Part 14 (1/2)
”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 fas.h.i.+on. 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.