(a) To try to eat them.
(b) To put in a boy’s bed.
Rather funny, don’t you think so.
By the way; last Sunday we went for a fine walk. About 12 miles. Binks signed us off school call (roll call), (which he is always willing to do if you want to go for a long walk). We walked to a place called Woodville, quite a big town. We went passed this, and lay down in a wood to eat our cake, which constituted our sole rations. We started out at about 2 o’clock and got back at six. Our return was not without excitement, for in one field a bull saw Turton’s red hair, and proceeded to chase us for rather a long way. The worst of it was that we couldn’t run very fast because we were laughing so much. But we got behind a hedge in time . . .
The weather has been fine this week and we’ve started bathing. I’ve bathed twice in the school baths.
In the midst off all this good weather, it suddenly clouded over yesterday, and I’m sure a cloud burst. The worst of it was that we were watching the match but luckily I had my umbrella with me as a sun-shade. The rain fairly poured down for about a quarter of an hour. The cricket square which had been surrounded by a mass of boys lounging in deck chairs was suddenly surrounded by tents. Very curious tents made of rugs, macs, umbrellas and deckchairs. We just lay there and waited for it to stop.
My six shilling umbrella kept it out very well, and Turton proclaimed in a loud voice how good his 4/- Irish self-opening umbrella was, for this time it had only let ‘quite a lot’ of the rain through and not all of it!
As the sun is shining I must now go and put our rabbit head outside, to make it a bit more appetising for the crayfish.
Love from
Roald
P.S. We’ve been doing quite a lot of enlarging etc. and are getting on fine.
[probably October 2nd 1932]
The Priory House
Repton
Derby
Dear Mama
Thanks for the telegram and the parcel. We have eaten multer* once more last week, and have felt no ill effects. But it is quite probable that Michael’s illness was caused by them . . .
At any rate they weren’t frightfully good to eat, so we took a 2lb jam jar full of them, put them in a handkerchief (clean), and squeezed all the juice out of them into another jar. We got quite a lot of juice, and into that we put an ounce of yeast, bought at the grocer’s, and 18 spoonfuls (tea) of sugar. You see the Repton sugar is so inferior, that you will only get one teaspoonful worth of sweetness out of 4. We stirred it all up and put it in the drying room for about 36 hours. It’s pretty warm in there. All this time it bubbled like hell and gave off heaps of Carbon Dioxide. When we took it out, a glorious smell was coming from it, a sort of very strong sweet potent multer stench. But it was very thick & full of yeast, so we filtered it through some blotting paper, through which it is still dripping. It comes out as a clear light yellow liquid, tastes lovely & is jolly alcoholic. I think multer wine is a very original drink. But you needn’t be frightened for we will neither imbibe it in vast quantities, nor will we get drunk; our distilleries are too small.
Those plums are marvellous, thanks a lot for them. But there is still something else I would like you to send me—a Tek toothbrush (hard) and a Jew’s Harp! A good one with a nice high note. I walked all over Derby trying to get one when I was coming here. I went into a grand-piano shop & tried to look as if I looked like I was the sort of fellow who would be likely to buy a grand piano! Then I asked for a Jew’s Harp. The man told me politely that he’d never heard of them, but he had Bechsteins!, ‘was it a baby grand? You would, sir’!!!
At last I managed to get a rotten little one for 3d. I play it a lot, but it’s rotten. There are several in the house (Oakwood) but I don’t think any of them are much good. Louis will get one for me. By the way, how is Louis, how many German girls has he got engaged to. I hope you’ve told him about my motorbike.
Tragic news: all my hard collars are much too small for me, they are the same size as my shirts’ necks were before they were enlarged. So I bought 6 bigger ones at 9d each & had it put on the bill.
Also one or two of my winter shirt necks are much too tight, so I’m going to get the Grubber to send them away to be enlarged. The others are O.K. Funny that they should be like that, because I’ve hardly got a neck like a bulldog!
I’m going for a walk now.
Love from
Roald
October 23rd 1932
The Priory House
Repton
Derby
Dear Mama
Thanks awfully for your letter . . .
. . . Michael & I saw some stuff advertised in a Paper the other day—‘No more razors, no more frequent shaves. Use Snow’. You just put it on your face and take it off again & it takes the toughest of whiskers off with it. Se we sent 3/ !!! up & got a tin of this stuff. It proved to be a white powder, which you have to mix into a paste with water. Well, we did it in the bedder a few nights ago, and on mixing with water the most disgusting smell (i.e. Hydrogen Sulphide) was given off. It stank the whole bedder out & it stank the whole upstairs passage out with a smell likened unto the greenest & stalest of turnips. But we put it on our faces, and very little happened. It hardened on Michael’s face, & he had to chip it off with a nail-file. It did absolutely nothing to me at all. So it was a bit of a failure. We had all the prefects coming in in turn cursing & asking what the smell was.
The next night we thought we’d do something else with it. So when a boy was out of the room we put some in his Pi-jerry (Po). He pumped without seeing it, & the foulest of all foul smells came out. I don’t know what action uric acid had on it but it was much worse than water. The whole place was stunk out. Windows were opened & doors used as fans with a vengeance. The offending Pi-jerry was rushed outside & poured down a sink. It was most frightfully funny, & and we fairly rocked with laughter . . .
