THE FRENCH MASTER:
And they dispersed with tumult, congratulating Pringle and Tomlinson upon their pluck and themselves upon a most profitable morning.
But it is a far cry to Sedan nowadays. The race of Klotzes has perished, and their place is occupied by muscular young Britons, who have no reminiscences and whose pronunciation,both of English and German, is easier to understand.
"There's your journey money, Jackson. Good-bye, and a pleasant holiday!"
"Thank you, sir. The same to you!" replies Jackson dutifully.
They shake hands, and the Housemaster adds:—
"By the way, I shall want you to join the prefects next term."
"Me, sir? Oh!"
"Yes. Endeavour to get accustomed to the idea during the holidays. It will make a big difference in your life here. I am not referring merely to sausages for tea. Try and think out all that it implies."
Then follows a brief homily. Jackson knows it by heart, for it never varies, and he has heard it quoted frequently, usually for purposes of derision.
"The prefect in a public school occupies the same position as the non-commissioned officer in the Army. He is promoted from the ranks; he enjoys privileges not available to his former associates; and he is made responsible to thoseabove him not merely for his own good behaviour but for that of others. Just as it would be impossible to run an army without non-commissioned officers, so it would be impossible, under modern conditions, to run a public school without prefects."
Jackson shifts his feet uneasily, after the immemorial fashion of schoolboys undergoing a "jaw."
"But I want to warn you of one or two things," continues the wise old Housemaster.
Jackson looks up quickly. This part of the exhortation is new. At least, he has never heard it quoted.
"You will have certain privileges: don't abuse them. You will have certain responsibilities: don't shirk them. And above all, don't endeavour to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. You will be strongly tempted to do so. Your old associates will regard you with suspicion—even distrust; and that will sting. In your anxiety to show to them that your promotion has not impaired your capacity for friendship, you may be inclined to stretch the Law in their favour from time to time, or even ignore it altogether. On the other hand, you must beware of over-officiousness towards those who are notyour friends. A little authority is a dangerous thing. So walk warily at first. That's all. Good night, old man."
They shook hands again, and Jackson returned soberly to his study, which he shared with his friend Blake. The two had entered the School the same day: they had fought their way up side by side from its lowest walks to a position of comparative eminence; and their friendship, though it contained no David and Jonathan elements—very few schoolboy friendships do—had survived the severe test of two years of study-companionship. Jackson was the better scholar, Blake the better athlete of the two. Now, one was taken and the other left.
Blake, cramming miscellaneous possessions into his grub-box in view of the early departure on the morrow, looked up.
"Hallo!" he remarked. "You've been a long time getting your journey-money. Did the old Man try to cut you down?"
"No.... He says I'm to be a prefect next term."
"Oh! Congratters!" said Blake awkwardly.
"Thanks. Has he made you one too?" asked Jackson.
"No."
"Oh. What rot!"
Presently Jackson's oldest friend, after an unhappy silence, rose and went out. He had gone to join the proletariat round the Hall fire. The worst of getting up in the world is that you have to leave so many old comrades behind you. And worse still, the comrades frequently persist in believing that you are glad to do so.
Such is the cloak of Authority, as it feels to a thoughtful and sensitive boy who assumes it for the first time.
Of course there are others. Hulkins, for instance. In his eyes the prefectorial system was created for his express convenience and glorification. He opens his study door and bawls:
"Fa-a-a-ag!"
A dozen come running. The last to arrive is bidden to remove Hulkins' boots from his feet and bring slippers. The residue have barely returned to their noisy fireside when Hulkins' voice is uplifted again. This time he requires blotting-paper, and the last comer in the panting crowd is sent into the next study to purloin some. The rest have hardly regained their fastness when there is a third disturbance,and there is Hulkins howling like a lost soul for matches. And so, with infinite uproar and waste of labour, the great man's wants are supplied. It does the fags no harm, but it is very, very bad for Hulkins.
Frisby is another type. He is not afraid of assuming responsibility. He is a typical new broom. He dots the i's and crosses the t's of all the tiresome little regulations in the House. He sets impositions to small boys with great profusion, and sees to it that they are shown up punctually. If it is his turn to take roll-call, he descends to the unsportsmanlike device of waiting upon the very threshold of the Hall until the clock strikes, and then coming in and shutting the door with a triumphant bang in the faces of those who had reckoned on the usual thirty seconds' grace. He ferrets out the misdemeanours of criminals of fourteen, and gibbets them. He is terribly efficient—but his vigilance and zeal stop suddenly short at the prospect of a collision with any malefactor more than five feet high.
Then there is Meakin. He receives his prefectship with a sigh of relief. For four years he has led a hunted and precarious existence in the lower walks of the House. His high-spiritedplaymates have made him a target for missiles, derided his style of running, broken his spectacles, raided his study, wrecked his collection of beetles, and derived unfailing joy from his fluent but impotent imprecations. Now, at last, he sees peace ahead. He will be left to himself, at any rate. They will not dare to rag a prefect unless the prefect endeavours to exert his authority unduly, and Meakin has no intention whatever of doing that. To Frisby, Office is a sharp two-edged sword; to Meakin, it is merely a shield and buckler.
Then there is Flabb. He finds a prefect's lot a very tolerable one. He fully appreciates the fleshpots in the prefect's room; and he feels that it is pleasant to have fags to whiten his cricket-boots and make toast for his tea. He maintains friendly relations with the rest of the House, and treats small boys kindly. He performs his mechanical duties—roll-call, supervision of Prep, and the like—with as little friction as possible. But he does not go out of his way to quell riots or put down bullying; and when any unpleasantness arises between the Prefects and the House, Flabb effaces himself as completely as possible.
