CHAPTER XI THE OLD BOY AS SCHOOLMASTER AND PARENT
Fears for the future and regrets for the past are alike forgotten during the last week. There are sad moments, but, as Arnold Lunn remarked, 'there is a world of difference between the pleasant sorrow of sentiment and the more real depression that coincides with an overdraft at the bank.' The last week is passed in a mood that I once heard described as 'happy-sad.' On the last Sunday in chapel the boy who is leaving endeavours to summon the appropriate emotion. He knows how he ought to feel. He has been instructed by so many stories. He is, in a way, an actor in a drama. He knows that the fag on the other side of the aisle is looking at him, is saying to himself: 'This is Jones's last chapel. What is he feeling?' And, like an actor, Jones does not want to disappoint his audience. He feels as he should feel. There is a lump at the back of his throat. But, on the whole, leaving is an exciting experience.
There is the auction of study furniture, when pictures that cost five shillings when they were new, fetch seven and six in their fourth year of service. There are the calls to be paid to masters, the 'good-byes' and 'good lucks.' It is the abdication of office when one is at the height of one's authority. It is a fine gesture that 'immeasurable power, unsated to resign,' to be able to step straight out from the lighted room, before the corroding forces of change have begun to work, and before habit has dulled applause. The exit is made at exactly the right moment. The curtain falls on a dramatic climax. And how rarely that happens.
In a temper of wistful sentimentality and self-satisfaction, arrayed in the colours of the old boys' society, the ex-public school boy leans out of the carriage window, waves good-bye to the friends who are catching a later train, makes and extracts promises to write, and watches as the train moves out of the station the familiar landmarks slip one by one behind him.
A sentimental, that is to say, a superficial emotion passes quickly. And it depends on the kind of life which awaits a boy, whether or not this sentimental regret will be followed by an acute sense of loss.
If he is going up to the university or to some remunerative and interesting employment, it is probable that he will forget school altogether in the fascination of a new life. If, however, he is destined for some dull unromantic post in the city, the thought of school will for a long time wake in him a deep, hopeless nostalgia. He will bring no enthusiasm to his work, and, as he sits at his high desk, balancing ledgers, computing insurance policies, adjusting income-tax returns, he will compare the monotony of his routine with the coloured movement and variety of school. As he walks to his office he will remind himself that at this moment the morning chapel is just ending. The school will be pouring across the courts. If he were there he would be walking arm in arm with some friend of his to the class-room, stopping on the way some intelligent friend to demand the elucidation of certain tiresome theorems. As he returns to the office after lunch he will say to himself: 'If I were there now I should be changing for football. I should have before me the prospect of a hard game and a bath afterwards, and a long, lazy evening in front of the games study fire.' And, at the end of the day, on his return to his home or diggings, he is lonely with the recollection of how often at such a time he has sat in the class-room waiting impatiently for the clock to strike, waiting for the moment of freedom when he can gather his books under his arm and rush back to the house to tea, to the four delightful hours of friendship and discussion that lie in that enchanted period between lock-up and lights out. School life never means so much to a boy as it does during his few months after he has left it. For he sees it transfigured in his imagination; he remembers nothing of the tiresome demands of routine, nothing of the friction between boys and masters, nothing of the long boring hours in form when he watched the patch of sunlight drift across the wall, nothing of the anxieties, the annoyances, the restrictions of a cloistered life. He sees it purged of the accidental, a city of his own fashioning.
It does not last, of course, this intense nostalgia. No young man can live for very long in the past. New interests come to him, he finds new fields for his ambition. He makes friends in his office. He joins a tennis club, he takes dancing lessons. He sets out in search of life. He ceases, at every vacant moment of the day, to compute what he would be doing were he at school instead of at an office. He thinks of the innings he intends to play next Saturday: his eyes pick out on the carpet an imaginary spot ten feet away from him, and he considers what shot he would play to a ball that pitched on it; he also perhaps wonders what exactly that charming lady with whom he had danced the night before, had meant when she had said, with a peculiar inflection in her voice: 'You're growing up.'
