in for a shower of abuse from certain quarters. He hits the
sentimentalist hard. We are told that the book is vulgar, that the
famous trio are "little beasts." (I think Mr. A. C. Benson said so.)
Still, Mr. Kipling never touches any subject which he does not adorn,
and in _Stalky_ he brings out vividly some of the salient features of
modern school life. He has drawn masters as they have never been drawn
before: the portraits may be cruel, biassed, not sufficiently
representative; but how they live! He has put the case for the
unathletic boy with convincing truth. He depicts, too, very faithfully,
the curious _camaraderie_ which prevails nowadays between boys and
masters, and pokes mordant fun at the sycophancy which this state of
things breeds in a certain type of boy--the "Oh, sir! and No, sir! and
Yes, sir! and Please, sir!" brigade--and deals faithfully with the
master who takes advantage of out-of-school intimacy to be familiar and
offensive in school, addressing boys by their nicknames and making
humorous reference to extra-scholastic incidents. And above all Mr.
Kipling knows the heart of a boy. He understands, above all men, a boy's
intense reserve upon matters that lie deepest within him, and his
shrinking from and repugnance to unrestrained and blatant discussion of
these things. Do you remember the story of the fat man--"the
jelly-bellied flag-flapper"--who came down to lecture to the school on
patriotism?
"Now the reserve of a boy is tenfold deeper than the reserve of a
maid, she having been made for one end only by blind Nature, but
man for several. With a large and healthy hand he tore down these
veils, and trampled them under the well-intentioned feet of
eloquence. In a raucous voice he cried aloud little matters, like
the hope of Honour and the dream of Glory, that boys do not discuss
with their most intimate equals.... He profaned the most secret
places of their souls with outcries and gesticulations. He bade
them consider the deeds of their ancestors, in such fashion that
they were flushed to their tingling ears. Some of them--the rending
voice cut a frozen stillness--might have had relatives who perished
in defence of their country. (They thought, not a few of them, of
an old sword in a passage, or above a breakfast-table, seen and
fingered by stealth since they could walk.) He adjured them to
emulate those illustrious examples; and they looked all ways in
their extreme discomfort.
"Their years forbade them even to shape their thoughts clearly to
themselves. They felt savagely that they were being outraged by a
fat man who considered marbles a game.... What, in the name of
everything caddish, was he driving at, who waved this horror before
their eyes?"
It was a Union Jack, you will remember, suddenly unfurled by way of
peroration.
"Happy thought! Perhaps he was drunk."
That is true, true, all through.
Then comes another class of school-story--the school-story written
primarily _for_ boys. Such are the books of Mr. Talbot Baines Reed.
These are regarded as somewhat _vieux jeu_ at the present day, but in
their own particular line they have never been bettered. They were
written to be read by comparatively young boys in a semi-religious
magazine; and anybody who has ever attempted to write a tale which shall
be probable yet interesting, and racy yet moral, will realise how
admirably Mr. Reed has achieved this feat--in such books as _The
Willoughby Captains_, _The Master of the Shell_, and _The Fifth Form at
St. Dominic's_.
Another excellent book is _Godfrey Marten, Schoolboy_. Here Mr. Charles
Turley achieves success by the most commendable means. He eschews the
theatrical. His story contains no death-bed heroics; no rescues from
drowning; no highly-coloured moral crises. He takes as his theme the
humdrum daily life--and no one who has not lived through it for weeks at
a time knows how humdrum it can be--of a public school, and makes it
interesting. He lacks fire, it may be said, but he avoids the
sentimentality of the old school and the cynicism of the new.
Perhaps the best of all this class is _The Bending of a Twig_, by Mr.
Desmond Coke--an absolutely faithful picture, drawn with unerring
instinct and refreshing humour. In fact it is so much the real thing
that at times it is a trifle monotonous, just because school life at
times is a trifle monotonous. But those who know what schoolboys are
cannot fail to appreciate the intrinsic merits of this book. It gently
derides the stagey incidents and emotional heroics of the old style of
school story. Here a small boy comes to Shrewsbury primed with the lore
of _Eric_ and _Tom Brown_ and _The Hill_, fully expecting to be tossed
in a blanket or roasted on sight. But nothing happens: he is merely
ignored. He has laboriously committed to memory a quantity of Harrow
slang from _The Hill_: he finds this is meaningless at Shrewsbury. He
cannot understand the situation: he has to unlearn all his lessons in
sophistication. The whole thing is admirably done.
