The yearlong furlough in Dryman sped by, and at the end of it, Eric’s mother had something important to tell her sons. The two boys would not be returning to China with the rest of the family. It was time for them to start their formal education in a proper English school. In 1908, it was normal for the children of missionaries to attend boarding schools in England while their parents served overseas in foreign countries.
Six-year-old Eric clung to his brother as the two boys followed their mother up the steps and into the dreary stone administration building of London’s School for the Sons of Missionaries. (In 1912, while Eric and Robert were still enrolled there, the school changed its name to Eltham College.) The school had been started in 1842 by the London Missionary Society, and all of the one hundred fifty boys who attended it were sons of missionaries, just as the sign on the gate said. All going well, Robert and Eric would attend the school until they graduated and were ready for university.
An hour after arriving, the boys had been outfitted with gray flannel shorts, jacket, tie, and cap, just like all the other students. Then they were shown to their beds at the end of a long row of narrow cots that ran the length of the upstairs dorm room. Beside each cot was a washstand that held a basin and water jug. The brothers were told to hang their things on the hook beside their cots and join the rest of the class for a cricket lesson on the back field. Mary Liddell slipped quietly away from the school while her boys were being introduced to the meaning of a wicket, a maiden over, and other details of cricket. It would be seven years before Eric and Robert would see their mother again, and thirteen years before they saw their father.
After his carefree life in China and the wilds of the Scottish highlands, Eric found it difficult to adjust to living in the gray stone building in London. He missed his parents, his younger sister Jenny, and the goats and the kittens he’d had in China. Since he was small for his age and very shy, Eric let Robert do the talking for them both. He would freeze with terror if someone asked him a question when Robert wasn’t around.
At school, every part of Eric and Robert’s life, along with the lives of the other students, was organized by someone else. The students sat in long rows when eating their meals, with a schoolmaster looking on to make sure they used proper manners. The Liddell brothers missed Chinese food a lot. They were not used to eating the bread and dripping and bowl of gray oatmeal they were served each morning for breakfast. Eric longed for a bowl of soya beans or millet.
All of the boys in school marched into class in rows and sat without talking as their teacher read the day’s lessons. After school they all went to the study hall, where they did their homework, once again sitting in rows. Each Thursday evening they wrote letters to their parents under the supervision of one of the schoolmasters. All this work was hard for a young boy not used to attending school.
As with most schools in the early 1900s, the hours of hard study went hand in hand with a lot of vigorous exercise. Sports were not something extra a boy might do for a hobby; they were a serious part of the school day. All the boys learned to play rugby in winter. In summer they played cricket and competed in many track and field events.
This emphasis on sports was meant to teach British boys how to play by rules, how to respect authority, and how to be part of a team. While Eric didn’t find much joy in class work, he enjoyed sports. In one of his letters to the family in China, ten-year-old Eric wrote, “I don’t think much of lessons, but I can run.”
And so he could! Both Eric and Robert excelled at every sport they tried.
Another activity all the students were expected to be a part of was the school play. The drama teacher took great pride in presenting a play each year, and there was a lot of competition for the leading roles. Even the girls’ parts were all played by the boys. One year it was decided that the play would be Alice In Wonderland. Eric didn’t want a leading role; in fact, he didn’t want a role at all. It was agony for him to think of getting up in front of so many people. As it turned out, the drama teacher cast him as the dormouse, a shy little creature with hardly a word to say. The part was just right for Eric, who did a wonderful job. Eric didn’t even have to pretend to be shy! After the play and until the time he left Eltham College at nineteen, his nickname was “The Mouse.”
For summer holidays, the two boys would take the train to Dryman to stay with their grandfather. On shorter holidays, they either stayed at school or stayed with some of their friends.
Eric would have liked to have been more involved in things at school, but he was just too shy. Once there was a tennis match against a nearby girls’ school, but Eric pulled out at the last minute. He couldn’t imagine what he would say to a girl when he got to her school. There were also Bible studies the boys could attend if they chose. Eric liked to go along, but he always sat near the back so that he could make a quick exit if he were called upon to answer a question or make a comment.
The years at school rolled by, with each new year not much different from the one before. That is, until 1914, when Eric was twelve years old. Two events happened that Eric would remember for the rest of his life. The first event was a happy one. Eric’s mother gave birth to another baby boy, Ernest. Eric was eager to see his new little brother, and his mother promised to bring Ernest and Jenny to London for a few weeks’ visit in 1915. The second event was a terrible and frightening one. A great war, which would eventually be known as the First World War, started in Europe. Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were on one side, with France, Great Britain, and Russia on the other. Many of the senior boys at the school volunteered to fight for the British. Before they left for the battlefield, they proudly visited Eltham College in their new khaki uniforms, and each boy carried a modern short-magazine Lee Enfield rifle.
