The Puppet Show of Memory. Baring Maurice
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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 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 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 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 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