These stories were all written at a very happy time
of my life, and
they were first published when I was a master at Eton
with a
boarding-house. A house-master is not always
a happy man. It is an
anxious business at best. Boys are very unaccountable
creatures, and
the years between boyhood and adolescence are apt
to represent an
irresponsible mood. From the quiet childhood
at home the boys have
passed to what is now, most happily, in the majority
of cases, a
carefully guarded and sheltered atmosphere the
private school. My own
private school was of the old-fashioned type, with
a very independent
tone of tradition; but nowadays private schools are
smaller and much
more domesticated. The boys live like little
brothers in the company
of active and kindly young masters; and then they
are plunged into the
rougher currents of public schools, with their strange
and in many
ways barbarous code of ethics, their strong and penetrating
traditions. Here the boys, who have hitherto
had little temptation to
be anything but obedient, have to learn to govern
themselves, and to
do so among conventions which hardly represent the
conventions of the
world, and where the public opinion is curiously unaffected
either by
parental desires, or by the wishes, expressed or unexpressed,
of the
masters. A house-master is often in the position
of seeing a new set
of boys come into power in his house whom he may distrust;
but the
sense of honour among the boys is so strong that he
is often the last
person to hear of practices and principles prevailing
in his house of
which he may wholly disapprove. He may even find
that many of the
individual boys in his house disapprove of them too,
and yet be unable
to alter a tone impressed on the place by a few boys
of forcible, if
even sometimes unsatisfactory, character. But
at the time at which
these stories were written the tone of my own house
was sound,
sensible, and friendly; and I had the happiness of
living in an
atmosphere which I knew to be wholesome, manly, and
pure. I used to
tell or read stories on Sunday evenings to any boys
who cared to come
to listen; and I remember with delight those hours
when perhaps twenty
boys would come and sit all about my study, filling
every chair and
sofa and overflowing on to the floor, to listen to
long, vague stories
of adventure, with at all events an appearance of
interest and
excitement.
One wanted to do the best for the boys, to put fine
ideas, if one
could, into their heads and hearts. But direct
moral exhortation to
growing boys, feeling the life of the world quickening
in their veins,
and with vague old instincts of love and war rising
uninterpreted in
their thoughts, is apt to be a fruitless thing enough.
It is not that
they do not listen; but they simply do not understand
the need of
caution and control, nor do they see the unguarded
posterns by which
evil things slip smiling into the fortress of the
soul.
Every now and then I used to try to shape a tale which
in a figure
might leave an arresting or a restraining thought
in their minds; or
even touch with a light of romance some of the knightly
virtues which
are apt to be dulled into the aspect of commonplace
and uninteresting
duties.
It is very hard to make the simple choices of life
assume a noble or
an inspiring form. One sees long afterwards in
later life how fine the
right choice, the vigorous resistance, the honest
perseverance might
have been; but the worst faults of boyhood have something
exciting and
even romantic about them they would not
be so alluring if they had
not while the homely virtues of honesty,
frankness, modesty, and
self-restraint appear too often as a dull and priggish
abstention from
the more daring and adventurous joys of eager living.
If evil were
always ugly and goodness were always beautiful at
first sight, there
would be little of the trouble and havoc in the world
that is wrought
by sin and indolence.
I chose, not deliberately but instinctively, the old
romantic form
for the setting of these tales, a semi-mediaeval atmosphere
such as
belongs to the literary epic; some of the stories
are pure fantasy;
but they all aim more or less directly at illustrating
the stern
necessity of moral choice; the difficulty is to get
children to
believe, at the brilliant outset of life, that it
will not do to
follow the delights of impulse. And one of the
most pathetic parts of
a schoolmaster’s life is that he cannot, however
earnestly and
sincerely he may wish to do so, transfer his own experience
to the
boys, or persuade them that, in the simple words of
Browning, “It’s
wiser being good than bad.” It may be wiser
but it is certainly
duller! and the schoolmaster has the horror, which
ought never to be a
faithless despair, of seeing boys drift into habits
of non-resistance,
and sow with eager hand the seed which must almost
inevitably grow up
into the thorns and weeds of life. If the child
could but grasp the
bare truth, if one could but pull away the veil of
the years and show
him the careless natural joy ending in the dingy,
broken slovenliness
of failure! But one cannot; and perhaps life
would lose all its virtue
if one could.
