SCHOOLS AND BOARDING-HOUSES

"Any two meals at a Boarding-House are together less than one square meal." This pleasing postulate was, I believe, in the first instance evolved from the bitter experience of a hungry mathematician who, at this season of the year, sought change of air and scene at Margate or Herne Bay. But to-day I use the word "Boarding-House" in that more restricted sense which signifies a Master's house for the accommodation of boys at a Public School. My reason for discussing the subject is that a stray sentence in my last chapter, about the profits derived from such Boarding-Houses, caused dire offence. I am the most docile creature alive, and the rebukes which I have incurred caused me, as the French say, to make a return upon myself. I subjected my conscience to severe cross-examination. I asked whether what I had written was wholly or even approximately true, or entirely false; and whether, if true, it was offensive or indelicate. Here is the sentence in all its unglossed brutality: "The proprietors of Boarding-Houses at the Public Schools buy villas in the Riviera and build pineries and vineries at home." Now, of course, a Schoolmaster is nothing if not critical, and, in superintending the studies of his young friends, he rightly insists on the most scrupulous accuracy of phrase and figure. Not for the construing boy is the plea, dear to Biblical critics, that "the wider divergence is the higher unity." The calculating boy must not, if he values his peace, mistake inference for demonstration. Woe betide the excuse-making boy if he protests that he has spent an hour over his lesson when his tutor can show that he could only have spent fifty-five minutes. This Chinese exactness is all very well in the schoolroom, but tends to become a bore in the intercourse of social life. An Assistant Master, stung into activity by my recent strictures on Public Schools, has swooped down upon me with all the fierce alacrity which he would display in detecting a false quantity or an erroneous deduction. "Villas in the Riviera! Who buys Villas in the Riviera? Give, name, date, and place by return of post, or—write out five hundred lines." "What do you mean by Pineries and Vineries? I and my colleagues at St. Winifred's only grow cucumbers; and the Composition-Master, though he has large private means, gets his grapes from the Stores. Retract and apologize, or be for ever fallen."

Now really, when I read all this virtuous indignation, I am irresistibly reminded of the Bishop in "Little Dorrit," who, when all the guests were extolling Mr. Merdle's wealth, spoke pensively about "the goods of this world," and "tried to look as if he were rather poor himself." In vain I protested that I meant no injurious allusion to Monte Carlo, and proposed to substitute "Mansions in the Isle of Wight" for "Villas in the Riviera." The substitution availed me nothing. "You say 'Mansions.' Do you really know more than one? And how do you know that the schoolmaster who bought it did not marry a wife with a fortune? You cannot investigate his marriage settlements, so your illustration counts for nothing." In the same conciliatory spirit, I urged that "Pineries and Vineries" was a picturesque phrase invented by Lord Randolph Churchill to describe the amenities of a comfortable country house, not of the largest order; but my pedagogue was not to be pacified. "If you didn't mean Pineries and Vineries, you shouldn't have said so. It creates a bad impression in the parents' minds. Of course no reasonable person could object to one's having gardens, or stabling, or a moderate shooting, or a share of a salmon river; but parents don't like the notion that we are living in luxury. They have a nasty way of contrasting it with the nonsense which their boys tell them about tough meat and rancid butter."

