Uppingham by the Sea | Page 5

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 minutiae, 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}

CHAPTER IV.
Gesta ducis celebro, Rutulis qui primus ab oris Cambriae, odoratu
profugus, Borthonia venit Litora; multum ille et sanis vexatus et aegris,
Vi Superum, quibus haud curae gravis aura mephitis: Multa quoque et
loculo passus, dum conderet urbem Inferretque deos Cymris.
AN EPIC