doing little, and saying almost nothing at all. If a Housemaster be
blatantly autocratic; if he deputes power to no one; if he prides
himself upon his iron discipline; if he quells mere noise with savage
ferocity and screws down the safety-valve implacably upon healthy
ragging, he will reap his reward. He will render his House quiet,
obedient--and furtive. Under such circumstances prefects are a positive
danger. Possessing special privileges, but no sense of responsibility,
they regard their office merely as a convenient and exclusive avenue to
misdemeanour.
On the other hand, a Housemaster must not allow his prefects unlimited
authority, or he will cease to be master in his own House. In other
words, he must strike an even balance between sovereign and deputed
power--an undertaking which has sent dynasties toppling before now.
In addition to all this, he must be an Admirable Crichton. Whatever his
own particular teaching subject may be, he will be expected, within the
course of a single evening's "prep," to be able to unravel a knotty
passage in AEschylus, "unseen," solve a quadratic equation on sight,
compose a chemical formula, or complete an elegiac couplet. He must also
be prepared at any hour of the day or night to explain how leg-breaks
are manufactured, recommend a list of novels for the House library, set
a broken collar-bone, solve a jig-saw puzzle in the Sick-room, assist an
Old Boy in the choice of a career, or prepare a candidate for
Confirmation. And the marvel is that he always does it--in addition to
his ordinary day's work in school.
And what is his remuneration? One of the rarest and most precious
privileges that can be granted to an Englishman--the privilege of
keeping a public house!
Let me explain. For the first twenty years of his professional career a
schoolmaster works as a mere instructor of youth. By day he teaches his
own particular subject; by night he looks over proses or corrects
algebra papers. In his spare time he imparts private instruction to
backward boys or scholarship candidates. Probably he bears a certain
part in the supervision of the School games. He is possibly treasurer of
one or two of the boys' own organisations--the Fives Club or the
Debating Society--and as a rule he is permitted to fill up odd moments
by sub-editing the School magazine or organising sing-songs. He cannot
as a rule afford to marry; so he lives the best years of his life in two
rooms, looking forward to the time, in the dim and hypothetical future,
when he will possess what the ordinary artisan usually acquires on
passing out of his teens--a home of his own.
At length, after many days, provided that a sufficient number of
colleagues die or get superannuated, comes his reward, and he enters
upon the realisation of his dreams. He is now a Housemaster, with every
opportunity (and full permission) to work himself to death.
[Illustration: THE DAREDEVIL]
Still, you say, the labourer is worthy of his hire. A man occupying a
position so onerous and responsible as this will be well remunerated.
What is his actual salary?
In many cases he receives no salary, as a Housemaster, at all. Instead,
he is accorded the privilege of running his new home as a combined
lodging-house and restaurant. His spare time (which the reader will have
gathered is more than considerable) is now pleasantly occupied in
purchasing beef and mutton and selling them to Binks tertius. As his
tenure of the House seldom exceeds ten or fifteen years, he has to
exercise considerable commercial enterprise in order to make a
sufficient "pile" to retire upon--as Binks tertius sometimes discovers
to his cost. In other words, a scholar and gentleman's reward for a life
of unremitting labour in one of the most exacting yet altruistic fields
in the world is a licence to enrich himself for a period of years by
"cornering" the daily bread of the pupils in his charge. And yet we feel
surprised, and hurt, and indignant, when foreigners suggest that we are
a nation of shopkeepers.
The life of a Housemaster is a living example of the lengths to which
the British passion for undertaking heavy responsibilities and
thankless tasks can be carried. Daily, hourly, he finds himself in
contact (and occasional collision) with boys--boys for whose moral and
physical welfare he is responsible; who in theory at least will regard
him as their natural enemy; and who occupy the greater part of their
leisure time in criticising and condemning him and everything that is
his--his appearance, his character, his voice, his wife; the food that
he provides and the raiment that he wears. He is harried by measles,
mumps, servants, tradesmen, and parents. He feels constrained to invite
every boy in his House to a meal at least once a term, which means that
he is almost daily deprived of the true-born Briton's birthright of
being uncommunicative at breakfast. His life is one long round of
colourless routine, tempered by hair-bleaching emergencies.
