Escape, and Other Essays by Arthur Christopher Benson (ebook reader online TXT) 📕

called over; but it left one with a three-hour space in the afternoon, when we could go exactly where we would. The saints' days and certain anniversaries were whole holidays, and we were free from morning to night. Then there was a delightful room, the old school library, now destroyed, where we could go and read; and many an hour did I spend there looking vaguely into endless books. I well remember seeing the present Lord Curzon and one of the Wallops standing by the fireplace there, and discussing some political question, and how amazed I was at the profundity of their knowledge and the dignity of their language.

But in many ways it was a very isolated life; for a long time I hardly knew any boys, except just the dozen or so who entered the place with me. I knew no boys at other houses, except a few in my school division, and never did more than exchange a few words with them. One never thought of speaking to a casual boy, unless one knew him; and there are many men whom I have since known well who were in the school with me, and with whom I never exchanged a syllable.

Though there was a master in college, who read evening prayers, gave leaves and allowances, and was consulted on matters of business, he had practically nothing to do with the discipline. That was all in the hands of the sixth form, who kept order, put up notices, and were allowed not only to cane but to set lines. No one ever thought of appealing to the master against them, and their powers were never abused. But there was very little overt discipline anywhere. The masters could not inflict corporal punishment. They could set punishments, and for misbehaviour, or continued idleness, they could send a boy to the headmaster to be flogged. But the discipline of the place was instinctive, and public opinion was infinitely strong. One found out by the light of nature what one might do and what one might not, and the dread of being in any way unusual or eccentric was very potent. There were two or three very ill-governed houses, where things went very wrong indeed behind the scenes; but as far as public order went, it was perfect. The boys managed their own games and their own affairs; a strong sense of subordination penetrated the whole place, and the old Eton aphorism, that a boy learned to know his place and to keep it, held good without any sense of coercion or constraint.

I do not think that the educational system was a good one. In my days there was little taught besides classics and mathematics and divinity. There was a little French and science and history; but the core of the whole thing was undiluted classics. We did a good deal of composition, Greek and Latin, and the Latin verses were exercises out of which I got much real enjoyment, and some of the pride of authorship. But it was possible to be very idle, and to get much contraband help in work from other boys. Most of the school work consisted of repetition, and of classical books, dully and leisurely construed. I do not think I ever attempted to attend to the work in school; and there were few stimulating teachers. I needed strict and careful teaching, and got some from my private tutor; but otherwise there was no individual attention. The net result was that a few able boys turned out very good scholars, saturated with classics; but a large number of boys were really not educated at all. The forms were too large for real supervision; and as long as one produced adequate exercises, and sat quiet in one's corner, one was left genially alone. It was not fashionable to "sap," as it was called; and though a few ambitious boys worked hard, we most of us lived in a happy-go-lucky way, just doing enough to pass muster. I took not the faintest interest in my work for a long time; but I read a great many English books, wrote poetry in secret, picked up a vague acquaintance, of a very inaccurate kind, with Latin and Greek, but possessed no exact knowledge of any sort.

Gradually, as I rose in the school, a faint idea of social values shaped itself. Let me say frankly that we were wholly democratic. There were many wealthy boys, many with titles; but not the faintest interest was taken in either. I was surprised to find later on in my career at school, that boys whose names I had known by hearsay were peers, though at first I had no idea what the peerage was. Whatever we were free from, we were at all events free from snobbishness. Athletics were what constituted our aristocracy, pure and simple. Boys in the eleven and the eight were the heroes of the place, and the school club called Pop, to which mainly athletes were elected, enjoyed an absolute supremacy, and indeed ran the out-of-doors discipline of the school. In fact, on occasions like big matches, the boys were kept back behind the lines, by members of Pop parading with canes, and slashing at the crowd if they came past the boundaries. All the social standing of boys was settled entirely by athletics. A boy might be clever, agreeable, manly, a good game-shot, or a rider to hounds in the holidays, but if he was no good at the prescribed games, he was nobody at all at Eton. It was wholesome in a sense; but a bad boy who was a good athlete might and did wield a very evil influence. Such boys were above criticism. The moral tone was not low so much as strangely indifferent. A boy's private life was his own affair, and public opinion exercised no particular moral sway. Yet vague and guileless as I myself was, I gratefully record that I never came in the way of any evil influence whatever at Eton, in any respect whatever. Talk was rather loose, and one believed evil of other boys easily enough. To express open disapproval would have been held to be priggish; and though undoubtedly the tone of certain houses and certain groups was far from good, there yet ran through the place a mature sense of a boy's right to be independent, and undesirable ways of life were more a matter of choice than of coercion. It was, in fact, far more a mirror of the larger world than any other school I have ever heard of; and I know of no school story which gives any impression of a life so curiously free as it all was. There was none of that electrical circulation of the news of events and incident that is held to be characteristic of school life. One used to hear long after or not at all, of things which had happened. There were rumours, there was gossip; but I cannot imagine any place where a boy of solitary or retiring character might be so entirely unaware of anything that was going on. It was a highly individualistic place; and if one conformed to superficial traditions, it was possible to lead, as I certainly did, a very quiet and secluded sort of life, reading, rambling about, talking endlessly and eagerly to a few chosen friends, quite unconscious that anything was being done for one, socially or educationally, entirely unmolested, as long as one was good-natured and easy-going.

