Let me now come to grips with the task of revealing the sort of boy that I was at heart, however discouraging such revelations might be. And I shall do this with a series of anecdotes relating to this period of my first year at Eton.

It is perhaps revealing that I set off for Eton, in the old Packard driven by Daddy and with Mummy accompanying us, to find that I'd left the trunk containing all my necessary clothes and belongings in my room at Claridges where we'd all been staying. There were fierce recriminations of course, with one person telling the next that the duty was theirs to have seen that all was on board before we set out from London. But in retrospect, I'm bound to judge that the fault was primarily my own. I think it's true to say that I was someone who didn't have his feet squarely placed upon the ground. I was up in the clouds: full of fleeting ideas, which were often impractical for reasons which I had not perceived. And I had notions that I was already a big success in life, which could in no way at all be substantiated. With the trunk - as with everything else - I relied upon others to sort things out for me, so that my life might continue upon its ordered track. (The trunk arrived later by taxi.) Or in other words, I was too well accustomed to being spoon fed, and too little initiated into the task of taking good care of myself.

In that respect, Eton - with its emphasis upon loner qualities as much as upon team spirit - was a good choice for my further education. It was the fact of having a room of one's own which cultivated one's sense of personal individualism, while the collective ethos came as much from the social friction within each house, as from the team games in which we were all obliged to participate.

But there were a vast number of rough edges which needed to be knocked off, or rounded, within the personality which arrived at the school. As previously mentioned, I kept a diary during my first half at Eton. As diaries go, it is not inspiring; but it does serve to let me glimpse myself as I then saw myself to be. And I must confess to finding the creature who wrote it to be quite objectionable at times.

There is a strain in it throughout, of finding fault in the behaviour of others, without the perception of how my own behaviour must have seemed to them. But there is a grosser example of my insensitivity within a letter that I sent to Daphne, after she had written to say that the bun in her oven had unfortunately arrived too early to survive: meaning that she had miscarried. (She was forty-one at the time.) My letter was as follows.

I know you are simply longing for me to take that letter seriously, but I'm afraid I have seen through it. The real matter with you is that you are in bed because of your rheumatism. You forgot the fact that if you were bun-bereft, you would be in hospital, and not at Sturford. Elementary my dear mother! So Yah-boo-suck- it, and stick-your head-in-a-bucket! [This was a current family retort.] Very best love from your detective son, Alexander Holmes - the more gifted brother to Sherlock and Mycroft.

In my diary, I recount how Daphne was indeed offended by my reply.

But the following day I received an additional rebuke from Henry, suggesting that I had best sit down and write a letter of apology to my mother - which I did.

I am very sorry that I sent you that somewhat snubbing letter, when it was really me who deserved to be snubbed. I thought you were trying to make a fool of me, as you have on several occasions in the past. So I had been looking out for the next one. Anyway I'm sending you this present [a book of poetry from the local second-hand book shop], to make up for it.
I think I should dwell for a moment upon my innermost thought in writing that first letter. I no longer feel, that I could have written it in such a state of innocence as I describe. I now think that the thought in my head was that this was a good opportunity for me to impress on Henry, more than Daphne, just how confusing it was to have them deliberately telling me things that were not true - just to tease me on my gullibility. I think that I was almost aware that the tidings they were delivering on this occasion were in fact true, but I saw my opportunity to demonstrate to them that the donor of false information stands to suffer as much as the recipient - if a state of uncertainty is artificially created as to how statements of potential fact are to be received. And I was prepared to give them this lesson, at the expense of saying something which might hurt my mother's feelings.

The idea of biding my time to find the right opportunity to make the required retort to my parents was certainly manifest within my behaviour at this time. There is another case of a resentment harboured inside me, concerning comments they had made with regard to noise I had been making when singing. Their fiercest comments had been made over the course of a car drive down to Cornwall, when I had persisted in singing descants, much in contrast to Henry's own, during the family sing-song which had been intended as an agreeable way of passing the time.