Finally, there is Manby, the head of theHouse. He is high up in the Sixth, and a good all-round athlete. He weighs twelve stone ten, and fears nothing—except a slow ball which comes with the bowler's arm. To him government comes easily. The House hangs upon his lightest word, and his lieutenants go about their business with assurance and despatch. He is a born organiser and a natural disciplinarian. His prestige overawes the unofficial aristocracy of the House—always the most difficult section. And he stands no nonsense. A Manby of my acquaintance once came upon twenty-two young gentlemen in a corner of the cricket-field, who, having privily abandoned the orthodox game arranged for their benefit that afternoon, were indulging in a pleasant but demoralising pastime known as "tip-and-run." Manby, addressing them as "slack little swine, a disgrace to the House," chastised them one by one, and next half-holiday made them play tip-and-run under a broiling sun and his personal supervision from two o'clock till six.
A House with a Manby at the head of it is safe. It can even survive a weak Housemaster. Greater Britain is run almost entirely by Manbys.
Taking it all round, the prefectorial machine works well. It is by no means perfect, but it is infinitely more efficient than any other machine. The chief bar to its smooth running is the inherent loyalty of boys to one another and their dislike of anything which savours of tale-bearing. Schoolboys have no love for those who go out of their way to support the arm of the Law, and a prefect naturally shrinks from being branded as a master's jackal. Hence, that ideal—a perfect understanding between a Housemaster and his prefects—is seldom achieved. What usually happens is that when the Housemaster is autocratically inclined he runs the House himself, while the prefects are mere lay figures; and when the Housemaster is weak or indolent the prefects take the law into their own hands and run the House, often extremely efficiently, with as little reference to their titular head as possible. He is a great Housemaster who can co-operate closely with his prefects without causing friction between the prefects and the House, or the prefects and himself.
But sometimes an intolerable strain is thrown upon the machine—or rather, upon the most sensitive portions of it.
Look at this boy, standing uneasily at the door of his study, with his fingers upon the handle. Outside, in the passage, a riot is in progress. It is only an ordinary exuberant "rag": he himself has participated in many such. But the Law enjoins that this particular passage shall be kept perfectly quiet between the hours of eight and nine in the evening; and it is this boy's particular duty, as the only prefect resident in the passage, to put the Law into effect.
He stands in the darkness of his study, nerving himself. The crowd outside numbers ten or twelve; but he is not in the least afraid of that. This enterprise calls for a different kind of courage, and a good deal of it. Jackson is not a particularly prominent member of the House, except by reason of his office: others far more distinguished than himself are actually participating in the disturbance outside. It will be of no avail to emerge wrathfully and say: "Less row, there!" He said that three nights ago. Two nights ago he said it again, and threatened reprisals. Last night he named various offenders by name, and stated that if the offence was repeated he would report them to the Housemaster.To-night he has got to do it.The revellers outside know this: the presentturmoil is practically a challenge. To crown all, he can hear, above the din, in the very forefront of battle, the voice of Blake, once his own familiar friend.
With Blake Jackson had reasoned privily only that afternoon, warning him that the House would go to pot if its untitled aristocracy took to inciting others, less noble, to deeds of lawlessness. Blake had replied by recommending his late crony to return to his study and boil his head. And here he was, leading to-night's riot.
What will young Jackson do? Watch him well, for from his action now you will be able to forecast the whole of his future life.
He may remain mutely in his study, stop his ears, and allow the storm to blow itself out. He may appear before the roysterers and utter vain repetitions, thereby salving his conscience without saving his face. Or he may go out like a man and fulfil his promise of last night. It sounds simple enough on paper. But consider what it means to a boy of seventeen, possessing no sense of perspective to tone down the magnitude of the disaster he is courting. Jackson hesitates. Then, suddenly:
"I'll bedamnedif I take it lying down!" he mutters.
He draws a deep breath, turns the handle, and steps out. Next moment he is standing in the centre of a silent and surly ring, jotting down names.
"You five," he announces to a party of comparatively youthful offenders, "can come to the prefect's room after prayers and be tanned. You three"—he indicates the incredulous Blake and two burly satellites—"will have to be reported. I'm sorry, but I gave you fair warning last night."
He turns on his heel and departs in good order to his study, branded—for life, he feels convinced—as an officious busybody, a presumptuous upstart, and worst of all, a betrayer of old friends. He has of his own free will cast himself into the nethermost Hell of the schoolboy—unpopularity—all to keep his word.
And yet for acts of mere physical courage they give men the Victoria Cross.
To conduct the affairs of a nation requires both a Government and an Opposition. So it is with school politics. The only difference is that the scholastic Opposition is much frankerabout its true aims.
The average schoolboy, contemplating the elaborate arrangements made by those in authority for protecting him from himself—rules, roll-calls, bounds, lock-ups, magisterial discipline and prefectorial supervision—decides that the ordering and management of the school can be maintained without any active assistance from him; and he plunges joyously into Opposition with all the abandon of a good sportsman who knows that the odds are heavily against him. He breaks the Law, or is broken by the Law, with equal cheerfulness.
THE INTELLECTUAL
The most powerful member of the Opposition is the big boy who has not been made a prefect, and is not likely to be made a prefect. He enjoys many privileges—some of them quite unauthorised—and has no responsibilities. He is one of the happiest people in the world. He has reached the age and status at which corporal punishment is supposed to be too degrading to be feasible: this immunity causes him to realise that he is a personage of some importance; and when he is addressed rudely by junior form-masters he frequently stands upon his dignity and speaks to his Housemaster about it. His position in the House depends firstly upon his athletic ability, andsecondly upon the calibre of the prefects. Given a timid set of prefects, and an unquestioned reputation in the football world, Master Bullock has an extremely pleasant time of it. He possesses no fags, but that does not worry him. I once knew a potentate of this breed who improvised a small gong out of the lid of a biscuit-tin, which he hung in his study. When he beat upon this with a tea-spoon, all within earshot were expected to (and did) come running for orders. Such as refrained were chastised with a toasting-fork.
Then comes a great company of which the House recks nothing, and of whom House history has little to tell—the Cave-Dwellers, the Swots, the Smugs, the Saps. These keep within their own lurking-places, sedulously avoiding the noisy conclaves which crowd sociably round the Hall fire. For one thing, the conversation there bores them intensely, and for another they would seldom be permitted to join in it. Therôleof Sir Oracle is strictly confined to the athletes of the House, though the Wag and the Oldest Inhabitant are usually permitted to offer observations or swell the chorus. But the Cave-Dwellers, never.
