Memoirs of a Born Adventurer

Memoirs of a Born Adventurer

D. Thomas Gochenour

Copyright © 2024 D. Thomas Gochenour

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-89157-955-2 (pbk)

ISBN 979-8-89157-974-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Memoirs

Chapter 2

Childhood and Youth

Chapter 3

Family and Friends

Chapter 4

Love for Women

Chapter 5

Death as a Lifelong Companion

Chapter 6

A Soldier's Life for Me

Chapter 7

Soldier of Fortune

Chapter 8

N'Midea

Chapter 9

The End of the Adventures

Failure and Decline

About the Author

Chapter 1

Memoirs

As I was walking slowly along the streets of Kensington one dreary fall day after the trees had shed most of their colourful leaves, the thought came to me: I had almost reached the beginning of the fourth stage in my life, as the Chinese traditionally divided the ages of a man's life. This means I was nearly sixty years old and was soon to embark on the stage where I was to live with less vigor and vitality but more wisdom and contemplation. My life as a dashing adventurer, world traveler, and dynamic warrior, as I had dreamed of as a youth, was probably over for good. My career in every aspect was probably, it is fair to say, a failure. My ambition, my social life, my noble heritage, and my love life all lay in shambles around me. I still felt strong, but not with the same vitality as I used to have. I was not yet decrepit and not ready to retire forever to infirmity and imbecility in the care of some immigrant nurse from one of the many countries I had once fought in.

As I thought about this new stage in my life, I also thought that I needed a project and a goal for my future years. And this is what I concluded as I stepped up the four brick stairs of the stoop in front of my house—a very nice house it is, one that anyone could be proud of, the house that my father had bought some seventy-five years ago as his town house in London and his home away from the family manor house out in the country. It was the house he had willed to me and which I inherited and moved into after I came back from the war in the Falklands, wounded and tired of the army, after he had died. I would write my memoirs in this house.

I would start to record and write out my memoirs. The memoirs of Simon Davall of Kensington, which is, more accurately, the fifth Earl of Aldermaston, David Simon Sebastian Herbert Davall Higford, or Lord Higford of Aldermaston in Berkshire. The memoirs of a born adventurer. And a failed English nobleman.

The idea at once inspired me into action, and I went to my studio to begin to think about how I would write my memoirs. What to include, what to leave out, how to write them, and what research I would need to do. Unfortunately, I have never engaged in writing a diary throughout my past life. So to compose a memoir, I would have to rely mostly on my own memories if I could shake them loose from the deep, dark recesses of my mind. I have reached this stage in my life with no tangible documents that provide proof that anything I manage to dredge up and write down is actually true and accurate.

You often read in the obituaries in newspapers that, after someone's death, the family and friends of the decedent have begun to gather together and sort his or her papers. I've never understood this almost ritual statement, as I am a person with no papers, so to speak. And I don't mean travel documents, as they are sometimes called your papers. I guess passports could be minimally useful for resurrecting exact travel dates, but I have long ago thrown out all my old, expired passports. Yes, I have copies of all the books I've written and published—the seven or eight books of fiction and the nine nonfiction books. But I did not write these on paper—or at least with my first books, which I typed out on an electronic IBM typewriter. I did not keep the paper draft copies once I sent them to the publisher. I have never kept handwritten letters, and God forbid, I have never made photocopies of the few letters that I myself have written and sent. My mother did that when she lived with us while I was still a child.

But my father did not keep letters, either ones he received or those extremely rare times when he actually wrote a letter. That means that I cannot go to my papers to recollect and restore my memory of past events in my life. I also have very few photographs of my past life, whether snaps taken by my parents of me when I was a child or photos taken of me by my friends or lovers. I can't resort to these sources to recreate my memories of past times. I will just have to try shaking up my memory, and by that, I hope to dislodge stories and conversations, relationships, and, of course, adventures from my past life so that I can put them in the correct context and time. And in those first hours, when I sat at my study desk and resolved to write my memoirs, I realized that my memory of past times operates capriciously. I don't remember most conversations and the actual words that were said, but I remember the feelings and impressions that I took from conversations. I remember vividly short glimpses of physical places I've been—framed in bright, clear light, mere snatches. But I don't have similar memories of things that occurred to me indoors, whether at home or in school. I remember my existence outdoors on the road, and as for domestic or routine actions indoors, I simply cannot call up vivid visual memories of time or place. Photographs would help there, but I'm afraid I simply haven't kept photographs from my past.

