Long afternoons I spent in my room alone, while the boys were at school. Drawing and painting took most of the time, but there was also the curious occupation of cutting patterns in perforated cardboard, sticking them on a piece of coloured ribbon, and inflicting them on some aunts as a Bible bookmark. I had a boyish contempt for dolls, especially the flaxen-haired blue-eyed type, whose clothes wouldn’t take off. These came in handy as an audience, for one of my favourite games was to hang over the foot of my bed, and preach to the counterpane, with a text duly given out twice, in different directions.
I must have done this to break the silence. No London child today can realize the quiet of the road on which my window looked. A tradesman’s cart, a hawker or a hurdy-gurdy, were the sum total of the usual traffic. Sometimes everything had been so quiet for so long that the sound of a passer-by or of a butcher’s pony would take on a distant, unreal tone, as if it were mocking me. This frightened me, and I would break the spell by singing ‘The Lass of Richmond Hill’.
Music I made for myself with broken nibs stuck into the edge of my table. The tinkle was cheering, but no tune could I achieve, although Charles made effective ones on his ‘organ’ of nibs.
In spite of my contempt for dolls of the usual kind, and my intense hatred of sewing, I took great delight in dressing up the pawns of a very large set of chess-men, discarded by the family. White pawns became Arthur’s knights or Greek heroes, as the fancy took me, black ones were pagans or Trojans. Bright bits of velvet and silk were sewn on them by my toiling fingers, and cardboard swords fitted to their sides. The best bits of stuff and passionate care were expended on Sir Lancelot, who slaughtered pagans with easy grace on my washing-stand.
Speaking of the washing-stand reminds me that I made a kind of sundial on it, being, however, quite ignorant of the existence of such a thing. Noticing that the afternoon sun kept shifting all the time from soap-dish to basin, from basin to tooth-glass, I conceived the idea of using it as a clock. Pencil marks were made on the marble top, and 3 o’clock, quarter past three, half-past three, and so on were neatly written beside them. Having no confidence, however, in the sun’s behaviour, I would run to the top of the stairs and call out to one of the servants to tell me the time. ‘By the right, or by the dining-room, Miss?’ ‘By the right, please.’ And if it came anywhere near agreeing with my clock, Galileo himself can hardly have had a greater thrill.
A feast for the Arthurian Round Table was sometimes planned. The lid of a bonnet-box was placed on the floor, and the pawns arranged round. I would slip into the kitchen when pastry was being made, beg for a little lump, shape it into tiny tarts, twelve, put jam on them, and smuggle them into the oven. When cook declared them done, they were taken upstairs and laid out on dolls’ plates. On one such occasion my pride induced me to invite Barnholt to ‘come and see’ when he came home from school. He could be trusted not to laugh at my banquet. Looking grave and impressed with its grandeur, he proceeded to pop all the tarts into his mouth, because they were too much for the tiny insides of the pawns. ‘I have saved all their lives,’ said he, with such solemnity that I was truly grateful to him.
Of course I had a shelf for my books. We were none of us too fond of showing our books to visitors. They didn’t really care about them and sometimes would wet their fingers to turn over the pages. My own treasures are nearly all with me still, showing only the honourable marks of age and continual reading—no thumb-marks, no dogs’ ears, no loose leaves. Rosy’s Voyage Round the World was prime favourite. A little girl and three boys go out in a rowing-boat, sight Africa, find Crusoe’s island, catch an eel, light a fire to cook it…and so on, in such a realistic way that I was as convinced of the extent of their travels as they were themselves. Each adventure had a full-page illustration by Lorenz Frolich. The Little Gipsy, also illustrated by him, was the story of an only child who is stolen by gipsies because of her lovely voice, brought up by them, and after terrible adventures becomes a famous singer and finds her parents. Alice in Wonderland we all knew practically by heart, and one of the red-letter days of my life was a birthday when I received from my father Through the Looking-glass. I got through the morning somehow, and then buried myself in it all the afternoon, my pleasure enhanced by the knowledge that there was a boring visitor downstairs to whom I ought to be making myself agreeable. And it was about chess-men! As I handle the book now I five over again that enchanted afternoon.
