Latest / The H. G. Wells Library / The New Machiavelli Chapter 3 Part 2

Transcript

The New Machiavelli Chapter 3 Part 2 · The H. G. Wells Library

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Chapter three, Section two of the New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Antoniogus five. These things stabbed through my life, intimations of
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: things above and below and before me. They had an
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: air of being no more than incidents interruptions. The broad
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: substance of my existence at this time was the city
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Merchant's school home was a place where I slept and read,
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: and the mooning explorations of the Southeastern Postal District, which
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: occupied the restless evenings and spare days of my vacations,
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: mere interstices giving glimpses of enigmatical lights and distant spaces
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: between the woven threads of a schoolboy's career. School life
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: began for me every morning at Herne Hill, for there
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: I was joined by three or four other boys, and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the rest of the way we went together. Most of
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: the streets and roads we traversed in our morning's walk
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: from Victoria are still intact. The storms of rebuilding that
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: have submerred so much of my boyhood's London have passed
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: and left them, and I have revived the impression of
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: them again and again in recent years, as I have
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: clattered dinner wood in a handsome or hummed along in
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: a motor cab to some engagement, the main gate still
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: looks out with the same expression of ancient, well proportioned
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: kindliness upon Saint Margaret's close. There are imposing new science
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: laboratories in Chambers Street, indeed, but the old playing fields
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: are unaltered, except for the big electric trams that go
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: droning and spitting blue flashes along the western boundary. I
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: know Rat and the new head very well, but I
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: have not been inside the school to see if it
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: has changed at all. Since I went up to Carebridge.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I took all they put before us very readily as
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: a boy, for I had a mind of vigorous appetite.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: But since I have grown mentally to man's estate and
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: developed a more and more comprehensive view of our national
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: process and our national needs, I am more and more
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: struck by the oddity of the educational methods pursued their
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: aimless disconnectedness from the constructive forces in the community. I suppose,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: if we are to view the public school as anything
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: more than an institution that has just chanced to happen,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: we mist treated us. Having a definite function towards the
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: general scheme of the nation, as being in a sense
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: designed to take the crude young male of the more
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: or less responsible class, to correct his harsh egotisms, broaden
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: his outlook, give him a grasp of the contemporary developments
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: he will presently be called upon to influence and control,
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: and send him onto the university to be made a
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: leading and ruling social man. It is easy enough to
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: carpet schoolmasters and set up for an educational reformer, I know.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: But still it is impossible not to feel how infinitely
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: more effectually, given certain impossibilities, perhaps the job might be done.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: My memory of school has indeed no hint whatever of
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: that quality of elucidation. It seems reasonable to demand from it.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Here all about me was London a vast inexplicable being,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: a vortex of gigantic forces that filled and overwhelmed me
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: with impressions that stirred my imagination to perpetual vague inquiry.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: And my school not only offered no key to it,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: but had practically no comment to make upon it at all.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: We were within three miles of Westminster and Charing Cross,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: the government offices of a fifth of mankind were all
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: within an hour's stroll. Eight economic changes were going on
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: under our eyes. Now the hoardings flamed with election placards.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Now the Salvation Army, and now the unemployed came trailing
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: in procession through the winter gray streets. Now the newspaper
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: placards outside news shops told of battles in strange places, now,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: of amazing discoveries. Now of sinister crimes, abject squalor and poverty,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: imperial splendor and luxury, Buckingham Palace, rotten Row, Mayfair, the
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: slums of Pimlico, garbage littered streets of balling costermongers, the
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: inky silver of the barge laden Thames. Such was the
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: background of our days. We went across Saint Margaret's Close
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: and through the school gate into a quiet, puerile world.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Apart from all these things, we joined in the earnest
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: acquirement of all that was necessary for Greek epigrams and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Latin verse, and for the rest played go. We dip
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: down into something clear and elegantly proportioned and time worn,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: and for all its high resolve of stalwart virility, a
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: little feeble like our blackened and decayed portals by Inigo Jones.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: Within we were taught as the chief subjects of instruction
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Latin and Greek. We were taught very badly, because the
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: men who taught us did not habitually use either of
