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Updated: May 11, 2025
But it was a sorry performance, and Radley put up over two hundred. Fernhurst went in again; and that day Gordon and Lovelace were sent in first. It was an amazing performance. Gordon's cricket was, in honest fact, one of the biggest frauds that had ever been inflicted on an opposing side.
No one who has ever been through the Upper Fifth at Fernhurst would have the slightest difficulty in writing a character sketch of any English king, even though he might never have read a chapter about him. Macdonald made every man in history a living character; not a sort of rack on which to hang dates and facts. Football, however, was not going quite so satisfactorily.
If he is at all sensitive, it is possible to make his life utterly wretched by a silent demonstration of hatred, but if he is at all a man, threats can never mature, and Clarke was a man. During his last days at Fernhurst he was supremely miserable. The House was split up into factions: he himself had no one to talk to except Ferguson and Sandham. But he carried on the grim joke to its completion.
"Caruthers, you know you are wasting your time. Here are you with all your brilliance and your personality worrying only about House caps and petty intrigues, and little things like that. What you want to realise is that there is something beyond the aim of a Fernhurst career. You are clever enough; but poetry and art mean nothing to you."
As he opened the door he paused for a second, laughed to himself: "Oh, it's funny, bloody funny," he murmured. "Not fit for Fernhurst.... Bloody funny." He laughed again, bitterly. The door closed slowly. Jeffries' footsteps could be heard on the stairs. They grew fainter; the door leading to the Chief's side of the House slammed.
Gordon saw he had said too much. "And I am not talking about his play, I am talking about his general attitude. Now, didn't you two rag about a good deal at the nets last term?" "Well, sir, it was hardly ragging, sir " "Oh, hardly ragging.... There must be no ragging.... If we are going to turn out good sides we must be in dead earnest the whole time. You imagine you are loyal to Fernhurst.
And Gordon gazing from the school gateway across to the grey ivy-clad studies was taken for a few moments clean outside himself. The next few hours only served to deepen this wonder and admiration. For Fernhurst is prodigal of associations.
Some of you will perhaps never rise above playing on House games, or get higher than the Upper Fifth. But if you can manage to set an example of keenness you will have proved yourselves worthy of the School House, which is beyond doubt the House at Fernhurst. That's all I have got to say." That scene was in many ways the most vivid in Gordon's career.
He had cursed at the Public School system because he thought it had done harm to Fernhurst. What if Fernhurst and not the system were at fault? For several days this worried him. One evening, however, during the last week of the holidays, a Mr Ainslie came to dinner. He had been a contemporary of Lunn's at Harrow, and had himself been head of his house for two years.
Now, when the glamour has fallen off athleticism, let's show the school what wretched things they have been serving so long. If we can in any way put a check on this nonsense now, if in Fernhurst only, we shall be doing something. After the war we shall have a fine Fifteen winning matches, and the school will feel its feet.
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