Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh

A prefect rises from the high table and leaves the hall. Immediately forms are pushed back and the long narrow passage leading to the dormitories is filled with sound. The new boy is taken with the stream. What will happen to him now, he wonders? He has always understood that most of the ragging takes place in the dormitories. Will all new boys be subjected to some common lot? In a way he almost hopes that they will. He may thus be given an opportunity of showing his courage. He will be marked down at once as 'a bit of a sport.'

But nothing happens. He walks timidly into the large airy room with its bare boards, its row of wash-hand stands and red-quilted beds. He sees his bag lying in the middle of the floor. Three hours earlier when he and his parents had been shown round by the house-master's wife, he had placed his bag on the corner bed. It had seemed to him a good idea to reserve that particular bed. He would then be open to attack only on one side. Memories of Horatius Cocles had stirred his imagination. But some one else is already undressing there. He picks up his bag, and is about to place it on the bed nearest him when a warning voice informs him that Jones has bagged that bed. He looks round him in dismay. There are only two vacant beds. 'May I have that one?' he asks. The boy with the warning voice looks surprised at being questioned. 'I should think so,' he says, 'unless Hughes wants it. He had it last term.' The new boy does not know whether or not he dare begin to undress beside the bed that Hughes may possibly commandeer. He stands irresolute; then decides to take the risk. There is nothing to choose between the two positions, and Hughes would probably prefer a change.

He begins slowly to undress. No one takes the least notice of him. No one evinces the slightest inclination to test the courage of the new man. No hardened bully enters with a blanket. It is possible that two blasé young gentlemen from another dormitory will stroll in 'just to have a look at the new men,' will make a cursory examination, and having expressed their disgust at 'such an appalling crew,' will seek better fortune elsewhere. That will be all. The inquisition of preparatory school terrors is a myth. This generation is not more timid than its predecessors, but it is more subtle. The boy who has just ceased to be labelled 'new' wishes to impress his importance on the new boy. Forty years ago he achieved this object by putting the new boy on a chair and throwing boots at him. The appeal to physical force was not, however, invariably successful. Sometimes the small boy retaliated, and there is no reason why a boy of thirteen should not be a match for one of fourteen. At any rate the 'year older' has accepted the twentieth century doctrine that the easiest way to impress a person is to ignore him. And so the boy of a year's standing assumes an air of Olympian superiority. The new man is beneath his notice. He prefers to lean in the doorway of the dormitory, and talk of the days when 'Meredith had that far bed, and Johnstone had the wash-hand stand beneath the window.' He will casually let fall the names of the mighty and note their effect on the young. In the daytime he is probably quite an insignificant person, low in form and a funk at football. He can only appear great in the presence of his juniors during the quarter of an hour between supper and lights out. He therefore takes enormous pains to secure the admiration of those whom he affects to despise.

It is the same everywhere. At Sandhurst, on the first night of each term, the seniors used to cluster round the piano and sing till 'rooms' with incredible violence and discord. It was done entirely to impress the juniors, and on the whole I am inclined to think it was successful. The junior is a shy person, and the din has on him an effect not unlike that of an intensive bombardment. As the junior sits in a far corner of the anteroom, cowed and unhappy by an exhibition that is being conducted, though he does not know it, entirely for his benefit, so does the new boy lie back in bed on his first night, wondering what it is all about.

The jargon puzzles him; the attitude to life puzzles him. The boy with the warning voice is lamenting that he has got his 'budge.'

'Rotten luck,' he says. 'I should like to have stopped in old Moke's for at least a year. I did just well enough in each paper to avoid being bottled. Fourteenth I came out, and now they've started a new form, so we've all got shoved up.' The rest of the dormitory express sympathy. Then some one wonders whether Davenport will turn 'pi' now he's a 'pre'; the opinion is expressed that Ferguson will find himself pretty lonely now that Wodehouse has left. A lot of people have apparently been waiting a long time to kick him with impunity. Some one says, 'Let's make up the Fifteen,' and the rival claims of Bradshaw and Murray are carefully weighed. And all the while four wretched new boys listen in silent, confused wonderment.

The conversation gradually becomes spasmodic. There are longer and longer pauses between the conclusion of one topic and the introduction of another. 'Well,' says the senior boy, 'about time we were going to sleep. Good-night all.' There is a murmur of 'good-night': silence: and then again the warning voice. 'Oh, but I say, Stewart, what about the new men's concert?' There is immediate interest among the senior members. Of course, they had forgotten that ... the new men's concert.

'Too late now,' says Stewart. 'Let's have it on Sunday.'

'Hear that, you new fellows; you must all have a song by Sunday. Good-night.'

But there is little sleep for the new boy. Where is he? What has happened to him? Such a little while ago he was secure, garrisoned, sheltered by his home. Only twelve hours. He begins to wish that he had not been so anxious to leave his prep. Why hadn't he stayed on there another year? He would have been head of the school. At this very moment if he had not been so absurdly impetuous he would be turning over to go to sleep, having wished his dormitory 'good-night.' Just as Stewart had done. The thought of the concert terrifies him. He is a bad singer. Will they make him stand on a chair? will they throw boots at him if his voice quavers, or if he forgets the words? It will be a long-drawn agony.