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: these languages. Nobody uses them anymore now, except perhaps for
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: the Latin of a few Levantine monasteries. At the utmost
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: our men read them. We were taught these languages because
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: long ago Latin had been the language of civilization, the
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: one way of escape from the narrow and localized life
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: had lain in those days through Latin, and afterwards Greek
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: had come in as the vehicle of a flood of
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: new and amazing ideas. Once these two languages had been
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: the sole means of initiation to the detached criticism and
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: partial comprehension of the world. I can imagine the fierce
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: zeal of our first heads, Gardener and Roper, teaching Greek
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: like passionate missionaries, as a progressive Chinaman might teach English
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: to the boys of p King, clumsily, impatiently with rod
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: and harsh urgency, but sincerely patriotically, because they felt that
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: behind it lay revelations, the irresistible stimulus to a new
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: phase of history that was long ago, a new great world,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: a vaster imperialism had arisen about. The school had assimilated
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: all these amazing and incredible ideas, had gone to new
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: and yet more amazing developments of its own. But the
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: City Merchant's School still made the substance of its teaching
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Latin and Greek, still with no thought of rotating crops
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: sowed in a dream amidst the harvesting. There is no
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: fierceness left in the teaching now. Just after I went
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: up to Trinity Gates, are Head wrote a review article
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: in defense of our curriculum. In this, among other indiscretions,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: he asserted that it was impossible to write good English
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: without an illuminating knowledge of the classic tongues, and he
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: split an infinitive and failed to button up a sentence
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: in saying so. His main argument conceded every objection a
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: reasonable person could make to the City Merchant's curriculum. He
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: admitted that translation had now placed all the wisdom of
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: the past at a common man's disposal, that scarcely a
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: field of endeavor remained in which modern work had not
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: long since passed beyond the ancient achievement. He disclaimed any utility.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: But there was, he said, a peculiar magic in these
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: grammatical exercises. No other subjects of instruction possessed. Nothing else
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: provided the same strengthening an orderly discipline for the mind.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: He said that, knowing the senior classics, he did himself
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a senior classic. Yet in a dim confused way, I
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: think he was making out a case. In schools as
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: we knew them, and with the sort of assistant available,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: the sort of assistant who has been trained entirely on
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the old lines, he could see no other teaching so
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: effectual in developing attention, restraint, sustained constructive effort, and various
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: yet systematic adjustment. And that was as far as his
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: imagination could go. It is infinitely easier to begin organize
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: human affairs than end them. The curriculum and the social
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: organization of the English public school are the crowning instances
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: of that. They go on because they have begun. Schools
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: are not only immortal institutions, but reproduct ones. Our founder,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: yabezarvon knew nothing. I am sure of Gates pedagogic values,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: and would I feel certain, have dealt with them disrespectfully.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: But public schools and university colleges sprang into existence correlated
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: the scholars went on to the universities and came back
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: to teach the schools, to teach as they themselves had
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: been taught, before they had ever made any real use
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: of the teaching. The crowd of boys herded together, a
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: crowd perpetually renewed, and unbrokenly. The same adjusted itself by
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: means of spontaneously developed institutions in a century. By its
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: very success, this revolutionary innovation of Renaissance public schools had
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: become an immense tradition, woven closely into the fabric of
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: the national life. Intelligent and powerful people ceased to talk
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Latin or read Greek. They had got what was wanted.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: But that only left the school master the freer to
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: elaborate his point. Since most man of any importance or
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: influence in the country had been through the mill, it
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: was naturally a little difficult to persuade them that it
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: was not quite the best and most ennobling mill the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: wit of man could devise. And moreover, they did not
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: want their children made strange to them. There was all
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the machinery and all the men needed to teach the
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: old subjects, and none to teach whatever knew the critic
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: might propose. Such science instruction as my father gave, seemed
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: indeed the uninviting alternative to the classical grind. It was
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: certainly in altogether inferer instruments at that time. So it
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: was I occupied my mind with the exact study of
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: dead languages for seven long years. It was the strangest
