that.” (Shouts of “Your play.“) “Nonsense! ’Twasn’t the wind and kick-off either—that wouldn’t do it. ’Twasn’t because we’ve half a dozen of the best players in the school, as we have. I wouldn’t change Warner, and Hedge, and Crab, and the young un, for any six on their side.” (Violent cheers.) “But half a dozen fellows can’t keep it up for two hours against two hundred. Why is it, then? I’ll tell you what I think. It’s because we’ve more reliance on one another, more of a house feeling, more fellowship than the School can have. Each of us knows and can depend on his next-hand man better. That’s why we beat ’em to-day. We’ve union, they’ve division—there’s the secret.” (Cheers.) “But how’s this to be kept up? How’s it to be improved? That’s the question. For I take it we’re all in earnest about beating the School, whatever else we care about. I know I’d sooner win two School-house matches running than get the Balliol scholarship any day.” (Frantic cheers.)
“Now, I’m as proud of the house as any one. I believe it’s the best house in the school, out and out.” (Cheers.) “But it’s a long way from what I want to see it. First, there’s a deal of bullying going on. I know it well. I don’t pry about and interfere; that only makes it more underhand, and encourages the small boys to come to us with their fingers in their eyes telling tales, and so we should be worse off than ever. It’s very little kindness for the sixth to meddle generally—you youngsters mind that. You’ll be all the better football players for learning to stand it, and to take your own parts, and fight it through. But depend on it, there’s nothing breaks up a house like bullying. Bullies are cowards, and one coward makes many; so good-bye to the School-house match if bullying gets ahead here.” (Loud applause from the small boys, who look meaningly at Flashman and other boys at the tables.) “Then there’s fuddling about in the public-house, and drinking bad spirits, and punch, and such rot-gut stuff. That won’t make good drop-kicks or chargers of you, take my word for it. You get plenty of good beer here, and that’s enough for you; and drinking isn’t fine or manly, whatever some of you may think of it.
“One other thing I must have a word about. A lot of you think and say, for I’ve heard you, ‘There’s this new Doctor hasn’t been here so long as some of us, and he’s changing all the old customs. Rugby, and the Schoolhouse especially, are going to the dogs. Stand up for the good old ways, and down with the Doctor!’ Now I’m as fond of old Rugby customs and ways as any of you, and I’ve been here longer than any of you, and I’ll give you a word of advice in time, for I shouldn’t like to see any of you getting sacked. ‘Down with the Doctor’s’ easier said than done. You’ll find him pretty tight on his perch, I take it, and an awkwardish customer to handle in that line. Besides now, what customs has he put down? There was the good old custom of taking the linchpins out of the farmers’ and bagmen’s gigs at the fairs, and a cowardly, blackguard custom it was. We all know what came of it, and no wonder the Doctor objected to it. But come now, any of you, name a custom that he has put down.”
“The hounds,” calls out a fifth-form boy, clad in a green cutaway with brass buttons and cord trousers, the leader of the sporting interest, and reputed a great rider and keen hand generally.
“Well, we had six or seven mangy harriers and beagles belonging to the house, I’ll allow, and had had them for years, and that the Doctor put them down. But what good ever came of them? Only rows with all the keepers for ten miles round; and big-side hare-and-hounds is better fun ten times over. What else?”
No answer.
“Well, I won’t go on. Think it over for yourselves. You’ll find, I believe, that he don’t meddle with any one that’s worth keeping. And mind now, I say again, look out for squalls if you will go your own way, and that way ain’t the Doctor’s, for it’ll lead to grief. You all know that I’m not the fellow to back a master through thick and thin. If I saw him stopping football, or cricket, or bathing, or sparring, I’d be as ready as any fellow to stand up about it. But he don’t; he encourages them. Didn’t you see him out to-day for half an hour watching us?” (loud cheers for the Doctor);
“and he’s a strong, true man, and a wise one too, and a public-school man too” (cheers), “and so let’s stick to him, and talk no more rot, and drink his health as the head of the house.” (Loud cheers.) “And now I’ve done blowing up, and very glad I am to have done. But it’s a solemn thing to be thinking of leaving a place which one has lived in and loved for eight years; and if one can say a word for the good of the old house at such a time, why, it should be said, whether bitter or sweet. If I hadn’t been proud of the house and you—ay, no one knows how proud—I shouldn’t be blowing you up. And now let’s get to singing. But before I sit down I must give you a toast to be drunk with three-times-three and all the honours. It’s a toast which I hope every one of us, wherever he may go hereafter, will never fail to drink when he thinks of the brave, bright days of his boyhood. It’s a toast which should bind us all together, and to those who’ve gone before and who’ll come after us here. It is the dear old School-house—the best house of the best school in England!”
My dear boys, old and young, you who have belonged, or do belong, to other schools and other houses, don’t begin throwing my poor little book about the room, and abusing me and it, and vowing you’ll read no more when you get to this point. I allow you’ve provocation for it. But come now—would you, any of you, give a fig for a fellow who didn’t believe in and stand up for his own house and his own school? You know you wouldn’t. Then don’t object to me cracking up the old School house, Rugby. Haven’t I a right to do it, when I’m taking all the trouble of writing this true history for all of your benefits? If you ain’t satisfied, go and write the history of your own houses in your own times, and say all you know for your own schools and houses, provided it’s true, and I’ll read it without abusing you.
The last few words hit the audience in their weakest place. They had been not altogether enthusiastic at several parts of old Brooke’s speech; but “the best house of the best school in England” was too much for them all, and carried even the sporting and drinking interests off their legs into rapturous applause, and (it is to be hoped) resolutions to lead a new life and remember old Brooke’s words—which, however, they didn’t altogether do, as will appear hereafter.
But it required all old Brooke’s popularity to carry down parts of his speech—especially that relating to the Doctor. For there are no such bigoted holders by established forms and customs, be they never so foolish or meaningless, as English school-boys—at least, as the school-boys of our generation. We magnified into heroes every boy who had left, and looked upon him with awe and reverence when he revisited the place a year or so afterwards, on his way to or from Oxford or Cambridge; and happy was the boy who remembered him, and sure of an audience as he expounded what he used to do and say, though it were sad enough stuff to make angels, not to say head-masters, weep.
We looked upon every trumpery little custom and habit which had obtained in the School as though it had been a law of the Medes and Persians, and regarded the infringement or variation of it as a sort of sacrilege. And the Doctor, than whom no man or boy had a stronger liking for old school customs which were good and sensible, had, as has already been hinted, come into most decided collision with several which were neither the one nor the other. And as old Brooke had said, when he came into collision with boys or customs, there was nothing for them but to give in or take themselves off; because what he said had to be done, and no mistake about it. And this was beginning to be pretty clearly understood. The boys felt that there was a strong man over them, who would have things his own way, and hadn’t yet learnt that he was a wise and loving man also. His personal character and influence had not had time to make itself felt, except by a very few of the bigger boys with whom he came more directly into contact; and he was looked upon with great fear and dislike by the great majority even of his own house. For he had found School and School-house in a state of monstrous license and misrule, and was still employed in the necessary but unpopular work of setting up order with a strong hand.
However, as has been said, old Brooke triumphed, and the boys cheered him and then the Doctor. And then more songs came, and the healths of the other boys about to leave, who each made a speech, one flowery, another maudlin, a third prosy, and so on, which are not necessary to