“I do,” said Sir Philip, “most certainly I do.”
“I realise,” continued Mr. Bent, “that for anybody who is aspiring to a post in Sir Philip Whaley’s office, shorthand and commercial French are a necessary branch of culture. But what about the boys who are going in for the learned or other professions—the Church, for example? Might not commercial French be, to a future bishop, what Homer is to Sir Philip himself, an ornamental but irrelevant accomplishment? And we must not ignore the bishops.”
“You must specialise,” said Sir Philip grandly. “You must be prepared to fit every boy with the special knowledge that he—um—er—will require in the profession of his choice. You schoolmasters, if you will forgive me for saying so, do not sufficiently realise the importance of specialising.”
“The difficulty of specialising beyond a certain point,” said Mr. Flaggon, “lies in the additional expense: and public school education is costly enough already. Our problem is to find a common basis of education for all.”
Sir Philip was not accustomed to have his judgment disputed, and he met the objection by repeating his previous remarks with amplifications. When he had finished for the second time, a Mrs. Sparrow, who had been making chirruping little noises to herself all the while, seized the opportunity to say that, for want of somebody better, she had come to represent the mothers’ point of view; and what mothers cared most about were just the little things that men so often didn’t notice. She was sure that the food was all that could be wished for or desired, and she wasn’t for a moment complaining about that. But she did think that the boys weren’t given enough time to eat it in. She was horrified at the way her own boy had learned to gobble his food in the holidays, and all doctors were agreed about the importance of eating slowly and biting properly. That was one thing. And, then, she did think that, for a big school, the sick-house was rather a dreary place—such bare unfurnished rooms and floors. When her boy was ill last Easter Term and she came down to see him, she went away feeling quite depressed. Of course everybody was most kind, and she knew that the school doctor was a very clever man; but she did think that the sick-house might be made a little more cheerful. That was the mothers’ point of view, and she hoped that Mr. Flaggon would not mind her putting it; for, after all a mother did know more about her own children than anybody else did.
Mr. Flaggon said that he was always delighted to hear what the mothers had to say, and he would give due weight to Mrs. Sparrow’s suggestions; but he thought that they were perhaps straying a little beyond the scope of the meeting, and he invited the other parents to give their view on the main subject under discussion, namely, education.
The other parents, thus appealed to, explained that they had come to listen and not to talk; but the stockbroker, who had from the first exhibited symptoms of acute boredom, remarked that, as he was there, he might as well say what he knew that most people thought, though apparently they were afraid to say so. “If you ask me,” he said, leaning back in his chair and thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, “if you ask me, I don’t think it matters a rap what you teach ’em. When I was at school, I never did a stroke of work—had a jolly good time, and I can’t say that I’m sorry for it. And I’m worth now” (here Mr. Flaggon winced visibly)—“well, it doesn’t matter what I’m worth; but I know that I could buy up half the swots—that’s what we used to call them in my days—half the swots who worked ’emselves silly over their Latin and Greek and all that sort of gibberish. And when I sent my youngster here, I said to him: ‘You may work if you like; you can please yourself about that, and it’s a point you’ll have to settle with your masters; but, if you want to please your dad, remember that I’d a da—jolly sight sooner see you head of your eleven than head of the school.’ That’s what I said; and I don’t believe, Mr. Headmaster, that you’ve got a finer little sportsman in your school than my youngster.”
Long before the discussion was over Mr. Flaggon realised that it had been a mistake and would only give the enemy cause to blaspheme. And he was not mistaken. Lady Bellingham was the joy of Common Room for weeks afterwards, and it was humorously assumed that she had made a convert of the headmaster. When a new chimney appeared on the Lodge, everybody said, “Flaggon is surrounding us with beautiful things”; when the rhododendrons at the far end of Colonus were thinned out, it was, “Flaggon is uncovering the great bosom of Nature.” And again, when a notice came round about the wearing of great-coats, somebody remarked that Flaggon was looking at education from the mothers’ point of view. Mr. Chowdler, who had not been present at the meeting, picked up all the best things and added them to his repertory. In fact there was a regular carnival of wit, and the wags had the time of their lives.
Only Mr. Bent affected to be agreeably surprised. “They were,” he said, “an unusually intelligent set of parents—quite unusually intelligent. Lady Bellingham, of course, talked an amazing lot of drivel; you would expect that from a woman. Still, she knows a great deal more than Chowdler does; for, though she can’t express herself rationally, she does realise in a vague way that beauty is a form of truth, and that education ought to mean something more than Balbus-built-a-wall and the off-theory. Even Mr.—I can’t remember his name—the stockbroker, has grasped what education is not; which is more than Chowdler ever has. They offered him an inferior substitute at the school where he spent his dazzling youth, and, with the intuition of genius, he divined that it was not worth his acceptance. And probably it wasn’t. And, then, the silent ones! How seldom you find four people in any given room who are wise enough to keep silence about a subject of which they know nothing. Whaley was the only really hopeless failure. Yes, they certainly were an unusually intelligent set of parents.”
“That’s all very well,” protested Mr. Plummer, “but if I had said so, you would have cursed me for my unreasoning optimism and made out that I was blinded by my infatuation for the middle classes.”