Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh

As so often happens with preconceived ideas, the only duties of prefectship which present any terrors to the imagination of the new boy turn out singularly simple. Most boys are self-conscious; they dread a silence, they hate being conspicuous. They regard, therefore, the taking of hall and the reading of the house list at roll as terrible ordeals. They are not so really. One is a little nervous lest the pitch of one's voice may sound curious as one shouts out the name of the top boy on the list: but it doesn't: not unless one is very odd. And the taking of hall is simple, unless one goes down there with an established reputation for inefficiency. In such a case the prefect does stand a poor look-out, as poor a look-out as the master who has proved himself weak. But such reputations are not easily acquired, and the possessors of them are well advised to bribe some hardier colleague to take their places. No attempt is made to rag the average prefect. He goes down on his first night fully prepared to inflict a violent punishment on any harbinger of insubordination. He may even carry down with him his swagger stick as a cautionary signal. But it is unlikely that he will be called upon to use it. The chief embarrassment, indeed, of taking hall is the importunities of small boys who come and ask one to help them with their translation. One hums and hahs, looks at the notes and the vocabulary and discovers how extremely hard it is to translate Livy without a crib.

To a great extent the proficiency of the prefectorial system depends on the house master. If prefects admire and respect their house master, the tone of the house will almost certainly be a good one. If they dislike him the tone may very likely be a good one. It is a toss up. Dislike and fear often go together. And a prefect who dislikes, and thinks he is disliked, by his house master may very well decide out of affronted dignity to perform his duties thoroughly. 'The old beast hates me,' he says; 'he thinks I'm no good. I'll jolly well show him!' Dislike is, at any rate, a positive emotion. It will produce something. Nothing, on the other hand, is more fatal than the sort of genial, indifferent good-natured friendship that so often exists between a house master and his prefects.

In Chowdler, G. F. Bradly has drawn just such a house master. Chowdler pretends to be the elder brother: he talks of 'good old Jones' and 'dear old Joe.' He has the prefects up in his study for heart to heart manly talks. And the prefects listen, agree with what he says, echo, when they speak, his own sentiments, and generally hoodwink him. They treat him as he treats them. They call him 'good old Chowdler,' and leave it at that. When there is a conscientious and an officious head of the house things go fairly quietly; when the head of the house is a lazy, sociable creature, the house runs itself, and with results that would cause little pleasure were they published to the mandarins of the common room. No new house master, Arnold Lunn says, has to face a more difficult task than he whose predecessor has earned the reputation of being a sport. The house master who always announces to the head boy his intention of visiting the studies is popular enough, but he has a rotten house.

Yet, however badly the prefectorial system may on occasions work, it is impossible to dispense with it. It is not so much the need for a heavy hand as the need for a scapegoat. Some one must be responsible to the supreme authority for any disturbance that may take place. If a house master enters the day room during 'prep.' and finds that an impromptu concert is in progress, he knows that it would be impossible for him to disentangle the muddled evidence of interested witnesses. He could never find out what it was all about, how it started, who started it, what happened next. He makes, therefore, one person responsible for the maintenance of order in the day room during 'prep.' He puts a house prefect there on duty. When, therefore, he interrupts an unseemly brawl, he does not concern himself with the incidents of the affair; Brown's face may be plastered with red ink, the head of Evans may be slowly extricating itself from the wastepaper basket, Ferguson may be withdrawing a battered compass from the unprotected quarters of an enemy. He does not notice that. He does not punish Brown and Ferguson and Evans. He asks the prefect in charge for an explanation. If the explanation is not satisfactory that prefect is relieved of office. It is the knowledge of this fate that inspires the industry of prefects.

This system is the basis for all administration, for the delegation of all responsibility. It rarely fails. When I shared a study with another prefect we divided eight fags between us. The best of these eight we appointed fag-master. 'You will do no fagging yourself, Marston,' we told him. 'To each of the other seven fags will be allotted one day of the week. You will see that they do their job. If the fire goes out, you will be beaten.' During the whole of that winter our fire never went out once. It is a regrettable fact, but a true one, that human beings will only work under the influence of a bribe, or of a threat. In the wide world it is usually a bribe. One may not threaten the foreman of an oil works. He has his union behind him. But there are no trade unions for fags: a judicious threat works wonders. And, when all other forces weaken, the wish to retain office helps the prefect to his task. Were there no prefects, no scapegoats, there would be no order. They are the exchange of hostages.

Suppose an attempt was made to run a house without them? How long do you imagine that it would last? Five days, six days, a week? Yes, perhaps as long as that: not longer: certainly I would not give it longer than a week. Such an experiment might be tried at the end of a long and unsatisfactory term during which several of the prefects had, at some time or another, come into collision with official ruling. And the climax might have been reached, shall we say, on the last Tuesday of the term, when the head of the house was discovered during 'prep.' playing the organ in the big school.

Next day, after lunch, the house would be astonished by the following announcement: 'I don't know,' the house master would say, 'whether I approve of the prefectorial system or not—that's neither here nor there. At any rate it has not worked well with my present set of prefects, and, for the rest of the term I propose to dispense with them. I shall occupy during preparation the small study at the end of the passage, and the house tutor will supervise preparation in the day room. I shall occupy the small single dormitory by the fire escape. That is all.' It is possible, is it not, as the sudden resolution of an overworked, exasperated man who had not paused to consider the results of his decision.

Well, what would happen then? We can guess to a certain extent. It is, at least, a subject of interesting speculation. What would happen to a house that had no prefects?

For a couple of days all would go smoothly, I imagine. The house would behave like a whipped dog. Its tail would be tucked between its legs. The prefects would make an ineffectual stand upon their dignity. Then the possibilities of the situation would become apparent. Authority spreads a veneer over the boisterous spirits of a boy of eighteen. But at heart he remains a ragster. In a couple of years' time, as an undergraduate or a medical student, he will be destroying furniture and organising preposterous bonfires. And, when authority is taken from him, he feels once again the old itch to enter the lists, to try one last throw with the marshalled forces of officialdom. It may, for instance, occur to Morcombe, the head of the house, that, though he has ceased to be a house prefect, he remains a school prefect, and that, outside the precincts of his house, he is still a force. When, therefore, he sees Jones mi. flinging stones against the cloisters, he orders Jones to appear before him that evening after roll. It is after roll, during the silence of first hall, that punishments are inflicted. And, that night, the house master, sitting in his narrow study at the end of the passage, will be astonished to hear the silence broken by a series of resounding bangs. He hurries down the passage and discovers Jones mi. straightening himself beside the water pipes, one hand ruefully stroking his trousers, while the head of the house proudly surveying his handiwork, delivers a last word of admonishment and taps his cane against his boots.

'But what on earth, Morcombe, is the meaning of this?' says the house master.