The pictures in our books were well drawn, but colour was very rare and highly prized. Just before the Christmas of 1872, mother took me to Oxford Street to do some shopping. Our main object was to buy a birthday present for Charles. I can remember mounting the stairs at Bumpus’s amid what seemed to me thousands of books—a land of Canaan indeed. The stairs are still there, and I prefer them to the lift, because they recall that golden day. Mother chose The Story without an End. The story itself was an allegory, and was too subtle for us, but it is impossible to describe the endless pleasure given us all by those full-page pictures, whose colours are as fresh and beautiful today as when Charles received them ‘on his tenth birthday’, as the inscription in mother’s hand-writing records.
It was entirely due to its colour that another book became my constant companion. This was an illustrated Scripture text-book, given to me on my seventh birthday, and still preserved. I have never come across another like it. Some of the little pictures are very crude, but most of them, especially such short commands as ‘Walk Honestly’, ‘Fear God’, in fancy lettering, with gold and bright-coloured borders, are tasteful enough.
Some of the boys’ prizes fell into my keeping, handed to me in disgust. One of these, The Safe Compass, afforded me many a joyful hour. It took the gloomiest views as to the fate of the disobedient. But if you left out everything that was in italics, and altered the endings of the plots, the stories were good. The disobedient were gored by bulls, those who laughed at the infirm-fell down wells and were crippled for life, busy mockers died in want…there was no lack of gripping incident. But sometimes one could improve on the plot. For instance, Joe had a beautiful toy boat. Fritz (ominous name) was jealous and destroyed it privily. Joe planned revenge. Knowing that Fritz passed by every day with a basket of eggs, Joe tied a piece of string across the road, hid in the hedge, and waited for the crash. Traffic along the lane was obviously not congested, but who should happen along in front of Fritz but the good Herbert. Joe called to him to come into the hedge too, and enjoy the disaster. Instead of entering into the spirit of the thing, Herbert went into italics about coals of fire, the string was hauled in, and when Fritz appeared he was kindly invited to tea. Now conversion was all right and proper, but surely it might have come after the egg-smash?
Many people of my age must have imbibed their early religious notions from the same book that I did—The Peep of Day, for my copy is dated 1872, and is one of the three hundred and forty-seventh thousand. It is very insistent and realistic about hell, and apparently there is only one virtue, obedience to parents and kind teachers, which leads of itself to a life of bliss ‘beyond the sky’. One stanza of verse attracted me greatly:
Satan is glad—when I am bad,
And hopes that I—with him shall lie
In fire and chains—and dreadful pains.
Whether the rhythm pleased me, or whether I was gratified that such an important person as Satan would actually welcome my company, I can’t say, but the idea was more exciting than that of heaven put forth by the author. The stories about Jesus I liked best, and admired Him greatly. What a pity, I thought, that after such a good life He should have told an untruth at the last. This is what I read: ‘Jesus just tasted the vinegar, and said, “It is finished.”’ My idea was that he had been given this horrid stuff to drink, tasted it, and then out of politeness pretended that he had finished it up.
I suppose that like all children I never asked anyone about the things that really puzzled me, although I was ready enough to ask questions for the sake of asking. When ob
liged to sit and be polite listening to a visitor’s conversation, I used to break the monotony with an innocent question, always prefaced by the phrase ‘What means by?’ Thus I would ask, ‘What means by poison?’ ‘What means by lottery?’ ‘What means by jealous?’ Mother would enter into explanations, only too thankful, I fancy, to find something to talk about. But one day she turned upon me, thoroughly exasperated, because I had asked, ‘What means by Russia?’ It seemed to me quite a promising opening, and I never knew why it suddenly enraged her.
Alone, in my room, I pondered over much. Once I was perturbed more seriously than a grown-up ever imagines. God had very kindly made the world, but suppose the notion had never occurred to Him? Suppose there had never been any God? Suppose there had never been anything at all? I was so devastated by the thought that I had to run about violently up and down stairs to kill the demon.