I wonder if Cervantes had the same problems when he was safely back in Spain and he began to write the memoirs of his adventures, whether he remembered things distinctly or if he relied on his imagination to fill in the gaps in his memory; and most importantly, if he told others during his later life about those adventures or whether he kept his memories to himself; or if he had kept a diary which to date remains undiscovered.

I have in my youth read much of the biographical materials written by Sir Richard Burton, an adventurer of the first rank, almost mythic travels. It occurred to me even while I was reading those adventures—none of which I have ever come close to emulating—that there was, in his time, and remains to our times, very little that could serve to corroborate and confirm the fundamental truth contained therein. But his writings about his adventures remained with me and are certainly a model for formulating my own memoirs, indeed in shaping my character, my career, and my ambitions.

And through these thoughts, I began to contemplate the questions: what and for whom is a memoir intended? And specifically, my memoirs, a man who has accomplished so little noteworthy in his life, what or whom are they for? My children? Perhaps. There's so much that I haven't spoken to them about myself. It is embarrassing. For the fans of my books, both now and in unknown future times when all memories of my life will have been erased from the records of mankind? I frankly do not know. As I thought about it, I suddenly came to the idea that this memoir is really for me. It is meant as an exercise to review my life and to adjudge whether or not I have lived a good life. It will be a collection of my memories of the events and encounters that shaped me or changed me throughout my life of adventures that will enable me to see clearly whether I achieved what I wished to do in my life, whether I was successful in my activities and projects, and whether I improved myself, or affected the lives of others around me. If I ever finish these memoirs, I will be better able to peruse them and judge for myself if I have accomplished all that I set out to do, whether I learned anything in my life, and whether I have anything to say to future generations about the right way to live. Alas, as I start this latest writing project, I suspect I will have to confront the reality that I have lived a life that has failed, one that is unnoteworthy and not worthy of emulation.

But even if I do come to that conclusion, the exercise of combing through and mining my memories from the past—and writing and publishing them for future generations—may be worthwhile just as a project to keep me occupied in my old age. Just as other retired people, who have left off their active public life, retire to activities of oil painting or building rock walls. Who knows? I may undertake some of those activities also, just as Churchill did after an intensely adventurous and accomplished life. My literary agent, when I told her yesterday about my thinking about this exercise, has highly encouraged me to do these memoirs. I especially wanted to fill in so many of the unknown and interesting details, motivations, and background information that most of my earlier books had left unsaid. Her words of encouragement are especially forceful as she is also my wife.

As I have been thinking about how to make these memoirs, I came to realize that I would better proceed not in a strictly chronological narration but through a series of themes. This corresponds with how I am resurrecting memories of my past actions. I have not been able to recreate my movements and activities throughout my past life. Instead, I have remembered events as they had some impact on me or as they resulted in some actions by me. I remember, for instance, some battles I participated in followed but not necessarily in chronological order by some occasion in my love life, and then maybe followed by some memory of my childhood. My memories are compartmentalized, or so it seems, just in the same way that the pursuit of my life was compartmentalized, namely my private sex life, my soldiering life, my public life, my personal and family life, my life as a writer. People knew me that way as well: Simon as a business manager, as a writer, as an officer, as a lover, as a husband, as an adventurer, as a son or a father.

Of course, within these themes, I will arrange my recalled memories in chronological order to make it easier for the reader to understand my development throughout my life. I also will select events and occasions that I think shaped my life and contributed to making me the man I became. An important motivation for these memoirs will be to better understand how I developed throughout my life and how certain events and experiences influenced me.

The themes I will focus on are childhood and youth, family, privilege and friends, death as a companion, love and women, a soldier's life for me, warring as business, in N'Midea's Thrall, politics, betrayals, and failures, the end of the adventure.

