AUTOBIOGRAPHY-Chesterton

him. On this was based the great constructive theory that the elder master
(who was one of the most important persons in the school) was in fact only a
clock-work figure, which they carried about with them and wound up to go
through his daily round. The dummy and the two conspirators were dragged
through an endless reel of long-drawn (and badly drawn) adventures, some
scraps of which must still be kicking about the world somewhere. But needless
to say, we never thought of doing anything with them, except enjoying them. It
has sometimes struck me as not being a bad thing to do with things.
My friend Bentley, indeed, had and has a natural talent for these elaborate
strategic maps of nonsense, or the suggestion of such preposterous plots. It is
something like the industry which accompanies the fantasy of Father Ronald
Knox, when he makes a detailed map of the Barsetshire of Trollope or works
out an incredible cryptogram to show that Queen Victoria wrote “In
Memoriam.” I remember one day when the whole school assembled for a
presentation to a master who was leaving us to take up a fellowship at
Peterhouse. The congratulatory speech was made by one of the upper masters
who happened to be a learned but heavy and very solemn old gentleman,
whose manner and diction were alike ponderous and prosaic. My friend and I
were sitting side by side, hopeless of any enlivenment except from the
speaker’s solemnity; when the whole assembly was startled as by a
thunderclap. The old gentleman had made a joke. What was even more
shocking, it was quite a good joke. He remarked that, in sending our friend
from this school to that college, we were robbing Paul to pay Peter. We looked
at each other with a wild surmise. We shook our heads gravely. It could not be
explained. But Bentley afterwards produced a most convincing and exhaustive
explanation. He insisted that the elder schoolmaster had devoted his whole life
to planning and preparations for that one joke. He had used his interest with
the High Master to obtain for the junior master a place on the staff. He had
intrigued with the University authorities to get him a Fellowship at that
college. He had lived for that hour. He had now made his first and last joke;
and probably would soon pass away in peace.
It was the third member of our original trio who brought into our secrets
the breath of ambition and the air out of the great world. He was a dark and
very thin youth, named Lucian Oldershaw, who looked and in some ways was
very sensitive; but about those larger matters he was much less shy than we
were. He was the son of an actor and had travelled about the country more
than the rest of us; he had been to other schools and he knew much more of
the variety of life. Above all, there possessed him, almost feverishly, a vast,
amazing and devastating idea, the idea of doing something; of doing
something in the manner of grown-up people, who were the only people who
could be conceived as doing things. I well remember how my hair stood on
end, when he first spoke casually about the official School Magazine; which