The curious part about it is that not by any means all the Cave-Dwellers are "Swots." It is popularly supposed that any boy who exhibits a preference for the privacy of his study devotes slavish attention therein to the evening's Prep, thus stealing a march upon his more sociable and less self-centred brethren. But this is far from being the case. Many of the Cave-Dwellers dwell in caves because they find it more pleasant to read novels, or write letters, or develop photographs, or even do nothing, than listen to stale House gossip or indulge in everlasting small cricket in a corridor.
They are often the salt of the House, but they have no conception of the fact. They entertain a low opinion of themselves: they never expect to rise to any great position in the world: so they philosophically follow their own bent, and leave the glory and the praise to the athletes and theirumbræ. It comes as quite a shock to many of them, when they leave school and emerge into a larger world, to find themselves not only liked but looked up to; while the heroes of their schooldays, despite their hairy arms and club ties, are now dismissed in a word as "hobbledehoys."
Then comes the Super-Intellectual—the"Highbrow." He is a fish out of the water with a vengeance, but he does exist at school—somehow. He congregates in places of refuge with others of the faith; and they discuss theEnglish Review, and mysterious individuals who are only referred to by their initials—as G. B. S. and G. K. C. Sometimes he initiates these discussions because they really interest him, but more often, it is to be feared, because they make him feel superior and grown-up. Somewhere in the school grounds certain youthful schoolmates of his, inspired by precisely similar motives but with different methods of procedure, are sitting in the centre of a rhododendron bush smoking cigarettes. In each case the idea is the same—namely, a hankering after meats which are not for babes. But the smoker puts on no side about his achievements, whereas the "highbrow" does. He loathes the vulgar herd and holds it aloof. He does not inform the vulgar herd of this fact, but he confides it to the other highbrows, and they applaud his discrimination. Intellectual snobbery is a rare thing among boys, and therefore difficult to account for. Perhaps the pose is a form of reaction. It is comforting, for instance, after you have been compelled to dance the can-can in your pyjamas for the delectationof the Lower Dormitory, to foregather next morning with a few kindred spirits and discourse pityingly and scathingly upon the gross philistinism of the lower middle classes.
No, the lot of the æsthete at school is not altogether a happy one, but possibly his tribulations are not without a certain beneficent effect. When he goes up to Oxford or Cambridge he will speedily find that in the tolerant atmosphere of those intellectual centres the prig is not merely permitted to walk the earth but to flourish like the green bay-tree. Under the intoxicating effects of this discovery the recollection of the robust and primitive traditions of his old School—and the old School's method of instilling those traditions—may have a sobering and steadying effect upon him. No man ever developed his mind by neglecting his body, and if the memory of a coarse and ruthless school tradition can persuade the Super-Intellectual to play hockey or go down to the river after lunch, instead of sitting indoors drinking liqueurs and discussing Maupassant with a coterie of the elect, then the can-can in the Lower Dormitory has not been danced altogether in vain.
Then come the rank and file. There are many types. There is the precocious type, marked out for favourable notice by aptitude at games and attractive manners. Such an one stands in danger of being taken up by older boys than himself; which means that he will suffer the fate of all those who stray out of their proper station. At first he will be an object of envy and dislike; later, when his patrons have passed on elsewhere, he may find himself friendless.
At the opposite end of the scale comes the Butt. His life is a hard one, but not without its compensations; for although he is the target of all the practical humour in the House, his post carries with it a certain celebrity; and at any rate a Butt can never be unpopular. So he is safe at least from the worst disaster that can befall a schoolboy. Besides, you require a good deal of character to be a Butt.
And there is the Buffoon. He is distinct from the Butt, because a Butt is usually a Buttmalgré lui, owing to some peculiarity of appearance or temperament; whereas the Buffoon is one of those people who yearn for notice at any price, and will sell their souls "to make fellows laugh." You may behold him, the centre of a grinning group, tormenting some shy or awkwardboy—very often the Butt himself; while in school he is the bugbear of weak masters. The larger his audience the more exuberant he becomes: he reaches his zenith at a breaking-up supper or in the back benches on Speech Day. One is tempted to feel that when reduced to his own society he must suffer severely from depression.
Then there is the Man of the World. He is a recognised authority on fast life in London and Bohemian revels in Paris. He is a patron of the drama, and a perfect mine of unreliable information as to the private life of the originals of the dazzling portraits which line his study—and indeed half the studies in the House. The picture-postcard, as an educative and refining influence, has left an abiding mark upon the youth of the present day. We of an older and more rugged civilisation, who were young at a period when actresses' photographs cost two shillings each, were compelled in those days to restrict our gallery of divinities to one or two at the most. (Too often our collection was second-hand, knocked down for sixpence at some end-of-term auction, or reluctantly yielded in composition for a long-outstanding debt by a friend in the throes of a financial crisis.) Butnowadays, with the entire Gaiety chorus at a penny apiece, the youthful connoisseur of female beauty has emancipated himself from the pictorial monogamy (or at the most, bigamy) of an earlier generation. He is a polygamist, a pantheist. He can erect an entire feminine Olympus upon his mantelpiece for the sum of half-a-crown. And yet, bless him, he is just as unsophisticated as we used to be—no more and no less. The type does not change.
Lastly, comes the little boy—the Squeaker, the Tadpole, the Nipper, what you will. His chief characteristic is terrific but short-lived enthusiasm for everything he undertakes, be it work, play, a friendship, or a private vendetta.
He begins by taking education very seriously. He is immensely proud of his first set of books, and writes his name on nearly every page, accompanied by metrical warnings to intending purloiners. He equips himself with a perfect arsenal of fountain-pens, rubber stamps, blue pencils, and ink-erasers. He starts a private mark-book of his own, to check possible carelessness or dishonesty on the part of his form-master. Then he gets to work, with his books disposed around him and his fountain-penplaying all over his manuscript. By the end of a fortnight he has lost all his books, and having broken his fountain-pen, is detected in a pathetic attempt to write his exercise upon a sheet of borrowed paper with a rusty nib held in his fingers or stuck into a splinter from off the floor.