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: of detachments. We would sit under the desk of such
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: a master as Topham, like creatures who had fallen into
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: an enchanted pit, and he would do so his considerable
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: best to work us up to enthusiasm for let us say,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: a Greek play. If we flagged, he would lash himself
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to revive us. He would walk about the classroom mouthing
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: great lines in a rich roar, and asking us with
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: a flushed face and shining eyes if it was not glorious.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: The very sight of Greek letters brings back to me
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: the dingy, faded ink splash quality of our classroom, the
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: banging of books, Topham's disordered hair, the scene of his
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: alpaca gown, his deep unmusical intonations, and the wide striding
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: of his creaking boots. Glorious and being plastic human beings.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: We would consent that it was glorious, and some of
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: us even achieved an answering reverberation and a sympathetic flush.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I at times responded freely. We all accepted from him
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: unquestioningly that these melodies, these strange sounds, exceeded any possibility
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: of beauty that lay in the Gothic intricacy, the splash
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: and glitter, the jar and recovery, the stabbing lights, the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: heights and broad distances of our English tongue. That indeed
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: was the chief sin of him. It was not that
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: he was for Greek and Latin, but that he was
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: fiercely against every beauty that was neither classic nor deferred
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: to classical canons. And what exactly did we make of it,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: we seniors, who understood it best. We visualized dimly through
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: that dust and the grammatical difficulties, the spectacle of the
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: chorus chanting grotesquely helping out protagonist and antagonists, masked and buskined,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: with the telling of incomprehensible parricides, of inexplicable incest of gods,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: faded beyond symbolism of that relentless law we did not
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: believe in for a moment that no modern Western European
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: can believe. We thought of the characters in the unconvincing
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: whigs and costumes of our school performance. No Gilbert Murray
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: had come as yet to touch these things to life again.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: It was like the ghost of an antiquarian's toy theater,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: a ghost that crumbled and condensed into a gritty dust
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: of construing as one looked at it marks Shindy's prayers
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: and punishments, all flavored with the leathery stuffiness of time
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: worn big Hall. And then how one would come through
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: our gray old gate into the evening light and the
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: spectacle of London, hurrying like a cataract, London in black
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: and brown and blue and gleaming silver, roaring like the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: very loom of time. We came out into the new world.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: No teacher has yet had the power and courage to
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: grasp and expound life and death sang all about one,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: joys and fears on such a scale, in such an
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: intricacy as never Greened nor Roman knew. The interminable procession
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: of horse omnibuses went lumbering past, bearing countless people. We
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: knew not whence we knew, not whither hansoms, clattered foot,
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: passengers jostled one A thousand appeals of shop and boarding
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: caught the eye. The multi colored lights of window and
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: street mingled with the warm glow of the declining day,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: under the softly flushing London skies. The ever changing placards,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the shouting news vendors told of a kaleidoscopic drama all
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: about the globe. One did not realize what had happened
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: to us, but the voice of Topham was suddenly drowned
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: and lost. He and his minute remote gesticulations that submerged
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: and isolated curriculum did not even join on to living
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: interests where it might have done. So we were left
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: absolutely to the hints of the newspapers, to casual political speeches,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: to the cartoons of the comic papers, or a chance
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: reading of some socialist pamphlet for any general ideas whatever
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: about the huge, swirling world process in which we found ourselves.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I always look back with particular exasperation to the cessation
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: of our modern history at the year eighteen fifteen. There
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: it pulled up abruptly, as though it had come upon
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: something indelicate. But after all, what would top a more
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: flack have maid of the huge adjustments of the nineteenth century.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Flack was the chief cricketer on the staff. He belonged
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: to that great cult which pretends that the place of
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: this or that county in the struggle for the championship
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: is a matter of supreme importance to boys. He obliged
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: us to effect a passionate interest in the progress of
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: county matches, to work up our natural enthusiasms. What a
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: fuss there will be when some well trained boy, panting
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: as if from marathon, appear with an evening paper. I say, you, chaps,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Middlesex all out for one hundred and five. Under flax pressure,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I became, my confess a cricket humbug of the first class.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I applied myself industriously, year by year to mastering scores
