i went to school in september 1884. on the 7th of september john came of age, and we had a large party in the house and a banquet for the tenants in the tennis court, at which i had to stand up on a chair and make a speech returning thanks for the younger members of the family. i travelled up to london with my mother and mr. walter durnford, and was given frank fairleigh to read in the train, but it was too grown-up for me, and i only pretended to read it. we stayed a night in charles street. i was given a brown leather dispatch case with my name stamped on it and a framed photograph of my father and mother and of membland, and a good stock of writing-paper, and the next afternoon we started for my school, which was near ascot. i didn’t cry either on leaving membland or at any moment on the day i was taken to school.

we arrived about tea-time. the school was a red brick building on the top of the hill, north of ascot station, and looking towards the station, situated among pine trees. the building is there now and is a girls’ school. we were shown into a drawing-room where the headmaster and his wife received us with a dreadful geniality. there was a small aquarium in the room with some goldfish in it. the furniture was covered with black-and-yellow cretonne, and there were some low ebony bookcases and a great many knick-knacks. another parent was there with a small and pale-looking little boy called arbuthnot, who was the picture of misery, and well he might look miserable, as i saw at a glance that he was wearing a made-up sailor’s tie. two days later the machinery inside this tie was a valuable asset in another boy’s collection. conversation was kept up hectically until tea was over. they talked of a common friend, lady sarah spencer. “what a[69] charming woman she is!” said the headmaster. how sensible he seemed to charm! how impervious to all amenities he revealed himself to be later! then my mother said good-bye to him, and we were taken upstairs by the matron to see my cubicle, a little room with pitch-pine walls, partitioned off from the next cubicle by a thin wooden partition that did not reach the ceiling, so that you could talk to the boy in the next cubicle. boys were not allowed to go into each other’s cubicles. we hung my solitary picture up, and my mother interviewed the matron, mrs. otway, in her room and gave her a pound as she went away; then we went out into the garden for a moment. my mother said good-bye to me and left me alone. i wandered about the garden, which was not a garden but grass hill leading down to a cricket-field. half-way down the hill was a gymnasium, and a high wooden erection with steps. i wondered what it was for. the boys had not yet arrived. two boys presently appeared on the scene; they looked at me, but took no great notice. then after a little time one of them approached me, holding in his hand a small pebble surrounded with cotton-wool, and asked me if i would like a cuckoo’s egg. i did not know whether i was supposed to pretend that i thought it was a real egg or not. it was so unmistakably a stone. i smiled and said nothing. presently a chinese gong sounded somewhere out of doors. the two boys ran into the house. i followed them. on the ground floor of the house there was a large hall with a table running down it, a fireplace at one end, and at the other end an arch opening on to the staircase draped with red curtains with black fleur-de-lys stamped on them. there were windows on one side of the room and a cupboard with books in on the other. this hall was now full of boys talking and laughing. nobody took the slightest notice of me. they then trooped through a passage into the dining-room, a large room with tables round three sides of it and a small square table in the middle where the headmaster, his wife, and one of the other masters sat. we sat down. i was placed nearly at the end of the last table. more boys—those of the first division, who were a race apart—came in from another door. then the headmaster entered, rapped on his table with a knife, and said grace. we had tea; large thick slabs of bread and butter, with the butter spread very thinly over them.

soon after tea we went to bed, and i dreamt i was at[70] membland, and woke up to find i was in a strange place. the boy in the cubicle next to mine was called hope. he was in the second division. in another cubicle opposite to mine there was a boy in the first division called worthington. one could talk to them, and they were both of them friendly.

the next morning after breakfast i was placed in the fourth division for latin and english, and the fourth set for mathematics and french, and had my first lesson in mathematics. the first thing the master did was to take a high three-legged stool from a corner and exhibit it to us. it had a very narrow seat. it was a rickety stool. “this,” he said, “is the stool of penitence. i hope none of you will have to stand on it.” then some figures were written down on the blackboard, and a sum in short division was set, which i at once got wrong. in fact, i couldn’t do it at all. the master came and sat down by my side, and said: “you’re trembling.” so i was. he corrected the mistakes and went on to something else. he was terrifying to look at, i thought, but perhaps not as frightening as he appeared to be. i was a little bit reassured. later in the day we had a french lesson. to my surprise i saw he knew but little french, and read out the first page of the elementary accidence, pronouncing the french words as though they were english ones.

