G. F. Bradby

“ Flaggon quickly, “that Dr. Lanchester was always considered a Radical?”
Mr. Chowdler had forgotten; all Chiltern was in the habit of forgetting this unpleasant fact. But he would not own to any lapse of memory, and his voice took on a note of challenge as he replied:
“Oh, a name doesn’t frighten me; there’s nothing in a name; names are only the coinage of the foolish. Lanchester was a man of very Conservative instincts. He was not one of those who love change for change’s sake. ”

“ Dennison! Mr. Chowdler nearly had a fit. Dennison! One of those morbid, cantankerous, precocious boys, who have none [135] of the good-fellowship, none of the joy of life, that are the crown of youth. A boy with a jealous, sour, carping disposition, unpopular with his fellows and unresponsive to his housemaster; a boy without influence and eaten up by an unhealthy egotism.
“You misjudge him,” said Mr. Flaggon. “The boy is reserved, rather sensitive, and shy of expressing himself; but he has character and a conscience. With guidance and a little sympathy he will make a very useful Prefect.” ”

“ If one’s to be a live man, one must have something definite to do—something that one can believe in and work for. I can appreciate and work for your ideals—decency, order, and an education that—that is educational. I know that I shan’t approve of all your methods—I’m Oxford, and much too critical for that—and you won’t expect it of me. But I cannot endure to sink back again into unreality. I have enough to live on; not much but enough; and I can always get work—tutoring or anything. But I will not face another fifteen years of the off-theory and Chowdler’s version of the Lanchester tradition. ”

“ The Council blushed uneasily at finding itself suddenly in the van of progress, and began to say harsh things about its Chairman; and its Chairman was only partially comforted by an assurance from the distinguished person behind the scenes that they had chosen the best man in, “a man who will think before he acts and who will go far.” For to the Chairman the ideal headmaster was rather a man who would mark time decorously than an explorer of untrodden ways.
To the masters the suggestion that Chiltern needed reforming—“turning inside out,” they called it—was, to say the least, unpalatable. ”

“ The great man was both an enthusiast for education and a firm believer in ability; he even had the hardihood to maintain that ability is of greater value than experience, and [46] experiment more fruitful of results than the accepted method of playing for safety. Being a shrewd judge of men, he soon discerned, beneath the tutor’s quiet and unsensational exterior, signs of exceptional power; and he did not lose sight of him. The Welsh appointment was largely his doing, and, when the headmastership of Chiltern fell vacant, it was he who wrote and suggested that Mr. Flaggon should stand. ”

“ At Chiltern, as in all intellectual societies, the personal doings and idiosyncrasies of its individual members formed the staple of daily conversation; and, before the Term was two days old, Mr. Chowdler knew that Bent and Flaggon had walked together in the holidays, taken tea together, and, no doubt, conspired together. He never had liked Bent—a cynical egotist (all the people whom Mr. Chowdler disliked were egotists) with dangerous principles. He shouldn’t wonder if Bent had been poisoning the “empty one’s” mind against Cheeny. Bent always had a grudge against his boys. ”

“ Flaggon, for his part, did not possess the easy manner and command of small talk which put strangers at their ease. Though anxious to be friendly, he was by nature reticent, one of those who, in new surroundings, are more disposed to receive impressions than to create them. So, after a little desultory talk about the golf links, and several ineffective openings that led into blind alleys, the conversation suddenly expired, and the colleagues found themselves gazing desperately at three iron bars and some unhealthy-looking green and yellow paper behind them. ”

“ Bent, [90] raising his voice, “and I don’t doubt that little Simpkin did say it and will say it again till he gets another cue. What does amaze me is that, with all his experience, Chowdler has never learned that boys encourage us in our illusions by quoting at us our own pet ideas and phrases. It isn’t conscious hypocrisy—merely an instinct of self-preservation, or an amiable desire to please. They approach us, as we should approach some beast of uncertain temper, with the sounds that experience has shown to be most soothing.” ”

“ But the extraordinary manifestations of grief which that father’s death provoked in the whole neighbourhood had taught him to judge the value of work by a different standard, and to realise that the things of the spirit can never be adequately measured in terms of the flesh. Henceforward, the life of duty, and faith in the individual conscience, which had been the secret of the father’s influence, became the ideals of the son, and, if he was attracted into the field of education, it was largely because, to him, education in its truest sense meant a lifting of the veil from the spirit. ”

“ Mr. Chowdler himself was quite unconscious that he had revealed his inner mind to the boys or fanned the flame of disloyalty. But there was no doubt that he talked with great freedom to parents and old boys; and neither parents nor old boys are invariably discreet.
The upshot of it all was that, at the school concert on the last night but one of the Term, both Mr. Chowdler and le Willow [115] received a great ovation which contrasted forcibly with the very faint cheering that greeted the entrance of the headmaster. ”

