well managed in every way, I lived for a time in atrocious terror of
everything and everybody. I was conscious of a great code of rules
which I did not know or understand, which I might quite unwittingly
break, and the consequences of which might be fatal. I was never
punished or caned, nor was I ever bullied. But I simply effaced myself
as far as possible, and lived in dread of disaster. The thought even
now of certain high blank walls with lofty barred windows, the
remembered smells of certain passages and corners, the tall form and
flashing eye of our headmaster and the faint fragrance of Havana cigars
which hung about him, the bare corridors with their dark cupboards, the
stone stairs and iron railings--all this gives me a far-off sense of
dread. I can give no reason for my unhappiness there; but I can
recollect waking in the early summer mornings, hearing the screams of
peacocks from an adjoining garden, and thinking with a dreadful sense
of isolation and despair of all the possibilities of disaster that lay
hid in the day. I am sure it was not a wholesome experience. One need
not fear the world more than is necessary--but my only dream of peace
was the escape to the delights of home, and the thought of the larger
world was only a thing that I shrank from and shuddered at.
No, it is wrong to say one had no friends, but how few they seemed and
how clearly they stand out! I did not make friends among the boys; they
were pleasant enough acquaintances, some of them, but not to be trusted
or confided in; they had to be kept at arm's length, and one's real
life guarded and hoarded away from them; because if one told them
anything about one's home or one's ideas, it might be repeated, and the
sacred facts shouted in one's ears as taunts and jests. But there was a
little bluff master, a clergyman, with shaggy rippled red-brown hair
and a face like a pug-dog. He was kind to me, and had me to lunch one
Sunday in a villa out at Barnes--that was a breath of life, to sit in a
homelike room and look at old Punches half the afternoon; and there was
another young man, a master, rather stout and pale, with whom I shared
some little jokes, and who treated me as he might treat a younger
brother; he was pledged, I remember, to give me a cake if I won an Eton
Scholarship, and royally he redeemed his promise. He died of heart
disease a little while after I left the school. I had promised to write
to him from Eton and never did so, and I had a little pang about that
when I heard of his death. And then there was the handsome loud-voiced
maid of my dormitory, Underwood by name, who was always just and kind,
and who, even when she rated us, as she did at times, had always
something human beckoning from her handsome eye. I can see her now,
with her sleeves tucked up, and her big white muscular arms, washing a
refractory little boy who fought shy of soap and water. I had a wild
idea of giving her a kiss when I went away, and I think she would have
liked that. She told me I had always been a good boy, and that she was
sorry that I was going; but I did not dare to embrace her.
And then there was dear Louisa, the matron of the little sanatorium on
the Mortlake road. She had been a former housemaid of ours; she was a
strong sturdy woman, with a deep voice like a man, and when I arrived
there ill--I was often ill in those days--she used to hug and kiss me
and even cry over me; and the happiest days I spent at school were in
that poky little house, reading in Louisa's little parlour, while she
prepared some special dish as a treat for my supper; or sitting hour by
hour at the window of my room upstairs, watching a grocer opposite set
out his window. I certainly did love Louisa with all my heart; and it
was almost pleasant to be ill, to be welcomed by her and petted and
made much of. "My own dear boy," she used to say, and it was music in
my ears.
I feel on looking back that, if I had children of my own, I should
study very carefully to avoid any sort of terrorism. Psychologists tell
us that the nervous shocks of early years are the things that leave
indelible marks throughout life. I believe that mental specialists
often make a careful study of the dreams of those whose minds are
afflicted, because it is held that dreams very often continue to
reproduce in later life the mental shocks of childhood. Anger,
intemperate punishment, any attempt to produce instant submission and
dismay in children, is very apt to hurt the nervous organisation. Of
course it is easy enough to be careful about these things in sheltered
environments, where there is some security and refinement of life. And
this opens up a vast problem which cannot be touched on here, because
it is practically certain that many children in poor and unsatisfactory
homes sustain shocks to their mental organisation in early life which
damage them irreparably, and which could be avoided if they could be
brought up on more wholesome and tender lines.