after luncheon, we played prisoner’s base, and i at once realised that there is a vast difference between games and play. play is played for fun, but games are deadly serious, and you do not play them to enjoy yourselves. everyone was given two blue cards, and every time you were taken prisoner you lost a card. if you lost both you were kicked by the captain of the side, who said we were a pack of dummies. the first week seemed endlessly long, and acute homesickness pervaded every moment of it. waking up in the morning was the worst moment. every night i used to dream i was back at home, every morning the moment of waking up was a sharp bewildering shock. our voices were tried, and i was put in the chapel choir. the chapel choir had special privileges, but also long half-hours of choir practice.

the masters laughed at me mercilessly for my pronunciation of english. i don’t know what was wrong with it, except that i said yallow, aint for aren’t, and ant for aunt, but i did my best to get out of this as soon as possible. apart from idiosyncrasies[71] of pronunciation, my voice seemed to them comic, and they used to imitate me by speaking through their noses whenever i said anything. the boys at first entirely ignored one, simply telling one to shut up if one spoke, but the boys in my own division soon became friendly, especially an american boy called hamilton fish the third. he was the first man to be killed in the american-spanish war in cuba. there was no bullying. one boy, although he was in the first division, was charming, and treated one like a grown-up person. this was basil blackwood. even then he drew pictures which were the delight of his friends. another boy who was friendly was niall campbell. dreadful legends were told about winston churchill, who had been taken away from the school. his naughtiness appeared to have surpassed anything. he had been flogged for taking sugar from the pantry, and so far from being penitent, he had taken the headmaster’s sacred straw hat from where it hung over the door and kicked it to pieces. his sojourn at this school had been one long feud with authority. the boys did not seem to sympathise with him. their point of view was conventional and priggish.

every morning there was a short service in the pitch-pine school chapel, and every morning an interval between lessons called the hour, in which the boys played nondescript games, chiefly a game called it. if you were it you had to catch someone else, and then he became it. on sunday afternoon we went for a walk. on sunday evening the headmaster read out a book called the last abbot of glastonbury, which i revelled in. after the first week i had got more or less used to my new life. in a fortnight’s time i was quite happy and enjoying myself; but every now and then life was marred and made hideous for the time being by sudden and unexpected dramas. the first drama was that of the spanish chestnuts. there were some spanish chestnuts lying about in the garden. we were told not to eat these. some of the boys did eat them, and one boy gave me a piece of something to eat on the end of a knife. it was no bigger than a crumb, and it turned out afterwards to be a bit of spanish chestnut, or at least i thought it might have been. one afternoon at tea the head rapped on his table with his knife. there was a dead silence. “all boys who have eaten spanish chestnuts are to stand up.”[72] nobody stood up, and there was a long pause. i think the boys were puzzled, and did not know they had been eating spanish chestnuts. i certainly did not know a spanish chestnut by sight. i had no chestnut on my conscience. after a very long pause the headmaster made some rather facetious remarks, which i thought were meant to encourage us, but the other boys, knowing him better, knew that they were ironical and portended dreadful things. one boy stood up. then, after a slight pause, another; about four or five boys followed suit. i suddenly remembered the incident of the penknife in the gymnasium three days before. could it have been that i had eaten a spanish chestnut? was that little bit of white crumb on the end of the knife a part of a spanish chestnut? i had not seen a whole spanish chestnut anywhere. in any case i had better be on the safe side, and i stood up. the headmaster made a cutting comment on boys who were so slow to own up. a few more stood up, and that was all. the head then delivered a serious homily. we had been guilty of three things: greed, disobedience, and deceit. we would all do two hours’ extra work on a half-holiday.

