A Student in Arms by Donald Hankey
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Donald Hankey >> A Student in Arms
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Besides him, I had a few associates, boys with whom I naturally
associated for the simple reason that they, too, were left out of the
main current of the life of the place. But they were not particularly
congenial. One or two were hard workers. One was a great slacker, and
more timid, physically and morally, than even I. He was a boy with a
fatal facility for doing useless things moderately well, especially in
the musical line. He was even more frightened of gym and horses than
I was, and unlike me was not ashamed to show it. If the Shop was
purgatory to me, it must have been hell to him.
My happiest times were week-ends spent at home. I used to arrive on
Saturday evening and leave on Sunday evening. About now I began to
get to know my father much better, and to develop my theological bent
under his advice. In my disillusionment as to my capacity for military
life I began to wish I had chosen the clerical profession. I think my
father had the shrewdness to see that failure in one profession was
not necessarily the sign of a "call" in another direction. Anyway, he
did not discourage me; but spoke of five years in the Army as the best
training for a parson.
I remember avowing my intention of becoming a parson to one of my more
friendly acquaintances at the Shop, and he replied that I wouldn't set
the Thames on fire, because I had such a monotonous voice.
In spite of seeking relief from my uncongenial surroundings in
religion and theology, I did not join myself to any one else. There
was a so-called "Pi Squad," or Bible class, held weekly, but I only
went once, and didn't like it. I was always peculiarly sensitive about
priggishness in those who professed themselves to be religious openly,
and generally thought I detected priggishness in any "Bible circle"
or similar institution that I came across. I think my theology
mainly consisted in speculations about the future state--I remember
I emphatically declined to believe in hell--and my religion consisted
mainly in fairly regular attendance at Matins and Communion.
Another effect of the intensity with which I hated my surroundings was
that I read a lot of good novels--George Eliot, the Brontes, Scott,
Dickens, Jane Austen, Thackeray, Besant, etc. A book which I read
over and over again was Arthur Benson's _Hill of Trouble, and other
Stories_. Those legends, with their imaginative setting, charm of
language and beautiful religious ideas were more restful to my unquiet
spirit than anything else I read.
The actual conditions of life at the Shop were pretty barbaric. The
aim was to make it as much like barracks as possible. Each term was
housed in a different side of the square of buildings which form the
Academy, and the fourth term were spread among the houses of the other
terms as corporals. My first term I shared a room with three other
fellows. I think it was the ugliest room I have ever lived in, without
exception. It had high whitewashed brick walls. In each corner was
a bed which folded up against the wall in the day time, and was
concealed by a square of print curtains. There were a deal table, four
windsor chairs, a shelf with four basins, and a cupboard with four
lockers. All the woodwork was painted khaki. The contrast with the
little study at Rugby, with its diamond-paned window, its matchboard
panelling surmounted by a paper of one's own choosing, its ledge
for photos and ornaments ("bim ledge" so called), its eggshell blue
cupboards, baize curtains and window box, was striking.
It used to be the custom to go to and from the bathroom attired in a
sponge, in connexion with which an amusing incident once happened.
A cadet in his second year was on the bathroom landing, when he
perceived that the mother and sisters of another cadet were coming
upstairs. From sounds in the bathroom he realized that they would
meet a naked corporal just as they reached the landing. The door of
the bathroom opened outwards, and with admirable presence of mind
he rushed back, and putting his back against the door and his feet
against the wall, imprisoned the corporal. The corporal, in the
approved Shop version of Billingsgate, began to blaspheme at the top
of his voice, so when the ladies reached the top of the stairs they
saw a vision of a cadet with his feet to the wall and his back to a
door singing at the top of his voice to drown a Commotion within!
On another occasion in my second year, when I was sharing a room
with one other fellow, I had a sister to tea. On arriving in my room
I found that my stablemate had been playing hockey, and was at the
moment in the bathroom, having thoughtlessly left all his clothes in
the room--mostly on the floor.
On the last day of my first term the corporals and officers were all
absent at a farewell dinner to the former, and we received information
that the third term were going to raid our house, with a view to
"toshing" us in a cold bath. We therefore prepared for action. Every
receptacle which would hold water was taken to the upper landing,
full. Then all the chairs in the house were roped together, and
placed on the stairs as an obstacle. The defenders then took up their
position at the windows and at the top of the stairs. In due course
the enemy's forces arrived, and stormed the stairs, under a heavy fire
of water. The obstacle was at length destroyed, and a solid phalanx
of wet bodies swarmed up the stairs. We formed a similar phalanx
and charged to meet them. I happened to be first, and much to my
discomfiture the enemy's phalanx parted in the middle, and I was
rapidly passed down the stairs--a prisoner! Fortunately at the bottom
I found a relieving party from the next house, making a diversion on
the enemy's rear. With great valour we dragged down a foe, and toshed
him in the bath that had been made ready for us. "The tosher toshed!"
