nose. In a few weeks I had settled down happily to a life of deception.

  3

  What I could never settle down happily to was the food. Even now, after forty years, I cannot think of College meals without disgust and indignation. After an hour’s work from 7 to 8 we had breakfast. Breakfast consisted of tea, bread and butter. The bread was, to me, the dullest form of bread, the butter the one uneatable sort of butter; otherwise I should have liked it, for I like bread and butter. Tea was tea, and I was never fussy about tea, but the milk had been boiled, and great lumps of skin floated about on the top of it. It made me almost sick to look at that milk, to smell that milk, to think of that milk; it makes me almost sick now to remember it. Well, that was breakfast, ‘the most divine meal of the day, the only meal which could never be a disappointment.’ At one o’clock we had the usual ‘joint and two veg,’ followed by pudding. The plates of meat had been carved well in advance, and brought to the right degree of tepidity in some sort of gas-cooler. If it were the fruit season, we had rhubarb. Not liking luke-warm slabs of beef (or rhubarb), I made no sort of contact with the midday meal. There was one terrible occasion when Rutherford came into Hall, and, observing my lack of interest in the meat, ordered me a glass of ‘milk.’ I managed to get my lips to it without being sick, and prayed earnestly to Heaven that he should move away before the shameful catastrophe happened. He moved; and thereafter I made a great show of business with knife and fork whenever he came into sight. The last meal was tea at 6.15. Tea was breakfast over again, with a few of the slabs of meat, now officially cold, for anybody who wanted them. Very few people did.

  We were allowed to supplement breakfast and tea with such cold food as we cared to buy or bring from home: sardines, tongues, jam, potted meat and so on. The home supply gave out quickly, and the problem then was how to lay out one’s money so as to make the school food most edible for the longest time. One found that a 7-lb. tin of marmalade would see one through quite a lot of bread, and that a 2-lb. jar of pickles would make the evening meat almost palatable. Even so, one was left with an inordinate craving for food. I lay awake every night thinking about food; I fell asleep and dreamed about food. In all my years at Westminster I never ceased to be hungry.

  As a schoolmaster, Father was unable to take our complaints about the food seriously. All boys complained about their food, it was part of the school routine. And Alan was notoriously fussy about what he ate. Why, there was even a time when he didn’t like new potatoes! But even if he had believed us, there was little that he could do. We lived in College at the expense of the authorities, and our scholarships entitled us to no more than they chose to give us. We were left to keep ourselves alive.

  Which we did. There were various expenses each term which demanded ready money: College subscriptions, entrance fees for competitions, hair-cuts, journey-money if we went out at the week-end, perhaps a wedding-present for a master who was getting married, or a wreath for a Canon who was being buried. To meet these expenses Father was accustomed to advance us three or four pounds at the beginning of the term, for which we had to account to him afterwards, handing him back the balance. We soon got into the habit of regarding this as our own money. We put by a small balance to take home to him, and spent the rest ‘up-Sutts,’ on the biscuits and sweets for which our neglected stomachs shrieked. The ‘accounting’ was child’s play. Father couldn’t know if a master h
ad been married that term, and wouldn’t know if a Canon, minor Canon or What-not had died that term; nor could he be dogmatic about the subscription likely to be demanded from each boy on these glad or sad occasions. ‘Wreaths 15s., wedding presents 17s. 6d.’ looked reasonable. Ken called our system the double-entry system, because we entered every expense twice, and he said that all accountants used it because it was a very good and well-tried system. Whether this was so or not, it served our purpose. Our most anxious moment was at one Easter, when Father suddenly demanded an account for £5 which we had hoped he wouldn’t be thinking about again. The trouble was that on this occasion we had no change left at all. Now it was extremely unlikely that, in giving us £٥, he had estimated exactly to the last penny the sum which we should want; it was still more unlikely that, if he had under-estimated it, we should not have applied to him for more. Obviously, then, we must show some small balance in his favour. Yet we had not one penny in our pockets. Ken put the crisis by for the moment while he went out to look for his dog who had gone off on some private business. He didn’t find the dog, but he did find a shilling in the road. He spent a penny ha’penny, and nobody would grudge it to him, on a ginger-beer, and came back triumphantly with the change. That night we presented Father with our account. There had been an exceptional mortality among the higher clergy of the Abbey (it had been a nasty cold winter) and a rather surprising outburst of matrimony in an unpromising-looking staff (but it had been a very tender spring), and what with one thing and another, there was a balance this term of no more than tenpence ha’penny. ‘Have you got it, Alan?’ I had. We handed it over.

