Sta,—The sneers that are directed against the Catho' lie Church
as the normal stock in trade of an English weekly that has a claim to be intelligent have gone beyond the permissible in Simon Raven's review in your issue of February 21 of Brian Moore's The Feast of Lupercal. The reviewer finds the author's 'authen' tic picture' of 'one of God's Institutions'—'one of those repositories of dirt and bigotry—a Roman Catholic public school,' sheer delight.' The boys are 'vicious and smelly,' the lay masters are 'decompos- ing,' the priests are 'sleek and chattering.' What is delightful in so filthy an institution is not noted. The statement about Roman Catholic public schools, of which there are only eight listed on the Headmasters' Conference, and none in Belfast, whence the example is taken, is a slander and a lying generalisation. It is a relic of old-fashioned Protestant prejudice, no longer tolerable.—Yours faithfully,
C. R. LEETHAM
[Simon Raven writes : 'Since Mr. Leetham, like others who have written about the same matter, seems to be in part confusing an observation I made about Roman Catholic public schools in general with those that apply to Mr. Brian Moore's fictitious school in particular, I should like to make my posi- tion plain. Firstly, in general, I hold that all public schools whatever, as a result of the nature of adolescent boys, the inadequate sanitation and the inefficiency of the servants, are nine-tenths of the day filthy. Secondly—again in general—I hold that all Roman Catholic public schools arc bigoted; for how could schools controlled by the Church which sponsors the Index be other than bigoted? Thirdly —and now we come to Mr. Moore's fictitious school in Belfast—the boys there, to judge from what he tells us of their minds and actions, were demon' strably vicious and also, from what he says of their personal habits, inevitably smelly. The masters in this school are presented as brow-beaten hacks (I used the word "decomposing" as a rather conscious metaphor), whereas the priests are forever having little nips of whisky in front of comfortable fires and nattering away. 'Again, if I find this spectacle of squalor "de- lightful"—and I most certainly do—I cannot see why it should worry Mr. Leetham. He won't be the one to burn on that account. Lastly, I am not a Protestant, so that none of this is Protestant prejudice, as Mr. Leetham suggests. I am a perfectly loyal Pagan.'—Editor, Spectator.]
Previous page
