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Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh · English · Gutenberg #51409 · 429,297 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

Author: Alec Waugh


        
Release date: March 9, 2016 [eBook #51409]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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PUBLIC SCHOOL LIFE


      *      *      *      *      *      *

COUNTRIES OF THE MIND
MIDDLETON MURRY
Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net

IBSEN AND HIS CREATION
Professor JANKO LAVRIN
Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net

THE RETURN
WALTER DE LA MARE
Cr. 8vo. 7s. 6d. net

      *      *      *      *      *      *


PUBLIC SCHOOL LIFE

Boys Parents Masters

by

ALEC WAUGH

Author of 'The Loom of Youth,' 'Pleasure,' etc.







[Illustration: Logo]

London: 48 Pall Mall
W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.
Glasgow Melbourne Auckland

Copyright, 1922

Manufactured in Great Britain




A DEDICATORY LETTER TO ARNOLD LUNN


_December 6, 1921_:

MY DEAR ARNOLD,--It was with genuine surprise that I read the other day,
while turning over the pages of _The Harrovians_, the date 1913 upon the
title-page. Only eight years ago, and since then so much has happened.
What a long while it seems since _The Harrovians_ was the most borrowed
book in the house, and we passed the hours of evening hall, that should
have been spent in the study of irregular verbs, in eager discussions on
your book. It was a revelation to us--we schoolboys of 1913. It
explained us to ourselves. We thought then that the last word on the
subject had been said.

But one can never say the last word on such a subject as the Public
Schools, especially in a novel. In a novel one is constrained to tell a
story or to reveal a character. In _The Harrovians_ you dealt with the
Public School System only in as far as it effected the development of
Peter, and in _Loose Ends_ you found yourself equally fettered with
regard to Maurice. It is for this reason that I feel there is still
room for a book such as this, which, though a narrative, has for its
object simply the analysis and presentation of public school life. At
any rate I hope that you may think, when you come to read it, that it
was worth doing. If you do not, well then at least here is your name
after the title-page in grateful tribute to many pleasant hours spent in
the company of yourself and of your books, and in the hope of many more
such hours.

For their sake, if not for its own sake, please accept this book, and
believe me,

As ever, your sincere friend,
ALEC WAUGH.




CONTENTS

CHAP.                                            PAGE
   I. INTRODUCTORY                                  1

  II. THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL                       20

 III. THE NEW BOY                                  38

  IV. THE SECOND YEAR                              60

   V. ATHLETICISM                                  76

  VI. THE TRUE ETHICS OF CRIBBING                  91

 VII. MORALITY AND THE ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP        124

VIII. THE MIDDLE YEARS                            161

  IX. PREFECTSHIP                                 171

   X. THE LAST TERM                               198

  XI. THE OLD BOY AS SCHOOLMASTER AND PARENT      215

 XII. SOME SUGGESTIONS: THE LEAVING AGE WITH
        REGARD TO MORALS                          231

XIII. THE LEAVING AGE WITH REGARD TO ATHLETICS    256

 XIV. CONCLUSION       263




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY


Twenty years ago a father said to his son, who had just come down from
Oxford with a batting average of 35.7: 'For ten years, my boy, you have
been playing cricket all through the summer at my expense. You can now
either come into my business and play first-class cricket during your
month's holiday in August, or, if you want to continue to play cricket
all through the season, you can go down to the Oval and apply to be
taken on as a professional.' The moral, the obvious moral, that is to
say, is admirable. And the elderly gentleman whom I overheard repeating
this story in the pavilion, leant back in his seat and affirmed proudly,
though with a deep sense of the passage of good things, that it was in
such a spirit that the game had been played when he was young. 'That's
what cricket meant to the Studds, the Lyttletons, the Fosters. We didn't
have any of these amateur professionals, none of these fine fellows who
get found soft jobs by their county committees. What's the difference, I
should like to know, between the fellow who gets paid five pounds a
match and the fellow who is presented with the directorship of a ladies'
corset factory at a comfortable salary, and who has only to go to the
office once a week to sign his name in the directors' attendance book?'
The elderly gentleman shrugged his shoulders with disgust.

He was quite right, of course. There are too many cricketers who make as
much money out of the game as any professional, yet are entitled to put
initials before their name upon the score card. And the father was quite
right when he insisted on the industry of his son. He was none the less
right because things probably failed to turn out as they had been
planned. They rarely do. We can guess what happened.

For a year the son worked hard. During his month's holiday he made a
couple of centuries in first-class cricket, and various papers
commenting on this achievement expressed their regret that so promising
a cricketer should only be available in August. It is needless to add
that the other members of the family saw to it that these references did
not escape the attention of their father. Next season the county started
so well, that by the end of May it stood at the head of the
championship, and the young financier was entreated to turn out for the
Yorkshire match in the middle of June. On such an occasion parental
discipline was naturally relaxed. And an innings of 87 on a tricky
wicket was followed by an invitation to play for the Gentlemen at Lords.
Parental pride was flattered. Next season the same thing happened, only
more frequently. There was, in fact, an understanding that he was
available for all the important matches, and very soon not only the
fixtures with Middlesex, Kent, and Surrey, came to be regarded as
important, but also those with Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and
Worcester. Indeed, in five years' time the son found himself playing
county cricket steadily from May to August and as an amateur. Things
happen like that. Still the pact, as the elderly gentleman in the
pavilion asserted, had been made in the right spirit. And it was, after
all, a family affair.

But the fine distinction between the amateur and the amateur
professional is defined only by the obvious moral to this story, and the
subtler moral had passed unnoticed by the elderly reactionary in the
pavilion. A young man, twenty-three years of age, has been expensively
educated for some ten to twelve years. And he is faced at the end of his
education, when it is assumed, that is to say, that he is equipped with
the knowledge and trained ability that will enable him to take up that
portion of the world's work for which he is best fitted, with two
alternatives. Either he can go into his father's business, or else he
can lose his caste and sign on as a professional cricketer. It occurred
neither to the father nor to the son nor to the elderly gentleman who
repeated the story in the pavilion that any other alternative was
possible, or, indeed, desirable. The son was not in a position to say to
his father: 'Of course I wouldn't become a pro. But I'm really not keen
on your business. I shouldn't be a success at it. I'd rather do
something else.' He could not say that, because there was nothing else
for him to do. Six years earlier he could have gone to Sandhurst. If he
had worked harder at school he might possibly have passed into the
Egyptian civil service. It is possible that his blue would have obtained
for him a schoolmastership, but his gulf in mods, would have limited his
choice of schools. And the prospects of a junior master at a second-rate
Public School are not inviting. So, whatever his own inclinations might
have been, he had to accept his father's offer. It is here that we find
the true moral of the story; and we ask ourselves whether this young man
was, in spite of his ten years at Oxford and at a Public School, really
educated. He had learnt how to make centuries in county cricket, and he
had acquired a certain quantity of uncorrelated information. But he had
not developed the ability to perform properly the type of work for which
he was best fitted, nor, indeed, had he discovered what that type of
work might be. As likely as not his father's business was the last that
he should have chosen. We all react from our surroundings, and he had
probably become heartily sick of his father's particular form of 'shop.'
He had so often sat wearily at the dinner table, fingering his bread,
piling the salt into pyramids on the edge of the cruet, while his father
had explained to his mother the minute details of his latest deal. 'You
see, my dear, I bought in at twenty-six....' Of all hideous employments
the buying and selling of shares had seemed to him the weariest. And yet
there was nothing for him but to accept a desk beside a telephone with
the files of the _Financial News_ spread out before him.

He can have brought no enthusiasm to his work. Out of a sense of duty,
and in order to improve his own position, he may have worked hard during
the winter months, but he must have worked without pleasure, with his
work not as an end but as a means.

Yet nothing in a man's life is of more importance than his profession.
If he does not enjoy his work he values too highly the privileges that
success in it will bring to him. He asks too much of his private life,
and if he is disappointed, he embarks on a desperate search for
pleasure. Half of the discontent of modern life, the discontent that
expresses itself in endless parties, dances, and entertainments, can be
traced to the reactions of men and women engaged in uncongenial
employment. And so we return again to that first question. Can we call a
man educated who has not discovered in what capacity he is most likely
to be of service to society, or who, having discovered it, has not taken
steps to qualify himself for that profession. That, in a sentence, is
the case against the English Public School. A system stands or falls by
its products.

And it is only natural that parents who are not particularly well off,
and who have no private business into which they can draft their
children, should ask themselves whether or not a public school education
is worth the considerable personal sacrifice that will be entailed if
their sons are to be sent to Wellington, Clifton, or Uppingham. 'We
want to do the best for Tommy,' they say. 'But after spending £250 a
year on him for five years what do we get in return? Tommy is not clever
enough to pass into the civil service; he may get a mastership on a
salary only slightly better than that of a Metropolitan policeman. Is it
worth it?' When the head master to whom these doubts are carried,
commences to enlarge on the moral qualities that are revealed and
strengthened by 'the honest give and take of public school life,' the
parent is still unsatisfied. 'Are you quite sure?' they say. 'Of course
we know it's all exaggerated, but where there's smoke, you know, and one
has heard....' Is it surprising that under such circumstances the
mandarins of the public school profession should have erected a
barricade of prejudice between themselves and criticism. Their
maintenance is at stake. They have to persuade the parent that he is
getting his money's worth. Otherwise he will send his son to a day
school, or, worse still, to some pension in Rome or Brussels.

And so it has happened that any critic of the Public Schools is
immediately driven into a false position. For so long the Public Schools
have been accepted with an unquestioning reverence--for so long, that is
to say, the authorities have been able to persuade the world that the
goods they are selling are the best, in fact the only goods upon the
market--that if any one breathes a word against them now he is labelled
a revolutionary; it is assumed that politically he is a Socialist, that
he wishes to substitute co-operation for competition, that he is a
harbinger of red ruin, concealing a bomb intended for William of
Wykeham's Tower or the green sward of Agar's plough; that his programme
involves the complete destruction of the existing fabric, and that he
proposes to erect about its ruins some bizarre construction of eugenics
and modernity. Nothing, as a matter of fact, is further from the truth.

The majority of assailants are anything but socialists. They consider an
enlightened oligarchy the ideal form of government, and their chief
quarrel with the Public Schools is the absence of that enlightened
oligarchy. No one wants to destroy the Public Schools. No one would be
so foolish. But we do maintain that the public school system--a very
old, a very magnificent, a very venerable mansion--stands in drastic
need of repair. It is some years since the drains were attended to;
electric light is more serviceable than gas; the tapestries are a little
moth-eaten; the books in the library are dusty. The house wants to be
spring cleaned.

It is easy, of course, to say that, but it is very difficult to know how
to set about it. Our institutions are mirrors in which are reflected our
personal imperfections. They can be no better than ourselves; and the
merchants of panaceas take for granted a world which has left behind it
envy, greed, malice, and desire. To that degree of perfection we shall
never attain, but we can at any rate be honest with one another. And
there is no side of English life about which rulers and ruled, fathers
and sons, old and young have been so consistently dishonest with one
another in the past as they have been about the standards and ideals of
the English Public Schools.

It is the old trouble of the merchant and his goods, and though the
English Public Schools do not insert double-column advertisements in the
daily papers, they are at least beholden not to prejudice the value of
their stock. The greengrocer does not inform you that, on the whole, his
potatoes are not bad, considering that he bought them from a farmer with
a leaking shed. A head master does not tell a parent that, if he is
going to send his son to a Public School, his own school is not worse
than any other. Yet the same man who views with grave suspicion eulogies
of a patent medicine, accepts complacently the house-master's assurance
that Tommy is improving enormously both morally and intellectually under
his care. A schoolmaster spends a large part of his life boosting the
value of his goods, and in time, of course, he comes to believe that
every word of what he says is true. The commercial traveller of two
years' experience will wink his eye: 'I spun him the tale!' But the
commercial traveller of ten years' experience has a solemn countenance.
'People know good stuff when they see it.'

A few weeks ago I was staying in the country with some friends, and was
taken over by them to the prize-giving of the Preparatory School at
which their sons were being educated. The ceremony was enacted in the
gymnasium. The staff sat at the end of the room on a raised dais, in the
centre of which was a table covered with 'calf-bound mementoes of
industry.' Behind this table stood the head master. He was a large,
genial, middle-aged man, rubicund with a surfeit of golf, and he smiled
down upon the school and upon its parents. 'Well, you boys,' he said, 'I
want to tell you how pleased I am with the way you've backed me up this
term. You've worked hard and you've played hard: I don't really know how
long it is since we've had such a thoroughly satisfactory term: of
course there are one or two young gentlemen'--and at this point a
twinkle appeared in the corner of his eye--'who have been a little,
well, shall we say, difficult; but that's past history, we won't say
anything more about it; and, as a whole, as I've already said, I don't
think I've ever had such a satisfactory set of fellows.' There were a
few more remarks of mutual congratulation, and then he proceeded to the
distribution of the prizes.

Afterwards I had a chat with one of the assistant masters, with whom I
happened to be on fairly intimate terms.

'A wonderful fellow, the Head,' he told me. 'Do you know he's made that
same speech at prize-giving for the last twenty years. Hardly a phrase
different. He wants to send the parents away in a good temper. They'll
get their account to-morrow. Of course he doesn't know that's why he's
doing it. But it's the reason right enough. And how clever that bit is
about the young gentlemen who've been a little troublesome. It makes
every mother feel that her boy is better than her neighbour's.'

I suggested that such an opinion was likely to be revised under the
influence of the terminal report. 'Not a bit of it,' he answered. 'All
our reports are strictly censored. We write them out on a piece of
foolscap and the Head gets them typed; but where we write "lazy and
unintelligent," the parents read "moderate." You can take my word for it
that the boy who gets "moderate" in his report from here is one of
earth's best dunces.'

That was, of course, at a private school; but, even at the most
prosperous Public Schools there is a tacit understanding that parents
should be stroked down after the manner of refractory cats. The
half-term report contains frequently enough a quantity of pungent
critical writing, but the parental visit to the school is invariably the
occasion for much conversational flattery. Freddie, unless he has become
involved in any particularly unfortunate adventure, is the object of
restrained, perhaps qualified, but still potential commendation. The
father is assured by the house-master that everything is going on
splendidly: 'A little low in form, perhaps, rather too boisterous at
times in the day room, but a sound fellow at heart, the sort of fellow
that the house will be proud of one day.' And the mother's qualms are
put at rest by the house-master's wife. 'The tone of the house is so
excellent, you see. No bullying at all, and Freddie's manners are so
charming. Every one likes him.'

It is possible that if the house-master were taken to task in the
privacy of his own study, he might be persuaded to confess himself a
pragmatist. 'One has to keep them quiet,' he might say. 'The young
rascal'll get on all right as long as they don't start meddling with
him.' But it is hard to be honest with oneself. The schoolmaster cannot
help regarding the parent in much the same way that the junior subaltern
regarded the brigadier. We all know what happened when the runner
brought the news that at such an hour the brigadier would visit
Lieutenant Jones's gun emplacements. Lieutenant Jones specially called
the brigadier's attention to what he knew would please him. He put his
smartest men on guard. He assured the brigadier that everything was
going quite all right, that the men were perfectly comfortable and that
the supply of rations was adequate; Lieutenant Jones did everything, in
fact, to get the brigadier into the next trench as soon as possible.

Which was, of course, all very rational. The brigadier's interest in
Lieutenant Jones's gun emplacements was remote and theoretical, and
either way was of small importance. But it is a different thing
altogether when house-masters wave parents out of the way with
comfortable excuses. It establishes at once a dishonest relationship.
The schoolmaster does not trust the parent. He regards him as a nuisance
that periodically has to be appeased. And, as long as things go
smoothly, he is content to leave him in the dark. There is no
co-operation. And that is absolutely fatal. It means that the two people
who are chiefly responsible for the boy's welfare are working at cross
purposes.

The trouble does not end there. For between the parents themselves there
is frequently an incomplete mutual appreciation of the difficulties of
school life. Women, in the nature of things, can only know about Public
Schools what men choose to tell them. That is usually remarkably little.
Many a husband encourages in his wife the illusion that before he met
her his life was a vague, indeterminate, ineffectual thing, the
incidents of which are unworthy to be recorded. And many others on such
matters as public school life consider that a lie that saves friction is
justifiable. It is so easy to see how it happens.

Husband and wife are sitting after dinner on either side of the
fireplace. The wife has just finished reading _The Harrovians_, and she
looks up with a puzzled, unhappy look. 'Harold, dear,' she says, 'it's
not like that really, is it? If it were true I couldn't think of sending
Freddie to such a place.' And what is Harold to say? He has read _The
Harrovians_. He knows that substantially it is true, but equally well he
knows that if he acknowledges this to his wife his domestic life for the
next six years will be complicated by incessant arguments and anxieties.
To begin with he will have to spend many evenings of discussion before
he can persuade his wife of the advisability of sending Freddie to
Rugby. And afterwards there will be constant uneasiness. His wife will
fret. She will want to pay visits to Rugby, to interview the head
master, to ask her son uncomfortable questions. His own life would
become unbearable. And a lie smooths out so much. 'Oh, no, dear, quite
unlike the Rugby of my day. An exaggerated picture of a bad house in a
bad school, that's all it is.'

Such a situation must arise fairly frequently. And at least one instance
of it has come within the circle of my own experience. While I was a
prisoner in Germany I lent a copy of my school story, _The Loom of
Youth_, to a fellow-prisoner, who had expressed a wish to read it. A few
days later he returned it to me with such a flattering display of
enthusiasm that, in a moment of unusual generosity I promised to send
him a copy on our return. The sequel reached me a few days later. He had
returned to his room and remarked that Waugh had promised to give him a
copy of that book of his, 'the thing that's all full of oaths. I don't
know what I shall do with it,' he said. 'I shall have to be jolly
careful that my wife doesn't read it.'

If one may generalise from such an incident, and I believe that one may,
for it has its root in the eternal indolence of human nature, then not
only schoolmasters and parents, but fathers and mothers are working at
cross purposes. And so the boy finds himself alone, stranded in a
society the nature of which he has to discover for himself. He never
regards his house-master as one working in co-operation with his
parents for the welfare of his soul. Schoolmasters will be to him a
separate caste. And although he will never reason this out with himself,
he will appreciate it intuitively in the natural cunning with which he
will exploit one or the other in the furtherance of his own ends. I do
not mean that he is deceitful. But he may want to specialise in History,
or to abandon German in favour of Greek, and he will think whether he
would do better to approach his father or his house-master. There is a
sort of dual monarchy, and if one sovereign is opposed to a favourite
scheme, it is but natural to try one's fortune with the other.

His parents' interest in his school life must appear to him superficial.
When his father comes down at half term, he has to answer innumerable
questions as to his prowess on the cricket field; and very often indeed
the chief pleasure that his athletic successes brings him is the thought
of the delight that his father will experience. But the intimate side of
his school life, his thoughts, his friendships, his troubles, his
ambitions, do not enter into his relationship with his parents. In the
same way his house-master's interest in his home life seems to him
superficial. On his return to school he is asked a few questions about
the theatres he has visited; whether he is in training for the football;
has he done any private work? not a word of his intimate life. The boy
ceases to regard his school life as a continuation of his home life. The
two are entirely separate, and it depends on the temperament of the
individual as to which of the two he will consider the more important.
We hear a great deal of talk about the influence of the home; it is,
indeed, the stock argument of the pedagogue who would shelve his own
responsibility on to other shoulders, but I believe that its influence
is greatly overrated. Home and school present to the average boy two
watertight compartments. They are different lives, a different technique
is required. And human nature has at least one property of the
chameleon.

