Outrageous Fortune: Growing Up at Leeds Castle

by Anthony Russell

  Second, never rat on any older boy who has clearly failed to study such heroes, and decides you need to be taught a lesson you had not, up to that point, been aware you needed to learn. The bloody nose and lost pride quickly heal, and, if you inform the headmaster it was a speeding cricket ball that did the damage, you are likely to gain a small but ever-increasing amount of grudging respect.

  Before the completion of my first fortnight I was obliged to put these rules into practice. I was standing in the doorway to my first-form classroom five minutes into morning break, contemplating just how bad I was at algebra, when I felt a powerful arm go around my neck and somebody drag me into the empty room. I dropped the books I’d been holding and was immediately engaged in a fierce struggle. My assailant was slightly bigger and stronger than me, but I did my best not to give an inch.

  From the outset, it was a most peculiar fight. There were no punches thrown, no kicks, no elbowing. It was mainly an arm-wrestling contest, with neck holds and aggressive tie pulling thrown in for good measure. After perhaps two minutes Mr. Gervis materialized suddenly in the doorway, and the hostilities came abruptly to a halt.

  “What the devil’s going on here? Who started this?” he demanded, this time not sounding quite so kind. I was now able to recognize my attacker as we stood facing each other, huffing and puffing from our exertions like four-minute milers: His name was King. A red-cheeked, brutish-looking fellow, he was one term ahead of me, and we’d hardly spoken before this engagement, so I was utterly in the dark as to what provoked the attack. We both said nothing but continued to glare at each other in a combative fashion, waiting to get our breath back. It seemed obvious that Mr. Gervis would have to punish both of us, or neither. He swiftly chose the latter.

  “Don’t let me catch you two at this again,” he said, his stern expression full of menace and a clear indication that “next time” would mean deep trouble—deep trouble being the cane, or, as Mr. Gervis liked to say, “the stick.” Alone with King again, the wretched fellow congratulated me for not telling tales, and we parted almost amicably.

  * * *

  Sports Day, the precursor to the half-term break, came not a moment too soon. I won the new-boys’ eighty-yard sprint, and James picked up a whole collection of cups. My father declined to participate in the fathers’ race (“But my dear sir,” he later explained, “a snail runs faster than I do. If I’d been competing we’d all still be waiting for the race to end!”), which disappointed me though I enjoyed his reason. I took part in my first March-Past, a military-style ceremony, like Trooping the Colour, in which the school, and school band, paid tribute to the St Aubyns boys who had lost their lives in World Wars I and II. The dignified and moving sounding of the “Last Post” in front of the small memorial by the cricket pavilion, with the colours (the Union Jack and the flag of Saint George) lowered and the massed ranks of parents and visitors gathered closely around, brought a lump to my throat. I wondered if I might not one day become silver bugler, and be the one to perform the “Last Post.”

  We left after church on Sunday morning for two nights at the castle. Upon our arrival, there was Nanny waiting by the front door. Bless her! I had tears in my eyes as I leapt from the car.

  “You’ve grown,” she told me as I gave her a kiss on the cheek. I felt like giving her a bit of a bear hug, but something told me it might not be the appropriate thing to do. “Only you, Nanny, could possibly notice an additional quarter inch, or whatever it is I’ve grown.”

  “Oh, but I do!”

  * * *

  I was riddled with self-doubt in my first two years at St Aubyns. “I wish he would be a little more forthcoming,” Mr. Gervis wrote in his headmaster’s report at the end of my third term. “I hardly know the sound of his voice, and am only greeted with a series of grunts when I ask him any question.” Fortunately there was no time to dwell on it. The days were organized in such a way that every boy knew exactly what he should be doing from the moment he woke up in the morning to the moment he went to bed at night.

