THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS

"Gentlemen," said Dr. Blimber to his pupils on the eve of the holidays, "we will resume our studies on the twenty-fifth of next month." But that adjournment, I think, was for Christmas, and we are now in what Matthew Arnold's delicious schoolboy called "the glad season of sun and flowers." Very soon, in Dr. Farrar's romantic phrase, "the young life which usually plays like the sunshine over St. Winifred's will be pouring unwonted brightness into many happy English homes." Or, to take Mr. Snawley's darker view of the same event, we shall be in the thick of one of "those ill-judged comings home twice a year that unsettle children's minds so."

The associations of the moment, so different in their effects on different natures, have awoke the spirit of prophecy in the late Head Master of Eton, Dr. Warre, who, projecting his soul into futurity, sees dark days coming for the "Public Schools" as that phrase has been hitherto understood. It was clear, said Dr. Warre, after distributing the prizes at Shrewsbury, "that ere long the Public Schools would have to justify not only their curriculum, but, it might be, their very existence. The spirit of the age seemed to be inclined towards Utilitarianism, and it was now tending to undervalue the humanities and the culture that attended them, and to demand what it appreciated as a useful and practical training—i.e. something capable of making boys breadwinners as soon as they left school. He did not say that view would ultimately prevail, but the trend of public opinion in that direction would necessitate on the part of Public Schools a period of self-criticism, and very probably a reorganization of curricula. But there was another problem to be faced which would become more serious as the century waxed older, and that was a new phase of competition. As secondary education expanded, secondary day-schools would be provided regardless of expense, and it was idle to think this would have no effect upon great Public Schools. What would be weighed in the balance, however, was the value of the corporate life and aggregate influence of the Public Schools upon the formation of character."

When ex-Head Masters begin to see visions and Old Etonians to dream dreams, the ordinary citizen, with his traditional belief in the virtue and permanence of Public Schools, must rub his eyes in astonishment. What is going to happen next? Is Eton to abandon "taste" and take to "useful knowledge"? Is Harrow to close its Boarding Houses and become a village Day School once more? Are Wykeham's "seventy faithful boys" (as the late Lord Selborne called them in his first attempt at verse) no longer to "tund" or be "tunded"? Is Westminster to forswear its Latin Play, and replace the "Phormio" and the "Trinummus" with "Box and Cox" and "Ici on Parle FranÇais"?

These enquiries, and others like them, are forced on our attention by such subversive discourse as Dr. Warre's; and that incursion of rampant boyhood which begins with the beginning of August reinforces the eloquence of the ex-Head Master. The Retreat of the Ten Thousand, which used to worry us in our youth, was not half so formidable an affair as the Advance of the Ten Thousand, schoolboys though they be, who just now overrun the land. There they are, an army ever increasing in numbers and maintained at an immense expense. Whatever commercial and agricultural depression may have effected in other quarters, it did not touch the schools of England. The greater schools are full to overflowing; provincial schools have doubled and trebled their numbers; and every Elizabethan and Edwardian foundation in the Kingdom has woke from slumber and celebrated at least a Tercentenary. And all this is not done for nothing. Private schoolmasters take shootings in Scotland; the proprietors of Boarding-houses at the Public Schools buy villas in the Riviera, and build pineries and vineries at home; meanwhile the British Parent eyes his diminishing income and his increasing rates, and asks himself, in the secrecy of his own heart, what Tommy is really getting in return for the £200 a year expended on his education. The answer takes various forms. Perhaps Tommy is following the "grand, old fortifying classical curriculum" which sufficed for Lord Lumpington, and enabled the Rev. Esau Hittall to compose his celebrated "Longs and Shorts on the Calydonian Boar." In this case the parent says, with Rawdon Crawley, "Stick to it, my boy; there's nothing like a good classical education—nothing," but he generally is too diffident about his own accomplishments to subject his sons to a very searching test. Perhaps one boy in a hundred learns enough Latin and Greek at school to fit him for a good place in the Classical Tripos or a "First in Mods." This, if he is meant to be a schoolmaster, is a definite and tangible result from his father's investment; if he is intended for any other profession the advantage is not so clear. If he is to be a Soldier, no doubt there is the "Army Class" or the "Modern School," where, indeed, he is exempted from Greek, is taught some mathematics, and acquires some very English French and German; but, in spite of these privileges, he generally requires a year's residence at a crammer's before he has a chance for Sandhurst. For the ordinary life of the Professions the Public School makes no preparation whatever. Tommy may have acquired "taste," but he is no more qualified to be, as Dr. Warre says, a "bread-winner" than he was the day he began school-life.