there was electric light in the school, and the electric light was oddly enough supposed to be under the charge of one of the boys, who was called the head engineer. clever and precocious as this boy was, i cannot now believe that his office was a serious one, although we took it seriously indeed at the time. however that may be, nobody except this boy was allowed to go into the engine-shed or to have anything to do with the electric light. we were especially forbidden to touch any of the switches in the house or ever to turn on or off the electric light ourselves. electric light in houses at that time was a new thing, and few private houses were lighted with it. one day one of the boys was visited by his parents, and he could not resist turning on the electric light in one of the rooms to show them what it was like. unfortunately the head saw him do this through the window, and directly his parents were gone the boy was flogged. every week the school newspaper appeared. it was edited by two of the boys in the first division, and handed round to the boys at tea-time. this was a trying and painful moment for some of the boys, as there were often in this newspaper scathing articles on the cricket or football play of some of[73] the boys written by one of the masters, and all mentioning them by name; and as parents took in the newspaper it was far from pleasant to be pilloried in this fashion. just before half-term another drama occurred. i was doing a sum in short division, and another boy was waiting for me to go out. he was impatient, and he said, “that’s right; don’t you see the answer is 3456,” or whatever it was. i scribbled it down, but unfortunately had left a mistake in the working, so the answer was right and the sum was partly wrong. this was at once detected, and i was asked if i had had any help. i said “yes,” and i was then accused of having wanted to get marks by unfair means, and of having cheated. we did not even know these particular sums received marks. the division master bit his knuckles, and said he would report the matter to the headmaster. when i went into chapel from the vestry, robed in a white surplice, he pinned a piece of paper with cheat on it, on to my back. i was appalled, but as nothing happened immediately i began to recover, and on the following sunday when we were writing home the master told me i could put in my sunday letter that i had done very well, and that i was his favourite boy. this was only his fun, but i took it quite seriously, and i did not put it in my letter, because i thought the praise excessive. on monday morning there was what was called “reading over.” the boys sat in the hall, grouped in their divisions. the headmaster in a silk gown stood up at a high desk, the three undermasters sat in a semicircle round him, also in gowns, and one division after another went and stood up in front of the desk while the report of the week’s work was read out. when the fourth division went up, the news was read out that duckworth and baring had been guilty of a conspiracy, and had tried to get marks by unfair means. duckworth was blamed even more severely than i was, being an older boy.

we were told this would be mentioned in our report, and that if anything of the kind occurred again we would be flogged. when this was over, the boys turned on duckworth and myself and asked us how we could have done such a base act. we were shunned like two cardsharpers, and it took us some time to recover our normal position. the half-term report was about nothing else, and my father was dreadfully upset. my mother came down to see me, and i told her the whole story, and i think she understood what had happened. i got[74] through the rest of the term without any fresh dramas, and did well in trials at the end of the term.

one day my sister susan unwittingly caused me annoyance by writing to me and sealing the letter with her name, susan. the boys saw the seal and called out, “he’s got a sister called susan; he’s got a sister called susan.” sisters should be warned never to let their christian names come to the knowledge of their brother’s schoolfellows. this kind of thing is typical of private-school life. the boys were childish and conventional, but they did not bully. it was the masters who every now and then made life a misery. in spite of everything, the boys were happy—in any case, they thought that was happiness, as they knew no better.

in the afternoons we played rugby football, an experience which was in my case exactly what max beerbohm describes it in one of his essays: running about on the edge of a muddy field. the second division master pursued the players with exhortations and imprecations, and every now and then a good kicking was administered to the less successful and energetic players, which there were quite a number of. the three best rugby football players were allowed to wear on sundays a light blue velvet cap with a silver maltese cross on it, and a silver tassel. i am sorry to say that this cap was not always given to the best players. it was given to the boys the headmaster liked best. what i enjoyed most were the readings out by the headmaster, which happened on sunday afternoons and sometimes on ordinary evenings. he read out several excellent books: the moonstone, the leavenworth case, a lot of pickwick, and, during my first term, treasure island. the little events, the rages for stamp collecting and swopping, stag-beetle races, aquariums, secret alphabets, chess tournaments, that make up the interests of a boy’s everyday life outside his work and his play, delighted me. i was a born collector but a bad swopper, and made ludicrous bargains. i made great friends with a new boy called ferguson, and taught him how to play spankaboo. we never told anyone, and the secret was never discovered. we used to find food for the game in bound copies of the illustrated london news. we had drawing lessons and music lessons, and i was delighted to find that my first school piece was a gigue by corelli that i had heard my mother play at the concert at stafford house, which i have already described.[75] at the end of the term came the school concert, for which there were many rehearsals. i did not take any part in it, except in the chorus, who sang “adeste fideles” in latin at the end of it.

