Free Portrait of Elmbury by John Moore Page A

house-flies, or watching the long black porcupine-quill when we fished for tench and bream, trolling for pike in winter, or sitting, oh! so quietly, in the sternsheets of Mr. Chorlton’s boat while with exquisite grace he swished his shining split-cane rod and sent out the cobwebby line towards the dark eddy under the overhanging willows.
    It was Mr. Chorlton’s custom (anathema to Bassett) while fishing to talk. He would chide the reluctant fishes with a quotation from Shakespeare, ask the favour of the immortal gods in Latin, curse a broken cast in Homeric Greek. He never talked down to us. If we didn’t understand what he said we could always ask the meaning of it. And so we did, with the result that we learned a great many wise sayings in a far more pleasant way than if we had been sitting at a schoolroom desk.
The Young Alchymist
    I left prep school in a blaze of glory. Illicitly and in secret, like an alchymist of old, I was conducting a complicated chemical experiment in an empty form-room when the bell rang for chapel. The experiment was somewhat empirical; it consisted of mixing together a number of different substances to see if they would explode. The chapel was next door to the form-room, and boys and masters had to pass through the form-room in order to get to it. Panic-stricken, I hid my concoctions in the grate, wiped my hands on the seat of my trousers, and wearing an expression of great piety went in to my prayers. The Headmaster entered, we knelt down, and he began to pray. He had got as far as “Forgive us our trespasses” when a tremendous explosion rent the air. The whole building shuddered; bits of plaster fell off the ceiling; and soon wisps of smoke drifted across the aisle, smelling acridly of phosphorus. The Headmaster finished the prayer and led usout in silence through the shattered form-room. The grate was blown clean out, and with it most of the chimney. Even in my terror of the consequences I could not help reflecting with justifiable pride that my experiment had succeeded.
    But it was the end of term, and my last term, so the consequences were not very serious. I stuffed my trousers with brown paper, but the precaution was unnecessary. The Headmaster had delegated my punishment to Mr. Chorlton, who looked at me sternly and asked: “When you mixed those chemicals together were you trying to prove anything or were you just hoping they’d explode?”
    I thought it safest to be honest. “Hoping they’d explode, sir.”
    â€œGood. I was afraid you might have had some serious scientific purpose. If so I’d have beaten you. The educational value of chemistry is almost exactly equal to that of a jigsaw puzzle. Make stinks for fun, but if you want to
learn
things, stick to Virgil. You can go.”
    Next day I had to see the Headmaster himself, to say goodbye. This was a ceremony at which, it was understood, we should be told the Facts of Life. We who were leaving all waited anxiously outside the Head’s door and went in one by one. It was terrifying; we vaguely expected some sort of a revelation. What appalling mystery was about to be revealed to us? A boy came out snivelling. Our terror increased. What dreadful initiation went on behind that closed door? But when I got inside the Headmaster merely delivered a dissertation on the subject of dirty jokes. I didn’t know any dirty jokes, so this rather missed its mark. However, I pretended to snivel when I came out; it seemed to be expected; and upon the face of the boy whose turn it was to enter I was pleased to see the appropriate expression of fear.
Anarchic Interlude
    From the glorious free-and-easy prep school I went to a hateful public school where I found I was expected in summer to play a regimented kind of cricket instead of collecting butterflies and in winter to go for compulsory runs, curiously termed “Voluntaries,” instead of watching birds. I discovered that my form was still