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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… The
Battle Of Messines (June 7-14) ended, an acknowledged success for combined
British, Anzac and Canadian forces. In the closing few days from June 11 the
Allies advanced around Blauwepoortbeek, Plugstreet Wood, Infantry Hill,
Monchy-le-Preux and beyond – without too much difficulty as the German Army
executed another strategic retreat. Even so, they did move forces from the
Aisne front, relieving the temporarily dishevelled French Army in that region
and so achieving another objective of the attack. Nonetheless, casualties for
the week were terrible and more or less equal at around 25,000 on each side.
In
northern Italy, the Battle of Mount Ortigara (June 10-25) proceeded, with the
Italian Army defending their initial gain – taking the summit on day one –
against Austrian counterattacks on June 13 and 17.
But
in the now-sticky Allied campaign to recover Macedonia/Serbia from the Bulgarians,
the British retreated from the Struma Valley (15; the river runs through
Bulgaria on into Greece).
Diverse
points of interest during the week: under pressure from the Allies King
Constantine of Greece abdicated in favour of his son Alexander (June 12) and
that same day French forces occupied Corinth and the British took control of
Thessaly; Portuguese troops entered combat on the Western Front for the first
time (17); in “the deadliest air raid of the war”, Germany’s new Gotha bombers
struck London’s East End, killing 162, including 18 children at a Poplar school
(13); the airship L-43 was brought down over the North Sea by a British Navy
Curtiss H12 flying boat (14); and… Haiti severed diplomatic relations with
Germany (16; the Kaiser’s reaction seems to have escaped posterity’s notebook).
[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, under-age 2/1st Royal Fusiliers
volunteer and Gallipoli veteran [Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016] had fought on the Somme Front
with his second outfit the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25, 2016)… until
officialdom spotted his age – 18 on July 6, 1916, legally too young for the
battlefield – and told him he could take a break from the fighting until he was
19. He did so, though with an enduring sense of guilt. By December, 1916, he
ended up posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated again, this time to the
Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion, along with a bunch of other under-age Tommies training/marking
time – and in Sam’s case dicing with meningitis and other battle-fatigue
enhanced ailments – until such time as they severally became eligible for the trenches
once more… But for now the blog continues with themed
childhood and teens material from the Memoir under the title The Making Of
FootSoldierSam – because my father didn’t write enough about his year “off” in
England to cover 1917 in weekly chunks (I can hardly blame him; writing in the
1970 he wasn’t really thinking about blog requirements)]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, The Making Of Foot Solider Sam, 1904-1907,
concentrated on the boy Sam’s recollections of growing up amid the hurly-burly
of Edmonton, then on the edge of London, bursting with energy as it expanded
into the surrounding countryside, but also alive with old-fashioned/Victorian
colour of the kind that Dickens would have relished and written into his
novels.
Now these excerpts take in his recollections of school, good and
bad – though, on the whole, he did enjoy it as a relief from the grinding
poverty and tensions of home life. In the move from wealth in Manchester to
barely scraping by in London Sam did miss some schooling, despite a brief stint
in “infants” in Tottenham. But when his mother decided they were settled in
Edmonton, her thoughts turned at last to education, at first just for the three
older children Ciss (born 1894), Ted (1896) and Sam (1898), not the toddler
Sidney (1900), nor the baby Alf (1903). (NB: my father wrote the early chapters in the
third person, calling himself “the boy” and then “Tommy”, while Ted’s temporary
alias was “George”).)
It’s a
good, big read:
‘Now came the question of new schools for the children.
Easily solved. An elementary school stood only a 10-minute walk from the house**…
The two older children fitted into their class quite easily. But Tommy had been
to school for only a brief period. Because of the moves from Manchester to
London and then from one district to another, he had lost slightly over a year,
so he went into the infants’ part of the new school. The alphabet, the abacus,
and plasticine occupied his days for the first few weeks. Games. Dancing to
music on the piano played by the teacher. And the maypole featured quite
frequently.
