A Traveller’s Life. Eric Newby

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       CHAPTER SEVEN Journeys Through Darkest Hammersmith

       (1928–36)

      In the autumn of 1928 I was sent to Colet Court, the Junior School of St Paul’s which stood opposite it in the Hammersmith Road. By a quirk similar (but not the same) to that which locates Harrods in SW1, when everything else in Knightsbridge is in SW3, Colet Court was in Hammersmith W6 and St Paul’s in West Kensington W14.

      As if to emphasize the connection between the two schools the architect or architects, who were obsessed with this material, had embellished both sets of buildings, which were constructed of purple brick, with what seemed like acres of shiny, orange terracotta. A large part of my schooldays were spent in these disturbing surroundings, which suggested some more restrictive uses than seats of learning, and it was quite common for boys waiting outside St Paul’s in the evening for a bus to take them home to be approached by some stranger, often a foreigner, wishing to know what kind of ‘institution’ was this enormous pile of Victorian Gothic in the Hammersmith Road, and of what sort were the inmates. Eventually, after some exceptionally earnest or morbid sightseer, wishing to see and know more, had enquired at the porter’s lodge, an order was promulgated to the effect that when such a question was posed by a member of the public we were forbidden to say that the place was a ‘loony bin’.

      A photograph probably taken in 1929, in the summer term of my first year at Colet Court, shows me, at least after the extensive retouching to which it had been subjected, to have been a healthy, cheerful-looking boy with large, protruding ears and a large mouth full of very slightly protruding teeth.

      Because my ears stuck out (whichever ear I slept on flapped over on itself, like an envelope) at night when I went to bed I was made to wear what were called ear-caps. They were made of cotton, had what looked like miniature fishing-nets on either side to keep the ears against the head, and were kept in place with a couple of bits of ribbon tied under the chin. Just as a hairnet or a bath cap imparts to the wearer an excessively senile or infantile appearance, according to whether the wearer is old or young, so did ear-caps, and for this reason I was extremely sensitive about wearing them, just as I had been sensitive, years before, about wearing red rubber waders on Bournemouth beach. These ear-caps proved to be useless for restraining ears as powerful as mine. After a few days my ears broke through the netting, and after I had worn out something like half a dozen pairs in a month, according to my mother, I was made to wear something more robust that looked like a pair of metal earphones with leather ear-pads in place of phones. However, these were so uncomfortable that I eventually refused to wear them at all, in spite of having been ‘given the slipper’ by my father to encourage me to do so. After this nothing more was done about my ears, as nothing was done about restraining my teeth, and eventually ears and teeth returned to where they should have been in the first place, of their own accord.

      This photograph, my last studio portrait for many years, was taken by Mr Spencer, whose studio was in an early Victorian villa next door to St Paul’s School, and it was he who had been responsible for photographing me ever since I first sat up, unaided, and wore nothing but a loincloth.

      It was Mr Spencer – a mild, pleasant man who used to wax the ends of his moustache into needlesharp points with the aid of a preparation called Pomade Hongroise, an operation which he once performed for my benefit at my earnest request – who first engendered in me an interest in photography, although a number of years were to pass before I had the opportunity to gratify it. Mr Spencer’s camera was a massive affair, made of mahogany and brass, which used glass plates. When he was going to operate it he used to put his head under a black velvet cloth and gaze into a ground-glass screen on which whatever he was photographing appeared upside down, which must have been disconcerting until he got used to it.

      Mr Spencer had various backgrounds against which one could be photographed: woodland dells, palace balconies, simulated sunsets, that sort of thing. He could even paint in gnomes and fairies, and did so in one unforgettable picture of me, with a fringe and aged about four, wearing a pale blue knitted-silk round-necked pullover and shorts to match. Much to my disappointment, apart from the picture with the gnomes and fairies, which I do not think she herself could really have liked, my mother always insisted that whatever background I happened to be taken against should be eliminated, so that I invariably appeared in the finished portrait against a white or sepia nothingness.

      Another important piece of equipment, with which Mr Spencer used to keep his younger sitters in good humour, was a little, brightly feathered bird, which spent the time in a small box when it was not called upon to play its part. Whether it was a real bird that had been stuffed, or an artificial bird, it is difficult to say; but the entire contraption came from France.

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