It is the same with games. Set a company of small boys to play cricket, and their solemnity at the start is almost painful. Return in half an hour, and you will find that the stately contest has resolved itself into a reproduction of the parrot-house at the Zoo, the point at issue being a doubtful decision of the umpire's. Under the somewhat confiding arrangement which obtains in Lower School cricket, the umpire for the moment is the gentleman whose turn it is to bat next; so litigation is frequent. Screams of "Get out!" "Stay in!" "Cads!" "Liars!" rend the air, until a big boy or a master strolls over and quells the riot.
The small boy's friendships, too, are of a violent but ephemeral nature. But his outstanding characteristic is a passion for organising secret societies of the most desperate and mysterious character, all of which come speedily to a violent or humiliating dissolution.
I was once privileged to be introduced into the inner workings of a society called "The Anarchists." It was not a very original title, but it served its time, for the days of the Society were few and evil. Its aims were sanguinary and nebulous; the Rules consisted almost entirely of a list of the penalties to be inflicted upon those who transgressed them. For instance, under Rule XXIV any one who broke Rule XVII was compelled to sit down for five minutes upon a chair into the seat of which a pot of jam had been emptied. (Economists will be relieved to hear that the jam was afterwards eaten by the executioners, the criminal being very properly barred from participating.)
The Anarchists had a private code of signals with which to communicate with one another in the presence of outsiders—in Prep, for instance. The code was simplicity itself. A single tap with a pencil upon the table denoted the letter A; two taps, B; and so on. As may be imagined, Y and Z involved much mental strain; and as the transmitter of the message invariably lost count after fourteen or fifteen taps, and began all over again without any attempt either at explanation or apology, the gentleman who was acting as receiver usuallyfound the task of decoding his signals a matter of extreme difficulty and some exasperation. Before the tangle could be straightened out a prefect inevitably swooped down and awarded both signallers fifty lines for creating a disturbance in Preparation.
However, the Anarchists, though they finished after the manner of their kind, did not slip into oblivion so noiselessly as some of their predecessors. In fact, nothing in their inky and jabbering life became them like their leaving of it.
One evening the entire brotherhood—there were about seven of them—were assembled in a study which would have held four comfortably, engaged in passing a vote of censure upon one Horace Bull, B.A., their form-master. Little though he knew it, Bull had been a marked man for some weeks. The Czar of all the Russias himself could hardly have occupied a more prominent position in the black books of Anarchy in general. To-day he had taken a step nearer his doom by clouting one Nixon minor, Vice-President of the Anarchists, on the side of the head.
It was during the geography hour. Mr. Bull had asked Nixon to define a watershed. Nixon,who upon the previous evening had been too much occupied with his duties as Vice-President of the Anarchists to do much Prep, had replied with a seraphic smile that a watershed was "a place to shelter from the rain." As an improvised effort the answer seemed to him an extremely good one; but Mr. Bull had promptly left his seat, addressed Nixon as a "cheeky little hound," and committed the assault complained of.
"This sort of thing," observed Rumford tertius, the President, "can't go on. What shall we do?"
"We might saw one of the legs of his chair through," suggested one of the members.
"Who's going to do it?" inquired the President. "We'll only get slain."
Silence fell, as it usually does when the question of belling the cat arrives at the practical stage.
"We could report him to the Head," said another voice. "We might get him the sack for assault—even quod! We could show Nixon's head to him. It would be a sound scheme to make it bleed a bit before we took him up."
The speaker fingered a heavy ruler lovingly, but Mr. Nixon edged coldly out of reach.
"Certainly," agreed the President, "Bashan ought to be stopped knocking us about in form."
"I'd rather have one clout over the earhole," observed an Anarchist who so far had not spoken, "than be taken along to Bashan's study and given six of the best. That is what the result would be. Hallo, Stinker, what's that?"
The gentleman addressed—a morose, unclean, and spectacled youth of scientific proclivities—was the latest recruit to the gang. He had been admitted at the instance of Master Nixon, who had pointed out that it would be a good thing to enrol as a member some one who understood "Chemistry and Stinks generally." He could be used for the manufacture of bombs, and so on.
Stinker had produced from his pocket a corked test-tube, tightly packed with some dark substance.
"What's that?" inquired the Anarchists in chorus. (They nearly always talked in chorus.)
"It's a new kind of explosive," replied the inventor with great pride.
"I hope it's better than that new kind of stinkpot you invented for choir-practice," remarked a cynic from the corner of the study."That was a rotten fraud, if you like! It smelt more like lily-of-the-valley than any decent stink."
"Dry up, Ashley minor!" rejoined the inventor indignantly. "This is a jolly good bomb. I made it to-day in the Lab, while The Badger was trying to put out a bonfire at the other end."
"Where does the patent come in?" inquired the President judicially.
"The patent is that it doesn't go off all at once."
"We knowthat!" observed the unbelieving Ashley.
"Do you chuck it or light it?" asked Nixon.
"You light it. At least, you shove it into the fire, and it goes off in about ten minutes. You see the idea? If Bashan doesn't see us put anything into the form-room fire, he will think it was something wrong with the coal."
The Anarchists, much interested, murmured approval.
"Good egg!" observed the President. "We'll put it into the fire to-morrow morning before he comes in, and after we have been at work ten minutes or so the thing will go off and blow the whole place to smithereens."
"Golly!" gobbled the Anarchists.
"What about us, Stinker?" inquired a cautious conspirator. "Shan't we get damaged?"
Stinker waved away the objection.
"We shall know it's coming," he said; "so we shall be able to dodge. But it will be a nasty jar for Bashan."
There was a silence, full of rapt contemplation of to-morrow morning. Then the discordant voice of Ashley minor broke in.
"I don't believe it will work. All your inventions are putrid, Stinker."
"I'll fight you!" squealed the outraged scientist, bounding to his feet.
"I expect it'll turn out to be a fire-extinguisher, or something like that," pursued the truculent Ashley.
"Hold the bomb," said Stinker to the President, "while I——"
"Sit down," urged the other Anarchists, drawing in their toes. "There's no room here. Ashley minor, chuck it!"
