Gerald Eversley's Friendship: A Study in Real Life

by J. E. C. Welldon

The modern bed of Procrustes is or was a public school. Nowhere in the world is there so keen an appreciation of those who adapt themselves to local tone, temper, and custom. But nowhere is departure, however slight, from the recognised standard of propriety, visited with consequences so unfailing. The society of a public school is a world in itself, self-centred, self-satisfied. It takes but slight account of the principles and practices which obtain in the world of men. It has its own laws, its own fashions, its own accepted code of morals. To these all persons must submit, or the penalty of resistance is heavy. Its virtues are not altogether those of men and women, nor are its vices. Some actions of which the world thinks comparatively little, it honours with profound admiration. To others, which the world thinks much of, it is indifferent. Mere physical courage, for instance, is esteemed too highly. Self-repression is depreciated. Hypocrisy is loathed. But the inverted hypocrisy—the homage which virtue pays to vice—or, in other words, the affectation of being worse than one really is, is common among boys and is thought to be honourable. Truth, again, is not esteemed as a virtue of universal application, but is relative to particular persons, a falsehood, if told to a schoolfellow, being worse than if told to a master. Nobody can be intimate with a community of schoolboys and not feel that a morality so absolute, yet so narrow, and in some ways so perverted, bears a certain resemblance to the morality of a savage tribe. It is rather the germ of morals than morality itself.

It is true that the general softening of manners, which is the one clear gain that the world seems to make as it grows older, has in some degree affected even schoolboys. Public school life is not what it was in the days of ‘Tom Brown.’ Thirty years ago, at the epoch of this story, a boy who entered a public school was sure to suffer a certain number of annoyances, if not of positive hardships. To-day, it is probable that the only boys who are actual sufferers are those shy, delicate, sensitive creatures who do not understand the rough give-and-take of life, who imagine injuries and brood upon them, who have no sense of humour nor any such companionableness as is necessary in a society of human beings. Public school life is milder than it was. The sum of happiness in it is increasing, the sum of misery is diminishing or disappearing. But this story relates to thirty years ago; things were rougher then than they are now. Still it is not difficult even now to discuss the traces of what may be called the uncivilised or unsoftened spirit in public school life. It is seen in the homage paid among public school boys to physical faculties and performances. Of the achievements of the intellect, if they stand alone, public school opinion is still, as it has always been, slightly contemptuous. But strength, speed, athletic skill, quickness of eye and hand, still command universal applause among schoolboys as among savages.

It is this uncivilised character of the young which accounts for the lack of sympathy—nay, the positive indignation and contempt—with which they regard anything like eccentricity or individualism. Science teaches that the progress of the species depends upon the preservation and improvement of varieties. Perhaps the reason why schools have made so little progress is that they have never encouraged variation, but have suppressed it. The bed of Procrustes is not favourable to varieties. Individualism among the young is looked upon as a form of conceit. Far stricter, and enforced by far more terrible penalties than the rules which masters make for boys, are the rules which boys make for themselves and for each other. Woe to him who consciously or unconsciously transgresses them! Their absurdity is itself the measure of their severity. It is not long since a mother, walking with her boy through the muddy streets of St. Anselm’s after a thaw in mid-winter, suggested to him that it would be a good thing to turn up his trousers at the bottom, and he told her with a biting scorn (which was provoked not by the rule but by her ignorance in needing to be informed of it), that the turning up of trousers was a privilege reserved to the select mysterious beings who are known as ‘swells.’

A public school, then, is the home of the commonplace. It is there that mediocrity sits upon her throne. There the spirit which conforms to custom is lauded to the skies. There the spirit which is independent and original is apt to be crushed. And yet to these public schools of England come boys of all sorts, conditions and characters, strong boys, delicate boys, rough boys, impudent boys, sensitive boys, unhappy boys, boys who have many friends, boys who have no friends, boys who are capable of fighting their way against odds, and boys to whom every harsh or inconsiderate word is a pang; they are all sent without discrimination to live as they may, and to shape their own characters or the characters of others by the simple primitive process of rubbing down inequalities through constant friction. Parents and schoolmasters often assume that the English system of public school life is suited to all boys, and that, if boys dislike it, it is all the better for them. It is forgotten how many boys of highest temper and keenest feeling have derived not benefit but injury from their school. There is no reason to deny that the public school system is good for the majority of boys. But it has its victims. How often has it happened that the boys, whose names have in after life been the glory and pride of their schools, have been ignored, depreciated, persecuted in their school lives! It is not needless—it cannot be wrong—to plead for a kindly sympathetic forbearance from masters and boys, yes, from masters as much as from boys, towards the stricken, suffering, despised members of the flock. For of these was Gerald Eversley.

