It is the old trouble of the merchant and his goods, and though the English Public Schools do not insert double-column advertisements in the daily papers, they are at least beholden not to prejudice the value of their stock. The greengrocer does not inform you that, on the whole, his potatoes are not bad, considering that he bought them from a farmer with a leaking shed. A head master does not tell a parent that, if he is going to send his son to a Public School, his own school is not worse than any other. Yet the same man who views with grave suspicion eulogies of a patent medicine, accepts complacently the house-master's assurance that Tommy is improving enormously both morally and intellectually under his care. A schoolmaster spends a large part of his life boosting the value of his goods, and in time, of course, he comes to believe that every word of what he says is true. The commercial traveller of two years' experience will wink his eye: 'I spun him the tale!' But the commercial traveller of ten years' experience has a solemn countenance. 'People know good stuff when they see it.'
A few weeks ago I was staying in the country with some friends, and was taken over by them to the prize-giving of the Preparatory School at which their sons were being educated. The ceremony was enacted in the gymnasium. The staff sat at the end of the room on a raised dais, in the centre of which was a table covered with 'calf-bound mementoes of industry.' Behind this table stood the head master. He was a large, genial, middle-aged man, rubicund with a surfeit of golf, and he smiled down upon the school and upon its parents. 'Well, you boys,' he said, 'I want to tell you how pleased I am with the way you've backed me up this term. You've worked hard and you've played hard: I don't really know how long it is since we've had such a thoroughly satisfactory term: of course there are one or two young gentlemen'—and at this point a twinkle appeared in the corner of his eye—'who have been a little, well, shall we say, difficult; but that's past history, we won't say anything more about it; and, as a whole, as I've already said, I don't think I've ever had such a satisfactory set of fellows.' There were a few more remarks of mutual congratulation, and then he proceeded to the distribution of the prizes.
Afterwards I had a chat with one of the assistant masters, with whom I happened to be on fairly intimate terms.
'A wonderful fellow, the Head,' he told me. 'Do you know he's made that same speech at prize-giving for the last twenty years. Hardly a phrase different. He wants to send the parents away in a good temper. They'll get their account to-morrow. Of course he doesn't know that's why he's doing it. But it's the reason right enough. And how clever that bit is about the young gentlemen who've been a little troublesome. It makes every mother feel that her boy is better than her neighbour's.'
I suggested that such an opinion was likely to be revised under the influence of the terminal report. 'Not a bit of it,' he answered. 'All our reports are strictly censored. We write them out on a piece of foolscap and the Head gets them typed; but where we write "lazy and unintelligent," the parents read "moderate." You can take my word for it that the boy who gets "moderate" in his report from here is one of earth's best dunces.'
That was, of course, at a private school; but, even at the most prosperous Public Schools there is a tacit understanding that parents should be stroked down after the manner of refractory cats. The half-term report contains frequently enough a quantity of pungent critical writing, but the parental visit to the school is invariably the occasion for much conversational flattery. Freddie, unless he has become involved in any particularly unfortunate adventure, is the object of restrained, perhaps qualified, but still potential commendation. The father is assured by the house-master that everything is going on splendidly: 'A little low in form, perhaps, rather too boisterous at times in the day room, but a sound fellow at heart, the sort of fellow that the house will be proud of one day.' And the mother's qualms are put at rest by the house-master's wife. 'The tone of the house is so excellent, you see. No bullying at all, and Freddie's manners are so charming. Every one likes him.'
It is possible that if the house-master were taken to task in the privacy of his own study, he might be persuaded to confess himself a pragmatist. 'One has to keep them quiet,' he might say. 'The young rascal'll get on all right as long as they don't start meddling with him.' But it is hard to be honest with oneself. The schoolmaster cannot help regarding the parent in much the same way that the junior subaltern regarded the brigadier. We all know what happened when the runner brought the news that at such an hour the brigadier would visit Lieutenant Jones's gun emplacements. Lieutenant Jones specially called the brigadier's attention to what he knew would please him. He put his smartest men on guard. He assured the brigadier that everything was going quite all right, that the men were perfectly comfortable and that the supply of rations was adequate; Lieutenant Jones did everything, in fact, to get the brigadier into the next trench as soon as possible.
Which was, of course, all very rational. The brigadier's interest in Lieutenant Jones's gun emplacements was remote and theoretical, and either way was of small importance. But it is a different thing altogether when house-masters wave parents out of the way with comfortable excuses. It establishes at once a dishonest relationship. The schoolmaster does not trust the parent. He regards him as a nuisance that periodically has to be appeased. And, as long as things go smoothly, he is content to leave him in the dark. There is no co-operation. And that is absolutely fatal. It means that the two people who are chiefly responsible for the boy's welfare are working at cross purposes.
The trouble does not end there. For between the parents themselves there is frequently an incomplete mutual appreciation of the difficulties of school life. Women, in the nature of things, can only know about Public Schools what men choose to tell them. That is usually remarkably little. Many a husband encourages in his wife the illusion that before he met her his life was a vague, indeterminate, ineffectual thing, the incidents of which are unworthy to be recorded. And many others on such matters as public school life consider that a lie that saves friction is justifiable. It is so easy to see how it happens.
Husband and wife are sitting after dinner on either side of the fireplace. The wife has just finished reading The Harrovians, and she looks up with a puzzled, unhappy look. 'Harold, dear,' she says, 'it's not like that really, is it? If it were true I couldn't think of sending Freddie to such a place.' And what is Harold to say? He has read The Harrovians. He knows that substantially it is true, but equally well he knows that if he acknowledges this to his wife his domestic life for the next six years will be complicated by incessant arguments and anxieties. To begin with he will have to spend many evenings of discussion before he can persuade his wife of the advisability of sending Freddie to Rugby. And afterwards there will be constant uneasiness. His wife will fret. She will want to pay visits to Rugby, to interview the head master, to ask her son uncomfortable questions. His own life would become unbearable. And a lie smooths out so much. 'Oh, no, dear, quite unlike the Rugby of my day. An exaggerated picture of a bad house in a bad school, that's all it is.'