My relations with Raymond were comradely, not amorous; but in my fourth year I fell in love with a boy three years younger than myself, who was exceptionally intelligent and fine-spirited. Call him Dick. Dick was not in my house, but I had recently joined the school choir and so had he, which gave me opportunities for speaking to him occasionally after choir practice. I was unconscious of any sexual desire for him, and our conversations were always impersonal. This illicit acquaintance did not escape comment, and one of the masters, who sang in the choir, warned me to end it. I replied that I would not have my friendships in any way limited, pointing out that Dick was interested in the same things as myself, particularly in books; that, though the disparity in our ages might seem unfortunate, a lack of intelligence among the boys of my own age obliged me to find friends where I could. Finally the headmaster took me to task for it. I lectured him loftily on the advantage of friendship between elder and younger boys, citing Plato, the Greek poets, Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and others, who had felt as I did. He let me go without taking any action.
In my fifth year I reached the sixth form, and became a house-monitor. There were six of us. One of them, Jack Young, the house games-captain, a friendly, easy-going fellow, said one day: ‘Look here, Graves, I have to send in a list of competitors for the inter-house boxing competitions; shall I put your name down?’ Since my coolness with Raymond, boxing had lost its interest; I had been busy with football, and played for the house-team now. ‘I’m not boxing these days,’ I told Young. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘young Alan is entering for the welter-weights. He’s got a fair chance. Why don’t you enter for the welter-weights too? You might be able to damage one or two of the stronger men, and make things easier for him.’ I did not altogether like the idea of making things easier for Alan, but obviously I had to enter the competition. Realizing that my wind, though all right for football, would not be equal to boxing round after round, I decided that my fights must be short. The house-butler smuggled a bottle of cherry-whisky in for me – I would shorten the fights on that.
I had never drunk anything alcoholic before in my life. At seven years old my mother persuaded me to sign a pledge card, which bound me to abstain by the grace of God from all spirituous liquors so long as I retained it. But my mother took the card away and put it safely in the box-room, with the Queen Anne silver inherited from my Cheyne grandmother, Bishop Graves’s diamond ring which Queen Victoria gave him when he preached before her at Dublin, our christening mugs, and the heavy early-Victorian jewellery bequeathed by Miss Britain. And since box-room treasures never left the box-room, I regarded myself as permanently parted from my pledge. This cherry-whisky delighted me.
The competitions began at about one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and went on until seven. I was drawn for the very first fight and my opponent, by ill luck, was Alan. Alan wanted me to scratch. I told him it would look bad to do so. We consulted Jack Young, who said: ‘No, the most sporting thing will be to box it out, and let the decision be given on points; but don’t either of you hurt each other!’ so we boxed. Alan started showing off to his friends, who were sitting in the front row. I muttered: ‘Stop that, we’re boxing, not fighting!’ but a few seconds later he hit me again, unnecessarily hard. I got angry and knocked him out with a right swing on the side of his neck. This was the first time I had ever knocked anyone out, and the feeling combined well with my cherry-whisky exaltation. I muzzily realized that the swing did not form part of the ordinary school-boxing curriculum. Straight lefts; lefts to body, rights to head; left and right hooks; all these were known, but the swing had somehow been neglected, probably because it was not so ‘pretty’.
I went to the changing-room for my coat, and stout Sergeant Harris, the boxing instructor, said: ‘Look here, Mr Graves, why don’t you put down your name for the middle-weight competition too?’ I cheerfully agreed. Then I went back to the house, where I took a cold bath and more cherry-whisky. My next fight, for the first round of the middle-weights, would take place half an hour later. This time my opponent, who was a stone heavier then myself but had little science, bustled me about for the first round, and I could see that he would tire me out unless I did something pretty soon. In the second round I knocked him down with my right swing, but he got up. Feeling a bit winded, I hastened to knock him down again. I must have knocked him down four or five times that round, but he refused to take the count I discovered afterwards that he, like myself, was conscious of Dick watching the fight Finally I thought, as he lurched towards me once more: ‘If you don’t go down, and stay down, this time, I won’t be able to hit you again at all.’ I just pushed at his jaw as it offered itself to me, but that was enough. He went down, and he stayed down. This second knock-out made quite a stir. Knock-outs were rare in these boxing competitions. As I returned to the house for another cold bath and some more cherry-whisky, I noticed the fellows looking at me curiously, almost with admiration.
