FOR the final part of this short series, whose predecessors can be read here and here, I am revisiting books three and four in the Molesworth oeuvre, Whizz for Atomms (1956) and Back in the Jug Agane, which appeared in 1959.
I think it’s fair to say that author Geoffrey Willans doesn’t quite hit the heights of Down With Skool and How to be Topp, but there is still much to enjoy and Ronald Searle’s illustrations are of course a delight.
Whizz for Atomms kicks off under the heading Prefface with the following: ‘Conoisuers of prose and luvers of literature hem-hem may recall that some of this hav apeared in that super smashing mag Young Elizabethan. [ADVERT]. In compiling the present volume it has been my intention insofar as it be within my poor ability – posh stuff this posh stuff go it molesworth – infarso as it be i.e. wot i want to sa is that i hav joly well tried to give others the fruits of my xperience at skool and also of the various chizzes which take place in the world outside the skool walls.’
One of my favourite passages concerns holidays. Nigel tells us: ‘Aktually most boys do not get the chance of a hapy hol in the s of France. They go on the broads where a steady percentage fall in and are never heard of agane: they go in caravans or camps, they are sent to aged aunts who hav houses au bord de la mer. Anything to save money.
‘molesworth 2 and me ushually get a lite sentence at a boarding house at Babbling-by-sea e.g.
MON REPOS
Furnished accommodation
teas. new laid eggs.
letuces from own garden
piano taught. Manicure.
Prop. Mrs furbelow (aply within)
‘Mon repos is a pritty tuough place and make even st custard’s seem like the ritz. It always rain when we arive and all in a bad temper. Inside front door is a mat which sa ‘Welcom’ and a huge hairy lady spring out at us and below ‘Wipe your shoes’. In fact this is all you are alowed to do in mon repos the rest e.g. sliding down banisters, having baths, bunging cushions etc is stricktly forbidden. There is no future in wiping your shoes forever so it is beter to brave the elements outside.
‘You kno how they describe hols in the childrens books e.g. as soon as mummy and daddy had unpacked the eager little chaps ran off with their bukets and spades to the seashore. If you do this at babblington-on-sea you get blown sixty miles inland the wind is so ferce. You hav to hang on all the way if you want to get down to the beach.
‘And then what do you see? Babies. Nothing but babies. Some sit in pudles, some stager drunkenly across the sand, beat pat a cake with a spade but most just sit there with their mouths open looking loopy. And when you pass it is always the same thing the mum sa: “Baby sa helo to the nice little boy.” Me nice? Hem-hem.
‘Ho for beach criket! As the tide recede leaving vast expanses of seaweed, old bottles, planks and oil wot can be nicer than a joly game of criket? All the fathers encourage their little ones and the little ones gaze at their fathers with their white hairy legs and become depresed about the future. If we are all to grow up like that wot is the use of going on, eh? Paters are oblivious of this and encourage all. “Come cyril you are in . . . don’t blub . . . timothy is not blubing . . . hit a six old chap . . . well tried . . . next man in” ect ect ect ect . . . until all the children are blubing and all the paters are plaing it is the same old story. Wot is left for the new boyhood? They dash into the sea with glad cries and drown themselves. So boo to boarding houses, cliffs, bukets, spades, water wings, windmills, model boats seaweed and striped beachwear – roll on thou grate and restless ocean roll over the LOT.’
The final page of Whizz for Atomms features an advertisement:
HEADMASTER FOR SALE
Small, part used in fare condition considering. Mustache recently trimmed and shoes soled with ruber excelent for cobbing boys, miscreants ect. No maintenance. Can live on seaweed and thinks boys can, too. Handy, adjustable, can be used for any purpose. Cantilever movement.
together with
SET OF KANES (part-worn and frayed)
price one d. or offer
or
would exchange for jumping flea
Back in the Jug Agane begins with a new term at St Custard’s. ‘On arrival all boys stand about with hands in pokets looking utterly fed up and dejected. Finally someone speke. “Did you have a good hols, molesworth?” “Not bad.” (Silence.) “Did you have a good hols peason?” “Not bad.” The dialogue is positively scintilating, my dear. Surely they canot keep it up. There is no chance of that for the wit of these skolars is interupted by a dread sound e.g. CLANG-PIP. CLANG-PIP. CLANG-PIP. It is the skool bell which sumon us to asemble in big skool into which enter anon GRIMES, the headmaster surrounded by a posse of thugs and strong-arm men in black gowns. The beaks, of course, alias “my devoted staff”. You can imagine it a few minits before. Scene GRIMES study. A candle is burning in a botle. A botle of GIN stand on the table. A beak is fixing an iron spike on a kane, another is fixing a knuckleduster, a third practise with a broken botle. GRIMES: “Are they all in, Slugsy?” G.A. POSTLETHWAITE, m.a. (leeds): “Yep, they’re all in, boss.” GRIMES: “o.k. then we’re ready to pull the job. You kno the plan, Slugsy, you cover me from the door. Lefty, cover my right flank. Butch, on the other side. Killer, bring up the rear. If there’s any trouble, let them hav it. That clear Butch?” P.St.J NETLETON, b.a. (exeter): “Wot about our cut? You still owe us for last terms jobs.” GRIMES: “How can you be so sordid?” ect, ect, ect.’
In a 2005 piece for the Independent headed: ‘The greatest schoolboy ever to skulk the earth’, Nicholas Lezard wrote: ‘The prose was almost chaotically misspelled. But not quite chaotically. A great deal of care was taken by Geoffrey Willans – himself a retired schoolmaster – to maximise the visual impact of the mistakes on the page. It is not, as so many people who try to imitate molesworth imagine it is, a matter of spelling everything wrong. Often quite complex or arcane words survive unscathed. Words like “strawberries”, though, or “toffee” come out as “strubres” and “tooffe”. “Football”, almost miraculously, becomes “foopball” – and it is only by a grate act of heroism that I am able, when talking about the likes of Brett Lee or Steven Harmison, not to refer to them as “fast blowers”.’
A critic named Bruce Ware Allen wrote: ‘Willans, unlike, say, Waugh, was absent of malice. Some of the jokes are topical, but for the most part they are of a piece, that piece being a wholly invented world instantly recognisable, more Wodehouse than Waugh. Who is Fotherington-Tomas if not the offspring of Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett?’
Geoffrey Willans did not live to see the publication of Back in the Jug Agane, dying of a heart attack at the age of only 47. In the 1980s Simon Brett wrote two sequels, Molesworth Rites Again and How To Stay Topp, featuring a grown-up Nigel musing on work and family life, still with misspellings, but they pale by comparison with the originals.
More recently, on the internet, a hilarious spoof diary of the junkie rock musician Pete Doherty appeared written in the Molesworth style, for example: ‘Today i hav shot up some herion but hav run out chiz chiz*.’ This abruptly vanished and I have been unable to find any reference to it since. Alas, the heavy hand of censorship.
In an obituary for the Times, Ronald Searle wrote that Willans’s work was more refined than other school stories, Billy Bunter for example. ‘He was delighted that schoolmasters, far from feeling publicly disrobed, were in fact giving away his books as end-of-school prizes.’
*a chiz is a swiz or swindle as any fule kno.
Old jokes’ home
When I was in the army the Sergeant said to me: ‘What does surrender mean?’ I said: ‘I give up!’
A PS from PG
The infant was looking more than ever like some mass-assassin who has been blackballed by the Devil’s Island Social and Outing Club as unfit to associate with the members.
PG Wodehouse: Eggs, Beans and Crumpets