Love from Boy

by Donald Sturrock

  Roald was profoundly unhappy at Repton. The first draft of Boy paints a picture of a young man for whom the pleasures of childhood had been stifled by an unfair system, devoid of affection and feeling, which had forced him into the role of outsider. “Four years is a long time to be in prison,” he writes. “It seemed as if we were groping through an almost limitless black tunnel at the end of which there glimmered a small bright light, and if we ever reached it we would be eighteen years old.”29

  In that early draft of Boy, Roald describes being bullied by several senior boys, including one incident where he was left “half-drowned” in the house lavatories.30 But these same tormentors adopt a different guise in his letters home. The abusive and supercilious Middleton, for instance, whose “cold, rather close eyes,” Roald villainously recreated in his short story “Galloping Foxley,” comes across in the letters as nothing more threatening than a connoisseur of wild irises. Flowers act as camouflage too for W. W. Wilson—the ringleader of those responsible for the bog-holing—who emerges instead as something of a dandy, obsessed with exotic breeds of chrysanthemum. Roald was creating a diversionary illusion. And, at least for his mother, these fictions were largely effective. She had no idea of her son’s sufferings when she came up for the school’s Speech Day in the summer of 1930. Writing shortly afterward to her daughter Else, she noted that she was “very pleased” with Repton. “It is much nicer than I expected it to be . . . Roald’s study was absolutely crammed with flowers.”31

  Roald was not an academic high flier. He was a misfit. A Norwegian. As a thirteen-year-old, he had size eleven feet and was taller than most of the teachers. Nor did he care to toe anyone else’s line. Charles Pringle summed him up in one adjective: “unconventional.”32 He was always ill at ease with Repton’s authoritarian hierarchy. His school reports accuse him of “idleness,” “apathy,” and “stupidity,” and he is described by turns as “lethargic,” “languid,” and “too pleased with himself.” He never became a boazer. He was however good at sports, including boxing, which doubtless helped ease some of his torments. “You had to be good at games,” Nancy Deuchar, his housemaster’s daughter explained to me, with a knowing grin. “If you weren’t good at games, life could be really hard.”33

  His friendships too were unpredictable. Roald respected his housemaster, S. S. Jenkyns or “Binks,” and liked his wife, “Ma” Binks, and their daughters, “the Binklets,” but his closest friendship was with an older boy. Michael Arnold was some two years his senior and similarly self-reliant. Roald hailed him to his mother as “the cleverest boy in England”34 and later insisted she call him by his first name, which was unusual in a world where everyone was referred to by their surnames. Roald’s unabashed delight in smoking may surprise some younger readers, unfamiliar with its prevalence in 1930s Britain. From the age of sixteen, Roald was allowed to smoke at home and his mother thought nothing of buying him a special meerschaum pipe to use while on holiday in Norway. The habit was even tolerated at school.

  Repton, like St. Peter’s, was not a healthy place. “Roald caught everything there,”35 recalled his elder sister Alfhild. He had a heart murmur. He got mumps. He suffered from headaches and constipation. He was often injured and always desperately trying to avoid the latest bouts of cold and flu. His letters from this period brim over with medical information and sometimes his requests read like a lexicon of contemporary medicines. Food also features strongly. The boys received regular rations from home in the post—including eggs, which often broke on the journey—to supplement what the school provided and several times a week the fags cooked meals for the other members of their study on portable paraffin primus stoves.

  Roald’s love of wildlife and the countryside is much in evidence and he spends a lot of his spare time at school walking and bird-watching in the surrounding fields and dales. It was a passion he shared with his mother and sisters. The family home in Bexley was a dizzying menagerie of dogs, cats, mice, tortoises, rabbits, and canaries which, like the cardinal birds—imported from the Americas—were allowed to fly free through some parts of the house. His mother’s letters were filled with the antics of her domestic menagerie and Roald’s involvement in them is delightfully expressed in a comic letter, written to the cardinals themselves and expressed in Repton vernacular.