The later stages of the competition are vague in my memory. I now had to worry only about Raymond – nearly a stone heavier then myself, and expected to win the middle-weights; but he had also gone in for two weights, the middle and the heavy, and just been through a tough fight with the eventual winner of the heavy-weights, that left him in no proper state to continue. So he scratched his fight with me. I believe that Raymond would have fought all the same, had it been against anyone else; but he wanted me to win, and knew that his scratching would give me a rest between bouts. Then a semi-finalist scratched against me in the welter-weights, so only three more fights remained, and I let none of them go beyond the first round. The swing won me both weights, for which I received two silver cups. But I had also dislocated both my thumbs by not getting my elbow high enough over. When I tried to sell the cups some years later, to keep food in my mouth, they turned out to be only silver-plated.
The most important thing that happened in my last two years, apart from my attachment to Dick, was that I got to know George Mallory: a twenty-six or twenty-seven-year-old master, not long up from Cambridge and so youthful-looking as to be often mistaken for a member of the school. From the first, he treated me as an equal, and I used to spend my spare time reading in his room, or going for walks with him in the country. He told me of the existence of modern authors. My father being two generations older than myself and my only link with books, I had never heard of people like Shaw, Samuel Butler, Rupert Brooke, Wells, Flecker, or Masefield, and the discovery excited me. It was in George Mallory’s rooms that I first met Edward Marsh (then secretary to the Prime Minister, Mr Asquith), who has always been a good friend to me, and with whom, though we seldom see each other now, I have never quarrelled: in this he is almost unique among my pre-war friends. Marsh liked my poems, which Mallory had showed him, but pointed out that they were written in the poetic diction of fifty years ago and that, though the quality of the poem was not necessarily impaired by this, many readers would be prejudiced against work written in 1913 in the fashions of 1863.
George Mallory, Cyril Hartmann, Raymond, and I published a magazine in the summer of 1913, called Green Chartreuse. It was intended to have only one number; new magazines at a public school always sell out the first number, and lose heavily on the second. From Green Chartreuse I shall quote one of my own contributions, of autobiographical interest, written in the school dialect:
MY NEW-BUG’S EXAM
When lights went out at half past nine in the evening of the second Friday in the Quarter, and the faint footfalls of the departing Housemaster were heard no more, the fun began.
The Head of Under Cubicles constituted himself examiner and executioner, and was ably assisted by a time keeper, a question-recorder, and a staff of disreputable friends. I was a timorous ‘new-bug’ then, and my pyjamas were damp with the perspiration of fear. Three of my fellows had been examined and sentenced before the inquisition was directed against me.
‘It’s Jones’s turn now,’ said a voice. ‘He’s the little hash-pro who hacked me in run-ab
out today. We must set him some tight questions!’
‘I say, Jones, what’s the colour of the House-master – I mean what’s the name of the House-master of the House whose colours are black and white? One, two, three…’
‘Mr Girdlestone,’ my voice quivered in the darkness.
‘He evidently knows the simpler colours. We’ll muddle him. What are the colours of the Club to which Block Houses belong? One, two, three, four…’
I had been slaving at getting up these questions for days, and just managed to blurt out the answer before being counted out.
‘Two questions. No misses. We must buck up,’ said someone.
‘I say, Jones, how do you get to Farncombe from Weekites? One, two, three…’
I had issued directions only as far as Bridge before being counted out.
‘Three questions. One miss. You’re allowed three misses out of ten.’
