The Lighter Side of School Life Part 12

SCHOOL STORIES

One of the most striking features of the present-day cult of The Child is the fact that whereas school stories were formerly written to be read by schoolboys, they are now written to be read--and are read with avidity--by grown-up persons.

This revolution has produced some abiding results. In the first place, school stories are much better written than they were. Secondly, a certain proportion of the limelight has been s.h.i.+fted from the boy to the master, with the result that school life is now presented in a more true and corporate manner. Thirdly, school stories have become less romantic, less sentimental, more coldly psychological. They are tinged with adult worldliness, and, too often, with adult pessimism. As literature they are an enormous advance upon their predecessors; but what they have gained in _savoir faire_ they appear to have lost in _joie de vivre_.

Let us enter upon the ever-fascinating task of comparing the old with the new.

To represent the ancients we will take that immortal giant, _Tom Brown_.

With him, as they say in legal circles, _Eric_. Many people will say, and they will be right, that Tom Brown would make a much braver show for the old brigade if put forward alone, minus his depressing companion.

But we must bear in mind that it takes more than one book to represent a literary era. We will therefore call upon Tom Brown and Eric Williams between them to represent the schoolboy of a bygone age.

Most of us make Tom Brown's acquaintance in early youth. We fortify ourselves with a course of him before going to school for the first time--at the age of twelve or thereabouts--and we quickly realise, even at that tender age, that there were giants in those days.

Have you ever considered Tom Brown's first day at school? No? Then observe. He was called at half-past two in the morning, at the Peac.o.c.k Inn, Islington, and by three o'clock was off as an "outside" upon the Tally-Ho Coach, in the small hours of a November morning, on an eighty-mile drive to Rugby.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE f.a.g: "SIC VOS NON VOBIS"]

He arrived at his destination just in time to take dinner in Hall, chaperoned by his new friend East; and then, _duce_ Old Brooke, plunged into that historic football match between the Schoolhouse and the School--sixty on one side and two hundred on the other. Modern gladiators who consider "two thirty-fives" a pretty stiff period of play will be interested to note that this battle raged for three hours, and that the Schoolhouse were filled with surprise and rapture at achieving a goal after only sixty minutes' play. ("A goal in an hour!

Such a thing had not been done in a Schoolhouse match these five years.")

In the course of the game Tom was knocked over while stopping a rush, and as the result of spending some minutes at the bottom of a heap of humanity composed of a goodly proportion of his two hundred opponents, was finally hauled out "a motionless body." However, he recovered sufficiently to be able to entertain East to tea and sausages in the Lower Fifth School. After a brief interval for ablution came supper, followed by a free-and-easy musical entertainment in the Schoolhouse hall, which included singing, a good deal of indiscriminate beer-drinking, and the famous speech of Old Brooke. Tom, it is hardly necessary to say, obliged with a song--"with much applause."

Then came prayers, and Tom's first glimpse of the mighty Arnold. (We may note here that a new boy of the old days was not apparently troubled by tiresome regulations upon the subject of reporting himself to his housemaster on arrival.) Even then Tom's first day from home was not over, for before retiring to his slumber he was tossed in a blanket three times. Not a bad record for a boy of twelve! And yet we flatter ourselves that we live a strenuous life.

Customs have changed in many respects since Tom Brown's time. Public schoolboys of eighteen or nineteen do not now wear beards, neither do they carry pea-shooters. Our athletes array themselves for battle in the shortest of shorts and the thinnest of jerseys. The partic.i.p.ators in the three-hour Schoolhouse match merely took off their jackets and hung them upon the railings or trees. We are told, however, with some pride, that those who meant _real_ work added their hats, waistcoats, neck-handkerchiefs, and braces! What of those who did not? Again, a captain does not nowadays "administer toco" upon the field of battle to subordinates who have failed to prevent the enemy from scoring a try.

Again, no master of to-day would dare to admit to a boy that he "does not understand" cricket, or for that matter draw parallels between cricket and Aristophanes for the benefit of an attentive audience in a corner of the playing-field during a school match.

