Tom Brown’s Schooldays
Introduction
The Author
Thomas Hughes, the son of a
landowner from Uffington in Berkshire, was born in 1822. After being educated at
Oriel College, Oxford, Hughes trained as a lawyer. While a student Hughes read
The Kingdom of Christ (1838) by Frederick Denison Maurice. In the book Maurice
argued that politics and religion are inseparable and that the church should be
involved in addressing social questions.
Hughes became a supporter
of Chartism and after the decision by the House of Commons to reject the
Chartist Petition in 1848, he joined with Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles
Kingsley to form the Christian Socialist movement. The men discussed how the
Church could help to prevent revolution by tackling what they considered were
the reasonable grievances of the working class.
The Christian Socialists
published two journals, Politics of the People (1848-1849) and The Christian
Socialist (1850-51). The group also produced a series of pamphlets under the
title Tracts on Christian Socialism. Other initiatives included a night school
in Little Ormond Yard and helping to form eight Working Men's Associations. In
1854 the evening classes that the Christian Socialists had been involved in
developed into the establishment of the Working Men's College.
In 1856 Hughes wrote Tom
Brown's Schooldays (1856) based on his school experiences at Rugby School. His
follow-up novel, Tom Brown at Oxford was less successful. Hughes became a
Liberal MP between 1865 and 1874 and principal of the Working Men's College from
1872 to 1883. Thomas Hughes died in 1896.
First published in
1857 ‘by an Old Boy of Rugby’, Thomas Hughes, this story of life in a
mid-Victorian public school has become a classic of English Literature. You will
study this text in conjunction with a very modern work, by JK Rowling, whose own
story of school life shows many parallels. The Harry Potter series (at present
an unfinished account of seven years in a similar school system) is seen by many
critics as something of a future ‘classic’ of children’s literature.
Whether or not you agree with this, you will certainly find that the two texts
do have a good deal in common.
You will probably find that
the Hughes book presents quite a bit of difficulty, unless you are presently
studying in the same school system. Twenty first century pupils in the State
system may find, for example, that much of the content, especially that relating
to Rugby school traditions, sounds very archaic and obscure. Try not to get too
discouraged if you can’t understand the slang Hughes uses, for example. What
you need to concentrate on are the broad issues of attitudes, values, plot,
themes and characters. The language changes are not as difficult to spot as you
think. I will try to make them a little bit clearer as we go through this study.
Contexts
First of all you need to
think about the contexts of the book. Thomas Hughes was an old boy (former
pupil) of a great English public school, called Rugby School. Rugby is in
Warwickshire, what we might call the ‘Heart of England’, a little to the
east of Coventry and north-east of Royal Leamington Spa. Hughes himself, the
‘Tom Brown’ of the novel (although he never directly stated that he had
based his central character upon his own), was born and raised further south, in
the Vale of the White Horse, in Oxfordshire. According to my atlas that’s in
Oxfordshire, although you can see that the biography above asserts it to be in
Berkshire. The first three chapters of the book are a lyrical celebration of
that area of England and the people who have lived there for generations, most
notably the ‘great army of Browns’, who are, according to Hughes, a
‘fighting family’.
Hughes uses a very familiar
Victorian convention in the first chapters, addressing his audience directly as
‘gentle reader’ or ‘simple reader’ and taking the opportunity to
introduce the ‘cast’ and the location to his audience. The tone here is very
patronising to a modern audience, indeed you might be a little offended by being
addressed in such a ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ authorial voice. Similarly, you
may find that Hughes’ passionate defence of the people of the White Horse Vale
and the Vale itself is very biased. You are right – it is biased, but it was
quite common for the author to take on the persona (character) of a didactic
lecturer and I suppose you might say that Hughes does sound very much like a
lecturer or a preacher in these first three chapters. His Victorian audience
would not think that this was at all inappropriate and you also need to bear in
mind that he was probably addressing rather a narrow audience, too. He makes no
pretence of doing anything other than praising the people of his own area, the
area itself and, of course, the school he went to and the friends he made there.
It does sound very incongruous to a modern reader, to be told that ‘if you
don’t like the sort, why cut the occasion at once and let you and I cry quits
before either of us can grumble at the other’, but Hughes would have seen that
as honest and straightforward, rather than patronising and arrogant and so,
probably, would his readers.
Genre
This brings us to a
consideration of where to assign this novel in terms of genre. Hughes makes no
pretence as author. He claims to be ‘an Old Boy of the School’ on the title
page and although he never admitted that Tom Brown’s character was based on
his own life and experiences, it is obvious that this work has a good deal of
autobiographical content. The location he describes so lyrically in the opening
chapters is the place where he grew up and so again we must assume that these
recollections of place are based on personal experience and sentiment. Is the
novel, then, really a ‘novel’ at all? Can we really say that is it
fictional, even though the character of Tom Brown has a different name to that
of Thomas Hughes? In addition, we have to ask ourselves what is the primary
purpose of the writing. If a novel is designed to entertain, then we could say
that the account of this ‘fictional’ character is entertaining, but we have
to consider the themes, too. One of the main themes in the book is that of
bullying and the struggle between Flashman and Brown is often regarded as a
seminal account of the harsh brutality of the school bully and his victim. There
is nothing entertaining in the account of Tom’s ‘roasting’ on the day of
the Derby sweepstake. Is it autobiographical? Was there a ‘real’ Flashman?
Is the book really a piece of persuasive writing about the evils of bullying?
Hughes himself said this about the book:
“But though, for quite
other reasons, I don't like to see very young boys launched at a public school,
and though I don't deny (I wish I could) the existence from time to time of
bullying, I deny its being a constant condition of school life, and still more
the possibility of meeting it by the means proposed I don't wish to understate
the amount of bullying that goes on, but my conviction is that it must be
fought, like all school evils, but it more than any, by dynamics rather than
mechanics, by getting the fellows to respect themselves and one another, rather
than by sitting by them with a thick stick.
