by Henry Green
to my Mother
PART ONE
Caterpillar
LAUGH
DIARY of John Haye, Secretary to the Noat Art Society, and in J. W. P.’s House at the Public School of Noat.
6 JULY (about)
It has only just struck me that a kind of informal diary would be rather fun. No driving as to putting down something every day, just a sort of pipe to draw off the swamp water. It has rained all the past week. We went to Henley yesterday and it was wretched: B. G. going off to Phyllis Court and leaving me with Jonson, an insufferable bore who means very well and consequently makes things much worse. Seymour went with Dore who was dressed in what would be bad form at Monte, and at Henley . . . Had a row with Seymour, and refused to be seen with Dore.
Wonderful T. Carlyle’s letters are, and his wife’s too. One can always tell them at a glance. She is the best letter writer there has ever been, I am told by a modern authority. I should think T. C. runs this pretty fine, his explosive style going well into letters.
9 JULY
Two people in my absence just had a water fight in my room, which enraged me.
The usual question asked, “Why not in anyone else’s room?” and of course no answer: however, felt better after calling Brimston an animated cabbage. His retort was, “Oh, cutting!”. . .
Seymour, B. G. and I were seriously discussing the production of a revue here next term, as they do at the universities, but as Seymour said, the difficulties were insuperable, too many old men to surmount.
19 JULY
Walk with Seymour today, who was very charming. Fell in love with a transparent tortoiseshell cigarette case for three guineas, very cheap I thought. He keeps his band of satellites in very good order. When he told them to leave the School Shop they did. They positively worship him. He is an extraordinary creature, I don’t believe he could get on without them: keeping them as some people keep a dog, to let off steam at. A rift between Harington Brown and Seymour, very amusing to watch: H. B. much the same as Seymour but lacks his charm. Seymour furious because H. B. has brought out a bad magazine called the Shop Window. Seymour thinks it is a challenge to his precious Noat Lights. If it is one it is a failure.
Dicky Maitland, who used to try and teach me science, has been writing to the Adjer to say that my Volunteer’s uniform is always untidy; the Adjer says he has had several notes: did you ever hear such cheek? But then the poor man is a military maniac.
As a matter of fact I ought to look quite well tomorrow on the occasion of the Yearly Inspection, as my tunic is nothing but oil stains, and everything else is sketchy and insecure.
J. W. P. told me last night that I was a person who wanted to fail at Noat and who thought (and only he knew how mistakenly) that he was going to be a success in after-life. A typically House-masterish thing to say. But then he was in a bad temper.
Later—Have just announced that I go to the dentist tomorrow so shan’t be able to play in the House match that afternoon: frenzy; “I call that rather a shame,” etc. Isn’t it funny what a good player one becomes on a sudden?
The dentist tomorrow will be the third time he has tried to kill a nerve, and it isn’t nearly dead now, but still fairly active.
Tremendous excitement over Hutchinson’s coming novel, everyone trying to get a first edition.
THURSDAY
Corps Inspection: all went well.
Afterward I went up to the dentist, and in the train met Mayo who is leaving early. Had a long talk mainly about Seymour and Co. As might be expected he did not like him, but what was more to the point, produced a most interesting reason and unanswerable to a person who holds views like his. Firstly, then, he has no use for a person who is no good at anything. He tolerates the clever scholar, he tolerates the half-wit athlete, but since he cannot see that any of us are remotely even one of these, he cannot bear us as a set.
What adds fuel to his fire is a person who glories in his eccentricity, which of course is true of all of us, in that we glory in ourselves. And of course the inevitable immorality touched on, which is always connected with eccentricities.
B. G. of course he merely regards as really and actively evil, and I don’t blame him as he does not know B. G., whose appearance is well calculated to sow the seeds of doubt and dislike in any righteous person. Furthermore, he can’t see what good any of us are going to do in after-life. He said that he was going into the army, he trumpeted that, and then because we were alone together he put me out of the argument by saying that I should be a future financier.
