_Sanitas sanitation, omnia sanitas_.
_The farmer vext packed up his beds and chairs_,
_And all his household stuff_, _and with his boy_
_Betwixt his knees_, _his wife upon the tilt_,
_Sets forth_, _and meets a friend_, _who hails him_, "_What_!
_You're flitting_!" "_Yes_, _we're flitting_," _says the ghost_
(_For they had packed the thing among the beds_).
"_Oh_, _well_," _says he_, "_you flitting with us too_--
_Jack_, _turn the horses' heads and home again_."
TENNYSON, "WALKING TO THE MAIL."
September 15th and 16th were the days of the school's return to Borth. We
slipped at once and easily into the groove of last term's routine,
filling our old quarters and several additional houses. Some building
operations needed for the winter's sojourn have been mentioned by
anticipation. Our medical officer, also, and the ready pickaxe of
"Sanitary Tom" (as the boys called the navvy who was his stout ally), had
been at work laying bare the subterranean geography of our premises and
making all right. At his instance, the proprietor ran out an extended
culvert into the sea beyond low-water mark, a grand engineering work,
which remains the one permanent monument of our settlement. Having in
mind some ancient aspersions on the wholesomeness of Borth we are glad to
bear testimony to the present adequate sanitation of the place.
We do not write for the scientific, and yet we must notice (we hope
without wounding an unprofessional ear) the beautiful economy of natural
forces by which that sanitation is effected. The channel of the Lery,
between which and the sea the hotel is built, runs parallel to the
coastline, till it meets at right angles the estuary of the Dovey. The
same tide which washes the beach also fills the Lery channel and the
adjoining ditches. When the ebb has set in the water in the latter
stands for a time at a higher level than on the beach. Reflecting on
this, our engineers cut a duct between the Lery and the sea, so as to
draw the water from the river down the main drainage artery, performing
twice daily a most effective flushing.
Some of us would have preferred to leave a more dignified memorial of
ourselves, forgetting, perhaps, that it is a Cloaca which is the most
impressive witness to the civilised resources of an ancient king. So an
offer was made to the proprietors that, if they would find the tools and
directors of the work, the school would provide the labourers for the
making of a road between the village and the church, an interval of a
furlong of marshy land, bridged at that time by a makeshift causeway.
They did not, however, see their way to accept our amateur industry, and
the project fell through.
With the arrival of the boys came also news, that on the day before,
September 14th, the engineers had broken ground at Uppingham:
_Ea vox audita laborum_
_Prima tulit finem_.
We had waited not without some impatience for the first sound of the
pickaxe; and its echoes were welcomed as promising an end to our exile.
The new term opened smilingly. The smooth working order into which
everything fell at once contrasted pleasantly with the anxious bustle of
the entry in April. A glorious autumn was settling on the hills, draping
them from head to foot with a red mantle of the withering bracken, which
slowly burnt itself out along their slopes. There was sun and daylight
enough for many rambles along old paths or new ones before the year was
fairly dead.
Our prosperity was suddenly staggered. Just five weeks after the return
a case of scarlet fever occurred, followed in the course of the week by
half-a-dozen more. An outbreak of this kind is too common an incident in
a large school to merit much surprise or great alarm. But then our
circumstances were exceptional. If the infection spread, it might be
difficult to find hospital room; to communicate it to the villagers, as
might easily befall, would be an unhappy return for their own ready
hospitality; and then how miserable to have fled from sickness at
Uppingham, and find it had followed us to Borth, as if, like the haunted
family of the poem, "we had packed the thing among the beds." Already
there came news which raised unspoken doubts of our returning home after
Christmas. How, then, if we could not stay here? The question was hard
to answer.