VII
FEARS OF BOYHOOD
There is a tendency, I am sure, in books, to shirk the whole subject of
fear, as though it were a thing disgraceful, shameful, almost
unmentionable. The coward, the timid person, receives very little
sympathy; he is rather like one tainted with a shocking disease, of
which the less said the better. He is not viewed with any sympathy or
commiseration, but as something almost lower in the scale of humanity.
Take the literature that deals with school life, for instance. I do not
think that there is any province of our literature so inept, so
conventional, so entirely lacking in reality, as the books which deal
with the life of schools. The difficulty of writing them is very great,
because they can only be reconstructed by an effort of memory. The boy
himself is quite unable to give expression to his thoughts and
feelings; school life is a time of sharp, eager, often rather savage
emotions, lived by beings who have no sense of proportion, no knowledge
of life, no idea of what is really going on in the world. The actual
incidents which occur are very trivial, and yet to the fresh minds and
spirits of boyhood they seem all charged with an intense significance.
Then again the talk of schoolboys is wholly immature and shapeless.
They cannot express themselves, and moreover there is a very strict and
peremptory convention which dictates what may be talked about and what
may not. No society in the world is under so oppressive a taboo. They
must not speak of anything emotional or intellectual, at the cost of
being thought a fool or a prig. They talk about games, they gossip
about boys and masters, sometimes their conversation is nasty and
bestial. But it conceals very real if very fitful emotions; yet it is
impossible to recall or to reconstruct; and when older people attempt
to reconstruct it, they remember the emotions which underlay it, and
the eager interests out of which it all sprang; and they make it
something picturesque, epigrammatic, and vernacular which is wholly
untrue to life. The fact is that the talk of schoolboys is very trivial
and almost wholly symbolical; emotion reveals itself in glance and
gesture, not in word at all. I suppose that most of us remember our
boyish friendships, ardent and eager personal admirations,
extraordinary deifications of quite commonplace boys, emotions none of
which were ever put into words at all, hardly even into coherent
thought, and were yet a swift and vital current of the soul.
Now the most unreal part of the reconstructions of school life is the
insistence on the boyish code of honour. Neither as a boy nor as a
schoolmaster did I ever have much evidence of this. There were certain
hard and fast rules of conduct, like the rule which prevented any boy
from giving information to a master against another boy. But this was
not a conscientious thing. It was part of the tradition, and the social
ostracism which was the penalty of its infraction was too severe to
risk incurring. But the boys who cut a schoolfellow for telling tales,
did not do it from any high-minded sense of violated honour. It was
simply a piece of self-defence, and the basis of the convention was
merely this, that, if the rule were broken, it would produce an
impossible sense of insecurity and peril. However much boys might on
the whole approve of, respect, and even like their masters, still they
could not make common cause with them. The school was a perfectly
definite community, inside of which it was often convenient and
pleasant to do things which would be penalised if discovered; and thus
the whole stability of that society depended upon a certain secrecy.
The masters were not disliked for finding out the infractions of rules,
if only such infractions were patent and obvious. A master who looked
too closely into things, who practised any sort of espionage, who tried
to extort confession, was disapproved of as a menace, and it was
convenient to label him a sneak and a spy, and to say that he did not
play the game fair. But all this was a mere tradition. Boys do not
reflect much, or look into the reasons of things. It does not occur to
them to credit masters with the motive of wishing to protect them
against themselves, to minimise temptation, to shelter them from
undesirable influences; that perhaps dawns on the minds of sensible and
high-minded prefects, but the ordinary boy just regards the master as
an opposing power, whom he hoodwinks if he can.
