By the time I heard Israel in Egypt at the Handel Festival, I had also heard the St. Matthew Passion at St. Paul’s, and I quite definitely compared them. Probably it is a mistake ever to compare one achievement with another even if they are built on an appeal to the same sense: it is no more use comparing Handel with Bach than it is comparing a sunset with the view of the Bernese Oberland. But, taken by itself, that performance of Israel in Egypt seemed to me a monstrous attempt to cover up a common invention by inflating it with noise. The fact that there were four thousand (or perhaps four million) singers all bawling, “He gave them hailstones for rain,” did not essentially make the hailstorm one whit the stormier, though the immensity of the row pleasantly stunned the senses. It would be as unreasonable to take a carte-de-visite photograph of a man with a stupid mouth and a chin-beard, and hope to make it impressive by enlarging it to the size of the Great Pyramid. Indeed, the bigger the enlargement, the sorrier would be the result. But by that time I had the sense to see how delicate and delightful an artist is Handel when he confines himself to the limits of his true territory. For sweetness and neatness of melody, in the violin sonata in A, the piano sonatas, and songs from countless operas, I knew he had no rival—in the silver standard. But no one, with the one exception of Bach, has ever defeated the awful limitations of the “form” of oratorio, and, as a rule, the larger the orchestra, the more stupendous the body of voice, the more shaky becomes the credit of the composer. Indeed, the very fact that so gigantic a representation as a Crystal Palace Handel Festival was ever desired or enjoyed postulates not only a complete want of musical perception on the part of the public, but a corresponding want of musical achievement on the part of Handel. No one would deny that the “Hailstone Chorus” sounds better when a huge band and an immense chorus all produce the utmost noise of which they are capable. We all like hearing a quantity of voices and a Nebuchadnezzar-band thundering out commonplace melodies, because a loud and tuneful noise has a stimulating effect on the nerves, and because we like our ears (occasionally) to be battered into a hypnotized submission. But we submit not to the magic of the music, but to the overpowering din of its production. And when “the feast is over and the lamps expire,” when we have had “the louder music and the stronger wine” of noise, our hearts steal back to the spell of Cynara....
Soon after that first enthralling day at the Crystal Palace came the scholarship examination at Eton, which, as far as I was concerned, produced no prize whatever. I spent a delightful three days there, basking in the effulgence of Arthur, then just eighteen and demi-godlike, and came back to Temple Grove after a pleasant outing. And at the end of that term Waterfield retired, and I went back in September to be tutored again for more scholarships.
The new headmaster, Mr. Edgar, previously conducted a boarding-house, and was hitherto distinguished for a very long clerical coat, two most amiable daughters, a gold-rimmed eyeglass which he used to clean by inserting it in his mouth and then wiping it on his handkerchief, and the most remarkable hat ever seen. The nucleus of it, that is to say the part he wore on his head, was of hard black felt, like the ordinary bowler, but it was geometrically, quite round, so that he could put any part of it anywhere. That I know because I have so often tried it on myself. Outside that circular nucleus came an extremely broad black felt rim, far wider than that of the shadiest straw hat, and turning upwards on all sides in what I can only describe as a “saucy” curve. As worn by Edgar, it produced an impression of indescribable levity, just as if he was, say, Mr. George Robey posing as a parson. His amiability was unbounded, and his driving-power that of a wad of cotton-wool. Indeed, he was so pleasant that for his sake it became the fashion to fall in love with either of his two daughters, whose mission was to influence us for good. They gave us strawberries, and tried to get between us and the soft spring-showers of their father’s disapproval, like unnecessary umbrellas.
Under Edgar’s beneficent sway, I managed to get into the most complicated row that ever schoolboy found himself immersed in, for I committed three capital (or rather fundamental) offences in one joyous swoop. In the first place, I concealed five shillings of sterling silver about my person, though all cash derived from “tips” had to be given up to the matron, and by her doled out as she thought suitable. This clandestine millionaire thereupon bribed a fellow-conspirator to break bounds and go into Richmond, there to spend four of those shillings in Turkish delight, and keep the fifth for his trouble. He got back safely, and three friends had a wonderful feast in the dormitory that night, all sitting on my bed, and cloying ourselves and the bedclothes with that delicious sweetmeat. Unfortunately there was amongst those midnight revellers one stomach so effete and spiritless that it revolted at the administration of these cloying lumps, and, prostrated with sickness, the owner of it confessed to an unusual indulgence, while the state of my sheets completed the evidence. The chain went back link by link from his sickness to my bed, and from my bed to the finding of the empty Turkish delight box, and from the Turkish delight to the place it came from, and from the place it came from to the money wherewith it was purchased, so that I was left in as the unrivalled culprit in the reconstructed story. But though I should have swooned with anxiety and probably confessed all, had Waterfield been the Sherlock Holmes, I never gave a moment’s thought to Edgar’s unravelling. He said I had been very naughty, and sucked his eyeglass, and hoped I wouldn’t be naughty again. It was all very polite and pleasant, and I knew I had nothing to fear from him. But even at the time I had a secret misgiving as to the Judgment Book that should soon be opened at this page. The best thing, probably, that I could have done would have been to write home instantly and tell my father all about it, for that would certainly have seemed to him the proper course, and also he would have blown off part of his displeasure in a letter. But I continued to procrastinate, and before many weeks the term mildly ebbed away. Then with a sudden crescendo my misgivings increased, and it was a very unholiday-minded urchin who went back that December for Christmas at Truro.
