We listened breathlessly to the scurryings and squeakings of small anonymous nocturnal things. Mice chirrupped; something - was it a blue-bellied adder? - rustled at our feet, something else went by in the air with a whisper of wings like a short gasp.

Gradually the darkness crept in upon us; we could almost see it advancing yard by yard, narrowing the circle. Mr Chorlton said something about ‘the circumambient night’. He never talked down to us, never mitigated a phrase or a quotation to make it more comprehensible, but paid us the extraordinary compliment of supposing we should either understand or ask for an explanation. He always treated boys as if they were his equals; and this was not, I believe, a technique of his teaching but simply part of his all-embracing courtesy. Therefore we never thought of Latin and Greek as ‘lessons’ but as fun, like fishing and rabbiting and sugaring and learning the names of moths, which as it happened were composed of Latin and Greek words too. ‘Lessons’ were geography, taught by a parrot who repeated to us biweekly something he had learned by heart long ago about Isobars and Isotherms; or English, taught by a pedant who compelled us to ‘parse’ the quality of mercy is not strained; or History, taught by a fool who made us repeat Dates. But when Mr Chorlton discussed Virgil or Plato it was as much an adventure as being out in the woods at night; and we did not associate it with our desks and inkpots since he did it impartially both in and out of school. I still remember after thirty years the fragment from the Aeneid which he quoted to us that evening when our minds were set on moths and our young bodies were a-quiver with the novelty and the delight and the terror of the inward creeping dark. ’ Nox atra cava circumvolat umbra,’ he said.’ Light the lanthorn! We’ll see what visitors have come to our feast!’

Brensham on that occasion provided no rarities; but all was rare to us, as we followed behind the white beam and peered over Mr Chorlton’s shoulder at the centipedes, woodlice, beetles, and huge horrific slugs which, as well as moths, were drawn to the strong-smelling sweetness. I think I remember an Elephant Hawk, its pink-and-olive wings beautifully incandescent in the rays of the lantern; and I am sure there were numbers of Red Underwings, great moths with forewings of delicately-shaded grey which they drape over hind wings of flaming scarlet; so that when the wings are raised for flight it is as if a dowdy old woman lifts her skirts to show the red flannel petticoat beneath.

However, we certainly didn’t think of that simile at the time; for Mr Chorlton as always used the Latin name which was Linnaeus’ lovely one, nupta: so for us it was a wedding-dress which the grey moth wore. When he spoke of creatures and flowers by their proper scientific names Mr Chorlton made us feel like men, or indeed like professors; so we did not trouble our heads with the English names but talked like naturalists from the very beginning. Thus we were enabled, at the age of ten or twelve, to disconcert a learned and pompous entomologist who came to give a lecture at our school. ‘We call this,’ he said, exhibiting a Cabbage White Butterfly - ‘we call this Pieris brassicae.’ ‘So do we!’ chanted four impertinent little boys in unison.

The Hermit

It was midnight when we finished the last round of the sugared trees. Brensham Hill at midnight! - with the harvest moon coming up through the black feathery branches of the larches, and Brensham Folly upon the summit looking like the Dark Tower in the poem! That was where the Hermit lived; we should have been frightened, perhaps, if Mr Chorlton had not been with us for the Hermit was a savage-looking man, with a dirty grey beard, who bedded himself down like an animal upon a heap of straw in the dark cobwebby chamber beneath the Folly. And it was true that he caught rabbits with his hands; he crept up to them where they couched in the tufts of long grass and pounced on them with a horrible pounce. (Thus murderers, thus assassins, thus the following footsteps which suddenly begin to run!) It was true too that he ate them raw, although we were somewhat disappointed to discover that he skinned them first. An eccentric old creature, as unhygienic as Black Sal and even crazier, for he had made his own slum at the top of Brensham.

How did he come to live in the Folly? It was said that he had simply squatted there, constituting himself its unpaid caretaker, and that the lord who was himself mad hadn’t the heart to turn him out. Local authorities were more tolerant in those days than they are now, and Medical Officers of Health rarely climbed up Brensham Hill; nor would the workhouse have welcomed such a disquieting inmate, for who knows what he would stalk and pounce upon if rabbits were denied him? Certainly he was harmless enough, he troubled nobody in his eyrie on Brensham; and in summer, on Sundays and Bank Holidays when visitors were to be expected, he even dressed himself up in an ancient clerkish black suit, and a straw boater with a black-and-yellow ribbon, and conducted tourists up the steps to the top of the Folly, charging them a fee of threepence for the privilege.

The tower had been erected by an ancestor of the Mad Lord. It was large enough to contain a narrow winding staircase of stone leading up to the roof. A long inscription in bad Latin, carved spirally upon the interior wall, followed the course of this staircase so that the climber read it word by word as he mounted step by step:

UT TERRAM BEATAM
VIDEAS, VIATOR,
HOEG TURRIS DE LONGE SPECTABILIS
SUMPTU BUS
RICARDI ORRIS
DOMINI MANORII
AD MDCGLXV
EXTRUCTA FUIT OBLEGTAMENTO
NON SUI SOLUM
SED VICINORUM
ET OMNIUM

We used to chant this as if it were a psalm as we climbed the stairs behind the Hermit, who for his part would always count the number of steps aloud, as if he wanted to make sure that there were always fifty-two. When we reached the top, puffing triumphantly et omnium, we entered a small dark chamber with slits for windows in which perhaps the altruistic Richard Orris had been accustomed to delight his neighbours with views of the blessed earth even on wet days. But now only bats inhabited the little room and slept, caring nothing for panoramas. When the trap-door in the roof was opened, letting in the light, they stirred uneasily with a slight dry crackle, like a crumpling of parchment.

The Hermit, observing with satisfaction: ‘Fifty-two: that’s as many stairs as there are weeks in the year,’ would now insinuate his head and shoulders into the oblong hole where the trap-door had been and with grunts and groans would heave himself through it. Dick, Donald, Ted and I followed like a pack of pirates emerging from a ship’s hold. Now we were on the roof. Upon the parapet another Latin inscription confronted us. From this elevated place, it said, when the sky is untroubled by cloud nor mists lurk in the low places thou canst see, O Traveller, twelve rich counties, four great cathedrals, and sixteen abbeys. There was a camera obscura which didn’t work and a telescope with a broken lens. This telescope had the remarkable property of imparting to all objects seen through it the colour of bright yellow.