MY DAYS AND DREAMS BEING AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

PREFACE

Old St. Pancras Churchyard even now, though dominated by the huge gasometers of Wharf Road and backed against the roaring traffic of the Midland Railway, preserves something of the sylvan beauty which a hundred years ago made it the frequent trysting-place of Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin. As it happened, in the summer of 1890, when staying in London, I used to make the garden my resort for writing purposes; and one day in July of that year I started some autobiographical notes. In a very casual way, and with long intervals between, the notes have been continued down to the present time. The volume therefore to which this is the Preface has been composed in somewhat disjointed fashion; and the discerning reader will probably perceive slight differences of style and outlook in its different portions, and perhaps also experience some uncertainty as to the proper chronology of the events which it records. In order to mitigate the latter trouble I have from time to time inserted in square brackets the date of the year in which the corresponding portion was written.

May 1916

I BRIGHTON

My life hitherto [7th July 1890] divides into four pretty distinct periods—first, my early life up to the age of twenty, during which time I lived mainly at Brighton, embedded in a would-be fashionable world which I hated; secondly, the period from ’64 to about ’74, during which time I was mostly at Cambridge, in a more or less intellectual atmosphere; thirdly, from ’74 to ’81, when I carried on the Extension lectures and made acquaintance with the manufacturing centres and commercial society of the North of England; and fourthly, for the ten years from ’80 and ’81 down to the present time, when I have lived almost entirely among the working masses, and been largely engaged in manual labour.

It may seem ungrateful to say so, but my abiding recollection of early days is one of discomfort. Not but that I had on the whole good times at school, in the classes and in the games; not but that at home I was lapped in the ease and attentive service of a well-to-do household, and had a hundred advantages denied to an ordinary child of the people; but that after all at home I never felt really at home. Perhaps I was unduly sensitive; anyhow I felt 14myself an alien, an outcast, a failure, and an object of ridicule.

The social life which encircled us at Brighton was artificial enough; but it was the standard which we children had to live to. My parents were the best people in the world, but they could not fly out of the conditions in which they belonged. I hated the life, was miserable in it—the heartless conventionalities, silly proprieties—but I never imagined, it never occurred to me, that there was any other life. To be pursued by the dread of appearances—what people would say about one’s clothes or one’s speech—to be always in fear of committing unconscious trespasses of invisible rules—this seemed in my childhood the normal condition of existence; so much so that I never dreamed of escaping from it. I only prayed for a time when grace might be given me to pass by without reproach. I was never a daring or rumbustious child. Timid and sensitive, my spirit was sadly lacking in the inestimable virtue of revolt. I suffered and was stupid enough to think myself in the wrong.

There was a curate at one of the churches to which we used to go—a smooth-haired, carefully shaven, meek young man, probably of feeble mind; but all I knew was that people praised him: such a good-looking, well-mannered fellow he was, and preached such nice sermons! “Happy Mr. Cass,” I used to think, for even now I remember his name—“Oh, happy Mr. Cass, if only I could be like you when I grow up.” I was then about fourteen, and I fancy that the mere sight of Cass in his spotless surplice must have worked upon me, for it was about that time or a little later that I began to make up my mind to take Orders. No doubt from the first there was a fatal bias towards religion. 15I remember distinctly—and it must have been about the same period—thinking as I lay awake in bed at night that if the house were on fire I would save my prayer-book! I saw myself in my mind’s eye in heroic attitude rushing into my mother’s room where the sacred volume lay, and bearing it out through flames and smoke into the street. It was not my mother or sisters that I was going to save ...

but my prayer-book! Alas! what a defect of nature, or of teaching, must have been there!

