A boy of eighteen can stand the strain of systematic coaching; a boy of twelve cannot. The preparatory scholar is more often than not a hot-house product. He has drawn on his reserves too early; his mind has been forced into a groove at the start. He is trained like a pet Pomeranian, and he is kept in blinkers; he is not allowed to explore bye-paths that are of interest to him. That would be prejudicial to his chances. He has to keep on the straight road of scholarship. He may get his scholarship; he probably will, for such Preparatory Schools are specialists at the game, but, in the long run, it does not pay. The boy has been forced too soon and he is stale by the time he gets to his Public School.
It is very interesting to note how often, in the course of a year or two, boys who did not get scholarships are higher up in the school than their successful rivals: a man who starts the half-mile at a hundred yards pace leads at the end of the first lap, but he does not win the race. And the preparatory school master is inclined to forget that, while a Winchester scholarship is the whole race for him, it is only the first lap for the boy. He naturally wants the credit of the scholarship for his school, but on the other hand he has to be unselfish. He has to ask himself whether, in the long run, it is not better for the boy to carry on with the general routine and take the scholarship examination in his stride. If he succeeds well and good; if not, there is plenty of time. And the wise parent will insist on this.
The boy himself, however, realises that his world is that of the green leaf and the bud. It is a time of sowing. And the fruits will show elsewhere. He knows that his career will only start when he reaches his Public School. The fact is always being forced upon his attention. 'This sort of thing is all very well here,' his masters will tell him, 'but it won't work at your Public School.' In the same way the commandant at Sandhurst used to adjure us in his speeches, 'to keep always before you the thought of the day when you will join your regiment.'
There is the fear and the attraction of the unknown future. And, for the sake of it, a boy will work far harder than he would otherwise have done. He looks beyond the rewards and position that his own school offers. It is not enough to be in the highest form, not enough to be in the first eleven. He must improve himself so as to be able to take a high place in the next stage of his career. A public school boy, on the other hand, regards the honours that his school has to offer as an end sufficient in themselves. In occasional addresses he is adjured to think of the day when he will have to step out of that cloistered peace into the rush and traffic of life; but that day is distant. He has little ambition beyond 'a ribboned coat' and a seat at the high table. His horizon is contracted, and his behaviour is that of those who do not believe in a survival after death. He places an undue value upon the immediate and the present. The preparatory school boy always looks ahead to a future stage of life. And so it is that, when the last day at school comes, he is not the victim of the surprised sentimentality that overcomes the public school boy. He has begun to feel that he has outgrown his surroundings. He has chafed at the restraint of childhood. He has felt that success or failure is of little importance: so soon he will be making a fresh start. He has lived in the future. He has spent long summer evenings reading the history of his new school. He has studied photographs of its buildings; he has pored over old numbers of the school magazines, and has formed a romantic conception of the giants of whose prowess he has read. The future opens before him with limitless opportunities, and he can face it with an eager confidence after his five long years of discipline. How long they have taken in the passing, and yet in retrospect how flat they appear, how colourless, how tiresome. Nothing has happened; day has followed day. Ah, well, that is over now. Life is to begin. The new boy sets out hungry for experience. On the last day at his Preparatory School he is addressed, in company with the other boys who are leaving, by the head master. His egotism is flattered by the assurance that the honour of his old school lies in his hands. He is told that he will need a firm upper lip and a stout heart. He listens to a recommendation of honesty, truthfulness, and courage—all this he has heard before. He has read so many school stories. And then, suddenly, he is startled by a warning against temptations, the nature of which he imperfectly understands. His curiosity is roused. He learns that if he yields to these temptations his career will be spoilt, his health and brain will be ruined. How this fate is going to be brought about he is not certain, but he agrees with his head master that it is a fatality at all costs to be avoided. He asks a friend for enlightenment and receives a superior answer of: 'Oh, don't you know!' which makes him think that his friend knows even less about it than he does. At any rate this particular temptation has not yet presented itself, and the acknowledgment of its existence fades from his contemplation of a golden future.
CHAPTER III THE NEW BOY
Alpha and Omega are the most widely known letters of the Greek alphabet. And the first and last weeks of a public school career have inspired more essays and sermons than the other two hundred and fifty weeks put together. Yet in neither the beginning nor the end is to be found the essence of school life. The last week is a period of agreeable sentiment. The first of embarrassed loneliness. The new boy feels that he has no part in the life of the school. On that first afternoon, when he has said good-bye to his parents, and turns to walk away from the station, the school buildings, chapel, studies, cloisters, assume in the mellow September sunlight the prospect of a distant city that one day he may be privileged to enter. At present he is outside it, as he stands at the edge of the courts, forlorn in his black tie and wide brimmed straw hat, while the stream of boys in bowler hats and gaily coloured ties pours up from the station. On all sides he hears shouts of welcome, snatches of eager conversation. No one takes the least notice of him. He is an unrecognised foreigner.
During supper, he sits silent and nervous among the new boys at the day-room table. From time to time he casts hesitating glances at the raised table where the prefects sit. What giants they seem. He wonders which is Featherstone, the head of the House?[1] Is that imposing figure with the black hair brushed back from his forehead, the G. O. Evans, who made 121 in the Public School's match at Lords? Can it be possible that he and they are members of the same society?