some scenes were acted from the bourgeois gentilhomme, the same scenes we had acted at membland, but i took no part in them. then came the unutterable joy of going home for the holidays, which were spent at membland. when i arrived and had my first schoolroom tea i was rather rough with the toast, and chérie said: “est-ce là les manières d’ascot?” at the end of the holidays i spent a few days in london, and was taken to the play, and enjoyed other dissipations which made me a day or two late in going back to school. the holiday task was bulwer lytton’s harold, which my mother read out to me. as soon as i arrived at school i was given the holiday-task paper and won the prize, a book called half-hours in the far south, which i have never read, but which i still possess and respect.

during the lent term we had athletic sports: long jump, high jump, hurdle, flat and obstacle races. i won a heat in a hurdle race and nearly got a place in the final, the only approach to an athletic achievement in the whole of my life. a curious drama happened during this term. a boy called phillimore was the chief actor in it. he was in the first division. one day the headmaster went up to london. during his absence a message was sent round in his name by one of the undermasters. the message was brought by one of the boys to the various divisions. it was to the effect that we were allowed or not allowed to do some specific thing. when the boy, who was new and inexperienced, brought the message into the first division, phillimore said to him, “ask mr. so-and-so with my compliments whether the message is genuine.” “do you really want me to ask him?” asked the boy. “yes, of course,” said phillimore. the little boy went back to the master, who happened to be the severest of all the masters, and said: “phillimore wants to know whether the message is genuine.” as soon as the headmaster returned the whole school was summoned, and the headmaster in his black gown told us the dreadful story of phillimore’s unheard-of act. phillimore was had up in front of the whole school, and told to explain his conduct. he said it was a joke, and that he[76] had never dreamt that the boy would deliver the message. the explanation was not accepted, and phillimore was stripped of his first division privileges. the privileges of the first division were various: they were allowed to dig in a place called the wilderness, which was a sand-heap through which ran a light truck railway without an engine. they went on special expeditions.

these expeditions need an explanation. sometimes they consisted merely of walks to bagshot or virginia water, and perhaps a picnic tea. sometimes, as in the case of the first division expeditions or the choir expedition, they were far more elaborate, and consisted of a journey to london with sight-seeing, or to places as far off as bath and the isle of wight.

during my first term the choir went to swindon to see the great western works, to reading to see the biscuit factory, and to bath in one day, and we got home late in the night. during my second term we spent a day in london inspecting the tower, the mint, and other sights, and had tea at the house of one of the boys’ parents, colonel broadwood, who lived in eccleston square.

these expeditions were recorded in the school gazette, and when my mother heard of our having had tea with colonel broadwood, she said: “why should not the choir, next time they came to london, have luncheon at charles street?” the idea made me shudder, although i said nothing. the idea of having one’s school life suddenly brought into one’s home life, to see the headmaster sitting down to luncheon in one’s home, seemed to me altogether intolerable. my mother thought i would perhaps be ashamed of the food for not being good enough, and said: “if we had a very good luncheon.” but that wasn’t the reason. it never happened. anything more miserable than the appearance of broadwood when we had tea in his father’s house cannot be imagined.

nothing was more strange at this school than the sudden way in which either a treat or a punishment descended on the school. the treats, too, were of such a curious kind, and involved so much travelling. sometimes the first division would be taken up en masse to a matinée. sometimes they would be away for nearly twenty-four hours. the punishments were equally unexpected and curious. one boy was suddenly flogged for cutting off a piece of his hair and keeping the piece[77] in his drawer. in the second division the boys were punished by electricity. the division was made to join hands, and a strong electric shock was passed through it. this went on until one day one boy, smarting from an overcharge of electricity, took the battery and threw it at the master’s head, inflicting a sharp wound. nothing was said about this action, to the immense astonishment of the boys, who thought it jolly of him not to sneak.

we lived in an atmosphere of complete uncertainty. we never knew if some quite harmless action would not be construed into a mortal offence. any criticism, explicit or implicit, of the food was considered the greatest of crimes. the food was good, and the boys had nothing to complain of, nor did they, but they were sometimes punished for looking as if they didn’t like the cottage pie.