  Of course, if you were not doing what you were meant to be doing, there was a strong chance you would be doing something you should not. My lack of self-confidence failed to stop me, when I was more senior, from joining in such intellectual activities as baiting the local “oiks” (boys from the non-private, distinctly less posh local school) who appeared from time to time at the entrance to our playing fields to see how much taunting they, or we, could get away with. Throwing bangers (not sausages but tiny exploding fireworks) at each other the evening of Guy Fawkes Day and not getting caught proved to be remarkably therapeutic. And should one dare attempt—as I did on two occasions—a strictly forbidden foray past the shooting range, out through the school’s side gate, followed by a quick sprint down the main road to the sweet shop, returning with illicit cargo without being discovered, the thrill was even more pronounced. To have been caught in either of these wicked misdemeanours would undoubtedly have led to a painful encounter with the stick.

  Compared with home life the atmosphere was a little harsh at first, but familiarity with the system and rising seniority brushed aside those initial anxieties after two years. St Aubyns had a happy atmosphere, a distinctive and charismatic group of schoolmasters (especially my geography and Latin teacher and cricket supremo, Walter Thursby-Pelham) and, over five years, helped me to discover the academic, leadership, and sporting strengths I wasn’t aware I had.

  By the time my third summer term rolled around, I’d managed to become the opening bowler and middle-order batsman for the Colts cricket XI, silver bugler in the school band, and was keeping up in the classroom. Ambition had joined forces with the castle way and exerted a levelling effect on the latter. This was possible only in the competitive and hierarchical environment of boarding school, where the senior boys became responsible for the juniors and the top sports players garnered all the accolades.

  Normally no one chooses to pick on the opening bowler. Nonetheless a big fat oaf called Ker challenged me to a boxing match and I couldn’t say no, even though he was huge, because I would have looked like a coward. What lay behind his challenge was the fact that I had knocked around a boy smaller than me, Bailey, in a brief fight instigated by the boxing coach himself. It had not been my intention to hurt Bailey—and I didn’t—but I was not of a mind to lose the encounter either. Ker and I arranged to fight in the small space behind the history teacher’s classroom, which meant I wouldn’t be able to make use of my speed and we’d be obliged to stand there and biff each other like prizefighters. We decided to have “seconds” as they used to do in duels in the old days, to check our gloves and call for help if necessary!

  It turned out to be a strange contest, with both of us keeping up a constant stream of threatening repartee modelled on Muhammad Ali’s but not as funny. It kept us busy, though, and actually slowed down the fighting dramatically, which was perhaps its intention. We finally laid down our gloves after about fifteen minutes of periodic hard-hitting fisticuffs, and though I’d been hurt, it seemed my opponent was not left entirely unscathed. With honour apparently satisfied, we continued about our business, and it was only a comment from Mr. Strawson, my English teacher and tennis coach, which later informed me that my not declining the contest had gained approval in the masters’ common room.

  Being in the choir was useful because just before chapel on Sunday, when the rest of the school were in their pews, I was able to listen to the last few tunes of Alan Freeman’s Pick of the Pops top-twenty show on the tiny pocket radio which had been in one of my previous Christmas stockings. It was essential to listen quietly, of course, because such behaviour was strictly verboten. But the radio’s size allowed it to be quickly stuffed away under my robes when the vicar arrived with Mr. Gervis for the warm-up prayers.

  I often wrote to Nanny about my near misses, and she would respond by telling me to take good care of myself and stay out of trouble, which generally wasn’t that hard to do. On the rare occasion that Mr. Gerv
is did require my presence in his study to rebuke me for a committed transgression, there was no brutality in his administration of the stick.

  When at home, during school holidays, the castle way’s operating system returned to its hard-wired dominance, there being no framework to counteract the slings and arrows of outrageous grown-ups who controlled the keyboard. In other words, no one paid any attention to the fact that at St Aubyns I’d become “somebody.” Why would they?

  Triumphs on the sports field, such as they were, were witnessed and applauded by a limited audience—the school and the visiting opposition. David, ever the sports fan, graciously took an interest in my cricket adventures, particularly one that occurred on a euphoric sunny day in June 1964. I was opening bowler for the first XI cricket team, and that day was able to achieve what few bowlers do—take the wickets of the entire opposing team with the exception of a run-out. In cricket-speak, nine wickets for twenty-seven runs. We won the match with five minutes left on the clock.