At this point I began to see some resemblance between my correspondent and Matthew Arnold's critic in the Quarterly of October 1868—"one of the Eton Under-Masters, who, like Demetrius the Silversmith, seems alarmed for the gains of his occupation." For, in spite of all corrections and deductions, I cannot help regarding Public Schoolmasters as a well-paid race. Of course, it is true that their incomes are not comparable to those of successful barristers or surgeons, or even Ministers of State; but, on the other side, their work is infinitely easier; their earnings begin from the day on which they embark on their profession; and no revolution of the wheel of State can shake them from their well-cushioned seats. I am quite willing to admit that, on the figures supplied by my correspondent, he and his colleagues at St. Winifred's are not making so much money as their predecessors made twenty or thirty years ago. But, as far as I can understand, this diminution of incomes does not arise from diminution of charges, but only from the fact that the force of public opinion has driven schoolmasters to recognize, rather more fully than in days gone by, some primary needs of boy-nature. When the Royal Commission of 1862 was enquiring into the boarding arrangements of a famous school, one of the Commissioners was astonished to find that, in spite of the liberal charge for board, the boys got nothing but tea and bread and butter for breakfast. Apparently wishing to let the masters down easy, he suggested that perhaps eggs also were provided. To this suggestion the witness's answer was monumental: "Eggs, indeed, are not provided, but in some houses a large machine for boiling eggs is brought in every day; so that, if the boys bring their eggs, they are boiled for them." Surely the Master who first conceived this substitution of hardware for food deserved a permanent place among Social Economists; but "the bigots of this iron time," though they may not actually "have called his harmless art a crime," have resolved that, when a father pays £200 a year for his boy's schooling, the boy shall have something more substantial than bread and butter for breakfast. This reform alone, according to my correspondent, knocked some hundreds a year off each House-Master's income.

Then, again, as regards Sanitation. Here, certainly not before it was wanted, reform has made its appearance, and the injured House-Master has had to put his hand in his pocket. When I was at a Public School, in that Golden Age of Profits to which my correspondent looked back so wistfully, the sanitary arrangements were such as to defy description and stagger belief. In one Pupil-Room there was only the thickness of the boarded floor between the cesspool and the feet of the boys as they sat at lessons. In my own house, containing forty boarders, there were only two baths. In another, three and even four boys were cooped together, by day as well as by night, in what would, in an ordinary house, be regarded as a smallish bedroom. Now all this is changed. Drainage is reconstructed; baths are multiplied; to each boy is secured a sufficient air-space at lessons and in sleep. The Sanitary Engineer is let loose every term—

"What pipes and air-shafts! What wild ecstasy!"

But the "ecstasy" is confined to the bosom of the Engineer as he draws up his little account, and the House-Master moans, like Mr. Mantalini, over the "Demnition Total."

Yet another such deduction must be borne in mind. Volumes of nonsense have been written about the Fagging System. Sentimental writers have gushed over the beautiful relation which it establishes between Fag-Master and Fag. Some, greatly daring, have likened it to the relation of elder and younger brothers. Others, more historically minded, have tried to connect it with the usages of Chivalry and the services rendered by the Page to the Knight. As a matter of fact, it was, as "Jacob Omnium," himself an Old Etonian, pointed out fifty years ago, "an affair of the breeches pocket." As long as younger boys could be compelled (by whatever methods) to clean lamps and brush clothes and toast sausages and fill tubs for elder boys it was obvious that fewer servants were required. One of the most brilliant Etonians now living has said that "to see a little boy performing, with infinite pains and hopeless inadequacy, the functions of a domestic servant, might have moved Democritus to tears and Heraclitus to laughter." That Fagging has its uses, more especially in the case of spoilt boys brought up in purse-proud homes, few Public Schoolmen will deny; but the British Parent tends increasingly to draw a distinction between the duties of a fag and those of a footman; and the wages-bill becomes an increasingly important item in the House-Master's expenditure.

What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? It is, as I have repeatedly said, that a Boarding-School, whether public or private, is not the ideal method of educating boys; but, pending that great increase of Day-Schools for the sons of the upper classes which Dr. Warre foresees, it is the only method practically available for the great majority of English parents. Whether the instruction imparted in the Public Schools is or is not worth the amount which it costs is a matter of opinion; and, indeed, as long as the parent (who, after all, has to pay) is satisfied, no one else need trouble himself about the question. As to domestic arrangements and provision for health and comfort, it may be frankly conceded that the Schoolboy of to-day is much better off than his father or even his elder brother was; and that the improvements in his lot have tended to diminish the profits on which the House-Master used to grow rich.

P.S.—Having the terrors of the ferule before my eyes, let me hasten to say, with all possible explicitness, that in my account of my correspondence with the outraged Schoolmaster, I have aimed at giving a general impression rather than a verbal transcript.