Tommy soon acquired
a regular way of living. After his breakfast of bread and margarine and a cup
of tea, at 20 to nine he set off for school, ran along with the rest of the
children and got there about 10 to. At nine, when a hand bell rang out, the
children formed up into double lines, then marched into the assembly hall to a
military tune played on the piano. Miss Smith was the pianist, a lady of 30 or
so with a mop of curly hair not conforming to the usual fashion of the period.
On the highly polished wood-block floor, small white crosses were painted about
30 inches apart. On each one stood a child. They took up the same positions
every morning. It had been drilled into them.
They faced the
rostrum, a small raised stage with a handrail in front of it, occupied by three
persons only. In the middle, the headmistress, a Miss Thomas: a short, sturdy,
manly type of woman, ruddy cheeks, bright eyes, certainly knew her job – how to
take control of this swarm of children and command silence when silence was
needed, singing when singing was required. Everything worked like clockwork,
fixing indelibly in Tommy’s mind a picture of the hall: the children standing
in lines, Miss Thomas’s beady eye watching for the movement, the cough, the
sniffle which she would not approve… it was really not allowed, you know. The children
came to regard the good lady not with fear, but respect, and a wish to please
her.
To Miss Thomas’s
left on the rostrum, Miss Smith – the joy it gave the lad when she played the
piano… A feeling when he took his place in assembly each morning that everything
was in order, was as it should be.
The brief morning
ceremony over, the children formed up again, each class in two lines. Their
teachers then lead them off to the strains of another of Miss Smith’s stirring
marches. In time to the beat – as best they could – they took their places at
their desks and faced the teacher. A Miss Booth presided over Tommy’s class, a
tall, stately lady who usually wore a velvet gown gathered in at the waist. An
appearance of depth and stateliness, the ideal matronly figure to command the
children’s respect. One look from her would subdue even the most difficult
child.
When morning school
finished, Tom would be allowed to go home for lunch – home now a place where
some food could be had, though never a satisfying meal, just enough to keep
them going. Perhaps a cheap meat stew with a few vegetables. Puddings were out,
of course. Money would never run to that.
Afternoons started
at 2 o’clock. To Tommy they always seemed nicer, more friendly, warmer than
mornings. He gradually became aware of the children around him in the
classroom. To his right, a well-dressed and rather good-looking boy with a
quite outstanding name: Nelson-Moxon. How did he come by it? Who were the
Nelson-Moxons? What was his family doing in this poor neighbourhood?
Nelson-Moxon. Tommy would repeat it to himself while considering these
questions. Nelson-Moxon. What a grand name…
To his left a
little girl. Bright, rosy cheeks, merry eyes, dark hair… curls across her
forehead. Always smiling. They became quite friendly. One day she held out her
hand to him and they sat there listening to the teacher, holding hands. But
disaster struck. Tommy felt a rumbling in his tummy and soon after that a
dampish unpleasant something or other in the seat of his trousers. As
realisation of what had happened came to him he freed his hand from the little
girl’s grip, stood up, dashed down the gangway, out of the classroom, out of
the school building, across the playground and the road and into the fields. So
to the haven of home. His first romance shattered.’
** Since the First
Edition, Stephanie M. MacDuff, a diligent and enthusiastic WW1 researcher and friend
of Nobody Of Any Importance, has discovered that the children must have
attended Eldon Road School, Edmonton, then surrounded by fields, now thronged
with suburban streets (and an all-new building by the looks of it). Thanks to
Stephanie for this and other points, from Phil pp Sam.
At seven, back then, it
seems children would move on from infants school to “junior mixed” until they
were 10 – but for my father, as you’ll read, this period was curtailed so it
probably ran from 1905-7.
‘… junior mixed. Girls and boys together in classes learning
simple arithmetic and reading. After two years in that class he was presented
with a book as a prize. Then the head teacher, a kindly and, as the boy
thought, good-looking lady spoke to him, asked his name and so forth, and had a
conversation with his class teacher. As a result he moved upstairs to a
boys-only department – all ages up to 14 in a series of classes.
There, with space
at a premium, the assembly hall had to be used for lessons. Partitions drawn
across after assembly screened off two classes. Catching up quickly after his
missing year, Tommy bypassed the lowest class. Unfortunately, this meant he
never really learnt the geography of Britain, which caused him some
inconvenience for years afterwards.
