Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh

And for a couple of days he is made wretched by the prospect of this ordeal. It allows him no peace of mind. In form, on the football field, as he walks up to the tuck shop, the disquieting thought descends to torture him. But in the end it is a very tame affair. It takes place after lights out, and new boys, as well as lovers, win a strange courage of the darkness. Moreover, the object of the concert is to amuse the senior members of the dormitory, and bad singing amuses no one. Myself, I remember being stopped before I had completed one verse of 'The British Grenadiers,' whereas the boy next to me, who had an agreeable treble voice was made to sing, 'Put on your ta-ta, little girlie,' every other night for the rest of the term.

The concert is practically the sole direct ordeal that a new boy has to face: yet it is probable that he would, on the whole, prefer the old-fashioned methods. It is better to be ragged than to be ignored. And he spends most of his first week wondering whether he has done the right thing. It is especially difficult if he finds himself placed high in the school. The lower forms are mainly composed of new boys, companions in calamity, and the master in charge of the second is lenient during the early days. It is different for the boy who finds himself in the Lower Fifth, or Upper Fourth. As likely as not there is only one other new boy in his house in the same form, and, when he cannot find that particular boy, there is no one to whom he may turn for advice. He soon learns that it is not wise to carry his troubles to his seniors. He may find himself in his house-master's study, waiting to hand in the list of books he will require, and suddenly he remembers that he has forgotten to put down his Latin prose book on the list; he has also forgotten what Latin prose book his form uses. He casts a despairing eye round the room and recognises, leaning against a bookcase the languid, supercilious figure of Watney. What luck, he thinks, Watney has been in the Upper Fourth two years. He is sure to know. The new boy edges towards him. 'Please,' he asks, 'what Latin prose book do we use?'

His query is met by a look of amazed, outraged disapproval. Watney looks him up and down. Then at last: 'Who are "we"?' he says. The experiment is not repeated. The new boy arrives in form without his Latin prose book and is threatened with an imposition.

The geography of the school is very puzzling.

No new boy could be expected to gather much help from the information that his class-room is 'under the library, up on the right, next to Uncle Ned's.' For at least a week he is always entering the wrong form room. In the lower forms it is customary for the master to glance round the class, see that five boys are missing, and send the senior member in search of them as a matter of course. Indeed the first week of term is very pleasant for the senior member of the lower forms. He spends most of his time searching for lost lambs, and he is in no frantic haste to complete his task. But that is in the lower form, and, in the middle and upper schools, form masters do not care to have their time wasted. The absence of Jones mi. is not regarded as a joke.

Nicknames are confusing.

The new boy does not realise that 'Crusoe' and Mr Robinson are the same person. And, when he finds himself a quarter of an hour late in Mr Robinson's class-room, his excuse that he thought he had to go to 'Mr Crusoe' is not an official success. He is always on the brink of a mistake.

Probably his life is further complicated by the fact that he is playing Rugby football for the first time, and, for at least a month, his performances on the field can give him little satisfaction and less amusement. In the course of two or three puntabouts he is taught by his house-captain how to pack and how to take a pass. He is then drafted on to pick ups and house-games to fare as best he may. He fares extremely badly. He hangs about on the edge of the scrum. He catches hold of his opponents when they are dribbling and attempts an Association barge when they are running. For a long time he never touches the ball with his hands at all, and on the rare occasions when he discovers it at his feet, he takes a terrific rout at it and is contemptuously informed that he is not playing soccer. He is playing with boys older and heavier than himself. He has little chance of acquiring self-confidence: no footballer is really any use till he has scored a try, and that day is slow in coming. The new boy's chief anxiety on the field is to avoid the notice of any house caps that may be on the touchline. At half-time he will rub worm-casts on his knees to present an appearance of muddy valour. He is terribly afraid he will be reported and beaten for slacking. This fate rarely, as a matter of fact, overtakes a small boy. A beating for slackness is usually reserved for the boy about half-way up the house who has committed no definite offence, but has been making a nuisance of himself generally.[2] Slackness on the field is the excuse for an official reprimand, and its effect is usually salutary. This, however, the new boy does not know. Games, when the house-captain is on the touchline, become a misery. During his first term he looks forward to the First Fifteen matches chiefly because on those days he will not himself have to play.

But it is in his spare time that he most acutely feels himself outside the general life of the school. He is oppressed by liberty. He does not know what to do with it. At his Preparatory School an elaborate time-table was posted on the notice-board, and every moment of his day was pigeonholed. A boy had no excuse for not knowing at any given time what he ought to be doing, and where he ought to be doing it. There was constant supervision. But, at a Public School, provided a boy answers his name at roll-call, and fulfils his social engagements in the form room and on the football field, no one worries much what he is doing during the rest of the time. He can search for plovers' eggs, or hunt for fossils, or develop photographs, or overeat at the tuck shop. He is his own master, and this the new boy cannot understand. When he has changed after football on a half-holiday he asks himself: 'What ought I to be doing now?' The answer is, of course: 'Nothing in particular. Whatever you like.' A disconcerting answer, for there is nothing in particular that he wants to do. The day room is inhospitable. The big chairs round the fire are occupied by the mighty. The library is only of less interest to him than the museum. The tuck shop at such an hour is full of bloods in whose presence he feels embarrassed. He wanders disconsolately round the courts. All the other new boys seem to have found something to do (a common delusion this). In the end he succeeds in finding some one equally lonely with whom he goes for a walk: and a walk, unless one is a botanist, is such a strange way of spending an afternoon, that I have since wondered whether any one after his first term ever goes for a walk at school without an ulterior motive, except when he is in training.

It is a strange business that first term, and its importance is, I think, overrated. It is not public school life. It is composed of the hesitations, the reactions of a novice. School life is on the other side of it. The new boy sees that life in fragments. It puzzles him. He tries to fit it into shape with the scale of values he acquired at his Preparatory School. And fails. The Preparatory School belongs to childhood, the Public School to adolescence. The new boy understands little of what is going on round him. Indeed there is no person whose testimony can be less relied upon than that of the new boy of four weeks' standing. He never knows what he should, and what he should not, believe. The new life is so strange to him that he is prepared to accept any absurdity for the truth. The veriest nincompoop can pull his leg.