THE MASTERS OF A PREPARATORY SCHOOL.

THE character of a boy is so profoundly stamped during the years he passes at a Preparatory School, that what manner of men the masters are is to him a matter of the very gravest concern. In the following paper an attempt is made to furnish some trustworthy information upon this subject. The subject being one upon which it may be thought that trustworthy information is difficult to get, it seems only reasonable to state what sources of information the writer possesses. For more than thirty years I have had multitudes of acquaintances and many friends among Public and Preparatory School Masters. For the last two years it has been my special business to acquaint myself with the latter, and I have special facilities, of which I have taken full advantage, for doing so. Of the thirty-two years during which I was a schoolmaster, about twenty-two were passed at Public and ten at Preparatory Schools, and I had thus some opportunity for comparing, in my own professional experience, Public with Preparatory Schools and different types of each with one another. I may, perhaps, therefore be regarded as favourably placed for having materials at my command upon which to form a judgment, and it is, I suppose, less difficult for me, being no longer engaged in the actual work of a schoolmaster, to form an unbiassed judgment on such matters than if I were so engaged.

I.

I will speak first of the Headmasters. The Headmasters of Preparatory Schools are, with rare exceptions, graduates of Oxford or Cambridge. Most of them have been Public School boys, and many of them Public School Masters. They are, therefore, as a body, saturated with University and Public School spirit. Most of them have graduated in honours, and not a few in high honours. The ages at which they assume the duties of headmastership vary from what is almost the period of boyhood -immediately upon leaving the University, with not one day of experience to the age of about fifty, with a quarter of a century's work and experience behind them. If the members of the Preparatory School Association may be taken as a fair test, the proportion of clergymen to laymen is as about one to six. The buildings which they occupy range from a single house in a row, with a couple of servants, to a princely mansion and surrounding estate, and a retinue of more than fifty servants. The boys for whom they are responsible vary from half-a-dozen to about a couple of hundred. If we turn for a moment to their financial position, their incomes must vary from something more than £15,000 to something less than £150 a year, and their profits from something that I cannot attempt to estimate, to nil. The whole subject of the finances of Preparatory Schools is treated else

where in a separate paper, but as the supposed profits of Preparatory School Masters are sometimes the occasion of unfavourable comment, a few words will be permitted to me in this context. It is true that in the past several Preparatory School Masters have retired upon large fortunes, and I suppose a few, though certainly a steadily diminishing number, will do so in the future. Such very large profits as are implied by such savings seem perhaps to be open to criticism. But the criticism must be well informed and fair. Is it? If the financial risk were very slight or nil, then such profits might seem to be hardly defensible. But if the financial risk is enormous and failure means ruin, then the thing assumes a very different aspect. And this is the precise state of the case in the large majority of such examples. I only state what I know. This is not the place for a more elaborate statement, with particulars. The savings of the large majority of Preparatory School Masters are of a very modest nature, and are not unlikely to become less as time goes on. So far, indeed, as my knowledge extends, the Preparatory School Master-contrary, I imagine, to the opinion usually held on the subject-is as a rule, more inclined to spend money upon his school than to save it.

And this brings me naturally to a point of much interest. Can it be said that these men, responsible for the training during the most impressionable period of their lives of a large portion of the boys belonging to the upper and middle classes of society, have any special characteristics to differentiate them from other men or other schoolmasters? Are there, first, any special characteristics influencing them initially to undertake this kind of work? And, second, does the work itself tend to superinduce any special stamp?

Though these men represent characteristics diverse as are the various members of their country, still careful observation and reflection do, I am sure, render it possible to disengage certain characteristics of an undoubtedly distinctive kind.

