an easy hymn for the desperately nervous substitute. Mr Gould announced the hymn number and, without a modicum of confidence, Siegfried struck the opening chord, followed by a few bars and then came a deluge of boys’ voices. It was unfortunate for Siegfried that he had not checked the words of the hymn. Its five verses lent themselves to ‘facetious interpretation’ and inferences about Mrs Bolt the Matron:
How blest the matron who endued
With holy zeal and fortitude,
Has won through grace a saintly frame,
And owns a dear and honoured name.
The remaining verses are a litany of anatomical allusions: ‘As I struck the first chord for verse 2 (which began “Such holy love inflamed her breast”), I could only confusedly suppose that I had somehow blundered when Mr Gould practically bellowed “Let the music cease!”’ Although later Mr Gould was heard to chuckle, it was from such incidents he divined Siegfried to be ‘irresponsible and deficient in solidity of character’. His final report contained the crushing remark: ‘lacks power of concentration; shows no particular intelligence or aptitude for any branch of his work; seems unlikely to adopt any special career’. It was a harsh judgement, made even worse when Mr Gould’s last goodbye was accompanied by the words, ‘Try and be more sensible.’ Siegfried, however, took a more philosophical view of his time at Marlborough: ‘moderately pleasant, but mentally unprofitable’.
Marlborough did one good thing for him, though: it nurtured the re-emergence of his poetic vocation. One of his masters, Mr O’Regan, encouraged the appreciation of poetry among his pupils and as a spur would occasionally offer a half-crown as prize for the best poem. The opposition was not fierce and Siegfried invariably won. Not that the editor of the school paper recognised any merit in his poetic endeavours – he rejected every poem submitted by Siegfried. Lying at home during his enforced absence from school in the spring of 1903, Siegfried composed what he called a parody, inspired by a debate current at the time about altering the height of the wicket, and sent it off to Cricket magazine. Entitled ‘The Extra Inch’, and having a Gilbert and Sullivan atmosphere and style, it appealed to the editor, Mr Bettesworth, who printed it.
O batsman, rise and go and stop the rot,
And go and stop the rot.
(It was indeed a rot,
Six down for twenty-three).
The batsman thought how wretched was his lot,
And all alone went he.
The bowler bared his mighty, cunning arm,
His vengeance-wreaking arm,
His large yet wily arm,
With fearful powers endowed.
The batsman took his guard. (A deadly calm
had fallen on the crowd.)
O is it a half-volley or long hop,
A seventh bounce long hop,
A fast and fierce long hop,
That the bowler letteth fly?
The ball was straight and bowled him neck and crop.
He knew not how nor why.
Full sad and slow pavilionwards he walked.
The careless critics talked;
Some said that he was yorked;
A half-volley at a pinch.
The batsman murmured as he inward stalked,
‘It was the extra inch.’
This was Siegfried’s first published poem. Mr Bettesworth took a shine to his poetry and published four more in the following 18 months. However, sustaining a belief in his vocation as a poet proved a difficult task. His success in Cricket, pleasing though it was, seemed more of an end than a beginning. But once again, in an unexpected moment, the hope was fed. He describes how in 1904, while in Cotton House library:
Idly I pulled out a book which happened to be Volume IV of Ward’s English Poets. By chance I opened it at Hood’s ‘Bridge of Sighs’, which was new to me. I had always preferred poems which went straight to the point and stayed there, and here was a direct utterance which gave me goose flesh and brought tears to my eyes. It wasn’t so much the subject of the poem which thrilled me as the sense of powerful expression and memorable word music. For the first time since I had been at school I felt separated from my surroundings and liberated from the condition of being only a boy. As a child I had believed in my poetic vocation and had somehow felt myself to be a prophetic spirit in the making. Now my belief was renewed and strengthened.
Sassoon, Old Marlburian, in the summer of 1904, was ‘bicycling’ his way through his nineteenth year. He had decided to go up to Cambridge, but the University had yet to decide whether to accept him. Bridging the gap between desire and its fulfilment required the passing of an examination. In the village of Frant, near Tunbridge Wells and within easy cycling distance of Weirleigh, lay Henley House, a crammer establishment of some repute. The young adult on his bicycle was a ‘happy-go-lucky sort of person, head in air and pleasantly occupied with loosely connected ruminations’, who had thrown off much of the anxiety and nervousness of the schoolboy. He had crossed a boundary, much as he crossed the boundary between Kent and Sussex on the bridge by Dundale Farm, on his way to board at Henley House. His was a charmed existence. Under his father’s will he was financially secure, the trust fund being administered mainly by the family solicitor, Mr Lousada. He was not wealthy and neither was Theresa; comfortable would be the best summary of his financial position. This meant, among other things, that there was no pressure to be successful; there was no family firm to enter and no call to find a profession. Mr Lousada and his alter ego Mr Pennett in Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man were more than willing to assist him into the Law. But what need of this to a bicycling youth, who was a poet? Inspiration lay all around him in the beauty of the Weald. The social order from the Squire down to the housemaids and stable-lads exuded permanence and its meridian prosperity seemed immutable. Sassoon was enjoying, like Sebastian Flyte of Brideshead, ‘the languor of youth – a mind sequestered and self-regarding’. E. M. Forster, a contemporary and later a friend, in describing his own youth might well be describing Sassoon’s: ‘I belong to the fag end of Victorian liberalism, and can look back to an age whose challenges were moderate in their tone, and the cloud on whose horizon was no bigger than a man’s hand.’ Sassoon confesses of that time through his alter ego George Sherston: ‘How little I knew of the enormous world beyond the valley and those low green hills.’ Enlightenment would come in its own savage way; meanwhile it was still ‘God in his Heaven and sausages for breakfast’. To which he might have added, ‘horses in the stables, golf-clubs in the bag, and bat and pads by the door’.
Henley House had four teachers and 20 students: Sassoon thought it a vast improvement on Marlborough, where he had felt moody and unappreciated. Now he was considered lively and amusing, and was consistently cheerful. In The Old Century, Sassoon exudes a sense of relief as academic pressure is lifted off his shoulders and he settles into a routine, which, while unhurried, fulfilled what was required to pass into Oxford or Cambridge. Much of this was due to the ‘quiet methods’ and laconic style of the headmaster and proprietor Mr Malden – known as ‘The Boss’ – and his staff, all of whom are remembered and portrayed with affection by Sassoon.
