THE MIDDLE YEARS
Desmond Coke has described in _The Bending of a Twig_, the middle years
of a public school career as being slow to pass, but swift in
retrospect. He devoted two chapters to them--'See-saw down' and 'See-saw
up.' And those chapter headings convey more clearly than a long analysis
the nature of that period. To begin with it is 'See-saw down.' The boy
is confused with his new-found liberty; the future stretches endlessly
before him. There is plenty of time. There is no need for hurry. And so
he rags and wastes his time and makes, on the whole, a pretty general
nuisance of himself. His house reports are worse at the end of every
term. His parents grow worried; they remember the bright promise of that
first term: the prize, the promotion, the glowing panegyric. The arrival
of the blue envelope during the second week of the holidays is the
occasion of considerable domestic stress. On such a morning one
remembers that one has promised to spend the day with a friend at
Richmond.
And then suddenly, when the revel is at its height, some chance incident
or conversation forces a boy to realise that he has not so much time as
he had thought, that the weeks are passing, that, already, the end has
drawn close to him. Clifford Bax, in one of his many beautiful poems,
has described a man's first appreciation of the approach of age.
'There is a certain mid-way hour in life
Which startles every man, when the tide turns
And, wave on wave, we hear death coming on.'
In the same way the boy discovers that the half of his schooldays are at
an end, that he has put them to little use. And, as the temporal quality
of life drives the epicurean to gather with what eager haste he may,
flowers that for him will soon have blossomed, the sense of passing days
defines and directs for the schoolboy the course of ambition. It is
perhaps the first moment of conscious thought, of objective reasoning.
The days of unreflecting action are at an end. He is no longer a child
playing in a nursery. He is a man, subject to the laws of time and
space, a mortal man aware of his mortality.
Now this sudden change, which partakes of the nature of a conversion,
owes its existence, as often as not, to some perfectly trivial
occurrence. The stage is not set appropriately. There is no long heart
to heart talk with a schoolmaster, a parent, or a friend at the end of
which the boy leaps to his feet, claps his hand to his forehead, and
exclaims: 'I see the evil of my ways.' Such dramatic moments, I suppose,
take place occasionally, but they are the exception. The boy has
reached that stage of his development when the idea of time can become
an actuality to him, and some quite casual incident will bring this
actuality before him.
It is possible, of course, that this reformation may be effected by a
conversation. But it will be an unrehearsed effect. One is walking down
to hall, and, through the open door of the changing room overhears some
uncomplimentary statement of one's worth. The statement need not be made
by a particular friend. Indeed, it will probably be more effective if it
is not. We accept with composure the criticisms of our friends, our
relatives, our enemies. Wherever there is an intimate relationship there
is friction. We know that, at times, we must be intensely annoying to
our friends, because they are at times so intensely annoying to
ourselves. Little tricks, traits of character, intonations of the voice
that we should hardly notice in those to whom we are indifferent,
exasperate us in those for whom we care. We expect our friends at times
to say nasty things about us. We are too conscious of our own
delinquencies. But impersonal criticism is unpleasant; it is like an
unfavourable review that is unsigned. If we cannot reassure ourselves
with the knowledge that our assailant is either jealous of us or
dislikes us, or thinks we pay too many attentions to his wife; if, that
is to say, we can detect in this criticism no ulterior motive, but
simply a dispassionate impersonal disapproval of ourselves and of our
work, then we do indeed feel that the need for drastic self-criticism
is immediate.
When, therefore, Jones on his way down to hall overhears Ferguson, who
is in another form, who has never been brought into contact with him,
who has no possible reason for feeling envious or jealous, remark that
Jones is the sort of fellow whom the house could get on very well
without, he goes quickly to his study and communes with himself.
At the beginning of my third year at school, when I was very happy, very
light-hearted, very boisterous, and, I suppose, rather obnoxious
generally, I was standing at the counter of the tuck shop waiting to be
served with a poached egg and a sausage. I experienced considerable
difficulty in catching the eye of the waitress, and for the better
announcing of my presence I took a knife out of the basket and beat it
upon the zinc covering of the counter. The waitress, who was harassed by
the number of orders, turned round impatiently: 'Oh, do be quiet, Mr.
Waugh,' she said, 'I don't know what's come over you lately. You used to
be such a nice quiet boy when you first came.' Several people laughed,
but her remark was a shock to me. I had not the slightest romantic
interest in her. I did not care greatly what opinion she held of my
moral worth, but I had not before realised that it was possible for a
change of which I was myself ignorant to take place within me, that a
process of degeneration could take its slow effect, altering me in the
eyes of others, leaving me unaltered in my own, that, like rust on
iron, environment could corrode temperament. That chance remark had a
most profound effect on me. It gave me a sudden insight into the secret
forces that lie under the surface of life. I do not know whether from
the outside I appeared afterwards a different person. One cannot focus
the impression one has of oneself and the impression one makes on
others. But to myself I know that I was different. And some such
revelation invariably comes to a boy during his period of school life.
In novels and stories we attribute it to some emotional crisis. The
reason of the change is less important than that there should be change,
and that the reader should be able to realise that for such a change
there was a reason. But, actually, the reason is usually trivial enough.
It may be that a boy's pride has been rebuffed; some one has got a house
cap before him. He begins to reassure himself with the old dope: 'There
is plenty of time. It doesn't matter. I'll catch him later on.' But for
once the old dope does not work. He realises with a shock that there is
less time than he had thought. He has allowed his rival to get too far
ahead. A house cap is only two stages distant from a first. He may not
have time to catch him up. In the light of the discovery he revises his
whole career. He asks himself whither he is drifting. He sees that he
has passed beyond the stage of a vague promise into one of definite
rivalry and achievement.