  Little Lord Fauntleroy seemed very far away.

  4

  School ended at 5. From 5.15 to 6.15 came ‘Occupations.’ The most usual occupation was going up-Library; alternatively you could join the Glee Society, learn drawing or go up-Gym. Starting my life at Westminster as an enthusiast, I went to Glee Soc. on Monday and drawing on Tuesday, leaving Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for Library. There is a story of a man about to be shot who was asked on the fatal morning if he had any last request to make, any last favour which he would wish to be granted. He said: ‘Well, what about learning the violin?’ In some such spirit I said, ‘Well, what about learning to sing?’ I couldn’t sing, I can’t sing, but I was prepared to try. As long as we were all rollicking together in ‘Oh, who will o’er the downs with me,’ I was grand. Even when Ranalow (the music-master, and father of MacHeath) said, ‘Somebody is singing flat,’ I could look indignantly at the boy next to me, and get away with it. But when he went seriously into this question of flatness, and discovered that, as long as I wasn’t singing, nobody was singing flat, but that when I was singing, then somebody was singing flat, there was nothing for it but to swallow my bull’s-eye and try to sing more sharply. Apparently I was not always successful. I persevered­ or, more correctly, Ranalow persevered–but he was clearly happier when I was resting. This made progress difficult. I left Glee Soc. feeling that the others were keeping me back.

  I thought it would be nice to be able to draw. I spent a year drawing a cast of Dante’s head. Little had Dante realized that I was going to do this. At the end of a year I had acquired the perspective of Dante’s head, the perspective of the drawing-master’s head, and the best way of sharpening pencils. It was not enough. I tried Gym, and qualified for some sort of competition or display, but found on the night that everybody was wearing white flannel trousers except me. I had white flannel shorts. This disheartened me. I realized that I was doing none of these things because I wanted to do them, but only because I felt that I ought to improve myself. Starting next term, I would stop improving myself and spend every evening happily up-Library.

  Occupation up-Library merely meant that you read for an hour. You could read Coral Island or A Study in Scarlet or Wuthering Heights or Sordello or The Athanasian Creed Explained. Nobody asked you what you were reading, or minded what you read, but the books were there, and you were there, and there was the Librarian; and at 6.15 he would dismiss you. Of all Westminster institutions this seems to me to have been the best. In no other way could a Junior (subject to fagging) be assured of an hour’s undisturbed reading every day. It was wonderfully reassuring to feel through the darkest hours of school that David Copperfield or Becky Sharp or Mr Bennet was waiting for you round the corner, and that nothing could endanger the meeting. Books were not allowed to be taken from the Library, but it was possible to slip ‘David’ up the waistcoat on a Friday evening, spend a happy week-end with him, and return together on the Monday.

  The week-end was happy anyway. One could get leave to go home, or to stay with approved friends, and most of the boys did this, so that there were not more than a dozen of us remaining in College. Save for two compulsory attendances in Abbey on Sunday we were our own masters from Saturday’s lunch until Monday’s breakfast. College discipline relaxed. Whatever our individual standing, the few of us there were drawn together, as survivors of unequal rank on a desert island would be. We were always the same happy few, and we affected to despise the weaklings who must needs rush home at every opportunity—as we should have done if home had not been so far away. The high light of the Saturday was football in the evening down the long stone corridor of College; played with a tennis-ball, four or five a side: real Henley House playground stuff, with a touch of the Eton Wall Game thrown in. It was almost an advantage to be little, so narrow was the passage, so confined the openings between a broad defender and the wall. One felt the equal of anybody, even of such heroes as were in the school XI or near it.

