"What is that silver bowl for?" inquires his sister.
"Ah, it takes him about half an hour to tell you about that. They won the race by two feet in record time, and he was in a dead faint for a week afterwards. As a matter of fact, Bailey tertius, whose governor was up at Oxford with the old Filbert"--etymologists will have no difficulty in tracing this synonym to its source--"says that he saw the race, and that Filbert caught a crab and lost his oar about five yards from the start and was a pa.s.senger all the way. The men on the bank yelled to him to jump out, but he was in too big a funk of being drowned, and wouldn"t. Of course he doesn"t know we know!" And so the joyous libel proceeds.
And yet, in Reggie Brown"s last half-term report we find the words:
_A conscientious, but somewhat stolid and unimaginative boy._
II
But "people" do not visit the School solely for the purpose of bringing social disaster upon their offspring. Their first visit, at any rate, is of a very different nature. On this occasion they come in the capacity of what Headmasters call "prospective parents"--that is, parents who propose to inspect the School with a view to entering a boy--and as such are treated with the deference due to imperfectly hooked fish.
The prospective parent varies considerably. Sometimes he is an old member of the School, and his visit is a purely perfunctory matter. He knows every inch of the place. He lunches with the Head, has a talk about old times, and mentions with proper pride that yet another of his boys is now of an age to take up his nomination for his father"s old House.
Then comes another type--the youthful parent. Usually he brings his wife with him. He is barely forty, and has not been near a school since he left his own twenty years ago. His wife is pretty, and not thirty-five.
Both feel horribly juvenile in the presence of the Head. They listen deferentially to the great man"s pontifical observations upon the requirements of modern education, and answer his queries as to their firstborn"s age and attainments with trembling exact.i.tude.
"I think we shall be able to lick him into shape," concludes the Head, with gracious jocularity. It is mere child"s play to him, handling parents of this type.
Then the male bird plucks up courage, and timidly asks a leading question. The Head smiles.
"Ah!" he remarks. "Now you are laying an invidious task upon me. Who am I, to discriminate between my colleagues" Houses?"
The young parents apologise precipitately, but the Head says there is no need. In fact, he goes so far as to recommend a House--in strict confidence.
"Between ourselves," he says, "I consider that _the_ man here at the present moment is Mr. Rotterson. Send your boy to him. I _believe_ he has a vacancy for next term, but you had better see him at once. I will give you a note for him now. There you are! Good morning!"
Off hurry the anxious pair. But the telephone outstrips them.
"Is that you, Rotterson?" says the Head. "I have just despatched a brace of parents to you. Impress them! There are prospects of more to-morrow, so with any luck we ought to be able to pull up your numbers to a decent level after all."
"Thank you very much," says a meek voice at the other end.
Then there is the bluff, hearty parent--the man who knows exactly what he wants, and does not hesitate to say so.
"I don"t want my son taught any of your new-fangled nonsense," he explains breezily. "Just a good sound education, without frills! The boy will have to earn his own living afterwards, and I want you to teach him something which will enable him to do so. Don"t go filling him up with Latin and Greek: give him something which will be useful in an office. I know you pedagogues stick obstinately to what you call a good general grounding; but, if I may say so, you ought to _specialise_ a bit more.
You"re too shy of specialisation, you know. But I say: Find out what each boy in your School requires for his future career, and teach him _that_!"
A Headmaster once replied to a parent of this description:
"Unfortunately, sir, the fees of this school and the numbers of its Staff are calculated upon a _table d"hote_ basis. If you want to have your son educated _a la carte_, you must get a private tutor for him."
Then there is the Utterly Impossible parent. He is utterly impossible for one of two reasons--either because he is a born faddist, or because he has relieved Providence of a grave responsibility by labelling himself "A Self-Made Man, and Proud of It!"
The faddist is the sort of person who absorbs Blue Books without digesting them, and sits upon every available Board without growing any wiser, and cherishes theories of his own about non-compet.i.tive examinations, and cellular underclothing, and the use of graphs, and, generally speaking, about every subject on which there is no particular reason why the layman should hold any opinions at all. Such a creature harries the scholastic profession into premature senility. Him the Head always handles in the same fashion. He delivers him over at the first opportunity to a Housemaster, and the Housemaster promptly takes him out on to the cricket-field and, having introduced him to the greatest bore upon the Staff, leaves the pair together to suffer the fate of the Kilkenny cats.
The other sort of Utterly Impossible is not so easily scotched. The ordinary snubs of polite society are not for him. He is a plain man, he mentions, and likes to put things on a business footing. Putting things on a business footing seems to necessitate--no one knows why--a recital of the plain man"s early struggles, together with a _resume_ of his present bank-balance and directorships. Not infrequently he brings his son with him, and having deposited that shrinking youth on a chair under the eyes both of the Head and himself, proceeds to run over his points with enormous gusto and unparental impartiality.
"There he is!" he bellows. "Now you"ve _got_ him! Ram it into him! Learn him to be a scholar, and I"ll pay any bill you like to send in. I"ve got the dibs. He"s not a bad lad, as lads go, but he wants his jacket dusted now and then. My father dusted mine regular every Sat.u.r.day night for fifteen year, and it made me the man I am. I"m worth----"
A condensed Budget follows. Then the harangue is resumed.
"So don"t spare the rod--that"s what I say. Learn him all that a scholar ought to be learned. If he wants books, get them, and put them down to me. I can pay for them. And at the end of the year, if he gets plucked in his examinations, you send him home to me, and I"ll bile him!"