He took a liking to
his new form teacher, a young man called Parker, fresh from college. But,
shortly, the teacher fell ill and for a couple of days the two groups in the
assembly hall joined together and he came under the authority of a very strange
man, elderly, with a grey, pointed beard, ruddy face, iron-grey hair and a
tongue like a whiplash.
The old boy rambled
on, seldom sticking to one subject, telling the youngsters about the Crimean
War, the price of tea shortly after it ended – apparently it soared to 8 or 9
shillings a pound and bread went up to a shilling a loaf… and similar bits of
fruity information. But regularly, perhaps every ten minutes or less, he would
call a lad forward from his desk, instruct him to hold out his hand and wham
the cane down on it. Perhaps the boy had been doing something wrong, who knew?
But surely that constant procession, wham, howl, surely they couldn’t all have
been breaking the rules all the time.
No indeed, that old
fool was a relic of a previous age of education in this country when it was
assumed that all boys were wicked, all boys were bad. Corporal punishment
should be administered regularly to keep the little devils in hand.
The stick as a
means of maintaining discipline bred no respect in the children. The old boy’s
nickname, “Dizziba”, in those days indicated the first stages of insanity. Even
as he walked down the street the bigger lads would yell after him — if they
could remain hidden – “Dizziba! Dizziba!”
The contrast
between that idiot and the young teacher when he returned from his illness was
very marked. In most cases, the lads lapped his lessons up. Parker was carroty
of hair, pale of face, a jutting jaw, height about 5’10”, broad-shouldered –
just the type to become a sort of hero to the class. If his legs looked a
little bandy, he was always nicely dressed – a rare sight for those boys, a
nicely dressed man.
He was so new to
the job that he didn’t know the golden rule, “nobody allowed outside the
grounds during school hours”. When the time came for the weekly one hour of
physical training, noting that the fields around the school extended for a mile
at least in one direction, he took his class out through the gate and organised
a game of rounders. But, sadly for us, it wasn’t repeated. We heard that the
headmaster ticked him off and thereafter that sort of thing had to be done in
the playground. There was no sports kit – nobody in Tommy’s class could afford
it anyway – so their PT comprised just bending and stretching and running
around, that sort of stuff; it wasn’t too bad.
Occasionally, Tommy
would catch sight of his brother, who was two to three classes ahead of him,
being both older and remarkably clever. Learning everything rapidly and
exceedingly well just came naturally to him. He set a pace in the school which
the other lads could not hope to keep up with. But it dawned on Tommy that, as
he moved through the school, each master would expect him to follow in his
brother’s footsteps and match his brilliance. Clearly impossible! He admired
his brother, didn’t envy him at any time, but probably suffered unnecessary
anxiety because of constant comparisons with his talent and performance.
Another year passed
and Tommy went on to the next class. He rather feared this because the teacher
was a North-Country man, short, wiry, strong, and reputedly rather harsh. But
he taught well. He either wrote down or told his boys the things they ought to
know and, after a time, he tested them and questioned them and if they didn’t
know, why didn’t they know, huh? He knows over there, why don’t you know? Given
any suspicion of inattention… out came the stick.
Tommy had only a brief
stay with that gentleman because, for some reason, it was decided he should
swiftly step up again to the next class – and a teacher of a different type,
scholarly, firm, but gentle. The lad who did his best received every
encouragement. The teacher selected those he thought the most promising and
rearranged the seating to fill one side of the room with the lads on whom he
thought it worthwhile to lavish most of his attention.
Finding himself
among that top group, Tommy wondered why. He was clean, which was something to
a teacher in charge of perhaps 40 small boys but, looking around, he saw that
most of them were better dressed than him.
He wore completely
home-made clothes. For the first time since they moved to London he had the
luxury of a vest, a woollen vest. To make it, mother had cut down an old men’s
vest. A cotton shirt over that, a white celluloid collar – quite deep and
easily washed under the tap, it cost thruppence farthing, no more than that,
and no laundry… In addition a sort of jacket; blue, thick, wool cloth, strong
and warm – because Tommy’s family’s next-door neighbour had a son in the Navy.
He came home once and gave Tommy’s mother a complete uniform, a flannel vest,
jacket and baggy trousers, in good condition although he’d worn it for some
while. Quite a lot of cloth there for her to work on and produce a jacket and
knee-length trousers. Of course, the cut wasn’t marvellous. The most obvious
thing about it was that it was home-made.’
As you see, Sam/”Tommy”
had his own kind of class consciousness from an early age, later reflected in
his writing about the WW1 Army. No doubt, his childhood understanding and
perspective was affected not just by observing poor and rich lives in his
neighbourhood, but his own family’s “coming down in the world”. That meant he
had snapshot memories of prosperity in Manchester from his first two or three
years and then the continuing awareness of how bitter his mother felt about
their social and economic descent – and how sorry and ashamed his father remained,
the debacle being his responsibility (see blog 149, May 14, 2017, fort the full
story).
‘Compulsory school attendance brought together children who
otherwise would never have rubbed shoulders. None of their parents well off,
though some more so than others, they observed varying standards of cleanliness
in their homes. On one occasion Tommy felt a good deal of itching round his
body and scratched. Mother noticed and suspected what was wrong. In his vest
she found a number of lice. She had never seen them before, but knew about them
and wondered where he could have got them from. School? She paid a visit there.
“Ah,” said that good man, Tommy’s teacher. “I’m aware of this already – I found
some in my underclothes. We must discover who is bringing them in. I’ll confer
with my colleagues and we will evolve some plan for finding the carrier.”
Predictably,
Stinker Jackson turned out to be the one, the host of these wretched lice. Poor
Stinker. Even a lad like Tommy could look across at him and see his staring
eyes, wide-open mouth, dirt-streaked face, and feel sorry for him and justified
in pitying him. Stinker’s family relied for their living on keeping pigs. He
and his sisters had to work in the sheds, cleaning them out, before they came
to school. The smell of the piggery hung about him. By common consent,
depending on who was absent with illness, he would occupy the most isolated
desk in the classroom. When the lice were discovered, the teacher sent him home
with orders to his parents to scrub him up and never let him come back carrying
these wretched things again.
The school did try
to encourage some universal standards of personal hygiene. Tommy never forgot
the day when the head of the junior-mixed department had assembled all classes.
There on a small table in front of her she had a long, narrow box and a cup of
water. In her hand she held a toothbrush with which she gave a demonstration.
In the box was powdered chalk. She dipped the brush in the water, then in the
powdered chalk, and carefully brushed her teeth up and down all round and
explained the reason for it to the children.’
But this school clearly
did take an adventurous attitude to education, trying to give the strivers, at
least, every opportunity, whatever social background they might spring from.
‘The school was experimenting. It had been decided that
Tommy and some others would spend two years in the same class with one teacher.
They had a “standards” system numbered 1 to 7 and Tommy’s group would be going
through standards 4 and 5. After two years they would move on, depending on the
teacher’s assessment of their abilities as displayed by general work and termly
exams. Luckily, Tommy liked the teacher, whom he observed closely. He liked his
white teeth, his silky moustache and his grand nose with its high bridge marked
at the top by the spectacles he wore in class. But all the boys appreciated him
because they felt he treated them fairly. In turn, they were willing to do
their best.
Tommy learned the
essentials. The world, its continents, its countries, the people who inhabited
them. What they grew or mined in the way of fruit, grains, metals, minerals,
and what they did with those things. Whether they treated them before selling
them. Also what they bought in, treated, and sold again. Then history… a
plodding progress from the time of the Romans onwards. Learning the kings and
queens who ruled our country and whether they were good, bad or indifferent.
Something of the laws promulgated during their reigns. The children had to
memorise the year in which each monarch came to the throne. Most could remember
these dates for a brief period, but recollection was apt to lapse quickly
except when, perhaps, some big event or some battle occurred, or some important
law was passed during that reign. Of course, they did arithmetic – the quicker
means of adding and division and subtraction.
The teachers worked
to a syllabus. At each hour of each day they commenced a given subject. A short
pause between each lesson and then straight on, teaching interrupted only by a
break in the morning and the midday meal.
No marvel, Tommy
did come somewhere near the top, third to fifth generally. If he fell below
that it would be because of illness — all the usual ones.’
Reading these extracts
from his school life you can see how Sam/”Tommy” grew to love it and learn much
from what was available to him. His general enjoyment of life also flowed from
his after-hours pleasures – music, Scouting – but in the following
recollections he’s avidly grasping every classroom opportunity to think
creatively and take responsibility. Not only that; his hawk-eyed view of
non-academic matters unfolding around him gave him a sense of life beyond
book-learning.
‘He found that time simply rushed by, every waking moment
occupied – the pattern for the following three or four years. In due course, he
moved up to his final classroom. The clever master there – A.E. Page, known as
“AEP” – managed to handle a syllabus which covered three groups of pupils at
different stages in their education. A huge man, over six feet tall, athletic
in build although getting quite old now, he had played for quite a well-known
football team, the boys believed.
AEP was a Cambridge
man and proud of it, whereas the headmaster had studied at Oxford… and when he
made his rounds and came into their class, the slight – not antagonism – but
that little thing rubbing between them became obvious to the boys. The head
would pause for a while for AEP to complete what he was saying, then start on a
talk on some subject he deemed important. He would ramble on rather and the
boys got a bit of fun out of this by watching their class teacher’s gorge
gradually rise. He had rather prominent eyes and they began to stare, and his
face coloured up as his blood rose. The boys quite welcomed these little
interludes, especially if AEP’s lesson concerned a subject they didn’t know too
much about. Perhaps sometimes they even hoped the head would step in when he
didn’t.
The class was
called standard 6 – above it only standard 7 and X7, the cream. In Tommy’s
classroom, the majority of the boys were triers. Some didn’t bother and they
would come in for a good deal of deserved abuse from the teacher, but he would
concentrate on those putting in effort to get the best out of the education
offered. AEP could even distinguish ability in the quality of nervousness which
can prevent a lad appearing successful in a class. To the right teacher it was
obvious that these boys would come through and do well. In many classes such
pupils received scant attention – they would be dubbed dunces and come to think
of themselves that way.
These last three
years*** became the most important and informative in his school career. They
had to cover a lot of ground in a short time and one doesn’t pretend that any
education in depth was achieved. But they acquired a sound grounding in English
and that included a study of grammar until they really understood it. A boy had
to take a sentence apart, give the grammatical name to each word or group of
words in a sentence – noun, verb, subject, object, and so on. “Parsing” it was
called. If you could do that successfully you had learnt a very important part
of elementary grammar.
Latin couldn’t be
taken in any depth and it was doubtful that AEP had the ability anyway. But he
did lay down that prefixes, roots, derivations and suffixes of Latin had to be
memorised, for he quite rightly considered them to be the basis for
understanding many English words. Frequently in later life, a chap would be
able to deduce for himself the meaning of a word by looking at its Latin
elements.
However, AEP didn’t
devote his English-teaching solely to grammar. He put much energy into bringing
literature to life too. He even suggested a project to take the class to a good
theatre. But first he prepared them thoroughly in advance, undertaking a study
of Shakespeare’s The Merchant Of Venice. The class read through it in silence –
often puzzled by the language – then he gave various boys their speaking parts
and so they learnt a great deal about the play.
Meanwhile, they
saved up penny by penny for the great day when they would journey into the West
End. Finally, one evening, they set off for the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane
Square**** where this great play came to life before their eyes, a memorable
evening (as Tommy soon proved via a dramatic venture of his own).'
*** My father told me he
left school at 14, so probably 1909-1912.
**** Present building
opened 1888 as the New Court Theatre.
Here Sam/”Tommy” even
refers to an open classroom debate between pupils and teacher as “thrilling” –
certainly not the image we have of public education pre-WW1. But then money,
lack of, casts its shadow over his future, although he pitches into everything
as enthusiastically as ever, while it lasts.
‘Each subject had its allotted half-hour, hour or two hours
a week, although some, such as arithmetic, they took daily. Anatomy and
physiology they covered in an elementary way, but enough to give knowledge of
the human body and what it was composed of. The skeleton on a huge chart would
be hung up, the bones named and memorised, and the types of joints. Another
brightly coloured chart showed muscles and organs. The chap in the picture, it
was noticed, had no bladder and no privates. And they were never mentioned in
instruction. One assumes it was similar for the girls in their class.
Under AEP, Tommy
had the great pleasure of being in the same class as his brother, who sat on
the far side with the select group. Those chaps more or less worked in a
freelance way. The things they wanted to do they were encouraged in. They read
books not in the syllabus. If they were particularly good at writing or
painting, AEP permitted them to spend long periods on these subjects. The rest
of the classwork went on under the master’s direction, but the select group
could ignore what was going on and persevere with their own special interests.
On one occasion,
when they discussed the “topic of the day” and AEP gave his view of current
affairs, Tommy was thrilled to see his brother espousing the cause of the
Conservative Party, well knowing the teacher to be a Liberal-radical type. And
the two went at it hammer and tongs for a while. Then it finished with
obviously no ill will felt. The boy had stated his point of view and he had not
been shouted down. His opinion had been considered, listened to. Tommy’s
brother would shortly go out into the world to make his way and already he was
being treated like a man. This was noted by the younger lads.
However, in answer
to a discreet enquiry Tommy’s parents made of AEP, they learnt that neither boy
would be able to take advantage of an examination that could secure them a
place in the local grammar school. They couldn’t afford the fees.
Good teachers are born not made and AEP, Tommy’s last and
best teacher, was a shining example. Let’s take the matter of music. The
ordinary elements Tommy learnt from Mr Frusher*****, but AEP particularly loved
to teach the class four-part chorus tunes – full songs with all verses and a
proper accompaniment – such as Sweet Lass Of Richmond Hill, Who Will O’er The
Downs Go Free, and on the sacred side, that old anthem How Beautiful On The
Mountains.
So when a singing
lesson was timetabled, AEP made preparations. On the black slate which lined
the wall above the cupboards he wrote out the words and four-part tonic sol-fa
music for the songs. Long before this, Tommy had discovered he had a natural
gift for singing tunes in tonic sol-pha (if anybody whistled a tune or picked
it out on the piano, Tommy could spiel it off – doh, me, soh etc – without any
effort at all, so he found this method of learning very agreeable).
AEP was in no
hurry, the time each song took immaterial. For him, the point was that the
class should learn to sing properly. So he would test the boys’ voices. He soon
discovered who should sing the alto, treble and even a few tenors. Some voices
in X7 were on the verge of breaking. When the class had learnt the whole thing,
he would sing the bass line. He had a marvellous voice like a lusty old
corncrake, but he carried the tune and, anyway, the full blast of the class
drowned out his rasping efforts. It was one of the more pleasurable lessons.'
*****
Vicar/choirmaster/scoutmaster/music
teacher/mentor, of whom much more in the next two “The Making Of” blogs.
About then, with some regret, George left school and got a
job in the wholesale paper trade – we shall hear more about that.
Still with a year
or so to go, Tommy was doing reasonably well in his exams despite always
feeling he could never rise to the same heights as his brother. The thing was
to get on and do the best possible. At English, in composition and dictation he
was good. In arithmetic and everything that came under that heading including a
smattering of algebra, percentages, rates of interest and what were generally
called problems – things that made you scratch your head and think – well, you
could call Tommy’s performance moderate to poor. Sometimes, though, he would
feel inspired and shine briefly.
One of AEP’s more
dubious methods of inspiring those who were a bit backward entailed what he
called “Questions” where he would point to a boy and ask him a question, then,
if he couldn’t answer, move on to the next and the next. When he had
established that nobody knew the answer, AEP would turn to one of his high-fliers
and say, “Well then, Jones?”; on the whole, this chap would come up with the
answer quickly. Once or twice, AEP must have forgotten that Tommy’s brother had
departed and suddenly swung this question on to him. Often, Tommy could do it,
but he remembered one occasion when he couldn’t and he wished the floor would
open up and let him through.
‘It was decided, for the first time, to hold a special
“school day”. The plan included a bazaar, several small plays, some singing,
and a long afternoon during which parents and friends could visit, listen, do
what they wished, and make quite friendly contact with the teachers. Tommy and
a friend were allotted the task of going to the bigger houses in the area,
whose occupants might be willing to give old items such as trays, candlesticks,
any sort of metalware or jewellery – anything they could clean, burnish, and
offer for sale.
The two boys
sacrificed much school time to hike miles, always collecting something useful.
A pair of heavy solid-silver, engraved candlesticks, he remembered – black they
were, from being stowed away in a lumber-room. Tommy polished them up.
One of the shows
the pupils put on they called Mrs Varley’s Waxworks******. Tommy’s pal, Charlie
– the one who lived in a small drapery shop – had developed the gift of the gab
with a vengeance, so he took the part of the showman who strutted around, spoke
about each of the dozen “waxwork” characters on the stage, and told them when
they should step forward and jerkily perform the actions he described.
Drawing inspiration
from his trip to the Royal Court, Tommy played Shylock. His father procured a
false nose – hooked, of course. His mother cut up a bright red, silk skirt and
turned it into a cloak. Then, with an old smoking cap on his head and his face
made up swarthily, he jerked forward with a large curved knife and went through
the motions of removing his pound of flesh from the victim.
Another boy took
the role of a Red Indian; he did what he thought the correct dance and
performed a wee bit of scalping.
The audience took
to it so well that a tour of the church halls and the schools in the area was
suggested. Quite a professional troupe they became — and this led to the first
party ever at Tommy’s home. His mother thought she would like to entertain all
the waxworks. Quite an undertaking, with their furniture and accommodation so
limited, but it went off well, a jolly party, and Tommy’s friends spoke of it
for some time afterwards.’
****** The shows, popular
at the time, and the name came from Mrs Jarley’s Waxworks, mentioned briefly in
Charles Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop,
1841.
These blogs are
generically titled “The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam”, but it’s not intended in a
simplistic “events A + B = character trait C” way. So I’ll just throw out a
guess here that there is a non-specific connection between my father’s
reluctance here to be designated “top boy” and his later fervent endeavours to
evade promotion in the Army – some of which regular readers may have noted
already, some of which will emerge in tales yet to be told.
‘Tommy neared the end of his school days. He knew that he
just had to leave, start work, and earn a few shillings. He would have welcomed
some sort of further training, but clearly the family’s finances would not allow
that. He felt particularly aware of this because his greatest friend, Charlie,
the draper’s son, was able to continue his education at a commercial college.
Their friendship lasted until later years in life. But, for the time being, the
break had to come.
During his final
months at school, Tommy found himself in the top group of class 7X. Not only
that – his teachers, including AEP, began to give him what they called the
“top-boy treatment”. He didn’t believe he was top boy and thought perhaps the
glory of his brother was shining on him a little.
But, along with
some of his fellows – as had happened to George when he reached this level – he
took certain fixed lessons with the class and then worked independently on any
subject in which he was especially interested. For Tommy, that meant the
history period he had reached; the end of the 19th century, the wars in Africa.
He read several
books about it, fiction mostly, and conceived the idea of writing a book on the
subject himself. He set to work, spending an hour or two on it each day. That
continued until the end of his time at the school. Unfortunately, it grew very
long and he could not complete it before he had to leave.
Aside from this
freedom of study, AEP gave him responsible, practical jobs too, such as making
a stock list of the school book store to help the teachers draw up their
syllabuses for the new year beginning in September – a task AEP would normally
have undertaken himself, but he thought it would give Tommy useful experience.
The settled life
he’d enjoyed – school and then all those regular evening activities – was about
to be fractured. Even his voice began to break, ending his participation in the
church choir. That made a great change; Sundays and two nights of the week
free. He had time on his hands. Too much even.
Finally, a month’s
holiday, a brief return to school in the summer until his birthday in July*******,
a farewell chat with his teacher, AEP, the big, admirable man, another with the
head, who handed him an excellent testimonial. And goodbye to all that.’
******* 1912, almost
certainly!
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: The making of
Foot Soldier Sam, 1903-1914 – various churches and Mr Frusher 1: the
development of Sam’s church life, from tin churches to his Vicar/mentor Frusher’s
CofE… the thrill of music, the choir and the piano
* In his 70s, Sam
Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance,
a Memoir of his life from childhood
through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919
Peace parade.
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