one day i heard a boy use the expression “mighty good.” the next day i said at breakfast that the porridge was mighty good. the master overheard me and asked me what i said. i answered, “i said the porridge was very good.” “no,” said the master, “that is not exactly what you said.” i then admitted to the use of the word mighty. this was thought to be ironical, and i was stopped talking at meals for a week.

another time a message was passed up to me to stop talking at luncheon. this was frequently done; a message used to be passed up saying: “baring and bell stop talking,” but sometimes the boys used to be inattentive, and if one sat far up table the message had a way of getting lost on the way. this happened to me. i was stopped talking and the message never reached me, and i went on talking gaily. afterwards the master sent for me and said, “you’ll find yourself in queer street.” i was not allowed to remonstrate. i didn’t even know what i was accused of at the time, and i was stopped talking for a week.

the headmaster was a virulent politician and a fanatical tory. on the 5th of november an effigy of mr. gladstone used to be burnt in the grounds, and there was a little note in the gazette to say there were only seven liberals in the school, the least of whom was myself. the gazette went on to add that “needless to say, the school were supporters of the church and the state.” one day somebody rashly sent the head a liberal circular. he sent it back with some coppers[78] inside, so that the recipient should have to pay eightpence on receipt of it, and the whole school was told of his action. one day there was a by-election going on hard-by. all the school were taken with blue ribbons on their jackets except the unfortunate seven liberals, who were told to stay at home and work.

one year mr. joseph chamberlain was burnt in effigy, as he was then a radical, and the effigy held in its hands a large cardboard cow with three acres written on it. it was a bad time for the liberals, as the foreign policy of the liberal government was at that time particularly weak, and it was impossible to defend mr. gladstone’s egyptian policy, still less lord granville. so the head smiled in triumph over the renegades, one of whom i am glad to say was basil blackwood. he took the matter very calmly and drew offensive caricatures of the conservative politicians.

during the summer the rage the boys had for keeping caterpillars in breeding cages, for collecting butterflies, and keeping live stock was allowed full play. the head himself had supplies of live animals brought to the school, among which were salamanders and italian snakes. i myself invested in a green lizard, which although it had no tail, was in other respects satisfactory, and ate, so a letter of mine of that date says, a lot of worms. i also had a large, fat toad, which was blind in one eye, but for a toad, affectionate. but the ideal of the boys was to possess a natterjack toad, whatever that may mean or be. we were allowed to go out on the heath during the summer and catch small lizards and butterflies, and altogether natural history was encouraged; so was gardening. boys who wished to do so might have a garden, and a prize was offered for the garden which was the prettiest and the best kept throughout the summer term. i won that prize. my garden contained four rose trees, several geraniums, some cherry pie, and a border of lobelias. it was a conventional garden, but there was a professional touch about it, and i tended it with infinite care. the prize was a ball of string in an apple made of lebanon wood. sometimes we were allowed into the strawberry beds, and could eat as many strawberries as we liked. during this term i made great friends with broadwood. we were both in the third division, and decided that we would write a pantomime together some day. one day we were[79] looking on at a cricket match which was being played against another school. i have told what happened in detail elsewhere in the form of a story, but the sad bare facts were these. the school was getting beaten, the day was hot, the match was long and tedious, and broadwood and another boy called bell and myself wandered away from the match; two of us climbed up the wooden platform, which was used for letting off fireworks on the 5th of november. bell remained below, and we threw horse-chestnuts at him, which he caught in his mouth. presently one of the masters advanced towards us, biting his knuckles, which he did when he was in a great rage, and glowered. he ordered us indoors, and gave us two hours’ work to do in the third division schoolroom. we went in as happy as larks, and glad to be in the cool. but at tea we saw there was something seriously amiss. the rival eleven who had beaten us were present, but not a word was spoken. there was an atmosphere of impending doom over the school charged with the thunder of a coming row. after tea, when the guests had gone, the school was summoned into the hall, and the head, gowned and frowning, addressed us, and accused the whole school in general, and broadwood, bell, and myself in particular, of want of patriotism, bad manners, inattention, and vulgarity. he was disgusted, he said, with the behaviour of the school before strangers. we were especially guilty, but the whole school had shown want of attention, and gross callousness and indifference to the cricket match (which was all too true), and consequently had tarnished the honour of the school. there was to have been an expedition to the new forest next week. that expedition would not come off; in fact, it would never come off; and the speech ended and the school trooped out in gloomy silence and broke up into furtive whispering groups. that night in my cubicle i said to worthington that i thought campbell minor, who had been scoring during the match, had certainly behaved well all day, and didn’t he deserve to go to the new forest? “no,” said worthington; “he whistled twice.” “oh,” i said, “then of course he can’t go.”