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: and averages. I pretended that Lords or the Oval were
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the place's nearest paradise for me. I never went to either.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: Through a slight mistake about the county boundary, I adopted
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: Surrey for my loyalty, though as a matter of fact
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: we were by some five hundred yards or so in Kent.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: It did quite as well for my purposes. I bowled
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: rather straight and fast, and spent endless hours acquiring the
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: skill to bowl Flak out. He was a bat in
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: the Corinthian style, rich and voluminous, and succumbed very easily
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: to a low shooter or an unexpected Yorker, but usually
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: he was caught early by long. The difficulty was to
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: bowl him before he got caught. He loved to lift
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: a ball to leg. After one had clean bolt him
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: at the practiced nets, one deliberately gave him a ball
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: to leg just to make him feel nice again. Flack
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: went about a world of marvels, dreaming of leg hits.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: He has been observed going across the park on his
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: way to his highly respectable club in Piccadilly, to break
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: from profound musings into a strange brief dance that ended
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: with an imaginary swipe with his umbrella a roofer over
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: the trees towards Buckingham Palace. The hit accomplished, Flak resumed
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: his way, inadequately instructed, foreigners would pass him in terror,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: needlessly alert. Six these schoolmasters moved through my memory as
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: always a little distant and more than a little incomprehensible,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: except when they wore flannels. I saw them almost always
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: in old college caps and gowns, a uniform which greatly
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: increased their detachment from the world of actual men. Gates
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: the head was a lean, looselim man, rather stupid, I
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: discovered when I reached the sixth and came into contact
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: with him, but honest, simple, and very eager to be
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: liberal minded. He was bold, with an almost conical baldness,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: with a grizzled, pointed beard, small featured, and under the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: stresses of a teitgeist that demanded liberality. With an expression
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: of puzzled but resolute resistance to his own unalterable opinions.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: He made a tall, dignified figure in his gown. In
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: my junior days, he spoke to me only three or
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: four times, and then he annoyed me by giving me
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: a wrong surname. It was a sore point, because I
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: was an outsider and not one of the old school families,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: the shoesmiths, the nailers, the markloths, the Tophams, the Pevices,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and such like, who came generation after generation. I recall
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: him most vividly against the background of faded brown book
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: backs in the old library in which we less destructive
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: seniors were trusted to work with. The light from the
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: stained glass window falling in colored patches on his face.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: It gave him the appearance of having no color of
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: his own. He had a habit of scratching the beard
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: on his cheek as he talked, and he used to
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: come and consult us about things, and invariably do as
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: we said that in his phraseology was maintaining the traditions
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: of the school. He had indeed an effect not of
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: a man directing a school, but of a man captured
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and directed by a school. Dead and gone. Elizabethans had
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: forgotten a monster that could carry him about in its mouth,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: yet being a man, as I say, with his hair
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: a little stir by seitegeist that made for change. Gates
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: did at times display a disposition towards developments. City merchants
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: had no modern side, and utilitarian spirits were carping in
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: the Palmal Gazette and elsewhere at the omissions from our curriculum,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: and particularly at our want of German. Moreover, four classes
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: still worked together, with much clashing and uproar in the
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: old big hall that had once held in a common
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: tumult the entire school. Gates used to come and talk
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: to us older fellows about these things. I don't wish
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to innovate unduly, he used to say, But we ought
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: to get in some German you know, for those who
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: like it. The army men will be wanting it some
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: of these days. He referred to the organization of regular
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: evening preparation for the lower boys in Big Hall as
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: a revolutionary change. But he achieved it, and he declared,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: he began the replacement of the hacked wooden tables at
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: which the boys had worked since Tudor days, by sloping
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: desks with safety ink pots and scientifically adjustable seats. With
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: grave misgivings. And though he never birched a boy in
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: his life, and was I am convinced morally incapable of
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: such a scuffle, he retained the block and birch in
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: the school through all his term of office, and spoke
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: at the headmaster's conference in temperate approval of corporal chastisement,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: comparing it, dear soul, to the power of the sword.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: I wish I could, in some measure and without tediousness,