A schoolboy sets out, therefore, to discover school life for himself. He
knows what his parents expect him to make of it; he has a fairly shrewd
idea of what his schoolmaster expects him to make of it. It remains for
him to investigate school life as his companions have made it. Naturally
he does not announce his investigations. He lets his parents think what
they like and his schoolmasters think what they like. He goes his own
way. And it is thus that school life as it is, differs so enormously
from the traditional concept of it. There must be always a gulf between
the reality and the imagined idea. But in public school life the gulf is
between, not the schoolboy reality and his idea of it, but between the
schoolboy reality, and the confused idea of it that is held by parents
and masters. It is two degrees from the truth. In consequence, when any
one does attempt to tell the truth there is an outburst of indignant
protest. And the worst of it is that it is an honest outburst. When head
masters write to the Press and say 'these accusations are entirely
false,' they honestly believe what they say. That is what makes
everything so difficult. They have forgotten their own schooldays, and
for so long they have been persuading parents of the value of a public
school education that they have come to believe in their own
advertisements. And yet what they have come to believe is far more
remarkable than the truth. In sermons and addresses they assure the boy
and his parents that school life is a miniature of the larger world;
which is the statement of a fact: yet every subsequent act and utterance
is in contradiction to this initial axiom. For, if that larger world did
really resemble the official concept of school life, what a bizarre,
what an extravagant affair it would be. It would be filled with high
lights, with breathless escapades, with impossible heroics. It has been
accepted as quite credible that a boy should be capable of the most
extreme and loathsome brutalities, that a percentage of every school
should spend its life in gambling and heavy drinking, that at least one
prefect in every school should contract inconvenient liabilities at the
Baron's Arms, and that to extricate himself he should forge his
house-master's signature. Indeed, anything may happen provided that the
course of life follows a simple process of right and wrong which leads
to the triumph of virtue and the downfall of vice. It is something like
a Lyceum melodrama. And, though we can all manage to enjoy for a couple
of hours the fine sensationalism of _The Beggar Girl's Wedding_, we
should hardly accept its values as a philosophical background for our
daily life. And yet that has actually happened in the case of the Public
Schools. Mr P. G. Wodehouse, in his delightful _Mike_, makes Psmith say
to a new acquaintance: 'Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or
the Boy who is led astray and takes to drink in Chapter Sixteen?' Such
figureheads exist in the popular imagination. The world believes in
bullies, in villains, in straight heroes and in the weak character who
goes wrong, but is saved through the influence of either the hero or the
head master, or the head master's daughter, or through the sermon of an
occasional preacher. It is all very jolly, of course, and no doubt the
world would be a far more comfortable place if it were possible to label
and pigeonhole all our friends and acquaintances. But life cannot be
simplified by any arbitrary process. We have our standards of conduct,
but they are shifting and relative. They are the measures that each
successive society arranges for what it considers to be its convenience.
And we accept them for what they are. At a Public School, however, a
traditional conception has formed a code of rules for the convenience of
a society that does not exist. Which is confusing: and when Desmond Coke
wrote in _The Bending of a Twig_ a very entertaining skit on the
behaviour of a boy who had read a number of school stories, and went to
Shrewsbury expecting to find bullies behind every cloister,
schoolmasters laughed over the book, but did not read into it any
criticism of themselves.

And yet there is nothing that we need more than an honest facing of the
facts of public school life. Facts are a solid neutral ground on which
parents and boys and masters may meet to discuss their ideals and their
difficulties. And, in the course of that discussion, they may discover,
as likely as not, a way out of their troubles. The hope of this book is
to provide that statement of facts. It does not set out as an
educational treatise. It accepts the Public Schools as the system best
suited to the material with which it deals. It suggests no new system of
teaching. It does not advocate co-education. It does not advance any
plea for Montessor methods. It will contain no discussion of the
advantages of Greek over German. There will be no appendix with
time-tables and suggested curriculum. For, as things are now, it does
not matter whether Sanscrit is substituted for mathematics: the boy will
learn equally little of either. It is intended as a human study of
public school life, as an attempt to break down that conspiracy of
silence, that relationship of evasion and deceit that exists officially
between parents, boys, and masters; and from time to time it will
suggest solutions.

It is, of course, only an attempt. For no one person can see more than a
side of the truth. However impartial we try to be, we can see in a
situation only what the limitations of our personality allow us. We are
all at tether. During the last three years many public men have visited
Russia; they have been honest men, and we know quite well that they went
there with the firm intention of telling nothing but the truth. But,
before they went, we could have told them exactly what they would say on
their return. Yet the analogy does not quite hold good. For we, too,
have gone, each of us, to a Public School with a preconceived idea of
what school life would be, and each of us in turn has had that
conception destroyed by actuality, and each in turn has had to create
for himself his own picture. It follows then that there must in each
picture be a certain measure of truth.




CHAPTER II

THE PREPARATORY SCHOOL


We hear much of the embarrassed misery of a boy's first week at school.
And, certainly, it is pretty wretched. Mr Vachell compared it to the
first plunge into an ice-cold swimming bath: the sudden shock, and,
afterwards, the glory of a swim. But it is the inaction, the loneliness
of the first week that is so difficult. It is more like standing on the
edge of the swimming bath on a cold day waiting for the signal that will
start the race. And yet the change must have been a great deal more
difficult for our parents than it was for us. The preparatory school
system is of more or less recent growth, and, when one considers how
much one learnt at a Preparatory School, in _esprit de corps_, in
patience, in sportsmanship, in the give and take of a communal life, one
wonders how an earlier generation managed to survive the first term.
School life by all accounts was a fairly barbarous business in the
eighties, and by what strange roads our parents came to those rough
waters. Some came straight from home, some from private tutors: the
majority from the old-fashioned dame school. It is not surprising that
the Preparatory Schools should have so increased in number and improved
in quality.

For the Preparatory School fulfils a most important function, and it
fulfils it extremely efficiently. It is what it sets out to be, a school
that will take a small boy almost from the nursery, and train him in the
course of four or five years to take his place in a large Public School.
The task that the head master of a Preparatory School has to tackle is
not, however, anything like so hard as that which confronts the head
master of a Public School. For a Public School has to equip a boy for
life; and life is vast, indeterminate, a swiftly moving river that is
never the same from one moment to another. The Preparatory School, on
the other hand, has only to equip a boy for a Public School, and the
Public School is a fixed quantity. As regards curriculum, the task is
simple. The required standard of education is known. A certain
percentage in the common entrance examination has to be obtained. The
school has not to discover the career for which its individual members
are best suited. It has merely to decide which of them are good enough
to be trained specially for scholarships. The main object of the
Preparatory School, however, is to produce presentable specimens of
society, boys who will do the right thing in the right circumstances.
And this the Preparatory School does admirably well.

It is at a Preparatory School that boys learn manners, courtesy, the
proper behaviour in the presence of ladies. But these things, you may
say, a boy will learn at home. No doubt he ought to, but any preparatory
schoolmaster will disabuse you on that point. How many small boys of
seven who have not been to a school will, when they are handed a plate
of cakes, take the one nearest to them rather than the one of which they
fancy the appearance. How many small boys will think of opening a door
for a lady, of offering her his chair when she enters the room, of
apologising to his hostess if he arrives late for breakfast. These are
the little things that a boy learns at a Preparatory School and that he
will learn nowhere else; at all good schools a great value is placed on
these points of etiquette; if anything, 'good manners' are rather
overdone, and the precipitate charge of twelve or thirteen urchins
towards a door handle is likely to prove embarrassing to the lady
visitor who has risen from her chair.

At my own school, for instance, music lessons always took place
immediately after lunch; so that, if lunch was a little late, the first
boys were allowed to leave the table before grace. It was a rule,
however, that no boy should ever leave the dining-room till he had asked
the permission of the ladies. And many visitors were much perplexed by
the repeated inaudible apologies of nervous small boys who came
stumbling towards them between two close-packed tables. The good manners
of a preparatory school boy are indeed slightly pedagogic. Their elbows
are pressed into their sides when they eat, their wrists are raised
above the table, and, in a precise voice, they request permission to
trouble their next door neighbour for the salt. They are like the
critics who insist that a sonnet is not a sonnet if the last lines of
the sestet form a couplet. But it is a fault on the right side. For
manners, as well as morals, relax in the greater freedom of a Public
School, and at the age of fifteen one has managed to substitute ease for
stiffness.

It is, indeed, impossible to say how much one learns at a Preparatory
School. At the age of ten one has not the necessary detachment to view
oneself as an objective reality. It is impossible, for instance, to
remember where, or when, was learnt the spirit of comradeship and
sportsmanship that is, perhaps, the most lovable quality of the old
public school boy. It is hardly inherited. For the average small boy is
greedy, selfish, and acquisitive; and, when one is given leg before to a
left-hand round the wicket bowler who is turning the ball from the off,
the temptation to protest against the umpire's decision is natural. The
primitive man, indeed, would have uprooted a stump and walked to the
other end of the pitch. Where does one learn to turn straight round and
walk towards the pavilion? I think it is at the Preparatory School. A
small boy knows that he has got to play cricket like a sportsman; he
knows that a sportsman does not question the umpire's decision; and he
is terribly afraid of doing the wrong thing in the presence of his
schoolfellows. The first time he is given out caught at the wicket off
his pad, a blind anger seizes him. His mouth opens to make a protest.
The same thing happened last year when he was playing cricket in the
garden with his brother and sister, and, when they insisted that he was
out, he sat down in the middle of the field and howled till they told
him he could continue his innings. The temptation to repeat the
experiment is considerable. But he dare not make any exhibition of
himself. He would be mercilessly ragged; and so he returns to his seat
under the trees and contents himself with the announcement that Jones is
a mean sneak who was trying to get a revenge for the kicking he got that
morning. And of course the incident will be repeated. Umpires make
mistakes in first-class cricket: small boys make them with a melancholy
frequency on lower grounds, and few batsmen are satisfied with an l.b.w.
decision. The young cricketer has many opportunities of displaying the
Christian qualities of patience and restraint, and every time the
temptation to sit down in the middle of the pitch and howl grows weaker.
'The monster custom is angel yet in this,' and, by the time he goes to
his Public School, his features have learnt to assume a good-natured
smile, and he says something about it being all in the game and that
last week he had a decision in his favour.

I am inclined to think that in that example can be found the essence of
preparatory school life; the habits of courtesy and sportsmanship are
acquired till they become a second nature. We are told that man is a
logical creature, that when he has been properly educated it will be
possible for forty million people to live in one country without
competition; that in an enlightened society there will be no need for
policemen, for every man will instinctively appreciate what is right. It
may be so. No one knows what the world will be like two thousand years
hence. But, in the meantime, I think we do wisely to train small boys as
we train an animal. We thrash our dog if he plays havoc in our
neighbour's chicken run, and we rag the small boy who disputes the
umpire's decision. The dog does not chase chickens again, nor does the
small boy argue in the middle of the pitch.

It is a strange business, though, this acquiring of social habits, and,
though preparatory school life has been only dealt with in a small way
by educationalists and novelists, the process is certainly interesting.
Everything, to allow for the subsequent relaxation at the Public School,
is slightly overdone, and the small boy tends to become a prig. It is
only natural that he should. By nature he is at that time a somewhat
poisonous little beast. He is the victim of numberless petty faults and
jealousies; and when he becomes reformed he is self-righteous. He would
never think of sneaking, of course, but he would not hesitate to whisper
just as a master is coming into the class-room, 'Oh, shut up, Jones.' He
always enjoys putting some one else in the wrong, and Arnold Lunn has,
in _The Harrovians_, an incident that provides an admirable example of
this attitude. A member of the school has just died. He was not a
popular boy; he was not distinguished in games or work. No one really
minded, but the school felt bound to present a countenance of
appropriate melancholy. A certain Clayford, however, had a set of stamps
he wished to sell, and he accosted cheerfully a couple of boys who were
discussing the last hours of their lost comrade. 'I say, you chaps, like
to buy a complete set of Borneos surcharged Labuan?'

'Not to-day, thank you,' said Peter stiffly.

'We're not much interested in stamps _to-day_,' added Morgan.

It is a perfect picture.

And as there is no stricter moralist than the potential rake, there is
no one with a more rigid code of honour than the preparatory school boy.
'Owning up' becomes a fetish. Popular opinion drives the wretched urchin
into the head master's study. I remember once that on the eve of a
school match a member of the eleven went sick with a headache. There was
immediate consternation. Ferguson might not be a good bowler, his
batting was indifferent and he missed his catches more often than not,
but he was a distinct improvement on Evans, the twelfth man. The chances
of a victory were prejudiced: and then some one recollected that that
morning Smith had smacked Ferguson's head in the changing room. It also
happened that, for the moment, Smith was extremely unpopular. Morison's
people had just paid their half-term visit to the school, and when the
Head had brought Morison's mother into the room, Smith had not stood up.
It had been a direct insult to Morison's mater. Every one had said so,
and none of us would listen to Smith's excuse that he had had his back
to the door, and was filling his fountain pen, a combination of
circumstances that rendered a sudden leap to the feet impossible.

'Don't argue, Smith; you're a cad.' That's what every one had said; and
when it was remembered that Smith had punched Ferguson's head that
morning, the fury of popular opinion knew no limit.

'You've lost the match, I hope you know; you'll have to own up, of
course,' we said.

Smith was resentful. He did not see why he should.

'Because, Smith, that is what a gentleman does under such
circumstances.'

Smith was still obstinate. He did not see why Ferguson should have got a
headache just because of this. People had had their heads punched before
without getting headaches. There was a murmur of contumely.

'But that wasn't an ordinary punch, Smith; you hit him with all your
force.'

The suggestion that it was not an ordinary punch flattered Smith's
pride. He, too, was inclined to think that there had been about that
punch a certain something. He grudgingly admitted that it had been a
pretty hard smack.

'Even so, though, I don't see how things are going to be made any better
by my owning up.'

Such an attitude was opposed to every idea of preparatory school honour.
There was a shudder of supreme contempt.

'Perhaps _you_ don't, Smith.' And there the argument stopped. But for
the rest of the day Smith's life was made miserable. Every time any one
passed him they said: 'Owned up yet?' No one would talk to him at
tea-time; when he joined a group afterwards the group dispersed and he
was left alone. Finally, of two evils, confession appeared to him the
less, and, after prayers, he pushed open the door of the head master's
study and blurted out to the accompaniment of big quivering sobs that he
had punched Ferguson's head in the changing-room and given him a
headache, and, perhaps, lost the match.

A couple of years ago I went down to my old school, and, just before
lunch, when the whole school was collected in the hall, the head master
announced that he wanted the name of the boy who had left the tap
running in the bathroom. There was a slight commotion in a far corner;
one boy was being nudged and pressed forward. There was a whisper of 'Go
on, Hunter.' All eyes were turned in his direction. There was no course
for Hunter but to come forward into the open and confess.

And yet, as likely as not, some one else was the offender. It was the
sort of offence that any one might commit. It is not easy to remember
what one has forgotten. No doubt he thought he had turned off the tap,
otherwise he would hardly have left the bathroom; yet he might very
likely have done it. His companions told him that he had, and his faith
in their loving kindness was not sufficient for him to have wondered
why they had not repaired his mistake. If Hunter had not owned up he
would have had to say definitely that he had not left the tap running,
and that he could not truthfully have done. So he owned up.

The fear of being thought a coward very often makes the preparatory
school boy confess to sins that he has never committed, and it is
usually the ones who are most often in trouble who find themselves in
this position. After all, if you are always getting into scrapes, are
always engaged in some misadventure, it is very hard to tell whether, on
a particular occasion, you are innocent or not. The head master comes
into a class-room in the afternoon.

'Now look here, you fellows,' he says, 'you know I've told you that I
won't have you running down that steep path to the football field. You
are bound to fall down; you must walk. I've told you that a hundred
times. Now the matron tells me that she saw one of you running down
there this morning. I want to know that boy's name.'

What is Jones mi. to do? He has run down that path so often. Whether or
not he did so that morning he cannot remember. He has had so much to
think about since then. Yet, suppose he did run down the hill, and
suppose that some one saw him. If he does not own up, he will be called
a coward all over the school. Far better 'own up,' and receive some
small punishment. Indeed, it may be said that the Jones mi.'s of the
world form a rule for themselves, that they own up to every offence of
which they are not dead certain that they are innocent. Head masters,
like batsmen, have to have the benefit of the doubt.

It is equally difficult to acknowledge innocence in the midst of crime.
At my old school there was an excellent rule that for half an hour after
lunch we should sit in our class-rooms and read quietly. One afternoon
this peaceful siesta was disturbed by a loud and fierce and general
discussion of the superiority of Yorkshire cricket over that of
Lancashire. The particular class-room unfortunately happened to be
situated beneath the nursery of the head master's children, and the
angry voices of the disputants roused from her slumbers a recent
addition to the family. The complaints of a very indignant nurse forced
a very busy master to disturb the repose of that restful half-hour after
lunch. On this occasion the usual formula was reversed. He did not ask
the names of the boys who had been talking, he asked for the names of
the boys who had not been talking. Now, as it happened, I had taken no
part in the argument. I am a Middlesex supporter, I had just received as
a birthday present a bound volume of _Chums_, I was also, at the time,
in popular disfavour. So I had seated myself in a far corner of the room
and read steadily, with my fingers pressed into my ears. But I did not
dare to say so. I should never have been forgiven. It would have been
the action of a conscientious objector. No one would have believed me.
I realised how hopelessly out of things I should feel while the rest of
the school were receiving their punishment. Suppose a half-holiday was
stopped--what on earth should I do with a half-holiday all to myself? I
should be much happier working out theorems in a class-room. And it was
also possible that I might have said something that some one had
overheard--at any rate, I was not going to risk it. I sat silent at my
desk and accepted meekly the common lot.

From the outside a Preparatory School looks very much like a miniature
Public School. It presents the same features, the same routine, the same
curriculum; there is even some attempt at a prefectorial system.
Superficially they have much in common. But there the resemblance ends.
The scale of values is altogether different. Indeed the Preparatory
School is very like the Public School of traditional conception. Talbot
Baines Reed is only read by boys of under thirteen; and boys of under
thirteen have moulded themselves after his image. There are, of course,
none of the high-lights, the heroism, the sacrifice. There are no
nocturnal visits to ostlers; but otherwise it is not unlike _The Fifth
Form at St Dominic's_. The smallest boys do resemble the 'Tadpoles' of
that popular romance. In spite of frequent visits to the bathroom their
hands and collars are continually smeared with ink; when they go for
walks at least one of them falls into the ditch and cuts his trousers;
they are all dog-eared except at meal times and at the start of the
morning's work. And they have the same attitude to life. They are
continually forming rival gangs; they are on the brink of feuds and
jealousies. They side against one another. Each boy in turn becomes the
object of general dislike. There is a certain amount of bullying, a
great deal more than there is at most public schools. New boys, for
instance, are subjected to an inquisition. They are asked what their
father is, and whether they would rather be a bigger ass than they look,
or look a bigger ass than they are. At a Public School only one boy in
every twenty gets really ragged, and usually for obvious reasons. But at
a Preparatory School every one has to put up with a certain amount of
persecution. There is a good deal of sycophancy, and the independent
learn many lessons.