VI. School-days
WHILE my brothers were quite small they went to a private school close by, kept by a very tall, thin, severe old Scot, whose notion of the evil in the world was summed up in ‘smoking and drinking and going to theayters’. A sound knowledge of grammar seemed to be the chief end of man. Tom was the first to enjoy the excitement of ‘going to school’. He came home one day full of the news that there was to be an examination on the morrow.
‘Mother, what is an examination?’
‘Oh, nothing much, dear. They want to see what you know, and you write it down.’
Alas for definitions, poor little Tom must have spent the intervening time in anxious thought. No sooner was the class provided with paper and pen than he began to write down all he knew. He had got no farther than ‘I know that the earth goes round the sun’ when the real nature of the business was explained.
After a while the school grew too big for the house, and a room was hired in Canonbury Tower for some of the classes. The boys enjoyed the change of walking through the few yards of street and racing up into the old building. The window overhangs the street in Tudor fashion, and it was here that Barnholt liked to sit. He used to fasten a stone to a piece of string, and let it down on to the hat of a passer-by. If he could pull it up before the bewildered man had discovered him, he scored a point in a game with another boy similarly armed.
What was taught at this school no one quite knew, but every one brought home a prize at the end of the year, even Barnholt, ‘for the general work of the class’, and when the time came for entering a public school the boys did well enough. Shrewsbury was chosen for Tom, merely, I think, because it was on the Welsh border and near my father’s old home. It was a long journey in those days, and seeing Tom off for the ‘half-year’ made quite a little stir in the family, while welcoming him home was a grand occasion, calling for a feast, and my ‘sitting up’. Things were to be done and seen ‘when Tom comes home’. For one of these home-comings I had prepared for weeks by saving up all the pennies that came my way, and hiding them in my bottom drawer, till there was a fair copper mine there. On the day after his return I took Tom solemnly into my room and unveiled the treasure, with the words, ‘For you.’ To my disappointment he refused to take them—a lesson to me through life never to refuse a gift.
What Tom learnt at Shrewsbury was clear enough—Latin and Greek, with the ancient history and geography pertaining to them. The only English literature that reached him were lines to be put into Latin verse, while Milton was used for punishment. There is a pencil note in his copy of Paradise Lost: ‘Had to write 500 lines of this for being caught reading King Lear in class.’ The only modern geography that he knew was the map of Scotland, because this too was chosen as a punishment. Once he tried to avoid having to copy it again by rubbing out the ‘T. W.’ at the bottom—the initials of the master, ‘old Thos. Webster’. But T. W. was too sharp for him. ‘Very nice,’ said he, ‘my dear Thomas, but you neglected to rub out my private mark under the Isle of Rum.’ He experienced a flogging, kneeling on the big Bible in the school hall. Once he was within an ace of being expelled for making a snow-storm in a preposter’s room by dropping showers of paper through a hole in the ceiling. Moss, the head master, summoned Tom to the dread ‘study’, and was looking up a train for his immediate departure, when a noble schoolfellow knocked at the door and produced some kind of alibi for Tom. No doubt Moss, not long appointed and hardly more than a boy himself, was glad of any excuse to avoid an expulsion, and no more was done. Gilkes was the only master Tom revered.
Not encouraged by Tom’s career, my father chose a day-school for the other three boys, and obtained presentations to Merchant Taylors’. The entrance examination was no great ordeal. Indeed, there was a legend that you needed only to be able to spell ‘separate’ and ‘parliament’, and to know who Jeroboam was. These bits of information were drilled into Barnholt’s head when his turn came, and all was well.
At the family tea at five o’clock we heard various bits of school gossip, and the names of the masters were printed on my memory. ‘Jala’, the short for J. A. L. Airey, the mathematics master, was naturally Dym’s chief god. Charles was extraordinarily lucky in having a real artist for his drawing-master, Mr. Fahey, who found in him a pupil after his own heart and managed to shield Charles from the demands of other subjects. Mr. Bamfield, affectionately called ‘Bammy’, was the classics master and Henri Bué the French master, with Mr. Storr later on.
