Public School Life: Boys, Parents, Masters

by Alec Waugh

Jones sits back in his chair, a look of horrified disgust upon his face.

'But, my dear fellow,' he says, 'you couldn't possibly—I mean I told you that in confidence. You couldn't be such a sneak!'

The prefect would shake his head.

'You do not understand. It is not sneaking. You would not call it sneaking on the part of a policeman if he arrested an old friend whom he found breaking into a house. This is an official duty that has nothing to do with our personal relationship.'

Jones is tempted to say that in another minute personal relationships will have a good deal to do with the matter, but he appreciates the necessity for tact. He talks, he argues, he cajoles; his patience is tried to the last degree. It is difficult to discuss a matter on grounds of personal and practical expediency when the other party refuses to desert the platform of high morality. In the end probably Jones is promised silence in return for reformation, and, as the door closes behind his old friend, he murmurs: 'Put not your trust in princes.'

The officious prefect is not content with the exposure of confidences received during his period of probation, he endeavours to unearth present scandals, and this is a point on which popular opinion is very strong. The moral tone of the house is not considered to be the concern of the house prefect. That is the province of the house master and the head boy.

The position of the head boy is a little difficult to define. He is the intermediary between mortality and Olympus. He is supposed to be above suspicion. He is the only person who is allowed to do anything out of 'a sense of duty.' If a house prefect interferes in the private affairs of another, an ulterior motive is always suggested, and the suggestion is probably justified. Whether or not a head boy is justified in unearthing scandal is an open point. There are those who will maintain that he should only take notice of what actually hits him in the face. The reason being that what hits the head of the house in the face will, sooner or later, inflict a similar shock to the physiognomy of the house master. And this should be avoided. In the first place, the house master will lose his high opinion of his head boy; in the second, a scandal that might have been prevented will reach official notice.

Indeed, there are not a few who will go so far as to assert that the function of a head boy is that of the taster, the impersonal critic who says: 'No, that is going too far.' He is the aeroplane photograph of a strategic position, that shows what gun emplacements are obvious and which are not. And, according to this line of argument, head boys should only concern themselves with the obvious; what was not apparent to them would certainly not be apparent to a house master; there is no need for them to play at Sherlock Holmes.

But this is a point on which the vote has not been taken. There are several schools of thought: all schools of thought are, however, joined in the denial of the right of the head boy to report to the house master anything save a case of insubordination or disloyalty on the part of a brother prefect. A head boy, it is felt, should be able to deal with the discipline and conduct of the house himself. To report is to confess a failure.

To the house prefect no such fine shades of motive are ascribed. He is not considered to be above suspicion, and he is allowed to indulge certain corresponding weaknesses. His business is to see that order is kept; the new prefect forms numberless resolutions. He is acutely conscious of his dignity, his bearing partakes of the solemnity of Malvolio. He wonders whether he ought to remain on terms of such easy familiarity with certain rowdy elements in the house. A prefect should not have too many friends. He should be the calm, implacable judge, impersonal, impartial, with bandaged eyes. He is very haughty for a day or two. But within a fortnight he has recovered. He becomes sociable once more. He walks down to the field with his old friends. He does not wonder whether it is wise or unwise to exchange confidences with those whose conduct one day he may be forced to view with official disapproval. He takes notice of, and deals with, only those problems that crop up from time to time. He acquires a wholesome tolerance of other people's business, a tolerance that slips over the border of indifference, but remains an admirable social lubricant.