but the choir had an expedition that term, nevertheless. we went to shanklin in the isle of wight, where we bathed in the sea and got back after midnight.

my mother took my sister elizabeth to the ascot races[80] that year. elizabeth was just out, and they came and fetched me and took me too, as boys were allowed to go to the races. a little later another drama happened, in which i was unwillingly to play the chief part. we were all playing on the heath one morning, and i had just found a lizard and was utterly absorbed in this find when i got a summons that i was wanted by the head. i found the head in the masters’ common room enjoying a little collation. it was half-past ten. “a telegram has come,” said the head, “that you have been especially invited to a children’s garden-party at marlborough house by the princess of wales, and you are to go up to london at once. are you,” said the head ironically, “a special friend of the princess of wales?” half excited, half fearful, and not without forebodings, i changed into my best clothes, and ran off to catch the train. i was to come back that evening. i arrived in time for luncheon, and after luncheon went to the garden-party with hugo, where we spent a riotous afternoon. there were performing dogs and many games. my father was not there. he was in devonshire. when we got home it was found that i had missed the train i was supposed to go back by, and my mother thought i had better stay the night. she sent off a telegram to the head, and asked if i might do so. i thought this was a rash act. the answer came back just before dinner that if i did not come back that night i was not to come back at all. everyone was distraught. there was only one more train, which did not get to ascot till half-past twelve.

my mother was incensed with the headmaster, and said if my father was there she knew he would not let me go back. i remained neutral in the general discussion and absolutely passive, while my fate hung in the balance, but i wanted to go back, on the whole. both courses seemed quite appalling: to go back after such an adventure, or not to go, and face a new school. at first it was settled that on no account should i go, but finally it was settled that i should go. d. took me. we arrived late. there were no flys at the station and we had to walk to the school. we did not get there till half-past one in the morning. d. said she would sleep at the hotel, but the matron who opened the door for us insisted on giving her a bedroom. the next morning i got up at half-past six to practise the pianoforte, as usual, and d. looked into the room and said good-bye, and then i felt i had to begin to live down this appalling[81] episode. but to my surprise it was not alluded to. the truth being, as i afterwards found out, that not only my father and mother, but dr. warre of eton, had written to the headmaster to tell him he had behaved foolishly, and shortly afterwards, to make amends, i was sent up to london to the dentist. but oh, parents, dear parents, if you only knew what stress of mind such episodes involve, you would not insist on such favours, nor ever forward invitations of that kind, not even at the bidding of the king.

d. paid me one other visit while i was at ascot, and brought with her a large bunch of white grapes from sheppy. we were not allowed hampers, nor were we allowed to eat any food brought by strangers or relations in the house, and when i saw that bunch of white grapes i was terrorstruck. i made d. hide it at once. i was afraid that even its transient presence in the house might be discovered, nor did i eat one grape.

i cannot remember that summer holiday, unless it was that summer we went to contrexéville for the second time, but when i went back to school in september, hugo went with me and we shared the same room. games of spankaboo went on every night. during all my schooltime at ascot i have already said that i was never once bullied by the boys, but i never seemed to do right either in the eyes of the headmaster or of the second division master. the two other masters were friendly. these two masters, we were one day informed, intended to leave the school and set up a school of their own at eastbourne. they were both of them friendly to hugo and myself. the school was to subscribe and give them a bacon dish in sheffield plate as a parting gift. one day i wrote home and suggested that hugo and i should go to that school. i did not think this request would be taken seriously. it seemed to me quite fantastic—an impossible, wild fancy. to my intense surprise no answer explaining how impossible such a thing was arrived, and i forget what happened next, but i know that soon the two departing masters discussed the matter with me, and i found out they were actually in correspondence with my mother. the remaining masters used to scowl at us, but the term ended calmly and we left the day before the end of the term, so i was unable to play in the treble in a piece for three people at one pianoforte called “marche romaine,” which i was down for on the concert programme, the[82] second time i missed performing at a concert in public, and the opportunity of a lifetime missed. when i got to membland i found it was settled that we were not going back to ascot, but to the new school, st. vincent’s, at eastbourne. the headmaster was told, and he at first accepted the matter calmly, but a little later he wrote to my father and asked him what reasons he had for taking his sons away if other parents asked him. my father seldom wrote a letter of more than one page. but on that occasion he wrote a letter of four pages, and the head wrote back to say that he was entirely satisfied with his reasons. my mother and i always wondered what was in that letter. my father when asked said: “i knew what the man wanted to know, and i told him,” but we never knew what that was.