His correspondence with his old friends becomes spasmodic. He no longer writes to his house master once a month. The arrival of a letter with the school crest on it ceases to excite him as it did. The school magazine becomes full of names that are meaningless to him. He notes with disgust that Baxter, in his day a miserable little squirt, has got into the Eleven; and that that goggle-eyed ass, Barton, is head of the school. He asks himself at Christmas whether it is worth his while to renew his subscription, and decides that it is not. From time to time he reads in The Sportsman of the feats of his school Fifteen, and remarks without enthusiasm that 'Fernhurst must be pretty strong this year.' His school life has dropped from him as a coat that he has outgrown. It belongs to the past, and he is living in the future. School will not mean much to him for another twenty years, till the time comes, that is to say, when he will have to send his son to school.
Then will he recover his youth, and live again his school days in his son, only more intensely, because he will be living them in his imagination. In the achievements of his son he will recognise the ghost of his old ambitions. His son's career will be more personal to him than his own. He will take more pleasure in his son's successes than the boy will himself. Indeed a great deal of a boy's pleasure in his success lies in his appreciation of the happiness that it will bring to his father. At no time in their lives do father and son come so close to one another as during these years. And it is at first sight surprising that this intimacy should not produce that common ground on which difficulties may be openly discussed and quarrels healed. For in spite of this intimacy, the relations between father and son are very often superficial.
This statement may appear self-contradictory, but a little examination will show that this is not so. We do not necessarily confide in the people we love best. Let any man think of his friends and acquaintances, and he may be surprised to discover that he knows a great deal more about his acquaintances than his friends. I do not lay it down as a fact that he will make this discovery. I merely say that he may make it; certainly a great many will.
At school, where one has a vast number of acquaintances and a few friends, I used to wonder sometimes how best one could draw the dividing line between a friend and an acquaintance. And I decided that the difference lay in silence, that with a friend one could be silent, whereas with an acquaintance one could not. If a friend walked into one's study when one was busy, one smiled and went on with one's work; the friend picked up a book and read. But if an acquaintance came in, one immediately stopped what one was doing; one felt that silence would become embarrassing.
In the same way one does not, in the company of a real friend, feel the need of personal confidences. One likes being with him. That is enough. One sits over a fire and talks spasmodically, with long silences drifting into the conversation. But with a person of whom one is not particularly fond, such desultory conversation is not adequate. An acquaintance is not, in himself, sufficiently interesting—he is interesting in what he has done, or is doing. The need for confidences is essential. And so it is that most of us have acquaintances to whom we recount all our discreditable exploits, our romances, our financial enterprises, with whom we seem, in fact, remarkably intimate, but whose absence, were they to pass out of our lives, we should not greatly regret. The man who knows most about us very often matters least to us. This is not a generalisation. One cannot generalise about an abstraction like friendship, that has a different meaning and a different message for every individual man. But such relationships are a common experience; they are the more common in the degree that their subjects are the more reserved. And there is no more reserved class than that of past and present public school boys.
This is, at any rate, the only explanation that I can find for the superficial relations between son and father that are spread over so deep a trust and intimacy. They accept without appreciating this superficiality. The father comes down at half term, and he goes for a walk arm in arm with his son, along the slopes. They discuss home affairs and the external activities of school: football shop, cricket shop, house politics. They rarely touch on the boy's inner life; the father can only guess at what his boy is doing and thinking. Underneath their love for each other they are strangers.
On the important issues of school life they are both driven to accept the verdict of the house master or head master. And he, although he is working in the dark on both sides of him, is their only intermediary.
But the relationships between parents and children are too intricate for so short a book as this. Indeed, I doubt whether it is possible ever to tackle satisfactorily a subject, the nature of which alters with every individual case. One would be lost at once in a labyrinth of generalisations and exceptions; Lytton Strachey made no attempt to write a history of the Victorian era. He selected and analysed a few specimens; that is, I believe, the only way in which to deal with the complex subject of parenthood. And it can only be thus dealt with by the story-teller, by the man who says: 'I care nothing for general principles. But this is how things went for one family.' In a general study such as this, it is quite impossible to dogmatise from individual cases. But I would submit this facet of the relationship between father and son as an important one in the study of school society. It throws the need for co-operation almost entirely on the schoolmaster. It makes his responsibility greater than he knows.
