Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  The ways of boys are past finding out, and what could have induced us to believe that the food supplied was disgusting to the verge of being poisonous I have no idea. But tradition, at the time of which I am speaking, ordained that this was so, and how often when I was longing to eat a plateful of pudding have I shovelled it into an envelope to bury in the playground, since the currants in it were held to be squashed flies and the suet to be made with scourings from dirty plates. Then somebody once saw potatoes, no doubt intended for school consumption, lying on the floor in a shed in the garden, which was considered a terrible way in which to keep potatoes. I remembering telling my father this, and with the utmost gravity he answered that every potato ought to be wrapped up singly in silver paper. He also asked if it was true that Mr. Waterfield had been seen, with his trousers turned up diluting the beer for dinner out of a garden watering-can. Most poisonous of all were supposed to be the sausages which we had for breakfast now and then: it was a point of honour not to eat a single mouthful of this garbage. Then suddenly for no reason the fashion changed, and the food was supposed to be, and indeed it probably was, excellent. We gobbled up our sausages, asked for more and got it, and ate the potatoes that had once lain on the dirty ground, and had even degraded themselves by growing in it....

  I plunged headlong into this riot of school life and for the first year enjoyed it enormously. I had been placed too low in the school and without the slightest effort I found myself term after term at the top of the class, and loaded with prizes, for no merit of my own but for the fact that I had the kind of superficial memory that retained what it had scarcely attended to at all. In consequence for a whole year I had no fear of Waterfield as regards lessons, and devoted myself to games, stag-beetles, and friendship, and I find it hard to decide whether the rapture of making twenty at cricket against overhand bowling (not lobs from sisters) was greater or less than finding a stag-beetle on the palings, or in the early dawn of summer mornings going on tiptoe into the next dormitory, and, after waking up my special friend, sitting on his bed, propped up with pillows and talking in whispers till there came the sound of the dressing-bell, which portended the entrance of the matron. Then it was necessary to steal round the corner of his cubicle, and slide back into my own bed, there apparently to fall into a refreshing slumber, for to be caught out of bed before it was time to dress meant to be reported to Waterfield, who took a serious, and to me then an unintelligible view of such an offence. But an hour’s whispered conversation with a friend was worth that risk, indeed probably the risk added a certain savour to it, and perhaps our present Minister at the Vatican has recollections similar to mine. Or else it would be I who was awakened by the soft-stepping night-shirted figure, and moved aside in bed to give room for him to sit there, and there would be plans to be made, and then combining friendship with stag-beetles into one incomparable compound we would take the stag-beetles (for there were two of them, male and female called “The Monarch of the Glen” and “Queen”) out of my washing basin, where they passed the night in optimistic attempts to climb its slippery sides, and refresh them with a breakfast of elm leaves and perhaps the half of a strawberry. They had to be put back into two matchboxes which were their travelling carriages before Jane the matron came round, for she had said that if ever she found stag-beetles in basins again she would throw them out of the window.

  An “Exeat” now and then diversified the course of the term, and these I spent with my Aunt Eleanor who had married Mr. Thomas Hare, famous for his book on the Representation of Minorities. He was a great friend of John Stuart Mill, whom Aunt Eleanor, for some reason of her own, always called “Mr. Mills.” They lived in a house near Surbiton which had a tower in it, on the top floor of which was Uncle Hare’s laboratory, chemistry being a hobby of his, and he made oxygen in glass retorts, and put snippets of potassium to scurry, flaring and selflit, on the surface of a basin of water.... On the 5th of November every year I was asked to a children’s party, given by Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck, at the White Lodge, Richmond Park, and there was an immense tea followed by fireworks in the garden. There we were given squibs and told to be sure to throw them away as soon as they burned low, before the explosion came at the end, and on one of these occasions the Duke of Teck wanting a light for his cigar told me to give him my squib, for he had no matches. I told him that it was already burning low, but he said “Wass?” rather alarmingly, and so I handed it to him. He had just applied the burning end of it to his cigar when the explosion came, and his face and hair were covered with sparks, and he danced about, and said sonorous things in German, and I gathered that he was vexed....