It is, however, a well-recognised fact that epidemics of this kind are
very much under the control of scientific precautions, and as we had good
advice on the spot, no time was lost in stamping out the plague. War is
not made with rose-water (it certainly was not rose-water which reeked
along our passages), and fever germs can be exterminated, it seems, by
nothing less exasperatingly unsavoury than carbolic acid, an agency which
was laid on without any ruth. Grumblers were offered the alternative of
being smoked with sulphur. Some complained of sore throats, contracted,
they said, from the fumes of the disinfectant, and declared that the
remedy, like vaccination, was only a mitigated form of the disorder. The
landlords of our studies looked on with irresolute wonder, when some of
us sprinkled their floors with a potent decoction poured from watering-
pots. Most of them regarded it as a kind of magical rite into which it
would not be seemly to inquire. In one house a practical seaman, late
home from a cruise, took a less reverent view of the lustration, and
uttered hints of what he would do to the perpetrators' heads if their
acid touched his carpets again. Probably the best disinfectant applied
was the clear strong wind, which ten days after the first case succeeded
the previous relaxing weather. All windows and doors were ordered wide
open for the free passage of the blast; and the boys were directed to
bring down their rugs, great-coats, and dressing-gowns, and anything of
the kind which might be supposed to harbour mischief, and spread them for
purification on the pebbles of the beach. It will be believed the scene
was a quaint one, however it might remind the scholar of the idyllic
laundry scene by the Phaeacian shore, where Nausicaa and her maidens:
[Greek verse]
Whether it was these purgations, or the fumes of the carbolic which
exorcised the infection, or whether the pest was starved out by the
immediate and careful isolation of the cases that occurred, we must leave
doctors to determine. It is certain that the epidemic came to an end in
less than ten days after the first case. That we were able to apply the
most necessary of measures, that of isolating at once all cases declared
or suspected, we owe to the readiness of the villagers to put house-room
at our service, a readiness on which we certainly had no right to
calculate. The rent we might pay them was no measure of the service
rendered. If a panic had closed their doors, our situation would have
been worse than critical.
The cause of the outbreak could not be confidently assigned, but since
the most probable theory traced it to a recent railway excursion made by
some school parties, these expeditions were discontinued for a time. This
was no great privation, for the year was closing in.
About this time, October 16th, the appointment of new "Praepostors" was
made, to fill up vacancies in the body. In speaking as usual on the
occasion, the Headmaster called attention to the experiment in
self-government which our special circumstances were affording. There
would be little reason for our recording the occasion, were it not that
since that date the monitorial system in public schools has been
canvassed in the Press, on occasion of an untoward incident of recent
notoriety, and has been described by some as the parent of the "grossest
tyranny," ruinous to the future of any school from which the institution
is inseparable. We had thought this view of the system obsolete, or
correct only of schools subject to obsolete conditions. If we were
mistaken, it may be worth while to record an experience which tends to a
less pessimistic conclusion.
It will easily be understood that the mechanical organisation of the
school was greatly deranged by the removal from home. The boys of the
several houses were no longer locally separated, nor in the same
immediate contact with their housemasters; they were restrained by few
bolt-and-bar securities, "lock-up" being for the most part impracticable,
and were allowed a larger liberty in many less definable ways. At the
same time they were exposed to no little discomfort, and during the rainy
months to much monotony, the very conditions which promote bullying and
other mischief. Further, the same causes which reduced the control of
masters, also embarrassed the upper boys in their monitorial duties. Thus
the school was left in a quite unusual degree to its self-government, and
that government had to act at a disadvantage.
Yet the result was that all went well. The boys did not bully one
another, and they gave their masters no sort of trouble. Old rules had
to be relaxed, because they could not be enforced, but no licence came of
it; new rules had to be made, which might seem vexatious and not very
intelligible restrictions, but there was no tendency to break them. Of
course wrong things were done at Borth as elsewhere; but if we were to
record the few misdeeds which occur to us, their insignificance would
provoke a smile; while we have good evidence for the belief that the rate
of undetected offences was not increased.
These are the facts we have to record. Different explanations will
suggest themselves to others, but among observers on the spot there was
but one opinion--that the prosperous result was due to the system of self-
government, "monitorial system," or whatever we name the institution,
which rests on the assumption that English boys are capable of
responsibility and authority, and will prove trustworthy if their masters
are willing to trust them. We do not forget that other factors entered
into the cause; one which cannot be ignored was the consciousness of the
boys that the school was on its trial, and that a public one. But people
cannot acquire self-control merely by the removal of restraints, or
behave well, for a long time together and in spite of tedium, simply
because they would like to do so. The truth is, that in a time which
might have been anarchical, we lived on the fruits of a long-established
order; and it is fair to add that at the end of thirteen months there
were no visible symptoms that discipline was wearing threadbare.