The next day we surveyed the damage. All the chairs and banisters were
broken, the whitewash was rubbed off the bricks by wet shoulders
and nearly all the basins were broken. That day was the day of Lord
Roberts's half-yearly inspection!
There was not such another battle until my third term, when we
were the aggressors. This time the damage was even greater, for the
defenders let down tables across the stairs as an obstacle, and we
battered our way through with scaffolding poles. There were some
casualties that day, owing to an indiscriminate use of mop handles.
On the day of Lord Roberts's inspection we had to change from parade
dress to gym dress, and it was during the change that Lord Roberts
inspected our quarters. He went into one room and found a fellow just
half-way through his change--with nothing at all on! The room was
called to attention, and with great presence of mind the boy dashed
into the bed curtains and stood to attention there, while Lord Roberts
had an animated conversation with him!
There were jolly moments in the life at the Shop. On Saturdays, after
dinner, the unfortunates who had not got away for the week-end used to
have "stodges" after dinner. Having put away a substantial dinner, we
changed into flannels, and used to crowd into some one's room, and eat
muffins and smoke cigars. I remember one night there were eighteen of
us in one small room.
In order to go away for a week-end one had to obtain (1) an
invitation, (2) permission from parent or guardian to accept the
invitation. One week my brother, who was working at the Admiralty,
offered his flat to myself and F----, as he was going to Brighton
himself. Fleming wrote to his guardian--a Scotsman--for permission
to stay with Captain Hankey. The guardian wrote back for more
information. He saw by the Army List that Captain Hankey existed, but
who were the Hankeys? etc., etc. F---- wrote back a furious letter,
saying that he expected to have his friends accepted without question,
and received the permission. We went. The awkward thing was that
Captain Hankey was not there, and we shuddered to think of the rage of
F----'s guardian if he should find out. Worse still, the guardian was
supposed to be staying at the Oriental Club in Hanover Square, and my
brother's flat was in Oxford Street! However, we didn't meet.
F---- and I neither of us knew London, and had the time of our lives.
We dined at Frascati's--a palace of splendour in our eyes--and went to
His Majesty's to see Beerbohm Tree in Ulysses. When it came to Hades,
we held each other's hands! On Sunday we went to St. Peter's, Vere
Street, but were so furious at being kept waiting for pew holders
long after service had commenced, that we went on to the Audley Street
Chapel, a most queer little place. It was full of monuments to the
dependents of peers, in which the peers figured very largely and
the dependents fared humbly--the epitome of flunkeydom. Among these
tablets was one inscribed--
"To John Wilkes,
Friend of Liberty."
Truly refreshing!
We finished the day at some old friends of mine, and voted the
week-end a huge success.
When I went to Woolwich I was just on the verge of getting keen
on games and beginning to feel self-confident, and to enjoy the
fellowship of my comrades. Woolwich nipped this in the bud. I left
with no self-confidence, having renounced games, and with a sense
of solitariness among my comrades. I was a misanthrope, and the
unhappiest sort of egotist--the kind that dislikes himself. To say
the truth, too, I was then, and always have been, a bit of a funk,
physically, which didn't make me happier. On the other hand, I was an
omnivorous reader of everything which did not concern my profession,
and a dabbler in military history.
I have sometimes thought that I was unconsciously a bit of a hero at
Woolwich, standing out for purity and religion in an atmosphere of
filth and blasphemy. I have come to the conclusion, however, that
there was nothing in this. As to the general atmosphere, there is
no doubt that it was singularly pernicious; even the officers and
instructors contributed their quota of filthy jokes, and there was no
religious instruction or influence at all except the parade service at
the garrison church on Sunday, if one happened not to be on leave. But
as to my heroism I am reluctantly compelled to be sceptical. I went
as far as I felt my inclination, and stopped after a time because
instinct was too strong the other way.