Now there are three types of men to whom the scholastic profession makes its chief appeal. There is the brilliant scholar, the man with the double first, who will turn out to be either completely incompetent, or will become a head master. There is the athlete who takes a third, or at best a second in mods, and on the strength of a blue, returns as games master to his old school. Lastly, there is the idealist, the man who regards teaching as a calling and not a trade, the man who may be either an impossible crank or, in his own line, a genius.
The first class of master plays, on the whole, a small part in the politics of school life. If he is incompetent he is ragged in form and his opinion carries no weight in the common room. If he is successful, he is a bird of passage, on his way to some rich head-mastership. He may become a house master for a while, but he is always looking beyond his immediate surroundings. He is ambitious. He does not regard one school as his compass. Always he is just outside the drama.
The second class, however, forms the backbone of tradition. The old boy comes back to his old school with an intense loyalty and with the intention of staying there for the rest of his life. His ambition is to have the best house in the best school in the best county. He is usually a very fine fellow indeed, but he represents eternally the spirit of reaction. He lives in the standards of his youth. He has had no opportunity of testing those standards in another environment. His whole life has moved within the circle of one school.
He imbibed as a boy the public school spirit, and he did not outgrow that spirit at the university—hardly a proof of mental elasticity. He has no sense of progress or of change in the world for which he is training the young. As things have been, so shall they be. The old boy turned house master is the most powerful force in the common room. He is the chief obstacle that the enthusiast has to face.
With regard to the enthusiast, one is tempted to put an asterisk against the heading and a footnote, 'Vide the novels of S. P. B. Mais passim,' and leave it at that. For Mr. Mais knows more about the reception of this type of master than any other man in the kingdom. He has himself a genius for teaching. I cannot imagine a better English master. He inspires enthusiasm in the confirmed slacker. He is an invaluable asset to any staff, and yet nearly everywhere he has been met by opposition. His own story, as set forth in A Schoolmaster's Diary, is typical of the young movement. Only there is this difference, that, whereas Mr. Mais has never yielded to the reactionary influences, the majority of young masters conform to the custom of the country. Their position is extremely difficult.
They leave Oxford with high ambitions. They have dissected and analysed the system, they have discovered the vital spot; they are eager to put their reforms into action. They have wonderful schemes for inspiring boys with a love of the beautiful, with an interest in politics and life. They are prepared to be ruthless in their battle; they will neither ask nor give quarter. They will not be fettered to the reactionary indolence of the intolerant and the effete. They have a mission and a purpose. They bring a sword. They arrive at school with a quenchless ardour.
Like the small boy home for the holidays, they want to do everything on the first day. Before they have had time to look round they are suggesting schemes for founding literary and dramatic circles: they want to open a political debating society where there shall be files of The Nation and The Daily News. They start a mile race at the speed of a hundred yards and find themselves alone in the void. Every one else is going at a very leisurely pace. There is no need for hurry. Their whole life is before them. The school has been in existence a very long while. It is moving in its own time to its duly appointed ends. The young enthusiast grows impatient: like most intense people he is tactless and makes mistakes. He ignores his colleagues, or interferes with their arrangements. He creates an atmosphere of opposition. This is, of course, what he has anticipated. The fight, he feels, is going to begin. But the nature of the fight is very different from what he had expected.
It is not waged with the intolerant and the effete, but with men whom he cannot help admiring. He cannot make himself hate his enemies. The old boy house master, it cannot be too often repeated, is a very fine fellow. And his point of view is reasonable. He has given his youth, his energy, his ambition to his school. He has cared for nothing else. He has allowed many of the good things of life to pass him because of this unwavering devotion, and it is natural that he should resent the intrusion of a young fellow who has not had time to learn to love the school, but who wants to overturn the most cherished privileges.
And his methods are so impeccably direct and honest. He does not go behind the young man's back to the head master. He has the young man into his study for a chat; he looks him straight in the face. He says: 'Come now, we've got to have this out.' And the young man finds it so desperately hard not to admire him. He endeavours to open a discussion: he states his case. For a moment he seems to forget the personal issue in the case. Confidence comes back to him. He develops his argument, and then, just when he feels that his grip is closing on the contest, he is beaten by that disarming sentimentality which is the most powerful of all the old boy's weapons.