"It won't work," muttered Ashley doggedly.
Suddenly a brilliant idea came upon Stinker.
"Won't work, won't it?" he screamed. "All right, then! We'll shove it into this fire now, and you see if it doesn't work!"
Among properly constituted Anarchistic Societies it is not customary, when the efficacy of a bomb is in dispute, to employ the members as acorpus vile. But the young do not fetter themselves with red-tape of this kind. With one accord Stinker's suggestion was acclaimed, and the bomb was thrust into the glowing coals of Rumford's study fire. The brotherhood, herded together within a few feet of the grate—the apartment measured seven feet by six—breathed hard and waited expectantly.
Five minutes passed—then ten.
"It ought to be pretty ripe now," said the inventor anxiously.
The President, who was sitting next the window, prudently muffled his features in the curtain. The others drew back as far as they could—about six inches—and waited.
Nothing happened.
"I am sure it will work all right," declared the inventor desperately. "Perhaps the temperature of this fire——"
He knelt down, and began to blow upon the flickering coals. There was a long and triumphant sniff from Master Ashley.
"I said it was only a rotten stinkp—" he began.
BANG!
There is a special department of Providence which watches over the youthful chemist. The explosion killed no one, though it blew the coals out of the grate and the pictures off the walls.
The person who suffered most was the inventor. He was led, howling but triumphant, to the Sanatorium.
"Luckily, sir," explained Rumford to Mr. Bull a few days later, in answer to a kindly inquiry as to the extent of the patient's injuries, "it was only his face."
THE NIPPER
One of the most pathetic spectacles in the world is that of grown-up persons legislating for the young. Listening to these, we are led to suspect that a certain section of the human race—the legislative section—must have been born into the world aged about forty, sublimely ignorant of the requirements, limitations, and point of view of infancy and adolescence.
In what attitude does the ordinary educational expert approach educational problems? This question induces another. What is an educational expert?
The answer is simple. Practically everybody.
All parents are educational experts: we have only to listen to a new boy's mother laying down to a Headmaster the lines upon which his school should be conducted to realise that. So are all politicians: we discover this fact by following the debates in the House of Commons. So are the clergy; for they themselves have told us so. So, presumably, are the writers of manuals and text-books. So are the dear oldgentlemen who come down to present prizes upon Speech Day. Practically the only section of humanity to whom the title is denied are the people who have to teach. It is universally admitted by the experts—it is their sole point of agreement—that no schoolmaster is capable of forming a correct judgment of the educational needs of his charges. He is hidebound, "groovy"; he cannot break away from tradition.
"What can you expect from a tripe-dresser," inquire the experts in chorus, "but a eulogy of the stereotyped method of dressing tripe?"
So, ignoring the teacher, the experts lay their heads—one had almost said their loggerheads—together, and evolve terrific schemes of education. Each section sets about its task in characteristic fashion. The politician, with his natural acumen, gets down to essentials at once.
"The electorate of this country," he says to himself, "do not care one farthing dip about Education as such. Now, how can we galvanise Education into a vote-catching machine?"
He reflects.
"Ah! I have it!" he cries presently. "Religion!That'll ginger them up!"
So presently an Education Bill is introduced into the House of Commons. Nine out of itsten clauses deal purely with educational matters and are passed without a division; and the intellectual teeth of the House fasten greedily upon Clause Number Ten, which deals with the half-hour per day which is to be set aside for religious instruction. The question arises: What attitude are the youth of the country to be taught to adopt towards their Maker? Are they to praise Him from a printed page, or merely listen to their teacher doing so out of his own head? Are they to learn the Catechism? Is the Lord's Prayer to be regarded as an Anglican or Nonconformist orison?
Everybody is most conciliatory at first.
"A short passage of Scripture," suggest the Anglicans; "a Collect, mayhap; and a few words of helpful instruction—eh? Something quite simple and non-contentious, like that?"
"We are afraid that that is sectarian religion," object the Nonconformists. "A simple chapter from the Bible, certainly—maybe a hymn. But no dogmatic teaching,ifyou please!"
"But that is no religion at all!" explain the Anglicans, with that quickness to appreciate another's point of view which has always distinguished the Church of England.
After a little further unpleasantness all round,a deadlock is reached. Then, with that magnificent instinct for compromise which characterises British statesmanship, another suggestion is put forward. Why not permit all the clergy of the various denominations to enter the School and minister to the requirements of their various young disciples? "An admirable notion," says everybody. But difficulties arise. Are this heavenly host to be admitted one by one, or in a body? If the former, how long will it take to work through the entire rota, and when will the ordinary work of the day be expected to begin? If the latter, is the School to be divided, for devotional purposes, into spiritual water-tight compartments by an arrangement of movable screens, or what? So the battle goes on. By this time, as the astute politician has foreseen, every one has forgotten that this is an Education Bill, and both sides are hard at work manufacturing party capital out of John Bull's religious susceptibilities. Presently the venue is shifted to the country, where the electorate are asked upon a thousand platforms if the Church which inaugurated Education in our land, and built most of the schools, is to be ousted from her ancient sphere of beneficent activity; and upon a thousand more, whether the will of the People or thePeers is to prevail. (It simplifies politics very greatly to select a good reliable shibboleth and employ it onalloccasions.) Finally the Bill is thrown out or talked out, and the first nine clauses perish with it.
That is the political and clerical way of dealing with Education. The parent's way we will set forth in another place.
The writer of manuals and text-books concerns himself chiefly with the right method of unfolding his subject to the eager eyes of the expectant pupil. "There is a right way and a wrong way," he is careful to explain; "and if you present your subject in the wrong way the pupil will derive noeducationalbenefit from it whatever." At present there is a great craze for what is known as "practical" teaching. For instance, in our youth we were informed,ad nauseam, that there is a certain fixed relation between the circumference of a circle and its diameter, the relation being expressed by a mysterious Greek symbol pronounced "pie." The modern expert scouts this system altogether. No imaginary pie for him! He is a practical man.