But he loves it all. He maintains, and ultimately comes to believe, that
his House is the only House in the School in which both justice and
liberty prevail, and his boys the only boys in the world who know the
meaning of hard work, good food, and _esprit de corps_. He pities all
other Housemasters, and tells them so at frequent intervals; and he
expostulates paternally and sorrowfully with form-masters who vilify
the members of his cherished flock in half-term reports.
And his task is not altogether thankless. Just as the sun never sets
upon the British Empire, so it never sets upon all the Old Boys of a
great public school at once. They are gone out into all lands: they are
upholding the honour of the School all the world over. And wherever they
are--London, Simla, Johannesburg, Nairobi, or Little Pedlington
Vicarage--they never lose touch with their old Housemaster. His
correspondence is enormous; it weighs him down: but he would not
relinquish a single picture postcard of it. He knows that wherever two
or three of his Old Boys are gathered together, be it in Bangalore or
Buluwayo, the talk will always drift round in time to the old School and
the old House. They will refer to him by his nickname--"Towser," or
"Potbelly," or "Swivel-Eye,"--and reminiscences will flow.
"Do you remember the old man's daily gibe when he found us chucking
bread at dinner? 'Hah! There will be a bread pudding tomorrow!'"
"Do you remember the jaw he gave us when the news came about
Macpherson's V.C.?"
"Do you remember his Sunday trousers? Oh, Lord!"
"Do you remember how he tanned Goat Hicks for calling The Frog a
_cochon_? Fourteen, wasn't it?"
"Do you remember the grub he gave the whole House the time we won the
House-match by one wicket, with Old Mike away?"
"Do you remember how he broke down at prayers the night little Martin
died?"
"Do you remember his apologising to that young swine Sowerby before the
whole House for losing his temper and clouting him over the head? That
must have taken some doing. We rooted Sowerby afterwards for grinning."
"I always remember the time," interpolates one of the group, "when he
scored me off for roller-skating on Sunday."
"How was that?"
"Well, it was this way. I had got leave of morning Chapel on some excuse
or other, and was skating up and down the Long Corridor, having a grand
time. The old man came out of his study--I thought he was in Chapel--and
growled, looking at me over his spectacles--you remember the way?----"
"Yes, rather. Go on!"
"He growled:--'Boy, do you consider roller-skating a Sunday pastime?' I,
of course, looked a fool, and said, 'No, sir.' 'Well,' chuckled the old
bird, 'I do: but I always make a point of respecting a man's religious
scruples. I will therefore confiscate your skates.' And he did! He gave
them back to me next day, though."
"I always remember him," says another, "the time I nearly got sacked. By
rights I ought to have been, but I believe he got me off at the last
moment. Anyhow, he called me into his study and told me I wasn't to go
after all. He didn't jaw me, but said I could take an hour off school
and go and telegraph home that things were all right. My people had been
having a pretty bad time over it, I knew, and so did he. I was pretty
near blubbing, but I held out. Then, just as I got to the door, he
called me back. I turned round, rather in a funk that the jaw was coming
after all. But he growled out:--
"'It's a bit late in the term. The exchequer may be low. Here is
sixpence for the telegram.'
"This time I did blub. Not one man in a million would have thought of
the sixpence. As a matter of fact, fourpence-halfpenny was all I had in
the world."
And so on. His ears--especially his right ear--must be burning all day
long.
* * * * *
Of course all Housemasters are not like this. If you want to hear about
the other sort, take up The _Lanchester Tradition_, by Mr. G. F. Bradby,
and make the acquaintance of Mr. Chowdler--an individual example of a
great type run to seed. And there is Dirty Dick, in _The Hill_.
* * * * *
When he has fulfilled his allotted span as a Housemaster, our friend
retires--not from school-mastering, but from the provision trade. With
his hardly-won gains he builds himself a house in the neighbourhood of
the school, and lives there in a state of _otium cum dignitate_. He
still takes his form: he continues to do so until old age descends upon
him, or a new broom at the head of affairs makes a clean sweep of the
"permanent" staff.
He is mellower now. He no longer washes his hands of all responsibility
for the methods of his colleagues, or thanks God that his boys are not
as other masters' boys are. He does not altogether enjoy his work in
school: he is getting a little deaf, and is inclined to be testy. But
teaching is his meat and his drink and his father and his mother. He
sticks to it because it holds him to life.