It was therefore a good school for a boy with any toughness of mind or originality; but it tended in the case of normal and unreflective boys to develop a conventional type; good-mannered, sensible, with plenty of savoir faire, but with a wrong set of values. It made boys over-estimate athletics, despise intellectual things, worship social success. It gave them the wrong sort of tolerance, by which I mean the tolerance that excuses moral lapses, but that also thinks contemptuously of ideas and mental originality. The idols of the place were good-humoured, modest, orderly athletes. The masters made friends with them because a good mutual understanding conduced to discipline, and they were, moreover, pleasant and cheerful companions. But boys of character and force, unless they were also athletic, were apt to be overlooked. The theory of government was not to interfere, and there was an absence of enthusiasm and inspiration. The headmaster was Dr. Hornby, afterwards provost, a courteous, handsome, dignified gentleman, a fine preacher, and one of the most charming public speakers I have ever heard. We respected and admired him, but he knew little of his masters, and never made his personal influence, which might have been great, felt among the boys. He was a man of matchless modesty and refinement; he never fulminated or lectured; I never heard an irritable word fall from his lips; but on the other hand he never appealed to us, or asked our help, or spoke eagerly or indignantly about any event or tendency. He hated evil, but closed his eyes to it, and preferred to think that it was not there. There were masters who in their own houses and forms displayed more vivid qualities; but the whole tone of the place was against anything emotional or passionate or uplifting; the ideal that soaked into the mind was one of temperate, orderly, well- mannered athleticism.

At the end of my time I rose to moderate distinction. I began to read the classics privately, I reached sixth form, and even was elected into Pop. But I was always unadventurous, and in a way timid. I nurtured a private life of my own on books and talk, and felt that the centre of life had insensibly shifted from home to school. But in and through it all, I never gained any deep patriotism, any unselfish ambition, any visions which could have inspired me to play a noble part in the world. I am sure that was as much the result of my own temperament as of the spirit of the place; but the spirit of the place was potent, and taught me to acquiesce in an ideal of decorum, of subordination, of regular, courteous, unenthusiastic life.

Leaving the school was a melancholy business; one's roots were entwined very deep with the soil, the buildings, the memories, the happiness of the place--for happy above all things it was--in the last few weeks there were many strange emotional outbursts from boys who had seemed conventional enough; and there was a dreary sense that life was at an end, and would have little of future brightness or excitement to provide. I packed, I made my farewells, I distributed presents; and as I drove away, the carriage, ascending the bridge by the beloved playing-fields, with its lawns and elms, the gliding river and the castle towering up behind, showed me in a glance the old red-brick walls, the turrets, the high chapel, with its pinnacles and great buttresses, where seven good years had been spent. I burst, I remember, into unashamed tears; but no sense of regret for failure, or idleness, or vacuous case, or absence of all fine intention, came over me, though I had been guilty of all these things. I wish that I had felt remorse! But I was only grateful and fond and sad at leaving so untroubled and delightful a piece of life behind me. The world ahead did not seem to me to hold out anything which I burned to do or to achieve; it was but the closing of a door, the end of a chapter, the sudden silencing of a music, sweet to hear, which could not come again.

That was all five-and-thirty years ago! Since that time--I have seen it unmistakably, both as a schoolmaster and as a don--a different spirit has grown up, a sense of corporate and social