Love from
Roald
[probably November 7th 1932]
The Priory House
Repton
Derby
Dear Mama
Thanks very much for the box of apples, bananas & pears. They are all fine, the pears were a bit squashy, but very good. But far better was the news of the motor-bike, it acted on me like a squitter pill acts on a constipated man, i.e. a complete revival; your letter might even have been a dose of Kruschen Salts!* An ‘Ariel’ too; one of the four kinds I was hoping he would buy for me. What have the insurance people let me off with; they oughtn’t to charge £4.
Last Monday we had a field-day, a jolly good field-day. It was a marvellous day & after an hour’s train journey we arrived at a place called Rugely in Staffordshire. From there we marched to Cannock Chase, stopping on the way to eat our lunch . . .
Cannock Chase is a marvellous place: thousands of acres of heather & bracken on a deeply undulating plain: Deep valleys etc. Then we had tea here at some barrack huts,—quite a good tea, except for the tea itself, which they chucked about the place in dirty buckets. It had a distinct and glorious flavour of cow dung . . .
Been playing quite a lot of football & fives this week.
What pity about Else’s fingers but she was a fool not to have seen doctor at the beginning. I hope it will soon be better.
Love from
Roald
[probably November 14th 1932]
The Priory House
Repton
Derby
Dear Mama
Thanks very much for your letter. Glad Else’s finger is a bit better.
Also glad that a bit more progress has been made towards the insurance of the motor bike. I’ll undertake not to take anyone on the pillion alright as long as they will insure it at a decent price. They all seem to be absolutely absurd about it. Dash me, what the hell’s an insurance company for. They can’t make all their own rules & fix all
their prices to suit themselves. They seem to think that a motor cyclist aged 16 is merely going to take his bike & run it into a brick wall as a matter of course. Call for the manager of the next insurance co. you go to & tell him that I’m quite willing to bet him sixpence that I wont have a smash. He’ll say ‘are you trying to be funny’. Then you ask him what his premium is for me & my bike & he tells you some exorbitant price. Then it’s your turn to say ‘Are you trying to be funny—You’re merely a damn fool frightened of losing a penny even if you gain double the amount in losing it’ is what you should say to him. Please let me know about further progress.
Love from
Roald
P.S. I’ve got an expensive shopping list for you: a Tube of Nostroline & a tin of Kalzana.* Could you please send them.
[probably November 27th 1932]
The Priory House
Repton
Derby
Dear Mama
. . . I’m glad you told [the insurance company] that I would only ride [the motor bike] in the country, etc. etc. If they aren’t decent about it now they ought to be shot. You can also tell them I’m terribly nervous, and show them as proof the hole in the floor of the car which I have made by pressing with my feet as Alf takes a corner. If they then say, ‘Well, why has your foolish son chosen such a powerful bike for himself?’ You can say ‘Why not, he’s frightened of cats’. At any rate please let me know as soon as they tell you.
. . . Does Else honestly want to go to school in Switzerland. I suppose it’s damn nice there. Only it’s a hell of a way away. I expect she’s getting quite a connoisseur on Schools!
Just been confirmed by the Bishop of Derby. There are quite a lot of parents here, but I didn’t ask you, because it’s a long way and damned expensive. I hope you don’t think I’m going to become a religious fanatic. Talking about religious fanatics—this new Boss is one. He’s most frightfully nice, but he’s a religious fanatic.* Far too religious for this place . . .
Love from
Roald
[? January 30th 1933]
Priory House
Repton
Dear Mama
Thanks awfully for all the parcels. I fitted the skates on to my corps boots all right, but of course they were on all wrong. Last Wednesday, the first day of skating Michael & I, wishing to skate apart, as he was learning, wandered off about 5 miles, and found a marvellous pond near some old caves—Anchor Caves . . . Everywhere we skated, we were preceeded by a long crack along the ice. But it didn’t quite give way. When we got home I changed the skates, (pointed them inwards more). The next day we went in a Charabanc to Melbourne where there is a huge lake, about the size of Danstone Park, hardly huge, but large for round about here. By then Michael had also got some skates, from the Grubber. Gosh it was funny to see him learning. He spent most of his time on all fours. Instead of complaining of aching ankles, his wrists ached!
. . . On the edge of the lake, Crummers, a fat master, was patiently instructing his small daughter to skate. Suddenly the ice gave & they both went in. Of course they were pulled out, but the only thing that Crummers said to his daughter while they were in the freezing water was ‘keep cool’ . . .