And now, having broken my resolution never to write a preface, there are
just two or three things, which I should like to say a word about.
Several persons, for whose judgement I have the highest respect, while saying very kind things about this book, have added, that the great fault of it is 'too much preaching'; but they hope I shall amend in this matter should I ever write again. Now this I most distinctly decline to do. Why, my whole object in writing at all was to get the chance of preaching! When a man comes to my time of life and has his bread to make, and very little time to spare, is it likely that he will spend almost the whole of his yearly vacation in writing a story just to amuse people? I think not. At any rate, I wouldn't do so myself.”
There
you have it, from the author’s own preface to the sixth edition of the book.
He is ‘preaching’ and his object is not to ‘amuse people’.
The
School
Maybe
here is a good place to talk a little bit about the central location of the book
– Rugby School itself.
Rugby
School located in Rugby, Warwickshire is one of the oldest public schools in the
United Kingdom and is perhaps the leading co-educational boarding school in the
country. Rugby School was founded in 1567 as a provision in the will of a
certain Lawrence Sheriff who had made his fortune supplying groceries to Queen
Elizabeth I of England. Since Lawrence Sheriff lived in Rugby, the school was
intended to be a free grammar school for the boys of that town. Gradually,
however, the nature of the school shifted to become fee-paying, and so a new
school - Lawrence Sheriff Grammar School - was founded to continue Lawrence
Sheriff's original intentions.
The
game of Rugby owes its name to the school. The legend of William Webb Ellis and
the origin of the game is commemorated by a plaque which states;
THIS
STONE COMMEMORATES THE EXPLOIT OF WILLIAM WEBB ELLIS WHO
WITH A FINE DISREGARD FOR THE RULES OF FOOTBALL AS PLAYED IN HIS TIME FIRST TOOK
THE BALL IN HIS ARMS AND RAN WITH IT THUS ORIGINATING THE DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF
THE RUGBY GAME
A.D. 1823
The
story has been known to be a myth since the Old Rugbeian Society first
investigated it in 1895. There were no standard rules for football during Webb
Ellis's time at Rugby (1816-1825) and most varieties involved carrying the ball.
The students and not the masters organized the games played at Rugby, the rules
of the game played at Rugby and elsewhere were a matter of custom and were not
written down. They were frequently changed and modified with each new intake of
students. The sole source of the story is credited to one Matthew Bloxam (a
former student, but not a contemporary of Webb Ellis) in October of 1876 in a
letter to the school newspaper (The Meteor). He quotes some unknown friend
relating the story to him. He elaborated on the story some 3 years later in
another letter to The Meteor, but shed no further light on its source.
Rugby
School now has both day and boarding-pupils - the latter in the majority.
Originally it was for boys only, but girls have been admitted to the sixth form
since 1975. It went fully co-educational in 1995. One of the more famous alumni
of Rugby School was Charles Dodgson, later to become famous as Lewis Carroll
(author of the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ books), who did not enjoy his stay
there. Salman Rushdie also attended Rugby School.
In
Hughes’ time, of course, Rugby was a boys-only school and he attended as a
pupil when Dr Arnold was in post as Head. It is obvious that he admired and
respected Arnold’s leadership, although the central character, Tom Brown, does
not always communicate that respect. At the end of the book, when, as a sixth
former about to leave, he acknowledges that ‘there wasn’t a corner of him
left that didn’t believe in the Doctor’, we see that Tom Brown has, in a
way, ‘become’ Thomas Hughes. This is, of course, one of the things you need
to mention when you talk about authorial viewpoint and the reliability (or
otherwise) of the narrator. ‘Tom Brown’s Schooldays’ was written as
fiction, but is very probably autobiographical. The author himself has stated
that he intended to ‘preach’. His narrative voice, therefore, is almost
certainly biased and it is very clear that he has strong views on a variety of
important issues. Perhaps, then, you can make a case for the book as a piece of
persuasive writing, rather than for entertainment. As to genre – you’ll have
to puzzle that one out for yourself.
The
Text
Let’s
go through the text chapter by chapter and try to sift out some of the themes,
attitudes and values on the way.
Chapters
1-4
Primarily
this is a book about school life in the mid nineteenth century, so you will need
to do some research on that if you want to understand what things were important
to the society of that time. The first few chapters, though, deal with people
and the area of England in which they lived. The purpose here is to sketch out
the background for the reader and to introduce us to a ‘clan’ of people,
with very specific character traits. The mythical ‘Browns’ are yeomen, that
is to say they are country people, some of whom, like Squire Brown, Tom’s
father, belong to what we might call the lower rank of gentry. It is very
difficult to understand this rank of society. They were not aristocratic and in
the main did not have important titles, but many of them owned land and held
County offices. Tom’s father is, for example, Squire of the village and a
Justice of the Peace. He would probably have title to a fair amount of land and
would collect rents from those who lived on it and farmed there. If you read the
first section of the book it is obvious that the Squire is something of an
important figure in the county and has a responsibility to the people. Hughes obviously admires this section of the English
population and suggests that somehow they are the foundation of all that is
noble and good in English life. We have to speculate here again as to whether he
is describing his own family or a type of Englishman he creates as a kind of
blueprint for the time. No easy answers here, either. The landscape, however, is
very dramatic and it is obvious that Hughes is deeply attached to it.
Oxfordshire's
White Horse Country, only 60 miles from London, lies between the Ridgeway and
the River Thames and stretches from the edge of Oxford to the threshold of the
Cotswolds. Its landscape is marked by a mysterious pagan past - the very name of
the Vale comes from the oldest chalk figure in Britain dating back over 3,000
years. The White Horse is cut out of the turf on the upper slopes of Uffington
Castle near the Ridgeway. It is 374 feet long and thought to represent a Celtic
god or tribal symbol. For centuries, however, local people have maintained that
it is a portrait of the dragon slain by St. George on the nearby Dragon Hill.
