As the Head was a powerful, stout, handsome, distinguished-looking man with a certain stamp of joviality and innocent good-living about him, these malicious tongues, who led the rest, declared that he only lived for his stomach. In the next place, the old-fashioned punishment of caning, administered by the Head himself in his private room, gave some cause of offence. It was certainly only very lazy and obdurate boys who were thus punished; for others such methods were never even dreamt of. But when they were ordered to appear in his room after school-time, and the Head took them between his knees, thrashed them well and then afterwards caressed them, as though to console them, he created ill- feeling, and his dignity suffered. If there were some little sense in the disgust occasioned by this, there was certainly none at all in certain other grievances urged against him.
It was the ungraceful custom for the boys, on the first of the month, to bring their own school fees. In the middle of one of the lessons the Head would come into the schoolroom, take his seat at the desk, and jauntily and quickly sweep five-daler bills [Footnote: Five daler, a little over 11/-- English money.] into his large, soft hat and thence into his pockets. One objection to this arrangement was that the few poor boys who went to school free were thus singled out to their schoolfellows, bringing no money, which they felt as a humiliation. In the next place, the sight of the supposed wealth that the Head thus became possessed of roused ill-feeling and derision. It became the fashion to call him boy-dealer, because the school, which in its palmy days had 550 scholars, was so well attended. This extraordinary influx, which in all common sense ought to have been regarded as a proof of the high reputation of the school, was considered a proof of the Head's avarice.
It must be added that there was in his bearing, which was evidently and with good reason, calculated to impress, something that might justly appear unnatural to keen-sighted boys. He always arrived with blustering suddenness; he always shouted in a stentorian voice, and, when he gave the elder boys a Latin lesson, he always appeared, probably from indolence, a good deal behind time, but to make up, and as though there were not a second to waste, began to hurl his questions at them the moment he arrived on the threshold. He liked the pathetic, and was certainly a man with a naturally warm heart. On a closer acquaintance, he would have won much affection, for he was a clever man and a gay, optimistic figure. As the number of his scholars was so great, he produced more effect at a distance.
XVI.
Neither he nor any of the other masters reproduced the atmosphere of the classical antiquity round which all the instruction of the Latin side centred. The master who taught Greek the last few years did so, not only with sternness, but with a distaste, in fact, a positive hatred for his class, which was simply disgusting.
The Head, who had the gift of oratory, communicated to us some idea of the beauty of Latin poetry, but the rest of the instruction in the dead languages was purely grammatical, competent and conscientious though the men who gave it might have been. Madvig's [Translator's note: Johan Nicolai Madvig (1804-1886), a very celebrated Danish philologist, for fifty years professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is especially noted for his editions of the ancient classics, with critical notes on the text, and for his Latin Grammar.] spirit brooded over the school. Still, there was no doubt in the Head's mind as to the greatness of Virgil or Horace, so that a boy with perception of stylistic emphasis and metre could not fail to be keenly interested in the poetry of these two men. Being the boy in the class of whom the Head entertained the greatest hopes, I began at once secretly to translate them. I made a Danish version of the second and fourth books of the Aeneid Danicised a good part of the Songs and Epistles of Horace in imperfect verse.
XVII.
Nothing was ever said at home about any religious creed. Neither of my parents was in any way associated with the Jewish religion, and neither of them ever went to the Synagogue. As in my maternal grandmother's house all the Jewish laws about eating and drinking were observed, and they had different plates and dishes for meat and butter and a special service for Easter, orthodox Judaism, to me, seemed to be a collection of old, whimsical, superstitious prejudices, which specially applied to food. The poetry of it was a sealed book to me. At school, where I was present at the religious instruction classes as an auditor only, I always heard Judaism alluded to as merely a preliminary stage of Christianity, and the Jews as the remnant of a people who, as a punishment for slaying the Saviour of the world, had been scattered all over the earth. The present-day Israelites were represented as people who, urged by a stiff-necked wilfulness and obstinacy and almost incomprehensible callousness, clung to the obsolete religious ideal of the stern God in opposition to the God of Love.
When I attempted to think the matter out for myself, it annoyed me that the Jews had not sided with Jesus, who yet so clearly betokened progress within the religion that He widened and unintentionally overthrew. The supernatural personality of Jesus did not seem credible to me. The demand made by faith, namely, that reason should be fettered, awakened a latent rebellious opposition, and this opposition was fostered by my mother's steady rationalism, her unconditional rejection of every miracle. When the time came for me to be confirmed, in accordance with the law, I had advanced so far that I looked down on what lay before me as a mere burdensome ceremony. The person of the Rabbi only inspired me with distaste; his German pronunciation of Danish was repulsive and ridiculous to me. The abominable Danish in which the lesson-book was couched offended me, as I had naturally a fine ear for Danish. Information about ancient Jewish customs and festivals was of no interest to me, with my modern upbringing. The confirmation, according to my mocking summary of the impression produced by it, consisted mainly in the hiring of a tall silk hat from the hat-maker, and the sending of it back next day, sanctified. The silly custom was at that time prevalent for boys to wear silk hats for the occasion, idiotic though they made them look. With these on their heads, they went, after examination, up the steps to a balustrade where a priest awaited, whispered a few affecting words in their ear about their parents or grandparents, and laid his hand in blessing upon the tall hat. When called upon to make my confession of faith with the others, I certainly joined my first "yes," this touching a belief in a God, to theirs, but remained silent at the question as to whether I believed that God had revealed Himself to Moses and spoken by His prophets. I did not believe it.
I was, for that matter, in a wavering frame of mind unable to arrive at any clear understanding. What confused me was the unveracious manner in which historical instruction, which was wholly theological, was given. The History masters, for instance, told us that when Julian the Apostate wanted to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem, flames had shot out of the earth, but they interpreted this as a miracle, expressing the Divine will. If this were true--and I was unable to refute it then--God had expressly taken part against Judaism and the Jews as a nation. The nation, in that case, seemed to be really cursed by Him. Still, Christianity fundamentally repelled me by its legends, its dogmatism, and its church rites. The Virgin birth, the three persons in the Trinity, and the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper in particular, seemed to me to be remnants of the basest barbarism of antiquity.