Uppingham by the Sea: A Narrative of the Year at Borth

"O what have we ta'en?" said the fisher-prince,

"What have we ta'en this morning's tide?

Get thee down to the wave, my carl,

And row me the net to the meadow's-side."

In he waded, the fisher-carl,

And "Here," quoth he, "is a wondrous thing!

A cradle, prince, and a fair man-child,

Goodly to see as the son of a king!"

The fisher-prince he caught the word,

And "Hail," he cried, "to the king to be!

Stranger he comes from the storm and the night;

But his fame shall wax, and his name be bright,

While the hills look down on the Cymry sea."

Finding of Taliesin.

Elphin, son of Gwyddno, the prince who ruled the coasts between the Dovey and the Ystwith, came down on a May-day morning to his father's fishing-weir. All that was taken that morning was to be Elphin's, had Gwyddno said. Not a fish was taken that day; and Elphin, who was ever a luckless youth, would have gone home empty-handed, but that one of his men found, entangled in the poles of the weir, a coracle, and a fair child in it. This was none other than he who was to be the father of Cymry minstrelsy, and whom then and there his rescuers named Taliesin, which means Radiant Brow. His mother, Ceridwen, seeking to be rid of her infant, but loath to have the child's blood on her head, had launched him in this sea proof cradle, to take the chance of wind and wave. The spot where he came to land bears at this day the name of Taliesin. On the hill-top above it men show the grave where the bard reposes and "glories in his namesake shore."

* * * * *

There is something magnetic in a famous site: it attracts again a like history to the old stage. Thirteen centuries and a half after the finding of Taliesin, the same shore became once again an asylum for other outcasts, whose fortunes we propose to chronicle.

But since the day when they drifted to land the cradle of the bard, the waves have ebbed away from Gwyddno's weir, and left a broad stretch of marsh and meadow between it and the present coast, where stands the fishing village of Borth. The village fringes the sea-line with half a mile of straggling cottages; but the eye is caught at once by a massive building of white stone, standing at the head of the long street, and forming a landmark in the plain. This building is the Cambrian Hotel, reared on a scale that would suggest the neighbourhood of a populous health-resort. But the melancholy silence which haunts its doors is rarely broken, between season and season, by the presence of guests, unless it be some chance sportsman in quest of marsh-fowl, or a land-agent in quest of rents.

When, therefore, on the 15th of March, 1876, a party of four visitors-the Rev. Edward Thring, Headmaster of Uppingham School, one of the Trustees of the school, and two of the masters-were seen mounting the steps of the porch, it was a sight to make the villagers wonder by what chance so many guests came to knock at the door in that dead season. Had the wind blown them hither? It blew a hurricane that day on the bleak coasts of Cardigan Bay; but it was a shrewder storm yet which had swept this windfall to the doors of Borth.

The story must be briefly told. On November 2nd, 1875, Uppingham School was dispersed on account of a fever which had attacked both town and school, not without fatal casualties. On January 28th, 1876, the school met again. In the interval the school-houses had been put in complete sanitary order, and though the efforts made to amend the general drainage of the town had been only on a small and tentative scale, it was thought that the school, if secure on its own premises, might safely be recalled, in spite of remaining deficiencies outside those limits. But, tua res agitur-the term began with three weeks of watchful quiet, and then the blow fell again. A boy sickened of the same fever; then, after an interval of suspense, two or three fresh cases made it clear that this was no accident. An inspection of the town drainage, ordered by the authorities, revealed certain permanent sources of danger. It was clear that the interests of school and town, in matters of hygiene as in others, were not separable; perhaps the best fruit of the sequel has been the mutual conviction that those interests are one.

Meanwhile the new illustration of this connection of interests had a formidable significance for the Uppingham masters. Men looked at one another as those do who do not like to give a name to their fears. For what could be done? The school could not be dismissed again. How many would return to a site twice declared untenable? But neither could it be kept on the spot: for there came in unmistakable evidence that, in that case, the school would dissolve itself, and that, perhaps, irrevocably, through the withdrawal of its scholars by their parents from the dreaded neighbourhood. Already the trickling had begun; something must be done before the banks broke, and the results and hopes of more than twenty long working years were poured out to waste.