In
Hughes’ time, the area was in the county of Berkshire, but is now part of
Oxfordshire. Don’t worry too much about this, what you need to get hold of is
the idea of the ‘Heart of England’. The school that Tom Brown attends is
further north than the Vale, but the whole area is the heartland of the country
and has been settled for thousands of years. There is an obvious sense of
‘belonging’ in Hughes’ account of the Vale and its inhabitants. The people
he describes have deep roots and Hughes himself says that ‘there is enough of
interest and beauty to last any reasonable man his life’ in
‘a circle of five miles’. This is what we call a ‘narrow canvas’
in writing. Hughes doesn’t extend his narrative beyond a very small
geographical area. As a child, Tom Brown occupies a tiny part of the centre of
England, but to him and to his author, this is ‘enough’. School in Rugby is
even more circumscribed – the buildings and the town around it are
‘enough’ once more. This is a tiny world, but for the author and the central
character, it is hugely important and significant.
You
need also to think about what Hughes says about the people, especially the Brown
family, because here we have a very important picture of Victorian England’s
values and attitudes. Have a look especially at the apostrophised passage that
begins ‘Oh, young England!” on page 19. An apostrophe, incidentally, is a
Classical figure of speech where a thing, a place, an abstract quality, an idea,
or a dead or absent person is addressed as if present and capable of
understanding.
You
will see that Hughes makes rather an impassioned attack on the young people of
the time who prefer foreign travel to exploration of their own ‘lanes and
woods and fields’, calling them ‘young cosmopolites, belonging to all
counties and no countries’.
The
Browns, however, are ‘stalwart sons’, who have ‘done yeomen’s work’
throughout history. Solid, country people who have ‘belief in one another’
and are ‘eminently Quixotic’ (they can’t let anything alone which they
think is going wrong). Hughes paints a picture of dogged, respectable, honest
English squires and it is obvious that he admires and respects these
characteristics.
The
whole of the first chapter is, then, a celebration of people and a place and
Hughes makes no pretence at unbiased narrative here. If his intention is to
‘preach’ then he preaches passionately about what he regards as ‘real’
Englishmen. Tom himself is ‘a hearty, strong boy’ who from childhood is
given to ‘escaping from his nurse and fraternising with the village boys’
(note the subtle social distinction implied here – Tom is not a peasant but
the son of the village squire, the ‘young master’.) Hughes makes it seem a
virtue that Toms family ‘didn’t go out of the county once in five years’.
The
tone here is certainly didactic (the authorial voice is telling the reader what
to think) and a modern reader may not warm to it. Hughes’ readers would
recognise it perfectly well and they would also probably recognise the
sentiments expressed. Remember that this book was published at the very height
of the Victorian age. England was very much a world power at that time and
regarded itself as eminently important. We might find the patriotic sentiment
overdone or even offensive in our multi-cultural post modern times, but the
Victorians would recognise a ‘Brown’ and moreover admire what Hughes has to
say about erosion of national values and loyalties. Foreigners were foreign in
Victorian times. Englishmen were admirable. Inward-looking, yes, but remember
that you have to understand what shapes the text and this one is shaped very
much by Victorian attitudes and values.
Chapter two looks in more detail at the place in which the young Tom
grew up and sketches out a more detailed portrait of the central character and
his companions. His ‘nurse’ (nanny) is Charity Lamb and his ‘two
abettors’ (people who encourage him to get into trouble) are in fact both old
men – Noah and ‘Old Benjy’ (Benjamin). There is much more here about the
social hierarchy of the time, with Charity being portrayed as something of an
idiot ‘two left hands and no head’ and the old men as faithful ex-servants.
Noah was a carriage driver and valet (gentleman’s servant) but Benjy’s past
is not explained. He is, though, a long-time resident of the Vale and knows
Tom’s family well.
The
main topic of this chapter concerns the ‘Veast’ (Feast). Note the way that
Hughes uses dialect throughout the first section of the book, certainly to
enforce the idea of the importance of heritage and to add ‘local colour’ to
the narrative. Notice also how obscure it makes the meaning for the reader who
is unfamiliar with this dialectic form.
What
is interesting here is the account of a very significant part of English rural
life, although now sadly archaic, with its references to it being a ‘day of
reconciliation for the Parish’. What you also see is the way that village life
revolved around the old church year (‘holiday’ is derived from ‘holy
day’ – a church feast day) and also the way that the Squire and his family
were the human centre of that life. Note, too the idea of human equality
implicit in Hughes’ remarks about ‘sociable and universal’ pastimes.
The
‘Veast’ account is interesting, with references to medieval games like
‘Blind Man’s Buff’, which Hughes calls a ‘jingling match’, possibly
deriving from the Great Plague, like the nursery rhyme ‘Ring a Ring ‘o
Roses’ and fighting with wooden swords (back-swording), which is possibly also
from medieval times. Note how simple they are, but also how violent they can be
and how competitive the villagers are. Note too, Hughes’ sermon on the value
of this kind of honest competition as an ‘educational grapnel’ (something to
‘hook’ a person into being educated) for the ‘working boys and young men
of England’. You can maybe see something similar being suggested today from
the educational lobby, which is trying to re-introduce the idea of competitive
sporting activities into modern school life.
Hughes
is once ore on his political soap-box at the end of this chapter, criticising
the government for having allowed
‘too much over-civilisation’ and ‘the deceitfulness of riches (money)’
to corrupt society.
In chapter three Benjy, who is growing older and more infirm, takes Tom to
visit a ‘wise man’ called
Farmer Ives. The ‘wise man’, or woman would nowadays be called an expert in
alternative medicine or healing therapies. What they did was to use a
combination of charms, herbs and natural resources to cure illness. Please
don’t call them ‘witches’ – although there were certainly people who did
practise witchcraft, Hughes is very careful not to use that word here. Farmer
Ives is also a horse and cow doctor (but not a vet – that’s quite a modern
term) and lives in a hut ‘very like those of the better class of peasantry in
general’. Despite his treatment of Tom’s wart, he is not able to deal with
Benjy’s ‘rheumatiz’, except by suggesting that it will only get better
when Benjy dies.
