Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh

It is difficult for him to work on the plan of 'circumstances alter cases.' He would thus lay himself open to the accusation of favouritism. 'You didn't stop Cartright and Evans, sir,' is a weapon for which a master has no shield. There is usually a compromise.[5]

The attitude of authority is one of nervous hesitance. The schoolboy, as in all other cases, evolves his own standards from his own life. It remains to be seen what are the actual effects on the partners in a relationship that must have a large influence on their subsequent development.

The first objection raised by authority is that it is very bad for a small boy to be petted and treated like a girl. And such is an undoubted fact. The small boy who is taken up by a 'blood' makes a very good thing out of it. He gets first-hand information on a number of disputed points. He knows two or three hours before any one else in the day room who is going to be given his house cap and who his seconds. He has a position among his contemporaries. Favours are sought through him. His friends get leave off house runs and are allowed to watch First Eleven matches when others have to attend pick ups. He is immune from the assaults of the swash-bucklers, for no one would willingly run the risk of making himself unpopular with the bloods. He gets his 'con' done for him, and, after football, he will sit in front of a warm study fire. He has many privileges, and, of course, it is very bad for him.

How far the effects last into manhood I cannot say with any degree of certainty. I am inclined to think that they pass more quickly than is popularly imagined. But the small boy who is taken up by his seniors gets very little out of his schooldays. If he gets taken up by a 'blood' he has a fairly good time while that blood is still at school. But it is by no means certain that he will be taken up by a blood, and he may very likely find himself an object of fierce jealousy between two fellows in the Middle School, both of whom he likes, but for neither of whom he feels any strong attachment. Neither of them is sufficiently important to claim a monopoly. Between them they contrive to make his life wretched for him. They worry him with notes and with pleas for an appointment. Each tries to persuade him to have nothing to do with the other. The whole of his spare time is divided between them. And the small boy who is unable to see why he should not choose what friends he likes, grows more and more impatient. At the end of a term's wrangling he decides to speak to neither of them again.

But the life even of the favoured-of-the-mighty has its disadvantages. The hours that he spends in the day room are numbered, so that he makes few friends among his contemporaries. The majority of them dislike him; nearly all of them are jealous and distrust him. They are afraid to say things in his presence for fear that they will be repeated. His only friends are those who hope to be able to gain some advantages from him. His life is made none too comfortable in the dormitory. He is accepted as being in a higher social position than the rest of the room, which is, of course, flattering to his pride; but it is not nice when every occupant of the room only speaks when he is spoken to. He feels himself apart. The evenings in the dormitory which, with their sing-songs, their football matches, and long talks, provide such delightful material for reminiscence, are for him cheerless. It cannot be too often repeated that the biggest mistake a boy can make at a Public School is to form friendships outside the circle of his contemporaries.

The good-looking boy makes friends so easily among his seniors, and the successful athlete can, if he wants, after a year or two choose his friends among boys who have been at school a couple of years longer than he has. It is very exciting for a boy to feel that he is outstripping his contemporaries, to be able to nod to fellows in the Fifteen and Eleven, but, in the long run, it does not pay. The big man leaves, and the social aspirant is left stranded. I have seen it happen so many times. One term a boy seems to be surrounded with friends. His life is a continual course of tea parties and suppers. An arm always lies through his as he walks down to the field, or to the tuck shop. And then, suddenly, a generation passes; he is left an anachronism without his friends. His contemporaries do not welcome him. They have made their own friends. If he has reached his prominence as an athlete he will be able to make friends in other houses, and, before long, in his own house. To the athlete everything is forgiven. But the boy who has become the associate of bloods not through any quality of his own, but merely because he is good-looking, never makes friends with his contemporaries. They have been jealous of him and have distrusted him a long time. There was a time when they longed for the big boy to go, so that they could 'jolly well boot the little swine.' But members of the Sixth Form table consider it beneath their dignity to indulge emotions that are the exclusive property of fags. They remain coldly distant. It may be that for the favoured small boy these years of loneliness adjust the balance and teach him those lessons of fortitude and independence that he should have learnt in the day room. But it is an unhappy time. He can hardly look back on his schooldays without regret. He would wish things had turned out otherwise. And it is not thus that we should look back on our schooldays. Certainly I could wish nothing worse for any friend of mine than to be taken up as a small boy.

There remains to be considered the effect that such friendships have on the elder boy. And it is generally conceded that though they may on occasions do harm to the smaller boy, they usually prove of benefit to the elder boy. Authority confines its objection to the secrecy that is involved. An eyebrow is raised at the interchange of notes and the carefully arranged Sunday afternoon walks. 'This is bad, this is bad,' says Authority. 'There would be no need for all this secrecy if the thing were honest and straightforward. They are both ashamed of themselves really. They wish to hide the thing away from their masters and their comrades. It is a bad thing for a boy, the harbouring of a secret. It will prey upon his mind. He will be forced to lie within himself. He will be unable to look us squarely in the face. He will never be free from worry.' Now all this about the subtle poison of a secret life is very true (though it is a fact seldom taken into account in the question of self abuse), but it is not at all applicable to the romantic friendship. The secret is an open secret. Neither party is ashamed of it. And the pretence of a secret is little more than part of a delightful game. A child in a nursery lays a deck chair on the blue carpet and imagines he is sailing the high seas in a schooner, while with a poker to his shoulder he shoots an albatross for breakfast. Twelve years later he signs notes with a false name, rolls them into a pellet, conveys them to a messenger and imagines he is a diplomat. The sending of notes is nothing but a game. Otherwise no one would write them, carry them, nor read them: for they are most unnecessary, and most dangerous. People will drop them in the cloisters, or put them in their waistcoat pockets and then leave their waistcoats in the matron's room to have a button sewn on them. The writing of notes has upset more careers than the rustling of silk or the creaking of shoes. And yet they will always be written, for they are a prelude to adventure.

Moreover, a certain measure of secrecy is prudent. If you have stolen a man's greatcoat you do not call at his house next day wearing it; and the schoolboy sees no reason why he should parade his affection before his head master's study window. Only the ass courts trouble. Prefects who are well aware of the existence of such a friendship do not wish to have their attention called to it officially. There are things they prefer not to notice. If a member of the Eleven and a new boy started out together for a walk under the shade of the school buildings the heads of their houses would reluctantly feel themselves forced to take some sort of action. They would be extremely annoyed with the school slow bowler for his lack of tact. A prefect is usually on the side of the house.

Masters, however, are pleased to imagine that a pact has been signed between the schoolboy and themselves which binds the schoolboy to confess to any fault he may have committed, and to answer any leading questions that may be put to him. The schoolboy does not look on things in this light. He knows that there is no such agreement. There are certain things he wants to do, the doing of which, if known, will render him liable to punishment. When the wish to do these overrides the fear of punishment he takes all reasonable precautions to avoid detection, and proceeds to break the inconvenient rule. It is up to the master to find him out. If the master came down to the dining-hall one evening and said: 'Now, look here, there have been complaints that some fellows, I don't say you, but fellows in the school, have been getting out at night and going down to the Eversham Arms. If any one of you here has been getting out at night, I want him to come to my study afterwards and tell me.' If a house master were to do that, the guilty one would not feel himself under the least compunction to own up. He has run a big risk in getting out of the boothole window at half-past eleven. It was up to the master to catch him then.