  The letters abound with the classical adjectives of the moment. “Topping,” “decent,” and “graggers”—Repton slang for “Congratulations”—pepper many of the letters. Yet through the schoolboy slang, the Repton letters show Roald practicing as a humorist and growing into a dextrous narrator, able to make sharp, comic observations about the adults around him. His relish for the joys of youth is also striking. Whether tobogganing down a hill, rioting on a train, chucking powder around his dormitory, or climbing illicitly up the tower of Repton Church, the letters convey an exuberant and infectious delight in the adventures of childhood, and a sense that these simple, unsophisticated pleasures can put misery and adversity to flight.

  The world outside school hardly seems to exist. There is barely a mention of politics, while a sense of the Great Depression appears only when it is rumoured that, because of economic cutbacks, the school’s fancy tailcoats might be replaced by regular, more inexpensive suits. Fortunately for the Dahls, the children’s trust funds seem to have seen them through these bumpy times. The regular “field days” and activity in Corps, however, are a reminder that outside the dales of Derbyshire, Europe was moving steadily toward armed conflict. Roald, though, is more interested in plotting holidays in Cornwall, Tenby and Norway than he is in the fate of the National Government in Britain or the rise of Nazism in Germany.

  In Roald’s penultimate year at Repton, Michael Arnold was expelled for having sexual relations with younger boys in the Priory. Both Roald and his mother appear to have been very forgiving of Michael and the two boys remained close, going on holiday together to Norway and the Côte d’Azur after Michael’s expulsion. The incident once again reveals how much Roald sanitised the more disagreeable aspects of school life for his mother and how eager he was to create a reassuringly carefree fiction. When the truth emerged, Roald was forced to admit to his mother that he had lied. His housemaster also felt compelled to write to her and explain what had happened.

  The tone of his letters to his mother changes subtly after this incident, which possibly marked a rite of passage into adulthood for young Roald. I have included a letter from Roald’s housemaster S. S. Jenkyns to Sofie Magdalene in this chapter, not only because it reflects the prevailing attitudes to teenagers and sex in schools at the time, but also because it is so revealing of Roald’s psychology and his desire not to worry his mother with bad news. It is interesting that she kept it with Roald’s own letters.

  For a family that appeared to be so open about many things, it is curious that the subject of Roald’s own sexual life is strictly off limits. It always would be. At the end of his time at Repton, his sister Alfhild’s Norwegian friend Kari became the object of Roald’s desire, but although some boys were known to have “wives” in the local village, Roald was not one of these.36 Indeed, later in his life he would argue that the world had got too casual about sex and that adolescents would do well to return to the values that marked his own teenage years.

  I am very glad I did not have to go through the horrors of promiscuity that torture today’s children. In this benighted age, girls and boys treat the sexual act rather as rabbits do, or cattle . . . Some of you may not believe this, but I promise you that a young man in the 1930s would have to court a girl for six months before he got anywhere near the mattress. He would have to ply her with flowers, give her meals he could ill-afford and behave generally with immense circumspection. If he tried anything too early, he got the boot.37

  In his remaining time at Repton, Roald indulged his passions, both for invention and photography. One senses that his darkroom gave him a creative hinterland, as well as a refuge from some of the un
pleasantness of school life. Then, in 1932, after months of persuasion, his mother bought him a motorcycle for Christmas. The machine was chosen by his half-brother Louis. Roald hid it in the barn of a local farm and reveled in driving it through town, muffled up to the eyeballs so no one could recognise him. His final weeks at Repton were also spent building gigantic fire-balloons, which he and his friends constructed out of tissue paper, wire and paraffin. They launched them with glee into the night sky. Roald claimed the biggest was eighteen feet high.38

  Before he left Repton in the summer of 1934, Roald had already decided university was not for him. He wanted something more adventurous. He was finished with education and with hierarchies and so he set off on a walking expedition to map uncharted areas of Newfoundland. He left his schooldays behind him with no regrets whatsoever.