Tom’s
friends are mostly ‘village boys’ before he goes to school and it is
interesting here to notice how Hughes makes it clear that although Tom spends
time with them, he is never one of them, because of his status as the ‘young
master’ and the Squire’s son. There might be a touch of hypocrisy here, too,
because Hughes goes to great lengths to explain Squire Brown’s ideas about the
equality of mankind. The idea that ‘a man is to be valued wholly and solely
for that which he is in himself’. Certainly a noble sentiment, but Tom is sent
off to public school away from the village as soon as he is old enough and that
marks him out as privileged, despite Hughes’ passionate defence of the
Squire’s beliefs that ‘it didn’t matter a straw whether his son associated
with Lords’ sons or ploughmen’s sons’. Maybe just another example of
Victorian double standards here.
To
be fair, though, Hughes’ Christian socialist background would suggest that the
sentiments he expresses about equality are sincerely meant. Certainly some of
the main themes of the book are those of honour and decency, so perhaps you
might need to do some reading about Victorian philanthropy and you’ll see
where Hughes and people like him were coming from at the time.
You
can’t though, ignore the reference to the differences in education between the
village boys and Tom Brown. Tom has lessons at home, preparing him for public
school and the boys of the village go to the ‘well-endowed’ village school.
Tom is not allowed inside and when he hangs around distracting the village lads,
the master takes him to Squire Brown to complain. Squire Brown makes the master
‘release ten or twelve of the best boys’ to play with Tom at three
o’clock. If that isn’t privilege, then what is? Despite the notional
equality, it is clear that Tom is set apart from the rest of the boys and cannot
ever really be equal to them, because he is the ‘young master’.
What
the boys ‘teach’ Tom is physical development. He runs, wrestles and develops
into something of an athlete. What Tom gains from this rough education is
celebrated as ‘manly and honest’, while intellectually his lessons (taught
at home by a governess) are passed over quite dismissively by Hughes as
‘petticoat government’.
When
Tom leaves the village to go to private school for a year to prepare for
entrance to Rugby, you should note the way that Hughes deals with the separation
from Mrs Brown (page 70-71). ‘Their love was as fair and whole as human love
can be, perfect self-sacrifice on the one side meeting a young and true heart on
the other’. Obviously there is a typical Victorian attitude towards women
here, with its ‘perfect self-sacrifice’.
Tom’s
preparation at private school is also interesting and it might be wise to have a
word about private schools here. I
suppose they would today be called ‘Preparatory’ or ‘Prep.’ Schools and
their function was to prepare the pupils for entry to public school. Tom’s
private school seems to have been quite a modest one, with a very small staff
– two masters and two ‘ushers’ and fifty boys as boarders. The masters
would teach the Latin, Greek and other subjects required for entrance and the
ushers supervised the pupils all the rest of the time until they went to bed at
night. Hughes is indignantly critical of the ushers at Tom’s private school,
who were ‘not gentlemen’. Here we have the first mention of injustice in the
form of two men who ‘encouraged tale bearing’ and thereby ‘sapped all the
foundations of school morality’ by creating ‘abominable tyrants’ among the
older pupils. Note also the incident with the boys who call Tom ‘Young
Mammy-sick’ and how Hughes suggests clearly that Tom’s violent response is
justified . Note, too, the punishments for hitting another pupil – a flogging
for ‘hitting in the face’. It is clear that Hughes admires Tom’s spirit,
when he is flogged for digging out the sand-martin’s nest on the downs and
equally clear that Tom is not an academic, as Latin and Greek ‘on the whole
did not suit him.’
The
chapter ends with Tom’s arrival home after fever breaks out in his private
school and his father’s decision to send him to Rugby for the rest of the
school year. Tom is nine years old and determined to ‘launch into a public
school’.
Chapter
four takes
us with Tom on the journey to Rugby. He travels by stagecoach and the journey
takes nine hours from London, with many pauses on the way. The main interest in
this chapter is the account of travelling by coach and horses over long
distances. By the time the book was published, railways had begun to make travel
much quicker and easier, but Hughes sets this story in pre-Victorian times,
before the advent of trains and the journey is extremely arduous. To get to
Rugby, Tom and his father first go to London, to take the fast coach, the
‘Tally-ho’, which goes ‘down’ from London to Leicester, passing through
Rugby on the way. Tom travels alone and has to sit on top of the coach with his
feet ‘dangling six inches from the floor’. The journeys were done in
‘stages’ (hence stagecoach) with pauses for the horses to be rested or
changed along the way at coaching inns. Passengers could also have meals in
these inns and notice how much drink is automatically taken by passengers and
drivers.Note also the quantity of food available.
References
to ‘sportsmen’ reflect the very common pastime of hunting, which was widely
pursued at the time. They are also referred to as ‘pinks’ which derives from
the traditional reddish-pink colour of hunting coats. Many towns and estates had
packs of hounds and ‘meets’ were held throughout the season, during autumn
and winter. Later on there is a reference to Rugby school having its own
‘pack’ and also to the unpopularity of the ‘Doctor’s’ decision to
abolish it.
Tom
learns about the school and some of the customs of the boys who travel up and
down in the coach from the guard, who tells a number of anecdotes about the
pranks played on passers-by during start and end-of-term journeys. To a modern
reader, these tales of pea-shooters and stone-throwing are quaint and rather
old-fashioned. Hughes’ narrative certainly seems to imply that he considers
the behaviour of the Rugby students is rather admirable – no more than natural
high spirits. Tom himself hopes that the ‘desperate and lawless character’
of the guard’s stories is ‘true’. However, if you look closely, you might
have a different opinion. Look at the episode of the attack on the Irish
labourers and you might find some implicit prejudice there, for example.