The plain man breaks off, and glares with ferocious affection upon his offspring. All this while the shrewd Head has been observing the boy"s demeanour; and if he decides that the exuberance of his papa has not been inherited to an ineradicable extent, he accepts the cowering youth and does his best for him. As a rule he is justified in his judgment.
Lastly comes a novel and quite inexplicable variant of the species. It owes its existence entirely to journalistic enterprise.
Little Tommy Snooks, we will say, arrives home one afternoon in a taxi in the middle of term, and announces briefly but apprehensively to his parents that he has been "sacked." He is accompanied or preceded by a letter from his Headmaster, expressing genuine sorrow for the occurrence, and adding that though it has been found necessary for the sake of discipline to remove Master Thomas from the School, his offence has not been such as to involve any moral stigma. Little Tommy"s parents, justly incensed that their offspring should have been expelled from school without incurring any moral stigma, write demanding instant reparation. The Headmaster, in his reply, states that Thomas has been expelled because he has broken a certain rule, the penalty for breaking which happens to be--and is known to be--expulsion. _Voila tout._ In other words, he has been expelled, not for smoking or drinking or breaking bounds (or whatever he may happen to have done), but for deliberately and wantonly flying in the face of the Law which prohibits these misdemeanours. Either Tommy must go, or the Law be rendered futile and ridiculous.
This paltry and frivolous attempt to evade the real point at issue--which appears to be that many people, including Tommy"s parents and the Headmaster himself, smoke, drink, and go out after dark and are none the worse--is treated with the severity which it deserves. A letter is despatched, consigning the Headmaster to scholastic perdition. The Headmaster briefly acknowledges receipt, and suggests that the correspondence should now cease.
[Ill.u.s.tration: RANK AND FILE]
So far the campaign has followed well-defined and perfectly natural lines, for a parent is seldom disposed to take his boy"s expulsion "lying down." But at this point the new-style parent breaks right away from tradition--kicks over the traces, in fact. Despatching that slightly dazed but on the whole deeply gratified infant martyr, Master Tommy, to salve outraged nature at an adjacent Picture Palace, the parent sits down at his (or her) desk and unmasks the whole dastardly conspiracy to a halfpenny newspaper of wide circulation. "I do this," he explains, "not from any feeling of animosity towards the Headmaster of the School, but in order to clear my son"s good name and fair fame in the eyes of the world." This is interesting and valuable news to the world, which has not previously heard of Tommy Snooks. The astute editor of the halfpenny paper, with a paternal smile upon his features and his tongue in his cheek, publishes the letter in a conspicuous position--if things in the football and political world happen to be particularly dull, he sometimes finds room for Tommy"s photograph too--and invites general correspondence on the subject.
Few parents can resist such an opportunity; and for several weeks the editor is supplied, free gratis, with a column of diversified but eminently saleable matter. The beauty of a controversy of this kind is that you can debate upon almost any subject without being pulled up for irrelevance. Parents take full advantage of this licence. Some contribute interesting legends of their children"s infancy. Others plunge into a debate upon punishment in general, and the old battle of cane, birch, slipper, imposition, detention, and moral suasion is fought over again. This leads to a discussion as to whether public schools shall or shall not be abolished--by whom, is not stated. Presently the national reserve of retired colonels is mobilised, and fiery old gentlemen write from Cheltenham to say that in their young days boys were boys and not molly-coddles. Old friends like _Materfamilias_, _Pro Bono Publico_, _Quis Custodiet Custodes_ rush into the fray with joyous whoops. There is quite a riot of pseudonyms: the only person who gives his proper name (and address) is the headmaster of a small preparatory school, who contributes a copy of his prospectus, skilfully disguised as a treatise on "How to Preserve Home Influences at School."
But the boom is short-lived. Presently a crisis arises in some other department of our national life. Something cataclysmal happens to the House of Commons, or the Hippodrome, or Tottenham Hotspur. Public attention is diverted; the correspondence is closed with cruel abruptness; and little Tommy Snooks is summoned from the Picture Palace, and sent to another school or provided with a private tutor. Still, his good name and fair fame are now vindicated in the eyes of the world.
But it is not altogether surprising that the great Temple should once have observed:
"Boys are always reasonable; masters sometimes; parents never!"
III
Correspondence between school and home is conducted upon certain well-defined lines. A boy writes home every Sunday: his family may write to him when they please and as often as they please. But--they must never send postcards.
Postcards in public schools are common property. Many a new boy"s promising young life has been overclouded at the very outset by the arrival of some such maternal indiscretion as this:
_Dearest Artie,--I am sending you some nice new vests for the colder months. Mind you put them on, but ask the Matron to air them first. The girls send their love, and Baby sends you a kiss.--Your affec._ _Mother_.
"Dearest Artie" usually comes into possession of this missive after it has been pa.s.sed from hand to hand, with many joyous comments, the whole length of the Lower School breakfast-table. He may not hear the last of the vests and Baby for months.
As for writing home, a certain elasticity of method is essential. In addressing one"s father, it is advisable to confine oneself chiefly to the topic of one"s studies. Money should not be asked for, but references to the Cla.s.sics may be introduced with advantage, and perhaps a fair copy of one"s last Latin prose enclosed. The father will not be able to understand or even read it; but this will not prevent him from imagining that he could have done so thirty years ago; and his heart will glow with the reminiscent enthusiasm of the retired scholar.
Mothers may be addressed with more freedom. Small financial worries may be communicated, and it is a good plan to dwell resignedly but steadily upon the insufficiency of the food supplied by the School authorities.
Health topics may be discussed, especially in so far as they touch upon the question of extra diet.
Sisters appreciate School gossip and small talk of any kind.