  Leaving the field amidst cheers, handclapping, and backslapping galore, the first person to make a beeline for me was the deputy headmaster, Mr. E. A. K. Webber, a wavy-white-haired, walrus-moustached, gravel-voiced old man with a twinkle in his eye and aptitude for tearing his tweed jackets and forgetting to do up his fly. Holding out his hand, a broad smile extending to the many corners of his craggy face, he said, “Congratulations! You’ll never do that again in your entire life!” It was intended as a compliment, of course. But after all the furore had died down, it dawned on me that it could just as easily have been a warning. Such heights are rarely scaled, and seldom matched.

  * * *

  Mr. Gervis wrote in the school magazine of October 1965: “A. J. M. Russell goes to Stowe. His two elder brothers, David and James, were here and we feel sad that there are no more brothers to come. But his mother is godmother to several future boys and we shall, therefore, hope to keep in touch with the family. He was captain of cricket, in the soccer XI and shooting VIII, and played for the rugger XV. He was in the choir until his voice broke and he then carried the Cross. In the band he was silver bugler longer than any boy; nine times in all, eight times in succession. He won the lawn tennis cup, was captain of hockey and a Section Commander.”

  After five years of making my way from small fry to the top, it was now time to go back down to the bottom and start the process all over again at Stowe School for boys, crucially without the companionship of my close friends Soames and Steel. Like a large number of St Aubyns pupils at that time, they were going on to Eton.

  In a peculiar twist of fate that shed a light not just on the way things were then done in the upper echelons of private education but also on the incomprehensible workings of my family, I was offered a place at Eton two weeks before I sat my Common Entrance exams (the all-important examinations for gaining entrance to a top public school). Because I was captain of cricket I’d been invited by a friend of the headmaster to accompany him up to London to watch the England v. New Zealand Test Match from the comfort of a private box at Lord’s. It was quite a thrill watching the game from such an exalted position. The grown-ups present, mostly men, a couple of ladies, were thoroughly agreeable from the outset.

  “How do you do?”

  “How do you do?”

  “How do you do?”

  “How do you do?”

  “Hello, how are you?”

  “Isn’t it simply glorious?”

  “I’d say!”

  Everyone drank copious amounts of champagne or red wine from the moment we arrived until teatime. At lunch I was placed between Mr. Gervis and a rotund, jovial man dressed in a three-piece tweed suit, and we discussed cricket and school at some length. On the train back to Brighton, Mr. Gervis informed me that this particular gentleman was a housemaster at Eton and he had offered me a place in his house. What did I think?

  I didn’t know what to think. I was unable to fathom that something as important and difficult to come by as a place at the world’s most famous school could be attained by sitting demurely with an unfamiliar bunch of grown-ups watching cricket for five hours, with a one-hour break for lunch. My father had been sent to Stowe by his mother—Eton had indicated it wished to distance itself from the “Russell baby” association—and, as a result, David and I went there too.

  In 1965 the difference between going to Eton and going to Stowe was the difference between flying First Class Pan American, and Aeroflot. The one had a well-established (founded in 1440 by King Henry VI) aura of distinction and a high success rate in achieving the goals of its customers. The other was suffering from low self-esteem, diminished public regard, and providing an indeterminate outcome for its clients.

  When my father arrived at Stowe in September 1935, the headmaster, J. F. Roxburgh, had already won the twelve-year-old public school an extraordinary reputation. Michael Bevington (head of the Classics Department) writes for the Stowe School Web site: His aim was to produce a modern public school concentrating on the individual, without the unpleasantness of fagging [a system by which younger boys act as servant-cum-dogsbody to older ones] or arcane names then common in other schools. Instead he sought to instil a new ethos enthused with the beauty of Stowe’s unique environment where the best of traditional education would be tempered by liberal learning and every pupil would “know beauty when he sees it all his life” (Roxburgh’s words). Pupils and staff would relate in a civilized and open way, showing confidence and respect based on Christian values. Such was Roxburgh’s success in developing this vision that he was recognized as a formative figure in 20th Century English education, “greater than Arnold” (the nineteenth-century headmaster of Rugby) in Gavin Maxwell’s (the author of Ring of Bright Water, among other books, was a Stowe alumnus) words.