‘Where is Charterhouse Magazine? One, two, three, four…’
‘Do you mean The Carthusian office?’ I asked.
Everyone laughed.
‘Four questions. Two misses. I say, Robinson, he’s answered far too many. We’ll set him a couple of stingers.’
Much whispering.
‘What is the age of the horse that rolls Under Green? One, two, three…’
‘Six!’ I said, at a venture.
‘Wrong; thirty-eight. Six questions. Three misses! Think yourself lucky you weren’t asked its pedigree.’
‘What are canoeing colours? One, two, thr…’
‘There aren’t any!’
‘You’ll get cocked-up for festivity; but you can count it. Seven questions. Three misses. Jones?’
‘Yes!’
‘What was the name of the girl to whom rumour stated that last year’s football secretary was violently attached? One, two, three, four…’
‘Daisy!’ (It sounded a likely name.)
‘Oh, really! Well, I happen to know last year’s football secretary; and he’ll simply kill you for spreading scandal. You’re wrong anyhow. Eight questions. Four misses! You’ll come to my “cube” at seven tomorrow morning. See? Good night!’
Here he waved his hair-brush over the candle, and a colossal shadow appeared on the ceiling.
The Poetry Society died about this time – and this is how it died. Two of its sixth-form members came to a meeting, and each read a rather dull and formal poem about love and nature; none of us paid much attention to them. But the following week they came out in The Carthusian, and soon everyone began pointing and giggling; because both poems, signed with pseudonyms, were acrostics, the initial letters spelling out a ‘case’. ‘Case’ meant ‘romance’, a formal coupling of two boys’ names, with the name of the elder boy first. In both poems the first names mentioned were those of bloods. It was a foolish act of aggression in the feud between sixth form and the bloods. But nothing much would have come of it, had not another of the sixth-form members of the Poetry Society been idealistically in love with one of the smaller boys whose name appeared in the acrostics. In rage and jealousy he went to the headmaster (Frank Fletcher, who had superseded G. H. Rendall), and called his attention to the acrostic – which otherwise none of the masters would have noticed. He pretended not to know the authors; but though he had missed the particular Poetry Meeting at which the verses were read, he could easily have guessed them from the style. Meanwhile, I had incautiously told someone the authors’ names; so I got dragged into the row as a witness against them.
The headmaster took a very serious view of the matter. The two poets lost their monitorial privileges; the editor of The Carthusian who, though aware of the acrostics, had accepted the poems, lost his editorship and his position as Head of School. The informer, who happened to be next in school order, succeeded him in both capacities; he had not expected this development, which made him most unpopular. His consolation was a real one: that he had done it all for love, to avenge the public insult done his young friend. The Poetry Society was ignominiously dissolved by the headmaster’s orders. It was an ‘I told you so’ for the other masters, who did not believe either in poetry, or in school uplift societies. But I owed a great debt of gratitude to Kendall (one of the few masters who insisted on treating the boys better than they deserved); the meetings of the Poetry Society had been all that I could look forward to when things were at their worst for me.
My last year at Charterhouse I did everything possible to show how little respect I had for school tradition. In the winter of 1913 I won a classical exhibition at St John’s College, Oxford, which allowed me to go slow on school work. Nevill Barbour and I were editing The Carthusian, and a good deal of my time went on that. Nevill, who as a scholar had met the same sort of difficulties as myself, shared my dislike of most Charterhouse traditions, and decided that compulsory games were among the worst. Of these, we considered cricket the most objectionable, because it wasted most time in the best part of the year. Nevill suggested a campaign in favour of lawn-tennis. We were not seriously devoted to tennis, but found it our handiest weapon against cricket – the game, we wrote, in which the selfishness of the few did not excuse the boredom of the many. Tennis was quick and busy. We asked Old Carthusian tennis internationals to contribute letters proposing tennis as the manlier and more vigorous game. We even persuaded Anthony Wilding, the world champion, to write. The games-masters, who called tennis ‘pat-ball’, a game for girls, were scandalized at this assault on cricket, and even more so by an ironical letter in its support, which I had signed ‘Judas Iscariot’. One of them came to Nevill and asked would he please be less controversial. ‘This is not a deputation,’ he explained. ‘No?’ said Nevill. ‘I thought it was. You were the only member of the Staff considered tactful enough to approach the Governing Body for a rise of salary last year.’