But we accept all these incidents in _Tom_ _Brown_ without question. We never dream of doubting that they occurred, or could have occurred.

Arthur, we admit, is a rare bird, but he is credible. Even East's religious difficulties, or rather his anxiety to discuss them, are made convincing. The reason is that _Tom Brown_ contains nothing that is alien from human nature--schoolboy human nature. It is the real thing all through. Across the ages Tom Brown of Rugby speaks to Brown minor (also, possibly, of Rugby) with the voice of a brother. Details may have changed, but the essentials are the same. "How different," we say, "but oh, how like!"

Not so at all times with _Eric, or Little by Little_. Here we miss the robust philistinism of the eternal schoolboy, and the atmosphere of reality which pervades _Tom Brown_. We feel that we are not _living_ a story, but merely reading it. _Eric_ does not ring true. We suspect the reverend author--to employ an expression which his hero would never have used--of "talking through his hat."

None of us desire to scoff at true piety or moral loftiness, but we feel instinctively that in _Eric_ these virtues are somewhat indecently paraded. The schoolboy is essentially a matter-of-fact animal, and extremely reticent. He is not usually concerned with the state of his soul, and never under any circ.u.mstances anxious to discuss the matter; and above all he abhors the preacher and the prig. _Eric, or Little by Little_ is priggish from start to finish. Compare, for instance, Eric's father and Squire Brown. Here are the Squire's meditations as to the advice he should give Tom before saying good-bye:

"I won't tell him to read his Bible, and love and serve G.o.d; if he don't do that for his mother's sake and teaching, he won't for mine. Shall I go into the sort of temptations he'll meet with? No, I can't do that. Never do for an old fellow to go into such things with a boy. He won't understand me. Do him more harm than good, ten to one. Shall I tell him to mind his work, and say he's sent to school to make himself a good scholar? Well, but he isn't sent to school for that--at any rate, not for that mainly. I don't care a straw for Greek particles, or the digamma; no more does his mother.

What is he sent to school for? Well, partly because he wanted so to go. If he'll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian, that's all I want."

Now compare Eric's father in one of his public appearances. That worthy but tiresome gentleman suddenly descends upon the bully Barker, engaged in chastising Eric.

"There had been an un.o.bserved spectator of the whole scene, in the person of Mr. Williams himself, and it was his strong hand that now gripped Barker's shoulder. He was greatly respected by the boys, who all knew his tall handsome figure by sight, and he frequently stood a quiet and pleased observer of their games. The boys in the playground came crowding round, and Barker in vain struggled to escape. Mr. Williams held him firmly, and said in a calm voice, 'I have just seen you treat one of your schoolfellows with the grossest violence. It makes me blush for you, Roslyn boys,' he continued, turning to the group that surrounded him, 'that you can even for a moment stand by unmoved, and see such things done. Now; mark; it makes no difference that the boy who has been hurt is my own son; I would have punished this scoundrel whoever it had been, and I shall punish him now.' With these words, he lifted the riding-whip which he happened to be carrying, and gave Barker by far the severest castigation he had ever undergone. He belaboured him till his sullen obstinacy gave way to a roar for mercy, and promises never so to offend again.

"At this crisis he flung the boy from him with a 'phew' of disgust, and said, 'I give nothing for your word; but if ever you do bully in this way again, and I see or hear of it, your present punishment shall be a trifle to what I shall then administer. At present, thank me for not informing your master.' So saying, he made Barker pick up the cap, and, turning away, walked home with Eric leaning on his arm."

Poor Eric! What chance can a boy have had whose egregious parent insisted upon outraging every canon of schoolboy law on his behalf? We are not altogether surprised to read, a little later, that though from that day Eric was never troubled with personal violence from Barker, "rancour smouldered deep in the heart of the baffled tyrant."