Chapter 2

Childhood and Youth

The scene from my childhood, which I still vividly remember as perhaps the most significant memory of my entire life, occurred when I had just turned eight years old. I was sitting at the family dining table over afternoon dinner on a dimly cloudy day at the family manor house in Berkshire, the Aldermaston Manor. My father sat at his usual place at the head of a long table, and next to him and opposite me was Mrs. Conners, who would soon become the new Lady of the house and my stepmother. It was a weekend, perhaps the traditional English Sunday dinner, which was one of the few family meals we had together although my sister, being only four years old then, was not there at the table. I was dressed, as was my father, in a dark jacket and tie, but we had not gone to church earlier that day because we just did not do that then.

We had just finished the soup course, and James, the butler who ran the big house throughout the years of my childhood until I went off to university, had cleared away the soup bowls and brought and laid out other dishes for the following courses. Mrs. Conners—I called her that for the rest of my life, even after she married father—was making little chat about how delicious the soup was, but it had left no impression on me as it was the same cream of spinach soup that we always ate on Sundays. Father, as was his practice, had sat quietly looking over the table—which had been shortened for the family weekend meals—and had his usual sour expression on his face as if he approved nothing. I remember the prelude to his announcement. He brought his dinner napkin up to his lips, wiped them, and quietly cleared his throat. To this day, more than fifty-one years later, I can clearly remember his words.

Without looking at me, he said, I have decided that next month, Simon will go off to the Ascot-Windsor School and begin his education properly. It is a residential school. He'll have to get a new wardrobe and the school uniform, and I suppose new and proper shoes. Of course, a duffel to carry his things there and back.

I was stunned and dumbfounded. My head hurt straight away from the rush of blood to my head, and I almost broke into tears. But I didn't cry. I remained silent and stark still as if transformed into an unfeeling statue. Nothing my father had ever said to me before or since that short announcement had ever hurt me so much. He was sending me away. Why, I wondered then—and continued to think ever afterward—was my father punishing me? What had I done wrong to deserve being sent away from home? Did father no longer love me? But I did not raise a question, nor ask then, or even much later, seeking to understand what the background was to being sent away to some distant school.

The main course, roast beef and boiled potatoes, was brought out. But I made no moves to eat anything, continuing to sit stone-still in my spot, my eyes fixed on the space between the edge of my plate and the edge of the table. When it became clear to my father that I wasn't eating or even moving, he scolded me, ordering me to eat my dinner. I asked if I could be excused. But he denied me permission to leave the table, and in a sterner voice, now looking at me, he again commanded me to eat. I refused. I tried again to ask to be excused. But again, I had to sit at the table. All I could think about was what I had done wrong to deserve that. Eventually, my father dismissed me and told me to go to my room in the nursery.

And thus, I was banished from home. The new clothes were ordered and delivered, along with two new pairs of black shoes with glossy laces, which I had not tried on. The end of September came, and one weekday morning, when my father was at his usual residence in the London house, the driver came around to the big house in the car that was to transport me to school and back over the next ten years, a two-tone Jaguar Mark IV, my father was not there to see me off. It was only my Nanny Jeanne, who had packed me up and bundled me into the car and said goodbye, with my sister Emily hanging on her arm, asking repeatedly where I was going. The driver, a man with a perpetually scruffy neck and chin, whose name I have long ago forgotten, delivered me into the welcoming arms of the house mothers at the school after what seemed like an infinitely long drive, even though the school was less than thirty miles from the house. The drive to the school was the first I learned about the truth about traveling out to some unknown destination the first time: the first time to go to a new destination seems much longer and farther away than all subsequent trips there and back. I never saw that driver again, although the car stayed at the house for the next twelve years. And the house, Aldermaston Manor, what my father called the Pile, that had been my dear, sole home for the previous eight years, seemed to have disappeared from my view as well until winter semester break at university more than ten years hence.

I was still in a state of shock when I arrived at the school, just as I had been in all of the six weeks prior to my departure from Aldermaston. I remained withdrawn and quiet for a long time. The house mothers even complained to father that I was not adjusting to the school like all the other little boys. I wanted to understand my situation, but I never did get a direct and detailed explanation of why I was sent away to school at the age of eight. I never learned why my father was so abrupt in making his decision—he hadn't sought my opinion, and he didn't try to convince me that going off to school was a great life-building adventure. The way he so cruelly announced his decision left scars on my personality for many years. It certainly was the cause for my failure to adjust to that school and the reason I was moved two years later to Eton, where I spent the remainder of my school years.