What
is clear is that the Rugby boys are unruly and have something about them that
may be called arrogance. Tom seems to think it is all ‘fun’ and of course
the contemporary reader of the time would understand and quite probably approve
of these boyish escapades, especially if they mirrored the reader’s own
childhood experiences. You need to consider how a present-day reader would
react.
The
final incident, when the boys from Rugby school race the coach as it enters the
town, is interesting in that it highlights the sporting emphasis of a good deal
of this book. The whole of chapter six is a graphic account of a Rugby football
match and all through the book there is a very significant amount of reference
to sport and physical excellence. I think you have to take into account the
Victorian ideal of ‘mens sana in
corpore sano’ (I bet I’ve misquoted and
somebody will email me to correct the Latin) The translation is ‘a healthy
mind in a healthy body’ and to a very great extent it did influence Victorian
thinking. Sport was regarded as a jolly good way of achieving this.
Chapters
5 – 7
Tom’s
first ‘half’ at Rugby takes up these three chapters and here we are taken
into the second small ‘world’ of the book – Rugby School - and introduced
to the boys and some of the masters.
Tom
is met at the school by a pupil called ‘Scud’ East, who is
the son of family acquaintances and he becomes Tom’s ‘mentor’ or
‘cicerone’ (both archaic terms for someone who knows the ropes and can show
them to someone else – a kind of companion). This is a clever narrative
device, because it is through East’s eyes, so to speak, that we (the ‘new
boys’) are introduced to the school and some of its customs. Here, too, we get
much more direct speech and dialogue, as East and Tom get to know one another
and Tom finds out about the school. For the reader, the pace becomes much faster
from this point, although Hughes still intrudes on the narrative from time to
time, with the impersonal observer’s ‘voice’ which makes the first three
chapters rather slow.
What
you are certainly going to find in these chapters is a very high level of field
specific lexis. You may be lucky and already attend Rugby school, in which case
all the references to ‘Blacks’ (nicknames), calling-over’ (taking the
register and ‘fives courts’ will be a piece of cake and perfectly
understandable. They may, indeed, form part of your own school’s lexis, if you
go to one of the other public schools in the country. There are probably a great
number of common terms in existence. What my own students found, though, is that
many of the references are totally obscure. This caused a good deal of anguish
and one or two copies of the book were, I suspect, put into the dustbin. They
could cope with ‘Muggles’ but not with ‘fagging’.
How,
then, do we deal with this for the exam? I suggest that you underline everything
you don’t understand and adopt a blanket policy of referring to slang,
colloquialisms and field specific lexis as just that. Make the point that this
will obscure the meaning for the modern reader (with the exceptions noted above)
and also that the author is indulging himself, possibly at the modern reader’s
expense. You may get no marks, but I can’t translate everything for you.
Here’s
a suggestion: How about a glossary of terms, compiled either by a Hughes
aficionado or somebody who is or was at the school? Post it to me and I’ll
publish it with accreditation and we’ll all be happy.
The
description of the school itself and the various buildings and uses should be
reasonably clear, especially if you have an illustrated copy of the book. It is
obviously very different when compared to many of today’s schools and you will
probably want to make some points about the rather primitive living and studying
conditions. You need, too, to remember that conventional classrooms did exist as
well and the studies that the boys shared were for private study purposes. Many
of the traditional universities also have the same system, with students
attending lectures or seminars around the University campus and living and
studying in their own set of rooms in Hall. In fact, our older Universities are
organised in a very similar way to public schools, except for sleeping
arrangements. In University, the student sleeps in his or her room, in Rugby,
the boys slept in dormitories, of which more later on.
Note,
too, the system of self-regulation, with older boys in charge of younger pupils.
The term ‘praepostor’ means a kind of prefect, or someone in authority and
this is quite unusual in today’s school world. The praepostors had a real
position of authority and were expected to keep order around the school. Senior
students held these positions. Of course, there was also a ‘pecking order’
of importance and some ‘perks’ to the job. Jones, the praepostor at the end
of the study corridor in School House, for example, makes sure that he gets all
the heat from the fire at the end of the corridor by fixing up a curtain across
the passage outside his room. You might also want to comment on the ways in
which the rules and regulations are ‘bent’ by the pupils, when they can get
away with it. The bars on the windows of ground floor studies are there to
‘prevent the exit of small boys after locking up’.
The
whole reading of this text will be affected by the reader’s experience and
knowledge (or otherwise) of the English public school. Some readers may be quite
shocked by the Spartan conditions and others, like Tom Brown and his alter ego,
Thomas Hughes will find the description of school life delightfully familiar.
Tom Brown certainly feels delighted to be part of the system from the beginning.
You
need to make a note also of the obvious hero worship of older boys, like Brooke,
who is described as ‘cock of the school’ because of his sporting prowess
‘head of the School House side and the best kick and charger in Rugby’. It
may well be tempting to see this aspect of the book as odd, but remember the
previous remarks about manliness and honour through good, clean competitive
sport. Hughes is not making fun of this at all. In fact he is sincerely paying
tribute to what was (and still is) considered to be important. This is a biased
viewpoint on the author’s part, but it was pitched into a society where that
bias was not even considered to be politically incorrect at all. What a modern
audience reads into the text will be quite different and you need to take that
into consideration. Do we still feel the same way, for example, about the
‘healthy mind in a healthy body’ ideal?
This
brings me neatly on to the main content of the chapter, which is the (long)
account of the football game played by School House and the rest of the school.
