Sunday, November 25, 2012
I have to admit that I was rather reluctant to post these here at first,
as my instructor Herman Bagstock could have probably sued me for libel
if he found these. However, he's very fortunately dead, so this can go
on the internet and I don't have to worry about a thing.
This is the second of a series of stories I wrote when I was a schoolboy
at Eton. They've been dubbed 'the Dirty Schoolboy Papers' because
they're extremely inappropriate because when you're around that age you
think that sort of thing is hilarious.
All names, including the surnames of my friends, have been changed because when I wrote this I didn't want to get in trouble.
Believe it
or not, old Bigsby had some friends at Eton who were perfectly human. One of
his closest friends was Mr. Nazus.[1]
I have chosen that particular pseudonym due to one of the man’s most
interesting qualities. He was tall and elegant – and rather attractive in the
eyes of the ladies, as I am told – and carried himself like an aristocrat. He
looked very proper overall, and we expected him to speak in a clipped, proper
accent to match.
We never
heard Mr. Nazus speak until he walked into the classroom that day to teach us
arithmetic. This moment is the reason I have christened him with this unusual
moniker – his voice, you see, was not at all what we expected it to be. When he
said, “Good morning, students,” to us, we could not believe it – someone was
surely throwing his voice. I glanced at William, who was biting his lower lip
and contorting his face in a most valiant attempt to keep himself from
laughing.
Mr. Nazus
had a high-pitched, nasal voice, almost as if a little man sat atop his head
and climbed down to pinch his nose every time he spoke. I sank down in my
chair, taking care not to make eye contact with William lest he laugh, and
contemplated this unusual speech pattern. There were certain words that would
sound terribly humorous if he said them – words that would surely set the class
off, and I, as a serious, responsible person, felt a twinge of pity for him. I
would learn later that he, like Mr. Bigsby before him, did not deserve the
sympathy I had considered bestowing upon him. I suppose he and old Bigsby were
in league with one another to make our lives most miserable indeed.
“Class,” he
addressed us, “today I am going to begin your arithme-TIC lesson with some
review. What did yeeeew learn last year?”
William
buried his face into his desktop, wrapping his arms around his head. His
shoulders shook as if he had just come in from the cold and was attempting to
warm up by the fire. A few other young gentlemen saw him and began to follow
his example, unable to help themselves. I conceded a smile, but I hid it with
my hand and disposed of it quickly.
A student
volunteered the information Mr. Nazus had requested, and before long the lesson
was underway. The class was about half an hour old when another instructor
knocked on the door and entered upon hearing Mr. Nazus’ whiny shout of, “Come
iiiin!” It was, much to our surprise, old Bigsby, his face as flat and equine
as ever.
“Hello,
children,” he said.
Somebody in
the back of the room neighed. William was unable to help it; he began laughing.
The rest of the class joined in, however, which saved him from a great deal of
embarrassment. I will confess that I had to bite my lip rather hard to keep
from chiming in myself and I nearly bled on my slate, but I was able to
restrain my own laughter. I did, however, have to hold my handkerchief to my
mouth for the rest of the class.
Bigsby and
Nazus, I must tell you, reacted rather unusually. Both of them turned matching
shades of pink, and they began to mutter and grumble and make other sounds that
did not exactly form understandable words. It made sense for Bigsby to respond
thus, as his liaisons with Lady Cordelia made perfectly clear, but the fact
that Nazus did the same thing was rather suspicious.
“Basil, I
have a theory.” William proposed his new idea once we were outside, away from
the ears of adults and prefects.
“Do you?” I
asked him somewhat rhetorically. I fully expected him to proceed, so my
question was unnecessary. Had I not wished for him to go on, it would have been
entirely rhetorical, but it was not thus.
“Yes. Perhaps
Mr. Nazus and Mr. Bigsby have orgies with the horse.” (William has an older
brother and thus knew far more about the art of copulation than I did at that
age, but I learned quickly and was fully aware of what he meant on that
occasion.)
It was a
disgusting, horrible theory. In fact, it was so disgusting and horrible that it
broke my serious resolve and made me laugh immoderately. When I managed to
recover myself and regained control of my emotions, I informed William that I
agreed with him. It made perfect sense for Nazus, Bigsby and Cordelia to share
their pleasure – Bigsby and Nazus were old friends, and Cordelia belonged to
Bigsby. She was a large enough horse that both men could ride her at the same
time.
Our
conversation was overheard by some rather notorious gossips – it must have
been, for our theory spread like the plague all over Eton. The first block
students, who were one year younger than us, began to whisper nervously,
concerned about the instructors they would inherit from us next year. The boys
who were older than us seemed thrilled by this revelation, and we even saw
prefects laughing about it.[2]
I have to admit that William and I were exceedingly proud of ourselves.
Mr. Nazus
seemed to be oblivious to the rumours that persisted about his rampant sexual
romps with Bigsby and Cordelia. He would simply instruct us until class was
over, ignoring the questions some of us would throw at him and the drawings on
the sheets of paper that William had stacked up on his desk. (As an art
student, William was permitted to carry his papers around, which nearly always
worked to his advantage as it allowed him to create caricatures whilst he could
actually see his models.)
Nazus did,
however, unleash a sort of savagery on students who were late for class. He
would scream at them, threatening them with the rod, every Etonian’s least
favourite chastisement, and nearly frighten them out of the classroom. I made
it a point to be early, of course, and I do not recall that William and my
other friends were ever late. One boy, however, was consistently late for
class, and he became Nazus’ mortal enemy, I am sad to report. The boy had a
rather long walk and could not help being tardy – he received our sympathy,
which occasionally meant we would lend him cushions to sit on after he had been
on the receiving end of a Nazus flogging. We got the impression that Nazus
enjoyed the use of his cane a bit too much, which naturally led to William’s
inclusion of a horse whip in nearly all of his drawings featuring our favourite
threesome of tutors and animals.
In general,
though, we were finding that we had an awful lot to worry about – one of our
tutors was fond of bestiality, whilst another had apparently read a bit too
much de Sade for our liking. We were in need of someone with more experience to
warn us about what we would undergo in coming months.
Fortunately,
we found Algernon.
[1] His real
name is Harvey Pankhurst. ‘Nazus’ is Latin for ‘nose;’ I selected the
pseudonym due to the sound of Pankhurst’s voice, as described in the story.
[2] I ironically later became a prefect when I was studying for my entrance exams
to Oxford. I stayed on at Eton for the extra year in order to do so, as did
William. During this time Will and I wrote Much Ado About Neighthing.
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