The very earliest memory I retain in my mind's eye is of me as a three-year-old. I can still see myself tottering around on a bright sunny day on the very green lawn facing the front of Aldermaston Manor across the gravel drive. In this memory, I was playing and laughing with my nanny and my mother. She was fully pregnant with my sister. I can still see it clearly, just as I have over the years. We both, along with nanny, were giggling and romping about on the lawn. The fragment, which has resided in my memory all these years, is like a snatched piece of a dream: brief, vivid, without a storyline or distinct conclusion. I was a happy little boy then—didn't understand what a great home represented, the privilege and the costs of such a home, didn't understand the worries that adults confronted all the time in maintaining such a home, didn't have any idea about the effort and cost of maintaining a green, neatly trimmed lawn. This memory was all about feeling: I was basking in the tender smiling love of my mother—her only son and the heir to the earl and the house—who only stayed with me another three years. Mother's name was Edith, and I was told much later that I could only say Edis when I was a toddler, which she thought funny. I have a similar memory of me bouncing around on that same lawn with mother and nanny, but in this memory, I was playing with a puppy who kept jumping up on me, knocking me over, and licking me in the face. I was told later that that occasion was maybe half a year later after the birth of my sister. Over the next four or so years, that puppy grew into our pet golden retriever, whom we named Laddie. I loved that dog so much and missed him terribly when I went away to school.

I lived at Aldermaston Manor in Berkshire for the first eight years of my life. From the outside, it was certainly a statement of grandeur, and it seemed to me to be gigantic, a veritable castle. Later, when I was older and saw other grand houses, manors, and castles around Britain, I realized that it was not so grand or aged and venerable. But a peer of the land needed to have a grand country estate, and it was the one my ancestor, the first Earl of Higford, had built when he was granted his earldom by Queen Victoria. It was red brick and full of odd decorations and fanciful embellishments and details—all meshed together—that I learned later were rather typical of Victorian architectural copies of Gothic, Tudor, Neoclassical, and Georgian architectural characteristics. But above all, in my visualizations, I remembered red brick, something which evoked in me not so much power and grandeur but stolidity, homeyness, and comfort.

I got the impression in those first years that the Manor also sat on near infinite grounds, but that was the illusion of a small child. The grounds around the house comprised a rather small park of eighteen hectares, which included a pond and a small stream, as well as a front lawn of an acre and a half and gardens in the rear of about the same size. But for a small lad to wander around, even a small portion of that land did seem to be walking over an entire bucolic county. And this impression was strengthened by the presence of the adjacent wooded reserve, Berks Forest, which stretched for several miles around on two sides of the house's grounds. Not that I was allowed to range by myself over much of the grounds. I remember once, when I was about seven, I think, that I was out on the front lawn when I saw in the distance a small rise and what appeared to me to be a small marble temple. Being headstrong and curious—and fearless even then—I started to walk toward it. I had not marched forty yards toward this castle on a hill when Nanny shouted for me to come back at once, and she came running after me. I got a good scolding for that first independent adventure.

It was only much later, when on term leave from university in the spring, that I began to take long exploratory walks around the grounds and explored its features: the stream, the pondside, and the long driveway. I even walked through the neighboring forest, which I was surprised wasn't nearly as big as my childhood memory had made it out to be. Nanny had long since gone away, and Father was not around—by then, he spent almost no time at all at the manor house, instead living full-time in his Knightsbridge townhouse. So there was no one there at that time to impede my peregrinations through the park and the surrounding countryside. I learned then that the estate used to have large farmlands, some extending to hundreds of acres, on all sides of the manor house. The extensive farm was sizable enough that it generated a couple thousand pounds a year before the First World War. But over the years, my ancestors, including my father, had sold off parcels, and by the time I was an adult and leaving home for the Army, none of the farmlands remained as part of the estate. Everything had been sold off and farmed by other people or companies, and some parcels had been developed for housing or industrial estates.

