Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh

CHAPTER VII MORALITY AND THE ROMANTIC FRIENDSHIP

It is at this period, also, of a boy's development that the moral question assumes a definite significance. There is no phase of school life that is more generally misunderstood and misrepresented, and there is no phase that a writer tackles with greater misgiving and disinclination. He is confronted with the barricaded prejudices of a vested interest, with the tremulous ignorance of mothers who seek to be deceived, with the conspiracy of silence that exists between boys, parents, and masters, and, last of all, with the wilful jealousy of the yellow press that is only too ready to decry the value of what it is pleased to call the 'trades union of snobbery.' There are times, indeed, when it seems better to acquiesce in that conspiracy of silence rather than to give those speculators in contention another opportunity of mud-slinging. There are times when it seems hopeless to attempt to explain the nature of public school morality to those who have not themselves been to a Public School. It is like looking at a stained-glass window from the outside. One reminds oneself that for many years, without, perhaps, any very disastrous results, we have muddled along in contented ignorance and self-deceit. Why not leave things where they are? Why stir up trouble? And yet the moral question is such an essential part of school life, it exercises such an influence on the development of the boy; indirectly it colours so considerably the attitude of the master to every other phase of school life, that it is impossible to omit all reference to it in a detailed study such as this, and, if it is impossible to avoid mention of it, it is fatal to content oneself, as one may very well do in a novel, with stray suggestions and inferences.

A novel is an abstraction. One compresses into a few pages the action of several years, so that one has to suggest rather than to state. One can withhold one's own opinion, one is under no compunction to generalise from the incidents one selects. One is telling a story or interpreting a personality. Only rarely is one constructing a thesis. In a novel it is not difficult to deal with the moral question. Most good school stories have touched more or less indirectly on some side of it. Ivor Brown and Compton Mackenzie have both dealt subtly with an intricate relationship. Hugh Walpole, if less originally, faced the same situation more courageously, while Arnold Lunn in Loose Ends has interpreted the boy as opposed to the official attitude to this issue with extreme effectiveness. The novelist is constrained to discuss only that part of the question that affects the action of the story. That is one of the great charms of story-telling: one can touch lightly without need of explanation on the most delicate situations. One can say only as much as one wants to say, and say it, what is more, obliquely. In a book such as this, however, one must deal with the subject thoroughly if at all. One must tackle every side of it. One is bound to follow one's thought through to the end. And that is a thing that no one cares to do in public. It was said of a certain intrepid Rugby player that he had not the brains to be afraid. It is certainly true that many soldiers lost their nerve after they had been once wounded, and that few soldiers were really frightened till they had seen what a shell could do; it may well be that at twenty-three one has not sufficient experience of the world to realise what risks one runs through honesty.

The first difficulty, especially for those who, without having been to a Public School themselves, are the fathers of present or prospective public school boys, is to start investigations with a clear mind. This feat the majority never manage to accomplish. For the moral question in schools is concerned with the relationship of two members of the same sex. Now such a relationship is counted in the world at large an unmentionable and unforgivable sin. It is regarded with horror by the average man. It is a penal offence. The man who enters into such a relationship is abnormal, and, as such, is considered a menace to society. But the same standards are not applicable to school life.

A man was intended by nature to marry at eighteen. The average villager, clerk, pit-boy, work-boy begins 'walking out' with a girl at the age of fifteen or sixteen; the public school boy has no such opportunities of courtship. Three hundred boys are spending three-quarters of their lives in a monastic world; from the beginning of the term to the end the only women to whom they have the opportunity of speaking are the matron and the house master's wife. They have never any chances of seeing girls of their own class and of their own age. At a particularly susceptible period, therefore, they have no natural object for their affections. The youngest boys are only thirteen, the eldest are between eighteen or nineteen.

In such circumstances it would be surprising if there were no uncomfortable complications. The public school system is, in this respect, unnatural; one must expect unnatural results. The trouble is to discover what those results are. For, although people speak glibly enough of immorality in Public Schools, it is extremely doubtful whether they realise of what exactly that immorality consists.