  Essentially, in a few short years Roxburgh turned Stowe into a contender for inclusion in England’s elite hierarchy of private boarding schools such as Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Westminster, Rugby, and Shrewsbury. But after World War II, which claimed the lives of many old Stoics, the school went into decline. It wasn’t until forty years later that the restoration came, both in education and for the glorious eighteenth-century buildings themselves. The school got its mojo back under Jeremy Nichols (a former Eton housemaster) in the 1990s, and then, expanding and improving as never before, under the current headmaster, Dr. Anthony Wallersteiner.

  Stowe has now regained, perhaps surpassed, the old Roxburgh heights, becoming not just a contender but a leading member of the elite group. In the mid-1960s, however, there was clearly no contest between the distinction and expected outcome of going to Eton or going to Stowe.

  “Look, Anthony,” Mr. Gervis said kindly. “This is an important and very difficult decision. It needs to be studied carefully, but unfortunately there isn’t much time. Leave it with me, and I’ll find out what your parents think.” I had a feeling this was going to be awkward, and I was soon proved right. Days went by, and I never heard another word. I tried to summon up the nerve to ask Mr. Gervis, or to write to my parents to ask what was going on, but my inhibitions froze all action. I said nothing to anybody about my dilemma.

  It’s hard to fathom how—having displayed over five years some healthy determination both on the sports field and in the classroom—I could have left unanswered the question of the Eton offer. I think what lay behind the confluence of silence might have been associated with my father having gone to Stowe after being turned down by Eton, and what was good for him must be good for me. No further discussion needed. But did he ask Mr. Gervis, a kind man and superb headmaster, not to discuss the affair with me as the case was most assuredly closed? Carrying my reserve to optimum negative levels, I felt unable to confront Mr. Gervis and did not write a letter home about it. What I did do was stay a long time inside my shell, feeling outraged that the principals had failed to involve me in their deliberations.

  I will never know what benefits, if any, going to Eton might have given me. If, however, there was one school that mig
ht have been able to combat the effects of the castle way once and for all, Eton could well have been the place. Its ancient rules and harsh discipline, not to mention high academic requirements and reams of boys from backgrounds equally, if not vastly more, privileged, than mine, might have been the medicine I least wanted but most needed. Perhaps foolishly, perhaps selfishly, my father must have thought otherwise.

  11.

  RECORD ROUNDABOUT

  During the period when St Aubyns was beginning, valiantly and moderately successfully, to conduct my education, my burgeoning love of music and its hold on my psyche led to significant new events on the home front. Chief amongst them was a second barnstorming of the grown-ups’ tea citadel, as well as the development of a profound new connection, close to Egerton Terrace, called Record Roundabout, where I made, and almost lost, a new best friend.

  I was not meant to be like this. I was not, by nature, inclined to cause a rumpus: I did not stir the pot, tie Nanny’s shoelaces together, go out of my way to frighten my mother’s poodle or defy castle way mores. I was eight and a half years old and had just completed my second, the winter term, at St Aubyns, during which we had all played a lot of football and kept up the now familiar tight schedule of lessons, meals, prep, and bed. A film was shown in the gym most Saturday and Sunday evenings, which was very good news. I could have done without the less than stellar comedies by the popular actor Norman Wisdom, but the World War II tales of heroics Reach for the Sky and The Dam Busters appealed to my advanced patriotic sensibilities. There had been the odd encounter with intimidation in far-flung windy corridors, but generally the speeding-cricket-ball-fallback excuse worked well, and the eleven weeks had sailed smoothly by.