“ Bent, “there cannot possibly be an end, because there has never been a beginning. Systematic teaching indeed! Why, a boy told me the other day that he had been doing the same French book ever since he came to the school two years ago; and it is notorious that Cox [77] set one and the same Latin prose every Term to his Form, and never looked it over.”
“I was not thinking of organisation,” said Mr. Plummer, “I was speaking of principles; and I repeat, if the parents are allowed to dictate the lines on which education is to proceed, there will be an end of systematic teaching.” ”

“ Cox, the Nestor of Chiltern, shook his head sadly from side to side with a far-away look in his eyes; Mr. Black, the senior mathematician, was for petitioning the Council, at once, to revoke its decision; and when Mr. Chase, the moderate man (every staff possesses at least one moderate who reads the Spectator) , expressed a timid hope that the newcomer would be given a fair chance, he was within an ace of being lynched. Even the school porter, a man of solemn demeanour and grave reticence, expressed the opinion that the choice was “hominous.” ”

“ Wild young men and women, athirst for bandy and bunny-hugs, for impossible ski-jumps and noisy races along the corridors, protested that they had not come out to be drilled like schoolboys but to enjoy themselves; [129] and they began to question the authority of the self-appointed committee. Profoundly ignorant of the past history of the place and of all that it owed to its aristocracy, they felt no reverence for Mr. Chowdler and the Hon. Fitzroy Plashy circling sedately round an orange, and only wondered why the best part of the rink was reserved for these old fogeys and their friends. ”

“ No, my dear Plummer, it’s too risky.”
“But one must take risks,” insisted Mr. Plummer, “if one is to do anything that is worth doing: and, to refuse to take risks when there’s a chance of saving anybody seems to me sheer cowardice.”
“Ah yes,” said Mr. Bent, “true enough, if the risk were our risk—a danger to you and me. But it isn’t. The danger is to the other boys—the boys who are here and the boys who are coming. If you want to make a public school a reformatory, you ought to be honest with the parents ”

“ Flaggon had been an angel from Heaven, she would have hated him with equal fervour. So she withdrew for the day to the Pounderlys’ and contented herself with a glimpse of “the man” from a window; which glimpse confirmed her in her worst forebodings. Mrs. Chowdler, who had a talent for saying the wrong thing, remarked that it would be “a very happy coincidence” if Mr. Flaggon and Miss Gussy took a fancy to each other, as it would give a continuity to life at Chiltern and make the impending change “so much less felt.” ”

“ It is the right thing in the Chiltern game for the leader to be everywhere; that is one of the features that has made of the Chiltern game the great moral training that it is. So Cheeny did his best to be ubiquitous, and played such a game as had not been played in Colonus within the memory of that generation—falling, rising, charging and being charged, stopping rushes, intercepting passes and spoiling shots. And, after each unsuccessful attack on the Chowdlerite goal, Mr. Trimble said calmly, “That settles it! Silly asses! They deserve to be beaten!” ”

“ Chowdler the victory did not mean merely that his boys, by superior luck or skill, had scored one goal more than the boys of another house. It meant, somehow, that the Lanchester tradition had been vindicated; that all that was best and noblest in the place, all that made the past glorious and the present fruitful, had, in the face of tremendous odds, asserted itself in a supreme and convincing manner. He was glad that his house had taken the field with two of their best players away, glad that le Willow had sprained his ankle and that the referee had been flagrantly [113] unfair. ”

“ Now a martyrdom is always an unpleasant business for others than the victim; and one of the spectators who felt the unpleasantness most acutely was Mr. Bent. Mr. Bent repudiated the title of sportsman, but he had scruples and susceptibilities of his own. As unacknowledged heir to Mr. Chowdler’s house he found his position a delicate one, and he hesitated to proclaim his right to the succession while Mr. Chowdler was so very much alive. It would have been comparatively easy to speak the word while the battle was still raging and the issue in doubt ”

“ Fortunately, and God be praised for it, they had in that place a great example by which to guide their endeavours—Abraham Lanchester, their great headmaster, restorer not destroyer, whose clear, sane intellect and genius, conservative in the best and noblest meaning of the word, had left them an imperishable birthright and a priceless heritage. Hold fast to a priceless heritage, hold fast to a great tradition, hold fast to that which is good! And so on for five-and-twenty minutes.
Mr. Flaggon was conscious that he was being preached at, and he knew that the boys knew it ”

“ Mr. Flaggon learnt it from the Chairman of the Council; Mr. Chowdler and the masters [168] were informed “privately and confidentially” by Mr. Benison-Benison, and the boys heard of it from the masters’ wives.
On the morning of the fateful day, Mr. Flaggon looked down the long rows of bowed heads in chapel with peculiar feelings. He was something of a fatalist, believing, as he did, that there is special Providence in the fall of a sparrow, and that a man is false to his duty, however hazardous that duty may be, if he allows himself to dwell on the possibility of failure. ”

