Well-known people used to come and lecture at the literary society sometimes, but the only famous man I heard while I was at Eton was Mr. Gladstone, who lectured at the literary society in March 1891, on Artemis, as revealed in Homer. I was fortunate enough to get a ticket for this lecture. The boys, abstruse as the subject was, were spellbound. There was only one joke in the lecture, and that would have been better away. It was this: “Some of you may have heard the old story of the moon being made of green cheese.” Pause for laughter and a dead silence. “The moon might just as well,” continued Mr. Gladstone, “be made of green cheese for all the purposes she serves in Homer.”
At the end of the lecture the Provost returned thanks, and then Mr. Gladstone leapt to his feet and made an impassioned speech on classical education. The last sentence of his peroration was as follows: “But this, Mr. Provost, I venture to say, and say with confidence, and it is not a fancy of youth nor the whim of the moment, but the conviction forced upon me even more by the experience of life than by any reasoning quality, that if the purposes of education be to fit the human mind for the efficient performance of the greatest functions, the ancient culture, and, above all, the Greek culture, is by far the best and strongest, the most lasting, and the most elastic instrument that could possibly be applied to it.”
As he said these words his eyes flashed, he opened and raised his arms, and his body seemed to expand and grow tall. He seemed like the priest of culture speaking inspired words. His voice rolled out in a golden torrent, and as he said the words, “the best and strongest, the most lasting, the most elastic,” they seemed to come to him with the certainty of happy inspiration and with the accent of the unpremeditated. With these words his voice reached its highest pitch of crescendo, and then, slightly dying down, melodiously sank into silence.
This little speech showed me what great oratory could be.
At the end of my first year there was a prize called the Headmaster’s prize for French, for lower boys. I competed for this. It was always rather difficult to get a French prize at Eton, as there was usually a French or a Canadian boy who spoke and knew the language like a native. There was a special examination paper for this prize. I and a French boy, whose name I have forgotten, both got 95 marks out of 100. Then the papers were looked through again, and it was found that I had translated the French word hôte by host, when it should have been guest, so the other boy was given the prize, but my tutor gave me a book as a consolation. The following year I competed for the Headmaster’s French prize for boys in fifth form, and that time I won it, much to the delight of Chérie and of everyone at Membland.
In fifth form we learnt German as an extra. German was taught by Mr. Ploetz, who knew the language; and by other masters, who didn’t. During the lessons of the latter, one paid no attention, and attended to one’s private affairs. Mr. Ploetz was an excellent, stimulating teacher, but most unpopular with the other masters. The boys liked him; he was a book collector, and had a fine library. He taught me a great deal, not of German, as I paid no attention to the regular work, but I picked up from him a mass of miscellaneous information. It was the fashion to rag during his lessons, and I outdid everyone in ingenious interruption during Mr. Ploetz’ lessons. It was not that he couldn’t keep order. He was extremely strict and competent, but one knew, with the fiendish intuition of boys, that his complaints would not be taken seriously by the other masters, or by one’s tutor. This was indeed the case. There were three forms of punishment at Eton. First of all, one could get a yellow ticket, which meant one had to do a punishment of some written kind and get the ticket signed by one’s tutor. We did not much like leaving out the yellow ticket in a prominent place for my tutor to see when he came round in the evening. If matters went further, one was reported to the Headmaster and received a white ticket. The white ticket was in force for a week. During that week leave was stopped, and if the slightest complaint was made by anyone, it meant being complained of to the Headmaster a second time and a flogging by the Headmaster. I was complained of by Mr. Ploetz to the Headmaster. As I guessed, the other masters took this far from seriously. “What have you been doing to Mr. Ploetz?” said my tutor. What I had been guilty of was overt rowdyism, combined with prolonged and unbearable impertinence, which if done to any other master would have been taken very seriously indeed. “What have you been doing to Mr. Ploetz?” said another master to me, with a laugh, when he met me in the street. I received a white ticket, but I got through the week without further complaints, and I was never complained of again.
When I was in fifth form, the school library became a favourite haunt of mine, and Mr. Burcher, the librarian, a special friend. Mr. Burcher was a little dapper man, who was pained when we jumped over the tables, a favourite game of mine, or if we threw the books about. “Is it a joke,” he would ask plaintively, “or is it an insult?” But in that library, during my last year at Eton, I made by myself the discovery of English poetry, and read the works of Shelley in the three little volumes of the second Moxon edition of 1850, and the poems of Keats in Lord Houghton’s one-volume edition. On Sundays I used to go, rich with my new discoveries, to Norman Tower, and compare notes with Betty Ponsonby, who knew reams of English poetry by heart, and we would read each last new favourite poem. There is no joy in the world like this to discover these things for the first time. The shabby little Keats and Shelley, the green volumes of Tennyson, the three dark volumes of Matthew Arnold—what mines of fairy treasure they represented!
I made friends, through one of his pupils, with Arthur Benson. I had been in his division twice, but I had never known him well. One of the Coventrys, Willie Coventry, was his pupil, and he told Arthur Benson that I liked books and poetry, and had written a novel called Elvira, which was true (only it had to be destroyed after I had measles), and was going to write the libretto of an opera of which he, Coventry, was to write the music. He was not really musical, and did not know a note of music technically. He also intended, when I first made his acquaintance, to write a life of Mary Stuart; but this, like the opera, never got far.
Arthur Benson was most kind and interested, and it was arranged that on Sunday afternoons we should meet in his rooms and read out poetry. Arnold Ward, Mrs. Humphry Ward’s son, who was in College, joined us. We read out poetry; if we had written something ourselves, we left it with Arthur Benson for a week, he told us what he thought about it next time. I showed him a Fairies’ Chorus from my libretto. He said: “I don’t like those galloping metres, but I see you have got a good vocabulary.” My next effort was an Ode on the Tercentenary of Eton College, in which Fielding was mentioned as “the great wielder of the painting pen.” “Have you read Fielding?” asked Arthur Benson. I had not read Fielding. “I see,” said Arthur Benson, “you take him on trust.”
There was at that time a newspaper edited by two of the boys, called the Mayfly. I sent them my poem on Eton College, but they wisely refused it. The Mayfly, edited by Ramsay, was an amusing paper, but not quite as good as the Parachute, which had come out the year before, and was edited by Carr Bosanquet and others. This was a singularly brilliant newspaper. It only had three numbers, but they were most successful. There was at the same time an exceedingly serious newspaper called The Eton Review, edited, I think, by Beauchamp, which had articles about the Baconian theory, and other rather heavy topics. During my last summer a newspaper which had twenty editors, but only one number, came out, called The Students’ Humour. There was also a book published in 1891, called Keate’s Lane Papers, in which there is an excellent poem by J. K. Stephen, which has never been republished, called “The Song of the Scug.” It begins: