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10.2: Activities and Identity: resting on my laurels

My whole intention really, was to spend a final half in which I could truly say that I had enjoyed myself; and I succeeded to this end. Normally one might have expected that I should spend a lot of time in boxing training, preparing for whatever contests had been lined up against other schools. But I had never enjoyed the tension in waiting for those dates to come round, and I kept well away from the gym so as to keep such prospects from my mind. But I was greatly assisted in this reluctance to participate by the fact that David Tankard, who was now the Captain of the Boxing Team, appeared no more anxious than myself to promote such activities this half. There simply weren't any fixtures arranged. And I certainly wasn't going to lodge any protest on my own behalf.

In point of fact I would have been unable to participate in any such sporting activities for most of the half, since I managed to break a finger during our mobbing activities down in the Library. This meant that I was excused from playing the Eton Field-game, too, which meant that I had to be dropped from Jaques's House Side, where I had been playing as a corner. But inasmuch as our team was of no special quality, I would not have been awarded my house colours. So nothing was lost.

It also meant that during this my final half, I found plenty of time to concentrate upon my painting. My imagination was still fired by that visit I had paid to the Tate Gallery. in the company of Wilfrid Blunt. It was the influence of the early German Expressionists with which I was now trying to infuse my work. There had been a portrait of Gardener, who was a member of Debate at Jaques's, which got this new style off to a good start. But my main artistic achievement of this half was in the completion of a very large self-portrait - which I am not alone in regarding as a praiseworthy work for someone of that age.

A cup had been presented to the drawing schools, to be awarded that half for the very first time, to the best artist of his day: something to be judged by someone appointed to that task, after listening to the comments of our teachers, Mr Blunt and Mr Thomas. It was the Headmaster, Mr Birley, who was asked to preside as judge on this occasion, and I more or less knew that whereas Mr Blunt was advising that the award should go to myself, Mr Thomas favoured David Lord Brooke, the heir to the Earl of Warwick, who was Christopher's contemporary at Jaques's. It is only natural I daresay, that I was anticipating that I was going to be honoured with the first prize. But in the event I was greatly offended to hear that I had been judged in third place - after both Brooke and Broad, who was another boy far younger than myself. I avoided the drawing-schools for the remainder of the half.

Thomas may have been endeavouring to explain his harsh judgement on me when he came to pen my final art report at the end of this half. It read as follows.

I feel he has accelerated his method of painting too much. In no essentials has his painting changed except that he has so stylized his work that he has not left it room for development. If he had taken things more steadily, he would not have altered the face of his pictures so much, but he would have left himself with infinite possibilities of development, and `style' would have grown more evident as time went on, simply because `style' grows with personal vision. It has been an evolution of a studied search into the nature of things. This has produced a "style", and the "style" in its turn has suggested to the artist all kinds of developments rather like a musical theme. To simply try and pick up the theme where it was left off is not a profound enough approach to modern art, and is really a failure to understand it. I think he ought to retrace his steps a bit. But this does not mean that I do not admire the tremendous concentration he has put into his work. (I have often watched him painting, wondering how to say something helpful and comprehensible.) I would like to say that I think he has given a tremendous stimulus to the painting in the Drawing Schools, which should keep things lively for some time to come. I hope this report will be helpful and comprehensible.

It came as only a small sop to my artistic vanity when I was awarded first prize in a competition for scraper board designs, to be printed by the school stationers' as a Christmas card design. I had been instructed by Wilfrid in this art form, but this was the first occasion that I had completed such a design. The theme I chose was a humorous one, of the ghosts of a man and his dog, greeting their own skeletons down in a dungeon, with a cry of "Happy Christmas!" This was to turn out to be the start of a personal tradition, which I have continued to the present day - always producing my own scraper board design to get printed as my annual Christmas card.

I also kept up my literary activities over the course of this half. Everyone in my History division was set to write a thesis upon their selected subject within the Elizabethan period that we were studying. We were up to Mr Wykeham, and it was he who suggested that I should write mine upon the life of Sir John Thynne. My efforts pleased Wykeham, and he insisted that I give it to him so that he could file it in the school library - where as I imagine, it must still rest to this day.

I also undertook the writing of another short story, which was included within the St Andrew's day edition of our Praed Society magazine, Parade. It is a tale that I entitled Megalomania, about a seven year old boy's eagerness to make his mark on life: even to achieve fame. And I suppose it's true that I was beginning to feel restless upon that issue. So the sentiments I express could be read as genuinely my own. And as far as technique is concerned, it displays much improvement upon my previous efforts. It all takes place in war- time Britain, on a Cornish beach.

Almost everyone seemed to have caught the holiday atmosphere. But Frederick sat despondently in one corner of the beach. He glared sharply round at the nameless figures tasting the enjoyment of life. Contempt flashed through his mind. The most insignificant of the company appeared to reap the richest harvest of pleasure....

Of all the people in the world, only he was unable to enjoy himself. And yet he told himself only too often that he was worth a hundred of the nonentities which danced rejoicingly before his eyes.... It was always he who had to reward another with praise. He had made the lives of others worth living, but nobody had praised his feats.

Frederick decides that he isn't getting enough attention, so he is going to do something spectacular. He climbs through the barbed wire entanglement which protects a mine field, and walks several paces into it. Then he sits down on the sand, toying with a colourful beetle he finds there, and waiting the moment when somebody might notice his feat. This eventually happens.

A murmur of startled surprise crescendos over the sand. He heard the hysterical outburst of his mother. All eyes on the beach were turned upon him. Slowly and with dignity he turned to face them. Children were crying; women were running; men stood breathless and pale. A striped deck-chair lay sprawled across a scattered picnic, whilst its owner ran around dementedly in search of her child. A sailing boat rocked uncared for on the waves, while a small boy scampered screaming to his mother. A mongrel dog stopped yapping and dropped its rubber ball plaintively upon the sand.

Frederick starts showing off by striding a few more paces into the minefield, and revels in the fact that everyone, apart from himself, appears terrified.

He wondered if he had ever enjoyed life as much as he did at this very moment. A crowd of frightened people stood quaking before his gaze. They waited in terror to see what his next action was going to be. Like the mesmerized victims of a snake, they waited, petrified. It was he, Frederick, who had trodden beneath his foot the terrors of the minefield. It was he who had laughed in death's face, while others only dared watch....

Then the spectators assist a man to climb over the wire. Frederick watches mistrustfully, but is relieved to see that the man hesitates on the brink of the minefield. He is obviously afraid. Or was he?

At this point Frederick's dream collapsed. Striding towards him came the man. Rage, indignation and mortified pride struggled in the young boy's heart. The man was advancing like a dictator's army. A feat over which Frederick had spent the proudest ten minutes of his life, was now being reconquered in the process of seconds.

His throat suddenly felt taut and turgid. He wanted to cry, and yet the situation seemed unfitting. He wanted to run, and yet for the first time he felt fear. Meekly, Frederick allowed his unwelcome saviour to pick him up and carry him back, in the same unhesitating fashion.

As he was lifted over the barbed wire entanglement, a murmur of frenzied applause broke out from the spectators. From every angle they surged up to congratulate their hero. But their hero was not Frederick. It was the man. The man was everything. What a brave man! What a clever man! What a splendid man! What a positively heroic man! But Frederick was merely handed back into the arms of his sobbing mother.

Frederick is disgusted, but he listens enviously while people congratulate the man, who brushes their praise aside. "All I had to do was to step in the kid's footsteps." Then a reporter wants the man's picture for his paper. But while setting up the two of them for this pose, he notices the colourful beetle that is still crawling around on Frederick's hand.

Next morning the papers divulged that Frederick had saved the country from a menace. Apparently the beetle was a Colorado.

On this occasion my short story was quite well appreciated - as is indicated in the letter which I received from Graham-Campbell.

Thank you for letting me read your story. I enjoyed it immensely and, much as I liked your older one, this one marked a great advance in the telling and in the probability and in the ending. The whole thing was delightful.