LECCION 25 - PAGINA 2   índice del curso   página anterior   página siguiente

I spent A GOOD PART of my early life at Wimbledon. We did not get rid of the house, a big one near the common, until soon after the end of the war; yet I can RECALL little or nothing of SIGNIFICANCE that happened there. But after the age of eleven or twelve I was always at some boarding school, and in the spring and summer holidays we went to the country, so that I saw Wimbledon only at Christmas and for a day or two at the beginning and end of the other holidays. London lay away, yet I seldom went there. We were never taken to the theatre, even to pantomimes, and by the middle of the war I had been to the theatre exactly twice in my life, and then MERELY to children's plays, by courtesy of an aunt. My mother brought us up to be serious and to benefit humanity in some practical way, but ALLOWED US NO HINT OF its dirtiness, intrigue, and lustfulness, believing that innocence would be the surest protection against them. She carefully censored our reading. I was DESTINED TO BE 'if not a great man, at least a good man'. Our treats were educational or aesthetic: to Kew Gardens, Hampton Court, the Zoo, the British Museum, or the National History Museum. I remember my mother, in the treasure room of the British Museum, telling us with bright eyes that all these wonderful things were ours. We looked at her astonished. She said: 'Yes, they belong to us as members of the public. We can look at them, admire them, and study them for as long as we like. If we had them back at home, we couldn't do better. Besides, they might get stolen.' We read more books than most children do. There must have been four or five thousand books in the house altogether. They consisted of an old-fashioned scholar's library bequeathed to my father by my namesake, to this were added my father's own collection of books, mostly poetry, with a particular cupboard for Anglo-Irish literature; devotional works CONTRIBUTED by my mother; educational books sent to my father by publishers in the hope that he would recommend them for use in Government schools; and novels and adventure books brought into the house by my elder brothers and sisters. My mother used to tell us stories about inventors and doctors who gave their lives for the suffering, and poor boys who STRUGGLED TO THE TOP OF THE TREE, and saintly men who made examples of themselves. Also the parable of the king who had a very beautiful garden which he threw open to the public. Two students entered; and one, of whom my mother spoke WITH A SLIGHT SNEER IN HER VOICE, noticed occasional weeds even in the tulip-beds; but the other (and here she brightened up) found beautiful flowers even on rubbish heaps. She kept off the subject of war as much as possible, always finding it difficult to explain how it was that God permitted wars. The Boer War CLOUDED my early childhood: Philip, my eldest brother (who called himself a Fenian), also called himself a pro-Boer, and I remember great tension at the breakfast-table between him and my father, whose political views were never extreme. The eventual sale of the Wimbledon house solved a good many problems. My mother hated throwing away anything that could possibly, in the most remote contingency, be of any service to anyone and, after twenty-five years, lumber had piled high. The medicine-cupboard was perhaps the most tell-tale corner of the house. Nobody could call it untidy; all the bottles had stoppers, but stood so crowded together that nobody except my mother, who had a long memory, could recognize the ones at the back. Every few years, no doubt, she went through them. Any doubtful bottle she would tentatively re-label: 'This must be Alfred's old bunion salve,' or 'Strychnine - query?' Even special medicines prescribed for scarlet fever or whooping cough were kept, in case of re-infection. An energetic labeller, she wrote in one of my school prizes: 'Robert Ranke Graves won this book as a prize for being first in his class in the term's work and second in examinations. He also won a special prize for divinity, though the youngest boy in the class. Written by his affectionate mother, Amy Graves. Summer, 1908.' Home-made jam used always to arrive at table well documented. One small pot read: 'Gooseberry, lemon and rhubarb - a little shop-gooseberry added - Nelly re-boiled.'

LECCION 25 - PAGINA 2   índice del curso   página anterior   página siguiente