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: convey the effect of his discourses to general assembly in
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Big Hall. But that is like trying to draw the
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: obverse and reverse of a sixpence worn to complete illegibility.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: His tall, fine figure stood high on the days. His
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: thoughtful tenor filled the air as he steered his hazardous
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: way through sentences that dragged in conclusive tales and dropped
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: redundant prepositions, And he pleaded, ever so urgently, ever so finally,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: that what we all knew for sin was sinful, and
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: on the whole best avoided altogether. And so went on
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: with deepening notes, and even with short, arresting gestures of
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the right arm and hand to stir and exhort us
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: towards goodness, towards that modern, unsectarian goodness, goodness in general,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: and nothing in particular, which the zeitguy seemed to indicate.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: In those transitional years seven, the school never quite got
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: hold of me. Partly, I think that was because I
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: was a day boy and so freer than most of
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the boys, Partly because of a temperamental disposition to see
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: things in my own way and have my private dreams.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Partly because I was a little antagonized by the family
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: traditions that ran through the school. I was made to
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: feel at first that I was a rank outsider, and
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: I know quite forgot it. I suffered very little bullying,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and I never had a fight. In all my time,
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: there were only three fights. But I followed my own curiosities.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: I was already a very keen theologian politician before I
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: was fifteen. I was also intensely interested in modern warfare.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I read the morning papers in the reading room during
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: the midday recess, never missed the illustrated weeklies, and often,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: when I could afford it, I bought a pal Maw
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Gazette on my way home. I do not think that
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I was very exceptional in that most intelligent boys, I
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: believe want naturally to be men and are keenly interested
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: in men's affairs. There is not the universal passion for
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: a magnified puriality among them. It is customary to assume
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: I was indeed a voracious reader of everything but boys books,
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: which I detested, and fiction. I read histories, travel, popular science,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: and controversy with particular zen, and I loved maps. School
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: work and school games were quite subordinate affairs for me.
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: I worked well and made a passable figure at games,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and I do not think I was abnormally insensitive to
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the fine quality of our school, to the charm of
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: its medieval nucleus, its Gothic cloisters, its scraps of Palladian
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: and its dignified George and extensions. The contrast of the
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: old quiet that, in spite of our presence, pervaded it everywhere,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: with the rushing and impending London all about it was
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: indeed a continual pleasure to me. But these things were
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: certainly not the living and central interests of my life.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: I had to conceal my wide routelook to a certain
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: extent from the masters, even more than from the boys. Indeed,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I only let myself go freely with one boy Britain,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: my special chum, the son of the Agent General Friest Australia.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: We two discovered in a chance conversation are proposver map
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: in the library that were we both of us curious
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: why there were malaise in Madagascar and how the Mecca
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: pilgrims came from the East Indies before steamships were available.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: Neither of us had suspected that there was anyone at
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: all in the school who knew or cared a rap
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: about the Indian Ocean, except as water on the way
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: to India. But Britain had come up through the Suez Canal,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: and his ship had spoken a pilgrim ship on the way.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: It gave him a startling quality of living knowledge. From
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: these pilgrims we got to a comparative treatment of religions,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: and from that by a sudden plunge to entirely skeptical
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: and disrespectful confessions concerning Gates's last outbreak of simple piety
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: in school assembly. We became congenial intimates from that hour.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: The discovery of Britain happened to me when we were
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: both in the lower fifth. Previously, there had been a
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: water type composed ament between the books I read and
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: the thoughts they forgot on the one hand, and human
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: intercourse on the other. Now I really began my higher
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: education and aired and examined and developed in conversation the doubts,
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the ideas, the interpretations that had been forming in my mind.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: As we were both day boys with a good deal
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: of control over our time, we organized walks and expeditions together,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: and my habit of solitary and rather vague prowling gave
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: way to much more definite joint enterprises. I went several
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: times to his house. He was the youngest of several brothers,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: one of whom was a medical student, and let us
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: assist at the dissection of a cat, and once or