  The minds of children as they grow have those diseases incident to childhood much as their bodies have. I had had my measles of sentimentality, and having got over that I developed during this year a kind of whooping-cough of lying. I used to invent and repeat extraordinary experiences, which had their root in fact, but were embellished by my imagination to scenes of unparalleled magnificence. For instance, the family spent that summer holidays at Etretat, crossing from Southampton to Havre, and I came back with Arthur who was going to Eton, a day late for the assembling of Temple Grove. The crossing was an extremely rough one; all night the water broke over the decks heavy and solid, and certainly some unfortunate passenger came into the cabin drenched through. All next day as I travelled to Temple Grove my imagination worked on these promising materials, and I told my admiring schoolfellows that we had barely escaped shipwreck. The waves, which certainly did deluge the decks, I represented as having poured in torrents down the funnels, extinguishing the furnaces, so that we had to stop till the fires were relit, while out of the passenger who came down drenched into the cabin I constructed a Frenchman who was supposed to have said to me in broken English, “Ze water is not coming over in bucketfuls it is coming over in shipfuls.” So vividly did I imagine this, that before long I really half believed it. Again the next winter holidays were marked by a heavy snowfall in Cornwall succeeded by a partial thaw and a hard frost. In consequence the horses had to be roughed, and it is certainly a fact that the carriage which was bringing my father home one evening slewed so violently that, according to his quite authentic description, he looked out of the window, and saw instead of the hedgerows the steep glazed road in front of him. I seized hungrily on that incident, and on returning to school said that we had enjoyed delightful sledging in the holidays, over roads and lakes, adding the further embellishment that I personally drove the horses.... There were more of these fictions which I cannot now remember, all of which had some exiguous foundation of fact, and great was my horror when an implacable enemy handed me one morning a scrap of paper, in the manner of an ultimatum headed:

  “BENSON’S LIES”

  and there below, neatly summarized were all these stories which I thought had been listened to with such respectful envy. The implacable enemy added darkly that “they” (whoever “they” might be) were considering what they were going to do about it all. I suppose consternation was graven on me, for he stonily added, “Yes, you may well turn pale,” and I pictured (my imagination again rioting off) this damning text being handed to Waterfield, who would send it to my father. What was the public upshot, I cannot remember, but by aid of that terrifying medicine I made a marvellously brisk recovery from that particular disease.

  Some time during that first year at school, there occurred a scene which I still look back on as among the most awful I have ever witnessed. Two boys, one high in the school, a merry handsome creature, the other quite a small boy, suddenly disappeared. They were in their places at breakfast, but during breakfast were sent for by Waterfield and at school that morning their places were empty. They did not appear at dinner, they did not appear at tea, and that night in the next dormitory their beds were vacant. Jane said they were not ill, and forbade any further questions, and curious whisperings went about, of which I could not grasp the import. Next morning there came a sudden order that all the school should be a
ssembled, and we crowded into the big schoolroom. Presently Waterfield entered with his cap and gown on, followed by the two missing boys. He took his place at his desk, and motioned them to stand out in the middle of the room. There was a long silence.

  Then Waterfield began to speak in a low voice that grew gradually louder. He told us all to look at them, which we did. He then told us that they had brought utter ruin and disgrace on themselves, that no public school would receive them, and that they had broken their parents’ hearts. They were not going to stop an hour longer amongst us, for their presence was filthy and contaminating. They were publicly expelled and would now go back to the homes on which they had brought disgrace.

  He then told us all to go out, and was left with those two, and I wondered, limp with terror, whether he was going to kill them, and what on earth it was that they had done. And if I was limp then, you may judge what was my condition, when presently the school sergeant who brought summonses from Waterfield told me that he wished to see me.... Indeed that imaginative habit which had made up so many glorious adventures for myself on slender grounds was a poor friend at that moment, for as I went to the study, it vividly suggested to me that I too, for some unintelligible reason, would be despatched to Cornwall, a ruined and disgraced boy.