When the crisis was perceived, a project which had been already the unspoken thought in responsible quarters, but which would have sounded like a counsel of despair had the situation been less acute, was suddenly started in common talk and warmly entertained. Why should we not anticipate calamity by flight? Before the school melted away, and left us teaching empty benches, why should we not flit, master and scholar together, and preserve the school abroad for a securer future afterwards at home?

In a space of time to be measured rather by hours than days, this project passed through the stages of conception, discussion, and resolve, to the first step in its execution. On Tuesday, March 7th, a notice was issued to parents and guardians that the school would break up that day week for a premature Easter holiday, and at the end of the usual three weeks reassemble in some other locality, of which nothing could as yet be specified except that it was to be healthier than that we were leaving.

The proposed experiment-to transport a large public school from its native seat and all its appliances and plant to a strange site of which not even the name was yet known, except as one of several possible spots, and to do this at a few days' notice-was no doubt a novel one. But the resolve, if rapidly formed and daring, was none the less deliberate and sane. Its authors must not be charged either with panic or a passion for adventure. All the data of a judgment were in view, and delay could add no new fact, except one which would make any decision nugatory because too late. It was wisdom in those with whom lay the cast of the die, to take their determination while a school remained for which they could determine anything.

It was a sharp remedy, however. For on the morrow of this resolve the owners of so many good houses, fields, and gardens, all the outward and visible of Uppingham School, became, for a term without assignable limit, landless and homeless men, and the Headmaster almost as much disburdened of his titular realm as if he were a bishop in partibus or the chief of a nomad caravan. It was a sharp remedy; but those who submitted to it breathed the freer at having broken prison, and felt something, not indeed of the recklessness which inspires adventure, but of the elation which sustains it:

Why now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark;

The storm is up, and all is on the hazard!

There was cited at this time a somewhat similar event in the history of Rugby School. Dr. Arnold, in a like emergency, had removed the school, or all who chose to go, in numerous detachments under the care severally of himself and others of his masters to various distant spots, among others his own house in the Lake country, where they spent some two months, and returned to Rugby when the danger was over. It was felt, however, that this incident furnished no real precedent for the present venture. What we were proposing was not to arrange a number of independent reading-parties in scattered country retreats. Such a plan would hardly have been practicable with a system in which, as in our case, the division of the school for teaching purposes has no reference to the division into boarding-houses. It was proposed to pluck up the school by the roots and transplant it bodily to strange soil; to take with us the entire body of masters, with, probably, their families, and every boy who was ready to follow; to provide teaching for the latter, not only without loss in the amount, but without interruption of the existing system in any branch; and to guarantee the supply of everything necessary for the corporate life of three hundred boys, who had to be housed, fed, taught, disciplined, and (not the easiest of tasks) amused, on a single spot, and one as bare of all the wonted appliances of public school life as that yet uncertain place was like to prove, of which the recommendation for our residence would be that no one else cared to reside there.

Habet populus Romanus ad quos gubernacula rei public? deferat: qui ubicunque terrarum sunt, ibi omne est rei public? pr?sidium, vel potius ipsa res publica.

Cicero.

Hamlet. Is not parchment made of sheep-skins?

Horatio. Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too.

Hamlet. They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that.

Shakespeare.

The Trustees of the School met at Uppingham on March 11th. This was the earliest opportunity of consulting them collectively on the resolution to break up the school and to migrate, which had been taken on the 7th. They sanctioned the breaking up of the school. On the question of its removal elsewhere they recorded no opinion.

Meanwhile a reconnaissance was being made by one of our body, who was despatched to visit, as in a private capacity, Borth, and two or three other spots on the Welsh coasts, while inquiries were also made in other directions.