And then the boyish ideal of courage is a very incomplete one. He does
not recognise it as courage if a sensitive, conscientious, and
right-minded boy risks unpopularity by telling a master of some evil
practice which is spreading in a school. He simply regards it as a
desire to meddle, a priggish and pragmatical act, and even as a
sneaking desire to inflict punishment by proxy.
Courage, for the schoolboy, is merely physical courage, aplomb,
boldness, recklessness, high-handedness. The hero of school life is one
like Odysseus, who is strong, inventive, daring, full of resource. The
point is to come out on the top. Odysseus yields to sensual delight, he
is cruel, vindictive, and incredibly deceitful. It is evident that
successful beguiling, the power of telling an elaborate, plausible, and
imperturbable lie on occasions, is an heroic quality in the Odyssey.
Odysseus is not a man who scorns to deceive, or who would rather take
the consequences than utter a falsehood. His strength rather lies in
his power, when at bay, of flashing into some monstrous fiction,
dramatising the situation, playing an adopted part, with confidence and
assurance. One sees traces of the same thing in the Bible. The story of
Jacob deceiving Isaac, and pretending to be Esau in order to secure a
blessing is not related with disapprobation. Jacob does not forfeit his
blessing when his deceit is discovered. The whole incident is regarded
rather as a master-stroke of cunning and inventiveness. Esau is angry
not because Jacob has employed such trickery, but because he has
succeeded in supplanting him.
I remember, as a boy at Eton, seeing a scene which left a deep
impression on me. There was a big unpleasant unscrupulous boy of great
physical strength, who was a noted football player. He was extremely
unpopular in the school, because he was rude, sulky, and overbearing,
and still more because he took unfair advantages in games. There was a
hotly contested house-match, in which he tried again and again to evade
rules, while he was for ever appealing to the umpires against
violations of rule by the opposite side. His own house was ultimately
victorious, but feeling ran very high indeed, because it was thought
that the victory was unfairly won. The crowd of boys who had been
watching the match drifted away in a state of great exasperation, and
finally collected in front of the house of the unpopular player, hissed
and hooted him. He took very little notice of the demonstration and
walked in, when there arose a babel of howls. He turned round and came
out again, facing the crowd. I can see him now, all splashed and muddy,
with his shirt open at the neck. He was pale, ugly, and sinister; but
he surveyed us all with entire effrontery, drew out a pince-nez, being
very short-sighted, and then looked calmly round as if surprised. I
have certainly never seen such an exhibition of courage in my life. He
knew that he had not a single friend present, and he did not know that
he would not be maltreated--there were indications of a rush being
made. He did not look in the least picturesque; he was ugly, scowling,
offensive. But he did not care a rap, and if he had been attacked, he
would have defended himself with a will. It did not occur to me then,
nor did it, I think, occur to anyone else, what an amazing bit of
physical and moral courage it was. No one, then or after, had the
slightest feeling of admiration for his pluck. "Did you ever see such a
brute as P-- looked?" was the only sort of comment made.
This just serves to illustrate my point, that boys have no real
discernment for what is courageous. What they admire is a certain grace
and spirit, and the hero is not one who constrains himself to do an
unpopular thing from a sense of duty, not even the boy who, being
unpopular like P--, does a satanically brave thing. Boys have no
admiration for the boy who defies them; what they like to see is the
defiance of a common foe. They admire gallant, modest, spirited,
picturesque behaviour, not the dull and faithful obedience to the sense
of right.
Of course things have altered for the better. Masters are no longer
stern, severe, abrupt, formidable, unreasonable. They know that many a
boy, who would be inclined on the whole to tell the truth, can easily
be frightened into telling a lie; but they have not yet contrived to
put the sense of honour among boys in the right proportion. Such
stories as that of George Washington--when the children were asked who
had cut down the apple-tree, and he rose and said, "Sir, I cannot tell
a lie; it was I who did it with my little hatchet"--do not really take
the imagination of boys captive. How constantly did worthy preachers at
Eton tell the story of how Bishop Selwyn, as a boy, rose and left the
room at a boat-supper because an improper song was sung! That anecdote
was regarded with undisguised amusement, and it was simply thought to
be a piece of priggishness. I cannot imagine that any boy ever heard
the story and went away with a glowing desire to do likewise. The
incident really belongs to the domain of manners rather than to that of
morals.