As I have said before, I have always had an insurmountable instinct
for keeping rules. At school I could never bring myself to transgress,
although I knew that transgression was the road to adventure. So
at the Shop, however much I may have wished to be in the swim, my
instinct for the moral and religious code of home was too strong for
me. It required no self-control to prevent myself from slipping into
blasphemy and filth. On the contrary, in order to do so I should have
had to violate my strongest instincts, and exercised a will to evil
much stronger than any will power that I possessed at that time. If,
when I left Woolwich, I was comparatively pure, it was because nature
did not allow me to be anything else.
To say the truth, I have never felt the sway of passions to anything
like the same extent as most men seem to. I have never cared for the
society of women for its sexual attraction. Consequently all my women
friends have been just the same to me as my men friends--friends whom
I could talk to about the things that interested me.
I don't boast of this, I only state the fact. I am not proud of it
because I know that some passion is necessary to make heroes and even
saints.
SOME NOTES ON THE FRAGMENT OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY BY "HILDA"
I have before me as I write a pencil sketch, limned with considerable
care, of a rather disagreeable looking young man, and beneath it is
written--
"D.W.A.H., by Himself."
It is a profile. The eye has almost disappeared under the brow, the
mouth is tightly closed to a degree that is quite unpleasant and there
is a deliberate exaggeration of a slight defect he actually had--a
tendency for the lower jaw to protrude a little. This little defect
hardly any of his friends seem to have noticed, for most of them
execrate it as a libel in the otherwise admittedly beautiful
photograph at the beginning of this volume. The expression in the
sketch is above all--dubious.
So did Donald see himself.
For the rest of us no doubt the lessons Mr. Haselden has for us in his
caricatures, "ourselves as we see ourselves" and "as others see us,"
are necessary. But not for Donald. The drawing is pasted into an album
which contains mainly Oxford College groups, and there is a certain
unpleasant resemblance between it and his full face presentment in one
of the groups--in which he has "the group expression" rather badly.
Assuming it to have been drawn at Oxford, or not very long after he
left, I think it must belong very nearly to a time when he was going
off abroad on one of his long trips, and I had the sympathy of a
dear old lady friend of ours on having to part with him. I remember
replying, "Yes, it always seems as if peace and happiness, truth and
justice, religion and piety went with him when he goes!" She laughed
a good deal, and then said, seriously, repeating over to herself the
stately mounting sixteenth century phrases, "But it's quite true, you
know!" I hardly think, though, that I should have said it of the young
man in the sketch!
I am now going to make a comment or two on my brother's word-pictures
as I should if he were by my side. But first I should like his readers
to know and realize that both were written before the period of what
I may call Donald's "Renaissance," a period that can be roughly marked
by the publication of his first book, _The Lord of all Good Life_.
Up to then he had been struggling in vain for self-expression. How he
had worked the amount of MSS. he has left alone proves--for we have it
on a friend's testimony that "he tore up much of what he wrote"; and
he also had experienced and suffered, violating his natural "timidity"
and his in some ways, precarious health, for he had never got over
certain weaknesses engendered by his illness in Mauritius--in his
struggle to get a true basis for a solution of the meaning of life
and of religion. What cost him most was the knowledge that he
was frequently doubted and misunderstood by many of those whose
approbation would have been very dear to him. This is proved by his
constantly expressed gratitude to the one or two who never doubted him
for one moment.
With the writing of this book, as we know, all his difficulties began
to clear away, and at the same time he began to reap the harvest of
love and admiration that he had sown in his toils to produce it.
And the result was he opened out like a flower to the sun! No one
can doubt this for a moment who has read his book of a year later,
_The Student in Arms_, and rejoiced in the radiant happiness of its
inspiration.
He had more than once said to me during the past two years, "You know
it makes a _tremendous_ difference to me when people really _like_
me." No longer was it a case of "one friend at a time." The period for
that was over and done with. He had come into his own. He was ready
for a universal brotherhood, and no hand would ever be held out to him
in vain.
It is impossible to believe that he does not now know of and
appreciate all the beautiful tributes that have come to him since
his "passing"--from the perfect wreath of immortelles weaved by Mr.
Strachey to the sweet pansy of thought dropped by a little fellow
V.A.D. of mine who said beautifully and courageously--though knowing
him solely through his book--"We feel since he gave us his thought
that he belongs a tiny bit to us, too," thus voicing the feeling of
many.
I believe the paper entitled "My Home" to have been written at Oxford,
and "School" not so very long after. In any case, I have definite
proof of their both belonging to Donald's pre-"Renaissance" period,
for the friendship with F----, that began at "the Shop" and went under
a cloud for a time, was renewed with fresh vigour in 1914, and has
burned brightly ever since. Only last July was I sent by him a letter
of F----'s from the trenches, with the injunction, "Please put this
among my treasures," and there is an allusion to a story told in this
letter in the article entitled "Romance" of the present volume.
