"HIPPO HAMILTON"

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 16, 19 January 1924, Page 16

"HIPPO HAMILTON"

HOW A GENERAL EARNED A

NICKNAME.

Some amusing reminiscences o£ his childhood days were told by General Sir Jan Hamilton in an address to 5000 Nottingham school children recently, states the "Daily Chronicle." . "I don't suppose," he said, "you have ever seen a sovereign. Once when I was about seven years old, my father pulled one out of his waistcoat pocket, and said, 'lan; what's that?' I said, 'Father, that's a pound.' So he turned to my four-year-old brother and said, 'VerLeker, what's, that?' VereUer replipd, |; 'Father, that's a Yellow Boy.' So my father patted him on the head, saying, 'I fear God Almighty has given me an idiot for my first-born.' \ . "When schoolboys in my day got tips," continued Sir lan, "they were given beautiful coins.of gold and silver. Now, at the best; you get a dirty paper note;. lat the worst, a. half-crown made of brass and nickel. At the end of the year 1866, when I was about to leave a. private school called Cheam for a public school called Wellington College, there was an order sent round by tho bursar that every boy should have his initials and school number stitched in red thread on to his underclothing. If you were to glance at my shirt tail now, which heaven forbid, you might "see that same old arrangement still sitting there: T.S.M.H. 150. It's the very same number I sported' when I used "to shoot little Bright-eyed squirrels as dead as door nails with my cataplilt or~saloon pistol; it's the very same' number. I wore when the master, Doctor Benson, afterward* Archbishop of Canterbury, used to cane me for those crimes, as well as for 'incorriiable unpunctuality,' the, second Monday morning of the term, and every Monday morning after it. He used to cane me until his eyes, always rather bulgy, nearly dropped out on to the carpot; until, whatwith old lickings and new lickings,,my back went blue, purple, green, and yellow with black weals over the ribs where the end of the cane flipped round. When I stripped at the bathing lake and the boys saw 1 was striped they used to call out 'Zebra.' This made me furious, and I used to call out' in reply, 'No, I'm a hippopotamus,' and dive to get awny from them under the yellow water, go they called me 'Hippo Hamilton' for the rest of my schooldays." .... i