I could not answer him, there was nothing further to say, but in the course of the running fire that we kept up afterwards just to show that there was no ill-feeling, he actually said that Seymour went up in his estimation because he had won his House hundred yards. Extraordinary! Very interesting, and, of course, a view which is almost incredible to me, in fact a great eye-opener.
Had to return in a hurry from the dentist who has given up trying to kill the nerve in my tooth. He prophesied what he called a “sting” in it tonight: he under-estimated it considerably. It is hurting damnably.
21 JULY
Am reading a very good book on the Second Empire with Napoleon the Third. It is in the Lytton Strachey style, which after Carlyle’s is, I think, the most amusing.
The Volunteers’ Camp and all its attendant horrors is getting quite close now: though I could get off whenever I wanted to with my hammer-toes, but I want to go just for once.
22 JULY
Bell’s, across the way, have bought as many as seven hunting-horns. Each possessor blows it unceasingly, just when one wants to read. They don’t do it all together, but take it in turns to keep up one forced note. Really, it might be Eton. They can only produce the one note during the whole day.
In addition to this trifling detail, it is “the thing to do” now to throw stones at me as I sit at my window. However, I have just called E. N. a “milch cow,” and shall on the first opportunity call D. J. B. a “bovine goat,” which generally relieves matters. These epithets have the real authentic Noat Art Society touch, haven’t they?
24 JULY
No Art Society this evening. No one turned up except H. B. who was to have read a paper; he was rather hurt. However, I think it will be all right, he has about as much admiration for the satellites as I have.
Am too tired to do anything but write this. The House rather alarmed and faintly contemptuous to hear I keep this; they have given me up, I think and hope. Rather a funny thing happened while fielding this afternoon. I had thrown myself down to stop a ball and I saw waving specks in my eyes for two minutes afterwards. I suppose my blood pressure was disturbed.
“For those in danger on the sea” is at the moment being sung by Truin’s at House prayers.
26 JULY
J. W. P. came in last night to say that I had bad reports, everyone saying that I took no trouble, which is not surprising on both sides of the question: says that next term I shall have to do all my work in his study with the half-wits, a song which I have heard before, I think, though it is so encouraging coming at the end of a term’s boredom.
Camp at Tidworth will be delightful in this soaking weather.
27 JULY
Have bought the most gorgeous sun hat for a horse in straw for sixpence, and have painted it in concentric rings. Shall wear it at Camp, and have fixed it up so that it will bend when worn like a very old-fashioned bonnet. In the ear-holes I am going to put violently swearing colours, orange and magenta, in ribbon I got for nothing by being nice to a shop-woman at Bowlay’s. Our little John is getting on, isn’t he?
The hat is a masterpiece, and being so has, of course, started a violent controversy. Those who consider it merely bounderism, and those who think it amusing, talk very seriously together and stop when I approach, while the faithful come in occasionally to tell me what the others have said.
The most beautiful letter ever written is undoubtedly that of Charlotte Brontë’s on her sister
Emily’s death.
28 JULY
No more work till the summer holidays. Have been relegated by the House selection committee to the dud tent at Camp, which amuses me vastly. Apparently those who manage the affairs of the tent prefer Bulwer and Matson to myself; more amusing still. Shall I get elected into the Reading Room next term? Probably not. I think as a matter of fact they want a mobbing tent which they know I would not join in, anyhow I shall be much more comfortable as I am: at any rate that reads better, and sounds so for that matter.
Apparently I shall get attacked if I wear my straw hat, a fact I can hardly believe. I have had the most heated arguments as to why I should not wear fancy dress; the fact remains that people are more prim and hidebound there than here, except that, as far as I can see, all and sundry combine to be rude to other schools.