First and foremost, they are, as a class, I am quite certainthough I am prepared to find the statement received with some scepticism-possessed in a large degree of the spirit of enterprise, even in some cases to the point of extreme rashness. One instance, related to me by one of the parties concerned, may serve to explain my contention. Two Assistant Masters of the Headmaster of a very important Preparatory School were leaving him to start a school of their own, and, on the eve of their departure, went to get from him a few last words of wisdom, the result of his own long experience, to guide them in their anxious undertaking. "The first piece of advice," he said, " and the last, that I have to give you is-start by getting deeply into debt." This spirit of financial enterprise gives, I am sure, in a curious and unexpected way, a kind of extra-professional, and therefore salutary fillip and piquancy to the life of many a Preparatory School Master, contributing a dash of the adventurer to a life too apt otherwise to develop the timid, cautious, not to say somewhat small side of a man's character.

If actual proof be needed of the presence of this element of enterprise in the character of the Headmasters of Preparatory Schools, it is ready to hand, in a very substantial form. The buildings, grounds, equipment of the Preparatory Schools of Great Britain are, for those who have some knowledge of them, and in proportion to the extent of that knowledge, a testimony of unaided individual enterprise quite unequalled, I believe, in the annals of education. The motive power that often, but by no means always, lies behind such enterprise is another questionI allude, of course, to the power of competition. Personally, I am not disposed, as will be explained elsewhere, to estimate its value highly. Be the causes what they may, it is a fact not to be denied that whatever other compounds go to make up the stuff of an average Preparatory School Headmaster's character, it may be assumed as certain that it almost invariably contains a large admixture of the ingredient of enterprise.

Further, the Headmasters of Preparatory Schools belong, as a body, to the class of what are known as successful men. They venture because they feel within themselves the capacity for success. They are not only enterprising, but their enterprises generally succeed. And yet the risk is often a serious one. The competition has for many years been very great. Still, extremely few go to the wall. They are persistent, resourceful, undismayed. It is by no means an uncommon experience among them to find that the locality in which they were once successful has, for some cause or other (sometimes a reasonable one, often enough quite unreasonable) lost its popularity, gone out of fashion. No weak, querulous upbraidings of fashion's silly fancies, or dejected acquiescence in the decrees of Fate. The tents must be pitched elsewhere-to fresh woods and pastures new. Nor can I recall an instance in which this spirited resourcefulness has failed. The Parents admire a dash of pluck and show their admiration of the adventurer in a tangible form. His boys follow him, and others follow in their wake.

Enterprising, persistent, resourceful-I may seem to be describing good business men. Certainly. As a body, with a fair sprinkling of exceptions, they would, I believe, justly answer to the description. And the description is an honourable one. This I believe to be the "solid base of temperament" that may be postulated as typical of most Headmasters of Preparatory Schools. It is hardly necessary to add that upon this base are constructed endless varieties of personal characteristics and idiosyncrasies endless, among such a crowd of men, as are the types of humanity.

One vital question remains to be asked about them. Do they love their work and their boys? Is their heart in the business? Confining myself to those (and they are many) whom I know sufficiently well to speak of them with certainty, I reply that I cannot recall one instance where this is not so. Differing widely and deeply as they do in all sorts of directions-in aims, methods, theories, opinions, abilities, attainments, characters-they have one possession in common-devotion to their work and their boys. Allusion was made above to the fact that Preparatory School

Masters are not specially careful financially, often the reverse. Their generosity is wonderful. It is probable that there is scarcely one of them who does not take some boys for little or no fees, and this indifferently in the case of schools that are quite full or otherwise. Also, they constantly help their old boys largely, and in all cases in such a way that it is usually impossible to hear of it excepting from the recipients themselves, and accordingly impossible to know the extent of such liberality.

