SUCH, SUCH WERE THE JOYS
ing might still
all
be there.
It
will have been seen that my own
main trou,ble was an utter lack of any sense of proportion or
probability. This led me to accept outrages and believe absurdities,
and to suffer torments over things which were in fact of no im–
portance.
It
is not enough to say that I was "silly" and "ought to
have known better." Look back into your own childhood and think
of the nonsense you used to believe and the trivialities which could
make you suffer. Of course my own case had its individual varia–
tions, but essentially it was that of countless other boys. The weakness
of the child is that it starts with a blank sheet. It neither understands
nor questions the society in which it lives, and because of its credulity
other people can work upon it, infecting it with the sense of in–
feriority and the dread of offending against mysterious, terrible
laws. It may be that everything that happened to me at Crossgates
could happen in the most "enlightened" school, though perhaps
in subtler forms. Of one thing, however, I do feel fairly sure, and
that is that boarding schools are worse than day schools. A child
has a better chance with the sanctuary of its home near at hand.
And I think the characteristic faults of the English upper and mid–
dle classes may be partly due to the practice, general until recently,
of sending children away from home as young as nine, eight or even
seven.
I have never been back to Crossgates. In a way it is only within
the last decade that I have really thought over my school days,
vividly though their memory has haunted me. Nowadays, I believe,
it would make very little impression on me to see the place again,
if
it still exists. And if I went inside and smelt again the inky, dusty
smell of the big schoolroom, the rosiny smell of the chapel, the
stagnant smell of the swimming bath and the cold reek of the
lavatories, I think I should only feel what one invariably feels in re–
visiting any scene of childhood: How small everything has grown,
and how terrible is the deterioration in myself!