Though elderly now, he enjoys many of the pleasures of middle age. For
instance, he has usually married late, so his children are still young;
and he is therefore spared the pain, which most parents have to suffer,
of seeing the brood disperse just when it begins to be needed most. Or
perhaps he has been too devoted to his world-wide family of boys to
marry at all. In that case he lives alone; but you may be sure that his
spare bedroom is seldom empty. No Old Boy ever comes home from abroad
without paying a visit to his former Housemaster. Rich, poor,
distinguished, or obscure--they all come. They tell him of their
adventures; they recall old days; they deplore the present condition of
the School and the degeneracy of the Eleven; they fight their own
battles over again. They confide in him. They tell him things they would
never tell their fathers or their wives. They bring him their ambitions,
and their failures--not their successes; those are for others to speak
of--even their love-affairs. And he listens to them all, and advises
them all, this very tender and very wise old Ulysses. To him they are
but boys still, and he would not have them otherwise.
"The heart of a Boy in the body of a Man," he says--"that is a
combination which can never go wrong. If I have succeeded in effecting
that combination in a single instance, then I have not run in vain,
neither laboured in vain."
CHAPTER THREE
SOME FORM-MASTERS
NUMBER ONE THE NOVICE
Arthur Robinson, B.A., late exhibitioner of St. Crispin's College,
Cambridge, having obtained a First Class, Division Three, in the
Classical Tripos, came down from the University at the end of his third
year and decided to devote his life to the instruction of youth.
In order to gratify this ambition as speedily as possible, he applied to
a scholastic agency for an appointment. He was immediately furnished
with type-written notices of some thirty or forty. Almost one and all,
they were for schools which he had never heard of; but the post in every
case was one which the Agency could unreservedly recommend. At the foot
of each notice was typed a strongly worded appeal to him to write (_at
once_) to the Headmaster, explaining first and foremost that he had
_heard of this vacancy through our Agency_. After that he was to state
his _degree_ (_if any_); _if a member of the Church of England_; _if
willing to participate in School games_; _if musical_; and so on. He was
advised, if he thought it desirable, to enclose a photograph of
himself.
A further sheaf of such notices reached him every morning for about two
months; but as none of them offered him more than a hundred-and-twenty
pounds a year, and most of them a good deal less, Arthur Robinson, who
was a sensible young man, resisted the temptation, overpowering to most
of us, of seizing the very first opportunity of earning a salary,
however small, simply because he had never earned anything before, and
allowed the notices to accumulate upon one end of his mantelpiece.
Finally he had recourse to his old College tutor, who advised him of a
vacancy at Eaglescliffe, a great public school in the west of England,
and by a timely private note to the Headmaster secured his appointment.
Next morning Arthur Robinson received from the directorate of the
scholastic agency--the existence of which he had almost forgotten--a
rapturous letter of congratulation, reminding him that the Agency had
sent him notice of the vacancy upon a specified date, and delicately
intimating that their commission of five per cent. upon the first year's
salary was payable on appointment. Arthur, who had long since given up
the task of breasting the Agency's morning tide of desirable vacancies,
mournfully investigated the heap upon the mantelpiece, and found that
the facts were as stated. There lay the notice, sandwiched between a
document relating to the advantages to be derived from joining the staff
of a private school in North Wales, where material prosperity was
guaranteed by a salary of eighty pounds per annum, and social success by
the prospect of meat-tea with the Principal and his family; and another,
in which a clergyman (retired) required a thoughtful and energetic
assistant (one hundred pounds a year, non-resident) to aid him in the
management of a small but select seminary for backward and epileptic
boys.
Arthur laid the matter before his tutor, who informed him that he must
pay up, and be a little less casual in his habits in future. He
therefore wrote a reluctant cheque for ten pounds, and having thus
painfully imbibed the first lesson that a schoolmaster must
learn--namely, the importance of attending to details--departed to take
up his appointment at Eaglescliffe.