Curious, the covered underground life that some children lead! I never remember, all those years at Brighton, till I was nineteen or twenty, a single person older than myself who was my confidant. I do not remember a single occasion on which in any trouble or perplexity I was able to go to any one for help or consolation. My mother, firm, just, and courageous as she was, and setting her children an heroic example, belonged to the old school, which thought any manifestation of feeling unbecoming. We early learned to suppress and control emotion, and to fight our own battles alone: in some ways a good training, but liable in the long run to starve the emotional nature. Masters at school in those days did not “draw boys out”; education was mainly a nipping of buds; older friends outside the family, who may so often play a useful part in the development of boy or girl life, never came—that I remember—to the rescue; and so my abiding recollection of all that time is one of silent concealment and loneliness.

Nevertheless of course there were joys. Though a town-house is not a congenial nursery for a child, yet we were comparatively fortunate. There was a large space at the back, where we kept, in succession, endless pets—pigeons, seagulls with clipped 16wings, rabbits, tortoises, guinea-pigs, and smaller fry (I was especially fond of an aquarium); while in front was the large garden of Brunswick Square, overrun, despite the efforts of the gardener and other authorities, by all the children of the surrounding houses. A fearfully active family, boys and girls, we kept a sort of proud superiority over the other children in running races, prisoners’ base, etc.; while inside the house, and for wet weather, we had a sport entirely our own, and which consisted in one pursuing the others up the front stairs and down the back stairs, or vice versa, with endless shrieks and uproar—a terrible affair, which nothing but the noblest self-sacrifice could have ever nerved our parents to endure! Also there was hide-and-seek in the dark, a grisly game, dangerous both to

limbs and to furniture; and occasionally a battle of the giants—as when, on one occasion, an elder sister having with the greatest care built up a beautiful dummy man round a long smooth pole, my eldest brother came on the sly and drew the backbone out! Then there was earth-shaking conflict, which I, quite a small boy, witnessed from a distance, and with quaking limbs.

As to school life, I suppose it is a general experience that what one learns at school does not count for much. At the age of ten I began at the Brighton College. My eldest sister had taught me a little Latin grammar before that. My eldest brother Charlie was already at the College. He was a kind of hero there. At that time (or possibly a year or two later) he was easily first in everything. In mathematics, classics, foreign languages, in cricket, football, athletics—no matter what it was—he took all the prizes. Withal he was so friendly, so sociable, that he was a universal favorite; so generous and 17so humorous—so naturally full of fun and comedy—that I really think he disarmed all jealousy in others—nor felt a spark of jealousy or vanity in himself. Seldom I should think has there been such a boy; and when at the age of nineteen or twenty he took his final leave in order to join the Indian Civil Service, his memory lingered long and long behind him in the school.[1]

My reception under those circumstances was naturally favorable. One day, shortly after my arrival, I was playing by myself in a corner of the entrance hall, when a big boy with a pleasant face came up to me and, making a suitable gesture, said, “Sweep up the Chips, sweep up the Chips.” Then I knew that my nickname was Chips—a family nickname indeed, since my father and my brothers at different times bore it.

The College was a large school of 150 or 200 boys—on public school lines. I went through the 18classes in due order from the lowest upwards; and the personality of each master in turn impressed its unconscious weight upon me. I remember distinctly the agonized effort and the triumph of passing the “Asses’ Bridge” in Euclid. The name of the master who got me over was Newton, and for some years I firmly believed that he was no other than the celebrated Sir Isaac. I joined in the games and athletics—and not without success, though I was never very partial to cricket; I climbed slowly up through the classes; I rubbed shoulders with all the queer, red-haired, pock-marked, fat, lean, mean, generous, handsome, clever, tyrannical, cross-eyed, gentle, good-natured, specimens of fellow humanity—the other boys—whose influence on one at that age is so strange and incalculable, and whose characters and deeds appear at the time so mysterious and inexplicable; though when one looks back upon them at a later date, they seem transparently clear

