I had a little cubicle in a high dormitory. There
was the big, rather frowsy dining-room, where we took our meals; a
large comfortable library where we could sit and read; outside
there were two or three cricket fields, a gravelled yard for drill,
a gymnasium; and beyond that stretched what were called "the
grounds," which seemed to me then and still seem a really beautiful
place. It had all been elaborately laid out; there was a big lawn,
low-lying, where there had once been a lake, shrubberies and
winding walks, a ruinous building, with a classical portico, on the
top of a wooded mound, a kitchen garden and paddocks for cows
beyond; and on each side the walls and palings of other big
mansions, all rather grand and mysterious. And there within that
little space my life was to be spent.
The only sight we ever had of the outer world was that we went on
Sundays to an extraordinarily ugly and tasteless modern church,
where the services were hideously performed; and occasionally we
were allowed to go over to Richmond with a shilling or two of
pocket-money to shop; and sometimes there were walks, a dozen boys
with a good-natured master rambling about Richmond Park, with its
forest clumps and its wandering herds of deer, all very dim and
beautiful to me.
Very soon I settled in my own mind that it was a detestable place.
Yet I was never bullied or molested in any way. The tone of the
place was incredibly good; not one word or hint of moral evil did I
ever hear there during the whole two years I spent there, so that I
left the school as innocent as I had entered it.
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