Take several ordinary tin canisters, he commands,a piece of string, and a ruler; and withoutany other aids ascertain the circumferenceand diameter of these canisters. Work out in each case the numerical relation between the circumference and diameter. What conclusion do you draw from the result?
We can only draw one, and that is that no man who has never been a boy should be permitted to write books of instruction for the young. For what would the "result" be? Imagine a company of some thirty or forty healthy happy boys, each supplied gratuitously with several tin canisters and a ruler, set down for the space of an hour and practically challenged to create a riot. Alexander's Rag-Time Band would be simply nowhere!
As for the last gang of experts—the dear old gentlemen who come down to give away prizes on Speech Day—they do not differ much as a class. They invariably begin by expressing a wish that they had enjoyed such educational facilities as these in their young days.
"You live in a palace, boys!" announces the old gentleman. "I envy you." (Murmurs of "Liar!" from the very back row.)
After that the speaker communicates to his audience a discovery which has been communicated to the same audience by different speakerssince the foundation of the School—to this effect, that Education (derivation given here, with a false quantity thrown in) is a "drawing out" and not a "putting-in." Why this fact should so greatly excite Speech Day orators is not known, but they seldom fail to proclaim it with intense and parental enthusiasm. Then, after a few apposite remarks upon the subject ofmens sana in corpore sano—a flight of originality received with murmurs of anguish by his experienced young hearers—the old gentleman concludes with a word of comfort to "the less successful scholars." It is a physical impossibility, he points out, when there is only one prize, for all the boys in the class to win it; and adds that his experience of life has been that not every boy who wins prizes at school becomes Prime Minister in after years. All of which is very helpful and illuminating, but does not solve the problem of Education to any great extent.
So much for the experts. Their name is Legion, for they are many, and they speak with various and dissonant voices. But they have one thing in common. All their schemes of education are founded upon the same amazing fallacy—namely, that a British schoolboy is aperson who desires to be instructed. That is the rock upon which they all split. That is why it was suggested earlier in these pages that educational experts are all born grown-up.
Let us clear our minds upon this point once and for all. In nine cases out of ten a schoolmaster's task is not to bring light to the path of an eager, groping disciple, but to drag a reluctant and refractory young animal up the slopes of Parnassus by the scruff of his neck. The schoolboy's point of view is perfectly reasonable and intelligible. "I am lazy and scatterbrained," he says in effect. "I have not as yet developed the power of concentration, and I have no love of knowledge for its own sake. Still, I have no rooted objection to education, as such, and I suppose I must learn something in order to earn a living. But I am much too busy, as a growing animal, to have any energy left for intellectual enterprise. It is the business of my teacher to teach me. To put the matter coarsely, he is paid for it. I shall not offer him effusive assistance in his labours, but if he succeeds in keeping me up to the collar against my will, I shall respect him for it. If he does not, I shall take full advantage of the circumstance."
That is the immemorial attitude of the growingboy. When he stops growing, conscience and character begin to develop, and he works because he feels he ought to or because he has got into the habit of doing so, and not merely because he must. But until he reaches that age it is foolish to frame theories of education based upon the idea that a boy is a person anxious to be educated.
Let us see how such a theory works, say, in the School laboratory. A system which will extract successful results from a class of boys engaged in practical chemistry will stand any test we care to apply to it. Successful supervision of School science is the most ticklish business that a master can be called upon to undertake. We will follow our friend Brown minor to the laboratory, and witness him at his labours.
He takes his place at the working bench, and sets out his apparatus—test-tubes, beakers, and crucibles. He lights all the bunsen burners within reach. Presently he is provided with a sample of some crystalline substance and bidden to ascertain its chemical composition.
"How shall I begin, sir?" he asks respectfully.
"Apply the usual tests: I told you about them yesterday in the lecture-room. Take small portionsof the substance: ascertain if they are soluble. Observe their effect on litmus. Test them with acid, and note whether a gas is evolved. And so on. That will keep you going for the present. I'll come round to you again presently."
And off goes the busy master to help another young scientist in distress.
Brown minor gets to work. He takes a portion of the crystalline substance and heats it red-hot, in the hope that it will explode; and treats another with concentrated sulphuric acid in order to stimulate it into some interesting performance. At the same time he maintains a running fire ofsotto voceconversation and chaff with his neighbours—a laboratory offers opportunities for social intercourse undreamed of in a form-room—and occasionally leaves his own task in order to assist, or more often to impede, the labours of another. When he returns to his place he not infrequently finds that his last decoction (containing the balance of the crystalline substance) has boiled over, and is now lying in a simmering pool upon the bench, or that another chemist has called and appropriated the vessel in which the experiment was proceeding, emptying its contents down the sink. Not a whit disturbed, he fills up the time withsome work of independent research, such as the manufacture of a Roman candle or the preparation of a sample of nitro-glycerine. At the end of the hour he reports progress to his instructor, expressing polite regret at having failed as yet to solve the riddle of the crystalline substance; and returns whistling to his form-room, where he jeers at those of his companions who have spent the morning composing Latin Verses.
No, it is a mistake to imagine that the young of the human animal hungers and thirsts after knowledge.
Arthur Robinson, B.A., of whom previous mention has been made, soon discovered this fact; or rather, soon recognised it; for he was not much more than a boy himself. He was an observant and efficient young man, and presently he made further discoveries.
The first was that boys, for teaching purposes, can be divided into three classes:
(A) Boys whose conduct is uniformly good, and whose industry is continuous. Say fifteen per cent.
For example, Master Mole. He was invariably punctual; his work was always well prepared;and he endured a good deal of what toilers in another walk of life term "peaceful picketing" for contravening one of the fundamental laws of schoolboy trades-unionism by continuing to work when the master was out of the room.
(B) Boys whose conduct is uniformly good—except perhaps in the matter of surreptitious refreshment—but who will only work so long as they are watched. Say sixty per cent.
Such a one was Master Gibbs. By long practice he had acquired the art of looking supremely alert and attentive when in reality his thoughts were at the back of beyond. When engaged in writing work his pen would move across the page with mechanical regularity, what time both eyes were fixed upon a page torn from a comic paper and secreted under his manuscript. He gave no trouble whatever, but was a thorn in the flesh of any conscientious teacher.