“ A few there were, chiefly boys in the highest forms, who felt dimly that they had been brought face to face with a real man and a nobler conception of life than they had hitherto realised; but, as yet, they were only few and they held their peace, leaving the talking to the malcontents.
On the first morning of the holidays, the headmaster had a long interview with Mr. Chase. Mr. Chase was not altogether happy about his house; no more was Mr. Flaggon. ”

“ There was an irony in the fate which might give him the summons to quit at the very moment when he had secured a firm grip of the school and proved his right to rule. Might give? Very probably would give; for, in his heart of hearts, he had no great faith in the Council that was to pronounce judgment.
And, a few hours later, the councillors were assembling at Grandborough to decide between the headmaster and his rebellious lieutenant. Most of them had come with their minds more than half made up. ”

“ Bent. “And I said Chowdler, because I bet that he has been telling you his story of the week—we have all heard it—to wit, how little Simpkin looked up at him with a wistful smile and said, ‘Sir, do you think the new headmaster understands anything about boys?’”
“Suppose he did!” said Mr. Plummer defiantly. “What then?”
“Only,” replied Mr. Bent, “that it isn’t a very likely thing for a boy to say, on his own. I know little Simpkin; he’s in my Form. All Chowdler’s pets are in my Form. A nasty, greasy, oily little beast. ”

“ Bent, “that for anybody who is aspiring to a post in Sir Philip Whaley’s office, shorthand and commercial French are a necessary branch of culture. But what about the boys who are going in for the learned or other professions—the Church, for example? Might not commercial French be, to a future bishop, what Homer is to Sir Philip himself, an ornamental but irrelevant accomplishment? And we must not ignore the bishops.”
“You must specialise,” said Sir Philip grandly. “You must be prepared to fit every boy with the special knowledge that he—um—er—will require in the profession of his choice. ”

“ But it is no reproach to a man to change his mind, and, with a riper experience, Mr. Chowdler had learned to love and value the Chiltern Sunday. To himself it meant a long country walk and a most refreshing snooze afterwards; but that was not the reason why he valued it. He valued it because it was so good for the boys; because it gave them, what no other school gives its boys, time to know themselves, time for thought, and especially home thoughts; and because it made of Sunday what Sunday ought to be, “a morally recuperative day.” “We must put our foot down,” he said to his colleagues ”

“ Flaggon and Mr. Chowdler, there could be no doubt as to what our decision would be; for every man in authority has a right to be supported against unruly subordinates. But we have not met here to judge between Mr. Flaggon and his subordinate. We are all aware that we have met to decide whether it is right or expedient that Mr. Flaggon should continue to be headmaster at all. ”

“ Plummer. “But, after Gussy, Chowdler’s position under a new man was bound to be difficult, and Flaggon ought to have made allowances; he ought to have been more tactful.”
“Tact on Chowdler,” said Mr. Bent, “is like a feather on a hippopotamus. Chowdler doesn’t ask for tact; he demands unconditional surrender.”
“Anyhow,” persisted Mr. Plummer, “though he does it badly, Chowdler represents what many, if not most, of us feel. ”

“ Bent recognised in the headmaster a man of great mental alertness and wide interests; and Mr. Flaggon discovered an unexpectedly serious vein in his companion, veiled, as it often was, under an ironic humour. As conversation became more intimate, Mr. Bent ventured one day to express his inner [123] feelings about Chiltern and the Lanchester tradition.
“We are haunted here,” he said, “as you have doubtless observed, by the ghost of greatness; and it won’t let us speak, or think, or do. Nothing is so paralysing (the preachers call it inspiring) as the memory of a great man. ”

“ But, as a matter of fact, it is not the football that attracts me on these occasions so much as the psychology of the competing housemasters.”
“Translate with brief notes,” said his companion.
“To an observer of human nature,” Mr. Bent explained, “nothing is so illuminating as the behaviour of a housemaster when his house is playing a match. Chowdler, of course, is elemental, and offers few points of interest; he has the naked simplicity of the [104] savage or the sportsman—blatant in victory, ungenerous in defeat. But Trimble is more complex, and, therefore, more worthy of study. ”

“ To the Old Chilternians it embodies the social ideas and customs with which they grew up; and to the boys themselves, if it means anything more than a name, it represents a certain immutability and fixity of things, an as-it-was-in-the-beginning-is-now-and-ever-shall-be attitude towards life that appeals to their best conservative instincts. Any change in the hour of a lesson or the colour of a ribbon is regarded as an outrage on the Lanchester tradition, and is popularly supposed to make the dead hero turn in his grave. ”