  I tapped at the door, tapped again without receiving any answer and entered. Waterfield was sitting at his table and he was crying. He indicated to me that I was to sit down, which I did. Then he blew his nose with an awful explosion of sound, and came with his rocking walk across to the chimney-piece.

  “I want to ask you a question,” he said. “Do you understand why those two boys were sent away?”

  “No, sir,” said I.

  His voice choked for a moment.

  “I am very glad to hear it,” he said. “I thank God for that. You may go.”

  Here was a mysterious affair! I went out wondering about a million things, why Waterfield was crying, why he had sent for me, and above all why those two boys were publicly disgraced. I began to grub in my memory for any clue, and recalled trivial incidents. The elder of the two had been rather kind to a junior like myself: he had nodded good night to me one evening on the stairs, and I think the next night had given me a lump of Turkish delight. Finally, only a few days before, he had by virtue of his first-form privileges taken me for a stroll round the wooded grounds, where the first-form might go at pleasure, and I felt highly honoured at his notice. He had become rather odd: he began questions like, “I say, do you ever — ,” and stopped. As I did not know what he was talking about, and only grew puzzled, he remarked rather contemptuously, “I didn’t know you were such a kid. Why, when I was your age...”

  Then our privacy came to an abrupt conclusion, for we suddenly met Waterfield, with a large cigar, strolling along a path. He took us both into a greenhouse, and gave us some grapes, and walked back with us, one on each side of him.

  There was nothing there at the time which had roused any strong curiosity in me. I had wondered vaguely why these sentences were left unfinished, and why he had only then discovered that I was such a kid. But now, in an intensity of wonder as to why Waterfield had been so glad to know that the reason for this expulsion was incomprehensible to me, and as to what that reason was, I began, with the groping instincts of a young thing, that has either to guess its way, or to be told it, to fit meaningless little pieces of the puzzle together, trying first one pair of fragments and then another, intensely curious and instinctively certain that there was something here which other boys understood, and which Waterfield certainly understood, but which I did not. I supposed that the completed puzzle contained something in which right and wrong were involved, since a transgression such as the two expelled boys had been guilty of was an affair that could not be atoned for by a caning or a birching.

  For days after that, hints, fragments, surmises floated as thickly about the school as motes of dust in a sunbeam. We were forbidden to talk about the subject at all, which gave an additional zest to discussion. Some knew a great deal, some knew a little, some knew nothing. Those who knew nothing learned a little, those who knew a little learned more, and we seethed with things that were unsavoury, because the secrecy and the prohibition made the unsavouriness of them.... But in heaven’s name, why could we not all have been given clean lessons in natural history? Is it better that young boys should guess and experiment and be left to find things out for themselves, with the gusto that arises from the notion of forbidden mysteries, than that they should be taught cleanness by their elders, instead of being left to experimentalize in dirtiness? Until there is extracted from boyhood its proper legitimate inquisitiveness which is the reason of its growth, nothing can prevent boys from seeking to learn about those things which its elders cover up in a silence so indiscreet as to be criminal. It is a libellous silence, for it surrounds, in an atmosphere of suspicion, knowledge which is perfectly wholesome and necessary.