The prospects of the beginner are always golden. His wares are not yet
for sale in the open market. He has not entered into competition with
his contemporaries. A young professional makes a century during his
first month of first-class cricket and is immediately the object of
generous enthusiasm. The reporter can write of him as ecstatically as he
will. The professional has not yet reached representative cricket. At
school a slow left-hand bowler takes eight wickets for twenty-seven in a
house match. He is spoken of at once as the coming man. For another
season he will continue to take wickets in house matches to the delight
of every one. Then he will enter the lists of representative cricket. He
will play on uppers, and it will have to be decided, not whether he is a
good slow left-hand bowler, but whether he is better than Evans in
Buller's, and Morrison in Wilkes's. It is so easy to say of a boy of
fifteen: 'Some day he will be captain of the house.' We can all of us
exclaim at the beginning of a Marathon: 'What a beautiful runner that
fellow is.' It is after ten miles have been run and the runners have
sorted themselves out that the real race begins. It is the appreciation
of this moment that ends the 'see-saw down' period and sees the start of
the 'see-saw up.'
It must not be imagined, however, that this process of see-saw up
involves a complete moral, spiritual, and intellectual reformation; it
sometimes does; more usually it means that the schoolboy looks at the
same life from a different angle. His standards, his scale of values
remain unaltered. He feels that he has not adjusted himself properly to
their demands. He has been making an ass of himself: he has been ragging
about, he has allowed opportunities to slip past him. 'It won't do,' he
tells himself. 'I must stop all this. I must settle down.'
Such a resolution involves, to a certain extent, an appreciation of
imminent responsibilities; a boy realises that a series of desperate
escapades will prejudice his prospects of prefectship; it often results
in the exchange of a positive for a negative manner of life. The Sixth
Former, the potential scholar of Balliol, is spurred by such an
experience to really hard work. For him a turning-point has been
reached. It is different, however, for the second eleven colour who has
reached the Lower Fifth after three years of spasmodic cribbing. He has
been in the past a free-lance, an irresponsible ragster. He decides that
the time has come for him to settle down. If the Lower Fifth is, as it
often is, a comfortable backwater, he is content to rest there. He sits
on a back bench, and plays an occasional part in the life of the form.
While he was a ragster he had to work. A well-prepared lesson was his
armour. Now that he no longer rags he need no longer work; he is content
to be inoffensive, agreeable, somnolent. He considers that between
himself and his form master there is an unwritten pact by which each
agrees to leave the other alone. It is as though he said: 'Your time,
Mr. Featherbrain, is fully occupied between the ragsters and the
industrious. You have to keep a constant watch upon the ragster. You
have to teach the industrious. That is a whole-time job. Why worry about
me? You need not keep a watch upon me. It is agreed that I shall do no
ragging. And why try to teach me anything. Your energies are wasted upon
me. I don't want to learn anything. You may lead a horse to the water,
you know. Why worry yourself and me! There are all those other fellows
who want to learn.' And the master, usually, signs the contract. He is a
busy man. The temptation is very great. He excuses himself in the common
room by speaking of 'fellows like dear old Thomas; good-natured chaps,
but with absolutely no brains. Latin and Greek are flung away on them.
But they'll make fine empire builders.' And so the boy who has settled
down spends the greater part of his day wool-gathering in vacuous
laziness. To nothing that happens between chapel and lunch can he bring
the least enthusiasm. His thoughts are fixed on the more thrilling
encounters of the football field. His whole life, indeed, is centred on
sport, and on the most entertaining methods he can discover for the
better employing of his spare time. All his energy, all his enthusiasm,
is concentrated into one, or perhaps two, focuses. It is not surprising
that he should become tolerably proficient at games and a source of
moral anxiety to prefects and house masters.
Is the pursuit of athletic success a sufficiently engrossing occupation
for such a boy? That is the question that a house master unconsciously
puts to himself. He must put it to himself, but his attitude to this
particular type of boy is based on a non-committal answer to this
question: the answer--'Perhaps; but it's up to you.' The house master,
therefore, does all in his power to persuade the boy that the acquiring
of a First Fifteen cap is his immediate object in life. He will not
state his case in words; but he will omit the uncomfortable topic of
form work in conversations, and discuss at length the prospects of the
house in the senior matches. If he does not succeed in directing the
entire energy of the boy on games, the results of such a failure may be
disastrous. A fellow of seventeen who has nothing particular to do is
bound to find himself in mischief. This fact is realised by both parents
and house masters, and those boys who are good neither at games nor work
usually leave at about this period. It is the falling out of the
unsuccessful runner in a long race. It is no good going on. The leaders
are too far ahead. The gap between the senior and the junior is thus
considerably increased. The stepping-stones have been removed. A boy of
eighteen at the start of his last year sees very few of his
contemporaries sitting at the Sixth Form table. Of the eight or nine
boys who came there with him, only three are left, and the Fifth Form
table is filled by fellows two or three years junior to himself, with
whom he has but a slight acquaintance. It is always the 'blood' who is
asked to stop on that extra year. The insignificant are encouraged by
silence to retire.
'Thou shalt not kill, yet needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.'
By the time the boy comes to be a prefect he is able to feel himself
supreme, not only because of the system that is at his back.