John Bull's Schooldays

Formative Years

By LESLIE HALE, MP

T

WAS an urchin of ten when I went, as a boarder, Ato Ashby : a cocky, assertive brat with an infinite capacity for drifting into trouble and brassing my way out. Though the years have brought increasing girth, I have not altered much.

The boarders were little gentlemen and wore bumfreezers on Sundays. They were a mixed crowd; coloured pupils, including an adult West African Negro, and two Whites expelled from Other schools, paid extra. A tubby, heavy-jowled youth we called Podger, with a greasy face and a mind like a foul sewer, was cock of my dormitory. He eyed me with loathing and assured me that henceforth I would be made to wash the neck be- hind the ears. He had an extensive store of learning of a type which would be indexed in the Charing Cross Road as `Curiosa,' and this he imparted with generosity. By the time my mind was as dirty as his we had begun to get on well together.

Of course there were halcyon days. There were nuts In the woods, though not in May, paper- chases over surrounding fields, cricket on the attractive grounds and Wood and Whitehead Opening for Leicestershire. I wrote a sonnet on the sinking of the Titanic which was favourably noticed, and a passionate Ode to Bombardier Billy Wells. How proud I would have been to know then that one day, after much travail, I would become a bombardier myself. 'There were days, too, of undiluted, introspective misery.

There was a loft in the Tower, lonely and difficult of access, which, like Merrick's Café of the Broken Heart, served Those Who Weep Alone. There I used occasionally to snivel alone until I became 'pi.' A lot of us were 'pi' at that time. We met in groups for religious discussion and I read a chapter of the Bible before rising each morning. My mind improved and my neck got dirtier. I used to visit the Tower for silent medita- tion and to commune with my Maker. But, alas, how soon the circles of the ri r 2. When I was twelve I took up biology, began to have doubts, and pleasantly noted how admirably adapted the Tower loft was for surreptitious smoking.

The teaching staff covered the whole gamut of academic attainment from MA (failed) to Oxford Locals (passed). Without any special pretension to learning or to regarding education as a vocation they were kindly, good-natured and hard-working and generally popular with the boys. Their job was to see that we passed examinations and they performed the task diligently and successfully. It is easy to sneer, half a century later, but passing an examination meant, for most, the one hope of further education and expanding opportunities.

Mr. Bull taught us French, a language I am still trying to learn. He was a kindly, cultured, man who, God forgive us, had turned to education because of a genuine affection for boys. He was gentle and sensitive and quite unable to preserve order. We played on his weakness with deliberate and persistent cruelty. He was plagued with ques- tion, argument, entreaty, and the real lessons rarely started and never finished. We knew he dare not send for the Head, who would have bullied him in our presence. He had a long, horsy face, a thick lower lip and a jaw which seemed to drop several inches in dismay. When we saw his sensitive nostrils quivering like those of an animal in agony and his mouth opened wide in frustration we rushed in like hounds to the kill. In the end he had to go. No one gave us four years' penal servitude or told us we should have considered the social consequences. Educationally the system had limitations: For years we studied the history of England from 1485 to 1688. At the end I knew the names of all the wives of Henry VIII and most of the mistresses of Charles II. Had the last trump sounded I could have discussed capital punishment with Anne Boleyn, deplored educational policy with Edward VI, exchanged bawdy jokes with topers from the Mermaid Tavern and familiarly slapped Louise de Kdroualle plump on her lovely back; but I should have had to be introduced to Thomas a Becket and Mr. Gladstone.

The 'stinks' master: universally popular but with a podgy right hand to which I still attribute a slight deafness in one ear, had devised a helpful system for the examination in practical chemistry, the neat label on the front of the bottle being supplemented by a neater and more informative one on the back.

The Head was a middle-aged, bull-necked man, with high cheek-bones which showed spots of scarlet in moments of anger, and ponderous feet which stamped the floor as he reached a crescendo of improvised rage. I disliked him intensely though I find it difficult to recall the precise reason— perhaps because of the terror he inspired. He was not brutal in his punishments. Ostentatious bottom displays in the dormitory disclosed little more than the fading blueprints of the immediate past. Though he thanked God a little unctuously for plain bread and butter, supplemented by jam from our private pots, the food was as good as could be expected for ten guineas a term. He was a snob, but so were most people. He failed to com- mand the respect of the staff, two of whom had assured me privately, before I was twelve, that his MA was only a BA manured with guineas.

