and has done it--in the eyes of the School--with one hand tied behind
him. But Scholarships are not won in this way, and no one is better
aware of the fact than Sparkleigh. His task, to tell the truth, has been
far more difficult than that of the unheroic Grubbe. Grubbe was content
to accept the stigma of "swot" because it carried with it permission to
work as hard and as openly--one had almost said as flagrantly--as he
pleased. But Sparkleigh, who had to maintain the attitude of a man of
the world and a scholastic Gallio and yet work just as hard as Grubbe,
was sorely put to it at times. He must work, and work desperately hard,
yet never be seen working. None of the friends who slapped him on the
back when the news of his success arrived knew of the desperate resorts
to which the boy had had recourse in order to obtain the time and
privacy necessary for his purpose. On Sunday afternoons he would
disappear upon a country walk, ostentatiously exhibiting a cigarette
case and giving his friends to understand that his walk was the
statutory three-mile qualification of a _bona-fide_ traveller. In
reality he sat behind a hedge in an east wind and contended with
Thucydides.
And there was his demeanour in school. On Thursdays, for instance, the
Sixth came in from four till six and composed Latin Verses. On these
occasions the Head seldom appeared, the task of presiding over the
drowsy assembly falling to a scholarly but timid young man who was
mortally afraid of the magnates who sat at the top bench. Sparkleigh
would take down the appointed passage as it was dictated and read it
through carelessly. In reality he was committing it to memory. Then:
"Wake me at a quarter to six," he would say to his neighbour, yawning.
And laying his head upon his arms, he would rest motionless until
aroused at the appointed moment.
But he was not asleep. For an hour and three-quarters that busy fertile
brain would be pulling and twisting the English verse into Latin shape,
converting it into polished Elegiacs or rolling hexameters. Then,
sleepily raising his head, and casting a last contemptuous glance over
the English copy, Sparkleigh would take up his pen, and in the remaining
quarter of an hour scribble out a full and complete fair copy--to the
respectful admiration of his neighbour Grubbe, who, covered with ink and
surrounded by waste paper, was laboriously grappling with the last
couplet.
There are many Sparkleighs in school life--and in the larger world as
well. They are not really deceitful or pretentious, but they are members
of a society in which revealed ambition is not good form. That is all.
* * * * *
There is one curious relaxation of the schoolboy's vendetta against
ostentatious industry. You may work if you are a member of the Army
Class. The idea appears to be that to cultivate learning for its own
sake is the act of a pedant and a prig, but if you have some loyal,
patriotic, and gentlemanly object in view such as the obtaining of the
King's Commission, a little vulgar application of your nose to the
grindstone may be excused and indeed justified. But you must be careful
to explain that you are never never going to do any work again after
this.
* * * * *
As already noted, these characteristics puzzle the foreigner. The
Scotsman, for instance, though even more reserved than the Englishman,
is not nearly so self-conscious; and to him "ma career"--to quote John
Shand--is the most important business in life. Success is far too
momentous a thing to be jeopardised by false modesty; so why waste time
and spoil one's chances by pretending that it is a mere accident in
life--the gift of chance or circumstance? The American, too, cannot
understand the pose. His motto is "Thorough." American oarsmen get their
crew together a year before the race, and train continuously--even in
winter they row in a stationary tub under cover--until by diligent
practice they evolve a perfect combination. Englishmen would never dream
of taking such pains. They have a vague feeling that such action is
"unsportsmanlike." In their eyes it is rather improper to appear so
anxious to win. Once more we find ourselves up against the shame of
revealed ambition. The public school spirit again!
* * * * *
So much for the gods a boy admires. Now for the gods he is afraid of.
The greatest of these is Convention. The first, and perhaps the only,
thing that a boy learns at a public school is to keep in his appointed
place. If he strays out by so much as a single pace, he is "putting on
side," and is promptly sacrificed. Presumption is the deadliest sin in
school life, and is usually punished with a ferocity out of all
proportion to the offence. In moderation, Convention is a very salutary
deity. None of us are of much use in this world until we have found our
level and acquired the virtues of modesty and self-suppression. It is
extremely good for a cheeky new boy, late cock of a small preparatory
school and idol of a doting family, to have to learn by painful
experience that it is not for him to raise his voice in the course of
general conversation or address himself to any but his own immediate
order until he has been a member of the school for a year at least.
These are what may be termed self-evident conventions, and it does no
one any particular harm to learn to obey them. But the great god
Convention, like most absolute monarchs, has grown distinctly cranky and
eccentric in some of his whims. A sensible new boy knows better than to
speak familiarly to a superior, or take a seat too near the fire, or
answer back when unceremoniously treated. But there are certain laws of
Convention which cannot be anticipated by the most intelligent and
well-meaning beginner. For instance, it may be--and invariably
is--"side" to wear your cap straight (or crooked), or your jacket
buttoned (or unbuttoned), or your hair brushed (or not), or to walk upon
this side of the street (or that). But which? It is impossible to solve
these problems by any process save that of dismal experience. And, as in
a maturer branch of criminology, ignorance of the Law is held to be no
excuse for infraction of the Law. I once knew a small boy who, trotting
back to his House from football and being pressed for time, tied his new
white sweater round his neck by the sleeves instead of donning it in the
ordinary fashion. That evening, to his great surprise and extreme
discomfort, he was taken out and slippered by a self-appointed vigilance
committee. To wear one's sweater tied round one's neck, it seemed, was
the privilege of the First Fifteen alone. Who shall tell how oft he
offendeth?
