The Press. — London, England, 1854-09-23 00:00:00

littraturt. School Experiences of d Fag at a Private and a Public School. By George Melly. London : Smith, Elder, and Co. WHATEVER any of us may have suffered in our school-days, we suppose that few can look back to life's early morn and cherish other than pleasing memories of the time when, if our griefs were frequent, they Were transient and unattended by the corroding cares of more advanced years. Beautifully has it been or dained that, at a period of physical and mental weakness, Hope should ever soar with such airy wings, and Fanny gild even the most lowering clouds. Miserable, indeed, must have been the school-days which, at the dis tance of thirty years, do not call up smiles and awaken recollections of many hours of joy. The strange variety of characters then brought before us on our leaving home, the fascinations of the first and most-enduring frietdships Of our lives, the field of emulation suddenly opened to our view, would of them- Selves cohapensate for separatiot .from the mother whose every 'Recent was in the tone of loVp,aiid frein the gentle little Playmates that had parted froin us with tearful eyes. Then let the delights of juvenile faction be consi dered, with its small but noisy passions, and its lively contests on trifles, heralding, perchance, the serious rivalries of after life in the Senate or the Court. And who could ever forget the stolen sweetness of those delightfiil hours when we read our first novel under the Waving willow tree on some secluded bank, while we began to feel the first th r illing of the most irrepressible and of hitnan passions? The pleasare .of hearing front home; the hamper of good things to be shared only amongst our devoted adherents ; the rural walk when, out of the hated usher's hearing, we poured our sorrows into the ears of a confidant; the conspiracies to dethrone eoine swaggering bully of four feet six in stature; the first practice in schemes of finance for obtaining credit froth pastryednks ; surely the pleasures incident to those liing-Vatished days flfr exceed any pitiffil terrors of a peda gogue with a birchen broom, caricatioing the part of Rhadamanthas, as he heard of our terrible raid, a la Russe, upon the principality of a neighbouring orchard, or, of our great pitched battle when we left the defeated young villagers ivith abundant black eyes and a su perfluity of bloody, fioseS. Seen through the vista Of advaitieing 3 ears, such times have cheering recolleotiOns for all of us who, retain any sunshine of the heart. Nor is it their distance that lends " enchant ment to the view." Contrast with the hard reality and unromantic strife of the actual world of ivhich we ottly dreatted in those days Wee theft additional merits on a retrespeet. Drib of Theinas Hood's Sentitnefital pieces pathetically utters the affectitin fOr school niemoiriee 04 when l, was a tiny boy.. My days 4nul nights were full.of joy, My mates were blithe and kind. No wonder that I sometimes And dash the teardrop front my eye, To cast a look behind! A less-known. but not less-brilliant, writer of verse, the late Mackworth Pruett, has touched on the same chord in some of his fugitive stanzas : Where are my friends ? lam No playmate shares my beaker; Some lie beneath the churchyard stone, And some before the Speaker. And some compose a trac,edy, . And some compose a rondo . ; , And some draw swords for liberty And some dritw pleas for John Doe. The poetry of boy-nature lias, perhaps„ never been adequately described. Boys, truly, are rough subjects for resthetical fictionists to take in hand. Adult human beings can be ex amined and analysed . with compaNive ease, but it is only given to persons with ahigh order of imagination and peculiar perception of the real to appreciate thoroughly the bound ing life and (in Shakspeare's words) " the extravagant and erring iipifit " of masculine hiltnataitY in teens. Several practised novelists hay,: utterly failed in their boys. Admitting THE PRESS. - - the excellence of Miss Edgeworth's works as educational primers, in which the didactic is okilfully diversified, still her " Frank" and " any'H no more resemble average, or even " extraordinary," boys than her " Rosamond " and " Lucy" are like any of the long rows of sly little misses with demure faces that troop out of boarding-schools in an afternoon around Highgate or Clapham-cominon. The boys of Mr. Dickens are " high-fantastical " creations, little cherubs just breeched, with brains be yond their years ; and we only wonder how such