and simple. I cannot remember anything very heroic that I did, though I can remember some mean things. I remember joining with the others in teasing the French master—that ever defenceless quarry; and I remember what was much worse, taking a kind of delight in privately tormenting an idiot boy. That was indeed a strange experience. I don’t know why the boy was allowed in the school; he was certainly quite weak-minded and incapable; and besides there exhaled from him an odd and fearsome odour. That boy convulsed me with alternate rage and pity. At one moment I was seized with the greatest sympathy for his weakness, and the next I was filled with wrath at his odour and his idiocy, and found or invented excuses for slapping him! Then after that I would sometimes lie awake at night remorseful over my conduct, and planning 19little schemes of reparation; but in the morning the sight of him would launch me on the waves of irritation again. It was quite a little tragedy to me—and I mention it because this savage and instinctive dislike of anything malformed, which is so

very marked in boys, no doubt accounts for much of their cruelty. It remains in the mind of course to a much later age, but is gradually covered over by the growth of sympathy and understanding. As a rule my better deeds were done in defence of the weak. Timid for the most part, I regained my courage on these occasions—as in delivering a small boy from a big bully; or once in sticking up for two brothers, the dirtiest and most stupid boys in the class, against the gibes of the master; or another time in helping a poor man in the street with his bundle—on which last occasion the said Sir Isaac Newton passing by, instead of scolding me as I expected, actually said, “That’s right, my boy”—a remark for which I felt ever so grateful to him—for indeed I was feeling rather ashamed of myself.

I think that was about the only occasion on which a master exercised any directly helpful influence. Schools were odd places in those days. The idea of really reaching the boy and drawing out his interest seems never to have occurred to the masters. When I arrived in the Sixth Form, the Headmaster was a certain Dr. Griffith—a burly, headstrong, muddle-headed, perhaps rather good-natured man. As often as not he would arrive in the class-room late, with his hair a-tumble, and looking as if he had not slept all night, would complain that some naughty boy in the Fourth Form was preoccupying his mind, and would leave us again alone with our books. Then presently his study door would open, and he would push the said boy into the room, saying, 20“I wish one of you gentlemen would cane this boy,” and throwing a cane in over the boy’s head would close the door again. Once, drawing a handful of silver and gold out of his pocket, he asked me to cane a boy for him—and afterwards I felt sorry I had not accepted the bargain. I think he must

have been a little touched in the head. It is certainly aggravating to think that we used to read Homer and Virgil and the Greek plays, and never that I remember was any attempt made to make us understand the subject or the plot or the literary interest of these works—nothing but grammar and syntax. As to mathematics the neglect was worse—and I left school at eighteen or nineteen having done nothing beyond Euclid and Algebra.

My record in the classes was on the whole, I suppose, good—though nothing remarkable. I gained the usual number of prizes, and kept about an equal interest in classics and mathematics. With regard to the former, my father—who had progressive ideas on such subjects—gave me a word for word crib to Horace, saying that the best way to learn a language was to use such a crib. Naturally after that I rejoiced in it freely in my preparation-work at home of an evening. But one day I could not resist taking it to school and showing it to some of my class-mates. Of course we were pounced upon, and the crib confiscated. The form-master at that time was E. C. Hawkins—a really fine type of man, father of Anthony Hope Hawkins the novelist. But when he asked me where I got the crib from, and I replied quite truthfully and simply “My father gave it me,” he was struck dumb! He certainly thought I was lying, but could make no reply. And for a long time after that would hardly speak to me.

Cricket I never took to much. Being a bad player 21I voted it ‘slow.’ Probably it gave too much rope to my dreamy tendencies, and I got into trouble missing unexpected catches. But hockey and football I was fond of, and fives, as being more lively.

