by Roald Dahl
Others in the dormitory had told you what to answer to this question. ‘Four with it on,’ you mumbled, trembling.
* * *
Boazer wasn’t a real word. It was Roald Dahl’s way of spelling ‘Beausieur’, which means ‘smart young man’ in French.
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* * *
Later Roald became a footballer (he’s in the front row on the far left) but never a Boazer.
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This Boazer was famous for the speed of his strokes. Most of them paused between each stroke to prolong the operation, but Williamson, the great footballer, cricketer and athlete, always delivered his strokes in a series of swift back and forth movements without any pause between them at all. Four strokes would rain down upon your bottom so fast that it was all over in four seconds.
A ritual took place in the dormitory after each beating. The victim was required to stand in the middle of the room and lower his pyjama trousers so that the damage could be inspected. Half a dozen experts would crowd round you and express their opinions in highly professional language.
‘What a super job.’
‘He’s got every single one in the same place!’
‘Crikey! Nobody could tell you had more than one, except for the mess!’
‘Boy, that Williamson’s got a terrific eye!’
‘Of course he’s got a terrific eye! Why d’you think he’s a Cricket Teamer?’
‘There’s no wet blood though! If you had had just one more he’d have got some blood out!’
‘Through a dressing-gown, too! It’s pretty amazing, isn’t it!’
‘Most Boazers couldn’t get a result like that without a dressing-gown!’
‘You must have tremendously thin skin! Even Williamson couldn’t have done that to ordinary skin!’
‘Did he use the long one or the short one?’
‘Hang on! Don’t pull them up yet! I’ve got to see this again!’
And I would stand there, slightly bemused by this cool clinical approach. Once, I was still standing in the middle of the dormitory with my pyjama trousers around my knees when Williamson came through the door. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he said, knowing very well exactly what I was doing.
‘N-nothing,’ I stammered. ‘N-nothing at all.’
‘Pull those pyjamas up and get into bed immediately!’ he ordered, but I noticed that as he turned away to go out of the door, he craned his head ever so slightly to one side to catch a glimpse of my bare bottom and his own handiwork. I was certain I detected a little glimmer of pride around the edges of his mouth before he closed the door behind him.
* * *
Painful Punishments
At my last boarding school there were at least one hundred different diabolical punishments. But that was more than fifty years ago and things have changed a lot since then. We got punished for burning the prefect’s toast or if he found a speck of dust on a shelf in his study, or for not touching the rims of our straw hats as we passed a master on the road, or not taking them off if we passed a master’s wife. We got punished for leaving games clothes on the floor of the changing-room, for being late for anything at all, for talking in class, or if the brass buttons on our OTC uniforms were not shining like gold.
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The OTC stands for the Officers’ Training Corps and is part of the British Army, providing military training to school and university students.
* * *
Above all, we were punished for poor work. But the master for whom one did the bad work never did the punishing. That pleasure was reserved for one’s Housemaster. A rather subtle method was emloyed by which the form-master told the Housemaster of your misdemeanour. The form-master would say in class, ‘Dahl take eighty blue’, or ‘one hundred and twenty blue’ or whatever. ‘Blue’ was a special kind of blue paper which only the Housemaster possessed, and each large page contained forty lines. You therefore had to go to your Housemaster to get it. After lunch every day, there was a queue of boys in the Housemaster’s study drawing out small fractions of their pocket-money which they had deposited with him at the beginning of term. We always paid in two and drew it out in tiny little bits at a time – thruppence, sixpence or a shilling. A boy who had been given ‘blue’ would go to the end of this queue so that when his time came he would be alone with the Housemaster. He would then be cross-examined, often beaten. Two hundred and forty blue, the maximum, was an automatic and severe thrashing. He would then have to go off and fill in all those two hundred and forty lines with an original composition of his own. Whatever other work he had to do or games he had to play, ‘blue’ had to be completed and delivered by hand to the form-master (often a mile away) before lock-up on that same day. Two-forty blue is three thousand words. That’s quite a lot to do in your spare time in one afternoon. But do it you had to, and do it you did.
* * *
* * *
This letter from Roald Dahl to his mother accompanied a series of photos that he’d taken. He was very fond of photography.
* * *
The Headmaster
The Headmaster, while I was at Repton, struck me as being a rather shoddy bandy-legged little fellow with a big bald head and lots of energy but not much charm. Mind you, I never did know him well because in all those months and years I was at the school, I doubt whether he addressed more than six sentences to me altogether. So perhaps it was wrong of me to form a judgement like that.
What is so interesting about this Headmaster is that he became a famous person later on. At the end of my third year, he was suddenly appointed Bishop of Chester and off he went to live in a palace by the River Dee. I remember at the time trying to puzzle out how on earth a person could suddenly leap from being a schoolmaster to becoming a Bishop all in one jump, but there were bigger puzzles to come.