Then, as already noted, the atmosphere and incidents of _Eric_ fail to carry conviction. Making every allowance for the eccentricities of people who lived sixty years ago, the modern boy simply refuses to credit the idea of members of a "decent" school indulging in "a superior t.i.tter" when one of their number performed the everyday feat of breaking down in translation. He finds it hard to believe that Owen (who is labelled with d.a.m.ning enthusiasm "a boy of mental superiority") would really report another boy for kicking him, and quite incredible that after the kicker had been flogged the virtuous Owen should "have the keen mortification of seeing 'Owen is a sneak' written up all about the walls." As for Eric and Russell, sitting on a green bank beside the sea and "looking into one another's eyes and silently promising that they will be loving friends for ever"--the spectacle makes the undemonstrative young Briton physically unwell. Again, no schoolboy ever called lighted candles "superfluous abundance of nocturnal illumination"; and no schoolmaster under any circ.u.mstances ever "laid a gentle hand" upon a schoolboy's head. A hand, possibly, but not a gentle one. Lower School boys are not given aeschylus to read; and if they were they would not waste their play-hours discussing the best rendering of a particularly knotty pa.s.sage occurring in a lesson happily over and done with.

If the first half of _Eric_ is overdrawn and improbable, the second is rank melodrama--and bad melodrama at that. The trial scene is impossibly theatrical, and Russell's illness and death-bed deliverances are an outrage on schoolboy reserve.

Listen again to one Montagu, a sixth-form boy who has caught a gang of dormitory roysterers preparing an apple-pie bed for him. Does he call them "cheeky young swine," and knock their heads together? No!

"'By heavens, this is _too_ bad!' he exclaimed, stamping his foot with anger. 'What have I ever done to you young blackguards that you should treat me thus? Have I ever been a bully? Have I ever harmed one of you? And _you_, too, Vernon Williams!'

"The little boy trembled and looked ashamed under his glance of sorrow and scorn.

"'Well, I _know_ who has put you up to this; but you shall not escape so. I shall thrash you, every one.'

"Very quietly he suited the action to the word, sparing none."

These silent, strong men!

Again, do, or did, English schoolboys ever behave like this?

"Vernon hid his face on Eric's shoulder; and, as his brother stooped over him and folded him to his heart, they cried in silence, for there seemed no more to say, until, wearied with sorrow, the younger fell asleep; and then Eric carried him tenderly downstairs, and laid him, still half-sleeping, upon his bed."

The characters in _Eric_ are far superior to the incidents. They may be exaggerated and irritating, but they are consistently drawn. Wildney is a true type, and still exists. Russell is a fair specimen of a "good"

boy, though it is difficult to feel for him the tenderness which most of us extend, perhaps furtively, to Arthur in _Tom Brown_. But some of the masters are beyond comprehension. Pious but depressing pedagogues of the type of Mr. Rose (who at moments of crisis, it will be remembered, was usually to be found upon his knees in the School Library, oblivious of the greater privacy and comfort offered by his bedroom) have faded from our midst. Their place to-day is occupied by efficient and unsentimental young men in fancy waistcoats.

But the book for clear types is _Tom Brown_. East, the two Brookes, and Arthur--we recognise them all. There is Flashman the bully--an epitome of all bullies. He is of an everlasting pattern. And there is that curiously attractive person Martin, the scientist, with his jackdaw and his chemical research, and his chronic impecuniosity. You remember how he used to barter his allowance of candles for birds' eggs; with the result that, in those pre-gas-and-electricity days, he was reduced to doing his preparation by the glow of the fire, or "by the light of a flaring cotton wick, issuing from a ginger-beer bottle full of some doleful composition"? Lastly, there is Arnold himself. He is only revealed to us in glimpses: he emerges now and then like a mountain-peak from clouds; but is none the less imposing for that.

What impression of bygone schoolboy life do _Tom Brown_ and _Eric_ make upon our minds?

The outstanding sensation appears to be this, that fifty years ago life at school was more _s.p.a.cious_ than now--more full of incident and variety. In those days a boy's spare time was his own. How did he spend his half-holidays? If he was a good boy--good in the bad sense of the word--he went and sat upon a hill-top and admired the scenery, or thought of his mother, or possibly gripped another good boy by the hand and said: "Let me call you Edwin, and you shall always call me Eric." If he was a normal healthy boy he went swimming, or bird-nesting, or (more usually) poaching, and generally encountered adventure by the way. If he was a bad boy he retired with other malefactors to a public-house, where he indulged in an orgy of roast goose and brandy-and-water.