(C) Boys who are not only idle, but mischievous. Say twenty-five per cent.
There was Page, whose special line was the composition of comic answers to questions. Some of his efforts were really praiseworthy; but like all adventurous spirits he went too farat last. The rod descended upon the day when he translatedcæruleæ puppes"Skye terriers"; and thereafter Master Page joked no more. But it was a privation for both boy and master.
Then there was Chugleigh, whose strong suit was losing books. He was a vigorous and muscular youth, more than a little suspected of being a bully; but he appeared to be quite incapable of protecting his own property. Sometimes he grew quite pathetic about it. He gave Mr. Robinson to understand, almost with tears, that his books were at the mercy of any small boy who cared to snatch them from him. Certainly he never had any in form.
"I see you require State protection," said Arthur Robinson one morning, when Chugleigh put in an appearance without a single book of any kind, charged with a rambling legend about his locker and a thief in the night. He scribbled an order. "Take this to the librarian, and get a set of new books."
Mr. Chugleigh, much gratified—the new books would be paid for by an unsuspicious parent and could be sold second-hand at the end of the term—departed, presently to return with five new volumes under his arm.
"Write your name in them all," said Mr.Robinson briskly.
Chugleigh obeyed, as slowly as possible.
"Now bring all the books here."
Chugleigh did so, a little puzzled.
"For the future," announced Mr. Robinson, unmasking his batteries, "in order to give you a fair chance in this dishonest world, you shall havetwosets of the books in use in this form. I will keep one set for you. The others you may keep or lose as you like, but whenever you turn up here without a book I shall be happy to hire you out the necessary duplicates, at a charge of threepence per book per hour. This morning you will require a Cæsar, a grammar, and a Latin Prose book. That will be ninepence. Will you pay cash, or shall I knock it off your pocket-money at the end of the week?"
He locked up the remaining two books in his desk, and the demoralised Chugleigh resumed his seat amid loud laughter.
The pursuit of knowledge, like the pursuit of other precious things in life, occasionally leads its votaries into tortuous ways. Cribbing, for instance.
All boys crib more or less. It is not suggested that the more sinful forms of this species of self-help are universal, or even common. But the milder variations are practised by all, with the possible exception of the virtuous fifteen per cent. previously mentioned.
The average boy's attitude towards cribbing is precisely the same as his attitude towards other types of misdemeanour: that is to say, he regards it as one of these things which is perfectly justifiable if his form-master is such a weakling as to permit it. It is all part of the eternal duel between the teacher and the taught.
"Do I scribble English words in the margin of my Xenophon?" asks the boy. "Certainly. Do I surreptitiously produce loose pages of Euclid from my pocket and copy them out, when I am really supposed to have learned them by heart? Of course. Why should I, through sheer excess of virtue, handicap myself in the race to escape the punishment of failure, simply because the highly qualified expert who is paid to supervise my movements fails in his plain duty?"
So he cribs.
But his attitude towards the matter is quite consistent, for when he rises to a position oftrust and authority in the school, he ceases to crib—at least flagrantly. The reason is that he is responsible now not so much to a master as to his own sense of right and wrong; and he has made the discovery which all of us make in the end—that the little finger of our conscience is often thicker than the hardest taskmaster's loins.
There are two forms of cribbing, and school opinion differentiates very sharply between them. There is cribbing to gain marks, and there is cribbing to save trouble or avoid punishment. The average boy, who is in the main an honest individual, holds aloof from the former practice because he feels that it is unsportsmanlike—rather like stealing, in fact; but he usually acquiesces without a struggle in the conveniences offered by the second. For instance, he refrains from furtively copying from his neighbour, for he regards that as the meanest kind of brain-sucking. (If the neighbour pushes his paper towards him with a friendly smile, that of course is a different matter.) But he is greatly addicted to a more venial crime known as "paving." The paver prepares his translation in the orthodox manner, but whenever he has occasion to look up a word in a lexiconhe scribbles its meaning in the margin of the text, or, more frequently, just over the word itself, to guard against loss of memory on the morrow.
Much less common is the actual use of cribs—the publications of the eminent house of Bohn, and other firms of less reliability and repute. Most boys have sufficient honesty and common sense to realise that getting up work with a translation is an unprofitable business, though at the same time they are often unable to resist the attractions of such labour-saving appliances. Their excuse is always the same, and it is not a bad one.
"If the School Library," they say, "contains Jowett's Thucydides and Jebb's Sophocles for all the Sixth to consult, why should not we, in our humbler walk of scholarship, avail ourselves of the occasional assistance of Kiddem's Keys to the Classics?"
So much for the casual cribber. The professional—the chronic—exercises an ingenuity, and devotes an amount of time and labour to the perfecting of his craft which, if applied directly to his allotted task, would bring him out at the top of his form. In a little periodical entitledThe Light Green, published in Cambridgethirty years ago by a young Johnian named Hilton (who might have rivalled Calverley himself had he lived to maturity), we have a brilliant little portrait of the professional cribber, executed in the style ofThe Heathen Chinee. It is calledThe Heathen Passee.
In the crown of his capWere the Furies and Fates,And an elegant mapOf the Dorian States:And we found in his palms, which were hollow,What are common in palms—that is dates.
But he is a rare bird, the confirmed cribber, with his algebraical formulæ written on his finger-nails, and history notes attached to unreliable elastic arrangements which shoot up his sleeve out of reach at critical moments. The ordinary boy does not crib unless he is pressed for time or in danger of summary execution. He usually limits his enterprises to co-operative preparation—that is to say, the splitting up an evening's work into sections, each section being prepared by one boy and translated to the other members of the syndicate afterwards—to the gleaning of discarded lines and superfluous tags from the rough copies of cleverer boys' Latin Verses, and to the acceptance of awhispered "prompt" from a good Samaritan when badly cornered by a question.