On Monday, 13th, the Headmaster left Uppingham for a visit to the sites which promised most favourably. A deep snow on the ground made the departure from home seem the more cheerless, but it had melted from the Welsh hills before we reached them. On Tuesday, the party-which now consisted of the Headmaster, two of the staff, and one of the Trustees (whose services on this occasion, and many others arising out of it, we find it easier to remember than to acknowledge as they deserve)-stayed a night at the inland watering-place of Llandrindod, one of the suggested sites. The bleak moors round it were uninviting enough that squally March day. But the question of settling here was dismissed at once; there was not sufficient house-room in the place. So next morning we bore down upon Borth.

The first sight of the place seemed to yield us assurance of having reached our goal. The hotel is a long oblong building with two slight retiring wings, beyond which extends a square walled enclosure of what was then green turf; Cambrian Terrace overlooks the enclosure at right angles to the hotel, the whole reminding us remotely of a college quadrangle. On entering the hotel, the eye seized on the straight roomy corridors which traverse it, and the wide solid staircase, as features of high strategic importance. A tour of the rooms was made at once, and an exact estimate taken of the possible number of beds. Besides two other members of the staff, who joined the pioneers at Borth, the school medical officer had come down to meet us, and reported on what lay within his province. Meanwhile two of the party were conducted by mine host to explore a "cricket-ground" close to the hotel, or at least a plot of ground to which adhered a fading tradition of a match between two local elevens. The "pitch" was conjecturally identified among some rough hillocks, over the sandy turf of which swept a wild northwester, "shrill, chill, with flakes of foam," and now and then a driving hailstorm across the shelterless plain. So little hospitable was our welcome to a home from which we were sometime to part not without regretful memories.

Next day, March 16th, a contract was signed, which gave us the tenancy of the hotel till July 21st, with power to renew the contract at will for a further term after the summer holidays. Our landlord, Mr. C. Mytton, was to provide board (according to a specified dietary) and bed (at least bed-room) for all who could be lodged in his walls, and board (with light and firing) for the whole party; to supply the service for the kitchen, and to undertake the laundry. Servants for attendance on the boys were to be brought by the masters. The payment was to be ￡1 a head per week for all who were lodged and boarded, or boarded only, in the hotel. For washing, and one or two other matters, an extra charge was admitted. We have only to add that the bargain was one with which both parties, under their respective circumstances, had reason to be satisfied; and that the arrangement worked not more stiffly than could be expected where the large margin of the unforeseen left so much to subsequent interpretation. Even Dido and Hiarbas were not agreed about the precise width of a bull's-hide. We do not, however, wish it to be inferred from this classical parallel, that our settlers claim to have rivalled the adroitness of the Punic queen in her dealings with the barbarian prince:

απολεμο? οδε y' ο πολεμο?, απορα ποριμο?. {12}

Your snail is your only right house-builder; for he builds his house out of the stuff of his own vitals, and therefore wherever he travel he carries his own roof above him. But I have known men, spacious in the possession of bricks and mortar, who have not so much made their houses as their houses have made them. Turn such an one out of his home, and he is a bare "O without a figure," counting for nothing in the sum of things. He only is truly himself who has nature in him, when the old shell is cracked, to build up a new one about him out of the pith and substance of himself.

Ten days after the reconnaissance described in the last chapter, the pioneers of the school were again upon the ground.

On Monday, March 27th, a goods train of eighteen trucks, chartered by the Uppingham masters, was unloading three hundred bedsteads, with their bedding, on Borth platform. These were to be distributed among the quarters of their respective owners, in some dozen different houses, which we had engaged in addition to the hotel. The workmen were mostly Welshmen, anxious to be doing, but understanding imperfectly the speech of their employers. With the eagerness of their temperament, they went at the trucks, and Babel began. Amid a confused roar of contradictory exhortations, with energetic gesture, and faces full of animation and fire, they were hauling away, to any and every place, the ton-loads of mattresses, and the fragments of unnumbered bedsteads. It was time for the owners to interpose; and those of the school party who were present, knowing that time was very precious, and that example is better than precept, especially precept in a foreign language, put their own hands to the work, the Headmaster being foremost, and earned a labouring man's wage at unloading the trucks and carrying the goods to their billets. Some of our new acquaintances watched the scene with a shocked surprise that authorities should share in the manual labour, instead of looking on and paying for it. But their feelings at last determined to admiration. "Why, sirs," they exclaimed, "you get it done as if you were used to move every three weeks." But, in fact, there was so much to be done, and so few days to do it in, that the exigencies of the work spared neither age, sex, nor degree of our party. None were exempt, and those who were not employed in porterage and rough carpentry might be found shifting furniture, or stitching curtains, or jointing together bedsteads.