The story strikes a deeper note towards the end. Here we are given a
very vivid study of the same boy, now head of his House, struggling
between his sense of duty and the fear of unpopularity. Shall he tackle
the disturbing element boldly, invoking if necessary the assistance of
the Housemaster, or let things slide for the sake of peace? Many a
tragedy of the Prefect's Room has hinged upon that struggle; and
although Mr. Coke's solution of the problem is not heroic, it is
probably all the more true to life. Altogether a fine book, but from its
very nature a book for boys rather than grown-ups.
Coming to the type of school-story at present in vogue, we have _The
Hill_, deservedly ranking as first-class. But _The Hill_ is essentially
a book for Harrovians; and the more likely a book is to appeal to
members of one particular school, the less likely it is to appeal to
members of any other school. (In this respect we may note that _Tom
Brown_ forms an exception. But then _Tom Brown_ is an exceptional book.)
If _The Hill_ had been written as a "general" school story, with the
identity of Harrow veiled, however thinly, under a fictitious name, its
glamour and romance, together with its enthusiasm for all that is
straight and strong and of old standing and of good report, would have
made it a classic among school fiction. But non-Harrovians--and there
are a considerable number of them--decline with natural insularity to
follow Mr. Vachell to his topmost heights. They are conscious of a
clannish, slightly patronising air about _The Hill_, which is notably
absent in other stories which tell the tale of a particular school. The
reader is treated to pedantic little footnotes, and given a good deal of
information which is either gratuitous or uninteresting. He is made to
understand that he is on The Hill but not of it. He recognises frankly
enough the greatness of Harrow tradition and the glory of Harrow
history, but he rightly reserves his enthusiasm over such things for his
own school; and there are moments when he feels inclined to bawl out to
the author that he envies Harrow nothing--except perhaps _Forty Years
On_.
In other words, _The Hill_, owing to the insistent fashion in which it
puts Harrow first and general schoolboy nature second, must be regarded
more as a glorified prospectus than as a representative novel of English
school life.
But _The Hill_ stands high. It cannot be hid. It is supersentimental at
times, but then so are schoolboys. And the characters are clean-cut and
finely finished. Scaife is a memorable figure; so is Warde. John Verney,
like most virtuous persons, is a bit of a bore at times; but the
Caterpillar, with his drawling little epigrams, and their inevitable
tag--"Not my own; my Governor's!"--is a joy for ever. Lastly, the
description of the Eton and Harrow Match at Lord's takes unquestionable
rank as one of the few things in this world which will never be better
done.
Two other books may be mentioned here, as illustrating the tendency,
already mentioned, of modern school-novelists to shift the limelight
from the boy to the master. The first is Mr. Hugh Walpole's _Mr. Perrin
and Mr. Traill_. A young man lacking means, and possessing only a
moderate degree, who feels inclined, as many do, to drift into
schoolmastering as a _pis aller_, should read, mark, learn, and inwardly
digest this book. It draws a pitiless picture of Common Room life in a
third-rate public school--the monotony; the discomfort; the mutual
antagonism and jealousy of a body of men herded together year after
year, condemned to celibacy by want of means, and deprived of all
prospect of advancement or change of scene. It hammers in the undeniable
truth that in the great majority of cases a schoolmaster's market value
depreciates steadily from the date of his first appointment. _Mr. Perrin
and Mr. Traill_ is a very able book, but should not be read by
schoolmasters while recovering, let us say, from influenza.
If the reader desires a further picture of the amenities of the Common
Room, viewed from a less oblique angle, he can confidently be
recommended to turn to _The Lanchester Tradition_, by Mr. G. F. Bradby.