Matthew Arnold, in his delightful essay on "An Eton Boy," says, with regard to that boy's prowess as Master of the Beagles:—

"The aged Barbarian will, upon this, admiringly mumble to us his story how the Battle of Waterloo was won in the Playing Fields of Eton. Alas! disasters have been prepared in those Playing Fields as well as victories—disasters due to an inadequate mental training, to want of application, knowledge, intelligence, lucidity."

With "taste" we commonly hear "tone" combined in the eulogies of Public Schools. The Parent, who knows (though he would not for the world admit) that Tommy has learnt nothing at St. Winifred's or Rosslyn which will ever enable him to earn a penny, falls back upon the impalpable consolation that there is "a very nice tone about the school." Certainly Eton imparts manners to those who have not acquired them at home, and in this respect Radley is like unto it. But, taking the Public Schools as a whole, it can scarcely be denied that, however faithfully they cultivate the ingenuous arts, they suffer Youth to be extremely brutal. If this be urged, the Parent will shift his ground and say, "Well, I like boys to be natural. I don't wish my son to be a Lord Chesterfield. Character is everything. It is the religious and moral influence of a Public School that I think so valuable." As to the Religion taught in Public Schools, it is, as Mr. T. E. Page of Charterhouse recently said with artless candour, exactly the same commodity as will probably be offered by the County Councils when the Education Bill has become law; and it is worth noting that, though Bishops shrink with horror at the prospect of this religion being offered to the poor, they are perfectly content that it should be crammed down the throats of their own sons. As to the morality acquired at Public Schools, a clergyman who was successively an Eton boy and an Eton master wrote twenty-five years ago: "The masters of many schools are sitting on a volcano, which, when it explodes, will fill with horror and alarm those who do not know what boys' schools are, or knowing it, shut their eyes and stop their ears." It must be admitted that the British Parent, dwelling on the slopes of that volcano, regards its chronic menace and its periodical activities with the most singular composure.

In years gone by Harrow, like most other places where there was a Public School accessible to day boys, was a favourite resort of widowed ladies whose husbands had served in the Indian Army or Civil Service. These "Indian Widows," as he called them, so pestered Dr. Vaughan, then Head Master, that he said in the bitterness of his soul: "Before I came to Harrow I thought 'Suttee' an abomination; but now I see that there is a great deal to be said for it." It is easy enough to see why Head Masters dislike the Home Boarding system. It defeats the curious policy by which assistant masters pay themselves out of their boarders' stomachs, and it brings all the arrangements of teaching and discipline under the survey, and perhaps criticism, of the parents; but, in spite of magisterial objections, the Home Boarding system is probably the only and certainly the most efficacious method of coping with those moral evils which all schoolmasters not wilfully blind acknowledge, and which the best of them strenuously combat. In that extension of Day Schools which Dr. Warre foresees lies the best hope of a higher tone in public education.

The British Parent knows the weaknesses of the Public School system. He knows that he gets a very doubtful return for his money—that his son learns nothing useful and very little that is ornamental; is unsuitably fed, and, when ill, insufficiently attended; exposed to moral risks of a very grave type; and withdrawn at the most impressible season of life from the sanctifying influences of Motherhood and Home. He knows all this, and, knowing it, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he sends all his boys to a Public School. Why? Partly because every one goes to a Public School and he has no wish to be eccentric or faddish; partly because the boys are tiresome at home and he wants peace; partly because, in existing conditions, he does not know how to get them educated while they are under his roof. But the strongest reason is none of these. He sends his sons to Eton or Harrow because he was there himself, has felt the glamour and learnt the spell; because some of his happiest memories hover round the Playing Fields or the Hill; because there he first knew what Friendship meant and first tasted the Romance of Life.

"I may have failed, my School may fail;
I tremble, but thus much I dare:

I love her. Let the critics rail,
My brethren and my home are there."