The result of our campaign surprised us. When we revealed the scandal that subscriptions to the two derelict school tennis-courts had been, for several years, appropriated by the cricket committee, not only did we double our sales, but a fund was started for providing several more tennis-courts, and making Charterhouse the cradle of public-school tennis. Though delayed by the war, these courts did, in fact, appear one day. I noticed them recently as I drove past in a car; there seemed to be plenty of them. I wonder, are there tennis bloods at Charterhouse now?
Poetry and Dick were still almost all that really mattered. Life with my fellow house-monitors was one of perpetual discord. I had grudges against every one of them, except Jack Young and the head-monitor. Young, the only blood in the house, spent most of his time with fellow-bloods in other houses. The head-monitor was a scholar who, though well-principled, had been embittered by his first three years in the house, and now stood too much on his dignity. He did more or less what the other monitors wanted him to do, and I hated having to lump him in with the rest. My love for Dick provoked a constant facetiousness, but they never dared go too far. I once caught one of them in the bathroom, scratching up a pair of hearts conjoined, with Dick’s initials and mine above them. I pushed him into the bath and turned the taps on. The next day, he got hold of a manuscript notebook of mine which I had left, with some other books, in the monitors’ room. He and all the others, except Jack Young, annotated it critically in blue chalk, and signed their initials. Jack would have nothing to do with this ungentlemanly behaviour. When I discovered what had been done, I demanded a signed apology, threatening that if it did not arrive within five minutes, I would choose one of them as being solely responsible and punish him. I was now off to take a cold bath, and the first monitor whom I met afterwards would get knocked down.
Whether by accident, or whether he thought that his position protected him, the first I met in the corridor was the head-monitor. I knocked him down. It was the time of evening preparation, from which we were excused. But a fag happened to pass on an errand, and saw the spurt of blood; so the incident could not be hushed up. Presently the housemaster sent for me. He was an excitable, elderly man, with some di
fficulty in controlling his spittle when angry; a trait that had earned him the name of ‘Gosh’ Parry. I went to his study, where he made me sit down in a chair, then stood over me, clenching his fists and crying in falsetto: ‘Do you realize that you have committed a very brutal act?’ His mouth bubbled with spittle. I jumped up and clenched my fists too, saying that I would do the same thing again to anyone else who, after scribbling impertinent remarks on my private papers, refused to apologize. ‘Private papers? Filthy poems!’ said Gosh Parry.
I had another difficulty with the headmaster as a result. But, this being my last term, he allowed me to finish my five years without ignominy. I puzzled him by the frankness with which I confessed my love for Dick, when he re-opened the question. I refused to be ashamed, and heard afterwards that he had described this as one of the rare friendships between boys of unequal ages which, he felt, was essentially moral. A week or two later I went through one of the worst quarters of an hour of my life on Dick’s account. When the master who sang in the choir warned me about exchanging glances with Dick in chapel I had been infuriated. But when one of the choir-boys told me that he had seen the master surreptitiously kissing Dick once, on a choir-treat, I went quite mad without asking for any details or confirmation. I went to the master and told him that unless he resigned, I would report the matter to the headmaster – he already had a reputation in the school for this sort of thing and kissing boys was a criminal offence. No doubt my sense of moral outrage concealed a murderous jealousy. When he vigorously denied the charge, I could not guess what would happen next. But I said: ‘Well, come to the headmaster and deny it in his presence.’ He asked: ‘Did the boy tell you this himself?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, then I’ll send for him, and he’ll tell us the truth.’