The truth is really that boys at school have a code which resembles
that of the old chivalry. The hero may be sensual, unscrupulous, cruel,
selfish, indifferent to the welfare of others. But if he bears himself
gallantly, if he has a charm of look and manner, if he is a deft
performer in the prescribed athletics, he is the object of profound and
devoted admiration. It is really physical courage, skill, prowess,
personal attractiveness which is envied and praised. A dull, heavy,
painstaking, conscientious boy with a sturdy sense of duty may be
respected, but he is not followed; while the imaginative, sensitive,
nervous, highly-strung boy, who may have the finest qualities of all
within him, is apt to be the most despised. Such a boy is often no good
at games, because public performance disconcerts him; he cannot make a
ready answer, he has no aplomb, no cheek, no smartness; and he is
consequently thought very little of.
To what extent this sort of instinctive preference can be altered, I do
not know; it certainly cannot be altered by sermons, and still less by
edicts. Old Dr. Keate said, when he was addressing the school on the
subject of fighting, "I must say that I like to see a boy return a
blow!" It seems, if one considers it, to be a curious ideal to start
life with, considering how little opportunity civilisation now gives
for returning blows! Boys in fact are still educated under a system
which seems to anticipate a combative and disturbed sort of life to
follow, in which strength and agility, violence and physical activity,
will have a value. Yet, as a matter of fact, such things have very
little substantial value in an ordinary citizen's life at all, except
in so far as they play their part in the elaborate cult of athletic
exercises, with which we beguile the instinct which craves for manual
toil. All the races, and games, and athletics cultivated so assiduously
at school seem now to have very little aim in view. It is not important
for ordinary life to be able to run a hundred yards, or even three
miles, faster than another man; the judgment, the quickness of eye, the
strength and swiftness of muscle needed to make a man a good batsman
were all well enough in days when a man's life might afterwards depend
on his use of sword and battle-axe. But now it only enables him to play
games rather longer than other people, and to a certain extent
ministers to bodily health, although the statistics of rowing would
seem clearly to prove that it is a pursuit which is rather more apt to
damage the vitality of strong boys than to increase the vitality of
weak ones.
So, if we look facts fairly in the face, we see that much of the
training of school life, especially in the direction of athletics, is
really little more than the maintenance of a thoughtless old tradition,
and that it is all directed to increase our admiration of prowess and
grace and gallantry, rather than to fortify us in usefulness and manual
skill and soundness of body. A boy at school may be a skilful carver or
carpenter; he may have a real gift for engineering or mechanics; he may
even be a good rider, a first-rate fisherman, an excellent shot. He may
have good intellectual abilities, a strong memory, a power of
expression; he may be a sound mathematician, a competent scientist; he
may have all sorts of excellent moral qualities, be reliable, accurate,
truthful, punctual, duty-loving; he may in fact be equipped for life
and citizenship, able to play his part sturdily and manfully, and to do
the world good service; but yet he may never win the smallest
recognition or admiration in his school-days, while all the glory and
honour and credit is still reserved for the graceful, attractive,
high-spirited athlete, who may have nothing else in the background.
That is certainly the ideal of the boy, and the disconcerting thing is
that it is also the ideal, practically if not theoretically, of the
parent and the schoolmaster. The school still reserves all its best
gifts, its sunshine and smiles, for the knightly and the skilful; it
rewards all the qualities that are their own reward. Why, if it wishes
to get the right scale adopted, does it not reward the thing which it
professes to uphold as its best result, worth of character namely? It
claims to be a training-ground for character first, but it does little
to encourage secret and unobtrusive virtues. That is, it adds its
prizes to the things which the natural man values, and it neglects to
crown the one thing at which it professes first to aim. In doing this
it only endorses the verdict of the world, and while it praises moral
effort, it rewards success.
