Littell's Living Age/Volume 138/Issue 1785/Our Young Masters

From The Spectator.

OUR YOUNG MASTERS.

Breaking-up day has come in hundreds of schools all over England, and boys have descended upon their happy parents and their peaceful homes. This has always been a serious event in the life of a household, and if we are not mistaken, it is likely to grow in importance. Boys used to be boys, and nothing else; that is to say, boisterous, mischievous beings, full of fun and frolic, but with a little consciousness that youth was not everything, and with a longing and ambition to quit school, and to be men. All this is changed. Some parent who has not made the discovery for himself previously, (will make it before the holidays are over, as he witnesses the inroads of young life, and watches the pleasant, unconscious air with which the boys enter and take possession; the frankness with which, as Hood says, "they push us from our forms," or take the last magazine, or occupy the billiard-room or the bath-room during the favorite hours, and appropriate the conversation during the intermediate period. Many a parent will feel very small before he sorrowfully parts with his youngsters. The fact is that we have come to a state of things in which adults must be content to "fag" for the boys. It is the fate of age, and must be submitted to. As soon as the fatal trunks are dumped down at the door, and the juveniles' caps are hung up in the hall, we know our doom, and must resign ourselves to an abridged estate, if we would not be execrated by all right-thinking people as heartless old fogies. "The boys have come," and everybody else is henceforth a tenant-at-will in his own house. Business, pleasures, engagements, all must give way for a time to the young tyrants of our homes.

There is no need to be cynical or unfair, or to try to make out that lads are a whit worse at bottom than they were; perhaps they are, in many respects, better. There are many extenuating circumstances connected with the form — the mild form — of domestic slavery of which we speak. Boys, it must be owned, impose no harsh and degrading conditions on their elderly victims. They are, on the whole, indulgent masters. They like to see their grown-up relatives happy and content. They ask no more than that their subjects should be obedient, and give them their attention and the results of their labor; and most of the worst sides of this tyranny will, we must say, compare favorably with the best aspects of slavery as seen in other lands. The "governor" is accorded a nominal precedence, in accordance with traditional usages or prejudices. No lad thinks of disputing his right to control his cheque-book, if his monopoly of his favorite armchair is a little in danger. He is treated by every well-disposed lad with the respect due to a bishop in partibus, or a colonial prelate; and it is only in regard to some trivial matters that he is taught to feel that, in the view of the young generation, "the child is father to the man" in a sense which Wordsworth scarcely contemplated. The lads treat their sisters, too, with chivalry, of course, and if they will listen to school chit-chat by the hour, and if they will not obtrude their own slightly silly and irrelevant interests on the patient, long-suffering, but still human Tom or Harry, they will be voted delightful companions. In fact, it must be said of “our masters" that they are considerate to every member of the household, from the head of the family to puss coiled on the hearth-rug. They insist only that every one shall bear in mind that "the boys are come," and that they are not to be lightly interfered with if on wet days they keep sliding down the banisters, against the orders of the former, or pull and pinch the tail of the latter in a vacant minute, or persist in saddling and mounting the lame pony, against the remonstrances and entreaties of the groom. We doubt much whether one household in England will have cause to murmur during the holidays, if only the lads get their own way, and if their elders do not keep thinking and talking about their own stupid affairs.

But we must not defend youth through thick and thin. There is one peculiarity of the gentle tyranny now so cheerfully acquiesced in by every true and tenderhearted parent, which, we venture to assert, has never been approached in any species of servitude hitherto known. Boys usurp the entire conversation, they peremptorily determine what it shall be. As far as we know, no tyranny has ever imposed this condition on its helots. The Romans may, by indirect means, have virtually imposed the Latin tongue on some of their conquered provinces, but it is not averred in history that they sternly regulated the subjects of private discourse among the vanquished. Certainly as long as a Gaul or a Dacian spoke in Latin, he might please himself as to what he talked about. The negroes might sing their songs or hymns, or preach their sermons, at will; the tunes and texts were not given out by their masters, who were indifferent, so long as the overseer was satisfied with their hoeing. But this is not so with us. Boys dictate the subjects of conversation, peremptorily impose their own interests on all comers, and resent ill-advised attempts to turn the talk into channels which concern their elders. The entrance of a public-school lad into a drawing-room or railway-carriage where conversation is going on necessitates a complete change of topic. When a friend had spoken to Balzac for some time of a great domestic calamity, the impatient novelist cut him short by saying, "Let us return to realities; let us talk of Eugénie Grandet." And in some such spirit acts the amiable young tyrant who finds himself among half-a-dozen men and women, middle-aged and elderly. The last novel or poem of merit, the début of a new singer at her Majesty's theatre, the position of the Eastern question, the correspondence between Lord Beaconsfield and Mr. Gladstone, or the price of "Turks" or "Egyptians," may be the theme that is up. But each one must pocket his special interest or enthusiasm, when our young hero proceeds to bring the conversation to realities, — that is, to cricket, football, and "our fellows." An ignoramus who has nothing to say about "dribbling," and does not know all about the crack bowlers or the highest scores of the season, must sit in silence. The weak-minded person who chats for two or three minutes about juvenile things and then slides back into his old talk, under the delusion that he has done his duty and paid due homage, is soon given to understand that he is not to escape in that way, — that he must toe the line, and that he must not thus trifle with his juniors.

The truth is that youth, or rather boyhood, has become the most important time of life, and that boys now know and feel this. In other days, it was left to age to speak of the joys of youth. Its possessors, little conscious of their wealth, looked forward with straining, longing eyes to manhood, its freedom and its strength. This has changed. Boys wish to be and remain boys as long as possible, and when grown to man's estate, they desire to be at least "old boys." They have learned to feel that the best things of life come before twenty, and that they will sink from the position of masters into that of slaves and “fags" when that age is past. To tell how they have managed to attain their present position of power, would be a long story; it would be a useless inquiry, too, for their ascendancy is too firmly established to be disturbed by their weak elders. But what wonder is there if it exists? What Eastern despot had ever more flatterers? Do the nostrils of the Grand Lama or the sultan inhale more of the incense of adulation than the modern English schoolboy, who stands it all, we must say, in a truly surprising way. Newspapers chronicle and comment on his sports and little victories as if they were events of great national interest. His teachers make his scholastic successes the theme of speeches; and there is a great conspiracy to make out that he is the most important person in the scheme of existence. Any one may see an illustration of the sense of awe and importance with which all concerned regard the modern schoolboy and his affairs, by turning to a very pleasant little book, excellently written, called "Uppingham-by-the-Sea." (Macmillan and Co.) It is the history of the Uppingham School while it was in quarantine at the remote Welsh village of Borth, and it is impossible to read it without a feeling of the huge proportions which an incident in the history of a school may assume, in the eyes of those who belong to it. It was, no doubt, a plucky and useful thing to transplant the school, after scarlet-fever had twice shown itself at Uppingham, and the narrative of the migration is flowing and pleasant. But when we find chapters telling how the dinners were eaten at Borth and how the sudden strain on the laundry was met, all fortified with stately quotations from Shakespeare and the "Iliad" — when we find the narrative as solemn and highly-wrought as De Quincey's or Gibbon's — we realize the overwhelming and even alarming importance of the modern schoolboy, and how he has come to be Cæsar to us all.