I recall a composite picture of him one summer afternoon. I was not quite twelve and a tolerable chess-player. After school he used to bring board and men to the refectory and offer to do battle. He took his constant defeats with good grace but with something like incredulity. As the imminent checkmate was tardily observed he, and the watch- ing boys, look'd at each other with a wild surmise. These encounters ended when I cockily and tactlessly offered him the odds of a Queen. He took the insult en passant,-but we never played again.

On that, one of the last lovely July afternoons of a dying era, he stood with his back to us gazing through the window, over the gardens, and to- wards the school. He talked of the recent murders at Sarajevo with understanding and prescience. Suddenly he stiffened and the danger signals glowed on the cheek-bones. With all the intensity of an acolyte contemplating the Vatican chimney during a papal conclave he was observing a wisp of smoke arising from the school urinal. It was greyish-blue. The Woodbine spices were wafted abroad. Storming wildly he left us like a bull rampant and caught the offenders nicotine- handed.

I suppose it was the war that did it. It brought many changes; two women teachers, a drill ser- geant with bulging biceps, waxed rnoustachios and a supply of superfluous aspirates (Hin, bout, hin, hout, hup), a Belgian refugee master with a talent for bawdy and a' West Indian Negro who taught mathematics. The latter had a habit of rapping the back of the head with a projecting knuckle. His name was E. M. Seeley, and we christened him Emus and liked him, but he was a lone] isolated soul.

Gradually the war came nearer. Young old boys visited the school in uniform. We had a rifle ebb and a cadet corps and the Head, with the rank of Major, was enabled avidly to receive salutes from soldiers returning from the trenches. 0] e night we were marched from the dormitory to a cellar, happily also the apple store, whilst a Zeppelin was bombing the district. Casualties tO old boys were reported weekly and we heard that lads who had left a few months before were lard- ing the fields of Flanders. There were public intercession services from one of which 1 was publicly marched out as morally unfit to be II the House of God. I expect I was.

I think it was the passing of Emus that brought matters to a head. I had taken up astronomy al d he delightedly invited me to his lodgings for tea. When the great moment came Emus was loaded with jam tarts and cream buns as we walked through the gate together. The Head bore dov n upon us and, after brief explanations, permissit n was refused in terms calculated to give mortal offence. Some days later Emus marched, during school, the whole length of the double classroom, his gown fluttering behind, his dark features almost russet red, and entered the Head's study without knocking. We heard, but could not decipher, high and very angry words. Then Emus emerged, slammed the door and departed and we never saw him again,, Once the Head offered a money prize to whom- soever could say where, in the Bible, was to be found the text 'God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.' During break I legged it to the curate's and borrowed his concordance. It was not there. felt that somehow, somewhere, there was some- thing dishonest about this.

It was the habit of the boarders to sham ill least once a term and the Head had, shrewdl threatened to call in a doctor. This frightened u Something had to be done. One night, weak ar trembling, I walked in my sleep, opened the win- dow and stepped out on to the roof of the bt; window below. Two intimate friends rescued me in the nick of time. The doctor diagnos:!d over- work, an ailment to which the Hales were never prone, and prescribed rest Then the West African sneaked.

It was the end. The Head wrote home curt to say that there was not room in the school It both of us and that, on reflection, he had decide to stay.! was just fifteen.

Eight years fater the Chairman of the Go \ nors said to the same Head, 'I must introduce y° to our newest and youngest governor. This is NI Hale.' We exchanged greetings cOldly but the' was a song in my heart.

A few years later a new and energetic heat master, with many of thq old staff, literally Iran formed the school and restored and expanded i s Old prestige, That is my case, M'Luds. And, though there were some very bright lads there in my time, none of us, so far as I can 'recall, achieved any particular success. Y, S.

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