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

of the most exacting yet altruistic fields in the world is a licence to enrich himself for a period of years by "cornering" the daily bread of the pupils in his charge. And yet we feel surprised, and hurt, and indignant, when foreigners suggest that we are a nation of shopkeepers.

The life of a Housemaster is a living example of the lengths to which the British passion[50] for undertaking heavy responsibilities and thankless tasks can be carried. Daily, hourly, he finds himself in contact (and occasional collision) with boys—boys for whose moral and physical welfare he is responsible; who in theory at least will regard him as their natural enemy; and who occupy the greater part of their leisure time in criticising and condemning him and everything that is his—his appearance, his character, his voice, his wife; the food that he provides and the raiment that he wears. He is harried by measles, mumps, servants, tradesmen, and parents. He feels constrained to invite every boy in his House to a meal at least once a term, which means that he is almost daily deprived of the true-born Briton's birthright of being uncommunicative at breakfast. His life is one long round of colourless routine, tempered by hair-bleaching emergencies.

But he loves it all. He maintains, and ultimately comes to believe, that his House is the only House in the School in which both justice and liberty prevail, and his boys the only boys in the world who know the meaning of hard work, good food, and esprit de corps. He pities all other Housemasters, and tells them so at frequent intervals; and he expostulates paternally[51] and sorrowfully with form-masters who vilify the members of his cherished flock in half-term reports.

And his task is not altogether thankless. Just as the sun never sets upon the British Empire, so it never sets upon all the Old Boys of a great public school at once. They are gone out into all lands: they are upholding the honour of the School all the world over. And wherever they are—London, Simla, Johannesburg, Nairobi, or Little Pedlington Vicarage—they never lose touch with their old Housemaster. His correspondence is enormous; it weighs him down: but he would not relinquish a single picture postcard of it. He knows that wherever two or three of his Old Boys are gathered together, be it in Bangalore or Buluwayo, the talk will always drift round in time to the old School and the old House. They will refer to him by his nickname—"Towser," or "Potbelly," or "Swivel-Eye,"—and reminiscences will flow.

"Do you remember the old man's daily gibe when he found us chucking bread at dinner? 'Hah! There will be a bread pudding tomorrow!'"

"Do you remember the jaw he gave us when the news came about Macpherson's V.C.?"[52]

"Do you remember his Sunday trousers? Oh, Lord!"

"Do you remember how he tanned Goat Hicks for calling The Frog a cochon? Fourteen, wasn't it?"

"Do you remember the grub he gave the whole House the time we won the House-match by one wicket, with Old Mike away?"

"Do you remember how he broke down at prayers the night little Martin died?"

"Do you remember his apologising to that young swine Sowerby before the whole House for losing his temper and clouting him over the head? That must have taken some doing. We rooted Sowerby afterwards for grinning."

"I always remember the time," interpolates one of the group, "when he scored me off for roller-skating on Sunday."

"How was that?"

"Well, it was this way. I had got leave of morning Chapel on some excuse or other, and was skating up and down the Long Corridor, having a grand time. The old man came out of his study—I thought he was in Chapel—and growled, looking at me over his spectacles—you remember the way?——"

"Yes, rather. Go on!"[53]

"He growled:—'Boy, do you consider roller-skating a Sunday pastime?' I, of course, looked a fool, and said, 'No, sir.' 'Well,' chuckled the old bird, 'I do: but I always make a point of respecting a man's religious scruples. I will therefore confiscate your skates.' And he did! He gave them back to me next day, though."

"I always remember him," says another, "the time I nearly got sacked. By rights I ought to have been, but I believe he got me off at the last moment. Anyhow, he called me into his study and told me I wasn't to go after all. He didn't jaw me, but said I could take an hour off school and go and telegraph home that things were all right. My people had been having a pretty bad time over it, I knew, and so did he. I was pretty near blubbing, but I held out. Then, just as I got to the door, he called me back. I turned round, rather in a funk that the jaw was coming after all. But he growled out:—

"'It's a bit late in the term. The exchequer may be low. Here is sixpence for the telegram.'

"This time I did blub. Not one man in a million would have thought of the sixpence. As a matter of fact, fourpence-halfpenny was all I had in the world."[54]

And so on. His ears—especially his right ear—must be burning all day long.

Of course all Housemasters are not like this. If you want to hear about the other sort, take up The Lanchester Tradition, by Mr. G. F. Bradby, and make the acquaintance of Mr. Chowdler—an individual example of a great type run to seed. And there is Dirty Dick, in The Hill.

When he has fulfilled his allotted span as a Housemaster, our friend retires—not from school-mastering, but from the provision trade. With his hardly-won gains he builds himself a house in the neighbourhood of the school, and lives there in a state of otium cum dignitate. He still takes his form: he continues to do so until old age descends upon him, or a new broom at the head of affairs makes a clean sweep of the "permanent" staff.

He is mellower now. He no longer washes his hands of all responsibility for the methods of his colleagues, or thanks God that his boys are not as other masters' boys are. He does not altogether enjoy his work in school: he is getting a little deaf, and is inclined to be testy. But[55] teaching is his meat and his drink and his father and his mother. He sticks to it because it holds him to life.