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: twice in vacation time, he came to Penge and we
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: went with parcels of provisions to do a thorough day
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: in the grounds and galleries of the Crystal Palace, ending
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: with the fireworks at close quarters. We went in a
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: river steamboat down to Greenwich and fired by that made
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: an excursion to Margate and back. We explored London Docks
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: and Bethnal Green Museum, Petticoat Lane, and all sorts of
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: out of the way places. Together we confessed shyly to
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: one another a common secret vice, phantom warfare. When we
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: walked alone and especially in the country. We had both
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: developed the same practice of fighting an imaginary battle about
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: us as we walked. As we went along, we were generals,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: and our attacks pushed along on either side, crouching and
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: gathering behind hedges, cresting ridges, occupying copses, rushing open spaces,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: fighting from house to house. The hillsides of our Penge
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: were honeycombed in my imagination, with the pits and trenches
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: I'd created to check a victorious invader coming out of Surrey.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: For him, West Kensington was chiefly important as the scene
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: of a desperate and successful last stand of insurrectionary troops
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: who had seized the navy, the bank and other advantages
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: against a Royalist army reinforced by Germans advancing for reasons
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: best known to themselves by way of harrow and ealing.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: It is a secret and solitary game, as we found
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: when we tried to play it together. We made a
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: success of that only once all the way down to Margate.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: We schemed defenses and assailed and fought them as we
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: came back against the sunset. Afterwards we recapitulated all that
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: conflict by means of a large scale map of the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Thames and little paper iron clads in plan cut out
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: of paper. A subsequent revival of these imaginings was brought
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: about by Britain's luck in getting through a friend of
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: his father's admission for us both to the spectacle of
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: volunteer officers fighting the war game in Caxton Hall, we
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: developed a war game of our own at Britain's home,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: with nearly a couple of hundred lead soldiers, some excellent
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: spring cannons that shot hard and true, at six yards
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: hills of books and a constantly elaborated set of rules.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: For some months that occupied an immense proportion of our leisure.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Some of our battles lasted several days. We kept the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: game a profound secret from the other fellows. They would
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: not have understood. And we also began, it was certainly
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: before we were sixteen, to write for the sake of writing.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: We liked writing. We had discovered Lamb and the best
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: of the Middle articles in such weeklies as the Saturday Gazette,
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: and we imitated them. Our minds were full of dim,
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: uncertain things we wanted to drag out into the light
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: of expression. Britain had got hold of in Memoriam and
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: I had disinterred Pope's essay on Man and Rabbi ben Ezra,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: and these things had set our theological and cosmic solicititudes talking.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: I was somewhere between sixteen and eighteen. I know when
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: he and I walked along the Thames Embankment, confessing shamefully
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: to one another that we had never read Lucretius. We
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: thought everyone who mattered had read Lucretius. When I was
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: nearly sixteen, my mother was taken ill, very suddenly and
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: died of some perplexing complaint that involved a post mortem examination.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: It was I think the trouble that has since those
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: days been recognized as appendicitis. This led to a considerable
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: change in my circumstances. The house at Penge was given up,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: and my staff at Your Uncle arranged from me to
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: lodge during school terms with a needy solicitor and his
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: wife in Vickers Street, Southwest, about a mile and a
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: half from the school. So it was I came right
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: into London. I had almost two years of London before
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: I went to Cambridge. Those were our great days to
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: go together. Afterwards we were torn apart. Britain went to Oxford,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and our circumstances never afterwards threw us continuously together until
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: the days of the Blue Weekly. As boys, we walked together,
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: read and discussed the same books, pursued the same inquiries.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: We got a reputation as inseparables and the nickname of
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the Rose and the Lily. For Britain was short and
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: thick set, with dark, close curling hair and a ruddy
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Irish type of face. I was lean and fair haired
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: and some inches taller than he. Our talk ranged widely,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: and yet had certain very definite limitations. We were amazingly
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: free with politics and religion. We went to that little
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: meetinghouse of William Morris's at Hammersmith and worked out the
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: principles of socialism pretty thoroughly, and we got up the
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Darwinian theory with the help of Britain's medical student brother.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: And the galleries of the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: Those wonderful cases on the ground floor, illustrating mimicry, dimorphism
