The Lighter Side of School Life by Ian Hay (important books to read txt) 📗

"Happy thought! Perhaps he was drunk."

That is true, true, all through.

Then comes another class of school-story—the school-story written primarily for boys. Such are the books of Mr. Talbot Baines Reed. These are regarded as somewhat vieux jeu at the present day, but in their own particular line they have never been bettered. They were written to be read by comparatively young boys in a semi-religious magazine; and anybody who has ever attempted to write a tale which shall be probable yet interesting, and racy yet moral, will realise how admirably Mr. Reed has achieved this feat—in such books as The Willoughby Captains, The Master of the Shell, and The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's.

Another excellent book is Godfrey Marten, Schoolboy. Here Mr. Charles Turley achieves success by the most commendable means. He eschews the theatrical. His story contains no death-bed heroics; no rescues from drowning; no highly-coloured moral crises. He takes as[167] his theme the humdrum daily life—and no one who has not lived through it for weeks at a time knows how humdrum it can be—of a public school, and makes it interesting. He lacks fire, it may be said, but he avoids the sentimentality of the old school and the cynicism of the new.

Perhaps the best of all this class is The Bending of a Twig, by Mr. Desmond Coke—an absolutely faithful picture, drawn with unerring instinct and refreshing humour. In fact it is so much the real thing that at times it is a trifle monotonous, just because school life at times is a trifle monotonous. But those who know what schoolboys are cannot fail to appreciate the intrinsic merits of this book. It gently derides the stagey incidents and emotional heroics of the old style of school story. Here a small boy comes to Shrewsbury primed with the lore of Eric and Tom Brown and The Hill, fully expecting to be tossed in a blanket or roasted on sight. But nothing happens: he is merely ignored. He has laboriously committed to memory a quantity of Harrow slang from The Hill: he finds this is meaningless at Shrewsbury. He cannot understand the situation: he has to unlearn all his lessons in sophistication. The whole thing is admirably done.[168]

The story strikes a deeper note towards the end. Here we are given a very vivid study of the same boy, now head of his House, struggling between his sense of duty and the fear of unpopularity. Shall he tackle the disturbing element boldly, invoking if necessary the assistance of the Housemaster, or let things slide for the sake of peace? Many a tragedy of the Prefect's Room has hinged upon that struggle; and although Mr. Coke's solution of the problem is not heroic, it is probably all the more true to life. Altogether a fine book, but from its very nature a book for boys rather than grown-ups.

Coming to the type of school-story at present in vogue, we have The Hill, deservedly ranking as first-class. But The Hill is essentially a book for Harrovians; and the more likely a book is to appeal to members of one particular school, the less likely it is to appeal to members of any other school. (In this respect we may note that Tom Brown forms an exception. But then Tom Brown is an exceptional book.) If The Hill had been written as a "general" school story, with the identity of Harrow veiled, however thinly, under a fictitious name, its glamour and romance, together with its enthusiasm for[169] all that is straight and strong and of old standing and of good report, would have made it a classic among school fiction. But non-Harrovians—and there are a considerable number of them—decline with natural insularity to follow Mr. Vachell to his topmost heights. They are conscious of a clannish, slightly patronising air about The Hill, which is notably absent in other stories which tell the tale of a particular school. The reader is treated to pedantic little footnotes, and given a good deal of information which is either gratuitous or uninteresting. He is made to understand that he is on The Hill but not of it. He recognises frankly enough the greatness of Harrow tradition and the glory of Harrow history, but he rightly reserves his enthusiasm over such things for his own school; and there are moments when he feels inclined to bawl out to the author that he envies Harrow nothing—except perhaps Forty Years On.

In other words, The Hill, owing to the insistent fashion in which it puts Harrow first and general schoolboy nature second, must be regarded more as a glorified prospectus than as a representative novel of English school life.

But The Hill stands high. It cannot be hid.[170] It is supersentimental at times, but then so are schoolboys. And the characters are clean-cut and finely finished. Scaife is a memorable figure; so is Warde. John Verney, like most virtuous persons, is a bit of a bore at times; but the Caterpillar, with his drawling little epigrams, and their inevitable tag—"Not my own; my Governor's!"—is a joy for ever. Lastly, the description of the Eton and Harrow Match at Lord's takes unquestionable rank as one of the few things in this world which will never be better done.

Two other books may be mentioned here, as illustrating the tendency, already mentioned, of modern school-novelists to shift the limelight from the boy to the master. The first is Mr. Hugh Walpole's Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill. A young man lacking means, and possessing only a moderate degree, who feels inclined, as many do, to drift into schoolmastering as a pis aller, should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest this book. It draws a pitiless picture of Common Room life in a third-rate public school—the monotony; the discomfort; the mutual antagonism and jealousy of a body of men herded together year after year, condemned to celibacy by want of means, and deprived[171] of all prospect of advancement or change of scene. It hammers in the undeniable truth that in the great majority of cases a schoolmaster's market value depreciates steadily from the date of his first appointment. Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill is a very able book, but should not be read by schoolmasters while recovering, let us say, from influenza.

If the reader desires a further picture of the amenities of the Common Room, viewed from a less oblique angle, he can confidently be recommended to turn to The Lanchester Tradition, by Mr. G. F. Bradby. The Lanchester Tradition is a comparatively short story, but it is all pure gold. It is written with knowledge, insight, and above all with an appreciation of that broad tolerant humorous outlook on life which alone can lubricate the soul-grinding wheels of routine. In Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill we have a young, able, and merciless critic exposing some of the weaknesses of the public-school system. In The Lanchester Tradition we have a seasoned and experienced representative of that system demonstrating that real character can always rise superior to circumstance, and that for all its creaking machinery and accompanying friction the pedagogue's existence can[172] be a very tolerable and at times a very uplifting one. It is the old struggle between theory and practice. Solvitur ambulando.

There are many other school stories of recent date, of which no mention has been made in this survey; but our excursions seem to have covered a fairly representative field. What is the prevailing characteristic of the new, as compared with the old? It appears to be a very insistent and rather discordant note of realism—the sort of realism which leaves nothing unphotographed. Romance and sentiment are swept aside: they might fog the negative. Our rising generation are not permitted to see visions or dream dreams. And there is a tendency—mercifully absent in most of the books which we have described—to discuss matters which are better not discussed, at any rate in a work of fiction. There is a great vogue in these introspective days for outspokenness upon intimate matters. We are told that such matter should not be excluded from the text, because it is "true to life." So are the police reports in the Sunday newspapers; but we do not present files of these delectable journals to our sons and daughters—let us not forget the daughters: the sons go to school, but the daughters can only sit[173] at home and read schoolboy stories—as Christmas presents.

There is another marked characteristic of modern school fiction—its intense topicality. The slang, the allusions, the incidents—they are all dernier cri. But the more up-to-date a thing may be, whether it be a popular catchphrase or a whole book, the more ephemeral is its existence. A book of this kind reproduces the spirit of the moment, often with surprising fidelity; but after all it is only the spirit of the moment. Its very applicability to the moment unfits it for any other position. Books, speeches, and jokes—very few of these breathe the spirit not only of the moment but of all time. When they do, we call them Classics. Tom Brown is a Classic, and probably Stalky too. They are built of material which is imperishable, because it is quarried from the bed-rock of human nature, which never varies, though architectural fashions come and go. [175]

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