It is a convenient phrase, but beyond it there is the conspiracy of silence. Schoolmasters prefer to deal with straight issues. They dislike the subtleties of action and character which are of such charm to the psychologist. They like to say, 'This is an offence.' Finer shades of meaning trouble them. At least that is their official attitude. And so it has come to be generally accepted that public school morality resolves itself into one main issue: that is, the corruption of a small boy by a big one. To protect the new boy from this danger elaborate precautions are taken. It is on this point that a boy is given advice before he goes to school. He is warned never to make friends with boys bigger than himself; it is against this danger that the majority of school sermons are directed. And, of course, this is a very convenient attitude for the schoolmaster to adopt. The offence is obviously so grave that there can be no cause to withhold complete official condemnation; it is also so rare that the head master is able to assure prospective parents of the excellent tone of the school. For I am convinced that the deliberate seduction of a smaller boy is an extremely rare occurrence. There are, of course, certain houses—probably there is one at every school—in which a good-looking boy stands very little chance of remaining straight. But I have not been in such a house and I can speak with no authority. I have heard, certainly, some astonishing stories of what can be tolerated in a really bad house; but, second-hand reports, especially on such matters, can only be accepted with reserve. Certainly in the average house cases of corruption are very rare. Few boys have the nerve, the assurance, or the adroitness to attempt such a task. A man of twenty-five will set out deliberately to seduce a housemaid, but the schoolboy in such matters is a novice. If a senior boy is casually attracted by the appearance of a smaller boy, he asks a friend lower down in the house to make inquiries as to the morals of the small boy. If the 'go-between' discovers that the small boy is 'straight,' the elder boy lets the matter fall from his mind. There are others who are not. If, on the other hand, the attraction is more than casual, the chances of seduction are even more remote. It is unlikely that the affection will be reciprocated. And, if a boy is really fond of another boy, the last thing he would wish would be to subject his friend to unwelcome advances. When a boy first falls in love with a girl the thought of sexual intimacy is, often, unattractive. It is only when his love is returned that he really desires it. It is fatal to confuse the processes of life at large with the processes of life in a monastic system. Because young men seduce young women with regrettable frequency, it is assumed that much the same sort of thing is happening at a Public School. And, parents believing this, are reassured; they are certain that their dear child when young will be strong enough to resist the passive temptation; they are equally certain that their dear child when nearly a man would not, for one moment, consider the possibility of active sin. And this amiable delusion schoolmasters encourage. It saves them a lot of trouble. They say one thing in public and another in private. But the Jekyll and Hyde business breeds confusion. They forget what they should believe and what they should not believe. They are agreed only on this: that any attempt at criticism, at explanation, at interpretation shall be counteracted with a concerted unanimity of opinion. They will deny hotly the prevalence of any such practices, they will make slighting references to the bad house in the bad school. They will complete their defence by asserting that for what faults there are the parents are alone responsible in that they had not sufficiently warned their sons of the evils of a Public School—evils, be it noted, that they had previously assured the parent did not exist outside the perverted imagination of the critic. And yet it is amazing what these same apologists will be prepared to believe about any institution other than their own.

Six years ago Sandhurst had an extremely bad name. Every kind of debauch was rumoured to flourish there. Sobriety was only more unpopular than purity. The G. C.'s secreted whisky beneath their beds, and actresses within them. The glittering temptations of St Anthony allured the unwary in the tea-shops of Camberley. And I remember being shown, before I went there, a letter that had been sent to the parents of a prospective cadet by his head master. 'I hope,' the letter ran, 'that Arthur is aware of the temptations to which he will be subjected. Concupiscence seems to be the chief topic of conversation and the sole Sunday afternoon amusement of the cadets.' It all sounded fearfully exciting. But it proved very tame. Indeed I am inclined to think that, on the whole, fewer temptations presented themselves to me during the eight months I spent at Sandhurst than during any other period of my time in the army. A fellow could do what he liked. No pressure was put on him to drink or gamble, or pursue loose women. He was none the less respected for being straight, nor the more admired for being crooked. A community such as this which exerts pressure on the individual in neither direction, I should be prepared to call as moral as any that is likely to be found this side of heaven, yet this head master, who would, no doubt, repudiate hotly the least suggestion that immorality in his own school was anything but a spasmodic and occasional phenomenon, was ready to believe that Sandhurst was a cesspool of all the vices that flourished so gracefully in the days of Petronius Arbiter. In our investigations we are not likely to be helped far by schoolmasters. They are constrained by the laws of exchange and mart to vindicate the quality of their wares.

It is generally assumed for the purposes of dialectic that there are two classes of persons: the normal and the abnormal, and that all normal people follow the same process of development from birth to death. To disprove this Havelock Ellis collected at the end of certain volumes of his psychology authenticated histories of men whose development he claimed to be normal, but whose histories were as different from one another as apples are from plums. In the face of such evidence it is dangerous to dogmatise on the gradual discovery of the sexual impulse by public school boys during adolescence. The most one can say is that the majority of them come to a Public School innocent and ignorant, and that they leave it certainly not ignorant and with a relative degree of innocence. This at least is sure—that between the years of thirteen and nineteen the impulse will have become powerfully defined and that each boy will have had to come to terms with its direction and control.

Now the important point seems to me to be this: the sexual impulse is a force on the proper direction of which depends, to a large extent, the happiness of a man's life; and marriage is the course into which it should be directed. No one, I think, will deny that. We may talk of the liberation of the sexes, of greater facilities for divorce, of the right of each man and woman to repair a mistake caused by the first surprise of a newly-awakened instinct; but there can be no questioning the assertion that monogamy is the ideal, and that while nothing can be more wretched than an ill-harmonised relationship, in the lifelong devotion of man and woman is to be found the surest happiness. That is the standard by which public school morality should be judged. But it is not the standard by which it is officially, and indeed generally, judged. A Public School is only a phase, a prelude in the sexual development of a man. Head masters are inclined to mistake it for the completed rhythm.