You will find that the rudiments of present day Rugby football are quite clearly
described. What you might find a bit difficult is how many people are on the
field. I estimated about two hundred altogether, but School House team seems to
be 75 boys, so the teams are far from equal. If you read the little bit at the
start of these notes about the game and its origins, you’ll see that the
‘rules’ were not rigid, but seem to have been adapted by the players as time
went on. Don’t, then, try to sweat out the mysteries of what is going on. In
principle everybody is out there knocking hell out of everyone else and having
great fun doing so. School House wins and it’s the sentiments afterwards,
during Brooke’s speech at the evening singing that are important. I am tempted
to go into some remarks about the playing fields of England here, but maybe
I’ll leave you to do some research on that one instead. Just hang on to the
idea that what they do out on the field is considered manly, sporting, healthy
and good for the soul and Tom loves all of it.
Chapter
six describes the evening after
the match. This is Tom’s first day, remember, but Hughes runs the narrative
along very quickly. Tom is integrated into lower school life and proves popular
because he is quite willing to spend his money on extra food which he shares out
between East and other pupils before the singing session, which is a regular
tradition on Saturday evenings at the end of term. You’ll note here again that
there is a high proportion of field specific lexis and some very dated
(or maybe archaic) slang. Tom, for example, is described as ‘green’,
which means ignorant or very young, like a green twig and the boys dash off to
buy baked potatoes called ‘murphies’, a derogatory term derived form the
Irish name Murphy (the Irish were supposed to eat nothing but potatoes.) The
beer served out to all the pupils is a regular part of the drink allowance of
the school. Don’t be shocked – the water was probably quite poisonous unless
boiled for tea or coffee, which was expensive. Beer was cheap and relatively
germ free.
The
songs sung are traditional British ones, still to be found in ancient choral
collections and what Hughes describes here is rather a naïve ceremony of self
entertainment, enjoyed hugely by all present. The speeches, though, are
interesting, especially the one given by ‘Pater Brooke’. ‘Pater; is Latin
for ‘father’ and this gives us a good idea of the esteem in which this sort
of senior was held. He was seen as a father figure and an example to the other
students. His speech is full of manly sentiment and celebration of ‘house
feeling’ and ‘fellowship’. It is obvious, too, that he takes his senior
position very seriously, as he defends the changes which are being made by the
new Head, the Doctor. Note, though, that he is careful to put the pupils first
and foremost – the beginning of the speech is all very complimentary to them.
It is only later that he makes his defence of the Doctor’s changes, being
careful to say that he’s ‘not the fellow to back a master through thick and
thin’. The changes being made are not affecting sporting games (it seems that
he doesn’t regard hunting as sport) so he feels that they are fair. He also
condemns excessive drinking ‘drinking bad spirits and punch’ as
‘unmanly’ and agrees with the Doctor’s ‘putting down’ of property
damage (taking the linchpins out of carriages at local fairs so the wheels would
fall off). He also comments on the
amount of bullying that happens in the House, but this section is quite
ambiguous. He condemns the idea of bullying, but defends the fact that the sixth
form doesn’t interfere, saying that it encourages tale-telling, which he finds
obnoxious. In fact he suggests that the boys will be ’all the better football
players for learning to stand it’ and suggests that they learn to ‘fight it
through’.
Hughes
digresses at length about the speech and its effect, taking time to defend the
actions which his own ‘Doctor’, Thomas Arnold, had introduced when he was at
school and pointing out that ‘he (the Doctor) had found School and School
House in a state of monstrous licence and misrule and was…..employed in ..the
unpopular work of setting up order with a strong hand.’ Again we see the
blurring of narrator and story teller and this occurs throughout the book, when
Hughes interrupts the narrative flow (Tom’s story) to make some personal
comment or observation.
After
prayers, there is the ritual humiliation of ‘tossing’ (throwing) younger
boys up to the ceiling in a blanket held by older boys and here we are
introduced to the famous Flashman, the school bully. Note the evident bias
Hughes shows towards ‘brave’ pupils like East and Tom, who volunteer to be
tossed, and the way he portrays the weakness of those who hide under their beds.
Obviously we have something here of Brooke’s sentiment – learning to
‘stand it’ is better than being cowardly and hiding under the bed. In fact
East and Tom are rather admired by the bigger boys for volunteering to be tossed
in the blanket, while their fellow schoolmates see them as ‘trumps’ and
‘good plucked ones’. (Jolly fine brave chaps). Note, here, that there is
some evidence that Brooke’s words have had an effect, as Walker refuses to
have two boys put in the blanket together. Flashman, of course, is the one who
suggests it. Apparently there are degrees of acceptable bullying.
What
does the reader today make of this episode? Again we have to look at the
Victorian context first and note that Hughes (through Brooke’s speech)
suggests that a certain amount of physical horseplay is a good thing for boys,
shaping them somehow into ‘better men’ in the future. It seems to be
suggested that the motive is what counts, rather than the deed. If things are
done in a ‘manly’ spirit, then it isn’t bullying. If in a ‘mean’
spirit, then it is.
Chapter
seven
takes the narrative to the end of Tom’s first ‘half’ and his return home
for the winter holiday. The two main events here are Tom’s experience of
school chapel and the hare and hound race and here we have two major Victorian
ideologies. Sport, which we have already seen, is something which Hughes regards
as fundamental to character development. Christianity is the other topic which
is now introduced.
School chapel (twice on Sunday) gives Tom his first experience of Doctor
Arnold’s preaching.
Arnold was appointed as Head Master of Rugby
in 1828. He used two means in
particular in order to impose his philosophy on the school: one was the prefect
system; the other was the Sunday sermon. When,
in 1831, the previous school chaplain retired, Arnold asked the Trustees to
trust him with the school's spirituality. The Trustees gave their assent and so, under Arnold,
"the school chapel became the centre of the religious life of the community
and played an important in the discipline of the school".
It was from the pulpit, in the chapel, that Arnold announced his
intention of making the school a place of Christian education.
"What we must look for here is, first, religious and moral
principle, secondly, gentlemanly conduct, thirdly, intellectual ability.