And even when the first years are past and a position of comparative
prominence attained, the danger of Presumption is not outdistanced. A
boy obtains his House colours, we will say. His friends congratulate him
warmly, and then sit down to wait for symptoms of "side." The newly-born
celebrity must walk warily. Too often he trips. Our first success in
life is very, very sweet, and it is hard to swallow our exultation and
preserve a modest or unconscious demeanour when our heart is singing.
But the lesson must be learned, and ultimately is learned; but too often
only after a cruel and utterly disproportionate banishment to the
wilderness. Can we wonder that the Englishman who has achieved greatness
in the world--the statesman, the soldier, the athlete--always exhibits
an artificial indifference of manner when his deeds are mentioned in his
presence? In nine cases out of ten this is not due to proverbial heroic
modesty: it is caused by painful and lasting memories of the results
which followed his first essays in self-esteem.
The other god which schoolboys dread is Public Opinion. They have little
fear of their masters, and none whatever of their parents; but they are
mortally afraid of one another. Moral courage is the rarest thing in
schoolboy life. Physical courage, on the other hand, is a _sine qua
non_: so much so that if a boy does not possess it he must pretend that
he does. But if he exhibits moral courage the great majority of his
fellows will fail to recognise it, and will certainly not appreciate it.
They do not know its meaning. Their fathers have extolled it to them,
and they have heard it warmly commended in sermons in chapel; but they
seldom know it when they meet it. If an obscure and unathletic prefect
reports a muscular and prominent member of the House to the Housemaster
for some gross and demoralising offence, they will not regard the
prefect as a hero. Probably they will consider him a prig, and certainly
a sneak. The fact that he has sacrificed all that makes schoolboy life
worth living in the exercise of his simple duty will not occur to the
rank and file at all. Admiration for that sort of thing they regard as
an idiosyncrasy of pastors and masters.
It is not until he becomes a prefect himself that the average boy
discovers the meaning of the word character, and whether he possesses
any of his own. If he does, he begins straight-way to make up for lost
time. He sets yet another god upon his Olympus and keeps him at the very
summit thereof from that day forth for the rest of his life. As already
noted, the Englishman is suspicious of brains, despises intellectuality,
and thoroughly mistrusts any superficial appearance of cleverness; but
he worships character, character, character all the time. And that is
the main--the only--difference between the English man and the English
boy. The man appreciates moral courage, because it is a sign of
character. It is the only respect in which the English Peter Pan grows
up.
Finally, we note a new factor in the composition of the Public School
Type--the military factor. Ten years ago school Cadet Corps were few in
number, lacking in efficiency, and thoroughly lax in discipline. Routine
consisted of some very inert company drills and some very intermittent
class-firing, varied by an occasional and very disorderly field-day.
Real keenness was confined to those boys who had a chance of going to
Bisley as members of the shooting eight. The officers were middle-aged
and short-winded. It was not quite "the thing" to belong to the
Corps--presumably because _anybody_ could belong to it--and in any case
it was not decorous to be enthusiastic about it.
But the Officers' Training Corps has changed all that. At last the hand
of peace-loving and somnolent Headmasters has been forced by the action
of a higher power. Now the smallest public school has its Corps,
subsidised by the State and supervised by the War Office. Three years
ago, in Windsor Great Park, King George reviewed a perfectly equipped
and splendidly organised body of seventeen thousand schoolboys and
undergraduates; and these were a mere fraction of the whole. The O.T.C.
is undeniably efficient. Its officers hold His Majesty's commission, and
have to qualify for their posts by a course of attachment to a regular
body. Frequently the C.O. is an old soldier. Discipline and obedience of
a kind hitherto unknown in schools have come into existence. That is to
say, A has learned to obey an order from B with promptitude and
despatch, not because A is in the Fifteen while B is not, but because A
is a sergeant and B is a private; or to put the matter more simply
still, because it is an Order. Conversely, A gives his orders clearly
and confidently because he knows that he has the whole weight of
military law behind him, and need not pause to worry about athletic
status or caste distinctions.
It may be objected that we are merely substituting a military caste for
an athletic caste; but no one who knows anything about boys will support
such a view. The new caste will help to modify the despotism of the old:
that is all. And undoubtedly the system breeds _initiative_, which is
not the strong point of the average schoolboy. In the Army everyone
looks automatically for instruction to the soldier of highest rank
present, whether he be a brigadier in charge of a field-day or the
oldest soldier of three privates engaged in guarding a gap in a hedge.