in january hugo and i went to eastbourne, and my friend, broadwood, also left ascot and followed us. there were only nine boys at first. but the next term there were, i think, twenty, then thirty, and soon the school became almost as big as the ascot school, where there were forty boys.

before i left eastbourne, the headmaster of my first school died, and i do not know what happened to the school afterwards. several of the ascot boys came to eastbourne later, but the boys at ascot were not allowed to correspond with us. my cousins, rowland and windham baring, arrived, the sons of my uncle mina, who was afterwards lord cromer.

at eastbourne a new life began. there was more amusement than work about it, and everything was different. we played soccer with another school; we went to the swimming bath, and i learnt to swim; to a gymnasium, and we were drilled by a volunteer sergeant. broadwood and i gave theatrical performances, one of which represented the headmaster’s ménage at our first school. it must have been an amusing play to watch, as the point of it was that the ascot headmaster discovered his wife kissing her brother, another of the ascot masters, the villain, and she sang a song composed by broadwood and myself, of which the refrain was, “what would herbert say, dear—what would herbert say?” herbert being the ascot headmaster. herbert then broke on to the scene and gave way to paroxysms of jealous rage. another boy who came to this school was pierre de jaucourt, the son of monsieur de jaucourt, a great friend of my father’s. pierre was one of the playfellows of[83] my childhood. he took part in the dramatic performances organised by broadwood and myself in the boot room, which became more and more ambitious, and in one play the devil appeared through a trap-door in a cloud of fire.

broadwood and i were constantly making up topical duets modelled on those of harry nicholls and herbert campbell in the drury lane pantomime. but we were not satisfied with these scratch performances in the boot room, although we had a make-up box from clarkson, and wigs, and we decided to act she stoops to conquer, which was at once put into rehearsal. i was cast for the part of mr. hardcastle, hugo for that of miss hastings, broadwood for that of marlowe, bell for that of miss hardcastle, and an overgrown boy called pyke-nott for the part of tony lumpkin. after a few rehearsals it was settled that the play should be done on a real stage, and that parents and others should be invited to witness the performance. dresses were made for us in london, scenery was painted by mr. shelton, our drawing-master, and my father and mother came down to see the play.

hugo looked a vision of beauty as miss hastings. pyke-nott was annoyed because he was not allowed to sing a song about fred archer in the tavern scene, instead of the real song which is a part of the text. it was thought that a song of which the refrain was, “archer, archer up,” would be an anachronism.

the play went off very well, and hugo played a breakdown on the banjo between the acts, but when he had played three bars the bridge of his banjo fell with a crash, and the solo came to an end.

we kept up the custom of going expeditions, not long ones, but only to places like pevensey and hurstmonceux, which were quite close. we also went out riding with a riding-master on the downs, and in the summer we sailed in sailing boats. altogether it was an ideal school life. we found the work easy, and we all seemed to get quantities of prizes, but we learnt little. hugo and i continued to play spankaboo in our room, and hugo would do anything in the world if i threatened to refuse to play. so much so, that one of the masters thought i was blackmailing him, and we were told to reveal our strange secret at once. this we both resolutely refused to do, protesting with tears that it was a private matter of no importance, and there the matter was allowed to rest, the master merely[84] saying that if he ever saw any signs of anything subterranean going on we should be punished.

i remember one curious episode happening. one of the masters found a letter addressed to one of the boys written to him by another boy. this was the text of the letter: “dear mister c.,—may i have my sausage next sunday at breakfast because i am very hungry.”