(from ’Rugby and the Myth of Dr Arnold’ by Dr J C Smith)
Read
the section from page 146, Tom’s visit to evening chapel and the sermon he
hears from the Doctor and you will see what importance is attached to Christian
principles and teaching. Hughes takes over the narrative once more and describes
the experience he must have had himself, listening to a man ‘with all his soul
and strength, striving against whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in
our little world’. Hughes here is
obviously writing with sincerity in praise of a very memorable Head, describing
him as a ‘captain..for a boys’ army’ (note the militaristic imagery) who
would ‘fight the fight out to the last gasp’. There is a fervour to this
section which is unsurprising, given the background of the author and the
undoubted charisma of Thomas Arnold himself and although it may seem outmoded
for the jaded audience of the post-modern era, you have to admire the passion of
the writing.
After
Christian character building, comes physical character building through sport,
with the hare and hounds run. Hare and hounds is cross country ‘hunting’
with humans as prey (hares) and hunters (hounds). A team of runners sets off and
scatters torn up paper as ‘scent’; the pursuing runners set off after them
and try to follow the trail of paper scent to a specific place, in this case a
country pub nine miles away from the school. The run is timed and anyone who
finishes within the time is treated to beer and food by the ‘big side’
pupils. East, Tom and ‘Tadpole’ fail to finish the run and are so late back
that they miss lock up and are sent to the Doctor as a result. Instead of fury,
he treats them with kindness and so we see the practical application of the
Christian principles he has tried to preach in chapel.
Term ends with the journey home (complete with pea-shooters) and Tom’s first ‘six o’clock dinner’ with his parents. This would be a significant event, as he would not have eaten with his parents before he went away, being too young and confined probably to the nursery, or schoolroom for his meals.
Chapters
8 – 9
Tom’s
time in the lower-fourth form sees Hughes turning to the serious theme of
bullying which has been touched on previously but is now expanded with the
account of Tom’s torments at the hands of Flashman and his friends.
Most
of the boys in this class are eleven or twelve, but note how many are older and
have been ‘kept back’ because they are not able to learn enough Latin and
Greek to go up into the older forms. Hughes calls them ‘great stupid boys’
and there is an obvious contempt for their ignorance. Note too the emphasis here
on learning the Classics, which were of course required for entrance to
University at the time. An interesting point here as well is the way that Hughes
seems also to be contemptuous of the ‘prodigies of nine and ten’ (very
clever younger boys) as he describes how they were tormented by the older pupils
and the mass of boys of the same age as Tom and East.
Classroom
discipline seems to have been chaotic, with all the lower school students
‘whipped in’ to the ‘great school’ (main building) and taught together.
Note the hunting term here – it refers to the way a Master of Hounds whips the
dogs into a pack and keeps them on task. The boys are certainly not treated with
any form of individuality, but like an unruly pack of dogs. Hughes makes no
bones about telling the reader how bad the control was from masters, either.
Discipline was kept with the cane and boys were regularly beaten, but again you
need to note that this did not seem to be a bother at all for the pupils, whose
main objective was finding ways to waste time and not study.
The
account of the Doctor’s monthly examination (when he would visit the form and
hear the boys ‘construe’ or translate a piece of Latin or Greek) is also
rather odd. When a pupil fails to translate properly, the Doctor ‘gave him a
good box on the ear’ (hit him across the side of the head) and knocked him
down. After hearing some of the better pupils, he then shouts at the whole
assembly and leaves. Hughes obviously thinks this is understandable behaviour as
the Doctor was ‘provoked’, but it is clear that Hughes is telling us about a
school which accepts corporal punishment as a natural part of the process of
teaching and learning. Tom’s character deteriorates at this time and he
becomes lazy and regards the masters as ‘his natural enemies’.
Behaviour
in School House is also bad, when old Brooke leaves. Without his influence all
is ‘dark and chaos’ and the remaining sixth formers are too ‘weak’ to
exercise control over the less savoury fifth form boys – ‘big fellows of the
wrong sort’. The result is that the ‘fellowship’ disappears and the House
breaks up into little ‘sets and parties’ of pupils. Hughes digresses about
the necessity for public school boys to ‘quit (themselves) like men…for
whatsoever is true and manly and lovely’. School
House is taken over by this set of bullies and the main character is Flashman,
who eventually moves into the praepostor’s study in Tom’s corridor and makes
life Hell for the pupils who live there. Tom decides to make a stand against
what he considers to be unfair fagging from Flashman and his other fifth year
friends and is joined by East and one or two other brave types.
Note
how the boys are reluctant to report the unfair fagging from the fifth to any of
the staff, because of a sixth form ‘levy’ (vote) which forbids
‘peaching’ (telling tales) as unsporting ‘against public morality and
school tradition’. Again, we see that it is thought to be better to stand up
alone, rather than tell tales, even if it means a beating from the bullies. Hughes
introduces an ‘odd’ character in the form of ‘poor Diggs’, whose
nickname is ‘the Mucker’. He seems to be a complete individual, and is
allied to no one in particular, but this individuality sets him completely apart
from the rest of the House. Tom and the rest of the pupils see his independence
as very strange, because he doesn’t ally himself with any ‘set’ but the
advice he gives them is good. If they stick to their guns and don’t fag for
any of the fifth year pupils, the ‘good’ ones will soon stop trying to make
them do it. This proves to be the case, although there is a short time of
‘chasings and sieges and lickings (fights) of all sorts’ before most of the
fifth year pupils stop trying to get the younger boys to fag for them.