It is these low-grade delegations of authority which force initiative
and responsibility upon boys who otherwise would shrink from putting
themselves forward, not through lack of ability or character, but
through fear of Presumption. And here we encounter another thoroughly
British characteristic. A Briton has a great capacity for minding his
own business. He dislikes undertaking a responsibility which is not his
by right. But persuade him that a task is indubitably and _officially_
his, and he will devote his life to it, however unthankful or exacting
it may be. In the same way many a schoolboy never takes his rightful
place in his House or School simply because he does not happen to
possess any of the restricted and accidental qualifications which school
law demands of its leaders. Now, aided by the initiative and
independence which elementary military training bestows, he is
encouraged to come forward and take a share in the life of the school
from which his own respect for schoolboy standards of merit has
previously debarred him. All he wants is a little confidence in himself
and a little training in responsibility. The Officers' Training Corps is
doing the same work among public schoolboys to-day that the Boy Scout
movement is doing so magnificently for his brethren in other walks of
life.
II
But we need not dip into the future: we are concerned only with the past
and its effect upon the present.
What manner of man is he that the English public school system has
contributed to the service of the State and the Empire? (With the
English public schools we ought fairly to include Scottish public
schools conducted on English lines.) How far are the characteristics of
the boy discernible in the Man? The answer is:--Through and through.
In the first place, the Man is usually a Conservative. So are all
schoolboys. (Who shall forget the turmoil which arose when a new and
iconoclastic Housemaster decreed that the comfortable double collar
which had hitherto been the exclusive property of the aristocracy
might--nay, must--be worn by all the House irrespective of rank?)
Secondly, he is very averse to putting himself forward until he has
achieved a certain _locus standi_. A newly-elected Member of Parliament,
if he happens to be an old public-school boy, rarely if ever addresses
the House during his first session. He leaves that to Radical thrusters
and Scotsmen on the make. He does this because he remembers the day upon
which he was rash enough to rise to his feet and offer a few halting
observations on the occasion of his first attendance at a meeting of the
Middle School Debating Society. ("Who are you," inquired his friends
afterwards, "to get up and jaw? Have you got your House colours?")
Thirdly, he declines upon all occasions, be he scholar, or soldier, or
lawyer, to discuss matters of interest relating to his profession; for
this is "shop." He remembers the historic "ragging" of two harmless but
eccentric members of the Fifth at school, who, dwelling in different
Houses, were discovered to be in the habit of posting one of Cicero's
letters to one another every evening for purposes of clandestine and
unnatural perusal at breakfast next morning.
If he rises to a position of eminence in life or performs great deeds
for the State, he laughs his achievements to scorn, and attributes them
to "a rotten fluke," remembering that that was what one of the greatest
heroes of his youth, one Slogsby, used to do when he had made a hundred
in a school match.
If he is created a Judge or a Magistrate or a District Commissioner he
is especially severe upon sneaks and bullies, for he knows what sneaking
and bullying can be. For the open law-breaker he has a much kindlier
feeling, for he was once one himself. He is intensely loyal to any
institution with which he happens to be connected, such as the British
Empire or the M.C.C., because loyalty to School and House is one of the
fundamental virtues of the public school boy.
Lastly, compulsory games at school have bred in him an almost passionate
desire to keep himself physically fit at all times in after life.
He has grave faults. Loving tradition, he dislikes change, and often
stands mulishly in the way of necessary progress. Mistrusting precocity,
he often snubs genuine and valuable enthusiasm. His anxiety to mind only
his own business sometimes leads him into deciding that some urgent
matter does not concern him when in point of fact it does. As a
schoolboy he was the avowed enemy of all "cads," and his views on what
constituted a cad were rather too comprehensive. Riper years do not
always correct this fault, and he is considered--too often,
rightly--cliquey and stuck-up. Disliking a bounder, he sometimes fails
to penetrate the disguise of a man of real ability. Similarly his
loyalty to his friends sometimes leads him to believe that there can be
no real ability or integrity of character outside his own circle; with
the result that in filling up offices he is sometimes guilty of
nepotism. The fact that the offence is world-old and world-wide does not
excuse it in a public school man.
Finally, all public school boys are intensely reserved about their
private ambitions and private feelings. So is the public school man.
Consequently soulful and communicative persons who do not understand him
regard him as stodgy and unsociable.
But he serves his purpose. Like most things British, he is essentially a
compromise. He is a type, not an individual; and when the daily, hourly
business of a nation is to govern hundreds of other nations, perhaps it
is as well to do so through the medium of men who, by merging their own
individuality in a common stock, have evolved a standard of Character
and Manners which, while never meteoric, seldom brilliant, too often
hopelessly dull, is always conscientious, generally efficient, and
never, never tyrannical or corrupt. If this be mediocrity, who would
soar?
* * * * *
**Transcribers Notes**
Minor punctuation errors corrected
Page 51 Buluwayo spelling left
Page 143 indiarubber spelling left
Page 199 disheartening printer typo corrected
Page 202 coinsiding spelling left
Illustrations in the HTML version have been moved to not break
paragraphs - the illustration index from the original, therefore, does
not exactly match the HTML location of the illustrations.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Lighter Side of School Life, by Ian Hay