Others were left fallow and had fallen out of agriculture altogether. During one of these strolls, I finally reached the so-called temple. It was a disappointment. It was not a marble temple at all. It was simply a small concrete kiosk or very narrow gazebo, painted white, made to look like something antique, with a cracked stone floor and a small dome on top, which was painted in eggshell blue in the interior. It was in a bad state of repair when I finally reached it and inspected it. And there was no one around whom I could ask about what it meant, what its origins were, or how or if ever it was used. Once there, I realized that it was less than five hundred yards from the front of the manor house. As a young man standing there, how I marveled at the illusion. My childhood memory of when I first tried to run off to see this gazebo but had been stopped by nanny made it seem as if it was more than a mile distant from the house. In fact, my impression then as I was walking around the manor was that everything had shrunk since I had first discovered the grounds as a little boy. Also, it had all become less wondrous, somewhat run-down, distinctly unkempt, and overgrown in places. It was my first encounter with a phenomenon that I ran into many times in collecting my memories through life, namely, how my memories changed, eroded, and degraded over time.

I have to conclude that the exterior of the manor house and the grounds around it did not really influence or shape my life, and my memories and visual recall of them are few to this day—no sweet nostalgia for Aldermaston Hall. But I was very much impressed and shaped by the interior of the house, and especially of the nursery and the children's quarters in the house. It was a large room with two outside windows, both spacious dormer windows. The walls were painted white with many brightly coloured creatures and fairy tale characters floating around, making the room cheerful and bright even on cloudy days. This central room had rugs on the floor, children's tables, a chest for toys, two chests of drawers, one that doubled as a changing table for baby sister, and miniature chairs. On either side of the room, there were two small closet-sized rooms where the beds, and originally the crib, of me and my sister were tucked in. This nursery compound was where my sister and I spent most of our time, under nanny's supervision, taking our meals, playing, taking naps, and getting first lessons. I only began to take meals in the family dining room with my parents on weekends in my sixth year. And my sister, Irene, never did join us at the table before I left for boarding school. She was too young.

Into this nursery compound, occasionally, Mother would come to play with both of us. There were even when I remember seeing photographs—black and white—that had been taken of her during one of her visits; in one, she was sitting on one of our miniature chairs and looking at my colouring book approvingly. In another, she was standing holding baby Irene, wrapped in swaddling. Those snaps disappeared long ago, and I have never been able to find them.

Those were happy days. I remembered them fondly for many years. And those halcyon memories only dimmed after mother fell ill and then died. Mrs. Connor, later Lady Higford, never visited the nursery while Irene was growing up; she had no intention of replacing Mother. After I first went off to boarding school, I was no longer admitted to the nursery. I was given a small bedroom on the third floor when I returned on term leaves—it had an adult-sized single bed, and there was an attached private bath and toilet. I had been banished from home, and as I was told, I had outgrown the nursery and the supervisory services of nanny. The nursery was used only until Irene's tenth birthday—six years after I had left the manor house—when it was locked up and left untended. That was the time when nanny had been given notice and let go, and she disappeared forever from the life of Aldermaston Manor and, of course, from the life of Irene and me. I can't remember nanny's name, and neither could Irene when I asked her for it as part of my research for these memoirs. Our memories match her looks and that she had a strange, distinct Western country accent. It is sad that she had a role and influence that was far in excess of anyone else in that house, more than even mother or father, and yet neither of us children can remember her name years later in our adulthood. I can still see in my mind's eye a vision of her face, warm and smiling, pretty and matronly.

While I was young, before I left for school, I remember that we never had other children from outside the house come to visit. For the first eight years of my life, I had no playmates, and after that, neither did Irene. We were socially isolated in the manor. There were no nearby neighbors, certainly none with children our age. I remember when I was about six and Irene was still a toddler, we had a visit from Uncle David and his wife and children, who were both about our age. One cousin was a girl named Susan, who was my age, and the other cousin was a little boy about two years younger. It was the only time they visited us, but I remember how jolly the three days of playing with my two cousins were. For a long time after that, I kept asking Mother and Father if they couldn't come back and visit us again. But they lived far away, in Scotland, at that time, and I didn't see them again until Uncle David's funeral, which occurred while I was in my first term at Oxford. At the funeral, I was shocked by how snooty and conceited both my cousins had acted toward Irene and me by then, and we did not continue as friends after that. To this day, I cannot understand how it was that they became so condescending and icy to us, all the more so as we had the family titles at Aldermaston. After the funeral of my uncle, who never acted conceited to me as I can remember, I have only seen my cousins once or twice each since then, and each time at their bidding. They were seeking to get something from me, but they were still not friendly, not like family.