He arrived the day before term began, to find that lodgings had been
apportioned to him at a house in the village, half a mile from the
School. His first evening was spent in making the place habitable. That
is to say, he removed a number of portraits of his landlady's relatives
from the walls and mantelpiece, and stored them, together with a
collection of Early Victorian heirlooms--wool-mats and prism-laden glass
vases--in a cupboard under the window-seat. In their place he set up
fresh gods; innumerable signed photographs of young men, some in frames,
some in rows along convenient ledges, others bunched together in a sort
of wire entanglement much in vogue among the undergraduates of that
time. Some of these photographs were mounted upon light-blue mounts, and
these were placed in the most conspicuous position. Upon the walls he
hung a collection of framed groups of more young men, with bare knees
and severe expressions, in some of which Arthur Robinson himself
figured.
After that, having written to his mother and a girl in South Kensington,
he walked up the hill in the darkness to the Schoolhouse, where he was
to be received in audience by the Head.
The great man was sitting at ease before his study fire, and exhibited
unmistakable signs of recent slumber.
"I want you to take Remove B, Robinson," he said. "They are a mixed
lot. About a quarter of them are infant prodigies--Foundation
Scholars--who make this form their starting-point for higher things; and
the remainder are centenarians, who regard Remove B as a sort of
scholastic Chelsea Hospital, and are fully prepared to end their days
there. Stir 'em up, and don't let them intimidate the small boys into a
low standard of work. Their subjects this term will be _Cicero de
Senectute_ and the _Alcestis_, without choruses. Have you any theories
about the teaching of boys?"
"None whatever," replied Arthur Robinson frankly.
"Good! There is only one way to teach boys. Keep them in order: don't
let them play the fool or go to sleep; and they will be so bored that
they will work like niggers merely to pass the time. That's education in
a nutshell. Good night!"
* * * * *
Next morning Arthur Robinson invested himself in an extremely new B.A.
gown, which seemed very long and voluminous after the tattered and
attenuated garment which he had worn at Cambridge--usually twisted into
a muffler round his neck--and walked up to School. (It was the last
time he ever walked: thereafter, for many years, he left five minutes
later, and ran.) Timidly he entered the Common Room. It was full of
masters, some twenty or thirty of them, old, young, and middle-aged. As
many as possible were grouped round the fire--not in the orderly,
elegant fashion of grown-up persons; but packed together right inside
the fender, with their backs against the mantelpiece. Nearly everyone
was talking, and hardly anyone was listening to anyone else. Two or
three--portentously solemn elderly men--were conferring darkly together
in a corner. Others were sitting upon the table or arms of chairs,
reading newspapers, mostly aloud. No one took the slightest notice of
Arthur Robinson, who accordingly sidled into an unoccupied corner and
embarked upon a self-conscious study of last term's time-table.
"I hear they have finished the new Squash Courts," announced a big man
who was almost sitting upon the fire. "Take you on this afternoon,
Jacker?"
"Have you got a court?" inquired the gentleman addressed.
"Not yet, but I will. Who is head of Games this term?"
[Illustration: THE LUNCHEON INTERVAL PORTRAIT OF A GENTLEMAN WHO HAS
SCORED FIFTY RUNS]
"Etherington major, I think."
"Good Lord! He can hardly read or write, much less manage anything. I
wonder why boys always make a point of electing congenital idiots to
their responsible offices. Warwick, isn't old Etherington in your
House?"
"He is," replied Warwick, looking up from a newspaper.
"Just tell him I want a Squash Court this afternoon, will you?"
"I am not a District Messenger Boy," replied Mr. Warwick coldly. Then he
turned upon a colleague who was attempting to read his newspaper over
his shoulder.
"Andrews," he said, "if you wish to read this newspaper I shall be happy
to hand it over to you. If not, I shall be grateful if you will refrain
from masticating your surplus breakfast in my right ear."
Mr. Andrews, scarlet with indignation, moved huffily away, and the
conversation continued.
"I doubt if you will get a court, Dumaresq," said another voice--a mild
one. "I asked for one after breakfast, and Etherington said they were
all bagged."
"Well, I call that the limit!" bellowed that single-minded egotist, Mr.
Dumaresq.
"After all," drawled a supercilious man sprawling across a chair, "the
courts were built for the boys, weren't they?"
"They may have been built for the boys," retorted Dumaresq with heat,
"but they were more than half paid for by the masters. So put that in
your pipe, friend Wellings, and----"
"Your trousers are beginning to smoke," interpolated Wellings calmly.
"You had better come out of the fender for a bit and let me in."