But when all is said and done, the really big difference between the
Preparatory and the Public School is the absence of the cult of
athleticism. The scholar is entitled to and receives as much respect as
the cricketer and for obvious reasons. The Preparatory School has to
contend with a far more competitive system than the Public School.
Schools have their ups and downs. Numbers rise and fall, but a Public
School that has a name can be always certain of the support of its old
boys. It has a firmly established tradition. Only a few Preparatory
Schools, on the other hand, possess this questionable advantage. The
name of only a few are familiar. None of them would justify the
journalist in the employment of his cliché 'a household word.' The
Preparatory School depends largely on the energy and personality of one
man, and the scholars are, after all, his exhibition blooms. He may
produce cricketer after cricketer, but the Public School will take all
the credit. We speak of Hedges and Chapman and Stevens as products of
Tonbridge, Uppingham, and U.C.S. respectively. We do not know where they
learnt the groundwork of the game. The scholar, however, comes into
prominence while he is still at his Preparatory School. The name of the
school is put after the name of the successful candidate. It is the
scholar, not the cricketer, who advertises a school. If the head master
of a Preparatory School told you that seven of his old boys were at that
time playing in their Public School Eleven, you would not feel that he
was entitled to any extravagant credit. If, however, he told you that in
one year seven of his boys had won scholarships you would be
considerably impressed. The boys themselves naturally, of course, are
more interested in cricket than in Greek, but they appreciate that
scholastic triumph has a marketable value, and the school officially is
prouder of its Winchester scholar than of its slow left-hand bowler. The
small boy who goes home for the holidays knows that he can impress his
uncle by the announcement that Hughes got the second Eton scholarship,
but that the statement that they beat Southdown by 100 runs and that
Evans took seven wickets for twenty-three will elicit only a polite
'really.' It is exactly the opposite at a Public School. The new boy
will proudly announce that the captain of his house had played for
Notts. There is a standard by which one can judge public school cricket
and football; there is no more a standard for the performances of
preparatory school athletes than there is for the startling figures of
the village fast bowler. Naturally there is more excitement when a new
boy shows an uncanny apprehension of the theorems of geometry than over
a new boy who brings the ball back naturally from the off. As a result
the preparatory master is inclined to push the clever boys on too fast.
It is the one real mistake that the Preparatory School makes, and it
should be noticed. For it is serious.

A boy of eighteen can stand the strain of systematic coaching; a boy of
twelve cannot. The preparatory scholar is more often than not a
hot-house product. He has drawn on his reserves too early; his mind has
been forced into a groove at the start. He is trained like a pet
Pomeranian, and he is kept in blinkers; he is not allowed to explore
bye-paths that are of interest to him. That would be prejudicial to his
chances. He has to keep on the straight road of scholarship. He may get
his scholarship; he probably will, for such Preparatory Schools are
specialists at the game, but, in the long run, it does not pay. The boy
has been forced too soon and he is stale by the time he gets to his
Public School.

It is very interesting to note how often, in the course of a year or
two, boys who did not get scholarships are higher up in the school than
their successful rivals: a man who starts the half-mile at a hundred
yards pace leads at the end of the first lap, but he does not win the
race. And the preparatory school master is inclined to forget that,
while a Winchester scholarship is the whole race for him, it is only the
first lap for the boy. He naturally wants the credit of the scholarship
for his school, but on the other hand he has to be unselfish. He has to
ask himself whether, in the long run, it is not better for the boy to
carry on with the general routine and take the scholarship examination
in his stride. If he succeeds well and good; if not, there is plenty of
time. And the wise parent will insist on this.

The boy himself, however, realises that his world is that of the green
leaf and the bud. It is a time of sowing. And the fruits will show
elsewhere. He knows that his career will only start when he reaches his
Public School. The fact is always being forced upon his attention. 'This
sort of thing is all very well here,' his masters will tell him, 'but it
won't work at your Public School.' In the same way the commandant at
Sandhurst used to adjure us in his speeches, 'to keep always before you
the thought of the day when you will join your regiment.'

There is the fear and the attraction of the unknown future. And, for the
sake of it, a boy will work far harder than he would otherwise have
done. He looks beyond the rewards and position that his own school
offers. It is not enough to be in the highest form, not enough to be in
the first eleven. He must improve himself so as to be able to take a
high place in the next stage of his career. A public school boy, on the
other hand, regards the honours that his school has to offer as an end
sufficient in themselves. In occasional addresses he is adjured to think
of the day when he will have to step out of that cloistered peace into
the rush and traffic of life; but that day is distant. He has little
ambition beyond 'a ribboned coat' and a seat at the high table. His
horizon is contracted, and his behaviour is that of those who do not
believe in a survival after death. He places an undue value upon the
immediate and the present. The preparatory school boy always looks ahead
to a future stage of life. And so it is that, when the last day at
school comes, he is not the victim of the surprised sentimentality that
overcomes the public school boy. He has begun to feel that he has
outgrown his surroundings. He has chafed at the restraint of childhood.
He has felt that success or failure is of little importance: so soon he
will be making a fresh start. He has lived in the future. He has spent
long summer evenings reading the history of his new school. He has
studied photographs of its buildings; he has pored over old numbers of
the school magazines, and has formed a romantic conception of the giants
of whose prowess he has read. The future opens before him with
limitless opportunities, and he can face it with an eager confidence
after his five long years of discipline. How long they have taken in the
passing, and yet in retrospect how flat they appear, how colourless, how
tiresome. Nothing has happened; day has followed day. Ah, well, that is
over now. Life is to begin. The new boy sets out hungry for experience.
On the last day at his Preparatory School he is addressed, in company
with the other boys who are leaving, by the head master. His egotism is
flattered by the assurance that the honour of his old school lies in his
hands. He is told that he will need a firm upper lip and a stout heart.
He listens to a recommendation of honesty, truthfulness, and
courage--all this he has heard before. He has read so many school
stories. And then, suddenly, he is startled by a warning against
temptations, the nature of which he imperfectly understands. His
curiosity is roused. He learns that if he yields to these temptations
his career will be spoilt, his health and brain will be ruined. How this
fate is going to be brought about he is not certain, but he agrees with
his head master that it is a fatality at all costs to be avoided. He
asks a friend for enlightenment and receives a superior answer of: 'Oh,
don't you know!' which makes him think that his friend knows even less
about it than he does. At any rate this particular temptation has not
yet presented itself, and the acknowledgment of its existence fades from
his contemplation of a golden future.




CHAPTER III

THE NEW BOY


Alpha and Omega are the most widely known letters of the Greek alphabet.
And the first and last weeks of a public school career have inspired
more essays and sermons than the other two hundred and fifty weeks put
together. Yet in neither the beginning nor the end is to be found the
essence of school life. The last week is a period of agreeable
sentiment. The first of embarrassed loneliness. The new boy feels that
he has no part in the life of the school. On that first afternoon, when
he has said good-bye to his parents, and turns to walk away from the
station, the school buildings, chapel, studies, cloisters, assume in the
mellow September sunlight the prospect of a distant city that one day he
may be privileged to enter. At present he is outside it, as he stands at
the edge of the courts, forlorn in his black tie and wide brimmed straw
hat, while the stream of boys in bowler hats and gaily coloured ties
pours up from the station. On all sides he hears shouts of welcome,
snatches of eager conversation. No one takes the least notice of him. He
is an unrecognised foreigner.

During supper, he sits silent and nervous among the new boys at the
day-room table. From time to time he casts hesitating glances at the
raised table where the prefects sit. What giants they seem. He wonders
which is Featherstone, the head of the House?[1] Is that imposing figure
with the black hair brushed back from his forehead, the G. O. Evans, who
made 121 in the Public School's match at Lords? Can it be possible that
he and they are members of the same society?

A prefect rises from the high table and leaves the hall. Immediately
forms are pushed back and the long narrow passage leading to the
dormitories is filled with sound. The new boy is taken with the stream.
What will happen to him now, he wonders? He has always understood that
most of the ragging takes place in the dormitories. Will all new boys be
subjected to some common lot? In a way he almost hopes that they will.
He may thus be given an opportunity of showing his courage. He will be
marked down at once as 'a bit of a sport.'

But nothing happens. He walks timidly into the large airy room with its
bare boards, its row of wash-hand stands and red-quilted beds. He sees
his bag lying in the middle of the floor. Three hours earlier when he
and his parents had been shown round by the house-master's wife, he had
placed his bag on the corner bed. It had seemed to him a good idea to
reserve that particular bed. He would then be open to attack only on
one side. Memories of Horatius Cocles had stirred his imagination. But
some one else is already undressing there. He picks up his bag, and is
about to place it on the bed nearest him when a warning voice informs
him that Jones has bagged that bed. He looks round him in dismay. There
are only two vacant beds. 'May I have that one?' he asks. The boy with
the warning voice looks surprised at being questioned. 'I should think
so,' he says, 'unless Hughes wants it. He had it last term.' The new boy
does not know whether or not he dare begin to undress beside the bed
that Hughes may possibly commandeer. He stands irresolute; then decides
to take the risk. There is nothing to choose between the two positions,
and Hughes would probably prefer a change.

He begins slowly to undress. No one takes the least notice of him. No
one evinces the slightest inclination to test the courage of the new
man. No hardened bully enters with a blanket. It is possible that two
blasé young gentlemen from another dormitory will stroll in 'just to
have a look at the new men,' will make a cursory examination, and having
expressed their disgust at 'such an appalling crew,' will seek better
fortune elsewhere. That will be all. The inquisition of preparatory
school terrors is a myth. This generation is not more timid than its
predecessors, but it is more subtle. The boy who has just ceased to be
labelled 'new' wishes to impress his importance on the new boy. Forty
years ago he achieved this object by putting the new boy on a chair and
throwing boots at him. The appeal to physical force was not, however,
invariably successful. Sometimes the small boy retaliated, and there is
no reason why a boy of thirteen should not be a match for one of
fourteen. At any rate the 'year older' has accepted the twentieth
century doctrine that the easiest way to impress a person is to ignore
him. And so the boy of a year's standing assumes an air of Olympian
superiority. The new man is beneath his notice. He prefers to lean in
the doorway of the dormitory, and talk of the days when 'Meredith had
that far bed, and Johnstone had the wash-hand stand beneath the window.'
He will casually let fall the names of the mighty and note their effect
on the young. In the daytime he is probably quite an insignificant
person, low in form and a funk at football. He can only appear great in
the presence of his juniors during the quarter of an hour between supper
and lights out. He therefore takes enormous pains to secure the
admiration of those whom he affects to despise.

It is the same everywhere. At Sandhurst, on the first night of each
term, the seniors used to cluster round the piano and sing till 'rooms'
with incredible violence and discord. It was done entirely to impress
the juniors, and on the whole I am inclined to think it was successful.
The junior is a shy person, and the din has on him an effect not unlike
that of an intensive bombardment. As the junior sits in a far corner of
the anteroom, cowed and unhappy by an exhibition that is being
conducted, though he does not know it, entirely for his benefit, so does
the new boy lie back in bed on his first night, wondering what it is all
about.

The jargon puzzles him; the attitude to life puzzles him. The boy with
the warning voice is lamenting that he has got his 'budge.'

'Rotten luck,' he says. 'I should like to have stopped in old Moke's for
at least a year. I did just well enough in each paper to avoid being
bottled. Fourteenth I came out, and now they've started a new form, so
we've all got shoved up.' The rest of the dormitory express sympathy.
Then some one wonders whether Davenport will turn 'pi' now he's a 'pre';
the opinion is expressed that Ferguson will find himself pretty lonely
now that Wodehouse has left. A lot of people have apparently been
waiting a long time to kick him with impunity. Some one says, 'Let's
make up the Fifteen,' and the rival claims of Bradshaw and Murray are
carefully weighed. And all the while four wretched new boys listen in
silent, confused wonderment.

The conversation gradually becomes spasmodic. There are longer and
longer pauses between the conclusion of one topic and the introduction
of another. 'Well,' says the senior boy, 'about time we were going to
sleep. Good-night all.' There is a murmur of 'good-night': silence: and
then again the warning voice. 'Oh, but I say, Stewart, what about the
new men's concert?' There is immediate interest among the senior
members. Of course, they had forgotten that ... the new men's concert.

'Too late now,' says Stewart. 'Let's have it on Sunday.'

'Hear that, you new fellows; you must all have a song by Sunday.
Good-night.'

But there is little sleep for the new boy. Where is he? What has
happened to him? Such a little while ago he was secure, garrisoned,
sheltered by his home. Only twelve hours. He begins to wish that he had
not been so anxious to leave his prep. Why hadn't he stayed on there
another year? He would have been head of the school. At this very moment
if he had not been so absurdly impetuous he would be turning over to go
to sleep, having wished his dormitory 'good-night.' Just as Stewart had
done. The thought of the concert terrifies him. He is a bad singer. Will
they make him stand on a chair? will they throw boots at him if his
voice quavers, or if he forgets the words? It will be a long-drawn
agony.

And for a couple of days he is made wretched by the prospect of this
ordeal. It allows him no peace of mind. In form, on the football field,
as he walks up to the tuck shop, the disquieting thought descends to
torture him. But in the end it is a very tame affair. It takes place
after lights out, and new boys, as well as lovers, win a strange courage
of the darkness. Moreover, the object of the concert is to amuse the
senior members of the dormitory, and bad singing amuses no one. Myself,
I remember being stopped before I had completed one verse of 'The
British Grenadiers,' whereas the boy next to me, who had an agreeable
treble voice was made to sing, 'Put on your ta-ta, little girlie,' every
other night for the rest of the term.

The concert is practically the sole direct ordeal that a new boy has to
face: yet it is probable that he would, on the whole, prefer the
old-fashioned methods. It is better to be ragged than to be ignored. And
he spends most of his first week wondering whether he has done the right
thing. It is especially difficult if he finds himself placed high in the
school. The lower forms are mainly composed of new boys, companions in
calamity, and the master in charge of the second is lenient during the
early days. It is different for the boy who finds himself in the Lower
Fifth, or Upper Fourth. As likely as not there is only one other new boy
in his house in the same form, and, when he cannot find that particular
boy, there is no one to whom he may turn for advice. He soon learns that
it is not wise to carry his troubles to his seniors. He may find himself
in his house-master's study, waiting to hand in the list of books he
will require, and suddenly he remembers that he has forgotten to put
down his Latin prose book on the list; he has also forgotten what Latin
prose book his form uses. He casts a despairing eye round the room and
recognises, leaning against a bookcase the languid, supercilious figure
of Watney. What luck, he thinks, Watney has been in the Upper Fourth
two years. He is sure to know. The new boy edges towards him. 'Please,'
he asks, 'what Latin prose book do we use?'

His query is met by a look of amazed, outraged disapproval. Watney looks
him up and down. Then at last: 'Who are "we"?' he says. The experiment
is not repeated. The new boy arrives in form without his Latin prose
book and is threatened with an imposition.

The geography of the school is very puzzling.

No new boy could be expected to gather much help from the information
that his class-room is 'under the library, up on the right, next to
Uncle Ned's.' For at least a week he is always entering the wrong form
room. In the lower forms it is customary for the master to glance round
the class, see that five boys are missing, and send the senior member in
search of them as a matter of course. Indeed the first week of term is
very pleasant for the senior member of the lower forms. He spends most
of his time searching for lost lambs, and he is in no frantic haste to
complete his task. But that is in the lower form, and, in the middle and
upper schools, form masters do not care to have their time wasted. The
absence of Jones mi. is not regarded as a joke.

Nicknames are confusing.

The new boy does not realise that 'Crusoe' and Mr Robinson are the same
person. And, when he finds himself a quarter of an hour late in Mr
Robinson's class-room, his excuse that he thought he had to go to 'Mr
Crusoe' is not an official success. He is always on the brink of a
mistake.

Probably his life is further complicated by the fact that he is playing
Rugby football for the first time, and, for at least a month, his
performances on the field can give him little satisfaction and less
amusement. In the course of two or three puntabouts he is taught by his
house-captain how to pack and how to take a pass. He is then drafted on
to pick ups and house-games to fare as best he may. He fares extremely
badly. He hangs about on the edge of the scrum. He catches hold of his
opponents when they are dribbling and attempts an Association barge when
they are running. For a long time he never touches the ball with his
hands at all, and on the rare occasions when he discovers it at his
feet, he takes a terrific rout at it and is contemptuously informed that
he is not playing soccer. He is playing with boys older and heavier than
himself. He has little chance of acquiring self-confidence: no
footballer is really any use till he has scored a try, and that day is
slow in coming. The new boy's chief anxiety on the field is to avoid the
notice of any house caps that may be on the touchline. At half-time he
will rub worm-casts on his knees to present an appearance of muddy
valour. He is terribly afraid he will be reported and beaten for
slacking. This fate rarely, as a matter of fact, overtakes a small boy.
A beating for slackness is usually reserved for the boy about half-way
up the house who has committed no definite offence, but has been making
a nuisance of himself generally.[2] Slackness on the field is the excuse
for an official reprimand, and its effect is usually salutary. This,
however, the new boy does not know. Games, when the house-captain is on
the touchline, become a misery. During his first term he looks forward
to the First Fifteen matches chiefly because on those days he will not
himself have to play.

But it is in his spare time that he most acutely feels himself outside
the general life of the school. He is oppressed by liberty. He does not
know what to do with it. At his Preparatory School an elaborate
time-table was posted on the notice-board, and every moment of his day
was pigeonholed. A boy had no excuse for not knowing at any given time
what he ought to be doing, and where he ought to be doing it. There was
constant supervision. But, at a Public School, provided a boy answers
his name at roll-call, and fulfils his social engagements in the form
room and on the football field, no one worries much what he is doing
during the rest of the time. He can search for plovers' eggs, or hunt
for fossils, or develop photographs, or overeat at the tuck shop. He is
his own master, and this the new boy cannot understand. When he has
changed after football on a half-holiday he asks himself: 'What ought I
to be doing now?' The answer is, of course: 'Nothing in particular.
Whatever you like.' A disconcerting answer, for there is nothing in
particular that he wants to do. The day room is inhospitable. The big
chairs round the fire are occupied by the mighty. The library is only of
less interest to him than the museum. The tuck shop at such an hour is
full of bloods in whose presence he feels embarrassed. He wanders
disconsolately round the courts. All the other new boys seem to have
found something to do (a common delusion this). In the end he succeeds
in finding some one equally lonely with whom he goes for a walk: and a
walk, unless one is a botanist, is such a strange way of spending an
afternoon, that I have since wondered whether any one after his first
term ever goes for a walk at school without an ulterior motive, except
when he is in training.

It is a strange business that first term, and its importance is, I
think, overrated. It is not public school life. It is composed of the
hesitations, the reactions of a novice. School life is on the other side
of it. The new boy sees that life in fragments. It puzzles him. He tries
to fit it into shape with the scale of values he acquired at his
Preparatory School. And fails. The Preparatory School belongs to
childhood, the Public School to adolescence. The new boy understands
little of what is going on round him. Indeed there is no person whose
testimony can be less relied upon than that of the new boy of four
weeks' standing. He never knows what he should, and what he should not,
believe. The new life is so strange to him that he is prepared to accept
any absurdity for the truth. The veriest nincompoop can pull his leg.

The following story is true.

It was the custom in my house for the matron to put out clean
underclothes for each boy on Saturday evening. On my first Saturday I
noticed that no clean pants had been put out for me. I asked an elder
boy why this was. 'Oh, don't you know?' he said, 'we only have clean
pants twice a term.' I believed him. The matron thought that I, in
common with many others, did not start wearing pants till well into the
winter. In consequence I wore the same pair till the second week in
November. It is the same with regard to the more serious issues of
school life. Mischief is often caused by the mistaken ideas that new
boys give their parents of what does and what does not go on in their
house.

I was provided the other day with a good example. At a certain house in
a famous school it was the practice of the house-master's wife to sit at
the day-room table for lunch. The idea was admirable. The house-master's
wife was a sympathetic woman who wished to recall to the small boys the
regenerating atmosphere of their homes. The results, however, were
unfortunate. The small boys became communicative. In their innocence
they repeated stories of which the true significance had escaped them.
In their ignorance they misinterpreted stories of which the nature
happened to be direct. In neither case did the reputation of certain
light-hearted sportsmen on the Va. table rise in the official esteem.
Indeed of that particular house there was composed a limerick, the exact
wording of which has more humour than propriety, to the effect that the
house reports of the Sixth Form table were written by the fags. Few
parents, however, would accept this explanation.