'My dear fellow,' he will say, 'you have your point of view and I have mine. We are both in our own ways working for the good of the school; why must we quarrel? We are fighting the same fight. But we can do nothing unless we stand together. I've given my whole life to the cause; you are just beginning.'
The acceptance of this offer of friendship and co-operation means defeat. The young man knows it. But it is so hard to refuse. The rebel in any sphere of life has no harder task than the cutting adrift from his own caste and the subsequent alliance with men of different upbringing and different standards. He sees, on the one hand, a vast number of noble, if bigoted men, men whom he can trust and admire. And, on the other side, as a setting for the few idealists in whose principles he believes, the arrayed forces of envy, greed, and malice. The temptation to cling to what he knows and what secretly he admires is too great. Most of the young enthusiasts give way soon. They join the forces of reaction.
And those that stand out are inevitably broken. What chance have they after all? The modern intellectual is something of a negativist. His tolerance is composed of indifference and uncertainty. He sees life in the words of Jurgen as a 'wasteful and inequitable process,' and does not discern clearly how to alter it. His philosophy is a series of disappointments. He is bound to go down before a bigotry that is certain of itself. The forces of reaction are so powerfully entrenched. The old boy house master knows exactly what he wants and how he proposes to get it. He advances down a straight road. His enemies pause and wonder and question themselves.
The bigot usually makes the best administrator. He is not worried by abstractions. He is certain of his ends and can devote all his attention to the means. The tolerant head master, the man who sees both points of view, is overcome in the end by preponderating faith and sincerity of reaction. The new man is invariably subjugated, or else is made to go. No head master would be anxious to take his side.
The games master type is intensely popular with parents and old boys. He represents for them the public school spirit. He is a fixed, immutable principle in which they can place their trust. They would be intensely worried were they to learn that the head master had taken the side of a new man against their old friend. The subject would be discussed in the clubs: 'There's trouble brewing at Fernhurst,' they would say. 'This new head master is a liberal. He's quarrelling with old Aiken. I don't like the look of it.' And the position of the school would be shaken. Parents would send their sons elsewhere. The numbers would drop. Unpleasant questions would be put to the head master at the next meeting of the governors. It is the old trouble of the merchant and his goods. Parents have to be placated. They have been assured that 'all is for the best in the best of all possible schools'; and, when they hear rumours of dissension they naturally imagine that something must be wrong with that particular school. It is not so everywhere. They remind the head master of his own official utterances. And it is not easy after prophesying smooth things to satisfy the complaints of those who find them hard.
A head master has to reach his ends through infinite tact and patience and through a long series of compromises. He has to be something of an opportunist. He has to give reasons other than the true ones for what he does. He has to promote progress secretly, while he advocates conservatism. And it is hard to remain true to oneself while playing the Jekyll and Hyde game. Motives become involved; there is too much diplomacy, and the forces of reaction, whatever else they be, are distinctly honest. Certainly he cannot allow the clumsy enthusiasm of a young man to complicate his vexed existence. And the young man has either to break or bend. Usually he bends. He has, after all, to consider his own career. He compromises with himself. He manages to persuade himself that he is not really yielding, but that he is adopting different tactics, attacking the enemy from another side. He decides to do his work of reform quietly, without ostentation. Other people can do their own way if they like.
That compromise is the start of a long process of self-deception. When he becomes a house master it will be so simple to put off parents with excuses. He will be able to justify himself, to say: 'These are stupid folk. They will worry me if I encourage them. I have my work to do. I must pacify them and get on with it.' And so the circle completes itself. The young man who sets out to reform school life, who brought to the task a fine, untried energy, ends in evasion, compromise and self-deception. Boys, parents, and masters are working at cross purposes.
There are certainly a large number of entries on the debit side of the ledger. It remains to be decided what hand has written these entries and whether it is possible to erase them. To a large extent they are due to four things: the moral issue; the cult of athleticism, which is regarded as an antidote to immorality; the conspiracy of silence that exists between parents and boys and masters, and the long period a boy spends at school—the six years that separate so unduly the junior from the senior, that accentuate the blood system, that erect a wall shutting out the world at large. School life is too much of a walled garden, too much of a world in itself. It has remained monastic, it has not established contact with the movements of the hour.