  Between terms came holidays full of things just as wonderful as the swamping of the furnaces of the Havre boat and “Benson’s lies” generally, and these must be lumped together, to form a general summary as to how we amused ourselves for the next three years or so, when holidays brought us together. About now a joint literary effort of all us children, called (for no known reason) the Saturday Magazine, made its punctual appearance. Already we were such savage wielders of the pen that one issue every holidays no longer contented us, but two or three times between term and term my father and mother were regaled of an evening with a flood of prose and poetry. Arthur would say one morning, “Let’s have a Saturday Magazine next Tuesday,” and straightway we called for a supply of that useful paper known as “sermon paper,” which contains exactly twenty-three lines to a small quarto page, faintly ruled in blue. Dialogues, satirical sketches, tales of adventure, essays, and poems, were poured out in rank profusion, the rule being that each member of the family should contribute “at least” four pages of prose, or one page of verse. There was, after we had all got blooded with the lust of production, little cause for this minimum regulation, and perhaps it would have been better, in view of subsequent fruitfulness, to have substituted for the minimum restriction of “at least” a maximum restriction of “at most.” Yet this habit of swift composition gave us all a certain ease in expressing ourselves if only because we expressed ourselves so freely. The contents of the Saturday Magazine were, since all choice of subject was left to the author, of the most varied description. Arthur would produce (at least) an essay in the style of The Spectator (Addison’s) describing how he threw a cake of yellow soap at a serenading cat, Nellie would refresh us with an imaginary interview with our Scotch coachman on the subject of sore backs, Maggie, whose chief avocation now was to rear an enormous number of guinea-pigs and find names for them, gave a dialogue between Atahualpa and Ixlitchochitl (only she knew how to spell them); poor Fred treated them to a poem on the Devil, which he felt sure solved the very difficult question about the origin of evil, and Hugh, who by reason of his youth was let off with two pages of prose, produced adventures so bloody, that out of sheer reaction his audience rocked with unquenchable laughter. There was a Saturnalian liberty allowed, and my mother’s experiences with a runaway pony, or her fondness for cheese, were treated with sharp-edged mockery, and even my father made a ludicrous appearance in some dialogue, where he was supposed to be worsted by the superior wit of his children....

  In lighter mood (save the mark) we played a poetry game called “American nouns,” in which you had to answer, metrically and with rhyme, a question written down at the top of a half-sheet of paper, and bring in a particular word like “unconstitutional” or some stumper of that kind. This particular word was given to my Uncle Henry Sidgwick together with the question, “What do you know of astronomy?” to which in the winking of an eye he produced the following gem:

  Phoebus, the glorious king of the sky,

  In his unconstitutional way,

  Dispenses at will his bounties on high


  And royally orders the day.

  No starry assembly controls his bright flow,

  No critical comet presumes to say “No.”

  Or again, my mother having to answer the question, “Does the moon draw the sea?” and to bring in the word “artist,” made a glorious last stanza:

  Ask me no more, but let me be;

  My temper’s of the tartest:

  For if the moon doth draw the sea,

  Why, then she is an artist.

  Somehow she got the reputation of being an indifferent poet, but that was considered remarkably good “for her,” and worthy of being immortalized on the printing press which belonged to this epoch. This was a small wooden box, at the bottom of which you set the type backwards if you were capable of a sustained effort, and if not, anyhow. The “forme” was then smudged over with a black roller anointed with printer’s ink, and letters of the set type used to stick to it (like teeth in toffee) and must be replaced if possible. Then a piece of paper was gingerly laid on the top, a lid was fitted on, and a lever was turned which pressed the lid (and of course the paper) against the inked type. The lever got out of order and I think broke, so instead several smart hammer-blows were given to the lid in order to produce the same result. The printed paper was then taken out, and the marks of punctuation inserted by hand, because there weren’t any commas and colons and so forth in our fount, or because it was easier to put them in afterwards. “E’s” had often to be left out too, and inserted afterwards, because “e” being a common letter was not sufficiently represented if you wanted to print a long piece like Uncle Henry’s.... Chemistry, also, among the Arts and Sciences claimed our attention, especially Maggie’s (when she was not too busy about guinea-pigs) and mine. The highest feat that we attained to, and that wanted a lot of stirring, was to dissolve a threepenny-piece in nitric acid. Then there was photography; I think a godfather gave me a camera, and we made our own wet plates which was very difficult, and began with pouring collodion (was it collodion?) smoothly over a piece of glass. Then nitrate of silver — we might have used the dissolved threepenny-bit, I suppose — must be applied. The plates usually recorded nothing whatever, but once an image remarkably like the yew tree outside the nursery window did certainly appear there. Arthur began collecting butterflies and moths, which eventually became a very important asset to a museum which now overflowed into all our bedrooms. There was an extraordinary abundance of clouded yellows (Colzas Edusa, and why do I remember that?) one year and he used to return, profusely perspiring, with captives in chip boxes, to which Maggie and I were anaesthetists, for Nellie took no part in this collection, as she objected to killing butterflies.