When I was six, I was invited to join Mother and Father for dinners and teas on weekends in the informal dining room. Weekends were the days when Father would come home from London. We ate rather glumly in this dining room, which had no windows and dark wooden paneling. It was a low-ceilinged room under the grand staircase adjacent to the kitchen, which had soft lighting and deep shadows. At dinner, the butler, Kenneth was his name, would silently serve us our food by each course, always consisting of soup, salad, a meat course, and dessert. Father was dressed formally, and I always wore a suit and waistcoat with a tie, which nanny put out for me and helped me put on. For evening tea, Mother would bring food on platters out from the kitchen, place it on the table, and informally portion it out family style. But after Mother's death, this tradition of tea ceased, and Kenneth would also serve Father and me. Family style did not resume then, even when Mrs. Connors came to live in the house, nor did it resume when she married Father and became Lady Higford.

Up until the day I was sent away to school, I did not see much of the interior of the house at all. It was only as a teenager on home term leave that I began to be shown the upstairs living quarters. And maybe I was already eighteen when my father led me into the grand sitting room where the family artworks were displayed on the walls. I remember then that there was a large stone fireplace at one end of the room above, which was a stone-carved coat of arms. Father pointed out to me the family motto, Fidelis, Firmus, Fortitudo. I had no idea what that meant, and when I asked my father what the motto meant, he muttered something along the lines of It is Latin. I was told it means something like ‘Loyalty, steadfastness, and valor.' Values that are difficult to maintain in all cases. He said further he had no idea who had chosen it or when this coat of arms was entered into the College of Arms. He made little of it. I remember asking what a coat of arms was for, and again, he was dismissive. It's all to do with heraldry, an obsolete tradition reserved for the nobility, who originally were all knights or lords. Our family were latecomers to this tradition. And that was about all he ever said to me about our family rank of privilege and his social standing, except when he told me about how his being an inheritable peer, and an earl at that, which meant that I was a viscount and would inherit his title when he died. It also meant when the time came, I could serve in the House of Lords, just as he did. At that time, he was not permitted to inquire further about his duties in the House of Lords or whether he had met the Queen or anything along that line.

Little did I know or suspect that when I first left for boarding school, I would rarely live again at the manor house. I only saw, for the first time, all the rooms of the manor in a walk-through that was arranged by the National Trust when Father had donated the manor to the Trust, leaving a small number of rooms for our family's residential use. I was surprised at that time about how little I had seen of the house up to that time. I understood then why I had no fond memories for the manor—other than the nursery and the family dining room—nor any nostalgia for the place.

It was on the trip to the first school that I, for the first time, really saw that houses throughout Berkshire and Buckinghamshire were a lot smaller than Aldermaston Manor. In fact, I saw lots of small buildings and some very small buildings, and at the time, I did not know that some were houses and others were commercial buildings or shops with residences on the second floor. I had no idea up to that moment that houses could be so small or that our manor was truly a grand, very large house.

I was enrolled in the Farnham Royal Grammar School. It was located only thirty miles from my home, but the drive there seemed to go on forever, and I thought it was really very far away, almost in another land. And it was in another county, near to London. But to little boys' first-time journeys to distant places always seem endless. When I arrived, I was uncertain that we had reached our destination because the grounds and buildings looked so small and unassuming. We drove up a short, asphalted lane and stopped by a long, two-story white plastered building that looked like a hospital with many windows. It was the main hall of the school, and it was flanked by two smaller brick buildings, and there was a third I could see tucked in behind the main building. I still see this memory of when I first drove up there vividly in my mind's eye.

But my three years at Farnham Royal Grammar School were not happy ones. I didn't make friends with the other boys, and indeed, throughout my second year, there seemed to be a cabal of boys who harassed me throughout that year and the next, teasing and making fun of me. I never really understood why they picked on me, and I had no one I could appeal to make the teasing stop. It was just the boys in that school did not like me. I was not as competitive or aggressive as they were and was, as I can remember, usually quiet. I seem to remember that one of the issues that enflamed my tormentors was that the teacher pointed out to the other boys how neatly dressed I was in comparison to them, how my shoe strings were always tied, that my tie was pulled tight and the knot was straight, and I kept my collar button buttoned. After that, the boys would unslip the knot on my shoelaces while we sat at our desks, tug on my tie when the teacher wasn't looking, or throw a spoonful of food at my jacket, either on my back or my chest at meals. My protests did not stop that.