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This Headmaster’s name was Geoffrey Fisher. He was Head of Repton School until July 1932.
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* * *
In 1932, while Roald Dahl was at Repton, a very important person was born 120 miles away in Sidcup. This was Quentin Blake – Whitbread Award winner, illustrator of over 300 children’s books and author and illustrator of over 30 more. But most importantly, he illustrated Roald Dahl’s books, bringing the BFG, Matilda, Willy Wonka and many more unforgettable characters to life in a totally unique and quite brilliant way.
* * *
From Chester, he was soon promoted again to become Bishop of London, and from there, after not all that many years, he bounced up the ladder once more to get the top job of them all, Archbishop of Canterbury! And not long after that it was he himself who had the task of crowning our present Queen in Westminster Abbey with half the world watching him on television. Well, well, well! And this was the man who used to deliver the most vicious beatings to the boys under his care!
By now I am sure you will be wondering why I lay so much emphasis upon school beatings in these pages. The answer is that I cannot help it. All through my school life I was appalled by the fact that masters and senior boys were allowed literally to wound other boys, and sometimes quite severely. I couldn’t get over it. I never have got over it. It would, of course, be unfair to suggest that all masters were constantly beating the daylights out of all the boys in those days. They weren’t. Only a few did so, but that was quite enough to leave a lasting impression of horror upon me. It left another more physical impression upon me as well. Even today, whenever I have to sit for any length of time on a hard bench or chair, I begin to feel my heart beating along the old lines that the cane made on my bottom some fifty-five years ago.
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This is J. T. Christie, Headmaster of Repton from 1932 to 1937.
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There is nothing wrong with a few quick sharp tickles on the rump. They probably do a naughty boy a lot of good. But this Headmaster we were talking about wasn’t just tickling you when he took out his cane to deliver a flogging. He never flogged me, thank goodness, but
I was given a vivid description of one of these ceremonies by my best friend at Repton, whose name was Michael. Michael was ordered to take down his trousers and kneel on the Headmaster’s sofa with the top half of his body hanging over one end of the sofa. The great man then gave him one terrific crack. After that, there was a pause. The cane was put down and the Headmaster began filling his pipe from a tin of tobacco. He also started to lecture the kneeling boy about sin and wrongdoing. Soon, the cane was picked up again and a second tremendous crack was administered upon the trembling buttocks. Then the pipe-filling business and the lecture went on for maybe another thirty seconds. Then came the third crack of the cane. Then the instrument of torture was put once more upon the table and a box of matches was produced. A match was struck and applied to the pipe. The pipe failed to light properly. A fourth stroke was delivered, with the lecture continuing. This slow and fearsome process went on until ten terrible strokes had been delivered, and all the time, over the pipe-lighting and the match-striking, the lecture on evil and wrongdoing and sinning and misdeeds and malpractice went on without a stop. It even went on as the strokes were being administered. At the end of it all, a basin, a sponge and a small clean towel were produced by the Headmaster, and the victim was told to wash away the blood before pulling up his trousers.
Do you wonder then that this man’s behaviour used to puzzle me tremendously? He was an ordinary clergyman at that time as well as being Headmaster, and I would sit in the dim light of the school chapel and listen to him preaching about the Lamb of God and about Mercy and Forgiveness and all the rest of it and my young mind would become totally confused. I knew very well that only the night before this preacher had shown neither Forgiveness nor Mercy in flogging some small boy who had broken the rules.
So what was it all about? I used to ask myself.
Did they preach one thing and practise another, these men of God?
And if someone had told me at the time that this flogging clergyman was one day to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, I would never have believed it.
* * *
Mr S. S. Jenkyns, the Housemaster of Priory House, known as ‘Binks’ . He was very keen on sport and anxious for Priory House to win!
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It was all this, I think, that made me begin to have doubts about religion and even about God. If this person, I kept telling myself, was one of God’s chosen salesmen on earth, then there must be something very wrong about the whole business.
* * *
These are the reports Roald Dahl mentions. Although he certainly wasn’t top of the class, he doesn’t seem to have been at the bottom of the class either!
* * *
Chocolates
Every now and again, a plain grey cardboard box was dished out to each boy in our House, and this, believe it or not, was a present from the great chocolate manufacturers, Cadbury. Inside the box there were twelve bars of chocolate, all of different shapes, all with different fillings and all with numbers from one to twelve stamped on the chocolate underneath. Eleven of these bars were new inventions from the factory. The twelfth was the ‘control’ bar, one that we all knew well, usually a Cadbury’s Coffee Cream bar. Also in the box was a sheet of paper with the numbers one to twelve on it as well as two blank columns, one for giving marks to each chocolate from nought to ten, and the other for comments.