Meanwhile, workmen in and round the hotel were as busy as stage-carpenters preparing a transformation scene. First, by the elimination of carpets and furniture, the interior was reduced to a tabula rasa. Then, in the somewhat weather-beaten top story, plastering and surface-washing went briskly on. Our hosts assured us no hands could be found for this work, but the Headmaster made a descent upon Aberystwith and returned with the required number. A contractor was fitting the large coffee-rooms, the billiard-room and others, and the ground-floor corridor from end to end, with long narrow tables-plain deal boards on wooden trestles-for the accommodation of three hundred diners. Outside, the stables were converted into the school carpentery, and the coach-house into a gymnasium. Above all, a wooden school-room, eighty-three feet by twenty, had been designed, and its site marked out on the north side of the enclosure behind the hotel.

Then there was the care of providing supplementary house-room for many purposes: rooms for music practice, and for the boys' studies (of which we shall have more to say), and for hospital uses. Ordinary "sick-room" accommodation was soon obtained by paying for it, but a fever hospital was also a requirement which, with our experiences, we were not likely to forget, and this was less easy to secure. We had to scour the neighbourhood, knocking at the door of many a farmhouse and country homestead, before we were provided.

The house-room being secured, came the labour of furnishing; the distribution of tables, benches, bookshelves, &c, for the class-rooms, and of furniture (in many cases a minimum) for the needs of masters and their families; the ticketing of the bed-room doors, the beds, the chests of drawers, and each drawer in them, with the name of the occupant-with many like minuti?, which it took longer to provide than it does to detail them. The task was not rendered easier by being shared in part with our hosts, who had hardly taken the measure of our requirements. It became necessary at the last moment to telegraph to the Potteries for a large consignment of bed-room ware, which, in spite of protestations, had been laid in only in half quantities. The world of school has marched forward since the days when three or four basins sufficed for the toilet of a dozen boys.

While the elementary needs of the colony were being attended to, its more advanced wants were not neglected. There were those whom the anxiety of providing for the school amusements, and in particular its cricket, suffered not to sleep. We believe that the first piece of school property which arrived on the scene was the big roller from the cricket-field. Resolved to gather no moss in inglorious ease at home, it had mounted a North-Western truck, and travelled down to Bow Street station, where it was to disembark for action. It cost the Company's servants a long struggle to land it, but once again on terra firma it worked with a will and achieved wonders, reducing a piece of raw meadow land in a few weeks' space to a cricket-field which left little to be desired. This meadow lay within a few hundred yards of Bow Street station, four miles by rail from Borth. It is the property of Sir Pryse Pryse, of Gogerddan, who gave the school the use of it at a peppercorn rent.

This was but one of the many acts of unreserved generosity shown by this gentleman to the school. It is not often that the opportunity offers of winning so much and such hearty gratitude as our neighbour of Gogerddan has won by his prompt liberality; still less often is the opportunity occupied with such thoughtful and ungrudging kindness.

We had help in the same kind from the Bishop of St. David's, who put at our service a field close to the hotel; a rather wild one, but in which little plots and patches for a practising wicket were discovered by our experts. The firm sands to the north were reported to yield an excellent "wicket;" with the serious deduction, however, that the pitch was worn out and needed to be changed every half-dozen balls.

Among such cares the week rolled away only too speedily, and brought the day of the school's arrival upon us. If we have failed, as we have, to convey a true impression of the serious labour and anxieties which crowded its hours, we will quote the summary of a writer who described it at the time, and knew what he was describing: "It was like shaking the alphabet in a bag, and bringing out the letters into words and sentences; such was the sense of absolute confusion turned into intelligent shape." {19}