It will, perhaps, be thought that the masters of a public school, as being presumably men of wisdom and experience, should correct the sympathies and prejudices of their pupils. But to think so is to exaggerate the power of masters. Masters have less influence upon a school than is sometimes supposed, perhaps than they themselves suppose. They do not always create public opinion, and often they follow it. They take their tone from the boys, as well as the boys from them. Sometimes they admire the boys whom the boys themselves admire; they ignore those whom the boys ignore. It is only here and there that a master has the courage and the self-denial to leave the popular, pleasant, responsive boys to themselves and seek those who are destitute and out of the way. There are masters who do this, and they deserve great credit for it. But too often masters waste their favours upon those who do not need them, and the misunderstood boys whom their schoolfellows neglect are equally neglected by their masters.

Mr. Brandiston, in whose house Gerald Eversley had been placed, was what is sometimes called ‘a master of the old school.’ It does not exactly appear what is the meaning of the phrase, though it may be presumed that the master, who is so described, does not altogether belong to the present school of masters. He was a tall and handsome man; in youth he must have been very handsome. Even now, when his hair was silvered and his figure a little bent, it would have been difficult to pass him without tacitly complimenting him on his appearance. He had held a boarding house at St. Anselm’s for over twenty years. It was a very popular house, and if Mr. Brandiston had a weakness, it lay in his belief that all the virtue and all the distinction of the school were centred in that one house. That a considerable part of the virtue and distinction were centred in it was undeniable. Mr. Brandiston’s critics (who were rather numerous) were wont to say of him that he did not care for any boy who was not either an aristocrat or a scholar. He would have admitted a weakness or predilection for scholars, but he would have said that the aristocrats came to his house of themselves. At all events they came. Mr. Brandiston was so upright a man that his word, especially in regard to his own house, deserved to be accepted unhesitatingly. There was only one reason—and it might not occur to everybody—for harbouring a suspicion that he would perhaps not altogether shrink from a purely accidental connection with the aristocracy. Mr. Brandiston was in politics a Radical.

But there can be no doubt that the boys in Mr. Brandiston’s house were proud of their house and of him. The conversation which Gerald Eversley heard on the first night of his school life exhibited that pride. If Mr. Brandiston’s boys found fault occasionally with him themselves, they never suffered a boy who was in any other house to find fault with him. It was the general fashion of the house to assume that its traditions and its methods were the best possible. This fashion the boys derived from Mr. Brandiston. They went so far as to maintain that the food provided by Mrs. Brandiston was superior to the food provided elsewhere. It was not so, and boys are critical of their food, however excellent it may be; but loyalty to the house and to Mr. Brandiston forbade the admission that other boys ate as good bread and butter as his. A master who excites this kind of loyalty is not an unsuccessful schoolmaster.

Mr. Brandiston excited loyalty by two qualities. One was a certain bluff straightforwardness of manner; to use the boys’ phrase, ‘there was no humbug about old Brandiston.’ Boys do not mind bluffness, roughness, or even gruffness of manner; what they hate is humbug. And they are apt to assume that anyone whose manner is at all effusive or demonstrative is a humbug. They do not, as a rule, themselves indulge in forcible eulogistic expressions; ‘not bad’ is one of their strongest forms of eulogy. It is somewhat curious that boys, whose expressions of censure or condemnation are so vehement, should be so moderate in their expressions of approval. But so it is, and they are often distrustful of anyone whose words or actions go beyond their own usual practice. But Mr. Brandiston was admitted to be as good as his word.

And he was just. Boys admire justice, and Mr. Brandiston was just. It may be that he plumed himself a little upon his justice. If so, the boys were not unwilling to forgive him. Boys despise weakness, and are wholly unmerciful in taking advantage of it. But they do not resent severity, so long as it is impartial. They are strangely impatient of undeserved punishment, forgetting how often they escape punishment which is richly deserved; but if they have done wrong, and are fairly detected in doing wrong, they do not mind being punished, they expect punishment, and rather like it.

One point in Mr. Brandiston’s favour it would be unfair to pass over. It is that he was generally called ‘old Brandiston.’ The epithet ‘old’ is apt to be taken as descriptive of age. It may denote age, but it may denote something quite different. There are some persons who in the vocabulary of boys are always ‘old,’ and always were ‘old.’ They are persons varying in age, character, and experience. But I do not recall any instance of a man or boy being known in a school as ‘old,’ if he was permanently unpopular among the boys. Mr. Brandiston was just, and he was called ‘old Brandiston.’ More fortunate than Aristides in the ancient story, he did not forfeit his popularity by his justice.