All we were required to do in return for this splendid gift was to taste very carefully each bar of chocolate, give it marks and make an intelligent comment on why we liked it or disliked it.
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Cadbury’s used young chocolate tasters for many years. Many of these tasters received an official certificate; but if Roald Dahl ever had one, unfortunately he didn’t keep it.
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Photograph © francisfrith.com
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‘If I were a headmaster, I would get rid of the history teacher and get a chocolate teacher instead and my pupils would study a subject that affected all of them.’ (The Roald Dahl Cookbook)
* * *
It was a clever stunt. Cadbury’s were using some of the greatest chocolate-bar experts in the world to test out their new inventions. We were of a sensible age, between thirteen and eighteen, and we knew intimately every chocolate bar in existence, from the Milk Flake to the Lemon Marshmallow. Quite obviously our opinions on anything new would be valuable. All of us entered into this game with great gusto, sitting in our studies and nibbling each bar with the air of connoisseurs, giving our marks and making our comments. ‘Too subtle for the common palate,’ was one note that I remember writing down.
For me, the importance of all this was that I began to realize that the large chocolate companies actually did possess inventing rooms and they took their inventing very seriously. I used to picture a long white room like a laboratory with pots of chocolate and fudge and all sorts of other delicious fillings bubbling away on the stoves, while men and women in white coats moved between the bubbling pots, tasting and mixing and concocting their wonderful new inventions. I used to imagine myself working in one of these labs and suddenly I would come up with something so absolutely unbearably delicious that I would grab it in my hand and go rushing out of the lab and along the corridor and right into the office of the great Mr Cadbury himself. ‘I’ve got it, sir!’ I would shout, putting the chocolate in front of him. ‘It’s fantastic! It’s fabulous! It’s marvellous! It’s irresistible!’
* * *
As far as Roald Dahl was concerned, the years 1930 to 1937 were quite the most important time in the history of chocolate:
‘In the seven years of this glorious and golden decade, all the great classic chocolate bars were invented: the Crunchie, the Whole-Nut Bar, the Mars Bar, the Black Magic Assortment, Tiffin, Caramello, Aero, Malteser, Quality Street Assortment, Kit Kat, Rolo and Smarties.
In music the equivalent would be the golden age when compositions by Bach and Mozart and Beethoven were given to us.
In painting it was the equivalent of the Renaissance in Italian art and the advent of the Impressionists towards the end of the nineteenth century.
In literature it was Tolstoy and Balzac and Dickens.
I tell you, there has been nothing like it in the history of chocolate and there never will be.’
(The Roald Dahl Cookbook)
* * *
Slowly, the great man would pick up my newly invented chocolate and he would take a small bite. He would roll it round his mouth. Then all at once, he would leap up from his chair, crying, ‘You’ve got it! You’ve done it! It’s a miracle!’ He would slap me on the back and shout, ‘We’ll sell it by the million! We’ll sweep the world with this one! How on earth did you do it? Your salary is doubled!’
It was lovely dreaming those dreams, and I have no doubt at all that, thirty-five years later, when I was looking for a plot for my second book for children, I remembered those little cardboard boxes and the newly invented chocolates inside them, and I began to write a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
* * *
‘This is Charlie. How d’you do? And how d’you do? And how d’you do again? He is pleased to meet you.’ And so begins one of the most famous – and most chocolatey – adventures …
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* * *
Ten Horrid Little Boys and Girls
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory took me a terrible long time to write. The first time I did it, I got everything wrong. I wrote a story about a little boy who was going round a chocolate factory and he accidentally fell into a big tub of melted chocolate and got sucked into the machine that made chocolate figures and he couldn’t get out. It was a splendid big chocolate figure, a chocolate boy the same size as him. And it was Easter time, and the figure was put in a shop window, and in the end a lady came in and bought it as an Easter present for her little girl, and carried it home. On Easter Day, the little girl opened the box with her present in it, and took it out and then she decided to eat some of it. She would start with
the head, she thought. So she broke off the nose, and when she saw a real human nose sticking out underneath and too big bright human eyes staring at her through the eye-holes in the chocolate, she got a nasty shock. And so it went on.
But the story wasn’t good enough. I rewrote it, and rewrote it, and the little tentacles kept shooting out from my head, searching for new ideas, and at last one of them came back with Mr Willy Wonka and his marvellous chocolate factory and then came Charlie and his parents and grandparents and the Golden Tickets and the nasty children, Violet Beauregarde and Veruca Salt and all the rest of them.
As a matter of fact, I got so wrapped up in all those nasty children, and they made me giggle so much that I couldn’t stop inventing them. In the first full version of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’, I had no less than ten horrid little boys and girls. That was too many. It became confusing. It wasn’t a good book. But I liked them all so much, I didn’t want to take any of them out.