Junior Scholarship
By RICHARD URQUHART
NEARLY thirty years ago I sat this same exam in this same hall. Scribble, scribble, scribble: . . A rough green baize cloth protecting long tables against ink. Scribble, scribble, scribble. . . The last feeble epithet swung into place with the padding of nunc and ecce and 0! to complete a set of Latin elegiacs against the clock. Scribble, scribble, scribble. . . . Two pages of essay on the question, "What are the advantages and disadvantages of a constitu- tional Government ? "; and I didn't really know what " con- stitutional " meant. Scribble, scribble, scribble. . . . The boy next to me, whose name was Trow, was showing up translations full of blanks where he did not know the words. I longed to tell him the rule pounded into us at my prep-school, "You'll never get a scholarship if you leave blanks." But Trow's name was in the list in The.Tinzes one above mine when the results were published.
And now I was putting my son through the same hoops. I did not see inside the hall this time. I brought the boy, always much too early, morning and afternoon to the court- yard. As the clock struck, he ambled up the steps with thirty Other candidates (" Remember, if they ask you what's the origin of the word 'candidate,' it's Latin, candidus, because candidates wore white. When.? What for ? I have never known. Still. . . and ' bishop ' comes from episcopus."). For ninety-minute, two-hour, periods I sat in the car outside, or walked round the cricket-fields, or read in the library, or drove to see retired masters, the head of my own day amongst them, or wandered into chapel. On the music-stand of the organ was clipped the pencilled note : Organ Practise (sic): Only soft playing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday till after 4.45. Examination in Hall. Illegible initials signed the order. The big Bible on the lectern was open at a chapter of Job. The phrase, "He shall return to the days of his youth," caught my eye. In the days of my youth I had a stammer, and when I was in the Sixth, I was excused from reading the lesson in chapel. If my boy gets a scholarship he may be reading the lesson occasionally on Sunday evenings in 1957.
And then we all, parents and schoolmasters, gathered again, much too early, in the courtyard, waiting to welcome our protégés with brave smiles. , Little boys scampered down the steps and showed their mothers the Greek Unseen paper, the Latin Verse and the Special Maths. I, as trainer, was torn betireen three urges—to go over the just-finished paper and see how my entry had done, to give him last-minute advice on the next paper, to talk about anything but exams. His prep-school had advised me on the drill, "Plenty of sleep, keep the bowels open, and don't- fuss him." We drove out to lunch at a pub in a near-by village. Thank heaven no other trainer had found it. On the way back (too early) one day we passed a boy and (what I took to be) his headmaster and headmaster's wife. They were walking, and a good mile from the Hall. I stopped and offered them a lift. No, thank you. We're walking. Clearing the cobwebs. Mens sana. . . . Their boy would not yawn in the afternoon's English paper.
On the second, and penultimate, afternoon, I saw the school headmaster go up the steps into the hall. Ah, interviews. He came out ten minutes before the end of the period. When I sat the exam, as I remember, not all of us were called up to the interview with the head. Only the possibles. When my boy came out this time, I nervously asked him if the head had been doing vivas. "Yes, everybody. But he stopped three short of me. We sit alphabetically, you know." "Oh. -well, he'll do you tomorrow," I said with attempted insouciance. But, horrors, what if it meant that none of the boys from T to Z was in the running after the first five papers ? I spoke to another parent. His boy, with six others, was taking the papers in another room; there was a mumps-scare, and these seven were the boys who hadn't had the disease. No, the head had not interviewed any of that seven. I breathed more easily. Next morning the head did complete his rounds. What did he say to you ? ".1-le said I had a good handwriting, and hoped I'd get a scholarship." (My God, what would that mean ? Did the head say that to all the boys ? Or did it mean something ?) Rumours fizzed round. Twenty of the candidates were not down for the school. They couldn't get in without scholar- ships. Would it tell against my boy in a pinch that he was down for the school anyway ? Would it tell for him that his father and grandfather were scholars at the school, albeit undistinguished ? What on earth was this "intelligence test" that was coming ? They had never had that when I was a boy. (Brothers and Sisters had I none. . . . Yes, they actually set that, and a lot of other things that my boy couldn't explain to me. They had no papers to bring out from the intelligence test; did it out of books provided and re-collected.) An old retired master was very scornful of intelligence tests when I asked him what they were. He didn't know, but he was very scornful.
The three days dragged through. Soft " practise " playing droned from the chapel-organ most of the time. The papers seemed to get harder and harder. My boy couldn't do a single question in Maths II. Nor could I. There was a mis- print in the Latin Verse paper. They don't set much store by Latin Verses at my boy's prep-school these days. (Now, when I was a boy there. . ..) He couldn't shape at the two stanzas from Byron. I tried them in the car afterwards. With plenteous use of nunc, ecce and 0!, and feeble epithets, I managed to grind out a version; chain-smoking allowed. My old glibness at the Latin Elegiac game had not deserted me in the twenty years since Honour Mods. I was feeling rather fatuously chesty when the boy emerged from his French paper. But I muzzled the desire to show him how easy the Latin Verses really were, and how clever his father is.
I left a note for the boy's eventual housemaster when it was all over. I asked him to ring me up this (Friday) evening if there was anything startling to tell me. I cannot restrain a wild, distant hope that the boy has flown a flag somewhere. But I would be pleased even to know that he has done well enough to be let off Common Entrance later in the term. II is now 10.45 p.m. The boy's light is still on, and his radio's going. I told him we could not know the result before tomorrow. But I know they settle the list after dinner today. Whatever the result, we can keep the boy at home till Monday, I suddenly realise that I don't know if my son is clever, a good plodder or, without books, clueless. And I want to know. This is his first real test. His prep-school says he's no scholar. There goes the telephone.
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