Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother by Arthur Christopher Benson
page 37 of 154 (24%)
page 37 of 154 (24%)
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Barnes' Pool, which, with the sluggish stream that feeds it, separates
the college from the town, and is crossed by the main London road. It was a quaint little house, which had long ago been a boarding-house, and contained many low-coiled, odd-shaped rooms. Hugh was Edward Lyttelton's private pupil, so that he was often in and out of the place. But I did not see very much of him. He was a small, ingenuous-looking creature in those days, light-haired and blue-eyed; and when a little later he became a steerer of one of the boats, he looked very attractive in his Fourth of June dress, as a middy, with a dirk and white duck trousers, dangling an enormous bouquet from his neck. At Eton he did very little in the way of work, and his intellect must have been much in abeyance; because so poor was his performance, that it became a matter of surprise among his companions that he had ever won a scholarship at all. [Illustration: _Photo by Elliott & Fry_ THE THREE BROTHERS, 1882 E. F. Benson A. C. Benson R. H. Benson at Marlborough. at Cambridge. at Mr. Cornish's School at Clevedon. Aged 15. Aged 21. Aged 11.] I have said that I did not know very much about Hugh at Eton; this was the result of the fact that several of the boys of his set were my private pupils. It was absolutely necessary that a master in that position should avoid any possibility of collusion with a younger brother, whose friends were that master's pupils. If it had been supposed that I questioned Hugh about my pupils and their private lives, or if he had been thought likely to tell me tales, we should both of us have been branded. But as he had no wish to confide, and indeed little |
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