My nanny had already taught me the fundamentals of writing and reading, so I found the first two years' lessons to be very boring and the readings just plain insultingly silly. I needed at that time to be challenged, and that school did not do that. I think if our lessons had focused on science or geography, I might have been more engaged. At that time, I did not have the independence to find my own readings or books that interested me. The school did not have those resources nor a library for young readers with broad interests. I also did well in math, but once again, I was more than a year and a half ahead of the others. In math anyway, the teacher, a Mr. Plum I seem to remember, noticed, and he gave me alternative exercises that better reflected my level and kept me interested.

I had the sensation while I was at Farnham Royal Grammar that I was undersized and perhaps weak when compared to the other boys my age. But I must've grown in those years because when I arrived at my next school, Eton Grammar Preparatory School, I was a little above average in size and height compared to the other boys. I did not regret leaving Farnham; I understood some years later that it closed because of weak finances and dropping enrollment.

In the term breaks during my school years at Farnham, I would go back to live at the manor, where my father resided most of the time with his new wife, Lady Higford, my stepmother, or Mrs. Conners, as I will forever remember her. I was, during these visits, no longer admitted to the nursery. Instead, I had my own room, which I populated with books that were given to me periodically as gifts and sometimes scientific instruments, such as magnifying glasses, telescopes, a globe, and the like. Most of those home leaves were not happy times for me. I was mostly alone. Father was still working in the City, and he would live in London on weekdays. Lady Higford remained at Aldermaston but did not join me and my sister at the informal or family dining room under the staircase for our meals. We still take our weekend dinners together in the main, formal dining room.

Those term breaks were usually four weeks long, at Christmastide, Eastertide, and summer. We did not take any family vacations during those breaks in the years I was at Farnham. It was explained to me because father was busy in the City working at an important merchant bank and, later, when she started school because my sister's school did not have the same break schedule. I was able to wander around on my own on the grounds and in the park. I first went out and discovered the gazebo I had seen as a very young child. I did a lot of exploration around the manor house as I grew up and was on leave from school. I recall that during those term breaks spent at the manor, I rarely saw my father and almost never spoke with him, even on the weekends when he came back from London. I think that my stepmother, Lady Higford, never spoke to me except to correct my behaviour at the dining table. During my third year at Farnham Royal Grammar School, my sister, Irene, was sent to a day school, so I did not see much of her at the manor during term breaks.

I was eleven years old when I was sent to Eton, or more accurately, to the Eton preparatory school for the two years before matriculation at the Eton College proper. It was also a boarding school conducted in a hall adjacent to the other houses of Eton. I imagine that it was a way to segregate the little boys from the teenagers who comprised the main student body at the College. I shared a bedroom with another boy named Clarence Smithson. We were cordial with each other but never were friends. He left the school before the end of the second year because he was not doing well in his lessons, and as I understood it, his father was a diplomat being posted abroad. The term breaks I remember were on different dates from those of my time at Farnham. I remember it caused my family some inconvenience at first because schedules changed to accommodate my returns during the break.

The next term, I began my studies at Eton College proper. Most of the class who were with me in the preparatory school moved up with me so that we formed a cadre inside Eton eighth form. They were not friends, but they were boys familiar to me who, so to speak, knew the ropes of the school and could defend themselves from the older boys in the higher forms. That helped us escape most of the rigors of fagging, which was still practiced in those years in the '50s. Of course, not all of us were placed in the same house. I was assigned to the manor house, and at the time, I thought that was appropriate as that was what I called my house at Aldermaston. I did not know at the time, in my first year, but my father had also gone to Eton College, and I suppose that that helped in my being admitted. Lots of the boys were scions of previous Etonians, and those family connections at that time were more important than entrance exams or academic merit. I think I would not have been admitted; otherwise, because when I started at the College, it became instantly clear that I was not the cleverest bird on the branch. I felt quite self-conscious about my dullness—something one of my instructors said of me in my second year. But I was from the posh set, and in those days, that is what counted most of all. The advantages I had had at Farnham had all long since disappeared, and at Eton, I was a laggard. The House Master tried his hardest to inspire me to study harder, but most subjects in my early years there just did not catch my interest. And I was not inspired by the oft-repeated mantra that Eton boys formed the backbone of the parliament and that more prime ministers came from there than from any other school.