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: and so forth, were new in our times, and we
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: went through them with earnest industry and tried over our
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Darwinism in the light of that. Such topics we did exhaustively.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I do not remember any
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: discussion whatever of human sex or sexual relationships there. In
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: spite of intense secret curiosities, our lips were sealed by
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: a peculiar shyness, and I do not believe we ever
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: had occasion either of us to use the word love.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: It was not only that we were instinctively shy of
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: the subject, but that we were mightily ashamed of the
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: extent of our ignorance and our uncertainty in these matters.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: We evaded them elaborately with an assumption of exhaustive knowledge.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: We certainly had no shyness about theology. We mark the
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: emancipation of our spirits from the frightful teachings that had
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: oppressed our boyhood by much indulgence in blasphemous wit. We
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: had a secret literature of irreverent rhymes and a secret
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: art of theological caricature. Britain's father had delighted his family
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: by reading aloud from doctor Richard Garnett's Twilight of the Gods,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: and Britain conveyed the precious volume to me. That and
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: the bab Ballads were the inspiration of some of our
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: earliest lucubrations. For an imaginative boy, the first experience of
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: writing is like a tiger's first taste of blood, and
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: our literary flowerings led very directly to the revival of
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: the school magazine, which had been comatosed for some years.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: But there we came upon a disappointment. Eight. In that
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: revival we associated certain other of the sixth form books,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: a notably one for whom our enterprise was to lay
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: the foundations of a career that has ended in the
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: House of Lords. Arthur Cossington now Lord Paddockhurst. Cossington was
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: at that time a rather heavy, rather good looking boy
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: who was chiefly eminent in cricket, an outsider, even as
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: we were and preoccupied. No doubt had we been sufficiently
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: detached to observe him with private imaginings. Very much of
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: the same quality and spirit as our own. He was,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: we were inclined to think rather a sentimentalist, rather a poseur.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: He affected a concise, emphatic style, played chess very well,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: betrayed a belief in will power, and earned Britain secret hostility, Britain,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: being a slaven by the invariable neatness of his collars
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: and ties. He came into our magazine with a vigor
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: that we found extremely surprising and unwelcome. Britain and I
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: had wanted to write. We had indeed figured our project
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: modestly as a manuscript magazine of satirical, liberal and brilliant literature,
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: by which, in some rather inexplicable way, the vague tumult
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: of ideas that teemed within us was to find form
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: and expression. Cossington, it was manifest from the outset, wanted
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: neither to write nor writing, but a magazine. I remember
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: the inaugural meeting in Shoesmith Major's study. We had had
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: great trouble in getting it together, and how effectually Cossington
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: bolted with the proposal. I think we fellows ought to
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: run a magazine, said Cossington. The school used to have one.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: A school like this ought to have a magazine. The
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: last one died in eighty four, said Shu Smith from
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the hearth Rug called the Observer rot rather bad title,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: said Cossington. There was a tackler before that, said Britain,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: sitting on the writing table at the window that was
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: closed to deaden the cries of the lower school at play,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: and clashing his boots together. We want something suggestive of
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: city merchants. City merchandise, said Britain. Too fanciful. What of
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Ourvonian Richard Arvan was our founder? And it seems almost
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: a duty. They call them all Usians or onions, said Britain.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: I like city merchandise, I said, we could probably find
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: a quotation to suggest, Oh, mix good things, Cossington regarded
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: me abstractly. Don't want to put the accent on the city,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: do we, said Shoesmith, who had a feeling for county families,
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and Naylor supported him by murmur of approval. We ought
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: to call it the Rvonian decided Cossington. And we might
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: very well have underneath with which is incorporated the observer
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: that picks up the old traditions, makes an appeal to
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: old boys and all that, And it gives us something
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: to print under the title. I still held out for
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: city merchandise, which had taken my fancy. Some of the
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: chap's people won't like it, said Nayla. Certain not to.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: And it sounds run, sounds weird, said a boy who
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: had not hitherto spoken. We aren't going to do anything queer,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: said Shoesmith, pointedly, not looking at Britain. The question of
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: the title had manifestly gone against us. Oh have it,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: Harvonian I said. And next, what size shall we have?
