Uppingham by the Sea: A Narrative of the Year at Borth

by John Huntley Skrine

The slow, sad hours which bring us all things ill,
And all good things from evil,

had brought its coveted security at last within our reach. For so it was with some of us. Perhaps the air of sea and mountain had got into the blood, and infected it with a certain disrelish for the restraints, the even decorum, and the tamer surroundings of our life in the Midlands. Well, we are not the only emigrants who have preferred their backwoods to the streets of the mother city, nor the first campaigners who have come back to home-quarters a trifle spoiled by adventure. And, moreover, while everything about us was a reminder of what we must forego, there was nothing to tell us of what a greeting our townsmen were preparing for us, or of the solid mutual good which filled the vista beyond that auspicious welcome.

However, alike for those who were impatient and those who were half reluctant to attain it, the equal-handed hours brought the end of our exile. On one of our last evenings, April 6th,

a reading was given in the school-room, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with Mendelssohn’s music; no unfit close, we said, to our annns mirabilis. For, indeed, its incidents had been “such stuff as dreams are made of,” as whimsical if not quite as harmless, as if their plot had been directed by the blithe goblin of Shakespeare’s fantasy. The chorus of readers and of singers were so far encouraged by their success, as to offer a second recital as a farewell entertainment to the good people of Borth. They enjoyed it hugely. Doubtless some of the simpler members of that audience would follow the drift of the Sassenach poet only at a certain distance; but Bottom’s “transformed scalp,” a pasteboard ass’s-head, come all the way from Nathan’s, was eloquent without help of an interpreter. “Oh! that donkey, he was beautiful,” was the dramatic criticism of an esteemed friend, a fisher’s wife. The criticism was at least sincere; from the moment of the monster’s entry she had been in one rapture of laughter, till her “face was like a wet cloak ill laid up.” Well, the kind soul had reason good enough for her merriment. But had the reason been less, our neighbours would not have lost the occasion of dropping the

shyness of intercourse in a frank outburst of good fellowship.

But we took a more solemn farewell on the morrow, the 10th of April. The parts were reversed now, and we were the spectators. Just at sundown of a day of clear spring weather, the school was gathered at their doors watching a long procession of villagers advancing up the street towards them. We had heard whispers in the morning of a “demonstration,” and now it was come. Through the dust we caught sight of banners flying at the head of the column; under them marched the choir of children singing, and behind them the whole village was a-foot. The people of Borth, of every age and degree, from the first householders and yeomen of the place to the fishermen’s boys and girls, had come to wish us God speed. Reaching the school quarters they halted, the boys lining the roadway on each side of them, and filling the broad flight of steps before the hotel doors. When the cheers for “Uppingham” and our answering cheers for “Borth” had rung out across the sands to seaward, there was an interval, filled up with songs by the children, while they waited the arrival of the spokesmen, whom

they had charged with their valediction. When these arrived, a deputation of the villagers moved into the school-room shed, and there presented a brief address, which ran thus: “We, the inhabitants of Borth, beg to tender our most sincere thanks to Dr. Thring, and all the masters and scholars of the celebrated Uppingham School, for the very many generous acts and kindly feelings exhibited to us during their sojourn here.” The address was introduced and explained by speeches marked by refined feeling, and delivered with a noticeable grace of manner. We will here cite, though for another reason, a few words of the speaker who moved the address; he commented on the discipline which (from the evidence of their conduct when at large) seemed to rule the school; naïvely but pointedly he noted that no offence had ever been given; “No boy had laughed at the villagers, if they were old and queer-looking or queerly dressed; there had been no disorder, no shabby act, nothing undecent” (so he put it in his unpractised English) “during the whole twelve months we had spent among them.” We give his testimony without note or comment, sure that the facts would not be better told in words less simple. They were little things he witnessed to;

was it a little thing that the witness could be truly borne?

The boys were not present to hear the speeches, but they will like well to remember the scene without doors at that unlooked-for reunion of school and village. It was a scene made up of homely elements enough, but somehow, in our own memory at least, few pictures will remain printed in such fast colours. Clearly, as on that evening, we shall always see, distinct in the quiet light of the afterglow, the ranks of serious faces, touched and stilled by the surprise of a contagious sympathy, as English boys and Welsh cottagers looked each other in the face, and felt, if for the space of a few heartbeats only, an outflash of that ancient kinship which binds man and man together more than race and circumstance divide.

It pleases the smaller kind of criticism to cheapen the meaning of such incidents as this, and explain them by the easy reference to interested and conventional motives. Wiser men will take occasion to rejoice that human nature is after all so kind; and if this be error, we would rather err with the wise. Take once again our thanks, kind people of Borth, if our thanks are worth your taking. You showed us no little kindness in a