One does not know, one cannot dimly guess, why all
these attractive
opportunities of evil are so thickly strewn about
the path of the
young in a world which we believe to be ultimately
ruled by Justice
and Love. Much of it comes from our own blindness
and hardness of
heart. Either we do not care enough ourselves,
or we cannot risk the
unpopularity of interfering with bad traditions, or
we are lacking in
imaginative sympathy, or we sophistically persuade
ourselves into the
belief that the character is strengthened by exposure
to premature
evil. The atmosphere of the boarding-school is
a very artificial one;
its successes are patent, its debris we sweep away
into a corner; but
whatever view we take of it all, it is a life which,
if one cares for
virtue at all, however half-heartedly, tries the mental
and emotional
faculties of the schoolmaster to the uttermost, and
every now and then
shakes one’s heart to the depths with a terrible
wonder as to how one
can ever answer to the account which will be demanded.
I do not claim to have realised my responsibilities
fully, or to have
done all I could to lead my flock along the right
path. But I did
desire to minimise temptations and to try to get the
better side of
the boys’ hearts and minds to emphasise itself.
One saw masters who
seemed to meddle too much that sometimes
produced an atmosphere of
guarded hostility and one saw masters who
seemed to be foolishly
optimistic about it all; but as a rule one found in
one’s colleagues a
deep and serious preoccupation with manly ideals of
boy-life; and in
these stories I tried my best to touch into life the
poetical and
beautiful side of virtue, to show life as a pilgrimage
to a far-off
but glorious goal, with seductive bypaths turning
off the narrow way,
and evil shapes, both terrifying and alluring, which
loitered in shady
corners, or even sometimes straddled horribly across
the very road.
The romance, then, of these stories is coloured by
what may be thought
to be a conventional and commonplace morality enough;
but it is real
for all that; and life as it proceeds has a blessed
way of revealing
the urgency and the unseen features of the combat.
It is just because
virtue seems dry and humdrum that the struggle is
so difficult. It is
so hard to turn aside from what seems so dangerously
beautiful, to
what seems so plain and homely. But it is what
we mostly have to do.
I saw many years ago a strange parable of what I mean.
I was walking
through a quiet countryside with a curious, fanciful,
interesting boy,
and we came to a little church off the track in a
tiny churchyard full
of high-seeded grasses. On the wall of the chancel
hung an old trophy
of armour, a helmet and a cuirass, black with age.
The boy climbed
quickly up upon the choir-stalls, took the helmet
down, enclosed his
own curly head in it, and then knelt down suddenly
on the altar-step;
after which he replaced the helmet again on its nail.
“What put it
into your head to do that?” I said. “Oh,”
he said lightly, “I thought
of the old man who wore it; and they used to kneel
before the altar in
their armour when they were made knights, didn’t
they? I wanted just
to feel what it was like!”
Life was too strong for that boy, and he was worsted!
He won little
credit in the fight. But it had been a pretty
fancy of his, and
perhaps something more than a fancy. I have often
thought of the
little slender figure, so strangely helmeted, kneeling
in the summer
sunlight, with Heaven knows what thoughts of what
life was to be; it
seems to me a sorrowful enough symbol of boyhood so
eager to share in
the fray, so unfit to bear the dinted helm.
And yet I do not wish to be sorrowful, and it would
be untrue to life
to yield oneself to foolish pity. My own little
company is broken up
long ago; I wonder if they remember the old days and
the old stories.
They are good citizens most of them, standing firmly
and sturdily,
finding out the meaning of life in their own way and
contributing
their part to the business of the world. But
some of them have fallen
by the way, and those not the faultiest or coarsest,
but some of fine
instinct and graceful charm, who evoked one’s
best hopes and most
affectionate concern.
If one believed that life were all, that there was
no experience
beyond the dark grave and the mouldering clay, it
would be a miserable
task enough to creep cautiously through life, just
holding on to its
tangible advantages and cautiously enjoying its delights.
But I do
most utterly believe that there is a truth beyond
that satisfies our
sharpest cravings and our wildest dreams, and that
if we have loved
what is high and good, even for a halting minute,
it will come to
bless us consciously and abundantly before we have
done with
experience. Many of our dreams are heavy-hearted
enough; we are
hampered by the old faults, and by the body that not
only cannot
answer the demands of the spirit, but bars the way
with its own urgent
claims and desires. But whatever hope we can
frame or conceive of
peace and truth and nobleness and light shall be wholly
and purely
fulfilled; and even if we are separated by a season,
as we must be
separated, from those whom we love and journey with,
there is a union
ahead of us when we shall remember gratefully the
old dim days, and
the path which we trod in hope and fear together;
when all the trouble
we have wrought to ourselves and others will vanish
into the shadow of
a faded dream, in the sweetness and glory of some
great city of God,
full of fire and music and all the radiant visions
of uplifted hearts,
which visited us so faintly and yet so beckoningly
in the old frail
days.