There is something more to add. There are of course, among so many it would be a miracle if there were not some men of an inferior type, with inferior aims and methods. There are also some possessed of the very finest natures that it has been my privilege to know, simple, disinterested, unworldly, with some touches of what is really great. Some of these possess those fundamental elements of enterprise and potential successfulness, of which mention has been made above. Some of them possess nothing of the kind. They succeed, and, let us add with thankfulness, always will succeed, in spite of the absence of such sturdy and virile qualities, and in consequence of the presence in large and generous measure of qualities of a rarer kind, qualities that sometimes, in some careers, contribute to failure. Unbusinesslike, unpractical, cast in the mould of the artist, idealists, imaginative, sensitive, they succeed just because they are what they are-men filled with reality, naturalness, simplicity because they have a touch of greatness, and because they are felt by those who come into contact with them to have it. These men, whether they possess those practical elements in their characters which go to make the great captains of industry, merchants, statesmen, soldiers, or the visionary elements out of which is formed the stuf that makes poets and philosophers, have all one common element in their composition-they have a touch of greatness. "They are wasted as Preparatory School Masters." So I also have sometimes been inclined to believe. But the inclination is due to ignorance. Looking back, I can see quite clearly that, in so far as influence upon character goes, at the period of life when character is still readily, almost inevitably, moulded and stamped permanently by influence, there is absolutely no position in life where influence, for good or for evil, is so sure, so direct, immediate, powerful, as that of a Preparatory School Master. Such a statement may perhaps seem to some to be exaggerated. It is, of course, merely an opinion, and is incapable of proof. It is, at any rate, the result of much observation and a long experience.

A few words must suffice to answer the second question :-Does the life of a Preparatory School Headmaster tend to produce and foster any special type of character?

The life of a schoolmaster of any kind is commonly regarded as tending to produce a certain kind of pedagogic superiority and dogmatism, the result of having things very much your own way, and of dealing mainly with puerile, instead of virile, intelligences. And this general rule, again, might seem to be applicable

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in a heightened degree to Headmasters, and very specially to Headmasters of Preparatory Schools, who deal with such very youthful material and are responsible only to themselves. The popular opinion regarding general pedagogic superiority has in it undoubtedly some truth, though the individual exceptions are numerous. And this general peculiarity may have a tendency to be accentuated in a Headmaster, as distinguished from an Assistant Master, particularly, perhaps, if the Headmaster is in a very prosperous condition. But much close observation of many Preparatory School Headmasters has convinced me that the large majority of them retain throughout their careers the human qualities implanted in them by nature in a very fresh and very delightful way. The explanation of this would lead us too far afield, and I must content myself with little more than a mere record of the opinion. The perpetual and close contact with the freshness of very early youth, and the love and sympathy for their boys characteristic of almost all Preparatory School Masters doubtless tend to keep them fresh and natural and to give them a dash of that boyishness so invaluable (I had almost said so necessary) to a schoolmaster. However acquired, it is, I rejoice to say, often there, a blessing both to themselves and their boys.

To sum up. The Preparatory School Headmasters are, of course, men of all kinds, good, bad, and indifferent; but, on the whole, they are a good body of men, and there are among them a certain proportion of the finest and most disinterested type of men that have ever worked usefully for their generation. They are such as they are both in consequence and in spite of the system to which, with so few exceptions that they may be neglected, they have to conform. This system is one of pure competition; the worst effects of which we are only too well acquainted with, as fostering some of the meanest and most selfish elements in human nature, and demoralising and debasing those who are subject to it. And the entrance of such a poisonous substance into a work of such fine and noble possibilities-we know only too well the possible results of this. Corruptio optimi pessima.

The best effects we also know-the encouraging of certain virile, if still selfish, qualities of our nature. It is to the credit of the Preparatory School Masters that it may, I believe, be stated with complete accuracy that, whilst it is impossible to maintain that they have been able in all cases to remain untouched by the evil influences of the system to which they are bound, it may yet be asserted confidently that the result of the fierce competition, the strain and the stress under which they live, has been shown almost entirely in its more wholesome products, which may at least lay claim to the distinction of virility. They are in their worse side (seen, as I have said, very rarely) pushing, commercial, selfish. In the better side of them (seen constantly, so constantly as to be a distinctive mark of the large majority of them) they are enterprising, energetic, unresting, successful; and they are all this in consequence of the system to which they are condemned.