Foxholme Hall, and Other Tales

by William Henry Giles Kingston

“You’ll do, and do famously!” exclaimed the master, who was not famed for bestowing unnecessary compliments on any one.

Reginald came out with no little feeling of allowable pride, and, dressing quickly, stepped on board the boat, when, taking the yoke-lines in a knowing manner, he steered away for Bargemen’s Bridge, where the stream once more joins the river.

Reginald at once threw himself into boating most zealously. He was always on the water, practising away, and soon became as proficient with oars as with sculls—his great ambition being to belong to an eight-oar. He and Power took a lock-up between them, for which they paid five pounds; and though they liked it very much, they agreed that it was not half so much fun as their boating in old days at Osberton, with Toby Tubb as coxswain. Reginald did not neglect cricket, however; but as he was still numbered among the Lower boys he could only belong to the Sixpenny Club.

The playing-fields at Eton are divided between different clubs. The boys subscribe to one or the other according to their position in the school. Above the Sixpenny, to which the entrance is only one shilling, is the Lower Club, to which those in the Fifth Form belong who are considered not to play well enough to belong to the Upper Club. To the Upper Club the clever and all the first-rate players alone belong. The grand cricketing time is “after six,” when, in the playing-fields, the balls are flying about as thickly as in a general action, or, at all events, as at “Lord’s” on practising days; while, especially at the great matches in the Upper Club, the non-players lie on the turf, indulging largely in Bigaroon cherries and other fruits in season, and making their remarks on the game.

Such is the every-day Eton life in which Reginald found himself placed. There was abundance of occupation to pass the time, and yet no very salient events worthy of description. After he had been there about a fortnight, he found himself apportioned, by the captain of his house, to a master who had already another fag. That fag, Cross, had been all his school-life at Eton, and was well accustomed to the work, so thought nothing of it; but when Reginald first found himself ordered to perform some menial office, he could not help his spirit rising in rebellion; but he soon conquered the feeling, the absurdity of which he acknowledged to himself, and he at once set about his task with a cheerful countenance and willing hands. The out-of-door fagging went more against the grain, as he did not like to be sent here or there by any stranger about some trifle, when he wanted to be doing something else; but he soon got reconciled to that also, with the reflection that all Eton fellows had to go through it.

Cross and he got on very well together. They were not great friends, but they never quarrelled. Their master, Coventry, was good-natured, though strict in having the duties they owed him performed, and his orders obeyed.

Reginald was talking over Coventry’s character with Power, and observed—“I would fifty times rather serve a strict master like him than one of your easy-going, idle fellows, who all of a sudden takes it into his head that he will have everything in apple-pie order, and thrashes you because you do not know what he wants.”

“Certainly,” answered Power. “When I first came I had a master who never by any chance was in the same mind two days together. He would have different things for breakfast and tea, and everything in his room arranged differently. He kept my mind on a continual stretch to guess what he would want, till he made me very nearly as mad as himself. At last I informed him that I would do anything that he told me, but that I could not undertake to guess his wishes. He could not see the reasonableness of my arguments, and so I at length gave up any attempt to please him—he of course never being satisfied; and thus we went on till the end of the half.”

What with observation, conversation, and his own personal experience, Reginald daily gained a larger amount of knowledge of the world in which he was destined to move—not of the bad which was taking place, but of the way to conduct himself in it.