_Nous avons change tout cela._ Compulsory games have put an end to such licence, and in so doing have docked a good deal of liberty as well. The result has been to emphasize the type at the expense of the individual.

It is a good type--a grand type--but it bears hardly upon some of its more angular components. The new system keeps the weak boy out of temptation and the idle boy out of mischief; but the quiet, reflective, unathletic boy hates it. He has little chance now to dream dreams or commune with nature. Still, his chance comes later in life; and as we all have to learn to toe the line at some time or another, thrice blessed is he who gets over the lesson in early youth.

The prefectorial system, too, has enlarged boys' sense of responsibility, and has put an end to many abuses which no master could ever reach. But on the whole we may say of the public-school boy throughout the ages that _plus que l'on le change, plus c'est la meme chose_. Schoolboy G.o.ds have not altered. Strength, fleetness of foot, physical beauty, loyalty to one's House and one's School--youth still wors.h.i.+ps these things. There is the same admiration for _natural_ brilliancy, be it in athletics or conversation or scholars.h.i.+p, and the same curious contempt for the plodder--even the successful plodder--in all departments of life. The weakest still goes to the wall. He is not b.u.mped against it so vigorously as he used to be; but he still goes there, and always will.

Still, has the present generation developed no new characteristics? Let us turn to a batch of modern school stories, and see.

We have many to choose from--_Stalky_, for instance. _Stalky_ has come in for a shower of abuse from certain quarters. He hits the sentimentalist hard. We are told that the book is vulgar, that the famous trio are "little beasts." (I think Mr. A. C. Benson said so.) Still, Mr. Kipling never touches any subject which he does not adorn, and in _Stalky_ he brings out vividly some of the salient features of modern school life. He has drawn masters as they have never been drawn before: the portraits may be cruel, bia.s.sed, not sufficiently representative; but how they live! He has put the case for the unathletic boy with convincing truth. He depicts, too, very faithfully, the curious _camaraderie_ which prevails nowadays between boys and masters, and pokes mordant fun at the sycophancy which this state of things breeds in a certain type of boy--the "Oh, sir! and No, sir! and Yes, sir! and Please, sir!" brigade--and deals faithfully with the master who takes advantage of out-of-school intimacy to be familiar and offensive in school, addressing boys by their nicknames and making humorous reference to extra-scholastic incidents. And above all Mr.

Kipling knows the heart of a boy. He understands, above all men, a boy's intense reserve upon matters that lie deepest within him, and his shrinking from and repugnance to unrestrained and blatant discussion of these things. Do you remember the story of the fat man--"the jelly-bellied flag-flapper"--who came down to lecture to the school on patriotism?

"Now the reserve of a boy is tenfold deeper than the reserve of a maid, she having been made for one end only by blind Nature, but man for several. With a large and healthy hand he tore down these veils, and trampled them under the well-intentioned feet of eloquence. In a raucous voice he cried aloud little matters, like the hope of Honour and the dream of Glory, that boys do not discuss with their most intimate equals.... He profaned the most secret places of their souls with outcries and gesticulations. He bade them consider the deeds of their ancestors, in such fas.h.i.+on that they were flushed to their tingling ears. Some of them--the rending voice cut a frozen stillness--might have had relatives who perished in defence of their country. (They thought, not a few of them, of an old sword in a pa.s.sage, or above a breakfast-table, seen and fingered by stealth since they could walk.) He adjured them to emulate those ill.u.s.trious examples; and they looked all ways in their extreme discomfort.

"Their years forbade them even to shape their thoughts clearly to themselves. They felt savagely that they were being outraged by a fat man who considered marbles a game.... What, in the name of everything caddish, was he driving at, who waved this horror before their eyes?"

It was a Union Jack, you will remember, suddenly unfurled by way of peroration.

"Happy thought! Perhaps he was drunk."

That is true, true, all through.

Then comes another cla.s.s 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 Sh.e.l.l_, and _The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's_.

Another excellent book is _G.o.dfrey 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 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.