The issue of all this is that the sort of courage which it enforces is
essentially a graceful and showy sort of courage, a lively readiness, a
high-hearted fearlessness--so that timidity and slowness and diffidence
and unreadiness become base and feeble qualities, when they are not the
things of which anyone need be ashamed! Let me say then that moral
courage, the patient and unrecognised facing of difficulties, the
disregard of popular standards, solidity and steadfastness of purpose,
the tranquil performance of tiresome and disagreeable duties, homely
perseverance, are not the things which are regarded as supreme in the
ideal of the school; so that the fear which is the shadow of sensitive
and imaginative natures is turned into the wrong channels, and becomes
a mere dread of doing the unpopular and unimpressive thing, or a craven
determination not to be found out. And the dread of being obscure and
unacceptable is what haunts the minds of boys brought up on these
ambitious and competitive lines, rather than the fear which is the
beginning of wisdom.
VIII
FEARS OF YOUTH
The fears of youth are as a rule just the terrors of self-consciousness
and shyness. They are a very irrational thing, something purely
instinctive and of old inheritance. How irrational they are is best
proved by the fact that shyness is caused mostly by the presence of
strangers; there are many young people who are bashful, awkward, and
tongue-tied in the presence of strangers, whose tremors wholly
disappear in the family circle. If these were rational fears, they
might be caused by the consciousness of the inspection and possible
disapproval of those among whom one lives, and whose annoyance and
criticism might have unpleasant practical effects. Yet they are caused
often by the presence of those whose disapproval is not of the smallest
consequence, those, in fact, whom one is not likely to see again. One
must look then for the cause of this, not in the fact that one's
awkwardness and inefficiency is likely to be blamed by those of one's
own circle, but simply in the terror of the unknown and the unfamiliar.
It is probably therefore an old inherited instinct, coming from a time
when the sight of a stranger might contain in it a menace of some
hostile usage. If one questions a shy boy or girl as to what it is they
are afraid of in the presence of strangers, they are quite unable to
answer. They are not afraid of anything that will be said or done; and
yet they will have become intensely conscious of their own appearance
and movements and dress, and will be quite unable to command
themselves. That it is a thing which can be easily cured is obvious
from the fact which I often observed when I was a schoolmaster, that as
a rule the boys who came from houses where there was much entertaining,
and a constant coming and going of guests, very rarely suffered from
such shyness. They had got used to the fact that strangers could be
depended upon to be kind and friendly, and instead of looking upon a
new person as a possible foe, they regarded him as a probable friend.
I often think that parents do not take enough trouble in this respect
to make children used to strangers. What often happens is that parents
are themselves shy and embarrassed in the presence of strangers, and
when they notice that their children suffer from the same awkwardness,
they criticise them afterwards, partly because they are vexed at their
own clumsy performance; and thus the shyness is increased, because the
child, in addition to his sense of shyness before strangers, has in the
background of his mind the feeling that any mauvaise honte that he may
display may he commented upon afterwards. No exhibition of shyness on
the part of a boy or girl should ever be adverted upon by parents. They
should take for granted that no one is ever willingly shy, and that it
is a misery which all would avoid if they could. It is even better to
allow children considerable freedom of speech with strangers, than to
repress and silence them. Of course impertinence and unpleasant
comments, such as children will sometimes make on the appearance or
manners of strangers, must be checked, but it should be on the grounds
of the unpleasantness of such remarks, and not on the ground of
forwardness. On the other hand, all attempts on the part of a child to
be friendly and courteous to strangers should be noted and praised; a
child should be encouraged to look upon itself as an integral part of a
circle, and not as a silent and lumpish auditor.