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Said Cossington, Something like McMillan's magazine or Longman's. Longman's is
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: better because it has a whole page, not columns. It
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: makes no end of difference to one's effects. What effects,
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: asked shu Smith abruptly. Oh, a pause or a white
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: line or anything you've got to write closer for a
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: double column. It's nuggety. You can't get a swing on
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: your prose. I had discussed this thoroughly with Britain. If
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: the fellows are going to write, began Britain. To keep
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: off fine writing, said shoe Smith. It's cheek. I vote.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: We don't have any. We shan't get any, said Cossington,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: and then as an olive branch to me unless Remington
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: does a bit or Britain. But it's no good making
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: too much space for it. We ought to be very
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: careful about the writing, said shoe Smith. We don't want
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: to give ourselves away. I vote. We ask Old Topham
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: to see us through, said Naylor. Britain groaned aloud, and
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: everyone regarded him. Greek epigram's on the fellow's names, he said,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: small beer in ancient bottles. Let's get a stuff broody
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: hen to sit on the magazine. We might do worse
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: than a greep epigram, said Cossington. One in each number.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: It impresses parents and keeps up our classical tradition, and
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the masters can help. We don't want to antagonize them.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: Of course, we've got to departmentalize. Writing is only one
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: section of the thing. The Rvonian has to stand for
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the school. There's questions of space and questions of expense.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: We can't turn out a great chunk of printed prose,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: like like wet cold toast and call it a magazine,
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Britain writhed, appreciating the image. There's to be a section
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: of sports. You must do that. I'm not going to
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: do any fine writing, said Shoesmith. What you've got to
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: do is just to list all the chaps and put
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: a note to their play. Nayla Minor must pass more.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Football isn't the place for extreme individualism. Amerson shapes well
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: as half back. Things like that. I could do that,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: all right, said Shoesmith, brightening and manifestly becoming pregnant with judgments.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: One great thing about a magazine of this sort, said Cossington,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: is to mention just as many names as you can
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: in each number. It keeps the interest alive. Chaps will
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: turn it over looking for their own little bit. Then
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: it all lights up for them. Any reports of matches,
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Shoesmith broke from his meditation, rather with comments. Nayla surpassed
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: himself and negotiated the lemon safely home, said Shoesmith. Shut it,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: said Naylor, modestly exactly, said Cossington that gives us three features,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: touching them off on his fingers, epigram, Litery, section Sports.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Then we want a section to shove anything into a
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: joke and notice of anything that's going on. So on
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: our notebook, Oh hell, said Britain and clashed his boots
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: to the silent disapproval of everyone. Well don't we unless
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: we have our notebooks begin on the front page. It
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: gives us scrappy effect to do that. We want something
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: manly and straightforward and a bit thoughtful about patriotism, say
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: or Espreed's a core or after Life. I looked at Britain.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Hitherto we had not considered Cossington mattered very much in
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: the world. He went over us as a motor car
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: goes over a dog. There was a sort of energy
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: about him, a new sort of energy to us. We
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: had never realized that anything of the sort existed in
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: the world. We were hopelessly at a disadvantage. Almost instantly,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: we had developed a clear and detailed vision of a
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: magazine made up of everything that was most acceptable in
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: the magazines that flourished in the adult world about us,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: and had determined to make it a success. He had,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: by kind of instinct as it were, synthetically plagiarized every
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: successful magazine and breathed into this dusty mixture the breath
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: of life. He was elected at his own suggestion managing director,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: with the earnest support of Shuesmith and Naylor, and conducted
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: the magazine so successfully and brilliantly that he even got
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: a whole back page of advertisements from the big sports
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: shop in Hobourn, and made the printers pay at the
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: same rate for a notice of certain books of their own,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: which they said they had inserted by inadvertency to fill
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: up space. The only literary contribution in the first number
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: was a column by Topham in faultless stereotyped English in
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: depreciation of some fancied evil called utilitarian studies, and ending
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: with that noble old quotation to the glory that was
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. And Flack crowded
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: us out of number two with a bright little paper
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: on the humors of cricket, and the head himself was
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: profusely thoughtful all over the editorial under the heading of
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: the school Chapel. And how it seems for an old
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: boy Britain, and I found it difficult to express to
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: each other with any grace or precision, what we felt
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: about that magazine. End of Chapter three, Section two,