Flashman,
though will not stop and takes a violent dislike to the ringleaders of the
rebellion, Tom and East. He catches them and thrashes them regularly and they
shout that he is a sneak and a coward at the tops of their voices while he is
doing it. This makes him more angry and violent, and because he is, in his way,
quite popular with many of the School House pupils (because he has a good deal
of money and can be pleasant and hearty when he wants to be) Tom and East are
put into a very difficult position. Flashman ‘left no slander unspoken and no
deed undone, which could in any way hurt his victims’. Thanks to Diggs, who
takes a liking to Tom and East, they are not alone, as he is able to an extent
to protect them from Flashman for a while. This is made even more significant
when the boys deliberately buy up a number of Diggs’s possessions at his
regular auction (he sells his possessions when he runs out of money during term
time) and put them back into his study. He returns the favour by correcting some
verses for them and calling them ‘good hearted little beggars’.
The
main event in this chapter is the ‘roasting’ given to Tom by Flashman when
Tom draws the favourite in the Derby lottery in School House and refuses to sell
the ticket back to Flashman’s ‘sporting gentlemen’. The
narrative is clear enough and presents no major problems. You should note one or
two things, though, about the morality. Hughes obviously disapproves of gambling
and regards it as immoral and ungentlemanly. The allowances of a shilling are in
fact stolen from the pupils by the older boys and they are forced to take part
in the lottery, whether they want to or not. There is, though, an acceptance of
it as a tradition, and even Tom, who draws the favourite, is prepared to sell on
his horse for seven shillings until Flashman tries to intervene and make
him sell it. It is Flashman’s intervention that makes Tom refuse, not a moral
objection to gambling. Note,
too, the way that East runs for Diggs while Flashman is holding Tom in front of
the fire (something that would normally not have happened if the incident
hadn’t been so serious) and also how nobody at all is prepared to tell an
adult (the matron) anything about what happened or who did it. Tom
doesn’t ‘peach’ on anybody, so ‘the whole House is with him’ next day,
including the bullies who helped Flashman hold him in front of the open fire. In
fact Hughes implies that Tom’s silence is enough to convert one or two of the
bullies in the fifth. He is, in their opinion a ‘staunch little fellow’ and
they realise ‘what brutes we’ve been’ as a result. Presumably the
sentiment is the one we have already met, which advises the boys to stand up for
themselves and ‘take their medicine like men’. Nobody tells the Doctor
anything about the true events, so he ‘never knew any more’ than Matron. He
could, of course, have dealt with Flashman instantly, but this book is very much
a boy’s account of a boy’s world and perhaps Hughes as narrator has never
forgotten his own boyhood either. At any rate, the Doctor is not involved and
Tom and East ‘resolve never to be beaten by that bully Flashman’ without the
intervention of the adults who are in charge of the school.
Chapter
9 follows Tom and East into senior school
with a ‘chapter of accidents’. Flashman’s
character is quickly removed from the narrative after Tom and East fight him in
the study hall with Diggs as referee and knock him out. Flashman is expelled
later for getting drunk at a local pub, but before he goes he succeeds in
ruining Tom and East’s reputation with tales and insults. Both
boys fall into bad habits and their reputations suffer because of Flashman’s
actions and also because the other seniors resent their attitude. They feel that
Brown and East caused them some inconvenience by their rebellion against fagging
and this, together with rather an arrogant attitude on the boys’ parts,
damages their reputation in the House.
Several
further incidents are told, all showing that Brown especially, is becoming wild
and unruly. The boys are described as ‘outlaws’ by Hughes, who obviously
wants the audience to see that while he admires their spirit, he also regrets
that they lack what he would probably regard as ‘steadiness’. The first
incident concerns the fishing from the opposite bank to the School in the nearby
river Avon. The boys all fish and the fishing rights on the far side of the
river are held by a local landowner. He objects to what he sees as poaching and
instructs his keepers to stop illegal fishing by the Rugby pupils. There is a
good deal of public protest by Rugby pupils and fights between the keepers and
the boys. The Doctor makes a rule that boys must fish from the school side of
the bank, but of course poaching becomes the norm and Tom especially makes it
his business to take fish from whichever bank he pleases.His encounter with the
new under-keeper, who Tom nicknames (or ‘Blacks’) Velveteens (a reference to
the material of the keepers breeches) leads to Tom being caught while hiding up
a tree, then taken to the Doctor by the keeper and reported for poaching fish on
the wrong side. Tom is flogged, but note that he makes a point of giving the
keeper a reward for not confiscating the borrowed fishing rod and this makes it
possible for him to become ‘fast friends’ with Velveteens, so he manages to
still catch illegal fish.
Tom
and East climb on to the top of the tower and carve their initials on the hand
of the clock, but the Doctor only gives them thirty lines to learn from that
(perhaps he considers it a plucky thing to have done?) and then they both get a
flogging for being out of school to a fair in the town. The end result is a
summons to the Doctor’s study and a warning that if they do not mend their
ways they will be asked to leave.
The
end of the chapter is interesting, when Hughes recounts the conversation between
the Doctor and Tom’s housemaster. Before he gets round to talking about Tom
and East, he has a conversation with a sixth former from another house
concerning an unnamed ’boy’ and the Doctor instructs the sixth former,
Holmes, to give him a ‘good sound thrashing’ in front of the House, because
the House master is ‘a very good fellow, but slight and weak’. Hughes defend
this incident quite vigorously, claiming that the same ‘boy’ (we never find
out his name) was thrashed and went back later to tell Holmes that the thrashing
was ‘the kindest act which had ever been done upon him’. He then goes on to
tell the reader what is said about Tom and East. They are, in the Doctor’s
opinion, in danger of ‘doing great harm to all the younger boys’. We might
expect him to order a ‘sound thrashing’ to them, but instead he listens to
the advice of the boys’ housemaster (this one isn’t presumably ‘slight and
weak’) and his suggestion that Tom and East are given ‘some little boy to take care of’ is considered.
The end of this chapter marks the end of the first part of the novel. In it we have seen the beginning of Tom Brown’s school career as a junior boy. The second half of the novel will trace Tom and East’s senior years at Rugby and Hughes will show us how both characters are ‘turned around’ by their housemaster’s suggestion.
© V Pope 2004
More
to come