The Lanchester tradition

by G. F. Bradby

The Term did not end without further unpleasantness. The treatment of le Willow had created a feeling of deep resentment in the school, and this feeling was intensified when Old Chilternians came down and said that the place was becoming a regular Sunday school, and that the new man deserved to be shot. It was known, too, that some of the masters shared the opinion of the Old Chilternians, and “the Jowler” was generally recognised as the champion who was foremost in defending the old flag against attacks. Mr. Chowdler himself was quite unconscious that he had revealed his inner mind to the boys or fanned the flame of disloyalty. But there was no doubt that he talked with great freedom to parents and old boys; and neither parents nor old boys are invariably discreet.

The upshot of it all was that, at the school concert on the last night but one of the Term, both Mr. Chowdler and le Willow received a great ovation which contrasted forcibly with the very faint cheering that greeted the entrance of the headmaster. It was said that there had even been hissing; but, while some maintained that it had proceeded from a group of old boys, and some ascribed it to isolated members of Mr. Chowdler’s house, others asserted that there had been nothing of the kind at all. Anyhow, it was not very marked, and Mr. Flaggon ignored it. He had a disconcerting way of concealing his feelings, an air of impenetrability which suggested, somehow, that he might have a trump card up his sleeve. The boys did not like him the better for this. Boys feel more at home with a man who plays with all his cards on the table.

But the school got a glimpse into the working of their headmaster’s mind when they were summoned into the Great Hall, just before the last chapel, to hear some remarks which Mr. Flaggon thought it his duty to address to them. The Term, he said, had been an unsatisfactory Term. He dwelt on the prevalence of cribbing, on the general slackness of discipline and the apparent absence of any healthy public opinion on matters that were vital to the school. He spoke sternly, but in measured language and without exaggeration of bitterness, and he ended with an appeal to the best traditions of the school and the better instincts of the better boys. There were no threats; but everybody realised that the speech was intended as a grave warning.

Many of the masters were considerably impressed upon it. A few of the older ones, however, headed by Mr. Chowdler, chose to regard it as an unwarranted attack on themselves. The boys listened, as boys will always listen to easy and effective speaking, with every appearance of being moved; and the singing in chapel, immediately afterwards, was unusually subdued. But, as soon as the first effect had worn off and the tongues of the scoffers were unloosed, the discontented spirit reasserted itself again, and the opinion most commonly expressed in the houses that night was that they had been treated like preparatory schoolboys. A few there were, chiefly boys in the highest forms, who felt dimly that they had been brought face to face with a real man and a nobler conception of life than they had hitherto realised; but, as yet, they were only few and they held their peace, leaving the talking to the malcontents.

On the first morning of the holidays, the headmaster had a long interview with Mr. Chase. Mr. Chase was not altogether happy about his house; no more was Mr. Flaggon. Indeed, he was not very happy about any of the houses. In his dealings with offenders who had been reported to him in the course of the Term, he had been painfully struck by a kind of moral hardness in them, an apparent imperviousness to the influences that make life a noble thing. It stamped itself on their faces in a particular look which was half defiant, half bored, and a sort of easy insolence which seemed to mistake itself for good breeding. And it was something new in his experience. With the thoughtless, daredevil, and impetuous temperament his own school days had made him familiar; but this was a new type, which seemed incapable of repentance and met punishment and appeal alike with the same callous indifference.

And, as he watched the boys’ faces day by day and week by week from his place in chapel, he was conscious of a gradual deterioration in many of them. Bigger boys, who at the beginning of the Term had suggested, with all their uncouthness, something of the frankness and spontaneity of healthy-minded youth, were growing old and veiled and blasé. Even among the new boys there were some who had exchanged the frank and grubby light-heartedness, natural to their years, for a look of self-conscious pertness that was decidedly unpleasing. It seemed as if there were a blight upon the place, some secret impalpable influence that was poisoning the springs of life. Mr. Flaggon had diagnosed it at first as a lack of discipline, and he had set himself to fight the evil with heroic remedies. Cost what it might, he would have discipline. But he was beginning to suspect that indiscipline was only a symptom and that he had not yet penetrated to the root of the mischief.

By his advice Mr. Chase, who was conscientious if unimaginative, was getting rid of some of the older boys in his house, who had been vegetating for a long time in the lower forms. He now suggested that the housemaster should try to establish confidential relations with some of the parents of his new boys, and find out from them, if possible, whether all was really well. Mr. Chase looked dubious. “I don’t quite like it,” he said. “It seems a little underhand—rather like going behind people’s backs; because I have been talking a good deal lately to my Prætor and to some of the old boys, and they all assure me that, though there is a prejudice in the school against my house, it is really quite right and as good as any. Besides, I don’t want to alarm parents unnecessarily.”

Mr. Flaggon concealed a slight feeling of impatience. “We mustn’t,” he said, “allow ourselves to be bound by a more than Spanish etiquette. We have got to do the very best we can for the boys who are under us, and, if we don’t use whatever help the parents can give us, we are surely guilty of a grave breach of duty. And as for frightening them—no sensible parent would be alarmed at being asked to co-operate with us in the interests of his child. Only, you must choose the right parents; for I’m really afraid there are some who don’t mind what happens to their sons, provided they do well at their games and have a good time.”

Mr. Chase yielded to persuasion, and, when he had gone, Mr. Flaggon sat down to a still harder task. He had decided that he must write to Mr. Chowdler. Ordinarily, in handling a delicate situation, he preferred the spoken to the written word. But in this case he felt that he could write more calmly and sympathetically than he could speak; for he was conscious that Mr. Chowdler’s voice and personality jarred upon him, and he feared that, in an interview, this latent irritation might betray itself in a tone or a gesture which would embitter rather than end the quarrel. Anyhow, something had to be done, for the situation was rapidly becoming impossible. Mr. Flaggon was aware of Mr. Chowdler’s indiscretions. The knowledge had come to him through various channels; and, once or twice lately, Mr. Chowdler’s tone and language to himself had been of a kind which it is difficult for a headmaster to ignore with dignity.

The letter was a difficult one to compose, and Mr. Flaggon weighed his words very carefully. He tried to recall Mr. Chowdler to a sense of elementary loyalty. He had, he said, every respect for differences of opinion, and he did not expect his own views or actions to pass uncriticised. But there were limits to the manner in which such criticisms could be expressed without doing harm to the school, and he was bound to say that, on several occasions, Mr. Chowdler had—quite unconsciously, no doubt—gone beyond those limits. He disclaimed any personal animus, and ended with a generous tribute to Mr. Chowdler’s many services to Chiltern.