It was Daphne who had first commented upon the row I was making, but then she herself had never been particularly musical. What galled me far more was Henry's comment that none of his children had inherited his own talent in the field, for he had been a chorister when at Harrow. But for my own part, I had indeed been much praised for the quality of my treble voice when at Ludgrove. The feeling in my own mind was that there were areas of excellence where Henry delighted in regarding himself as supreme, at the expense of acknowledging talent in his children which might stand in rivalry to that pre-eminence.

I had been anticipating on my arrival at Eton, that I would be given a place in the choir - which would furnish me with the desired opportunity to send my parents the snubbing letter that I held mentally, in readiness for them. It is my sincere belief that I would indeed have been put in the choir. But at the time when I was standing in the queue to have my voice tested, along with all the other new boys that half, I was in a group with Winslow and Napier, who were then my mess mates. And Winslow - who was far from being musical in any way at all - was going on about how all the wets got into the choir.

Being as suggestible as I then must have been, by the time I arrived at the front of the queue I was in a state of considerable uncertainty as to what I desired the outcome of the test to be. I wanted to pass the test all right, just to prove my own ability in that field. At the same time, I wanted to be able to say to my new group of friends that I had attempted to decline the status of chorister, but had been overruled.

It should have come as no surprise to me that the matter was resolved differently. I was given all the tests by Mr Beswick, and I demonstrated that I was good at picking out the lower, or higher note in a chord, to sing in descant. And he did end up by asking me if I'd like to be in the choir: to which I replied that I'd prefer it if he could find me some other place. The curious part is that I returned to m'tutor's firmly believing that I would be placed in the choir notwithstanding. And I was bitterly offended when I discovered that I had been placed instead, in the Treble Block.

The letter that I now sent home indicates that I was by no means reconciled to the position, and was still intent on delivering the snub that I had been preparing for them.

The Treble Block incidentally, cannot in all truth be regarded as part and parcel of the school choir at Eton. But I was managing to think of it that way.

Quite apart from the evidence I am here revealing of an objectionable streak within my personality, this anecdote is also indicative of the state of confusion that I felt as to what my identity should really be. And it reveals me in a state of cowardice in neglecting to be my full potential, regardless of the taunts that might be forthcoming from the likes of Winslow. So let me now furnish an additional anecdote which reinforces this evidence for some streak of inner cowardice.

That happened down at Looe during my first Summer holidays. I had bought myself a small rubber dinghy, which I kept down on the rocks at the foot of the cliff - along with the double paddle which Donald had assisted me in making. But one morning I found that the paddle had disappeared: stolen one had to assume, because the niche in the rocks was secure from both wind and tide.

About a fortnight later however, I was bathing with Christopher on a beach some little distance from where we normally went, and there we espied a couple of boys (of approximately the same age as ourselves) using the paddle which I had made for the propulsion of their own canoe. There could be no doubt about it being the same paddle, since it bore all the same signs of being home-made, with its two blades painted the same bright red. The situation was too much for me to go up and retrieve my property. I pushed myself as far as enquiring where they had obtained their paddle. After a moment's silence, one of them had suggested it had been washed up from the sea - in the opposite direction from our own village.

I knew that a courageous person would have just snatched the paddle, and walked away. Or I could have insisted that we take the paddle to a police station, where we could each have explained our respective positions. But I couldn't bring myself to do either of these things. I looked instead for some formula whereby I might feel that the situation could be legitimated, without further conflict. So I agreed that if the paddle had been washed up to them from the sea, then it was a case of finders, keepers. And we went our own way. But the incident had left me with a nasty feeling inside: the knowledge that I had avoided any true confrontation with the thieves, from a fear that the situation might escalate into violence. And I have always found that memory difficult to live with.