When I was about thirteen an event important to us children happened, which I must not pass by. My parents determined to spend a year in France, and they actually transported the whole household, nine children (i.e. all except my brother Charlie) and two servants, to Versailles. I remember only too well that awful night journey by Newhaven and Dieppe, the raging sea, the arrival drenched, the dim lights of the Customhouse, the cries of lost children, the journey by train to Paris and onwards. How my mother survived it I do not know. We settled in a house in the Avenue de Sceaux, amid barracks, and continual fanfaronades and trampings of military, near the great Palace with its endless galleries, and the Park with its fountains and music. All very exciting and delightful. And we found some good and friendly French neighbours. At first they did not the least understand our household. It never occurred to them for a moment that it was all one family, and for some time it was supposed that my father and mother kept a school! But when the truth at last dawned upon them, their delight and

amazement knew no bounds, and we became the centre of the greatest interest. I and my younger brother, Alfred, went as day-boys to school at the Lycée Hoche (then Imperiale)—a great place of five hundred boys—where we learned French by sheer necessity. I do not think we learned much else. In the matter of lessons the instruction was much on a par with that at the Brighton school, and the playground life and social organization of the boys were far less pregnant of good influences.

22I don’t know how the Lycées are now, but at that time the school methods were only poor. The boys sat an outrageously long time at their desks—ten hours a day or more—either construing or preparing lessons; but got through very little work, spending most of their time in furtive games or conversations with each other. Everything was done in set and military style—marchings along corridors from class-room to class-room, or from class-room to refectory, or from refectory to playground. In the latter a master (always called ‘pion’) was present to see that there was no bullying, or to disperse knots of boys (who might of course be talking sedition) or to prevent individuals approaching the playground wall within a set distance (lest they should escape). The games were limited and regulated. Everything was regulated. It was said that the Minister of Education at Paris could at any hour of the day place his finger on the line of Virgil that was being translated, or the proposition of Geometry that was being proved at that moment in all the Lycées alike

over the face of the land. One very curious custom prevailed, which has probably now gone out of date, but which had a strong suggestion about it of the Church system of Indulgences. At the end of the week the marks gained by each boy during the week were added up and announced by the master. Then those boys who were credited with more than a certain number of marks were told they might write out for themselves a certificate of satisfaction, good for exemption from one, two, or even three hours’ punishment, according to circumstances! Great excitement prevailed. You cut yourself a neat square of paper, adorned it with lines and flourishes, and inscribed on it “Témoignage de Satisfaction—Elève Carpenter—bonne à une heure”—and left a space 23at foot for the signature of the master. When signed you treasured this up in your desk—and at some later date when the hour of punishment came, produced it, and unless your crime was very heinous were duly let off! It was a curious arrangement, but one which had perhaps the advantage of discouraging

a boy from being too good—since obviously it would be a mistake to collect a greater number of such tickets than you were likely to make use of.

My brother and I, as day-boys, escaped a good deal of the general school routine and regulation, and on the whole had not a bad time. The boys received us decently, and as we could play leap-frog or prisoners’ base (Les Barres) as well as any of them, paid us due respect; and one of the masters, Llandais by name, was quite kind and thoughtful towards me. Out of hours we careered through the woods of Satory, watched military evolutions on the plain above, or at dusk chased and caught the great stag-beetles—a thrilling joy. We wandered through the huge statue-adorned Park and the shady Bosquets of diamond-necklace celebrity, and learned swimming—as did also my sisters—in the fine open-air swimming bath, which used to be the bath of the pages of Louis XIV’s Court. After a year thus spent, the family returned to England, and we boys to the Brighton College.

As I say, it is probably a common experience that mere school teaching does not leave a very deep impression. Probably a good deal really is learned—but these are the more indirect things which slip into the background or foundation of the mind and character and so pass comparatively unobserved. Only three or four subjects of interest stand out in my memory as belonging to my school-days, and these all lay outside school proper. The earliest of 24these was music. At the age of ten I desired mightily to learn the piano; but music was not considered appropriate for a boy—besides there were six sisters who had to be taught, poor things, whether they liked it or not—and so my appearance on the music stool was treated rather as an intrusion, and I was generally hustled off again forthwith. However I got my way by playing late of an evening, when they were all upstairs in the drawing-room; I never had any regular teaching, but my mother took pity on me and taught me my notes; and from that time I stumbled through the “Marche des Croates” and