So the babble went on. To Arthur Robinson, still nervously perusing the
time-table, it all sounded like an echo of the talk which had prevailed
in the Pupil Room at his own school barely five years ago.
Presently a fresh-faced elderly man crossed the room and tapped him on
the shoulder.
"You must be Robinson," he said. "My name is Pollard, also of St.
Crispin's. Come and dine with me to-night, and tell me how the old
College is getting on."
The ice broken, the grateful Arthur was introduced to some of his
colleagues, including the Olympian Dumaresq, the sarcastic Wellings, and
the peppery Warwick. Next moment a bell began to ring upon the other
side of the quadrangle, as there was a general move for the door.
Outside, Arthur Robinson encountered the Head.
"Good morning, Mr. Robinson!" (It was a little affectation of the Head's
to address his colleagues as 'Mr.' when in cap and gown: at other times
his key-note was informal bonhomie). "Have you your form-room key?"
"Yes, I have."
"In that case I will introduce you to your flock."
At the end of the Cloisters, outside the locked door of Remove B,
lounged some thirty young gentlemen. At the sight of the Head these
ceased to lounge, and came to an attitude of uneasy attention.
The door being opened, all filed demurely in and took their seats,
looking virtuously down their noses. The Head addressed the intensely
respectable audience before him.
"This is Mr. Robinson," he said gruffly. "Do what you can for him."
He nodded abruptly to Robinson, and left the room.
As the door closed, the angel faces of Remove B relaxed.
"A-a-a-a-a-ah!" said everybody, with a sigh of intense relief.
Let us follow the example of the Head, and leave Arthur Robinson, for
the present, to struggle in deep and unfathomed waters.
NUMBER TWO THE EXPERTS
Mr. Dumaresq was reputed to be the hardest slave-driver in Eaglescliffe.
His eyes were cold and china blue, and his voice was like the neighing
of a war-horse. He disapproved of the system of locked form-rooms--it
wasted at least forty seconds, he said, getting the boys in--so he made
his head boy keep the key and open the door the moment the clock struck.
Consequently, when upon this particular morning Mr. Dumaresq stormed
into his room, every boy was sitting at his desk.
"Greek prose scraps!" he roared, while still ten yards from the door.
Instantly each boy seized a sheet of school paper, and having torn it
into four pieces selected one of the pieces and waited, pen in hand.
"_If you do this_," announced Mr. Dumaresq truculently, as he swung
into the doorway, "_you will be wise_."
Every boy began to scribble madly.
"_If you do not do this_," continued Mr. Dumaresq, "_you will not be
wise. If you were to do this you would be wise. If you were not to do
this you would not be wise. If you had done this you would have been
wise. If you had not done this you would not have been wise_. Collect!"
The head boy sprang to his feet, and feverishly dragging the scraps from
under the hands of his panting colleagues, laid them on the master's
desk. Like lightning Mr. Dumaresq looked them over.
"Seven of you still ignorant of the construction of the simplest
conditional sentence!" he bellowed. "Come in this afternoon!"
He tossed the papers back to the head boy. Seven of them bore blue
crosses, indicating an error. There may have been more than one mistake
in the paper, but one was always enough for Mr. Dumaresq.
"Now sit close!" he commanded.
"Sitting close" meant leaving comparatively comfortable and secluded
desks, and crowding in a congested mass round the blackboard, in such
wise that no eye could rove or mouth gape without instant detection.
"_Viva voce_ Latin Elegiacs!" announced Mr. Dumaresq, with enormous
enthusiasm. He declaimed the opening couplet of an English lyric. "Now
throw that into Latin form. Adamson, I'm speaking to you! Don't sit
mooning there, gaper. Think! Think!
_Come, lasses and lads, get leave of your dads_--
Come on, man, come on!
--_And away to the maypole, hey!_
Say something! Wake up! How are you going to get over 'maypole'? No
maypoles in Rome. Tell him, somebody! 'Saturnalia'--not bad. (Crabtree,
stand up on the bench, and look at me, not your boots.) Why won't
'Saturnalia' do? Will it scan? _Think!_ Come along, come _along_!"
In this fashion he hounded his dazed pupils through couplet after
couplet, until the task was finished. Then, dashing at the blackboard,
he obliterated the result of an hour's labour with a sweep of the
duster.
"Now go to your desks and write out a fair copy," he roared savagely.