William Golding on Learning Latin as a Schoolboy

from an Essay by William Golding entitled: The Ladder and the Tree

…One day I should be part of that organization marching irresistibly to a place which I was assured was worth finding. The way to it lay through a net of Latin’s golden, bumbling words. But Latin marched away from me. I had a divinatory skill in translation but the grammar seemed related to nothing in any universe and I left it alone.

My father was appalled and, I think, frightened. ‘You’ve got brains—I know you’ve got brains!’ But not for Latin grammar.

‘It doesn’t need intelligence, you know—just sticking at it! And you can stick at things—look at the books you read! You can stick at it!’ Not Latin grammar.

‘But you’ve got brains!’ No.

‘Now look. I’ll explain it again!’ No use. No go.

I knew I could not learn Latin grammar for a perfectly clear reason, a logical reason. The logic of childhood is just as good as adult logic – better sometimes, because unconditioned. Logic is only a few different shaped bricks, after all, out of which we build skyscrapers. But in childhood the axioms are different. I had an adventure book and the word ‘Latin’ occurred on page 67. At some time a blot of ink had fallen on that page and blotted out the word ‘Latin!’. I knew that in my universe, though not in my father’s, this was enough. I should never be able to learn Latin.

‘Haven’t you got any brains, then?’ No use. Not for Latin grammar No go.

He never knew. No one else knew.

There came a time when I got no marks at all in a Latin test and minus one for bad writing. Then we had a show down.

Let me make on point perfectly clear. My father was generous, loving, saintly in his attitude to his family. He would give up anything for us gladly. He was understanding, too. His human stature grows, the more I think of him. If we could not meet at this point it was no failing of his. It seems more like a defect in the nature of human communication.

What I remember most of that terrible evening is the reasonableness of my father’s arguments. If I really did not want to go to Oxford, that was all right. If I would prefer to go into the Merchant Navy, that was all right. If I wanted to leave school at fourteen that was all right too. Now please don’t cry, I don’t like it when you cry! If you want to forget the whole thing, that’s all right. Everything was all right, in fact. Then why do I remember such anguish such tears, such sobs racking up from the soles of my feet, mouth agape, sweat, streaming nose, mouth, and eyes, misery. hopeless misery> When I could cry no more, I lay, y face a few inches from the white skirting of the hall, and jerked and sniffed and shuddered. I was, I saw, in a place. Just as I has recognized that Poe and I knew a place which we shared so now I knew this place, this atmosphere. It was real, grey, had the quality of promising a dreary familiarity. It was the first step on the road. I saw that I should really do this thing, really learn Latin and grow up.

I moved, sniffing, to the dining-room and sat down with Richie’s First Steps in Latin, and Richie’s Second Steps. I needed to begin at the beginning. My father and mother sat on either side of the fire and hardly breathed. I thumbed the books through. Rules, declensions, paradigms and vocabularies stretched before me. They were like a ladder which I knew now I should climb, rung after factual rung, and Sir James Jeans and Professor Einstein were waiting at the top to sign me on I was glad about science in a remote sort of way. If you were going to be anything, then a scientist was what you ought to be. But the ladder was so long. In this dreary mood of personal knowledge and prophecy I knew that I should climb it; knew too that the darkness was all around. inexplicable, unexorcized, haunted, a gulf across which the ladder lay without reaching to the light.

My parents must have been emotionally exhausted. They stayed quiet and I worked for two and a half hours. I found, as in the last hour or two I had expected, that I could learn the stuff and that it was ridiculously easy. I moved on, surely and quietly, from rung to rung over the dark. My mother came at last and stood by my side and put her arm round me. ;It’s not so bad when you get started, is it? No. Not so bad.

All at once, the air became light and jolly. We cracked jokes. We laughed. Amemus. My father put way his book on Vertebrate Zoology. ‘Go on like this;, he cried delightedly, ‘and we shall find we have to stop you doing too much Latin!’

‘The next thing’, said my mother, ‘and he’ll be taking his Latin up the tree!’