Shall we, for writing this, be taxed with the vain-glory for which public
schools are at times reproached? We must brave the charge, then; for the
facts seem to furnish evidence of a kind so rarely obtainable, that to
omit them from this chapter in school life would be hardly excusable. An
experiment so crucial as that to which we were submitted does not occur
once in fifty years.
But enough of serious matters. Let us go out and forget them in a run
with Sir Pryse's harriers, along the breezy gorse-covered downs of the
Gogerddan estate. We take the train which arrives just after we have
risen from dinner, and land at the upland village of Langfihangel. It is
a Saturday afternoon, the 21st of October, the day is clear and sunny,
and several ladies are of the party. A few hundred yards from the
station we met the hounds, and Sir Pryse's man who hunts them. The owner
is not with them, but (by his good leave) yonder tall, lithe fellow, the
best runner in the school, acts as Master of Hounds. He promises us good
sport, having heard from the huntsman of a hare which is "waiting for
us." As they prepare to cast off, the non-effectives separate from the
runners, and climb a round-topped hill which commands the country. The
fields are spread like a map under us; nothing on the face of the country
escapes our eyes. The hare that was "waiting for us" has grown tired of
it, and left the rendezvous, but another is soon started, and a stout
one. She is of the mountain breed, as are many in this country; they
could not otherwise have held out so long before the pursuit of such
runners, to say nothing of the hounds. The "tally-ho" comes cheerly up
to us from the valley through the crisp October air, and we see puss
scudding along up the hedgerow, the hounds and the foremost runners in
the next field, the rest thinning out and straggling behind them. Among
these we recognise with glee a friend or two, who years ago were in the
first flight of every Uppingham paper-chase (_si nunc foret illa
uventus_), labouring across a turnip-field, or held by the leg in a gorse-
cover. A check gives them a chance of coming up again with huntsman and
master. We won't spoil the chance by halloing where the hare went,
though, from our vantage-ground, we can view her throughout. Our friends
have just got in line with the leaders, and are finding their breath
again for a second burst, when the scent is recovered; the chase sweeps
up the ridge, and over it out of our sight, away, perhaps, towards the
moorland spurs of Plinlimmon. We descend the hill homewards, leaving
puss to her doom, whatever it may be. For these runs sometimes had a
fatal termination. In the school serial is told the story of a
magnificent day, of which, however, the runners did not witness the end,
for "time was drawing late, and we were far from the station, so had to
leave the hounds under the charge of the huntsman alone, and as the hare
was now exhausted, they soon killed her. We were on the scent for over
two hours, and ran about twelve miles." These days took place two or
three times a week; for good practical reasons the "field" was restricted
in numbers.
After the short and sharp battle with the scarlet fever narrated above,
the term went on very peacefully, but with a growing expectation that
this would not be the last one in Wales. News from Uppingham of the
unpreparedness of the place to receive us left little room for doubt, but
the question was not decided (at least, officially) even at the date of
the break-up. The prospect of a fresh period of makeshift life was not a
welcome one; but the worst had been faced by this time, and found, after
all, not hard to deal with. The long dark evenings of November proved a
less difficulty than was anticipated. With afternoon school shifted to
the hour of sunset, and with meetings of the Debating and other societies
on half-holiday evenings, the dark hours did not hang heavily, and the
expected tedium of an Arctic winter was not experienced. The term closed
with a concert given in the Assembly Room at Aberystwith, December 13th,
and another on the next night in the Temperance Hall at popular prices.
On the 14th, a team of Old Boys played the usual football match against
the Present School, and were beaten by two goals to one. That evening
the class-list was read and the prizes given. If the boys hoped to
gather from the Headmaster's speech an intimation of where they would
meet him after Christmas they were disappointed. The government had as
yet no communication to make. Next morning, in the darkness before dawn,
the special train carried them to their homes, to await with curiosity
their next marching orders.