  And then Sunday. Now for the first time it was to become a happy day. Having got up at a few minutes before seven all the week, we got up at a few minutes before nine. Breakfast, alas! was the same cold parody of a meal, but one didn’t feel quite so hungry for it. Morning service in the Abbey was bearable. We sat next to the choir, were probably mistaken for the choir, being in surplices, and took a condescending interest in the choir. During the inaudible sermon we tried to keep awake. At the afternoon service we didn’t even try; the thing was clearly impossible. In the recitation of the Creed everybody turned to the East and bowed, except Ken and me. We were Nonconformists, and did not hold with these Popish practices. We gazed stolidly in front of us, giving the boy next to us a good view of our martyred profiles. For a few weeks we felt heroic. Then Ken decided that it didn’t matter either way, and turned to the right. Firm in the belief that I was making a stand for something, though I didn’t know what, I continued to face north. My mood was such that for twopence I would have turned to the west and surprised everybody. After the morning service we took the river air on the terrace of the House of Commons. Since Queen’s Scholars were the only boys in the world who were allowed to do this, it seemed a duty to exercise the privilege; after a year or two we preferred to exercise the privilege of being the only boys in the world who were bored by it. Refreshed by the afternoon service we returned to College and ‘messed about’ happily until bed-time. No master had spoken to us all day.

  5

  There was no bullying in College. Big boys were not encouraged to take either a sadistic or a sentimental interest in small boys. It was an offence, punishable by tanning, for Juniors and Third Elections to go about together. In any case Juniors were so busy that they really had no time in which to be bullied; and since each boy slept in a separate, and entirely sacred, cubicle in the long dormitory, they were equally safe when the labours of the day were over. But they were never safe from the threat of tanning.

  It is often assumed, a little too confidently, by magistrates and members of Parliament that the fact that they themselves were thrashed at school is in some way a vindication of corporal punishment. To their opponents it seems, rather, a condemnation, as accounting for a stupidity and insensitiveness otherwise inexplicable. The curious, but infrequent, boast: ‘Thrashing never did me any harm,’ invites the retort: ‘Then what did?’

 
‘Justice’ in College was administered by monitors to Juniors and Second Elections under a show of legality. The slamming of Seniors’ Room door was the signal for a ‘case,’ or, as one might call it, a sessions. The captain and the three other monitors sat in council within the Under Elections, all potential victims, clustered together without. The chosen victim was summoned. He entered nervously, shuffled along the wall, step by step, until he faced his Judges. The dialogue might go like this:

  Captain: You were ragging up-Fields to-day.

  Junior (swallowing): No, I wasn’t.

  Captain (negligent/y): Have you any other excuse to make?

  Junior (at a Joss): No.

  Captain (formally and without interest): Do you wish to appeal to the Headmaster?

  Junior (wishing to): No.

  The Captain hands the cane to the monitor whose turn it is. The monitor takes off his coat, and judging his distance points to the place of execution. The Junior bends down and gets four. He shuffles out with an air of indifference, hurries into ‘prayer-room’ (the Under Elections’ common-room), and rushes round in circles rubbing himself. The ‘offence’ and the names of victim and executioner are entered by the Captain in the Black Book.

  Sometimes a more impartial justice was administered. When the interval after the last ‘case’ had grown tedious, the summons would come for ‘all people talking up­-Library.’ It was an offence for Under Elections to talk up-Library as it is an offence for old gentlemen to snore in the Club reading-rooms, and equally beyond control. On any particular evening any of those gathered outside the door might or might not have offended. The custom was for four volunteers to take over the company’s liabilities. A hearty Second Election, who was already beginning to sustain himself with the thought that this sort of thing made the Empire what it was: another who felt that it was coming round to his turn again anyway: a Junior who had been reading school-stories, and was determined, at whatever cost, to be popular: another who was pushed in at the last moment because he explained too volubly that he didn’t go up-Library on Tuesdays: four went in, and three came out, to wait at the door and wonder, in the few moments left for wonder, who their executioner would be. Not, they hoped, Parkinson. The four would meet again in prayer-room, the one who had drawn Parkinson more subdued for the moment, if more voluble later, than the others.