The Lighter Side of School Life, Ian Hay [historical books to read .txt] 📗

dear little boy with brown eyes? Great Scott, how should I know[179] 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."[180]

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[181] 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[182] 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.[183] 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?"[184] 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[185] 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.[186]

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[187] 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.

"Is that you, Rotterson?" says the Head. "I[188] have just despatched a brace of parents to you. Impress them! There are prospects of more to-morrow, so with any luck we ought to be able to pull up your numbers to a decent level after all."

"Thank you very much," says a meek voice at the other end.

Then there is the bluff, hearty parent—the man who knows exactly what he wants, and does not hesitate to say so.

"I don't want my son taught any of your new-fangled nonsense," he explains breezily. "Just a good sound education, without frills! The boy will have to earn his own living afterwards, and I want you to teach him something which will enable him to do so. Don't go filling him up with Latin and Greek: give him something which will be useful in an office. I know you pedagogues stick obstinately to what you call a good general grounding; but, if I may say so, you ought to specialise a bit more. You're too shy of specialisation, you know. But I say: Find out what each boy in your School requires for his future career, and teach him that!"

A Headmaster once replied to a parent of this description:[189]

"Unfortunately, sir, the fees of this school and the numbers of its Staff are calculated upon a table d'hôte basis. If you want to have your son educated à la carte, you must get a private tutor for him."

Then there is the Utterly Impossible parent. He is utterly impossible for one of two reasons—either because he is a born faddist, or because he has relieved Providence of a grave responsibility by labelling himself "A Self-Made Man, and Proud of It!"

The faddist is the sort of person who absorbs Blue Books without digesting them, and sits upon every available Board without growing any wiser, and cherishes theories of his own about non-competitive examinations, and cellular underclothing, and the use of graphs, and, generally speaking, about every subject on which there is no particular reason why the layman should hold any opinions at all. Such a creature harries the scholastic profession into premature senility. Him the Head always handles in the same fashion. He delivers him over at the first opportunity to a Housemaster, and the Housemaster