_The Lanchester Tradition_ is a comparatively short story, but it is all
pure gold. It is written with knowledge, insight, and above all with an
appreciation of that broad tolerant humorous outlook on life which alone
can lubricate the soul-grinding wheels of routine. In _Mr. Perrin and
Mr. Traill_ we have a young, able, and merciless critic exposing some of
the weaknesses of the public-school system. In _The Lanchester
Tradition_ we have a seasoned and experienced representative of that
system demonstrating that real character can always rise superior to
circumstance, and that for all its creaking machinery and accompanying
friction the pedagogue's existence can be a very tolerable and at times
a very uplifting one. It is the old struggle between theory and
practice. _Solvitur ambulando._
There are many other school stories of recent date, of which no mention
has been made in this survey; but our excursions seem to have covered a
fairly representative field. What is the prevailing characteristic of
the new, as compared with the old? It appears to be a very insistent and
rather discordant note of realism--the sort of realism which leaves
nothing unphotographed. Romance and sentiment are swept aside: they
might fog the negative. Our rising generation are not permitted to see
visions or dream dreams. And there is a tendency--mercifully absent in
most of the books which we have described--to discuss matters which are
better not discussed, at any rate in a work of fiction. There is a great
vogue in these introspective days for outspokenness upon intimate
matters. We are told that such matter should not be excluded from the
text, because it is "true to life." So are the police reports in the
Sunday newspapers; but we do not present files of these delectable
journals to our sons and daughters--let us not forget the daughters: the
sons go to school, but the daughters can only sit at home and read
schoolboy stories--as Christmas presents.
There is another marked characteristic of modern school fiction--its
intense topicality. The slang, the allusions, the incidents--they are
all _dernier cri_. But the more up-to-date a thing may be, whether it be
a popular catchphrase or a whole book, the more ephemeral is its
existence. A book of this kind reproduces the spirit of the moment,
often with surprising fidelity; but after all it is only the spirit of
the moment. Its very applicability to the moment unfits it for any other
position. Books, speeches, and jokes--very few of these breathe the
spirit not only of the moment but of all time. When they do, we call
them Classics. _Tom Brown_ is a Classic, and probably _Stalky_ too. They
are built of material which is imperishable, because it is quarried from
the bed-rock of human nature, which never varies, though architectural
fashions come and go.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"MY PEOPLE"
[Illustration: THE SCHOOLGIRL'S DREAM]
I
Under this comprenhensive title the schoolboy groups the whole of his
relatives, of both sexes.
"Are your people coming for Speech Day?" inquires Master Smith of Master
Brown.
"Yes, worse luck!"
"It is a bore," agrees Smith. "I wanted you to come and sit with me."
"Sorry!" says Brown, and the matter ends. It never occurs to Brown to
invite Smith to join the family party. Such a proceeding would be
unheard of. A schoolboy with his "people" in tow neither expects nor
desires the society of his friends. His father may be genial, his mother
charming, his sister pretty; but in the jaundiced eyes of their youthful
host they are nothing more or less than a gang of lepers--to be
segregated from all communication with the outer world; to be conveyed
from one point to another as stealthily as possible; and above all to be
kept out of the way of masters.
Later in life, say at the University, this diffidence disappears. A
pretty sister becomes an asset; a pearl of price; a bait for luncheon
parties and a trap for theatre-tickets. Even a father, provided he does
not wear a made-up tie or take off his hat to the Dons, is tolerated.
But at school--never! Why?
The reason is that it is almost impossible to give one's "people" their
heads when on a visit to School without opening the way for breaches of
etiquette and social outrages of the most deplorable kind. Left to
themselves, fathers are addicted to entering into conversation with
casual masters--especially masters who in the eyes of a boy are too
magnificent to be approached or too despicable to be noticed. Mothers
have been known to make unsolicited overtures to some School
potentate--yea, even the Captain of the Eleven--because he happens to
have curly hair or be wearing a pretty blazer. Sisters are capable of
extending what the Lower School terms "the R.S.V.P. eye" to the meanest
and most insignificant fag. These solecisms shame Master Brown to his
very soul. Consequently he keeps his relatives in relentlessly close
order, herding them across the quadrangle under a running fire of
admonition and reproof.
"Yes, Dad, that's the Head. Look the other way, or he'll notice you....
For goodness sake, Mum, don't stop and talk to _this_ fellow: he's in
the Boat. _Who is that dear little boy with brown eyes?_ Great Scott,
how should I know all the rotten little ticks in the Lower
School?... Sis, what on earth did you go smiling and grinning at that
chap for? He is a master. _He took his hat off?_ Well, you must have
begun it, that's all! Think what an outsider he must consider you!...