Love from
Roald
[probably February 21st 1933]
The Priory House
Repton
Derby
Dear Mama
. . . we had a grand time yesterday, The Maynell hunt met at the Cross here yesterday at 12 o’clock, We got off last hour to see them. Michael took his lunch with him and ran after them in football clothes. I was going to, too, but I asked too late. So I changed immediately after lunch and set off alone to find them. When I’d got to Crewe’s Pond, Ma Binks came along in her Austin Seven, & told me to hop in. I got in & the mudguards almost rubbed against the wheels on my side, & the springs made the most alarming noises. But she didn’t seem to notice this. She drove me along about 2 miles, when I got out and went across country, because it was no good following them on the road any more. It was a lovely day, except that the wind was a bit cold so one had to keep running. There wasn’t a soul in the country except a few ploughmen. By asking them I was able to follow the hunt up, and take a few shortcuts. One ploughman was very excited—it appeared that the ‘bloody forx’ had run right between his plough and his horses, ‘an I could ’ave slain the devil dead with t’stain, but I thought me better of t’it’.
Eventually I got up just after the 2nd kill. (Michael saw the first but not the second.) After that the hunt dispersed and set off home along the roads. I was then about 8 miles away from Repton, and could just see the spire in the distance. So I set off—heading straight for it. When I got to Orange Ponds, where I saw 23 skinned moles hanging neatly upon the barbed wire fence,—it started to snow like hell. When I say ‘like hell’ I mean exactly the opposite. At any rate it came down so hard that the ground was white in no time. It was pretty grim running home against this. Halfway I sheltered behind a steam roller for 5 minutes, but I saw that it wasn’t going to stop so I ran home. Had a hot bath. In the changing room, I found Michael who said he had had the deuce of a good time, & had seen the first kill, which I had missed, but had missed the second kill which I had seen. By the way, Sir William Bass, the man who makes a little beer, was the master. I’ve just measured on a map & I make it that I went 23 miles!
. . . It was damned funny the other day in the study. You see we aren’t allowed to cook supper on the fire on weekdays. But Michael & I had put a small tin of Pea soup in front of the fire to heat—one hour before supper—which was quite within the law. When I came to take it off, the tin was bulging at both ends. Hellish pressure inside owing to the steam of the boiling soup. I covered it with an umbrella & pierced it from behind—then took away the umbrella & stood at a safe distance; an enormous jet of steam & pea soup shot out, and continued to shoot for about 2 minutes.—All over the study, the place was covered with condensing pea-soup.
. . . Please can you send me a Tek Toothbrush.
Love from
Roald
March 26th 1933
The Priory House
Dear Mama
Thanks for your letter. I’m going down to the house today, this afternoon. All this week I have been perfectly well, but still infectious, so I have wandered about the place with another fellow called Beaumont, who is up here because his nose is always bleeding. We’ve played Golf every day on the fields with some old clubs we found here, and Hodder gave us some old balls. Darn good fun. We each put our hat in the opposite corners of the field & played into them as holes. There’s also a billiard table here. Last night Beaumont & I played Hodder & Sister for a shilling each. Hodder is marvellous & frequently makes breaks of 50. So they beat us, & we had to fork out a bob.
I lost another bob to Hoddy last Friday, on the Grand National. I betted him a shilling to £1 that Annandale would win. If it had won he would jolly well have paid me £1, But it fell over another horse early on. I went down to his house to listen in to it on his wireless.
By the way, I asked him about riding my motor-bike to Tenby; & he said that it would be quite alright, because the only glands that I had swollen were a few just under my ears, and those only slightly, and that when 2 weeks have elapsed since the swelling disappeared they will be just the same as they were before. It is over a week already, so two weeks will be just as I get home.
. . . It’s marvellous weather here now, & I was going to play golf with Hoddy in a field nearby, but Sister,—who is grossly religious, stopped us because it was Sunday.
Is Kari coming to Tenby? You never said anything about it before. But it will be fine if Ellen & Ashley come for a week. Jolly funny to see Ashley on Louis’ motor-bike too.
I’ll probably write or postcard again before Friday.
Love from
Roald
Roald with his fr
iend Beaumont, smoking “bowls” in the Derbyshire countryside, in summer 1933. Earlier that year he told his mother: “All this week I have been perfectly well, but still infectious, so I have wandered about the place with another fellow called Beaumont, who is up here because his nose is always bleeding.”
May 14th 1933
The Priory House
Repton
Derby
Dear Mama
Do you know what has happened; Michael has had a severe mental breakdown and has had to go away for the rest of the term before he goes to Oxford. He is staying in a lonely inn, up in Westmoreland all alone + perfect quiet, which is essential for him to have. I don’t think he’ll mind it, because he rather enjoys tramping about on moors & things alone all day. I have had quite a lot to do arranging all his things, returning all his books to the masters from whom he had borrowed them, packing a crate full of his books, & putting everything else in his trunk. I’m very sorry he’s gone, but now I go about with Smith, that fellow from Bromley. To show how darned popular he was—half the house has written to him already.
. . . By the way, has Else gone back to school yet. If not when is she going. I expect I shouldn’t speak too much on them dropping my summons* if I were you. They obviously won’t. I should have thought that they had got it all filed up, & were just waiting for its turn on the list. Of course, there is just the tiniest chance that they forgot to put it down or something.
. . . Last night after lights I was shaving in the dark, when Palairet whose bed was within reach of my basin, said, I’ll strike a match for you, so you can see. I had my back to him, & when he struck the match, as it was still fizzing he pushed the end against my bottom, burnt a hole in both me & my pyjamas.—He had to be sat on.
Love from Boy Page 6