  January 18th 1929 [sic]*

  The Priory House

  Repton

  Dear Mama

  I don’t suppose that you will get my postcard before this letter, it is Sunday tomorrow.

  It’s topping here, I don’t have to fag for the first fortnight, and I have a desk in a very decent chap’s study, K Mendl. I am in Lower four, B, Mr. Carter’s form, and I believe by a fluke I’m top of it in Maths; All the chaps here are very decent, both Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, being exceedingly decent; (Mr. Jenkins is always called Biggs.)* The dormitories are called ‘Bedders’ and the school shop sells everything from an unsophisticated piece of bacon fat, to the school blazer. That reminds me, I have got all my footer things, and straw hat; my house colour is black and blue, the hat-band being something like this:

  The white stripes are really blue, and the bit filled in is black.

  I think Priory is easily the nicest house of the whole 9. All the houses being totally separate buildings, and a good way apart from each other . . .

  The best bit of it is we are allowed to go anywhere we like when nothing is happening. This afternoon I went for a walk over the fields and over a stream called the ‘Stinker.’ Tonight we are cooking our own supper, sausages etc.

  Our study is called the Gramophone Study and has a large gramophone and heaps of records. It is jolly good; it’s singing away just behind me now.

  Please tell Else and Asta not to forget to feed my mice.

  I don’t at present want a cake, but I’ll let you know when I do.

  Love from

  Roald

  P.S. I forgot to tell you, I sleep in a comparatively small bedder; seven chaps in it.

  R.D.

  The arch through which all boys entered the main buildings of Repton School. Originally built for Repton Priory, which was dissolved in 1538, it was moved to its current position in 1906. Roald’s “house” on a neighboring site was called the Priory.

  January 25th 1930

  Priory House

  Repton

  Derby

  Dear Mama

  Thanks awfully for the tablets. I took some a few times and the indigestion has stopped now, they are jolly good. I have just got the diary, it’s a topping one, thanks awfully; I was just going to ask you for one. Oh! Before I forget it, will you send me a new tooth-brush, and a tube of Euthymol;* my tooth-brush is getting soft, and I am running out of tooth-paste. Please don’t forget to send it.

  We have half-holidays on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and the latter day we have no prep, at least I don’t because I have joined the ‘Mussoc,’ or Musical Society! It’s jolly good fun; to begin with you get off prep, and sing instead; you see when you come first, you have to go to Dr. Stocks to have your voice tested, and he may ask you if you with to join the ‘mussoc’, and you say ‘yes’, and he puts your name down, and on Saturday evenings, instead of doing prep we go and practice, for an exhibition at the end of the term; there are about a hundred chaps, but we practise in sets. They try to make me sing Alto! At any rate its much better than prep, in fact its jolly good sport, and rather funny.

  I am in form, ‘Four, two, B,’ or ‘Lower Four B’, I am top of it in maths, and fourth in French. The work is comparatively easy, and at present it is easier than the St. Peter’s. The form master is Mr. Jack Carter, a jolly good chap. Mr Jenkyns provides supper on ordinary days but on the three half-holidays, we get same thing for ourselves at the Grubber.* The Grubber is a very worthy man who keeps the school shop, and he has in stock every conceivable kind of sweets, chocolate, or anything like Force* or tinned fruit and even sardines and biscuits. He also sells everything to do with sports-clothes and sport. For supper I generally have tinned fruit or force. Next term, I’ll bring a Primus and have baked beans, tomato soup, asparagus, or eggs and bacon, and having fires in our studies, we have toast.

