ANOTHER VOICE
Victims of this Trench warfare
CHARLES MOORE
The boys whom I saw flogged had incurred their fate by chasing a colt about a field, or something of that nature. After 12, when I made as if to go, though I knew what was coming, yet thought it best to appear igno- rant, Austen Leigh [the Lower Master, i.e. Deputy Head, a kinsman of Jane Austen] told me to stay . . . A boy called Harrison was also told to wait. Presently the three culprits came in. I forget their names. After a short speech Austen Leigh concluded, 'You must be flogged'; pronouncing the words as though he rather enjoyed saying them.
We were told to put the block in the middle of the room. I thought it would be heavy and was surprised to find it hollow and quite light. Austen Leigh meanwhile took out the birch from a locker near where the block usually stood. The birch looked larger than I had expected and altogether a most unpleasant instrument, composed of a long handle which suddenly swelled out into a short but wide business end. I felt most uncomfortable, rather as I feel now at an inquest [my grand- father was a doctor]. One boy was told to be first, he had undone the necessary buttons in anticipation; he let go his trousers and knelt on the block, I standing on his left, and Har- rison at his right, one of us holding his shirt out of the way. The Lower Master stood well away, and holding aside with his disengaged hand the long right sleeve of his gown, gave the first stroke with a good swing, lifting his arm high and seeming to put plenty of force into the stroke. The skin winced and shrank and as other strokes followed bloody scratch- es appeared. Bits of the birch flew all about. After five or six strokes the first flogging was over; and the next boy knelt. This time I felt less nervous, and by the time the third boy was being swished I felt I could assist in the Roman arena if required. It evidently hurt a good deal judging from the writhing of the victims. One almost cried and I think there were tears in his eyes. I should have liked to have picked up one of the broken pieces of birch, but did not feel easy.
When a boy had been flogged there appeared in his school bill the item: Domestic Medicine, 2/6d. (Or it may have been five shillings, I forget.)
This is a useful account because it appears to have no ulterior motive: my grandfather is not trying to say that flog- ging was good or bad, that he loved it or hated it, that it turned boys into real men or into emotional cripples. He simply describes what happened and how it seemed at the time. Reading such witnesses helps one avoid anachronism in judging the past. This was how flogging seemed to a sane late Victorian in whose school life it played an accepted, if unwelcome part.
But Anthony Chevenix-Trench, of course, was not a Victorian. He was headmaster of Eton in the years of les evenements in Paris and the Woodstock Festival and all that. He was whacking boys not for 'chasing a colt about a field', but for going to Carnaby Street without leave. As a result his sadism, if sadism it was, is harshly judged. I learn from Tim Card's book Eton Renewal, which has stirred up the trouble, that flogging was abol- ished at Eton in 1971, shortly after Trench left. Once abolished, it seems incredible that it should have persisted so long, and Trench's reputation suffers accordingly. There is noth- ing harder to sympathise with than the fash- ion just discarded. This fact affects the partic- ular criticism of Trench that he got a perverse pleasure from beating: fashion dictates which vice is most severely censured.
Anthony Chevenix-Trench was my head- master at Eton, but only in my first year, so I scarcely knew him. My one lengthy meet- ing with him was as a boy being confirmed, where he was utterly charming and consid- erate, and displayed the most flattering of all the schoolmaster's skills — to make a boy feel grown-up. So I am predisposed in his favour, but, even if all the accusations against him are true, I do not think it proves any appalling corruption or hypocrisy that he was not exposed by col- leagues at the time. Richard Ingrams wrote in the latest Observer that Private Eye under his editorship published a piece which led to Trench's removal from Eton. In fact, the article did not achieve this, but if it had I am not sure it would be anything to boast about. Ingrams, like Esther Rantzen, seems to think that any sexual or violent appetite in a teacher is so wicked that it should be
shown up and punished. Such puritanism is itself cruel, and also stupid.
Think of the grinding boredom of teach- ing adolescents, of having to confront their ignorance, their low cunning, their bad manners and moods, their conformism, their idleness, their ugliness. Think of growing old in the service of the unappre- ciative young, paid by the unappreciative middle-aged. It must be hell, and most of us would not stick the job for a week. It is in the nature of things that many of the people who are best at it are quite odd. And, since imaginative gifts are vital for good teaching and since sexual desire stimulates the imagination, it is not surprising that many great teachers are driven, in part, by desire for their pupils. This is so obvious, surely, and so important, that a good teacher should get the benefit of a great deal of doubt. His bad behaviour must be very horri- ble or very public before it undoes all his good work, and means he has to go.
Tim Card's book, which begins in 1860, also discusses the case of William Johnson (later known as Cory), author of 'The Eton Boating Song' and 'They Told Me, Heracli- tus'. Johnson provides a classic case. He was removed quietly from Eton in 1872, exactly why is still not known. He was in love with various boys, and Card prints a contemporary account of three of them lying on a sofa and embracing while John- son watched. But Eton put -up with his behaviour for the previous 25 years because he was a great schoolmaster, perhaps the greatest of the 19th century. In 'Pamphlets 869' in the London Library, sandwiched between 'Sur la Voix et l'Art du Chant' and the 13th annual report of the National Foot- paths Preservation Society, is Johnson's `Hints to Eton Masters', which contains everything, from what to do about boys that stammer, to a subtle exposition of an idea of schooling as an adventure of the mind and character: 'I write my hints for men who love freedom more than power,' he says, 'who rejoice in seeing the freedom of others, and would never encroach on it more than they are obliged.' Of the boys, he says, 'Do let them alone sometimes: trust them to the sun and the air and their chosen companions,' advice made more poignantly powerful by the fact that he himself found it hard to fol- low. Socrates corrupted young men, it was said, and so, perhaps, did Johnson and Trench. Schools are freer than ever of such men, and they are the poorer for it.
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