Within weeks, many of these new recruits had been killed on the battlefields of Flanders, in France. Like the rest of the boys at school, Eric came to dread the daily assembly where the latest list of dead and injured “old boys” was read. It was not easy to listen to the names being read. These dead and wounded soldiers were not just names, they were people—friends the boys had played cricket and rugby with, friends who had helped the younger boys in study hall. It was like losing one big brother after another, and it went on for four years.
Sports though, seemed to cheer Eric up. Like his older brother, Eric showed a lot of promise. By the time Robert had reached his senior year at Eltham College, Eric was his only real competition in sports. By 1918, when Eric was sixteen and Robert was eighteen, the brothers were the two athletic stars of the school. The 1918 sports page in the school record book read as follows:
First in Cross Country, High Jump, and Hurdling, Robert Liddell.
First in Long Jump, 100-Yard Dash, and Quarter-Mile Race, Eric Liddell.
Where the one brother came in first, the other was always in second place! Not only that, Eric and Robert both played rugby for the First Fifteen and cricket for the First Eleven (the school’s top teams in each sport). Robert, and then Eric, was also made captain of most of the school’s sports teams.
In 1918, just as Robert was old enough to consider signing up to fight, the First World War ended. That year, instead of going off to war, Robert left Eltham College for Edinburgh University to study to become a doctor. Edinburgh was located on the east coast of Scotland. For the first time in his life, Eric was alone, away from every member of his family. But he had little time to be lonely. He had to study for some difficult and important exams coming up at the end of the 1919 school year. And, as usual, involvement in sports also kept him busy. Eric did well in both pursuits. He passed his exams and set a new school record of 10.2 seconds for the 100-yard sprint, a school record that to this day has not been broken.
A year later, Eric left Eltham College and rode the train north to Edinburgh University. It was a very exciting time for him. His mother was coming home to Scotland, along with seventeen-year-old Jenny and six-year-old Ernest. They would all live together again in Edinburgh, and Eric’s father would join them there a year later. Finally, the whole family would be together again.
Sure enough, in 1921 James Liddell returned to Scotland. Eric was six years old when he had last seen his father. After the two of them had caught up on each other’s lives, James Liddell asked his son what he wanted to do once he finished studying for his degree in math and science. Eric had to confess that he wasn’t too sure. Never in his wildest dreams, though, could he have imagined that before he even graduated he would be the most famous man in Scotland.
Chapter 3
A Rising Sports Star
Eric loved attending university. He was free to come and go as he pleased, and at the end of each day, he had a home-cooked meal waiting for him to eat with his family. He kept busy with classwork and got good grades, especially in chemistry and mathematics. When he wanted a break from studying, he would get together with a group of friends and play a friendly game of rugby or throw a cricket ball around for an hour or two. It wasn’t long before these friends began to notice that Eric was a very fast runner. One friend, Bill Harvey, who had done some running himself, invited Eric to participate in the University Athletic Sports competition. At first Eric refused; he was at university to get an education, not to spend his time running around a track. But Bill Harvey wanted someone to practice his coaching skills on, and in the end he managed to persuade Eric to enter the 100-yard and 220-yard races.
Even though he had agreed to participate in the competition, Eric had no intention of letting running interfere with his other activities. He and four other students had made plans to take a six-day bike ride from Edinburgh to Ben Nevis and back during their Easter break. Ben Nevis was Scotland’s highest mountain, and Eric wanted to climb it and see the view from the top. But Bill Harvey didn’t want him to go on the trip. It was only six weeks until the competition, and he had read that bike riding stretched the wrong muscles for running. Eric didn’t believe him, and he cycled off. A week later, upon returning from the trip, Eric discovered that Bill Harvey had been right. When he tried to run, his leg muscles stiffened up, and he knew it was going to be a tough job to get back in shape for the race.
The five weeks leading up to the competition were busy. Bill Harvey took coaching seriously and spent many hours with Eric, massaging his leg muscles to make them stretch the right way again. As race day approached, Eric began to get nervous. It was one thing to run at Eltham College, where everyone knew him and where his own brother was the main competition. It was another thing to run in front of a thousand strangers!
Finally, in May 1921, the day of the competition rolled around. Bill Harvey had worked hard to get Eric’s body in shape for his first competition in Scotland. Of course, Eric didn’t think he could win his races. Scotland’s best running star, Innes Stewart, was competing against him in both events. Eric did hope, however, to be among the first three runners to finish the race. Eric Liddell and Innes Stewart were set to race against each other in the first heat of the 100-yard sprint.
Eric jogged nervously to the starting line. It was a hot day, and he wiped his brow on his white singlet before crouching at the starting line beside the other runners in the heat. The starter’s pistol let out a loud crack, and the runners sprang forward. The crowd cheered wildly for Innes Stewart, and in less than eleven seconds it was over. As expected, Innes Stewart had finished first, but right on his heels was Eric Liddell.
