Stalky's Reminiscences. L. L. Dunsterville
short and he would then hand over a two-shilling piece to the biggest boy of four, with instructions to change it and pass on their shares to the other three.
It was the stupidest way of doing things that you can well imagine, and was putting a very strong temptation in the way of the elder boy. And the elder boy with whom I was generally bracketed was the sort of boy who needed little tempting. So I often got no sixpence at all, or was glad to compound for twopence and a ball of twine, or a penknife with both blades broken.
So I learnt two valuable lessons. First, to earn money honestly, to be spent in the tuck-shop. Second, to procure eatables from the world at large without expenditure, and honestly – if possible.
I earned money in various ways, little odd jobs rewarded by richer boys with a penny or two. I got half a crown out of a rich youth one Sunday for diving into the swimming-bath in my Sunday clothes with my top-hat on. And I made and sold a great many sets of miniature golf-clubs and balls for use in a popular game of miniature golf played on the floor of the form-room. The clubs were about eight inches long and were accurate models.
I made a little money almost honestly by collecting copper nails, and bits of copper sheeting from pools on the beach, and selling them in Bideford where I got quite a good price for them.
Wrecks were not uncommon in Bideford Bay, and my copper came from sailing ships that had gone to pieces on the bar. I suppose these things belonged in law to ‘the Crown’, but you had to be pretty clever to find them, and I am sure the Crown would never have done it.
The eatables I procured for myself were such things as blackbirds, potatoes, turnips, hens’ eggs, apples, with good fortune a rabbit, and on rare occasions a whole loaf of fresh bread.
With the exception of the bread these were just things that bountiful Nature provided or that farmers and hens had left lying about and that seemed to come my way. The bread, I am afraid, was real theft, but it did not seem to be so to me. It was our own college bread and part of the supply intended for our consumption – but they only gave us slices and I wanted a whole loaf after I had eaten all my slices. And it took some getting, I can assure you.
One had to descend into forbidden regions, and dart from passage to passage with domestics passing backwards and forwards all the time. And there was no escape in flight, because you were known, and to be seen was equivalent to being captured.
I am sure that no parent who reads the above will want to write again to the Headmaster to inquire whether Cuthbert gets enough to eat. Once for all, it is quite certain that he does not. As far as my experience goes, no healthy boy has ever had enough to eat. I have sometimes as a boy had too much, but never once enough.
I know that I am not, and never was, abnormally greedy, and my fat cheeks were purely natural and not in the least due to my large appetite. In my recollection it was always the thinnest boys who ate most, and the fatness of my cheeks brought tears to my eyes when I noticed a sort of living skeleton always eating two to my one.
This food problem not only exercises the minds of parents with regard to boys at school, but a fond mother often betrays the same anxiety for a full-grown man.
During the Great War all sorts of ‘mothers’ darlings’ found themselves unexpectedly in the ranks of the army. A mother of one such lad wrote to me when I was commanding a brigade, asking me if I would assure myself ‘personally’ that her boy had enough to eat.
I hadn’t really time to do that, so I told the Brigade-Major to write to her and advise her to have a good look at the next batch of British soldiers she met, and judge from their prime condition whether army food was ample or not.
I managed to get through a good deal of reading in the intervals of work, games, and being hunted. Like most boys my fancy ran to rather lurid works of fiction. I owe a deep debt of gratitude for many happy dreams of love and adventure to the authors of two splendid books. My first favourite was Ned Kelly, The Ironclad Bushranger, with a thrill in every chapter. The second favourite was Jack Harkaway. I also read most of Fenimore Cooper’s splendid stories of Red Indians, and Captain Marryat’s books of adventures at sea. Another author was ‘Gustave Aimard’, who wrote of Spanish adventures and vendettas. From his books I learnt a whole set of Spanish oaths and imprecations, which still linger in my memory.
Spain is one of the few countries I have not yet been able to visit. I hope to get there some day and try my vocabulary on the inhabitants.
It was about this time that I took to signing in my blood the letters I wrote to my sisters.
I don’t believe that they were much impressed by it, and it was an unpleasant job getting the blood from my arm, and blood is most trying stuff to write with, it congeals very quickly and won’t run off the nib – I doubt if it was worth while.
About my second or third year at school I ran away to sea, during the summer term.
In taking this action I was impelled by many considerations. I had a great love for the sea which has never left me. I never had the least desire to be a soldier, I wanted to be a sailor, but I was never consulted.
I wanted freedom and adventure – something on the lines of being wrecked on a desert island where one found conveniently to hand all the things one needed, not forgetting a parrot and a Man Friday.
I wanted to get away from the tyranny of masters and boys, to get out into the wide world, to make my own way in life, to find possibly a gold mine, and return in a few years and say ‘Ha, ha!’
My effort ended in complete failure. I sought employment with the small coasting brigs and schooners, but they laughed at me and told me to go back to school. It worried me that they should spot so easily that I was a schoolboy when I had taken, as I thought, great pains to disguise myself.
I must have been away about three days and two nights, getting a crust of bread here and there at farms, a turnip or two from the fields, and sleeping concealed in the thick Devon hedges at night. At last hunger compelled me to surrender and I made my way back to school to give myself up. As I crossed the football field I was spotted by various people, who ‘captured’ me, and rather boasted of their capture. This annoyed me more than anything. To be regarded as a ‘capture’ when one was really a ‘surrender’ – quite a different thing.
I was taken before the Head, who showed considerable tact in his treatment of me.
Although I had failed in my endeavour to go to sea, I had had an interesting time, and the excitement caused by my recapture helped me to feel somewhat of a hero. I was, on the whole, rather pleased with myself. The fact that I should have to undergo a severe licking and perhaps be expelled, did not worry me in the least. I was very, very hungry and the thought uppermost in my mind was that whatever they did, they would have to give me food!
So I was full of assurance as I was marched by Sergeant Schofield into the awful presence of the Head. I expected him to leap from his desk and do or say something dramatic, but to my pained surprise, he continued writing and seemed barely aware of our presence.
The silence was very unnerving. Nothing beyond the sound of my own breathing, and the ticking of the clock.
At last the sergeant ventured to attract attention by clearing his throat, on which the Head asked him what he wanted, without even turning round.
My assurance was trickling out of me fast.
It trickled out to the last drop when I heard the Head say ‘Dunsterville? Dunsterville. Oh yes, now I remember. The boy that ran away.’
Then turning suddenly round and facing me he asked, ‘And what do you want?’
‘What did I want?’ This was quite a new proposition. I had thought that it was they who wanted me, but the Head assured me that that was not so at all. Having run away, my name had just been erased from the rolls and that settled it. I no longer belonged to the college and so ‘What did I want?’
Visions of cups of hot tea, and plates of nice meat and bread, faded from my mind, as I burst into tears. No amount of beating or reproaches could have made me weep like that,