Part 12 (1/2)
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.