To return to "My Home," I question whether the love and devotion of
"Hilda" and "Ma" for Hugh was so entirely unselfish. For my mother I
fully believe, as for "Hilda," Hugh was the epitome of all that was
fine, splendid and joyous in life. He was the glorious knight, the
"preux chevalier" "sans peur et sans reproche," who rode forth at dawn
with clean sword and shining armour, and all the world before him, yet
keeping his heart for ever in his home. He was the child of her youth
as Donald was the child of her maturity. Deep down in her wonderfully
varied nature there were certain bottomless springs of courage, daring
and enterprise which she herself had little chance of expressing and
of which Hugh alone was the personification.
As long as I can remember Hugh had been my ideal and made all the
interest and joy of life for me. Whether he were at home or abroad I
never had a thought I did not share with him. When he died, the best
part of me died too, or was paralysed rather, and Heaven knows what
sort of a "substitute" I should have been for "Ma" to Donald, had not
the baby Hugh come, just in time, with healing in his wings to restore
life to the best part of me!
I am glad to think that Donald's "Autobiography" was written before
1914, for I know that even before that I was becoming more to him than
a "substitute." I too have my memories and pictures!
It is May, 1915. I am in the country-house--cleaning is going on at
home.
I get a letter to say that the Rifle Brigade may leave for France
at any time, and that Donald _may_ get some "leave" on Saturday or
Sunday.
I make a dash for town.
There I find a telegram of reckless and unconscionable length, running
into two pages. He cannot come up--they may leave at any moment. It
seems hardly worth while my bothering to come to Aldershot on the
chance--he may be unable to leave barracks.
I write a return telegram--also of reckless and unconscionable length,
and reply paid--it is a relief to do so--asking for a place of meeting
at Aldershot to be suggested.
I get no answer at all, and on Sunday morning, in despair, I go
over to see my aunt and cousin. My aunt is my mother's sister and a
sportswoman. She counsels, "Go at all costs." Dorothy will come with
me: Dorothy is Donald's best woman pal--she reminds him of his mother.
She is all that is wholesome and comportable.
The element of enjoyment comes in, and I go home and pack a nice
lunch.
We arrive at Aldershot.
There is no one on the platform to meet us, and we push our way
through the turnstile.
There is Donald, on the outskirts of the waiting crowd--a tall,
soldierly figure in the uniform of a private--for he has resigned his
sergeant's stripes by now.
His face is very boyish--not the face of the photograph at the
beginning of this book: that was taken after he had been to France,
and had been wounded, and had written "A Passing in June," and "The
Honour of the Brigade"--but a much younger face, really boyish.
He glances quickly and anxiously at every face that passes, and each
time he is a little more disappointed--but he tries not to show it.
I am not tall and cannot catch his eye. It is like being at a play,
watching him! All at once he sees me! Involuntarily a sudden quick
spasm of joy passes across his face, absolutely transfiguring it.
He smooths it away quickly, for he is a Briton and does not like to
show his feelings--but he has given himself away!
Dorothy and I shall never forget that look. And it was for _me_--at
first he does not see Dorothy. When he does it is an added pleasure.
With _two_ ladies to escort he assumes a lordly air.
He had thought of everything. We would like some tea? Yes, all the big
places are shut as it is Sunday, but he has marked down a little place
on his way to the station.
It is a lovely day, and we are very happy!
The girl who waits upon us at the little tea place likes us, and so do
the other Tommies and their friends who are having tea there.
We sit at little tables, but at very close quarters with each other,
and we smile at them and they at us.
I have brought Donald some letters, which pleases him, and Dorothy has
brought him some splendid socks, knitted by herself.
After tea we walk across an arid plain to a little wood, and sit down
under the trees.
Donald changes to the new socks--those he had on were wringing wet!
He picks us little bunches of violets, hyacinths and wild strawberry
flowers--we have them still.
We are very happy the whole of the day, and have my sandwiches and
cake and fruit for supper, there under the trees. And here in thought
let me leave "The Student in Arms," who was to me part son, best pal,
brother, comrade, and counsellor on all subjects--and more than a
little bit of grandpapa!
He could be so many different things because, as another friend and
cousin said, "he seemed to know everything about everybody."
I like to think of those two fine spirits--Hugh and Donald--each with
a hand to the tiny baby nephew, and a word of greeting for me when I
go over the top.
THE END
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