Officially the first term is usually an unqualified success. The new boy
is not distracted from his studies by the stress of house politics nor
by the ambitions of the football field. The weekly form order is his
chief excitement. And it would be surprising, considering the qualified
enthusiasm with which the majority of the form welcome this occurrence,
if the new boy did not soon find himself in the running for promotion.
There is, indeed, little else for him to do.[3] He lives in a world of
his own. He sees a good deal of new boys in other houses, and the usual
question in break on Saturday morning is: 'Where were you this week?'
His offences against discipline are inconsiderable. It is 'side' for a
new boy to rag in the day room, in the changing room, and in the
dormitories. That is the privilege of his seniors. He is not hardened
enough to rag in form. He still regards work as important. I remember
once seeing a very small and inoffensive scholar crumple up a sheet of
paper and fling it at the head of his chemistry master. He maintained,
however, that he was aiming at the waste-paper basket, and, though the
excuse was not accepted, the offender's subsequent performances on the
cricket field have inclined me to think he spoke the truth. At any rate
this is the sole piece of audacity on the part of a new boy that I have
witnessed. Indeed the new boy who does not return home with a thundering
good report is a well-placed candidate for expulsion. Most of us start
well. How many public school boys would have to confess that they won
their only prize in their first term. The new boy returns home as from a
Roman triumph. The indulgent father is prodigal of largess and
theatre-tickets. His secretary is instructed to type out the report and
send copies of it to aunts and uncles and his former head master. It is
a great occasion, and we do well to make the most of it. It does not
come twice.

The change begins, I suppose, on the first evening of the second term,
when the novice, clad appropriately in bowler hat and coloured tie, is
accosted by a member of the form into which he has been promoted and
informed that he will be expected to do the 'con' for them that term.
There is no threat. It is merely the announcement of an arrangement for
mutual help. The old stagers who have slowly moved up the school, with
the danger of superannuation camping on their trail, consider that their
last terms should pass in a soft tranquility. They expect the newcomer
to provide them with that peace. 'Here,' they say, 'is a smart lad who
has got his promotion straight away; he can be of great service to us.'
It is a form of practical communism of which the scholar is particularly
the victim. There is a general conscription of intellect. Scholars are
expected to do the work of the bloods. 'You are paid to come here,' say
the great men, 'you must prove yourselves worthy of your hire.' Arnold
Lunn has described how the captain of his house used to hold an
educational raffle. Slips of paper on which were written: 'Greek Prose';
'Latin Prose'; 'Essay,' were placed in a hat and the scholars took their
chance of drawing a blank. I can still hear the voice of the school
fast-bowler shouting over the banisters to a wretched goggle-eyed youth,
'No. 69, Becke, and shove it in my study before prayers.'

But the scholar is an exceptional person, and the novice who is accosted
in the courts has an easier fate. He does not have to do other people's
work. He merely has to do his own out loud. He is, moreover, a
privileged person. He does not have to look the words up in a
dictionary. That is the task of another member of the combination. He is
spared the hack work of translation. It is for him to discover the
sense. At a first glance it would seem that this arrangement would be to
the advantage of the new boy; certainly it will ensure his industry.
There is no chance of his scamping his work. The fate of others depends
on his efficiency, and it does not pay him to guess at the sense. I
remember once translating _Remotis arbielis, surrexit e lectulo_,
'having kicked off his bedclothes he rose from his bed.' No one
questioned the interpretation, so I proceeded to the next sentence. None
of us luckily was put on to translate that passage, but I can recall now
the icy looks of the other members of the combination when the sentence
was correctly rendered. I made a bolt for it afterwards, but they caught
me. I did not guess again.

The form interpreter is never able to say to himself: 'I went on to con
yesterday, and I went on the day before, there's not the least
likelihood of my being put on to-day. I shan't prepare it.' He has to
labour for the general good, and probably, by the end of the term, he
knows the Latin and Greek books pretty well. But he has not only learnt
the correct rendering of certain obscure classical passages; he has
learnt also, through contact with older boys, the correct public school
attitude to work and the relative importance of football and
mathematics.

This is what he learns.

It is the business of the school to win their matches and to produce
first-class footballers and cricketers; it is the business of the house
to win their house matches and to produce as many colours as possible.
It is the business of every individual member of the school to subscribe
to this creed. The value of scholastic achievements is relative. It is a
feather in the cap of a double first to be privileged to wear the dark
blue ribbon of the Sixth. But it is not a necessary achievement.
Scholars, on the other hand, should work. They are no use to the school
at games. It is for them to do what little lies within their power; a
scholarship has its value. The school likes to get scholarships. It is a
side show, of course, but a creditable side show. And the Fourth Former,
after recounting the feats of Lewis in the big school match, comments on
the fact that Bevan won a Balliol scholarship in the same way that the
village greengrocer will say: 'Oh, yes, sir, we have a drapery
department, too.' Real brains are accorded a sort of grudging
admiration. They are entitled to respect. A Fellow has done his job
well. It may not be an important job, but he has done it. Our Fourth
Former remembers the parable of the talents. The Balliol scholar has
converted his one talent into two.

The boy, however, who, without being a scholar, shows unusual signs of
industry, is a swot. Valuable time is wasted. The school is divided into
two parts: the scholars and the rest. The rest brings to its work
whatever energy is saved from its more arduous activities. No one thinks
any the less of a man for being low in form. Slackness on the football
field is anti-social. In the long category of an unpopular boy's offence
the final evidence of worthlessness is the statement: 'He doesn't even
work.' Even that resort, 'that last infirmity,' is denied him. What
purpose has his existence? These are the articles of faith; these are
the conventions. And the new boy who is ambitious, who wishes to win
the respect and admiration of his comrades realises that athletic
prowess will win him a position that is beyond the reach of the
liveliest intellect. He begins to look on his work as a side show. It
does not particularly matter what happens to him in the class-room. It
would be nice to reach the Sixth. There are agreeable privileges. But it
is not of first importance.

No sooner has he decided this, than he discovers that his form work is
intolerably dull. Of course he does. He brings no enthusiasm to it. The
masters who can inspire the indifferent are rare. And the mind wanders
from the inky desks, the hunched row of shoulders, and the far voice of
a master droning monotonously, to the swimming bath and the cricket
field. Will Butler get the cricket cup? Did Frobisher get his firsts
because he was worth them, or because he was in the Captain's house?
These topics offer inviting prospects; speculation follows speculation
till suddenly the tired voice breaks into the day-dream: 'Will you
continue now, please, Dunkin?' There is a scuffle as Dunkin collects his
books and thoughts. There is a whisper of: 'Where's the place?' 'What
does _crates favorum_ mean?' And the delinquent begins to stumble
through his lines in a fashion that may, or may not, result in an
imposition. To the unresponsive the atmosphere is one of intolerable
listlessness.

He makes another discovery, namely, that during his first term he did
far more work than was strictly necessary. That he should discover the
idiosyncracies of certain masters was a matter of course. Sooner or
later he would have been bound to learn that in Old Mouldy's he could
pin the repetition on to the back of the boy in front of him, that the
Moke's mathematical class provided him with an admirable opportunity for
writing the imposition that his house-master had given him the evening
before. A good batsman soon sizes up the opposing fieldsmen; he knows
whether he can risk a single to cover, or whether there is one for a
throw when the ball goes slowly to third man. That is part of the game.
The new boy makes more important discoveries than that. He comes to
understand the intricacies of the set system by which the middle and
upper schools learn French, German, Science, and Mathematics.

For the days have passed when a boy learnt only Latin and Greek and a
little French grammar. A liberal education is supposed to give him a
general idea of a wide number of subjects. A choice of subjects is
allowed, and it is hard to arrange a fair system of marking that will
bring the boy who does German into line with the boy who does Greek.
Each school tackles the situation in a different way, but each system
probably leaves a loophole for the idle. It could hardly be otherwise,
and it is enough to describe one system and the tactics that are adopted
to cope with it.

This particular system works as follows: It is accepted that the only
universal subjects, that is, the only subjects that are studied by the
whole form under the same master, are Latin and English, and, under
English, are to be included History, Literature, Geography, and
Divinity. On the marks earned in these subjects the form order and
promotion depends. All other subjects, Greek, German, French, Science,
and Mathematics are treated independently of the form order and are
taught in sets of varying standards. It would seem to be a very sound
scheme. A boy, for instance, may be a bad historian and a poor classic,
but a fine mathematician. If all subjects were included in the same
order he would be kept back by his bad English and Latin and would have
to do algebra that he had long outgrown, yet at the same time his
mathematical ability would place him in a form where the English and
classics would be too difficult for him. Under the set system it is
possible for the boy to reach the highest set in the school at
mathematics and yet remain in the Shell or Lower Fourth.

During his first term the new boy worked with equal industry at form and
set subjects. During his second term he realises that he is wasting his
energy. Proficiency in Greek will not help him to secure his promotion
into the Lower Fifth; whereas, if he takes things easily at Greek, he
will be able to spend more time on History and Latin. Indeed, it might
be said that the wily one 'makes a book' in form and set subjects. He
appreciates the need of reserve strength. He ought always to have a
little in hand. He casts his eye down his time-table. There is no
reason why he should not spare himself during the hour in the
laboratory. The time might be so much more profitably devoted to his
Latin 'con'; and at the time, of course, he will not consider the
possibility of allowing such an arrangement to divert in any way his
classical activities in 'prep' on the previous night. Far from it. He
will have an opportunity to revise. He again studies his time-table.
French with 'Bogus.' A little relaxation there is possible. Greek with
'Crusoe,' however, presents difficulties. Crusoe is something of a
martinet; he expects lessons to be prepared, and he has a way of
remembering what impositions he has set. He will have to work hard for
Crusoe. Indeed it would be as well if he tried an honest, or the
equivalent for an honest term's work for Crusoe. Is not the next set
conducted by the Moke on admirably communal grounds. In the Moke's every
one helps every one. There is no haste, no envy, no striving for
position. A few scholars hurry through on their way to Balliol
scholarships. They do not matter. They are only ripples on the surface
of that calm, deep pool.

Sometimes 'the book is made' the other way. A member of the school
eleven has at last reached the Lower Fifth, and is content for a term or
two to rest upon his achievements. He decides to do just enough work to
avoid being bottled. He realises, however, that it will be as well for
his father's peace of mind if a few single figures appear after his name
in the report. And so he devotes himself to Chemistry and French. Two
subjects appear on the time-table for each evening's preparation. And it
is a bad day when it is impossible to dismiss at least one of them in a
quarter of an hour.

Examinations present difficulties. And it is here that the new boy, at
the end of the summer term, makes his first serious compromise with the
rigid code of ethics that he has brought with him from his Preparatory
School. Why should he not crib in set subjects. They are unimportant.
Promotion does not depend on them. He is not taking an unfair advantage
of any one else. He will only do just well enough to avoid having to do
the paper again. Why should he have to spend hours sweating up a useless
subject. It is absurd. Besides, cribbing is rather an exciting game. It
is a daring feat to smuggle the principal parts of the irregular verb,
into a waistcoat pocket. It needs courage to open a French dictionary
beneath the desk. He will be able to talk about it afterwards, and
fellows will say he is a sport. It is the first step, and afterwards the
compromise becomes increasingly easy.

He returns home at the end of his first year fortified with a deal of
worldly wisdom. He looks forward to the next year hopefully. He knows
where he is now. He has learnt the tricks of the trade. It is all going
to be splendid fun.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] I have used throughout this book the idiom of my own school. The
Head of a house or of the school is the head boy in work. The
Captainship of a house or of the school is a term applicable only to
athletic prominence.

[2] I am speaking of the average house. There are frequent occasions, of
course, in bad houses where this privilege of the house-captain is
abused.

[3] It has even been known for a new boy to work in his spare time.




CHAPTER IV

THE SECOND YEAR


And it is splendid fun. Let us make no mistake about that. It is
splendid fun. For the ordinary boy, for all those, that is to say, who
have not been designed by nature for the contemptuous entertainment of
their companions, nothing is much better than the second and third
years. It is a light-hearted, swash-buckling period. The anxieties of
the fag have been forgotten, the responsibilities of the Sixth Former
are still remote. The second yearer can rag, and his ragging is not
taken seriously. At the end of the term house-masters do not address him
solemnly and appeal to his better nature. They beat him, and that makes
it a square fight. He knows where he is. He has to remain on the right
side of the law. If he passes the limit, he knows what to expect. Later
on the issue will be complicated by his position: for a while he can
afford to be an irresponsible free-lance.

It is a happy time of eager unreflecting action. There is a good deal of
noisiness and 'showing off.' But it is harmless. A boy has just begun to
find himself. He is free at last. At his Preparatory School he was
always under the eye of authority. His freedom was enmeshed by a network
of regulations. His first year at his Public School his freedom was
fettered by nervousness and prejudice. That is over now. I sometimes
think that we love Charlie Chaplin so dearly because he does all the
things we have not the courage to do ourselves. When a waiter hurries
past us with a pile of plates, how delightful it would be, we think, to
drive our feet between his legs; who would not love to hurl a brick at a
retreating foe; who is not tempted to crook his walking-stick round the
ankles of the pompous. We never do these things; not as we should like
to do them. But we come as near as we ever shall come to the attainment
of this desire during our second year at school. On a small scale it is
permitted us to destroy furniture. We can pull chairs from beneath an
unsuspecting foe. The strings of a hammock have been cut to the
discomfiture of the occupant. The terminal bill for breakages is often
considerable, but no one is ever really hurt.

For what little bullying exists nowadays the second and third yearers
are in the main responsible. The effect of a new-found freedom is
intoxicating. And there is always a boy in every house who is an
irresistible butt. There is a compound German word that means
'face-that-invites-a-box-on-the-ear.' And such a physiognomy is the
invariable possession of at least one scholar; in its own way the
magnetic influence of such ugliness is as irresistible as the charm of a
pretty woman. One has only to see that particular brand of face to want
to heave a boot at it. One refrains seldom. It used to be held that
every house contains one bully. It would be truer to say that every
house contains one boy who is bullied. Most boys go through their
schooldays without being subjected to any bullying, but most boys
indulge in a little spasmodic bullying themselves. It is a sort of bull
baiting, and it is in the main good-natured.

Four or five fellows are sitting in a study after tea. There are still
twenty minutes before lock-up, and the conversation has grown desultory.
They all feel a little bored. One of them suggests that they should go
and see how that ass 'Sniffy' is getting on. It is a popular suggestion,
and a raid is made upon Sniffy's study. Sniffy is discovered working.
This is considered to be a disgrace to the house, and Sniffy is informed
of the fact. He invites his guests to get out. 'But, my dear Sniffy,
what hospitality! Surely you are going to offer us a chair! No? Then we
must teach you manners!' Sniffy's chair is suddenly jerked from under
him and Sniffy is flung forward on to his table. He jumps up and lets
fly at one of his assailants. It is no fun ragging some one who does not
retaliate, and proceedings are soon less cordial. In the end Sniffy's
study is pretty effectively wrecked. This happens about once a
fortnight, but, beyond this, I am inclined to think that, except in a
bad house, there is very little bullying now in Public Schools.

The tone of a house changes far more quickly than the tone of a school.
And, in every school, there is usually a thoroughly bad house. As a
house-master grows old he tends to leave the management of the house
more and more in the hands of his prefects. As long as his prefects are
efficient all goes well; but, sooner or later, a weak head is bound to
come, and then the swash-buckling element gets out of hand. One of the
houses when I first went to school had got into this state. The head boy
was easy-going, and there were in the day room two members of the First
Fifteen who had in school failed to reach the Lower Fourth and who were
thorough 'wrong 'uns.' Terrible tales of refined torture used to be
repeated in the upper dormitories, and I can well believe that life
there was pretty wretched. But I always distrust second-hand accounts.
Nothing is more easily distorted than the story of atrocities, and, for
my part, I have neither been a victim, nor the witness of any serious
bullying. The only case that reached official notice during my time
savoured strongly of the ludicrous.

A parent had complained that his son had been ill-treated, and all the
house prefects were summoned into the head master's presence. The
offenders were leaning nervously against the wall; their victim was
enduring tortures of self-consciousness; the head master was fingering
his pen, and the avenging father blocked up the entire fireplace. There
was a dead silence. We were all hard put to it not to smile. The
offenders looked so much smaller than the prey. At last proceedings were
opened by the boy's parent. He followed the traditional line. He had
been a boy. He knew what boys were. He knew the public school code of
honour. He loathed sneaking. His boy had not sneaked. The confession had
been dragged out of him. What he, the father, wanted, was not
punishment, but the assurance that such a thing would not happen again.
'And now, John,' he concluded, 'show the head master that bruise upon
your arm.' Very sheepishly the boy drew off his coat, rolled up his
sleeve and revealed a bruise, certainly of extensive proportions.

'How did they do that?' asked the chief.

'By flicking him with wet towels, head master,' said the parent.

A simultaneous denial came from both offenders. 'We didn't make that
bruise, sir.'

'But did you flick him?' asked the chief.

'Well, sir; yes.'

'Then how on earth can you tell that you did not make that bruise?'

There was a moment's silence, during which the smaller of the offenders
surveyed the wound with an almost envious eye.

'It couldn't have been me, sir,' he said at last. 'I can't flick well
enough to have done that.'

I hope I may be pardoned for retelling this story, which I have already
told elsewhere. But it seems to me to interpret perfectly the attitude
towards bullying that exists in most houses. No doubt there was a great
deal of bullying fifty years ago. And people think that what was true of
the Rugby of _Tom Brown's Schooldays_ is true of the Shrewsbury of
to-day. They still think that the three chief sins of a Public School
are bullying, stealing, and midnight escapades into the town. But those
days have passed. In Desmond Coke's _The Bending of a Twig_ the new boy
who sought for bullies behind every cloister quickly won the nickname of
Don Q.

It is usually during the course of his fourth term that a boy first
begins to swear. For swearing is, on the whole, confined to members of
the Middle School. It is side for a fag to swear, and an oath, except on
rare occasions, is considered beneath the dignity of a blood. He is
supposed to dwell in an Olympian fastness beyond the reach of
inconvenience, where the need for violent language is infrequently
presented. For the second yearer, however, life is full of emotion that
demands to be registered forcibly.

I can never quite see why so many people refuse to believe that a
schoolboy's conversation is punctuated with 'damns' and 'bloodys.' We
employ the idiom of our surroundings. A boy does not swear at home; at
school he does. And there is no particular reason why he should not. An
oath means little to him. He knows that some indecency is implied. But
the meaning of the word is not defined by his use of it. He rarely
employs it appropriately. He recommends the most contradictory
performances. A powerful expression is needed. He wishes the world to
know that he has been moved powerfully either to anger, or to delight.
That is all. Any word that would have this effect would suit him, and I
remember a dormitory captain insisting that the only expletive to be
used in his presence should be 'daggers'; this crasis satisfied every
one. The language a boy uses is no index to his character. Swearing and
'talking smut' are very different things.