_What, Mum? Who are these two nice-looking boys sitting on that bench?_
Not so loud! They're the Captain of the Eleven and the Secretary. _Will
I ask them to tea to amuse Dolly?_ Certainly, if you don't mind my
leaving the School for good to-morrow morning!... This is the
cricket-ground. No, you can't go and sit in the shade under those trees:
it is fearful side to go there. Stay about here. If you see any people
you know, from Town or anywhere, you can talk to them; but whatever you
do, don't go making up to chaps. I'll find young Griffin for you if you
like. He'll be pretty sick; but he knows you in the holidays, so I
suppose he has got to go through it. Sit here. Perhaps you had better
not speak to _anybody_ while I'm away, whether you know them or not.
Sis, remember about not making eyes at fellows. They don't like that
sort of thing from young girls: they're different from your pals in Hyde
Park; so hold yourself in. I'll be back in a minute."
Then he departs in search of the reluctant Griffin.
The only member of the staff to whom a boy permits his "people" to
address themselves is his Housemaster. Him he regards as inevitable; and
consents gloomily to conduct his tainted band to a ceremonial tea in the
Housemaster's drawing-room. There he sits miserably upon the edge of a
chair, masticating cake, and hoping against hope that the ceremony will
end before his relatives have said or done something particularly
disastrous.
He is conscious, too, of a sad falling-off in his own demeanour. Ten
minutes ago he was a miniature Grand Turk, patronising his parents and
ruffling it over his sister. Now he is a rather grubby little
hobbledehoy, conscious of large feet and red hands, mumbling "Yes, sir,"
and "No, sir," to a man whom he has been accustomed to represent to his
family as being wax in his hands and a worm in his presence.
An observant philosopher once pointed out that in every man there are
embedded three men: first, the man as he appears to himself; second, the
man as he appears to others; third, the man as he really is. This
classification of points of view is particularly applicable to the
scholastic world. Listen, for instance, to Master Smith, describing to
an admiring circle of sisters and young brothers a scene from school
life as it is lived in the Junior Remove.
_"Is the work difficult?_ Bless you, we don't do any _work_: we just rot
Duck-face. We simply rag his soul out. _What do we do to him?_ Oh, all
sorts of things. _What sort?_ Well, the other day he started up his
usual song about the necessity of absolute attention and
concentration--great word of Duck-face's, concentration--and gave me an
impot for not keeping my eyes fixed on him all the time he was jawing. I
explained to him that anybody who attempted such a feat would drop down
dead in five minutes. _How dare I say such a thing to a master?_ Well, I
didn't say it in so many words, but he knew what I meant all right. He
got pretty red. After that I tipped the wink to the other chaps, and we
all stared at him till he simply sweated. Oh, we give him a rotten
time!"
Mr. Duckworth's version of the incident, in the Common Room, ran
something like this.
"What's that, Allnutt? _How is young Smith getting on?_ Let me
see--Smith? Oh, that youth! I remember him now. Well, he strikes me as
being not far removed from the idiot type, but he is perfectly
harmless. I don't expect ever to teach him anything, of course, but he
gives no trouble. He is quite incapable of concentrating his thoughts on
anything for more than five minutes without constant ginger from me. I
had to drop rather heavily upon him this morning, and the results were
most satisfactory. He was attentive for quite half an hour. But he's a
dull customer."
What really happened was this. Mr. Duckworth, who was a moderate
disciplinarian and an extremely uninspiring teacher, had occasion to set
Master Smith fifty lines for inattention. Master Smith, glaring
resentfully and muttering muffled imprecations--symptoms of displeasure
which Mr. Duckworth, who was a man of peace at any price, studiously
ignored--remained comparatively attentive for the rest of the hour and
ultimately showed up the lines.
All this time we have left our young friend Master Brown sitting upon
the edge of a chair in his Housemaster's drawing-room, glaring defiantly
at everyone and wondering what awful thing his "people" are saying now.
Occasionally scraps of conversation reach his ears. (He is sitting over
by the window with his sister.) His mother is doing most of the
talking. The heads of her discourse appear in the main to be two--the
proper texture of her son's undergarments, and the state of his soul.
The Housemaster, when he gets a chance, replies soothingly. The Matron
shall be instructed to see that nothing is discarded prematurely during
the treacherous early summer: he himself will take steps to have
Reggie--the boy blushes hotly at the sound of his Christian name on
alien lips--prepared for confirmation with the next batch of candidates.
Occasionally his father joins in.
"I expect we can safely leave that question to Mr. Allnutt's discretion,
Mary," he observes drily. "After all, Reggie is not the only boy in the
House."