mr. c., it was discovered, had been regularly levying a tribute from his neighbour at breakfast for some weeks, and the other boy, a much smaller boy, had had to go without his sausage. mr. c. was severely flogged in front of the whole school. boys who went to scotland for the holidays were allowed to leave a day before the others, and as we had an all day’s journey to devonshire, we shared the same privilege; so did pierre de jaucourt, who went to france. this inspired broadwood to make the following lampoon, which was good-naturedly but insistently chanted by the rest of the school on the day before we went away:

“the honourables are going away to-morrow,

and ten to one the count goes too.

we poor swinies we don’t go,

we poor swinies we don’t go.

the honourables are going away to-morrow,

and ten to one the count goes too.”

when we went home for the holidays for the first time from eastbourne the train stopped at slough. the st. vincent’s term had ended a few days before the ascot term, and there, on the platform of slough station, we saw the headmaster of our ascot school, surrounded by the first division and evidently enjoying a first division expedition.

“why don’t you put your head out and say how do you do to them?” said my mother, but hugo and i almost hid under the seat, and we lay right back from the windows, spellbound, till the train went on.

broadwood and i used to meet in the holidays in london. broadwood used to say to his parents that he was having luncheon with me in charles street, and i used to say i was having luncheon with broadwood in eccleston square, but what really happened was that we used to go to a bun shop, or have no luncheon at all, as neither of us would be seen at luncheon with a friend in each other’s homes.

[85]

broadwood said that his mother cross-questioned him about our house, and that he gave a most fantastic account of our mode of life.

while we were at school at eastbourne many eventful things happened at home. in the summer holidays of 1886, hugo and i went with my father to the cowes regatta.

in september of the same year my father, hugo, and myself went for a long cruise in the waterwitch. we started from membland and stopped at falmouth, and mounts bay, and saw over st. michael’s mount, and then we sailed to the scilly isles, where we spent a day in the wonderful garden of tresco. at that time of year the sea in the scilly isles was as blue as the mediterranean, especially when seen through the fuchsia hedges and the almost tropical vegetation of the tresco gardens. we then sailed across the irish channel to bantry bay and up the kenmare river and drove in an irish car right across the mountains to killarney.

next year was jubilee year. both my eldest sisters were married that year. hugo and i attended these weddings and the jubilee procession as well, which we saw from bath house, piccadilly, but i don’t remember much about it, except the queen’s bonnet, which had diamonds in front of it, and the german crown prince in his white uniform, but i remember the aspect of london before and after the jubilee, the venetian masts, the flags, the crowds, the carriages, the atmosphere of festivity, and the jokes about the jubilee.

we went on acting a french play every year at christmas, and it was before margaret was married that we had our greatest success with a little one-act play by dumas fils called comme elles sont toutes, in which margaret and susan did the chief parts quite admirably, and in which i had a minor part. this was performed at christmas 1886. after elizabeth and margaret were married, susan and i and hugo continued to act, and we did three plays in all: les rêves de marguerite (1887); la souris (1888); l’amour de l’art (by labiche) (1889).

another home excitement was the building of an organ in the house in charles street. it was by way of being a small organ at first, but it afterwards expanded into quite a respectable size, and had three manuals. this gave me a mania for everything to do with organs. i got to know every detail in the process of organ-building and every device, tubular-pneumatic,[86] and otherwise. the organ we had at membland had been built by mr. hele of plymouth, and when we went back to membland, when the organ was being built in london, my mother said: “don’t say anything to mr. hele about this, as he will be hurt at our not having employed him.” one day mr. hele came to tune the organ, and i disappeared with him, as was my wont, right under the staircase into the very entrails of the organ and watched him at his work. while we were there in the darkness and the confined space, i confessed to him the secret that we were having an organ built in london. when we came out he went straight to my mother and said that messrs. hele would have been only too glad to build an organ in london. when my mother asked me how i could have told mr. hele we were having an organ built in london, i said i thought that as we were right inside the organ, in the dark and in such a narrow space, that it wouldn’t matter, and that he would forget. when my mother told chérie of this episode, chérie laughed more than i ever saw her laugh, and i couldn’t understand why; i was, in fact, a little offended.