It is also in his fourth term that a boy who is anything of an athlete
begins to discover himself on the football field. He finds himself
scoring tries in home games. He is noticed by the bloods as a coming
man. He makes friends among his seniors. He is no longer outside the
life of the school. The road of ambition lies clear and straight before
him. It is marked out in distinct stages. He learnt, of course, during
his first term that a house cap may put one hand in his trouser pockets,
that a seconds may put both, that a first may walk across the sixth form
green in break; but these facts were distant in the imagination like the
ritual of a mediæval court: they now become realities. In a year, he
reminds himself, he will be in his house fifteen. The year after he
should get his house cap. In four years he should be a first. It might,
indeed, be maintained that the blood system is at the same time the
magnet and the expression of the second yearer's ambition. The blood
would not value his performances so highly were he not encouraged by
others in the belief that he is of supreme importance. And, at fifteen,
one idealises the future. It seems splendid to be a blood, to play for
the school against Blackheath, to saunter across the courts with one's
hands in one's pockets, one's books stuck under one's arms; to be on
terms of friendly intercourse with masters, to be beyond the reach of
punishment. And, because the future seems so glorious, the second yearer
idealises the dwellers in it. In the same way that in Chelsea the latest
poet or draughtsman can disregard the social laws of property and of
propriety, in the eyes of the junior the blood can do no wrong. His
voice is hushed when a blood passes him in the cloisters. If one should
speak to him, he blushes and stammers and feels proud of it for days.
The blood naturally endeavours to realise the popular conception of
himself. He owes his position to it. For the higher up the school we go,
the less important the blood appears, and, when our time comes to sit at
the high table, we can hardly believe that we are occupying the same
chair that Meredith sat in four years ago. It is absurd. How the house
must have come down. To think of that little ass, Barton, being a
prefect. How short a time since he was playing in junior house games and
getting cursed for funking. And for ourselves--it is only yesterday that
we were trembling, a diffident new boy, at the far corner of the
day-room table. We cannot but believe our generation to be vastly
inferior to those that have preceded it, and we do not think otherwise
even when we win the senior cricket cup, although in Meredith's year the
house was beaten by an innings in the first round. It is not in our
nature to desire, or even value highly, what we possess. The last year
is often a disappointment.

No such foreknowledge mars the enjoyment and anticipation of the second
yearer. It is indeed hard to imagine a more fortunate combination of
circumstances. From an agreeable present he surveys the prospect of a
delightful future. The days may pass slowly, or swiftly, as they
will--their passage will be a long enchantment.

It is during this period that a boy gets through the majority of his
ragging in form. Now the ragging of masters is a very specialised art.
The master holds all the cards. He has behind him the marshalled forces
of the law. He can cane, he can give lines. He has every implement,
physical and moral, for the preservation of order. He ought to be able
to keep order. Yet the boy usually wins. Indeed, I often wonder how a
master, who has once begun to be ragged, can ever hope to regain order.
He is fighting a confident foe. The new boy learns during his first week
that 'one can do anything one likes in Musty's.' Musty stands no chance.
He enters the form room nervously; he is on the lookout for trouble; he
is afraid to turn his back on the class when he is working on the
blackboard. For ten minutes there is silence, a suspicious silence,
perhaps, but still a silence. Musty tells himself that if any one
attempts to break that silence he will make him sorry for it. He will
punish the first whisper: that is the only way. And then, suddenly, from
the back of the room, comes an ominous sound. It is not a cough: it is
not a sneeze: it is a hideous nasal and vocal croak that Musty has
learnt to recognise as the prelude to rebellion. He observes that some
one is cramming a handkerchief into his mouth, and is choking in the
subdued manner of one who is unsuccessfully stifling a laugh.

Musty decides on action. 'Jones, take that handkerchief out of your
mouth immediately, and you'll spend the afternoon doing me a hundred
lines.' Jones withdraws the handkerchief from his chin, and his face
assumes an expression of outraged innocence. 'But, sir----' he begins.

'A hundred and fifty lines,' snaps Musty.

At this point the democracy of the class feels that its independence has
been violated. There is a murmur of disapproval. And a tall, cadaverous
youth rises from the front desk.

'Please, sir----'

'Silence, Evans.'

'No, sir, but really,' Evans persists, 'I must explain to you, sir, that
the younger Jones is suffering from a very severe cold.'

'Yes, sir, I am,' blurts out the victim. 'And the matron said I was not
to play football this afternoon.'

At this point Musty should, of course, be firm.

'I am sorry,' he should say, 'but, at the same time, that will allow
you, Jones, to do me two hundred lines instead of a hundred and fifty.
And perhaps you, Evans, will do me a hundred and fifty. Thank you. We
will now proceed with the lesson.'

Such tactics might succeed. But Musty hesitates; for a moment he wonders
whether Jones is telling him the truth. And the delay is fatal. Already
other members have started to produce testimonials to Jones mi.'s
integrity and disease. 'He really is awfully bad, sir. My study's next
door to him, and he was coughing all last night. He made such a noise
that I was only able to do you three problems instead of six!'

A general conversation begins. Members cease even to address the chair.
When Evans assures Musty that 'Jones would never tell a lie,' Power
retorts that the other day Jones sold him a watch as new which went
smash at once. 'Dirty little liar, I call him!' 'You wait till
afterwards,' is Jones's reply. And, by the time honour has been
vindicated, there is no chance of restoring order that day. The class is
already out of hand. Jones mi. has the general permission to sneeze as
often as he likes, a permission of which he generously avails himself.

Such a disturbance should have been quelled by a firm hand. Masters have
to run the risk of being unfair. There is, of course, the possibility
that Jones's cold may have been genuine, but his previous record should
preclude it to a 100 to 1 chance. At any rate, it is unlikely that Jones
would be anxious to carry the case to the head master. Criminals avoid
Bow Street.

It is not usually, however, so easy to distinguish the preliminary
manoeuvres. When, for instance, a boy walks quickly up to the master's
desk and says that he thinks there is a peculiar smell in the room, the
master is taken off his guard. He assumes interest. He walks to where
the boy was sitting and sniffs. A polite boy rises and asks respectfully
if anything is the matter. 'No, nothing,' says the master, 'Jones
thought there was a curious smell where he was sitting.' The interest of
the form is quickened. There is a general sound of sniffing. 'Well, sir,
now that Jones comes to mention it, I do seem to recognize--I don't
quite know what it is, sir.'

'Come, come,' says the master, 'that'll do.'

'No, but really, sir, I don't know if it's quite healthy. Do you think
the drains are all right?'

The information is hazarded that there have been several cases of
typhoid recently in the town.

'It must be the drains.'

Then some one suggests that it may be the gas. The school custos is
notoriously careless in these matters. The suggestion is welcomed. At
any rate it deserves investigation. And such investigations, when
conducted by twenty clumsy boys, whose clumsy feet are shod with heavy
boots, are a long and noisy business. Books fall with a clatter on to
the floor. The hindquarters of the inoffensive are accidentally kicked.
Smith endeavours to jump from one desk to another, misses his footing
and crashes on the desk. Musty is lost.

He stands in the middle of the room. He says 'Come, now!' a great many
times. He varies it occasionally with 'That'll do.' He asks Smith
whether he considers that what he is doing 'is really necessary.' At
last a piping unrecognisable voice rises from the far corner. 'It isn't
the gas. It must be Musty himself. He never washes.'

In most schools there are at least two masters who are the continual
victims of such treatment. Such ragging, however, is too simple to
content the truly adventurous. The Mustys of the scholastic world are
objects of contempt, and we prefer to respect our enemies. It is far
more entertaining to rag a disciplinarian. One has to guard oneself. The
master has all the weapons. Among other things the ragster has to work.
If he is unexpectedly put on to con, flounders through a couple of lines
and breaks down completely at the third, he has played into his
opponent's hand. He has deserved the imposition that he will most
certainly get. The ragster must prepare his work. That is part of his
defence. He cannot say to himself: 'I have been on twice running. I
shall not go on to-day.' If he makes a cheeky remark in form, the
master's just retort is: 'Jones, you seem to like talking. I think you
had better translate the next passage.' And, if Jones translates the
passage successfully he feels that he is one up. Such ragging is very
different from the general rag of the complete incompetent. It is a
free-lance affair. It is an art. The majority of masters meet it in some
form or other. It is only a few who are subjected to displays in which
the whole form take part.

Yet it is a puzzle to find out how exactly this ill-fortune selects its
particular victims. Personality is limited. There are only a few who
have a real genius for teaching. The majority are merely competent. And
competence must fall before invention. Why is it that some are ragged
and others not. The ragged master may be an excellent fellow. He may be
good at games; he may be just as exemplary a member of society as his
colleagues, and yet he is selected for this refined torture. There are
some masters for whom one never works hard; one does enough and no more
to avoid being bottled. One sits in the class-room for long, sultry,
tedious hours; the insipid sunlight moves across the wall. One watches a
fly crawl up the window-pane. One writes 'is a fool' upon the desk after
the inscribed name of an enemy. One sticks a compass into the back of
the man in front. Perhaps one revises the next hour's lesson. It may be
that there is an imposition to be completed. The minutes pass slowly;
one longs for the strike of the clock. And yet no one attempts to
enliven the hour with some geniality. The few attempts that are made are
spasmodic and unsuccessful.

We had a master who was nicknamed, I never knew why, Marchand. And, one
day, a boy who was doing translation paused at the French word
_marchand_. 'Please, sir,' he said, 'I don't know what _marchand_
means.' There was no laugh, not even a titter. We were all too
surprised. The master's face did not alter. 'It means merchant, Smith,'
he said, 'and you will stay behind afterwards and speak to me.' He
received six of the best. And it was, no doubt, such a master who made
the historic retort to the boy who, during an hour that was devoted to
the discussion of Old Testament history, inquired what 'harlot' meant.
'A harlot, Jones,' the master answered, 'is a lady who finds herself in
unfortunate circumstances, and you will take two hundred lines.'

If such an answer had been made by Musty, the boy would have
expostulated freely; other members of the form would have interested
themselves in the cause of justice. As it is, Smith gets his half-dozen
and Jones his two hundred lines, and the world says 'silly ass!'

There are certain masters who inspire neither industry nor
insubordination, and yet I suppose that once they, too, had their hour
of trial. So much depends on the first impression. Arnold Lunn has
recounted in _The Harrovians_ the story of one Crabbe, who was so
unmercifully ragged that he had to leave at the end of his first term.
'He went on to another school where his reputation had not preceded him.
He opened his first lesson by setting a boy a hundred lines for
sneezing. After having successfully established a reputation for
unbridled ferocity, he was able, by slow degrees, to relapse into his
natural kindly self.' It is typical of much. The master who has once
allowed himself to be ragged is lost for ever. He may beat, he may line,
he will never restore order. His only chance is to try elsewhere.

The ragging of prefects is of very much the same order. There is less of
it, because the head of the house has a way of jumping suddenly on the
turbulent. 'I hear you were ragging Beetle last night in hall. You've
got to stop it--see? and you're going to get six as a warning!' The head
of the house has more authority than an assistant master. If a boy felt
that an assistant master was unjust he might very well complain to the
head master. But no boy would care to appeal against a boy--that would
be sneaking. A good head of the house sees to it that none of the
prefects are indiscriminately ragged, but there is always one of them
for whom the rest of the house has but little respect, and to whom the
taking of prep is always an anxiety. He beats and lines more than the
rest of the prefects put together. But it has small effect. Indeed the
second yearer acquires a hardened hide. Punishment is no deterrent to
him; it is merely a pawn in the game.




CHAPTER V

ATHLETICISM


By this time the new boy may be truly said to have reached the inner
circle of a public school philosophy. He knows to what gods he must bow
the knee. And he serves dutifully before the altar of the god of sport.

The cult of athleticism has been for a long while the target at which
the enemies of the Public School have launched their abuse. And until
this cult is understood, it is impossible to understand the standards
and the scale of values of a Public School. Every community must have a
religion of sorts, a faith to which all faiths are subservient, a
service which makes the first demands. A man, when called to decide
between two claims, must be able to know which way his duty lies. He may
not follow the claim of duty, but he should be able to distinguish which
it is. In some communities it is the observance of social custom, in
another the making of money is all important, in one the honour of the
regiment, in a second the teaching of the Scriptures. At a Public School
it is athletic prominence.

The position of a school is decided by its performances on the field. If
two men in a club are discussing the merits of a certain school, the
first consideration will be athletics. 'Oh, yes,' they will say.
'Fernhurst stands very well just now. It beat Tonford and Merton last
season, and it's got two fellows in the Varsity eleven.' The social
status of a school is judged, not by the number of Balliol scholars it
has produced, but by the quality of the schools it plays. 'Oh, Marestone
can't be much of a place,' you will hear said. 'They only play a few
grammar schools.'

This fact the new boy realises at once. His father's friends are
impressed when he can tell them that his school has beaten Haileybury.
They display a mild interest at his casual reference to Bennett's
scholarship. The new boy reads in the daily papers enthusiastic articles
on the performances of the school eleven, and he learns that Haslett is
being watched by the county authorities. There is an air of publicity
about every school match. There will be reports in the newspapers. The
new boy feels himself to be participating in a function of considerable
general interest. All over the country people will be wondering what
will chance in this particular encounter. He is on the spot. The Press
accentuates his keenness. How could he, in the face of such a testimony,
doubt the supreme importance of athletics. We believe in the goods that
are most widely advertised. Who ever read an article on the prospects of
the various competitors for a certain exam. Who has read in the _Times_
that 'enormous interest is being taken in the approaching scholarship
examinations. Clifton has several promising scholars. Marston may be
poor at unseen, but he is very deft in his handling of Latin prose, and
he has a good ear for hexameters. Haileybury, on the other hand, place
their faith in Johnson, a steady, industrious worker who can be trusted
to perform consistently in all subjects....' Yet, two or three times a
week, we can read in the _Sportsman_ that Fernhurst has a vastly
improved side and that with Evans back again in the three-quarter line,
is hopeful of emerging triumphantly from the approaching contest with
Tonford.

Public School sport is awarded at the present moment a preposterous
amount of publicity. It is bad for the schools; it is bad for the boys
themselves, and, as far as one can gather, it has not helped English
sport to any appreciable degree. It encourages in schools the belief
that games matter more than anything else. Very often it makes boys
swelled-headed, certainly it makes them think they are bigger than they
are, and is preparing for them a big disappointment. It is so easy to
appear a giant among pigmies. In my own short experience I can remember
more than one player who was described while at school as being an
England batsman in the making, and who now experiences a difficulty in
getting into the county side. Every summer we know by name a whole host
of public school cricketers that are never heard of afterwards. They
have averages of sixty during their last term; their exploits are
described in fervid journalese. They go up to Oxford, fail to reach
double figures in the Freshmen's match, and are quickly submerged in
college cricket. Others go up with enormous reputations, making
centuries in the trial match, and then find that there is a difference
between club and county cricket. They just get their blue with a batting
average of twenty-five; they play for the county during August and do
nothing exceptional. They are just average cricketers, useful members of
a side and nothing more. In the meanwhile the journalists are shrieking
of the natural offbreak of a sixteen-year-old Rugbeian. This particular
type of writer resembles the literary critic who hails every new poet as
a 'second Keats,' and every new novelist as 'a second Hardy,' but loses
interest in his discoveries after the appearance of their fourth book.

There is no need to dive back into past history. We can find enough
examples in post-war cricket. N. E. Partridge in 1919 had a batting
average of 43, and took 71 wickets for under 12 runs each. He had a
magnificent press. Next to Stevens, and perhaps Hedges, he was the most
discussed boy cricketer of the year. On the strength of this boosting he
very nearly received an invitation to play for the Gentlemen at Lords.
As a matter of fact, I am not certain that he did not actually receive
an invitation, and that his head master refused to let him go--but on
that point I am not certain. At any rate his claims were seriously
advanced by a great many reputable judges of the game, among whom I
think Sydney Pardon has to be included. He went up to Cambridge with a
tremendous reputation; he did only moderately. At one time, indeed, it
seemed improbable that he would get his blue. Last season he did nothing
exceptional for Warwickshire. I may, of course, be misjudging a
cricketer whom I have never seen play, but everything would seem to
suggest that Partridge will develop into nothing more exciting than the
average county cricketer.[4]

We could also take the example of L. P. Hedges. I spent the summer of
1918 in a German prison camp; but even to that distant city came news of
the brilliant Tonbridge batsman who was greater even than Hutchings.
During the summer of 1919 the assiduous student of the _Sportsman_ heard
much of him. Every week appeared the score of some fresh triumph, and,
to crown it all, came that brilliant 163 at Lords. It was a gorgeous
show. I was thankful not to be fielding at coverpoint. But, let it be
whispered gently, the bowling did not look particularly difficult, and,
though Hedges's innings was dazzling, a quite ordinary batsman should,
off the same bowling, have been able to help himself to a generous
allowance of fours.

That particular innings marked, I suppose, the height of Hedges's career
from the point of view of press publicity and popular esteem; the height
had been reached, that is to say, before his qualities had been placed
on the open market and tested by the stress of three days' cricket and
the accuracy of professional bowling. We do not hear much of Hedges
nowadays. He has played useful cricket for Oxford and for Kent; but he
has done nothing sensational. And yet, when I saw him last summer make a
50 against Middlesex at Lords, I could not help feeling that he is a
better bat to-day than he was in 1919, and that that 50 in an important
match, against confident bowling, and while Woolley was scratching
uncomfortably at the over end, was in every way a finer performance than
his 163 of two years earlier. He drove Haig and Durston through the
covers as easily as in 1919 he had plastered the ring with boundaries.
And yet the pressmen remained calm.

It is vain and it is unfair to attempt to form a judgment of a person
whose wares are not upon the open market. No one can tell who is, and
who is not, going to prove a test match cricketer. Equally it is
impossible to tell from public school form which boys are potential
cricketers. Who, for example, who saw in 1910 F. H. Knott and D. J.
Knight batting in the Public School's match at Lords realised that
Knight was going to develop into an incomparably greater batsman than
Knott. And yet sportsmen continue to write about boy cricketers with the
seriousness that they devote to Hobbs. They draw the most ridiculous
comparisons. I discovered last summer in one of the most influential
daily papers the following passage in the account of the Public
School's match at Lords: 'There is probably no cricketer, with the
exception of R. H. Spooner, who sees the ball more quickly than J. L.
Guise.' Now anything much more ridiculous I can hardly imagine. It is
like the literary critic, who shall be nameless, who described the work
of a minor poet, who shall be also nameless, as having given him more
pleasure than anything since the first flights of Swinburne. It is
preposterous to speak of Guise, who is an extremely promising cricketer,
as seeing the ball more quickly than any batsman except Spooner. It all
depends on what manner of ball he is seeing. In the Eton match he, no
doubt, saw Allen's deliveries with considerable speed. Spooner, however,
was in the habit of seeing in this manner the deliveries of Cotter,
Tarrant, and Schwarz. Speed of eye is relative to the quality of the
bowling. I should hesitate to call myself a batsman, but there is a type
of ball that I can see with incredible rapidity. It is bowled to me,
alas, too occasionally, in village matches. It is medium paced, it
pitches on the middle stump, a little more than half-way down the pitch,
and it turns away ever so slightly towards the leg. Any one can look a
good bat who is opposed to bad bowling. And I maintain that it is no
sort of sense indulging in wild panegyrics about schoolboys who have
never been tested by first-class bowling.

