It came about owing to the fact that I have several prefects (elected solely for their "beefiness") in my low mathematical sets. They never do any work and altogether set a rotten example to the others. Of late I have been punishing these boys very heavily, to the great astonishment of themselves and no little enjoyment of the other boys. One of these giants complained to Hallows, his House-master, who came to me in a towering rage and told me that I was subverting the whole of the Public School tradition, lowering the dignity of the prefects and—Heaven knows what besides.
"How the blazes are these fellows going to keep order when the rest of the school see that a young new master can defy them at will and set them punishments which degrade them in the sight of their own fags?"
"Wouldn't it be a good idea," I replied, "if prefects were not elected until they had risen high enough in the school not to have 'fags' in their forms? After all, one of the reasons for coming to school is to work, though we seem to do our best to gloss over that inconvenient fact."
I have had a series of visits lately from Stapleton, who was at Oxford with me: he has been appointed curate at Todsdale, an enormous mining town, and the life there is nearly killing him. The eternal squalor and dreariness of the life, the pettiness of the routine at the Clergy House, the lack of any intellectual or æsthetic interests all bid fair to send him out of his mind.
He usually comes over on a motor-bicycle on Thursday afternoons, and pours out all his troubles as we walk up and down the seashore: he reads to me his sermons, he gives me graphic accounts of the quarrels about ceremonial and duty that occur daily over meals in the Clergy House, of some of the hovels he has to visit, of his opponents among the laity and so on. He seems to be getting mixed up with some mill-girl in a way I can't quite understand: it sounds as if her people were trying their hardest to secure him as a husband for their daughter: perhaps they know that he has considerable private means, for the average curate is not much of a catch in the eyes of the north-country factory worker: he has no prospects.
I must say I admire Stapleton's courage and devotion to duty in cutting himself off from the beauties of the south, from all decent society, and all chance of meeting a girl of his own status: it must be a terrible life for him, for his senses are not blunted. He sits and mopes, thinking over old days when he too lived in Arcadia.
I don't think that I could ever settle down in the north. I like the bustle and the sense of importance that possesses the money-makers in Leeds, but I object to the absence of sun, of the sleepy happiness of the south; the crude dialect, rasping and hard, seems typical of the people here. They seem to have no time to devote to anything which does not actually increase their income, they pride themselves on their parsimony and yet they are strangely inconsistent.
I have just got back from a House supper, a quaint terminal affair held by the House which wins the Senior Athletic Cup for the term: how different these tame, nervous affairs are from the full-blooded, riotous orgies of Oxford days. It appears that it is necessary to get a man drunk before you can really put him at his ease at a big gathering. The much-watered claret-cup which passes for strong drink at these school-shows is pitiable enough, but it is typical of the spirit of the whole thing. Most of the principals concerned are in a state of pitiable terror because of the speeches which they are expected to make at the conclusion of the feast. Conversation is tedious and conducted in undertones; there are frequent dead silences; House-masters work unflaggingly to put people at their ease, but every one feels conscious of his clothes and his neighbour's criticisms. We are all afraid of saying the wrong thing or of omitting to praise some one who coached the team or played well: every time some name is left out which ought to have been included, some one asked to sing who breaks down, some one to speak who only succeeds in stammering out platitudes.
And yet if there ever was a man calculated to put people at their ease, it is the House-master in whose house I live. Heatherington is one of the finest men I have ever met: he represents the high-water mark in schoolmasters.
He is an excellent scholar, bred in the best traditions of Eton and Christ Church, of good family, hard as nails physically, a double Blue, a prominent mountaineer, a born humorist, well-to-do, whose one great aim in life is to make and keep his House famous for sportsmen, scholars and gentlemen. He knows his boys through and through and makes friends with all of them: every one in the place is devoted to him. He belongs to no clique in the Common Room, but preserves the best traditions of the Englishman in his own life and in that of his boys. Yet even he cannot attain the unattainable: he cannot make a House supper "go." The only people who enjoy themselves to the full are the fags: they have no responsibility, they simply eat and drink and applaud. For the rest of us it is one long agony.