About now my fear of my father was at its perihelion, and morning by morning I used to come downstairs, a quarter of an hour before breakfast time, to look at the post which had arrived, and see if among the letters for him there was one with the Mortlake postmark and the “Temple Grove” inscription on its flap. Some morning soon, I knew, my report on the term’s work and my conduct generally would come, and in it, no doubt, would be an allusion to this escapade. Edgar had treated it so lightly that it was still just possible that he would not allude to it in his report, but that possibility was not seriously entertained. Morning by morning I turned over the letters, while my father was at early service, and then one day, while Christmas was nearly on us, I saw with a sinking of the heart that the fatal letter had arrived. What added to the terror of it was that my father was in a fit of black depression.
He did not open his letters at breakfast, and afterwards I went out into the garden in pursuit of an entrancing game just invented, that concerned a large circular thicket of escalonia which grew near the front door. There was an “It,” who at a signal started in pursuit round the bush to catch Hugh and me, and “It” on this occasion was Nellie. She came running round the curve of the bush and set us flying off in the opposite direction, still keeping, by the rule of the game, close to the bush. Then, when she had got us really moving, she would double back with the design that we should still, running in that direction, rush into her very arms and be caught. Full speed astern was the only thing that could save us.... In the middle of this out came the butler, who said that my father wanted to see me at once. “Come out again quickly,” called Nellie.
My father was sitting in his study with an open letter in his hand. I think he gave it me to read; in any case, Mr. Edgar had been sufficiently explicit, and in all my life I have never been so benumbed with fear.... Had I committed the most heinous of moral crimes my father could not have made a blacker summing-up. He said that he would not see me among the rest of his children. I was to have my meals alone and disgraced upstairs, and to take no part in their games or in their society, and away I went battered and yet inwardly rebelling against this appalling sentence. Then I think my mother or Nellie must have pleaded, for I was allowed to go out for a walk with Nellie alone that afternoon, but was segregated from the others. I was still bewildered with the fierceness of my father’s displeasure, and took it for granted that I must have done something unintelligibly wicked, for I asked Nellie if she had ever done anything so dreadful as the crime of which I had been guilty. She said she had not, so I drew the inference that her theft of dried plants from my collection (which, after all, was a violation of one of the commandments) was venial. But it was precious on that black afternoon to receive sympathy at all, which certainly she gave me, and I did not risk the loss of it by enquiring about the comparative wickedness of the “Affair Turkish delight” and theft.
Then on Christmas Eve, which I think must have been next day, came one of those unutterable brightnesses which my father always had in store. Again he sent for me, and I went stiff and resigned, not knowing whether there was not to be some renewal of his anger.... Instead, he put me in an armchair close by the fire and wrapped a rug round my knees, and asked if I was quite comfortable, and shared with me the tea that had been brought in for him, since he was too busy to come into the nursery as usual and have it with the rest of us. And then he somehow gave me a glimpse, sitting tucked up by the fire, of the love that was at the base of his severity. How, precisely, he conveyed that I cannot tell, but there was no more doubt about it than there was about the heaviness of his displeasure.
The remaining two terms at Temple Grove passed along pleasantly. In school work I continued my slow placid gravitation to the bottom of my form, as other boys were promoted into it and took their places below me. I sank gently through them and came calmly to rest at a position where no fresh sinking was possible. There I went in for a little more sleep, “a little slumber, a little folding of the hands in sleep,” and resisted with the passive force of mere inertia any attempt to raise me. But probably vital forces were beginning to stir again, for I got free of the successive childish ailments which had been afflicting me—colds, sore throats, earaches and toothaches—all of which no doubt added their contribution to