So what did Eton give me?

The most important thing I learned at Eton was the hierarchical ranking of the British class system. And my place in it. It was not enough to simply be told by the headmaster that we were inheritors of the country's elites and top government officials. We were especially privileged. You had to know where you stood. I knew well before I got to the College that I was a very privileged young lad, but I didn't really feel all that separate. I think that the main reason for that was that up until my thirteenth year, I had not encountered any boys from, let's say, the less fortunate classes. Almost none at all. I did not feel myself to be posh because, in fact, that is a pose and not a characteristic of a person with rank, title, and wealth. I learned that simply by the accident of birth, I was among the elites of the land. My father, after all, was an earl, a peer of the land, who served in the House of Lords, who had been a general during the Second World War, and was an adviser to the chiefs of staff in London. I had been raised at his stately family estate, Aldermaston Manor, in Berkshire. He also had an expensive automobile with a driver who wore a family livery—that ironically made the biggest impression on the other boys. Of course, there were others at the preparatory school who came from families that were much richer than my own but did not hold the same titles and honors. I began my education about hierarchy through the unfortunate slip of some instructor at the preparatory. One day, as he was reading out loud the roll of students, he blurted out, Oh, and then there is, Viscount Simon Davall of Kennet.

He wasn't supposed to say that in front of the other boys. It was not a title, after all. Such an address was reserved for general society and was only a courtesy title. The boys, of course, roared jollily and afterward gave me the hardest time about that. I was the Viscount—with the "s pronounced normally and not silent. I soon was teased as Vissy, and worse, sometimes later, Vissy the Sissy." It became clear to me that many of the other boys were not merely being playful with my name. They were resentful and jealous of my rank and standing. They could often be mean and were filled with envy toward me. It made it very hard for me to make friends there. On some days, I would go to my room at the end of the evening in tears. It is hard when still young to understand the viciousness of envy and how it might differ from just plain mean-spiritedness. These boys—the envious—also carried this mocking moniker over to the college and told the students there just who I was. But I remembered several of the worst offenders from that time and at the college well into my adulthood. I even had the satisfaction of snubbing a couple of them who came to me twenty or twenty-five years later seeking something or other from me. And being Vissy at Eton was not so bad. It would have been worse if I was one of those boys called Poof the Posh. Outside of Eton, of course, I came to learn that there were lots of young men who looked at all Etonians as poofs and posh, hot-air balloons, or fags. It helped all of us that there were reforms at Eton, and by the mid-1950s, we no longer had to wear jackets with tails or high shiny top hats although many of the houses continued to wear jackets with tails.

I was spared lots of mockery and teasing because, in the years since I had left Farnham, I had grown too well above average height and strength. Most of this occurred while I was at the preparatory school. I had grown and had great coordination as well. And this showed up immediately on the playing fields of Eton. I was spared a lot of the harassment of fagging, which was prevalent then at the school, by actively resisting, and once even by striking out forcefully at a senior fag master who wanted to enforce the fagging traditions when my fag master was too weak to enforce it on me. It helped me by being stronger and bigger than a lot of the older boys, and the first fag master who was assigned to me had a very weak personality. In the first term, he asked me to run a few errands for him, and after that, he just let the situation slide. As a result, for me, fagging was never onerous at Eton, although I understood that for some boys, it really was and remained so until recent years. I did not experience any sexual advances or harassment perpetrated under the guise of fagging, but I knew it happened during my time there. There was an incident at another house where two prefects tried to rape one of the younger boys. He was so traumatized that he committed suicide away from school. It was all the talk of the school for a year. The guilty prefects were harried out of the school.

I liked sports from the very beginning at Eton. I particularly enjoyed playing rugby union, especially the running game. I played rugby in all five years of my time there. Perhaps it is too much of an understatement to say I enjoyed rugby; it is probably more accurate to say I was happiest and felt most alive when I was playing. Not only were the feelings of full lung dashes down the field, chill air, and hard tackles exhilarating, but I also felt connected with my teammates. I was