If a boy seems promising the county authorities should give him a trial,
and, if he does well, then let the pressmen get busy. Every one is so
terrified lest a good man may be overlooked. But how unlikely that is if
the county authorities are at all keen. Trial matches can be arranged.
Visits can be paid to schools. There is no need for this hectic
discovery of twenty Spooners every season. The school figures of players
like Stevens and Chapman and Hubert Ashton would have been quite
sufficient to ensure a proper trial for them. And the fact remains that
in spite of this press work amateur cricket is at a lower ebb now than
it has ever been before. The Gentlemen and Players match has become too
one-sided to stimulate interest in anything save individual
performances. Very few amateurs are good enough to play for England.
Douglas is; and he was not one of the marked men of cricket articles.
His entrance was as untheatrical as his batting. D. J. Knight, is on his
form of 1919, the second best batsman in the country; Stevens, at his
best, is a great match-winning factor; Tennyson and Fender are useful
players. But it is impossible to maintain that there are to-day any
amateur batsmen comparable with Maclaren, Spooner, Fry, Stoddart, and
Jackson, than the cricketers, that is to say, who passed unheralded on
their merits into first-class cricket. The low standard of amateur
cricket cannot be argued away. And this trumpeting of the press could
only be excused, could it be proved to further the interests of amateur
sport in England. Instead of furthering those interests, it works
against them. It makes games at a Public School too much of a business
and too little of a sport. It introduces professionalism. And I am
prepared to wonder how far one really enjoys one's games at school.

One is frightfully excited about them; one is very pleased when one does
well and depressed if one does badly. One works oneself into a state of
nervous misery before a match, and one of hysterical excitement after
it. Victory and defeat mean a great deal. And it was with a real
surprise that I realised a few months ago at the end of a very pleasant
season that, although I should continue to play football for another ten
years, and cricket, I hope, for another forty, I should never again
really care whether the side for which I am playing wins or loses--care,
that is to say, as I cared at school about a house match. In club
cricket and football one asks for a good game in pleasant company, and
victory is incidental. While one is playing, of course, one is keen, but
one will not brood afterwards over one's mistakes,--not as one does
after a school match. There is, I suppose, no public school man under
the sun who does not now and again on some winter evening drop his paper
on his knees and curse himself because, fifteen years ago, he missed a
catch at an important crisis--that is one of the things one never ceases
to regret. That awful moment when one picks up the ball with tingling
fingers and tosses it back to the bowler; it is for all time a vivid
memory. One does not feel like that about an ordinary catch in an
ordinary club game. One is annoyed with oneself; one is sorry for the
bowler; one apologises to the captain, but one remembers that one is
out, after all, to enjoy oneself.

That is the difference between school and club cricket. At school one is
not out to enjoy oneself. It is a business, this getting of runs and
taking of wickets. There are cups for house matches, and there are cups
for batting and bowling averages, and it is a sin to miss a catch. There
are few worse things than the anxiety attendant on those who play on the
fringe of a school side. Not only is one worried about one's own
performances, but about one's rivals. If one has made a duck oneself one
cannot, in spite of one's patriotism, be anxious for a particular rival
to retrieve the fortunes of the side with a century. A first eleven cap
is valued far too highly for such unselfishness. It is equally little
fun to be a member of a bad fifteen. One is subjected to a series of
complaints and recriminations. One grows sick of the whole business. And
I can remember during the first winter of the war the relief with which
we learnt that the Tonbridge match had been scratched. We had a poor
side. We knew that we should be thoroughly trounced, and that, for the
next week, the lives of those who had not distinguished themselves would
be made wretched. We never for a moment questioned the justice of this
tyranny. The Lord our God was a jealous God. We had to serve him. But we
were not sorry that an occasion for his wrath should be removed. I very
much doubt whether the actual playing of games was as pleasant at
school as it is outside it.

The intensity and rapture are irrecoverable. There is nothing to compare
with the elation that follows a victory over a stronger side. But in the
long run I find cricket more enjoyable to-day than I did six years ago.
It is less complicated. One takes a day off from one's work and spends
it in agreeable company. One can field out all day and never take a
wicket, miss a couple of catches, and then crown everything by making a
duck, and yet thoroughly enjoy oneself. At school that would have been a
rotten day, and one would have spent the evening in deep despondency.
Yet everything is in favour of one enjoying one's game at school. It is
so simple. One strolls down after lunch in a leisurely fashion to the
field. One changes one's boots in the pavilion. A hot bath is waiting
for one afterwards. But, in order to play football after one has left,
one has to rush off to catch impossible trains from impossible stations.
One has no time for lunch. The train always seems to start at 1.18.
There is as likely as not a long walk from the station. One changes in a
converted army hut; one is more than a little tired before the game
starts. There are no proper baths afterwards, and one has to hurry, or
one will miss the only train to town: for it is amazing the number of
football fields which are on loop lines with trains at hourly intervals.
And yet, personally, I enjoy my football now a great deal more than I
ever did at school.

It would not be just, however, to lay the blame of this professionalism
to the account of the sporting press. Journalists are rarely responsible
for anything. They do not lead public opinion. They follow it or, if
they are clever, they anticipate it. Had not the worship of athleticism
been already firmly established in the schools themselves it would never
have occurred to them to run it as a stunt. The journalist spends most
of his time searching for a town of blind men over which he, with his
one eye, may rule. And the journalist discovered that the Public School
had enthroned an unofficial king who had not received his due of public
recognition. The journalist decided to officialise his position. To this
king was paid extensive homage; and, as there is no more pleasant
reading for ladies-in-waiting than court gossip, he commenced a column
of court news. But he did not set up the court, or crown the king. He is
only a herald. And we must regard these tiresome articles as a proof,
but not a cause of this peculiar ritual. The trumpeting of the herald
adds certainly to the glamour of the court, but his absence would not
start a revolution. If not another article appeared on public school
sport, the cult of athleticism would still continue; it would continue
because as things are at present there is no other focus for the
enthusiasm and partisanship of a boy of seventeen. There is really
little else about which a schoolboy could reasonably become excited.

Indeed it is hard to see what other results could have been expected
from such a combination of circumstances. Four hundred boys are divided
into ten houses. They are encouraged to feel an intense loyalty for
their house and for their school. They are told that it is up to them to
make their house the best house in the school, and their school the best
school in the country. They set out in all good faith to accomplish
their task. In what, they ask themselves, does the goodness of a house
consist. It is not much sense to speak to them of the moral tone of a
house or school. They desire a tangible manifestation of virtue, 'an
outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.' And the only
available outward and visible sign is the row of silver challenge cups
on the dining-hall mantelpiece. It is natural to assume that the house
which has the most cups is the best house; a school can only prove its
superiority over another school by victory on the football field.
Scholarships are an indirect form of competition. For the best boys from
one school may not come into touch with the best boys of another. But a
victory by 30 points is a direct statement of a fact. The victorious
school is superior to the defeated school. It is in athletic contests
alone that a house or school can express a united will, can become
indeed one person. The loyalty of a boy for his house or school is a
fine thing, but it renders athletic worship almost inevitable. Were
there not this intense house and school feeling individual boys would
cultivate their individual tastes; forty boys would be grouped together
for convenience of boarding--that is all a house would be. But as soon
as a boy comes to regard himself as a member of a fine community, he
feels a natural pride and loyalty in its performances and in its
welfare. There is no other focus for partisanship: form work is
uninteresting. Boxing, fives, the corps, and the gymnasium are side
shows. Cricket and football are what count. A boy must have a religion
of sorts. He must have some ideal to which the demands of his own
temperament may become subservient.

On this worship of games is based the scale of social values. The ethics
of cribbing, for example, are based entirely on the assumption that a
success in form is of inconsiderable importance; it is permissible for a
boy to crib in order to save his energies for worthier causes. The blood
system is built on an intense admiration for those who are upholding the
honour of the house, and is an expression of the small boy's longing to
reach such a position himself. The attitude to morality on the part of
masters is intimately connected with athletics, and on the boy's part,
the belief that a member of a school side is, _ipso facto_, an
invaluable asset to the school, allows the blood to do very much what he
likes; as long, in fact, as a boy can satisfy his companions and himself
that he is exerting all his power on the football field, he can amuse
himself in other ways as he thinks fit.

There is no other criterion for a boy's worthiness, or unworthiness, as
a member of a house, and the half-bloods consider that a very big
responsibility has descended on them. They have to keep the house up to
the mark. The big men cannot bother themselves about individuals. But
the half-bloods who are, as it were, emissaries between heaven and
earth, can investigate closely the behaviour of the coming generation.
They can notice who is showing signs of slackness. They individually
give themselves enormous airs. They form a sort of improvement society.

I remember that, in the course of one term, our house lost every
challenge cup that it had possessed. This was considered a disgrace. And
several of us decided that it was for us to reform the house. We did not
consider ourselves to stand in any need of improvement. But we used to
wander round the studies between tea and hall inquisitioning fags and
scholars, asking them what use they thought they were to house or
school, and informing them that they would be well advised to make more
strenuous efforts. It was, I suppose, a form of bullying; or rather
perhaps an aid to vanity. What we really needed was for some one to kick
us hard. No one did, however. It seemed to occur to no one else, any
more than it did to us, that there were objects of a public school
education other than the acquiring of caps and cups. You might as well
expect an Indian priest to doubt the omnipotence of Buddha.

FOOTNOTE:

[4] The proofs of this book were corrected in April. Should anything
unforeseen change during the cricket season, before its appearance, I
can only plead the fallibility of the prophet.




CHAPTER VI

THE TRUE ETHICS OF CRIBBING


The boy who thus exhausts in ragging the residue of energy that the
football field allows him, has, it follows, to be careful not to burn
the candle at both ends. He has to spare himself, and to spare himself
he abandons the spasmodic cribbing of his first year's summer
examination for sustained, systematic methods. Now the true ethics of
this subject are as little understood as those relating to any other
sphere of public school life. Cribbing is generally regarded as a
dishonest practice to which only the ignoble few have regular resort.
The habitual cribber is as morally lost as a thief. For what, after all,
is cribbing, say our aunts, but the stealing of marks from your
companions. 'When you crib,' they tell us, 'and say that you are not
stealing, you argue from the standpoint of the housemaid who would
return conscientiously the sixpence you have left on your
dressing-table, but would not think twice of filling a medicine bottle
with your best brandy and handing it over to her young man.' While we
are at our Preparatory Schools we are inclined to agree with this. We
ourselves would never think of cribbing. At a Preparatory School it is
not done. But at a Public School we learn otherwise. To the public
school boy cribbing is not dishonest. It is not wrong, because it is not
anti-social. There are no doubt somewhere, if we could discover them,
fixed immutable standards of righteousness. But we have not found them
yet. In the meantime we are content to frame conventions that alter with
each generation to safeguard what we consider to be our comfort. We put
a thief in prison because we are anxious to protect our property. His
actions are anti-social. They are only anti-social, however, because we
happen to value our property. We should not object if he took from us
what we did not prize. It is thus indeed that the dustman earns his
living. And the public school boy does not usually set much greater
value on his marks than the housewife on her egg-shells.

I remember reading several years ago a short story that appeared in _The
Captain_. It was about an American who came to an English Public School.
On the result of a certain examination depended the position of head boy
in the house, and the American broke into the head master's study and
extracted the examination paper. The theft was, however, discovered, and
the American summoned to the head master's study for an interview that
was the certain prelude to expulsion. This fact was made known to him.
'Waal,' he said, 'I guess that's fair. My father often said to me when a
big bluff fails, it's down and out for the guy that misses.' The head
master was surprised. He appreciated the difference between a big bluff
and a piece of calculated deceit. He saw that the American had, because
of the atmosphere of business in which he had been brought up, a
standard different from his own. The American had honestly believed
himself to be attempting 'a big bluff.'

Now, in the world at large, ignorance of the law is no excuse. If it
were, law court procedure would be infinitely complex. At school,
however, the intention matters more than the result. The means are set
before the end. The head master in the story realised that the
American's offence was actually far less serious than it appeared, and
the American was not expelled.

In this case, of course, the theft of the examination paper was
definitely anti-social. It was a real theft. The American was
endeavouring to acquire a position that others valued through means not
at the disposal of his competitors. But this story, which appeared in a
paper the moral tone of which has necessarily to be above suspicion,
establishes officially the principle that the seriousness of an offence
depends largely on the attitude adopted to it by the offender. And
therein lie the true ethics of cribbing. What public opinion approves
cannot be anti-social. Only a few recognise the distinction between the
immoral and the anti-social. And public opinion is, on the whole,
inclined to condone cribbing.

Every boy is anxious to be a power in his house; he wants to be a
prefect, he looks forward to the day when he will be safe from
authority, will be, indeed, authority itself. But he knows that, without
unduly exerting himself in the class-room, he will be able to achieve
prominence through success at football. A house cap has to sit at the Va
table: as a second, probably, and certainly as a first, he will be
raised to the dignity of the dais; thence the process of seniority will
carry him quickly to his prefectship. It is assumed that by that time
the same process of seniority will have carried him to the Upper Fifth.
(It is hard to avoid being promoted once a year.) The hours spent in the
class-room are a dull setting for the vivid hues of the life that lies
outside it. Occasionally the setting is relieved by a bright patch of
colour--an ingenious rag, a successful piece of cribbing--but, on the
whole, it is dull and monotonous. A boy works spasmodically, sometimes
to get a promotion, sometimes to secure the good-will of a master he
admires, sometimes to reach a form where it will be only rarely
necessary for him to prepare his work. And he cribs more or less
consistently out of laziness, to avoid being bottled, to save himself
trouble, to be able to devote as much of his evening as is possible to
more sympathetic forms of employment. He does not consider he is doing
anything wrong. He knows that, if he is caught, he will be punished. But
then he sees the relationship of boys and masters as a long,
intermittent struggle, a game played in good faith, with fixed rewards
and penalties. He does not expect his conduct to be condoned officially.
His form master has set him so many lines of Virgil to prepare. It is
assumed that he will take an hour to prepare those lines properly.
However, with the help of Dr Giles's translation, he has managed to
prepare those lines satisfactorily in twenty minutes. He has gained,
therefore, forty minutes; naturally the master demands, and exacts, a
reparation. But his companions do not mind. And he regards as
anti-social only what will offend them. If he were a thief it would be
in their eyes that he would be guilty. But a theft only becomes criminal
when the injured party has taken proceedings against the offender. In
this case no proceedings have been taken. He has not been reported to
the head master, nor has he been kicked round the cloisters. He
considers himself to be innocent. Indeed, popular opinion is far more
likely to be directed against the boy who is scrupulously honest. His
behaviour may be anti-social.

There was a form, for instance, in which it was the custom for the boys
to correct their own papers and give up their own marks. They would pass
their papers to the next boy but two. The answers would be read out and
the marks awarded. When all the answers had been given the marks would
be added up. 'Any one over 90?' a couple of hands would rise. 'Any one
over 95?' one of the hands would sink. 'Right,' said the master. 'Divide
all marks by 11.' The names of the boys would then be read out in turn,
and the marks earned by each would be delivered by the corrector.

Now the correction of exercises and the addition of marks entails a
measure of labour, and no one does unnecessary work. It had become the
custom, therefore, to doze pleasantly while the answers were being given
out, to insert various hieroglyphics in the margin, and to return at the
conclusion an average total. The system had been in existence a long
while, and it was known that the top mark usually lay somewhere between
100 and 90; a top mark of over 110 or beneath 80 would rouse comment,
perhaps inspire investigation, and that was, of course, the last thing
the form desired. So that, when the form master said any one 'over 90'
some one on the front bench raised a hand. It happened in rotation more
or less; at the end of the term there was little to choose between the
top ten in the marks for those particular exercises. Certainly whatever
difference there was could be easily counteracted by superior
proficiency in some other field.

All went well till a certain Miller was promoted into this particular
form. Miller was a prig: he came from an undistinguished house. He was
excessively industrious. He had the prude's morality. He was desperately
honest. He corrected the papers passed to him accurately and gave up the
right mark.

During his first week in the form, when the top mark was 91, Miller gave
up 63. The form master was surprised; Miller had corrected the paper of
quite a senior member of the form. 'Really, Jones,' he said, 'I'm
surprised.' Jones also was surprised. After the lesson he expressed his
surprise with a well-aimed kick that landed Miller at the foot of the
second landing. He considered that no further explanation was required.
He was wrong.

The next day, when the top mark was 103 he received 57. On the occasion
of this second essay in originality the whole form decided to interest
itself in Miller's welfare. There was an informal meeting at the end of
the hour, in which Miller was given to understand that on this system
exercises had been marked in the Middle Fifth for upwards of twenty
years. Tradition had approved the system. The form was conservative. It
meant to uphold that tradition. In earnest of its intention it proceeded
to demonstrate what defensive method it would adopt. Miller made no
answer, but the next day he not only returned Jones's paper with 65 at
the head of it, but when a certain Burton announced that the paper he
had marked was worth 103, Miller said something to the effect that the
maximum was 93.

Such a thing had never happened before in the Middle Fifth. It was an
orderly form, but there was very nearly a popular demonstration.
Burton's honour had been questioned. The form master agreed that such an
imputation had not been made upon a boy during the five-and-twenty years
that he had sat in that class-room. 'We'll go through the questions one
by one and see what the maximum is.'

Now, luckily for Burton, the master had not kept a check upon the marks.
He had gone through question after question, saying after each: 'Now
let me see, I think that should be worth 10,' or 'that 15.' So that,
when he went through the questions again, he appealed, on each occasion,
to the head boy of the form. 'How many did I give you for that, Evans?'
And, on each occasion, Evans was generous.

Once Miller timidly suggested that for Question 6, 15 marks and not 30
had been the maximum, but there was a complete unanimity of opinion
among the rest of the form. 'Thirty, sir, certainly it was 30. It must
have been--I've got 23 down to Firth for that, sir.' Miller was
overruled.

The maximum was finally discovered to be 130. 'So you see, Miller,' said
the master, 'you've not only questioned Burton's word, but you've been
inattentive during the lesson. You will do me 200 lines, and if you will
hand me up Jones's paper I will correct it myself.' With this generous
addition to the maximum Jones received a heavy mark.

After such a disaster the form felt certain that Miller would bow to the
convention; but there is no limit to the obstinacy of the martyr: Miller
continued to mark according to order. He was kicked, but kicking was of
no avail. His own paper was undermarked. This, too, was unavailing.
Finally the form decided to accept him as an inevitable affliction. They
ceased to kick him. Each of the ten top boys took it in turn to sit two
places away from him so that no one person should suffer unduly from the
general evil. And the one who sat two places on the other side of
Miller had instructions to over-mark his paper so that he should be got
out of the form as speedily as possible. At the end of the term Miller
was promoted; and the Middle Fifth relapsed into its placid communal
existence.

Now Miller's conduct would no doubt appear worthy of the most intense
approval. He had behaved like the hero of the school sermon. He had done
what every new boy is adjured to do. He had taken a firm stand against a
dishonest practice. He had been bullied, but he had remained firm. His
honour had withstood the shock of his opponents. Such a splendid example
would shine like a candle in a dark cathedral, and from this simile the
preacher, as a runner reaching the straight, can stride into the rounded
periods of his peroration. 'If only others of you would light your
candle from that flame; if only in that large cathedral there were a
hundred burning candles instead of one, how soon would not the whole
building be filled with light. The beautiful tracery of the roof would
emerge from shadow. A soft glow would be shed on the strong carved
pillars. The brasses would glimmer on the wall. The splendid
architecture of the building would be plain. So is it with the human
soul.'