  . . . The chap who takes us in maths; Major Strickland (Stricker), who is chief of the O.T.C. is terrifically humorous. For instance, he will suddenly turn to you and say ‘Are you a slug, do you leave a long slimy track behind you?’ The chap says ‘no’ and he then says, ‘Well you’re a fungus, in fact you’re wet!’ And perhaps he’ll make a statement: ‘Do you understand,’ and then he will repeat it about six times, either getting louder and louder, or softer and softer, in the end developing into a concentrated mumble. He doesn’t mind being answered back, but rather likes it; he is also very funny when arguing. For instance, if he can’t think of an answer, he’ll say ‘Well you’re . . .’ then after the ‘you’re’ he will start mumbling, gradually getting louder and louder, and in the end developing into a low pitched groan. I believe he’s half-baked! He’s a short man with a face like a field elderberry, and a moustache which closely resembles the African jungle. A voice like a frog, no chest and a pot-belly, no doubt a species of Rumble-hound.

  Please don’t forget the toothpaste and brush.

  Love from

  Roald

  March 2nd 1930

  Priory House

  Repton

  Derbyshire

  Dear Mama

  . . . You seem to have been doing a lot of painting; but when you paint the lav. don’t paint the seat, leaving it wet and sticky, or some unfortunate person who has not noticed it, will adhere to it, and unless his bottom is cut off, or unless he chooses to go about with the seat sticking behind him always, he will be doomed to stay where he is and do nothing but shit for the rest of his life. But no doubt an excellent cure for constipation, as the person, having nothing else to do but to ‘rear’, will consequently be trying to rear the whole time!

  The school boxing competition was held last week (damn I can’t write straight, I’m sorry). We all watched it, one chap was knocked out from half past eleven, and came round at half past one. It was just a lucky shot, the other boy got him just on the side of his face, just above the eye.

  I don’t think that I’ve told you what we do every day, sort of thing: the First bell goes at quarter-past seven, and the fag who is on water in each bedder, gets up and fills the cans with hot water, and closes the windows. Then, if he wants to, gets into bed again. The second bell goes at half past seven, and everyone must be down for prayers by quarter to eight. Then we have a cup of cocoa and biscuits, and go out to an hour of work. On arriving back we have breakfast, then there is about half an hour in which you may do what you like. Then you have prep in the house then go out for the rest of morning’s school.

  The house wireless is now working toppingly,

  Love from

  Roald

  Roald (no. 6) joins fellow schoolboys beagling, March 8th 1930. “Yesterday,” he told his mother, “there was a meet of the Burton Beagles, and half the school went Beagling (you know, they have a pack of small hounds, and a master, and several other men called whips). The thing is to catch a hare.”

  [undated]

  The Priory House

  Repton

  Derby

  Dear Mama

  Thanks awfully for your letter, and the eggs and cake,
of which none were broken. The cake is topping.

  Do you know what Turton & I had yesterday for supper? Stewed Gooseberries. You see Turton had some sent him, amongst other things, by an ex-cook of his living in Norfolk! At any rate we stewed them & put sugar in and they were fine.

  I mustn’t forget to tell you all about Field Day. It was lovely weather, though very foggy when we paraded on the paddock at half past seven, (in uniform, of course.) Then we received our rations, including two apples, and stuffed it all in our packs then we marched to Willington, which is about 20 minutes march.

  Then we assembled in houses on the platform, and got into the train. There was heaps of room, and they were jolly good carriages, each lot of seats had a table, you know the kind. The journey took about an hour and a half.

  When we got to Kettering we fell in again in our platoons, and marched through the town, (which is quite large, at least it took about 20 minute to get to the other end of it.)

  Then we marched 4 miles out into the country, where we split up into companies of about 8 people. By the way there was no time to eat our lunch, so we ate it on the march. The boy commanding my company was called Yates, a school boazer and Head of New House. He is jolly nice.

  The enemy had got into a wood called Geddington Chase, quite a big one, and we had to attack them.

  However Yates thought he would do something rather cunning, so he took us (10 boys including myself) round the side of the wood and to avoid being seen we often had to crawl about on our bellies in the long grass, and over fields. Then we got to the part of the wood which the enemy were not occupying, and marched right through it at a colossal pace, (it was about 4 miles wide!) Two boys could not keep it up so they were left behind. When we got to the other side, we marched to the left so that we were directly behind the enemy. As a matter of fact it was rather a cunning thing to do, on Yates’ part.