creatures could have been drawn as realities by Boz. They are about as like the robust and buoyant little Englishmen of this Anglo-Saxon land as the Chinese ladies on porcelain saucers are to the fair equestrians at Rotten-row. In " Conino•sby " the scenes at Eton are very naturally described, and the " talk" of the boys is most faithfully reported • their vivacity never degenerates into vulgarity ;_ but the passages of youthful life there briefly painted are Merely episodical. Some of the boys of Mr. Tliackeray are very good, and are iiistinct with life and nature, but generally they belong to one family—that of the juvenile swaggerers, who talk big as if they were men ; and they are' too suggestive of the .master-hand that drew Lilliput. What a terrible satire on man , hood would have been a boy-novel from the ten Of Swift! We have premised these remarks to explain the causes of our diSappointroent with the very prosateal and Matter • of-fliet volume before us. We expected some thing in the nature of S lively,. autobiography of. an English school boy, and We find only a collection of retrospec tive views, written in the style, of an essayist. The volume, though full of detail, wants the colour and liveliness of the kind of life that it attempts to describe. Grown folk have not Much to learn from its discussion of trite topics, and schoolboys would yawn over its tages., In short, it is a good stibject heavily reated. It is entirely deficient in heartyfun ; there is, not a real good booing-match in its pages ; ita floggings, thouo fregiiplat, scarcely frighten a bold infant ; the iisherd, those crorgons to schoolboys, *ant the pecu- liar cast of malignity common to their detested kind ; and the practical jokes are suffi ciently dull for the mess of a certain nameless regiment. Taking a syllable from Harrow aiid Rugby, the author names his public school as " Harby, ' and allots its locality at Henley-on-Thames, thud suggesting that he had three great public schools in his eye when he composed his veluine. He first describes a private school, Whe're he was bullied Mercilessly by the big boys, and where fagging was very severe. Nothing more dreary can well be iniagined than his account of the persecutions he there endured ; but we fear that a critical schoolboy Would be apt to ask, "Why was the author so slow in learning the use of his fists ?" In trnth, he seems to have been of d. very sensi tive disposition. We actually find hitn retiring to his room to cry at merely seelq at flogging itdininikered by the inonitbis to three WO for the mean oltelite Of thieving. He re cords Ob, how relieved I was to rush into my Study, throw myself on a chair, and btirst into an unrestrained fit of team. It Was the first tithe I had eyer Been any polish merit so Solbtinly iudicial; it was so coldly and &tinily adinitiisteted that it had the repulsive air of the execution of a Penal sentence. To my heated brain it Seemed Lynch law in a chronic state ; and 1 was almost afraid to be alone, lest any one should come in and maker long speech prior to nearly killing me. I was roused by w knock at the door, and an older boy, whom, ,I was very food of, entered and threw himself full length upon the sofa. Well, what do you think of a hall-Hating? Is it not a glorious institution?" "1 never sitw anything so horrid before." "Hut I am sore they deserved it handsomely. What could be lower and more ungentlemanly than what they were licked for ?" " I think they ought to have been flogged." " Well, you see, the monitors did.not like the responsi bility of that., for the boys,would have been in such a bad position if the doctor had flogged them for stealing; the whole school would have cut them. Ilegides, I know the duJor himself thought this was best." , So sensitive a being was scarcelx fit for any boyish treats; and we can imagine what ter rors he would have felt if he had been invited by old Busby to partake of his frequent "rump-and-dozens." The most lively bit in the *Winne is the record of the first flogging he SATURDAY received. While he was a fag he injured some of his master's handsomely-bound books, and he thus relates the consequences : whet could have possessed a man to put six valuable gilt-edged books ender a sofa it was impossible to guess. Such a state they were in l covered with green speckles of mildew ' • the gold backs white, and the white sides yellow. I felt thoroughly ashamed of my carelessness, and : forgetting the fag Id the gentleman, said I would at once write to London and replace them, and expressed myself