We have heard that sermon many times. Miller is a splendid handle for
rhetoric, but his behaviour remains anti-social. If it is wrong to place
oneself in a position of inequitable advantage, it is equally wrong to
place a rival in a position of inequitable disadvantage: and that is
what Miller had done. Jones had done his work as thoroughly and as
conscientiously as the others, but he had received lower marks for it,
because Miller had chosen to apply to it a standard that was not imposed
on that of his companions. It is not unfair in a hundred yards' sprint
to start a second before the pistol is fired if you know that the other
runners are going to do likewise, but it is hard lines on the one runner
who is compelled to wait for the proper signal. True morality plays an
insignificant part in business and competition. We all have different
ideas of what is sport. If W. G.'s much-criticised running out of Jones
in the Test Match of 1880 had taken place at a house match at school, we
can assume that W. G., whatever his batting average, would not have been
invited to play for the school again. What is moral and what is
anti-social become practically synonymous terms as long as every one
starts fair and plays the game by the same code of rules. No one must be
allowed opportunities that are not at the disposal of his opponents.
And, in the case of the Middle Fifth's corrections, the rules of the
game ordered generous marking and no great gulf between the first and
last. Miller played the game by different rules. The form was
righteously indignant. It is doubtful even whether Miller's immortal
soul drew sustenance from the conflict. It was probably confirmed in its
priggishness. Certainly Miller became, in the course of time, a highly
officious prefect. I do not know what fortune the 'romance of destiny'
may hold in store for him, but I can imagine that he will occupy some
post of prim, precise officialdom. He will create nothing. Whereas
Evans's opportunism is largely responsible for the rapidly increasing
market for Messrs. ----'s patent cookers.

The schoolmaster asserts that between himself and his form there exists
a compact of square dealing. But the signature of the form has not been
obtained, and it is an agreement every clause of which is very clearly
to the advantage of the schoolmaster and to the disadvantage of the
form. The form does not recognise the treaty. It refuses to commit
itself, and indeed in this singular document the true nature of cribbing
has not been defined. The exact line between cribbing and co-operation
has not been drawn. We are safe when dealing with 'con,' that is to say,
the translation of Greek or Latin into English. We know, for instance,
that boys are allowed to prepare their work together. Two brains are
better than one. Well and good. But, if two soldiers have to dig a
trench one uses the pick and the other the shovel. So it is with Latin
'con.' One boy looks up the meaning of the words in a dictionary; the
other unravels the sense. That means that the boy who looks up the words
never brings his mind to bear on the translation of the text. Yet such a
combination is accepted as fair by any master. And, once this
combination has been accepted, a master's position becomes logically
impossible. For it must be remembered that a schoolboy has a fairly
sound grasp of consecutive reasoning. He studies the theorems of
geometry. He struggles with the dialectic of Plato. He is capable, that
is to say, of following out to their logical conclusion such lines of
argument as will, in the end, assuage his conscience. He could
construct, for instance, an imaginary conversation between Socrates and
his form master.

_Soc._: You object, Mr. Featherbrain, to the cribbing that is prevalent
in your form?

_Mr. F._: Certainly.

_Soc._: Now, as I am inexperienced in this matter, never having been
myself to a Public School, perhaps you will be so kind as to make me
better acquainted with the methods adopted by these members of your
form.

_Mr. F._: Certainly. Some of the boys use English translations with
which to prepare their Virgil and Homer. Others copy the Greek prose of
their more clever companions, inserting, from time to time, certain
gross errors that they expect will throw me off the scent.

_Soc._: I understand. Now, in this matter of English translations: you
expect each boy to prepare his Virgil by himself, and to produce in form
the results of solitary unaided labour?

_Mr. F._: Certainly.

_Soc._: If, therefore, you discovered one boy asking another to explain
to him a difficult passage, you would punish him severely?

_Mr. F._: No. You have misunderstood me. I should not.

_Soc._: But how is that? Have you not just told me that each boy must
produce in form the results of solitary, unaided labour?

_Mr. F._: Certainly, but we allow boys to prepare their 'con' together.

_Soc._: I understand. On the assumption that two brains are better than
one, you permit two boys to unravel the sense together.

_Mr. F._: Certainly.

_Soc._: Now, if two people attempt a certain task, what procedure would
they follow? Would they not divide the task into two portions. If two
men are building a house one man stands at the top of a ladder and lays
the bricks that his companion, who is standing below, throws up to him.

_Mr. F._: Certainly.

_Soc._: Time would be wasted were each man to do the same work: that is
to say, were two ladders to be placed against the wall and were the two
men to descend and ascend the ladder carrying bricks to the top?

_Mr. F._: Certainly.

_Soc._: Therefore, we may assume that in all tasks that are undertaken
by two persons, the work is divided into two duties?

_Mr. F._: But I do not see, Socrates, that this line of reasoning has
any bearing on the subject we are preparing to discuss.

_Soc._: That may very well be, for, as I have told you, I am ignorant of
these matters and have come to you for guidance. It does seem to me,
however, that in this matter of translation, which is the discovery of
an unknown thing, the unknown may be divided into two parts.

_Mr. F._: How is that?

_Soc._: When a boy reads over the passage that he has to translate, two
things are unknown to him: the general meaning of the passage and
certain words in the passage. That is so, is it not?

_Mr. F._: Certainly.

_Soc._: Then do you not think that two boys, before setting out to
translate a passage, would make some arrangement by which one of them
should be responsible for unravelling the sense, while the other should
look up the unknown words in a dictionary.

_Mr. F._: It is possible.

_Soc._: And to which of the two would be entrusted the task of
unravelling the sense.

_Mr. F._: To the cleverer, undoubtedly.

_Soc._: Therefore the less clever would do the drudge work: that is to
say, he would never bring his mind to bear upon the passage: and the
imaginative work would be done for him by his companion.

_Mr. F._: It would seem so, Socrates.

_Soc._: Yet the system is approved as an honest one by the authorities
and the work of the drudge is accepted as solitary and unaided labour.

_Mr. F._: That is so, Socrates.

_Soc._: Now, is this task of translation limited to the co-operation of
two persons, or may three or more persons take their share in it?

_Mr. F._: As many persons may take their share in it as may
conveniently be crowded into a study measuring eight feet by four.

_Soc._: I understand. Suppose now that three persons are preparing a
passage together. We have agreed, have we not, that this work can be
divided into two duties only?

_Mr. F._: That is so.

_Soc._: Then what share of the work will the third partner take?

_Mr. F._: He will act as a reserve and will bring assistance to either
party when it is necessary.

_Soc._: But, to whom have we allotted the task of unravelling the sense:
to the cleverest, have we not? If the help of the third party, then, is
only requested when the cleverest finds himself in difficulties, does it
seem to you likely that the third party will succeed where one cleverer
than himself has failed?

_Mr. F._: It is unlikely.

_Soc._: And, if this third party is higher and more important than the
second party, it is unlikely, is it not, that he will content himself
with what we have admitted to be the drudge's work of looking up words
in a dictionary?

_Mr. F._: It is unlikely.

_Soc._: Then the third party will do nothing save profit by the industry
of his two companions, and the work that he will produce in the
class-room next day will, strictly speaking, be not his at all, but
theirs.

_Mr. F._: It would seem so, Socrates.

_Soc._: Now, let us take a further example. For I am anxious to discover
at what exact point the work that a boy produces in form will cease to
be, in the official eye, the result of solitary and unaided labour.
Suppose that the third party is a member of the Eleven, who has various
social duties: it is possible, is it not, that he would prefer to spend
over his translation less than the three-quarters of an hour that his
two companions require?

_Mr. F._: It is possible.

_Soc._: Then, is it impossible that he might arrange for the cleverer of
the two to come to him after breakfast and explain to him in twenty
minutes the meaning of the passage?

_Mr. F._: It is possible.

_Soc._: And such an arrangement would be accepted by you?

_Mr. F._: I do not see that I could object.

_Soc._: Now let us suppose that the cleverer of the two finds that he
will have to clean his corps clothes during the twenty minutes between
breakfast and chapel. He will feel himself bound in honour, and also by
fear, to translate the passage to the third party, but he will obviously
be unable to do it in person. Is it not likely, therefore, that he will
write out the meaning of the passage and hand it to the third party?
Would such conduct be unacceptable to you?

_Mr. F._: I do not know, Socrates.

_Soc._: But, surely in your own mind you have clearly defined the line
that separates what is honest from what is dishonest. Surely that is
your profession--to teach the young to distinguish between what is good
and what is not good?

_Mr. F._: That is so, Socrates.

_Soc._: Then do you see any real difference between hearing a
translation and reading a translation? Is there any difference between a
meaning that is apprehended through the ear and a meaning that is
apprehended through the eyes; for are not both eyes and ears channels
through which meanings are carried to the brain?

_Mr. F._: It would seem so, and, when you put it that way, I can
distinguish no essential difference.

_Soc._: Very good: then we have established that it is fair for a boy to
come to his study after breakfast, find in his hand a written
translation of his Virgil, and, with that written translation, prepare
in twenty minutes his morning's lesson.

_Mr. F._: It would seem so, Socrates.

_Soc._: If, however, he were to take from his drawer a printed
translation of Virgil, and with that prepare his morning's lesson, you
would consider him capable of dishonest behaviour and you would report
him to the head master.

_Mr. F._: Most certainly, Socrates.

_Soc._: In what, then, lies the essential difference between the printed
translation and the one that was copied out for him by his companion?

_Mr. F._: But that is surely obvious.

_Soc._: It is not to me, and it is for this reason that I seek
enlightenment of you. For to me it seems that the work produced in form
by the boy who has studied the printed translation is every bit as much
the result of solitary and unaided labour as that which is informed by
the study of a written translation. But is it that you appreciate a
difference between the written and the printed word?

_Mr. F._: Perhaps that is it, Socrates.

_Soc._: Then would you allow a boy during the holidays to copy out one
of Dr. Giles's aids to the classics?

_Mr. F._: Most certainly not.

_Soc._: Then it is not between the written and the printed word that the
difference lies?

_Mr. F._: It would seem not.

_Soc._: Then where does it lie?

_Mr. F._: I do not know, Socrates.

_Soc._: Then we must surely assume that there is no difference; and we
must further add that you have not dealt honestly with your form in so
severely punishing them for conduct that you, yourself, are not able
logically to condemn.

_Mr. F._: As ever, Socrates, you have succeeded in making me say what I
did not mean to say.

_Soc._: Then, in order that you may extricate yourself, let us consider
this question of the prose.

_Mr. F._: Certainly. For, here at least, my position is impregnable.

_Soc._: I, too, am certain of it, and, in order that I may know the true
nature of the offence, you will, I hope, permit me to ask you certain
questions. You say that the more stupid members of your form are in the
habit of copying the exercises of their more clever comrades?

_Mr. F._: That is so.

_Soc._: Now is it a rule that a boy may not give another assistance in
his Latin prose?

_Mr. F._: Certainly.

_Soc._: The position is not the same as that of the Latin translation,
where two boys were permitted to co-operate?

_Mr. F._: Certainly not.

_Soc._: I presume that you have explained to your form the essential
difference that exists between the nature of Latin 'con' and Latin
prose.

_Mr. F._: How do you mean, Socrates?

_Soc._: Why, surely, if in the preparation of Latin 'con,' which is the
translation of Latin into English, two boys are allowed to co-operate,
and, if in the preparation of Latin prose, which is the translation of
English into Latin, they are not allowed to co-operate, it follows that
there must be some essential difference in the nature of the two
studies.

_Mr. F._: It would seem so, Socrates.

_Soc._: It would certainly seem so, and this difference you have, no
doubt, made clear to your form, for, at present, I must confess myself
unable to discover in what it consists. The exercise of Latin prose as
of Latin 'con,' for each study is the translation of a language and the
correct rendering of the idiom of that language into the language and
idiom of another tongue, is no doubt intended to train, inform, and
quicken the intelligence. Each would appear to be branches of the same
study, and for each the same method of instruction should be employed.
You tell me, however, that there is between these two branches an
essential difference.

_Mr. F._: You are right, Socrates, and, though I cannot explain the
difference in so many words, its nature is plain to me.

_Soc._: Of that, Mr. Featherbrain, I am certain. I understand that you
apprehend this fine distinction as you apprehended the fine distinction
between the written and the printed 'crib.' We should consider, though,
whether this distinction is equally plain to your form. Such intuitive
knowledge may be denied to them, and, if they sin through ignorance,
their sin is slighter than if they sinned through knowledge. Tell me,
now, whether, if you overheard one member of your form say to another on
the way to chapel: 'I'm absolutely tied up with that piece of prose.
Shall I put it in O. R. or O. O.?' would you immediately report that boy
to the head master?

_Mr. F._: I should not.

_Soc._: You would no more report him than if you had overheard him
asking his friend to make clear to him a passage of Virgil that had
puzzled him.

_Mr. F._: That is so.

_Soc._: Do you not think, therefore, that the boy who knows he is
allowed to ask for help in his Latin 'con,' and who does not know for
what reason he is not allowed to ask for help in his Latin prose, who
has never, that is to say, been able to apprehend the fine difference
between the nature of the two studies, is likely to consider that the
same technique is permissible for both branches, and would not that
third party of whom we spoke and who is in the habit of getting his
Latin 'con' done for him by his friend, consider himself morally
justified in accepting the same assistance in his Latin prose?

_Mr. F._: But I have told him that it is not allowed.

_Soc._: Certainly, but good can only come from a reasoned knowledge of
what is good, and you have not explained to him in what his fault
consists. Moreover, if you have granted him permission to seek advice in
small matters, you must tell him at what exact point the thirst for
information becomes dishonest; a line must be drawn between what is good
and what is bad. Is a boy responsible for a percentage of his prose,
and, if so, for what percentage. Have you made these things plain to
him?

_Mr. F._: I have not, O Socrates.

_Soc._: Then how do you expect the unformed mind of a boy to draw this
line for himself. It would seem to me, Mr. Featherbrain, that you are
not training the youth as it should be trained, when you order its
conduct not by the results of logical deduction but by arbitrary ruling.
For if in your own mind you are not certain at what exact point the good
becomes the bad, and indeed are not certain of what the bad consists;
what confusion must you not expect to discover in the minds of those
that are taught by you. You must remember that on the football and
cricket field a boy is under orders which he accepts, but of whose moral
nature he is ignorant. He knows that if he is offside in football a free
kick is awarded to the other side; he knows that if he knocks the ball
forward with his hands a scrum is given. He has made a mistake. He has
committed a tactical, but not a moral offence. The rulings of the Rugby
Union are arbitrary and subject to frequent alteration; whereas the
rulings concerning what is good and what is bad are fixed and
irradicable. Is it not likely, therefore, that a boy will come to regard
your rulings in these matters of cribbing as arbitrary rulings that may
be altered. His life is a game, you must always remember that, and it is
on that basis that he accepts it. He knows that he will be punished if
he uses a crib; he knows that you appear to apprehend a distinction
between the written and printed word; he knows also that you have
discovered a difference in the nature of the studies of translation and
prose, and that while you will allow him to ask advice on certain points
you will not allow him to seek advice on the whole, though at the same
time you do not define the point at which these same certain points
cease to be certain points and become sufficiently part of the whole to
be called the whole. Can you expect him, then, to regard such a system
as anything but the complicated rulings of a game played between you and
him. And can you expect him to attach to these regulations any moral
significance. On the cricket field he places his leg in front of the
wicket and tries to hit a short length ball over square-leg's head. If
he misses the ball he is leg before, and goes to the pavilion. In his
study he prepares his translation with a crib; he is discovered by his
house master; he goes to the head master. And it is in this spirit, Mr.
Featherbrain, that your form deceives you. You have to make clear to the
young many things before you can expect them to attach a moral
significance to what has no logical proof.


There may be flaws in the argument, for the Socratic method is
insidious, but I have not, myself, been able to discover them. The
ethics of cribbing from the master's point of view are illogical. The
exact point where co-operation starts and cribbing begins is not fixed.

Cribbing goes by form and houses. Its activities expand and contract
according to the demands of popular opinion. It is always communal.
There is a conscription of intellect and knowledge. No boy would
prejudice his chances of winning his house cap; but most boys would
assist their most dangerous rivals in promotion. We hear in chapel sad
stories of the large and brutal bully who cribs steadily throughout the
term and wrests the prize from the pure innocent who looked up every
word in a large Lewis & Short. But it rarely happens like that. No one
cribs for a prize, because few really want a prize. Occasionally
cribbing wins a prize, but it is usually through a fluke.

A boy is particularly nervous about the results of a certain paper. He
takes elaborate precautions to make sure that he will not have to spend
the last Saturday of term rewriting the paper, and, in consequence,
unexpectedly discovers himself at the head of the list. I recall one
such instance in particular, and, because it seems to me so singularly
appropriate, I may be pardoned, I trust, for retelling a story that I
have incorporated elsewhere.

Divinity in the army class was a casual affair; a knowledge of the Old
Testament not being considered a necessary part of the intellectual
equipment of a subaltern, the Sandhurst authorities did not examine
candidates on the subject, and both the form and its master regarded the
hour's lesson on Sunday morning as a pause in the exertions of the week.
The yearly divinity examination always occasioned, therefore, a measure
of panic among the soldiers, for the form master, when confronted with
irrefutable proofs of his own indolence, was in the habit of punishing
not only the form but himself by keeping in for two hours on the last
Saturday those of the form who had failed to score an adequate
percentage. During the preceding days feverish and spasmodic attempts
were made to cope successfully with the complicated relations of kings
and prophets. One year, however, the form was fortunate.

A certain Mallaby, while searching in the class-room just before lock-up
for a book he thought he had left there, saw lying among the papers on
the master's desk, the rough draft of the questions for the divinity
exam. In surprised delight he copied them all down. According to the
popular conception of schoolboy honour, Mallaby, being a potential
thief, would have kept the information to himself. Being a boy, however,
he imparted it to his companions. The form entered the examination room
in a mood of quiet confidence, and left it in a mood of deep content.
Two days later, however, it was announced that this year the annual
interest of a bequest would be devoted to a series of divinity papers
throughout the school. The next day Mallaby learnt that he was head of
the army class in divinity.

His conscience was fluttered. He could not, he felt, take a prize which
he would have won through cribbing. It would be dishonest. It would be
stealing. He announced his intention of explaining matters to the chief.
This announcement was not, however, received with the enthusiasm that
should have welcomed the imminence of so noble, so disinterested, so
sacrificial a performance. The form was indeed seriously perturbed. It
explained to Mallaby that, if he went to the chief, he would be queering
not only his own pitch, but theirs as well, and that there were certain
members of form who did not stand well enough in the eyes of authority
to be able to risk such an addition to their score of discovered crimes.
'And, after all,' they said, 'why shouldn't you take the prize? We all
knew the questions; you took the trouble to prepare them. You worked
hard, and prizes are the reward of hard work. You've worked for the
prize, harder than we did. Therefore you deserve the prize. And let's
have no more of this nonsense about confession.'

In these matters each form and each house works out its own salvation.
In some houses cribbing is not general, and in some forms cribbing is
not general; and, in such cases, cribbing is anti-social. It might be
urged that boys from houses that do not crib find themselves at a
disadvantage in relation to boys from houses that do. But life usually
manages to adjust itself, and a boy's position in form is chiefly
important as regards the relation it bears to that of the other members
of his house. It does not matter much to a boy in the school house if he
is passed by a boy in Buller's. It will not affect his seniority in his
own house, and it is his seniority in his own house that matters. Only a
very few are concerned with the specialised rivalry of the Upper Sixth
that decides who will be the official head of the school. Scholastically
the ambition of few passes outside their house. In games it is
different. But then the eleven is not a fluid body like the Sixth; it is
a close corporation, and once the reputation of being the best slow
left-hand bowler is lost, the chance of a ribboned coat grows distant.

