The person upon whom the schoolboys' attention centred was, of course,
the Headmaster. To the very young ones, the Headmaster was merely
powerful and paternal, up above everything. As soon as the critical
instinct awoke, its utterances were specially directed, by the
evil-disposed, at him, petty and malicious as they were, and were
echoed slavishly by the rest.
As the Head was a powerful, stout, handsome, distinguished-looking man
with a certain stamp of joviality and innocent good-living about him,
these malicious tongues, who led the rest, declared that he only lived
for his stomach. In the next place, the old-fashioned punishment of
caning, administered by the Head himself in his private room, gave some
cause of offence. It was certainly only very lazy and obdurate boys who
were thus punished; for others such methods were never even dreamt of.
But when they were ordered to appear in his room after school-time, and
the Head took them between his knees, thrashed them well and then
afterwards caressed them, as though to console them, he created
ill-feeling, and his dignity suffered. If there were some little sense
in the disgust occasioned by this, there was certainly none at all in
certain other grievances urged against him.
It was the ungraceful custom for the boys, on the first of the month,
to bring their own school fees. In the middle of one of the lessons the
Head would come into the schoolroom, take his seat at the desk, and
jauntily and quickly sweep five-daler bills [Footnote: Five daler, a
little over 11/--English money.] into his large, soft hat and thence
into his pockets. One objection to this arrangement was that the few
poor boys who went to school free were thus singled out to their
schoolfellows, bringing no money, which they felt as a humiliation. In
the next place, the sight of the supposed wealth that the Head thus
became possessed of roused ill-feeling and derision. It became the
fashion to call him boy-dealer, because the school, which in its palmy
days had 550 scholars, was so well attended. This extraordinary influx,
which in all common sense ought to have been regarded as a proof of the
high reputation of the school, was considered a proof of the Head's
avarice.
It must be added that there was in his bearing, which was evidently and
with good reason, calculated to impress, something that might justly
appear unnatural to keen-sighted boys. He always arrived with
blustering suddenness; he always shouted in a stentorian voice, and,
when he gave the elder boys a Latin lesson, he always appeared,
probably from indolence, a good deal behind time, but to make up, and
as though there were not a second to waste, began to hurl his questions
at them the moment he arrived on the threshold. He liked the pathetic,
and was certainly a man with a naturally warm heart. On a closer
acquaintance, he would have won much affection, for he was a clever man
and a gay, optimistic figure. As the number of his scholars was so
great, he produced more effect at a distance.