"No, I am sure he is not," concedes Mrs. Brown. "But I know you won't
object to hear the _mother's_ point of view, will you, Mr. Allnutt?"
"I fancy Mr. Allnutt has heard the mother's point of view once or twice
before," interpolates Mr. Brown, with a sympathetic smile in the
direction of the Housemaster.
"Now, John," says Mrs. Brown playfully, "don't interfere! Mr. Allnutt
and I understand one another perfectly, don't we, Mr. Allnutt?" She
takes up her parable again with renewed zest. "You see, Mr. Allnutt,
what I mean is, you are a bachelor. You have never had any young people
to bring up, so naturally you can't _quite_ appreciate, as I can----"
Mr. Allnutt, who has brought up about fifty "young people" per annum for
fifteen years, smiles wanly, and bows to the storm. Master Brown, almost
at the limit of human endurance, glances despairingly at his sister.
That tactful young person grasps the situation, and endeavours to divert
the conversation.
"What pretty cups those are on that shelf," she says in a clear voice to
her brother. "Are they Mr. Allnutt's prizes?"
"Yes," replies Master Brown, with a sidelong glance towards his
Housemaster. But that much-enduring man takes no notice: his attention
is still fully occupied by Mrs. Brown, whom he now darkly suspects of
having a suitable bride for him concealed somewhere in her peroration.
Master Brown and his sister rise to inspect the collection of trophies
more closely.
"What a lot he has got," says Miss Brown, in an undertone now. "Was he a
great athlete?"
"He thinks he was. When he gets in a bait over anything it is always a
sound plan to get him to talk about one of these rotten things. I once
got off a tanning by asking him how many times he had been Head of the
River. As a matter of fact, most of these are prizes for chess, or
tricycling, or something like that."
So the joyous libel proceeds. Master Reggie is beginning to cheer up a
little.
"What is that silver bowl for?" inquires his sister.
"Ah, it takes him about half an hour to tell you about that. They won
the race by two feet in record time, and he was in a dead faint for a
week afterwards. As a matter of fact, Bailey tertius, whose governor was
up at Oxford with the old Filbert"--etymologists will have no difficulty
in tracing this synonym to its source--"says that he saw the race, and
that Filbert caught a crab and lost his oar about five yards from the
start and was a passenger all the way. The men on the bank yelled to him
to jump out, but he was in too big a funk of being drowned, and
wouldn't. Of course he doesn't know we know!" And so the joyous libel
proceeds.
And yet, in Reggie Brown's last half-term report we find the words:
_A conscientious, but somewhat stolid and unimaginative boy._
II
But "people" do not visit the School solely for the purpose of bringing
social disaster upon their offspring. Their first visit, at any rate, is
of a very different nature. On this occasion they come in the capacity
of what Headmasters call "prospective parents"--that is, parents who
propose to inspect the School with a view to entering a boy--and as such
are treated with the deference due to imperfectly hooked fish.
The prospective parent varies considerably. Sometimes he is an old
member of the School, and his visit is a purely perfunctory matter. He
knows every inch of the place. He lunches with the Head, has a talk
about old times, and mentions with proper pride that yet another of his
boys is now of an age to take up his nomination for his father's old
House.
* * * * *
Then comes another type--the youthful parent. Usually he brings his wife
with him. He is barely forty, and has not been near a school since he
left his own twenty years ago. His wife is pretty, and not thirty-five.
Both feel horribly juvenile in the presence of the Head. They listen
deferentially to the great man's pontifical observations upon the
requirements of modern education, and answer his queries as to their
firstborn's age and attainments with trembling exactitude.
"I think we shall be able to lick him into shape," concludes the Head,
with gracious jocularity. It is mere child's play to him, handling
parents of this type.
Then the male bird plucks up courage, and timidly asks a leading
question. The Head smiles.
"Ah!" he remarks. "Now you are laying an invidious task upon me. Who am
I, to discriminate between my colleagues' Houses?"
The young parents apologise precipitately, but the Head says there is no
need. In fact, he goes so far as to recommend a House--in strict
confidence.
"Between ourselves," he says, "I consider that _the_ man here at the
present moment is Mr. Rotterson. Send your boy to him. I _believe_ he
has a vacancy for next term, but you had better see him at once. I will
give you a note for him now. There you are! Good morning!"
Off hurry the anxious pair. But the telephone outstrips them.