I remember once a parson from the East End preaching a sermon in the
school chapel, in which he intimated that in comparison with the
loathsome atrocities that had for setting the Mile End Road, a schoolboy
merely played at sin. This was reassuring to certain genial sportsmen
who had hitherto been unable to view with any confidence the prospect of
immortality: and the phrase 'playing at sin' passed into the vocabulary
of the school. To such an extent, indeed, that the head master was
forced to deliver a special midweek address, in which he pointed out
that the degree of sin was relative to environment, and that the moral
offences of a man who had been nurtured in surroundings of bestiality
and filth were less grave than those of the boy who had spent his
childhood in the clean atmosphere of a decent home. The complacence of
the aforesaid sportsmen was broken. Not only were their offences as
serious as those of their less fortunately placed brethren, they were
actually more grave: a disquieting reflection. But I have often felt
inclined to question, not the irrefutable logic of the head master's
sermon, but the truth of that original contention about 'playing at
sin.' Are, that is to say, the vices of the lower orders actually more
startling than those of Mayfair? Are they more startling? I wonder: a
higher standard of civilisation refines our pleasures, quickens our
powers of appreciation, makes us more subtle, more complex; does it not
also sharpen the edge of misbehaviour? It is a point on which perhaps
Casanova would be able to enlighten us. But, certainly, in the matter of
cribbing, the methods of the lower forms are clumsy, unimaginative,
bourgeois in comparison with those of the Fifths and Sixths.

A master who expects to discover in the Third the guile of the Fifths
will be disappointed; and, equally, the master who has successfully
combated the guile of the Lower Second may discover himself completely
outwitted by the Middle Sixth. In the Lower School the use of the actual
crib is rare. It is easy for the Sixth Former to possess himself of a
translation. The Everyman series contains excellent renderings of
Thucydides and Plato. The Loeb library is not useless. Gilbert Murray
may be a poet, but his translations of Euripides have proved of
assistance to many a harassed student. Jebb's version of Sophocles is to
be found in the shelves of the school library. It is a different job to
find a crib of Ovid and Livy. Dr. Giles has done some excellent research
work, but questions are apt to be asked about bona fide students; an
address such as 'The School House, Fernhurst,' is likely to wake
suspicion, and the Third Former has not read enough French novels to
appreciate the value of the _poste restante_. He considers that a crib
is more trouble than it is worth. And what is cribbing but laziness!
Moreover, he has a distrust of cribs. He is naturally stupid or he would
be higher in the school, and he knows that when a boy gives the right
meaning to the wrong words there are unpleasant investigations. He
prefers to rely on the inspiration of the moment: as a result the
offences of the Lower Second are trivial. They rarely reach the green
baize of the head master's study. One boy looks over another's paper,
another is prompted during 'con,' there is a strange similarity between
two Latin proses, an unusual mistake is repeated in several exercises.
The offender is beaten afterwards, and no more is heard about it. As a
matter of fact there is less cribbing in the Lower School than in the
Upper. Opportunities are rare and the example of hardened criminals is
absent. The second yearer only becomes a practised deceiver under the
influence of his seniors, and there are not many third yearers in the
Lower School. Higher up it is different. But it is to be doubted whether
the effects of cribbing are as serious as they are depicted.

The case against them comes under two main headings: (1) The moral
issue; (2) The expediency issue. With the moral issue I have already
dealt. Most boys crib at school, but the public school man is straighter
in business than the self-made man and the American. Nearly all men will
boast in their clubs of the way they bamboozled 'old Moke,' of how they
pinned up the rep. on the back of the boy in front, and of how they used
to strip off the cover of the translation book and sew it round one of
Dr. Giles's publications; but the man who has forced a young inventor
into a hard contract remains silent. It is a matter that he prefers to
keep to himself. I do not believe that cribbing saps the moral sense.

The expediency issue is more complicated. And, on the surface, it does
seem that the use of a crib is the very worst thing for a boy who hopes
to win scholarships and fellowships. It is a short cut. He does not
need to use his brain. His thinking is done for him. That is true, but
there are points on the other side. He is set fifty lines of Virgil to
prepare. If he comes into form next morning with those lines half learnt
he will derive little benefit from the hour's lesson. The whole time he
will be worrying at the sense. He will not be able to give his full
attention to the points of grammar and history that will arise in the
course of the hour. If, on the other hand, he is free from the anxiety
of failure he is able to give his full attention to what is perhaps the
more important part of the lesson. Also a boy remembers what he has
worked out for himself; and a crib used intelligently provides just
enough struggle to impinge the result of the effort on the memory. And
the wise do use a crib intelligently. They not only want to know their
'con' for the next day: they also wish to be able to remember it for the
examination. They, therefore, read a sentence over first in the
original. Some one wonders what a certain word means. The word is looked
up. Then a shot is made at the sense, not a very serious shot perhaps,
and speedy reference is made to the crib. The English is read out loud.
'Now, how does he get that out of it?' some one asks. There is a minute
of tussle and explanation--then all is clear. And the next sentence is
read out loud.

That is the way to use a crib. And if one has worked out for oneself,
even if it be with the aid of a crib, the meaning of a long passage of
Virgil, one remembers that passage. I have forgotten now nearly all my
Greek and Latin, but I can still read currently and with pleasure the
Eclogues, for which I used a crib. Whereas the memory of other books,
through which I struggled honestly, but less successfully, has faded
altogether. For the average member of the Sixth I believe the
intelligent use of a crib is to be recommended. A greater number of
lines could be prepared at one time, and there would be leisure for
acquiring that knowledge that comes to us indirectly from the classics.
Plato is a window through which we see the gymnasiums of Ancient Greece.
But it will be shuttered for those to whom the struggle is ever with
correct rendering and syntax.

The real scholar, whose life will be spent largely with the classics,
must avoid short cuts; he should glory in difficulties that will quicken
his wits: he has his whole life before him. He does not have to pass, as
the rest of us do, swiftly into a world of politics and business. And,
indeed, the real scholar realises this. I can recall few instances in
which a boy with a really fine brain has deadened his perceptions by the
use of translations. The scholar, when he reaches the Sixth, and is no
longer forced to write the proses and prepare the translations of his
less clever comrades, prefers to work alone, if not in the company of
boys who are equally brilliant.

But the real scholar is the exception. This book is written for, and
about, the average schoolboy. I know that in the matter of cribbing I
am pleading a lost cause. Cribbing will always, of course, be a
forbidden thing; therein lies its charm. But it is important that master
and parents should realise in what light these questions appear to the
boy. A boy is frequently misunderstood. He is accused of dishonesty. He
resents the accusation, but he is unable to explain why his offence does
not deserve so stern a label. He is tempted to lose heart, to console
himself with the reflection that 'they don't understand,' and so further
estrange himself from sympathy and mutual understanding. The boy stands
before the house master and lets the wind of words flow over him. What
use is it for him to attempt an explanation. If he argues his punishment
will be increased. It is better to assume contrition; to say, 'Yes, sir,
I hadn't seen it in that light before,' and to be more clever another
time. It would be far more just were the master to regard cribbing as a
boy regards it: as a game, to be punished effectively when discovered,
but not to be associated with the welfare of the human spirit.

If school authorities wish, however, to find a lasting cure they have in
their own hands the remedy. They will not achieve their ends through
increased vigilance; that will only make the boy more clever. They
should make work more interesting. There is little cribbing in form
where boys are interested in what they are learning. Boys are not
anxious to learn what a master is not anxious to teach. Laziness begets
laziness, and cribbing is a form of laziness.

Systematic cribbing will not disappear till popular opinion regards as
important success or failure in the class-room. Success at games is
considered important; games are, in consequence played fairly. But, as
popular opinion sets no value on school work, it does not seem to matter
much what happens in school hours. Success in form needs to be brought
into some sort of relationship with success at football. Athletic
prowess will always, naturally, and perhaps rightly, be rated more
highly than intellectual achievement. But that is no reason why
intellectual achievement should be disparaged in the case of all save
the brilliant few whose feats are received with a mild enthusiasm. At
Sandhurst we used to have weekly examinations, and, as far as I
remember, there was no cribbing at all in these exams. To a certain
extent promotion depended on one's performance in them, and each G. C.
was anxious to work out the problems for himself so as to be able to
judge how much, or how little, progress he had made. This did not mean
that we were more interested in topography than late cuts, but that we
realised that, at this stage of our career proficiency in topography
would be of service to us. I believe that a similar state of affairs
would exist at a Public School were the social values to be readjusted.

Cribbing, like so much else in public school life, is a side-shoot of
athleticism.




CHAPTER VII

MORALITY AND THE ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP


It is at this period, also, of a boy's development that the moral
question assumes a definite significance. There is no phase of school
life that is more generally misunderstood and misrepresented, and there
is no phase that a writer tackles with greater misgiving and
disinclination. He is confronted with the barricaded prejudices of a
vested interest, with the tremulous ignorance of mothers who seek to be
deceived, with the conspiracy of silence that exists between boys,
parents, and masters, and, last of all, with the wilful jealousy of the
yellow press that is only too ready to decry the value of what it is
pleased to call the 'trades union of snobbery.' There are times, indeed,
when it seems better to acquiesce in that conspiracy of silence rather
than to give those speculators in contention another opportunity of
mud-slinging. There are times when it seems hopeless to attempt to
explain the nature of public school morality to those who have not
themselves been to a Public School. It is like looking at a
stained-glass window from the outside. One reminds oneself that for many
years, without, perhaps, any very disastrous results, we have muddled
along in contented ignorance and self-deceit. Why not leave things
where they are? Why stir up trouble? And yet the moral question is such
an essential part of school life, it exercises such an influence on the
development of the boy; indirectly it colours so considerably the
attitude of the master to every other phase of school life, that it is
impossible to omit all reference to it in a detailed study such as this,
and, if it is impossible to avoid mention of it, it is fatal to content
oneself, as one may very well do in a novel, with stray suggestions and
inferences.

A novel is an abstraction. One compresses into a few pages the action of
several years, so that one has to suggest rather than to state. One can
withhold one's own opinion, one is under no compunction to generalise
from the incidents one selects. One is telling a story or interpreting a
personality. Only rarely is one constructing a thesis. In a novel it is
not difficult to deal with the moral question. Most good school stories
have touched more or less indirectly on some side of it. Ivor Brown and
Compton Mackenzie have both dealt subtly with an intricate relationship.
Hugh Walpole, if less originally, faced the same situation more
courageously, while Arnold Lunn in _Loose Ends_ has interpreted the boy
as opposed to the official attitude to this issue with extreme
effectiveness. The novelist is constrained to discuss only that part of
the question that affects the action of the story. That is one of the
great charms of story-telling: one can touch lightly without need of
explanation on the most delicate situations. One can say only as much
as one wants to say, and say it, what is more, obliquely. In a book such
as this, however, one must deal with the subject thoroughly if at all.
One must tackle every side of it. One is bound to follow one's thought
through to the end. And that is a thing that no one cares to do in
public. It was said of a certain intrepid Rugby player that he had not
the brains to be afraid. It is certainly true that many soldiers lost
their nerve after they had been once wounded, and that few soldiers were
really frightened till they had seen what a shell could do; it may well
be that at twenty-three one has not sufficient experience of the world
to realise what risks one runs through honesty.

The first difficulty, especially for those who, without having been to a
Public School themselves, are the fathers of present or prospective
public school boys, is to start investigations with a clear mind. This
feat the majority never manage to accomplish. For the moral question in
schools is concerned with the relationship of two members of the same
sex. Now such a relationship is counted in the world at large an
unmentionable and unforgivable sin. It is regarded with horror by the
average man. It is a penal offence. The man who enters into such a
relationship is abnormal, and, as such, is considered a menace to
society. But the same standards are not applicable to school life.

A man was intended by nature to marry at eighteen. The average villager,
clerk, pit-boy, work-boy begins 'walking out' with a girl at the age of
fifteen or sixteen; the public school boy has no such opportunities of
courtship. Three hundred boys are spending three-quarters of their lives
in a monastic world; from the beginning of the term to the end the only
women to whom they have the opportunity of speaking are the matron and
the house master's wife. They have never any chances of seeing girls of
their own class and of their own age. At a particularly susceptible
period, therefore, they have no natural object for their affections. The
youngest boys are only thirteen, the eldest are between eighteen or
nineteen.

In such circumstances it would be surprising if there were no
uncomfortable complications. The public school system is, in this
respect, unnatural; one must expect unnatural results. The trouble is to
discover what those results are. For, although people speak glibly
enough of immorality in Public Schools, it is extremely doubtful whether
they realise of what exactly that immorality consists.

It is a convenient phrase, but beyond it there is the conspiracy of
silence. Schoolmasters prefer to deal with straight issues. They dislike
the subtleties of action and character which are of such charm to the
psychologist. They like to say, 'This is an offence.' Finer shades of
meaning trouble them. At least that is their official attitude. And so
it has come to be generally accepted that public school morality
resolves itself into one main issue: that is, the corruption of a small
boy by a big one. To protect the new boy from this danger elaborate
precautions are taken. It is on this point that a boy is given advice
before he goes to school. He is warned never to make friends with boys
bigger than himself; it is against this danger that the majority of
school sermons are directed. And, of course, this is a very convenient
attitude for the schoolmaster to adopt. The offence is obviously so
grave that there can be no cause to withhold complete official
condemnation; it is also so rare that the head master is able to assure
prospective parents of the excellent tone of the school. For I am
convinced that the deliberate seduction of a smaller boy is an extremely
rare occurrence. There are, of course, certain houses--probably there is
one at every school--in which a good-looking boy stands very little
chance of remaining straight. But I have not been in such a house and I
can speak with no authority. I have heard, certainly, some astonishing
stories of what can be tolerated in a really bad house; but, second-hand
reports, especially on such matters, can only be accepted with reserve.
Certainly in the average house cases of corruption are very rare. Few
boys have the nerve, the assurance, or the adroitness to attempt such a
task. A man of twenty-five will set out deliberately to seduce a
housemaid, but the schoolboy in such matters is a novice. If a senior
boy is casually attracted by the appearance of a smaller boy, he asks a
friend lower down in the house to make inquiries as to the morals of the
small boy. If the 'go-between' discovers that the small boy is
'straight,' the elder boy lets the matter fall from his mind. There are
others who are not. If, on the other hand, the attraction is more than
casual, the chances of seduction are even more remote. It is unlikely
that the affection will be reciprocated. And, if a boy is really fond of
another boy, the last thing he would wish would be to subject his friend
to unwelcome advances. When a boy first falls in love with a girl the
thought of sexual intimacy is, often, unattractive. It is only when his
love is returned that he really desires it. It is fatal to confuse the
processes of life at large with the processes of life in a monastic
system. Because young men seduce young women with regrettable frequency,
it is assumed that much the same sort of thing is happening at a Public
School. And, parents believing this, are reassured; they are certain
that their dear child when young will be strong enough to resist the
passive temptation; they are equally certain that their dear child when
nearly a man would not, for one moment, consider the possibility of
active sin. And this amiable delusion schoolmasters encourage. It saves
them a lot of trouble. They say one thing in public and another in
private. But the Jekyll and Hyde business breeds confusion. They forget
what they should believe and what they should not believe. They are
agreed only on this: that any attempt at criticism, at explanation, at
interpretation shall be counteracted with a concerted unanimity of
opinion. They will deny hotly the prevalence of any such practices,
they will make slighting references to the bad house in the bad school.
They will complete their defence by asserting that for what faults there
are the parents are alone responsible in that they had not sufficiently
warned their sons of the evils of a Public School--evils, be it noted,
that they had previously assured the parent did not exist outside the
perverted imagination of the critic. And yet it is amazing what these
same apologists will be prepared to believe about any institution other
than their own.

Six years ago Sandhurst had an extremely bad name. Every kind of debauch
was rumoured to flourish there. Sobriety was only more unpopular than
purity. The G. C.'s secreted whisky beneath their beds, and actresses
within them. The glittering temptations of St Anthony allured the unwary
in the tea-shops of Camberley. And I remember being shown, before I went
there, a letter that had been sent to the parents of a prospective cadet
by his head master. 'I hope,' the letter ran, 'that Arthur is aware of
the temptations to which he will be subjected. Concupiscence seems to be
the chief topic of conversation and the sole Sunday afternoon amusement
of the cadets.' It all sounded fearfully exciting. But it proved very
tame. Indeed I am inclined to think that, on the whole, fewer
temptations presented themselves to me during the eight months I spent
at Sandhurst than during any other period of my time in the army. A
fellow could do what he liked. No pressure was put on him to drink or
gamble, or pursue loose women. He was none the less respected for being
straight, nor the more admired for being crooked. A community such as
this which exerts pressure on the individual in neither direction, I
should be prepared to call as moral as any that is likely to be found
this side of heaven, yet this head master, who would, no doubt,
repudiate hotly the least suggestion that immorality in his own school
was anything but a spasmodic and occasional phenomenon, was ready to
believe that Sandhurst was a cesspool of all the vices that flourished
so gracefully in the days of Petronius Arbiter. In our investigations we
are not likely to be helped far by schoolmasters. They are constrained
by the laws of exchange and mart to vindicate the quality of their
wares.

It is generally assumed for the purposes of dialectic that there are two
classes of persons: the normal and the abnormal, and that all normal
people follow the same process of development from birth to death. To
disprove this Havelock Ellis collected at the end of certain volumes of
his psychology authenticated histories of men whose development he
claimed to be normal, but whose histories were as different from one
another as apples are from plums. In the face of such evidence it is
dangerous to dogmatise on the gradual discovery of the sexual impulse by
public school boys during adolescence. The most one can say is that the
majority of them come to a Public School innocent and ignorant, and
that they leave it certainly not ignorant and with a relative degree of
innocence. This at least is sure--that between the years of thirteen and
nineteen the impulse will have become powerfully defined and that each
boy will have had to come to terms with its direction and control.

Now the important point seems to me to be this: the sexual impulse is a
force on the proper direction of which depends, to a large extent, the
happiness of a man's life; and marriage is the course into which it
should be directed. No one, I think, will deny that. We may talk of the
liberation of the sexes, of greater facilities for divorce, of the right
of each man and woman to repair a mistake caused by the first surprise
of a newly-awakened instinct; but there can be no questioning the
assertion that monogamy is the ideal, and that while nothing can be more
wretched than an ill-harmonised relationship, in the lifelong devotion
of man and woman is to be found the surest happiness. That is the
standard by which public school morality should be judged. But it is not
the standard by which it is officially, and indeed generally, judged. A
Public School is only a phase, a prelude in the sexual development of a
man. Head masters are inclined to mistake it for the completed rhythm.

In the same way that the head master of a Preparatory School specially
coaches a boy for a scholarship, not realising that what for him is the
whole race is for the boy but a first lap, so the head master of a
Public School regards the preservation of innocence between the years of
13 and 19 as the entire battle. As far as I can make out this attitude
is adopted by nearly every unscientific writer on the subject.

If the matter ended there it would, of course, be simple. Rigid
policemanship and supervision and a system of spies would probably be
effective. They might stamp out impurity to a large extent; they would
also destroy the discipline of independence, of trust and of authority
that one learns at a Public School. The matter is far less simple. The
public school system is unnatural. Through unnatural channels,
therefore, a natural impulse has to flow into a natural course.

Let us see, more or less, what happens.

We have assumed that an ignorant and innocent boy arrives at his Public
School at the age of thirteen, and, to simplify the matter further, we
will assume that the boy is not particularly good-looking, and is not,
therefore, likely to win the patronage of his seniors. For the first
weeks everything is so strange that he lives in a world of his own
fashioning. Later on, as he begins to enter the life of the school, he
is puzzled by references to an offence the nature of which he does not
understand. He hears some one described as being 'smutty.' He does not
in any way connect this with the elaborate address that was delivered to
him on the last day at his prep. Indeed I knew of a new boy who informed
his parents on a postcard that a rather decent chap in his house had
been nearly sacked for 'smut.' 'Is this,' he asked, 'anything serious?'
He received in reply a reassuring letter telling him that he need not
worry about such things just yet.

It is the fashion nowadays to demand open discussion of all subjects;
there must be no secrets. Parents are told that they are guilty of
criminal negligence if they do not instruct their sons and daughters in

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