extremely sorry to have spoiled such valuable books. In my distress the licking, the bet, and the club, were all forgotten. But, he of course, would listen to no reason, so putting up the damaged volumes, and clearing away the tables and chairs, he made immediate preparations fur the punishment. It then suddenly occurred to me that I had white trousers on, and that they were of the thinnest possible material. It was clearly impossible to be licked at that moment; and perhaps I had a chance, by an typeal, of getting off altogether. But no: the whole literary feeling of the house—all the admiration for white vellum and gilt edges—would be brought to beat upon me. What was I to do? I made a rapid calculation : as three cuts in white trousers are to six cute in thick woollen ditto, so must be my decision. And then, with much the same feelings as those by which dentists lose half their patients, who, on hearing their teeth ought to come out, promise to call again, I decided to appeal. The prwpostor advised me not, as the house Would be sure to confirm his judgment, and I should only be worse licked in the all. But I was i fixed more firmly n my idea of putting off the evil hour as long as possible ; so the house was appealed t 3. But nothing I could say would influence it, and accordingly I was licked, with great eclat, by the monitor, and received six cuts in the thickest woollen bags which my wardrobe Torded. I may add that the pain was atrocious, and that ad the felicity of showing six well-defined marks to my friends, and spending half an hour in arranging the look ing-glasses of my room so as to see them myself; when, after having distinctly seen that there was something to cry fur, I incontinently burst into tears ; a weakness wherein I resembled my little sister, who never used to cry because she had hurt herself until she had been shown the bleeding Cut or the inflamed blimp. Sit cuts in thick Woollen bagS were not such very " atrociOus" things to waste tears upon. If he had been horsed upon the whipping block at Eton, afterwards burnt by the Mar quis of —,.he would have had good reason for putting his ocular waterworks into full play. But thus it is in the volume. Shrink ing and sensitive, the story-narrating " fag" would have been equally miserable on ship boatd or iii association with any larger number of hattly boys, whether at school or in the Playground. On a proper occasion, and *ith a fitting text Wa i te us, we should he happy to diSciiss our public-school system. To calumniate it is easy; arid to correct it is, in sonic respects, difficult. Like every other long-existing sys tem, it has some peculiar abuses of its own ; but, though we are conscious and cognisant of its Milts, *e agree rather with the generous tiewit taken of it by George Canning than with those of Crtibbe and Cowper, *hose severe censures We see profusely quoted in the volurrie before us: On such a subject we must decline to take the evidence of the nervous and melanchblY Cowpet, or to accept witlioat large qualifications the rather morose Motility of the author of the " Borough," whoie stern genius was only too addicted to the more repulsive side of things. The greater part of the . gentlemen of England have had their blittractets and manners formed at our public schools; and the prieelesti merits of manly self reliance, truthfulness, and contempt for all siieakin#, Paltry Practices —in short, most of the animating qualities of the Anglish gentle man, frank, generodS, and bold—have been often acquired, and almotit always fostered, in our great public schools. But we must decline, with this unsatisfac tory volume, to go into the whole question. The antlioi; In his preface„ fears that he has giVen " too bright a . picture " of a public school ! tel him be Undbi no kiprehension on that head, as lie has left out of view nearly all its ruu, and much of its invaluable advan tages, id hlending together boys of various classes. In short, we are sorry to say that, upon a good subject, we have been disap pointed. Even where it would have been easy to have been graphic or amusing he writes with tatri'etiesa. The follbwing sketch of the Irlarbean Debating Sotiety is on of the best passages ih the volume : Aker " ealling . over," l wandered abing the cloisters til I came to an Open door, iihenee proceeded a tremendous row, which recalled the idea of Derhosthenes talking to a calm sea with his Moab full of pebbles. With the charac teristic impudence of a new boy walked in, took the first seat I could find, and surveyed thb scene. It was the