LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

      This was never explained to me, with the result that I hated all grown-ups with a hatred that no words can express. They were just so many unreflecting tyrants, and the world was full of them.

      Whatever I did or wanted to do, I was promptly told to ‘don’t’.

      As a parent myself I know how unfortunately necessary this is, because, in keeping with the theory I have expounded above, whatever children want to do is what they should not: but a wise parent withholds some of the ‘dont’s’ for fear of driving the child into the state of mutiny in which I found myself.

      I cannot at all account for the vileness of my temper in childhood’s days. It disappeared entirely with manhood and at my present age I find it very hard to get angry with anyone about anything. My fierce outbursts of rage were succeeded by long periods of sulks which made them worse.

      In these days some kind-hearted faddist would prove that all the evil of my nature proceeded from the fact of something pressing on my brain, and a timely operation might suddenly endow me with the temper of an angel.

      But in the Dark Ages when I was a boy, they thought it was just my wickedness (so did I), and they treated me on that assumption with no more serious operation than the frequent wielding of a slipper or a cane.

      At Ventnor, when I was about eight years old, I decided to commit suicide. I was very miserable, and I attributed none of this misery to my own abominable temperament, but laid it all to the blame of the grown-ups, and suicide seemed to fill two necessary conditions – escape from my own misery, and inflicting misery on grown-ups in their turn.

      I did not stop to reflect that possibly the disappearance of such a horrid child might not cause widespread misery – I simply had the one thought in my mind, ‘They’ll be sorry when I’m gone, and they’ll repent them of their sins. But – ha, ha – it will be too late.’

      I left the house in a raging temper one evening, probably about eight o’clock, and I walked down to the sea to throw myself in. It was bright moonlight, and the fresh night air both cooled my temper and weakened my resolve. What I did I cannot exactly recollect, but I got very wet, and then I must somehow have made up my mind to defer the business to some future occasion, because by about 10 p.m. I found myself back in the town finding life well worth living again.

      The reason of this change of outlook on life was due to the fact that, with some other boys, I had found a loose flap in the big circus tent through which we could gaze on the prancing horses and buxom ladies in tights – a glimpse of Paradise.

      While engaged in this pastime I felt a heavy hand descend on my shoulder, and, turning, gazed into the stern features of one of the town police – the authorities had been informed of my dramatic disappearance, and the incident terminated with my recapture.

      When I was about nine years old my mother went out to India with my elder sisters, while my younger sisters and myself were sent to Woolwich to be under the care of a guardian, an officer’s widow.

      We remained under her care for about five years. Here I found my hatred for grown-ups diminishing. My guardian was a charming lady who let us do exactly as we pleased. It was like a fairy-story – I could not have believed there were such people in the world. She had three sons and two daughters, so that I was able to enjoy the society of other boys, another step in emancipation.

      I should have rewarded this dear lady guardian for the unrestrained freedom she allowed me to enjoy by saying to myself, ‘Here at last is a good, kind, grownup who never says “Don’t”. I must be careful never to cause her any pain or worry,’ but instead of this 1 simply thought ‘Hurrah! Now I can do as I jolly well please.’ And I did so to such effect that on more than one occasion the unfortunate widow was embarrassed by visits from the police.

      My younger sisters were as bad as I was, and between us and the guardian’s own children, it is a marvel to me how that dear lady ever survived. I remember one tutor and several governesses who all left in rapid succession declaring that they could do nothing with such depraved children.

      In the winter term of 1875, when I was just ten years old, I was sent to school at the United Services College, Westward Ho, in North Devon.

      This college was started about the year 1872 on a sort of co-operative principle by a lot of old Admirals and Generals who found themselves like most retired service-men unable, even in those days, to pay the high costs of Public-School education.

      With their very limited funds they could not afford a large outlay on school buildings, and they were consequently delighted to find a real bargain waiting for them on the coast of North Devon.

      Westward Ho had always been famous as a golf centre, and a company had been formed to turn it into a fashionable seaside resort with the additional attraction of the splendid links. A fine pier was built, swimming baths, hotels, and terraces of houses: but visitors failed to come and the property came into the market.

      The founders of the college bought a long terrace of houses at the foot of the high ground facing the sea. These were adapted to form dormitories, class-rooms, and quarters for the masters.

      A long corridor was built to enable masters and boys to pass from one class-room to another in bad weather, and it also served under such conditions as a sort of makeshift playground for the boys. A gymnasium and chapel was built on the north side of the terrace, and a fives-court on the south. In this way at a very small expenditure of time and money, the college came into being.

      We had a very poor lot of buildings compared with any of the well-known public schools, but as most of us had never seen any of these, no feeling of envy rankled in our bosoms, The locality was perfect, with wild scenery and glorious air, at a distance from any large town and out of the reach of parents.

      Bideford was the nearest town, and was of course ‘out of bounds’, which added to its attractions.

      My father being one of the founders, I was destined for the school as soon as I reached the age of ten.

      As regards the staff and the boys, the former were, I should say, a particularly talented set of men and the latter were a rather unusual collection of rough specimens, all, with very few exceptions, being sons of officers in the navy or army. Kipling was one of the exceptions, his parents having wisely selected the school for him on account of the peculiar merits of the Headmaster – Cormell Price. Cormell Price was a very remarkable and gifted man, and the extraordinary success of the college in its earlier years was entirely due to his personality.

      Boys are apt to look on schoolmasters as a sort of brotherhood all pulling together in a more or less successful endeavour to instil some learning – or better still, a love of learning – into youthful minds. It is only later in life that we realize that this team is seldom a team that ‘pulls together’, and I know now that this was the case at Westward Ho. The Headmaster could run the school, but its eventual failure was due to the fact that his ‘team’ were unmanageable.

      And when I look back on those days with the proper perspective of old age, I can see what an impossible task he had.

      The control of 200 wild lads was an easy matter for a man of his charming personality and intuition. But the control of the widely divergent characters of Crofts, Willes, Campbell, Pugh, Haslam, Green, Stevens, Evans, Bode, and others, not forgetting Messieurs Jacquot and Marner, the French masters who succeeded one another, was beyond the power of mortal man.

      Of all the masters Crofts must have been the most impatient of control – he was not the sort of man who would care to accept any other person’s opinion on any subject. He certainly had the great and uncommon gift of imparting instruction as distinct from mere teaching, but he was of a very irritable temperament and gave us the impression that he heartily disliked boys – quite rightly, I dare say, but when one feels like that it is better not to let the boys know it. A keen athlete and a fine swimmer, he was drowned at sea some years after the college had been transferred from North Devon to Harpenden.

      Willes, the padré, was a genial, robust type, popular with both masters and boys and possessed of uncommon common sense that enabled

Скачать книгу