Although Charles successfully avoided doing anything much beside drawing he never got into trouble. Never observed to laugh himself, he would be the cause of laughter in others, doing some trick and preserving a face of disapproving innocence. Many’s the time at home that Barnholt was sent out of the room for unseemly bursts of laughter when it was Charles who had set him off. Once, however, at school Charles was caught red-handed throwing stones impiously at the figure of Sir Thomas White. He defended himself by the curious plea that this was the only thing against which there was no rule. The master, a bit nonplussed, had no ready reply, and while he thought it over Charles faded away.
He came home in high delight one evening, having shone beyond all the others in the French lesson. Some three or four times during the reading of the French play Mr. Storr was reminded of a parallel passage in Horace. Before he could quote it, ‘Ah yes, Sir,’ chipped in Charles, ‘does it not go something like this?’—and neatly, but with becoming hesitation spouted the Latin line. Mr. Storr was delighted, and when this happened twice more, enthusiastic. ‘I am very pleased, my boy, that you have such a feeling for literature.’ He did not know that Charles was using Tom’s copy of the play. Tom had also been reminded of Horace, and had written the appropriate quotations at the side.
No master seemed to have taught Barnholt anything, and all he brought home was detention-cards. ‘Never mind,’ mother used to say, ‘mark my words, he will be the first to earn his own living.’ And she was right.
So much did I hear about the school and the masters that I feel almost an old Taylorian myself (especially since I have had two sons there). On one day every year I seemed to get right inside the life of the boys. The Feast of St. Barnabas has been Speech Day at the school from time immemorial. The weather was always fine, and I was fixed into a pretty summer frock and taken by mother to Charterhouse Square. Here in the great Hall I felt, for a time at least, superior to the boys. For I was ushered to a proper seat, and given a printed programme, while they were all huddled at the back, by the great fireplace. The plays and speeches in French and Latin and Greek and Hebrew gave me plenty of unintelligent excitement. There were definite points for which I could watch. Dym told us that the Members of the Company were provided with a copy of the speeches, with hints where to laugh at the jokes, so that the parents should realize how well they knew their classics. When they laughed, therefore, I knew. Another diversion was to count the number of times that the Head Master, Dr. Baker, would call out ‘Sit down, every boy.’ Charles had so often imitated the nervous agitation with which these words were uttered that it would have been dull indeed if ‘every boy’
had been obedient. The next excitement was to see Dym walk up for a prize, always a certainty. One year Charles actually had a prize for Latin—a quite unreadable book, magnificently bound. It stood on our shelves as a monument of what Charles could achieve by sheer humbug. But he always had the head prize for drawing, which once was a colossal paint-box, stocked with all sorts of new shades of colours, probably ordered for him by Mr. Fahey.
Another treat to me was the school song (‘Homo plantat’), which I knew so well that I was able to join in, and dazzle the fat mothers around me by my familiarity with the Latin words. But all feelings of superiority were bowled over by the procession of the Master and Wardens, or whatever they were, of the Merchant Taylors Company, in their robes and chains, with their fur collars and bouquets. The chief one, who had been enthroned, and saluted by each prize-taking boy, looked to me exactly like the Lord God mentioned so often in Genesis.
After the solemnities the fun. To be allowed to see a real classroom, where boys behaved badly, with desks all inky and carved with names, a desk where the master sat, and a notice-board; to run out on the great green, where the masters were swishing about in gowns and hoods, being agreeable to mothers, and where the grand senior boys were still walking about in the stage clothes in which they had been acting—all this was a kind of awful delight.
It is hardly surprising that I cast longing thoughts on going to school myself. So in my twelfth year mother decided to send me to an ‘Establishment for Young Ladies’ about a mile from home. It must have been to give me some companionship, for I can conceive no other rational motive for the step. Indeed, I have come to think that the main value of school life is to prevent one’s getting on too fast in the natural surroundings of home.
A London Child of the Seventies Page 6