29 JULY
A sing-song in the Hall to-night, to which everyone but myself has gone: didn’t go for two reasons; first, because the cinema part of it was certain to be lamentable; secondly, Fryer irks me when he sings songs, and the applause he gets, for no other reason than that he is everything at games, and so is profitable to applaud, maddens me.
What is bad is that this school tends to turn the really clever into people who pretend for all they are worth to be the mediocrities which are the personification of the splendid manhood phrase. And in the end these poor people succeed and lose all the brains they ever had, which is distressing, particularly for me who could do with a few more.
SUNDAY
Sing-song apparently a great success. There is an auction going on now, everything that has been handed down through the ages is being resold. I suppose some pictures have seen about forty auctions: the commonest are Thorburn’s petrified partridges, or worse still, those most weird and antiquated pictures of horse-racing, the horse’s neck being the length of its body.
Social ostracism which I am experiencing now for the first time for many terms is really incredibly funny. It begins with a studied vagueness when you address anyone, which means that he is frightened at being seen talking to you: it goes on, in direct ratio to the number of jaws they have about you, to a studied rudeness, and the lower and younger you are the more your room is mobbed. And then the whole thing blows over you on to some other unfortunate.
I suppose I have been rather tiresome lately, but all except T. D. and possibly E. N. are so distressingly the athletic type, who sink their whole beings in the school and its affairs, and are blind and almost ignorant of any world outside their own.
31 JULY
The last flourish before Camp.
My room is a sight for the gods, piles and stacks of clothing to be packed, a bulging pot-bellied kit-bag filled with changes of clothing for the ten days’ horror, everything upside down, and over all the frenzied maid as near suicide as she ever gets: her chief job is to look for lost garments, and as she regards me with the deepest suspicion over a pair of tennis shoes, I am not left long alone. The storm in the Chinese tea-service had died down, and once more I am anchored precariously outside the haven of the barely tolerated.
I hear that the only hotel where one can get a bath in Camp has been put out of bounds, which is delightful. How furious Mamma will be: apparently the reason is that people used to drink there.
In CAMP: 2 AUGUST
Just a scrawl. It has been raining viciously as if with a purpose. At the moment I am lying on what is affectionately known as a “palliarse.” Underneath is deal planking. Underneath that is a torrent as we are on a hill and the accumulated effects of two days’ rain are flowing beneath. Above is a bell tent, long since condemned by the army authorities as unsound, so that the cloudburst which is pouring from Heaven penetrates freely. There is one spot under which lies Brown, the world’s greatest grouser, and it is appropriately threadbare. He was foolish enough to put soap on it; we had told him that if you soaped a bit of cloth it became waterproof, and now soapsuds drip down on to his face. We have also told him that his grousing is intolerable, and will be dealt with unless he suppresses it, so that he lies in a misery too deep for words, and is the only thing that keeps us happy.
There are, of course, rumours about our going home on account of the wet, but such a good thing could not possibly happen.
The food and the smell of grease in the eating tent are both very foul. The smell I was warned against by an old campaigner. Thank God my turn has not yet come for washing up, but I shall have to do it tomorrow. They are thinking themselves the most awful devils in the next tent with a bottle of port; perhaps if I had one I should feel one too.
HOLIDAYS: 11 AUGUST
The village fête here yesterday, and after a three forty-five awakening, reveille or whatever you like to call it, at Tidworth, I had to run about here when I arrived and be officious to all and sundry. An awful thing happened. It was towards the end when I was so tired I could hardly see. Mamma told me to go and find the young lady who ran the Clock Golf Competition and tell her to send in the names of the prize-winners. The young ladies who ran things were all surprisingly alike, disastrously so, and there were many of them. I went up to a girl I was sure had run the Clock Golf, and I asked her if she had done so. No answer. Again I asked, and again no answer. Somehow I felt only more sure from her silence that she had run it, so I asked her yet again, and more eagerly. There was no answer, but there came a blush like a banner which rallied all her friends to her, to protect her from the depredations of this young man. After that I hid myself in the house. I know what the neighbourhood will make of my reputation now. Mamma laughed; I have never heard her laugh so much before.