A candle flame sputtering in the dismal dark
sharpens its flame if palms protect it from the wind,
kindling bright and inspirational, preciously
fresh - while ringed round by the hedge of hands.
When standing alone on life's battle ground,
sounds unhinge my spirit from without and within.
I cringe from the confrontational kiss with discord,
risking my clean ticket for undaunted courage.
Burrowing a furrow through mountain waves in a gale,
I quail inside my groaning hull, aghast
at the blast of wind and water, awaiting the hour
of a coward's disintegration in squalid death.
But when I face the mirror in their eye,
I really wish for parts of me to die.

The artistic side to my personality was being slow to develop over this early period at Eton. I made no immediate impression with my efforts at the drawing schools, and soon found that my interests were veering in the direction of pottery, rather than painting - with a special delight in the sculpting of fierce prehistoric monsters. It wasn't until I had been at the school for a full year in fact, before Mr Gerald Leet recommended that I join the group of pupils who were to compete for the Harmsworth prize in art; and even then my performance was strictly average. But with my pleasure in art slightly rekindled, I found myself with rather too many occupational interests - along with my piano lessons that is to say. So I took the decision to drop music as an extra subject - originally with the thought being that this would be just for a year perhaps. But it became more permanent than that, inasmuch that I never did get round to learning to play the piano ever again.

When it came to the question of how my room should be decorated, I had few ideas of my own. My tastes hadn't been developed in any particular direction at all. It was suggested that Daphne might assist me in choosing pictures for my room - with the idea I suppose, that this could be regarded as some initial instruction in what `good taste' entailed. I know that I was dissuaded from buying a sentimental picture of two dogs peering into a rabbit hole. Instead I was persuaded to take some old-fashioned shooting prints, which had been coloured in water-colour by hand. I never did manage to feel that these represented the kind of taste to which I aspired, but they were to adorn my walls for the rest of my time at Eton.

The question of taste was something that I developed very slowly indeed. In fact for many a year I was to find myself making faux pas, in that my choice of gifts for my parents seldom seemed to furnish them with anything they might truly esteem. The choice of a second-hand lamp stand made from a cow-horn, set upon a piece of chromium, is an example which comes to mind. It represented a taste which might nowadays be described as kitsch. So the question arises as to how I came to be developing it.

There was in fact a distinct element of kitsch taste in what could be seen at Sturford Mead: for example in the china dish for lavatory paper with its motto stating "Thou God seest me." But such items were relatively infrequent, to be judged alongside much fashionable decor such as might merit the commendation of Cecil Beaton - that doyen of elegance for their generation as a whole. But I was less than adept at this age in dissociating the kitsch element from all the rest that they might be hoping I'd absorb.

Already at Ludgrove, I had been developing rather too great an awareness of my personal appearance, setting myself in imitation of Henry's own manicured elegance, if the truth be told. But this did give rise to some small friction with my contemporaries at Eton, where it was regarded as distasteful (even plebeian) to see anyone with "smarmed" hair. My own use of honey and flowers on my hair incurred some ribald comments from those seated in chapel within my immediate proximity. I did in fact find it quite confusing concerning what standards were really expected of me. I wanted to feel that my father was someone who would know best in such matters, and yet I was increasingly aware how the majority of my social group condemned such meticulous concern about one's appearance as being dandified.

Taking things all round, I cannot persuade myself that I was an easily likeable person at this point in time. I was excessively self-centred, and took myself too seriously perhaps - without the mellowing influence of a well-developed sense of humour. But Jaques' comments upon my personality in my school report at the end of the first half are an indication that there were some good things also to say about me.

Jaques' use of the phrase "as you know" would seem to indicate that there had been an exchange of letters between my father and himself concerning the faults in my personality. So the words "priggish and aggressive" might well have been taken from Henry's own stated opinion of me. In any case I was essentially geared in eagerness towards the task of making the best possible person out of myself. And these were early days. I remained abundantly self-confident that I would someday emerge as the sort of individual that is universally admired within this brand of schooling.

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