But we may note that cribbing is not confined to schoolboys. The full perfection of the art is only attained in the pass-examinations of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Then all considerations of conscience or sportsmanship are flung aside, and the cribber cribs, not to gain distinction or outstrip his rivals, but to get over a troublesome fence by hook or crook and have done with it. There was once a Freshman at Cambridge whose name began with M. This accident of nomenclature placed him during his Little Go examination in the next seat to a burly young man whom he recognised with a thrill of awe as the President of the C.U.B.C., whose devotion to aquatic sports had so far prevented him from clearing the academic fence just mentioned, and who now, at the beginning of his third year, was entering, in company with a collection of pink-faced youths fresh from school, upon his ninth attempt to satisfy the examiners in Part One of the Previous Examination.
Our friend, having completed his first paper, quitted the Senate House and returned to his rooms, to fortify himself with luncheon beforethe next. During the progress of that meal a strange gyp called upon him, and proffered a note, mysteriously.
"From Mr. M——, sir," he said, mentioning the name of the Freshman's exalted neighbour in the examination room.
The Freshman opened the note with trembling fingers. Was it possible that he had been singled out as a likely oar already?
The note was brief, but to the point. It said:
"Dere Sir,Please write larger.Yours truly,J. M——."
However, this is a digression. Let us return for the last time to Arthur Robinson's three divisions of youthful humanity. Class A he found extraordinarily dull. They required little instruction and no supervision; in fact, they were self-educators of the most automatic type. Class B were a perpetual weariness to the flesh. They gave no trouble, but their apathy was appalling. However, a certain amount of entertainment could be extracted from studying theirmethods of evading work or supplying themselves with refreshment. There was the ingenious device of Master Jobling, for instance. Mr. Robinson noted that this youth was in the habit, during lecture-time, of sitting with his elbows resting on his desk and his chin buried in his hands, his mouth, or a corner thereof, being covered by his fingers. His attitude was one of rapt attention, and his eyes were fixed unwinkingly upon the lecturer. Such virtue, coming from Master Jobling, roused unworthy suspicions in the breast of Arthur Robinson. He observed that although the youth's attitude was one of rigid immobility, his facial muscles were agitated from time to time by a slight convulsive movement. Accordingly, one day, he stepped swiftly across the room, and taking Master Jobling by the hair, demanded an explanation. It was forthcoming immediately, in the form of a long thin indiarubber tube, of the baby's-bottle variety; one end of which was held between Master Jobling's teeth, while the other communicated,viahis right sleeve, with a bottle of ginger-beer secreted somewhere in the recesses of his person. From this reservoir he had been refreshing himself from time to time by a process of suction.
Mr. Robinson, who believed in making the punishment fit the crime, purchased a baby's "soother" from the chemist's, and condemned Jobling to put it to its rightful use during every school-hour for the rest of the week. He was only allowed to remove it from his lips in order to answer a question.
Class C, the professional malefactors, Mr. Robinson found extremely attractive. They appeared to possess all the character and quite half the brains of the form. But this is a permanent characteristic of the malefactor, and is most discouraging to the virtuous.
Once, early in his career, Robinson was badly caught. On entering his form-room one winter evening, when darkness had fallen and the gas was ablaze, his eye fell upon the great plate-glass window which filled the south wall of the room. Form-room windows are not usually supplied with blinds, and this window stood black and opaque against the darkness of night. Right in the centre of the glass was a great white star, which radiated out in all directions in a series of splintered cracks.
Mr. Robinson knew well what had happened. Some one had hurled a stone inkpot against the window. Only last week he had had occasionto discourage target-practice of this kind by exemplary measures. He addressed the crowded form angrily.
"Who broke that window?"
"It is not broken, sir," volunteered a polite voice.
Arthur Robinson was a young man who did not suffer impudence readily.
"This is not precisely the moment," he rapped out, "for nice distinctions. The window is cracked, starred, splintered—anything you like. I want the name of the boy who damaged it. At once, please!"
Silence. Yet it was not the sullen, obstinate silence which prevails when boys are endeavouring to screen one another. One would almost have called it silent satisfaction. But Arthur Robinson was too angry and not sufficiently experienced to note the distinction. Naming each boy by name, he demanded of him whether or no he had broken the window. Each boy politely denied the impeachment. One or two were courteous to the point of patronage.
Suddenly, from the back bench, came a faint chuckle. Arthur Robinson, conscious of a sickly feeling down his spine, rose to his feet and approached the splintered window. The formwatched him with breathless joy. Hot faced, he rubbed one of the rays of the star with his fingers. It promptly disappeared.
The window was undamaged. The star was artistically executed in white chalk.
Malefactors have their weak spots, too.
One afternoon Mr. Robinson held an "extra." That is to say, he brought in a body of sinful youths, composed of the riff-raff of his form, for a period of detention, and set them a stiff imposition to write out. About half-way through the weary hour he produced from his locked desk an old cigarette-box containing sundry coins. Laying these out before him, he proceeded to count them. The perfunctory scratching of pens ceased, and the assembled company, most of whom had been unwilling contributors to the fund under review, gazed with lack-lustre eyes at their late property.
"Fourteen-and-nine," announced Mr. Robinson cheerfully. "That is the sum which I have collected from you this term in return for the loan of such useful articles as pens and blotting-paper. I know my charges are high; but then I am a monopolist to people who are foolish enough to come in here without their proper equipment. Again, though threepencemay seem a fancy price for a small piece of blotting-paper, it is better to pay threepence for a piece of blotting-paper than use your handkerchief, which is worth a shilling. However, the total is fourteen-and-nine. What shall we do with it? Christmas is only a fortnight off, and I propose, with your approval, to send this contribution of yours to a society which provides Christmas dinners for people who are less lavishly provided for in that respect than ourselves. If it interests you at all, I will get the Society's full title and address and read them to you."
Arthur Robinson was out of the room for perhaps three minutes. When he returned he was immediately conscious, from the guilty stillness which reigned, and the self-conscious air of detachment with which everybody was writing, that something was amiss. He glanced sharply at the little pile of money on his desk.
It had grown from fourteen-and-ninepence to twenty-seven-and-sixpence.
Life is full of compensations—even for schoolmasters.