I have got the most vile and horrid “bedabbly” cold—Carlyle again. Had one or two highbrow talks with Seymour in a small canteen with two cubic feet air-space for each savage human, which was rather wonderful.
29 AUGUST
I fished today and “killed” two tiddlers, one was a minnow, and such a small one at that that I thought it too infinitesimal even for the stable cat. That was a record broken, if in the wrong direction.
Mamma tonight on religion. What effect it had, and how far it went, at Noat? They are effectively stifling mine.
During dinner I saw a man run across the bottom of the garden, so when it was over I took the dogs, and with an eye to theatrical effect I put the bulldog on a leash, and led him snorting, pulling, panting and roaring round the garden. He made just the noise, on a minor scale, that one is led to believe a dragon made. William waited with Father’s revolver loaded with blank, awaiting a scream from me if I was attacked. He looked too ludicrous, with a paternal smile on his face.
2 SEPTEMBER
To my mind there is nothing so thrilling as the rushing, hungry rise the chub have here; it makes me tingle even now to think of it, and the more spectators on the bank watching, after you have hooked your fish, the better.
At the present Mamma is in a great state over someone on the Town Council of Norbury. After swearing me to secrecy she told me all about it, and I have forgotten. But the main thing is that she has her suspicions only and no proof, but that, of course, only makes her more sure. But she had a splendid speech in the middle about dishonesty on town councils when she was at her best. But I wish she would not take these things so seriously. She expects me to too, and when I don’t, she says, “Ah! you are too young, John dear.”
9 SEPTEMBER
Mamma not sleeping, so Ruffles, the chow, passed the night in my room, which he disliked intensely, so much so that when he did eventually doze off distrustfully, he had what is a rare thing with him, a nightmare of the most alarming and noisy order. I hope this Town Council business is not really keeping Mamma awake. Probably the wretched devil is quite innocent. It would be quite like Mamma to go up to him and accuse him of it. But then she couldn’t.
Caught seven fish yesterday, which wasn’t so bad. They were rising well.
NOAT, FRIDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER
Back to the old place again, and very depressed in consequence: ho
wever, I am now a full-blown specialist in history, and am allowed to send small boys on errands as I am one of the illustrious first hundred in the school. But the football is going to be awful.
I came back on Wednesday. As usual, nothing is changed in the least: Bell’s opposite have discarded their hunting-horns of accursed memory for an accordion and a banjo, just as painful.
What with the accordion and the cold and the noise and the discomfort and Cole, who I am up to in history, this has ceased to be a life and has become a mere existence. However, the outlook is always black at the beginning of the term.
Later—An excellent meeting of the Art Society: very amusing. There was a grand encounter between Seymour and Harington Brown and B. G.’s unrivalled powers of invective were used with great effect. His face, his voice, everything combines to make him a most formidable opponent in wordy warfare.
1 OCTOBER
Since all my contemporaries spend all their time in the Senior Reading Room with a newly-acquired gramophone, I am left alone and undisturbed, which is very pleasant. Am feeling much more cheerful now, which I attribute to a cup of hot tea.
Am keeping up all the traditions by being the only person in the school with a greatcoat on. Why is it that when there is the hardest and most bitter frost no one wears a greatcoat here? I think it is so absurd, and get rewarded for my pains by catching reproving glances from the new boys, who, of course, are ultra careful, so much as to say, “You are making an ass of yourself with that coat on.”
Seymour and B. G. are going to give the most immense and splendiferous leaving party, which is going to be wild fun.
3 OCTOBER
This morning an outrage: I am eating my morning bun, given to me for that purpose by J. W. P., when my tooth meets a stone, and half of it is broken off clean. Result, an immense jagged cavity which I shall have filled, at J. W. P.’s expense, with platinum, and set with brilliants. I am furious.