Though elderly now, he enjoys many of the pleasures of middle age. For instance, he has usually married late, so his children are still young; and he is therefore spared the pain, which most parents have to suffer, of seeing the brood disperse just when it begins to be needed most. Or perhaps he has been too devoted to his world-wide family of boys to marry at all. In that case he lives alone; but you may be sure that his spare bedroom is seldom empty. No Old Boy ever comes home from abroad without paying a visit to his former Housemaster. Rich, poor, distinguished, or obscure—they all come. They tell him of their adventures; they recall old days; they deplore the present condition of the School and the degeneracy of the Eleven; they fight their own battles over again. They confide in him. They tell him things they would never tell their fathers or their wives. They bring him their ambitions, and their failures—not their successes; those are for others to speak of—even their love-affairs. And he listens to them all, and advises them all, this very tender and very wise old Ulysses. To him they are[56] but boys still, and he would not have them otherwise.

"The heart of a Boy in the body of a Man," he says—"that is a combination which can never go wrong. If I have succeeded in effecting that combination in a single instance, then I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain. [57]

CHAPTER THREE SOME FORM-MASTERS

[59]

NUMBER ONE THE NOVICE

Arthur Robinson, B.A., late exhibitioner of St. Crispin's College, Cambridge, having obtained a First Class, Division Three, in the Classical Tripos, came down from the University at the end of his third year and decided to devote his life to the instruction of youth.

In order to gratify this ambition as speedily as possible, he applied to a scholastic agency for an appointment. He was immediately furnished with type-written notices of some thirty or forty. Almost one and all, they were for schools which he had never heard of; but the post in every case was one which the Agency could unreservedly recommend. At the foot of each notice was typed a strongly worded appeal to him to write (at once) to the Headmaster, explaining first and foremost that he had heard of this vacancy through our Agency. After that he was to state his degree (if any); if a member of the Church of England; if willing to participate in School games; if musical; and so on. He was advised, if he thought it desirable, to enclose a photograph of himself.[60]

A further sheaf of such notices reached him every morning for about two months; but as none of them offered him more than a hundred-and-twenty pounds a year, and most of them a good deal less, Arthur Robinson, who was a sensible young man, resisted the temptation, overpowering to most of us, of seizing the very first opportunity of earning a salary, however small, simply because he had never earned anything before, and allowed the notices to accumulate upon one end of his mantelpiece.

Finally he had recourse to his old College tutor, who advised him of a vacancy at Eaglescliffe, a great public school in the west of England, and by a timely private note to the Headmaster secured his appointment.

Next morning Arthur Robinson received from the directorate of the scholastic agency—the existence of which he had almost forgotten—a rapturous letter of congratulation, reminding him that the Agency had sent him notice of the vacancy upon a specified date, and delicately intimating that their commission of five per cent. upon the first year's salary was payable on appointment. Arthur, who had long since given up the task of breasting the Agency's morning tide of desirable vacancies, mournfully[61] investigated the heap upon the mantelpiece, and found that the facts were as stated. There lay the notice, sandwiched between a document relating to the advantages to be derived from joining the staff of a private school in North Wales, where material prosperity was guaranteed by a salary of eighty pounds per annum, and social success by the prospect of meat-tea with the Principal and his family; and another, in which a clergyman (retired) required a thoughtful and energetic assistant (one hundred pounds a year, non-resident) to aid him in the management of a small but select seminary for backward and epileptic boys.

Arthur laid the matter before his tutor, who informed him that he must pay up, and be a little less casual in his habits in future. He therefore wrote a reluctant cheque for ten pounds, and having thus painfully imbibed the first lesson that a schoolmaster must learn—namely, the importance of attending to details—departed to take up his appointment at Eaglescliffe.

He arrived the day before term began, to find that lodgings had been apportioned to him at a house in the village, half a mile from the School. His first evening was spent in making[62] the place habitable. That is to say, he removed a number of portraits of his landlady's relatives from the walls and mantelpiece, and stored them, together with a collection of Early Victorian heirlooms—wool-mats and prism-laden glass vases—in a cupboard under the window-seat. In their place he set up fresh gods; innumerable signed photographs of young men, some in frames, some in rows along convenient ledges, others bunched together in a sort of wire entanglement much in vogue among the undergraduates of that time. Some of these photographs were mounted upon light-blue mounts, and these were placed in the most conspicuous position. Upon the walls he hung a collection of framed groups of more young men, with bare knees and severe expressions, in some of which Arthur Robinson himself figured.

After that, having written to his mother and a girl in South Kensington, he walked up the hill in the darkness to the Schoolhouse, where he was to be received in audience by the Head.

The great man was sitting at ease before his study fire, and exhibited unmistakable signs of recent slumber.

"I want you to take Remove B, Robinson,"[63] he said. "They are a mixed lot. About a quarter of them are infant prodigies—Foundation Scholars—who make this form their starting-point for higher things; and the remainder are centenarians, who regard Remove B as a sort of scholastic Chelsea Hospital, and are fully prepared to end their days there. Stir 'em up, and don't let them intimidate the small boys into a low standard of work. Their subjects this term will be Cicero de Senectute and the Alcestis, without choruses. Have you any theories about the teaching of boys?"

"None whatever," replied Arthur