Stephen Fry - MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

Back to the fag test. This took the form of a written exam and required of its candidates a full knowledge of all the school Houses (in alphabetical order), their housemasters, their House-captains and their locations. One had to know too all the form masters by their names and initials and where in the school their form-rooms lay. Being an ancient establishment that had prospered in Victorian England, Uppingham, like a good English town, like the English language itself indeed, had rambled and swollen and bulged itself out in a higgledy-piggledy manner that demonstrated no logic, plan or rationale. The new boy had to know where each games field was, the layout of the music school and the art school and the carpentry and metalwork shops and all manner of other places. These were the compulsory and predictable elements of the fag test and held no terrors for me. I have always been able to rely on that excellent memory of mine; the unknown factor in the test lay in the right of the House-captain, whose job it was to mark the results, to top off all of this factual quizzing with school slang tests and unpredictable questions about nicknames, customs and traditions. A cobbled pathway that led past the library through to the central colonnade, for example, was known as the Magic Carpet and an alley whose flooring was made of small square raised tiles sometimes went under the name of the Chocolate Block. There were dozens and dozens of similar nicknames for people, places and regions of the school that one naturally absorbed over a period of months and years, but to find them all out in a week and a half was difficult.

The price of failure in the fag test was high: a flogging from the House-captain. I had a dread conviction that boys beat much more mercilessly than prep school headmasters. The captain of the House, whose name was Peck, sported splendid sideburns, nothing to Edward Thring’s Dundreary Weepers of course, but impressive none the less and an indicator, to my mind, of huge reserves of strength. There was something horrible too about the very word ‘flogging’ which conjured images of naval punishment at the mast, the victim biting on wads of leather as the lash was laid on.

Peter Pattrick my fag teacher set about his task with vigour, for if I failed, he too would be punished. If I passed, and passed well, there was a reward: Pattrick would have to stand me a tea at the buttery. The school had three butteries, sort of cafés-cum-tearooms-cum-tuck-shops-cum-ice-cream-parlours. There was the Upper Buttery, the Lower and the Middle. The one I came to love and cherish was, as befits my nature, the Lower Buttery, a cash only, high cholesterol joint run by a couple called Mr and Mrs Lanchberry, or possibly Launchberry. Mrs Lanchberry (we will settle on that, I have only a limited number of ‘u’s at my disposal) had a way of dropping two eggs into a lake of boiling lard that I have yet to see rivalled. To this day, double-eggs on toast with baked beans, a glass of sparkling dandelion and burdock and I’m simply anybody’s. The Upper Buttery was run by a Mrs Alibone and was really more of a shop, selling sweets, coffee, biscuits, bread, cheeses, ices and other consumables on tick. There was some system of order-forms involved and she always knew exactly when one was bust, which I found irritating and in rather poor taste. The Middle Buttery was hidden somewhere in the Middle, one of the largest playing fields in England, on which dozens (literally) of cricket matches could be played simultaneously, as well as games of tennis, hockey, rugger and Christ knows what else besides.

For the fag test then, they dangled a carrot and they brandished a stick. Like most small boys at new schools I was far more driven by the stick than I was drawn by the carrot. To tell the truth, the prospect of being bought a huge tea by Peter Pattrick frightened me almost as much as being flogged by Peck.

Pattrick – I think I mentioned that he was athletic? Especially good at tennis – decided that the way to teach me was to take me to the House library, find the largest book he could, Liddell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon probably, and hold it over my head while he tested me. A mistake or hesitation from me and - bang! - down would crash the book on to my skull. This was of no help and only served to confuse me. I remembered everything perfectly well almost the first time I was told it, the sight of that huge eau de nil jacketed dictionary looming above me simply mesmerised me into stupidity. At one point, while the book was hovering and I was havering, the door to the library opened and my brother came in. He took in the situation at a glance, I rolled a pleading eye towards him and then he spoke:

‘That’s it, Peter,’ he said. ‘If he gives any trouble, knock some sense into him.’

I hate myself for telling that story, for it gives quite the wrong impression of Roger who is just about the kindest man I know, with less malice in him than you would find in a bushbaby’s favourite aunt. He will squirm with embarrassment and shame at reading this, which is undeserved. Facts must out, however, and I must record that I was a little hurt by his failing to come to my aid or defence. No grudge of course, for I thought it must be my fault and that this was how things were done at big schools. Prep school is, it goes without saying, no kind of preparation at all for public school, any more than school is a preparation for life. The alteration in scale, the sudden descent from seniority to absolute insignificance, these make any social lessons learnt worse than useless. Those whose early days at public school were least happy were those who had won most prizes, rank and power at their preps. Worth noting here the oddity too of my brother calling Pattrick by his Christian name. It was considered rather cool and adult amongst second, third and fourth years to be on first name terms.

‘Hi, Mark,’

‘Guy! How’s it going?’

When Mark and Guy subsequently leave school and find each other again in their twenties, after university, working in the same merchant bank it becomes cool, of course, to revert back to surnames.

‘Bloody hell! It’s Taylor!’

‘Hallett, you old bastard!’

All very puzzling and absurd.

In the event, whether Liddell and Scott had anything to do with it or not, I scored 97 per cent in the fag test, a House record. I remember the thrill of seeing the word ‘Excellent!’ scrawled next to my result in Peck’s hand. Peck wore the striped trousers and black waistcoat of the sixth-former as well as the boater of the School Polly, but I seem to remember that he also (unless I have gone stark mad) affected a sort of cream-coloured silk stock of the kind huntsmen wear. I thought him little short of a god -even more so when I watched him playing Volpone in the school play and saw that he was a magnificent actor. I think he was the only boy older than me that I ever had a thing for, if you’ll forgive the prissy phrase. I can’t call it a crush exactly, or a ‘pash’ as they were sometimes odiously called, a ‘thing for’ about sums it up.

I can still remember the twelve Houses in alphabetical order, I suppose every Old Uppinghamian can – I’ll recite them for you.

Brooklands

Constables

Farleigh

Fircroft

The Hall

Highfield

The Lodge

Lorne House

Meadhurst

School House

West Bank

West Dean

I do that to show the pleasingly bourgeois nature of the names of most of the Houses. ‘Meadhurst’, ‘Farleigh’ and my own House, ‘Fircroft’ – they sound as if they belong in Carshalton or Roehampton, peeping through laurel bushes and shaded by monkey-puzzle trees. These Houses were necessarily larger than the average suburban villa however, despite their names, because they had to fit in dormitory and washing facilities for fifty boys, study accommodation, shower rooms, a dining hall and kitchens, as well as boot rooms, storage space and what estate agents once called ‘the usual offices’. There had to be too the housemaster’s area, the ‘private side’ as it was called, where he could live some sort of life with his wife and family. The Frowdes had two children and a golden labrador called Jester. I don’t suppose an active dog could have a better life than in the boarding-house of a school. No matter how pissed off a boy might be with existence, authority or himself, there was always room to share food and affection with a dog. A dog allowed an adolescent, struggling to be manly, cynical and cool, to romp and giggle and tickle and tumble like a child.