those vast joints never knows when he will strike his elbow against the walls or passers-by; while the incidence of draughts is clearly enough defined by here and there a coat-collar turned up in self-defence; for neither the glass front door, nor the wooden porch, nor our massive porter can effectually keep out the weather. Dinner here is a stern bit of the day’s work, to be discharged with a serious fortitude.
We have described how we eat, but said nothing yet of what was eaten. Yet our practical narrative cannot ignore the matter. Certain delicate subjects, however, are best treated dialectically, and perhaps we could not here do better than record a dialogue which we think we must have overheard between Grumbler and Cheerful, two dramatic characters not unknown to readers of the School Magazine some year ago:
Cheer. Have you read that jolly letter in The Times, on “Uppingham by the Sea?”
Grumb. Yes, I have; and the writer says, “The commissariat was on the whole good.” I must say that surprises me.
Cheer. Why where was it at fault, then?
Grumb. Where? It was at fault all round. Look at the puddings—everlastingly smoked!
Cheer. Yes; but the commissariat is not puddings.
Grumb. Well then, the coals—all chips and small dust; at least, when there were any.
Cheer. But the commissariat is not coals.
Grumb. Then the cold plates your gravy froze on!
Cheer. My good fellow, who ever heard of hot plates on a picnic?
Grumb. How about the vegetables then, that never came to table except to make believe there was something in the Irish stew? or what do you call the thing they sometimes served out for butter?
Cheer. Ah! well! “a rose by any other name”—you know the rest. But still, the commissariat isn’t bad because the butter was so sometimes.
Grumb. Oh! of course, you can say the Commissariat (if you spell it with a big C) doesn’t mean the meat, or the soup, or the puddings, or the greens, or the butter, or the coals, or the rest of it—but if it isn’t these, I should like to know what it is.
Cheer. (loftily). My good friend, it is easy for you to say this thing or the other was not to your fancy, but it was not quite so easy a matter for our landlord to provide a daily supply of meat, bread, and dairy stuff for some four hundred people; especially as it had to be organised for the occasion, without previous experience. I take it if you knew how the farmers had to be coaxed to sell us their butter, how green things couldn’t be had in the markets for love or money, and if you knew how many miles of railway those beeves travelled to and fro between pasture, slaughter-house, and kitchen, before their weary joints rested on our table, I say you would thank the commissariat that you hadn’t something worth grumbling about. I am glad we never were on famine rations. I asked to live, not to live well.
Grumb. (a trifle ashamed, but dogged). Why, of course, I don’t mean to say things might not have been worse. Still I stick to it, they were not nice.
Cheer. But you’ll admit the commissariat did its work: the army was fed. After all, the proof of a pudding is not the eating of it, it is how you feel after it. Now, people are not starved who look the strong healthy fellows ours did when they went home after the first term of it. No ‘famine marks’ in those firm, brown faces, eh? And then, tell me, did the Rutland pastures ever yield such juicy mutton, or flow so abundantly with milk?
Grumb. Enough, enough; you have it. Only I won’t be told I was revelling in comfort when I was doing nothing of the kind. I’ll bear it, but I won’t grin and say I like it; I’ll say nothing against it if it’s better not, but I shan’t say what is untrue in favour of it. [Exeunt arm-in-arm.]
Our two interlocutors fairly exhaust the facts of the case between them, and the historian, who can serve no purpose by trying to think things better or worse than they were, will silence neither. We give our honest praise to the organisers of the food supply for their effectual performance of a very heavy, vexatious, and precarious task, the scale of which we have been brought by inquiry to estimate at its true magnitude. At the same time we will spare such sympathy as the dignity of the matter demands for the sufferers from tough beef, tub butter, smoked puddings, cold potatoes, and congealed gravy, and not mislead any refugee schoolmaster of the future into the belief that he can dine in the wilderness as comfortably as in Pall Mall.
CHAPTER VIII.—DIVERSIONS AT BORTH: NEW SOIL, NEW FLOWERS.
There be delights, there be recreations and jolly pastimes that will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream.
Milton, “Areopagitica.”
O summer day, beside the joyous sea!
O summer day, so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!
For ever and for ever shalt thou be
To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
To some the landmark of a new domain.Longfellow.
Housed, fed, and taught; what more does the school need done for it? “Is that all?” some of the English public will exclaim. “Then you have done nothing. What about the boys’ sports?” We foresaw the question, and when we left home some people felt uneasy as to what would happen to a school separated from its fives-courts and
playing-fields. True, there was to be a beach, and the boys could amuse themselves by throwing stones into the sea: but when there were no more stones to throw—what then? The prospect was a blank one.
Well, as we have seen, things came right enough as regarded the cricket. Players had to content themselves with fewer games, for the ground could only be reached on half-holidays. On the other hand, the season of 1876 gained a character of its own from the novelty of its matches against Welsh teams. One of these was the eleven of Shrewsbury School. With this ancient seat of learning our troubles brought us into genial intercourse, and a few months later we met them again on the football-field. Both matches were played at Shrewsbury; in the former we gained a victory over our kind hosts, the latter was a drawn game.
The athletics were held on the straight reach of road beyond Old Borth; the steeple-chases in the fields which border it. At the prize-giving, the “champion” was hoisted as usual, and carried round the hotel, instead of along the via sacra of the Uppingham triumph, with the proper tumultuary rites. For the make-believe of paper-chases we had the realities of hare-hunting, of