y and economically, from what it
was in 1911 when I went to Sherborne, I do not think that in essentials
the life of the Public School boy has greatly changed. Most schools are
larger than they were, but they have retained the same traditions and
ideals; there is the same atmosphere of rivalry and competing loyalties;
youth has the same basic problems, is fired by the same ambitions, beset
by the same doubts. And if the modern reader, after turning a page or
two finds his attention held and wants to go on reading, it will mean
that this book has become at last what in fact it was always meant to
be--a realistic but romantic story of healthy adolescence set against
the background of an average English Public School.

April, 1954.

Alec Waugh

BOOK I: WARP AND WOOF

"While I lived I sought no wings,
Schemed no heaven, planned no hell;
But, content with little things,
Made an earth and it was well."

RICHARD MIDDLETON.

CHAPTER I: GROPING

There comes some time an end to all things, to the good and to the bad.
And at last Gordon Caruthers' first day at school, which had so combined
excitement and depression as to make it unforgettable, ended also.
Seldom had he felt such a supreme happiness as when he stepped out at
Fernhurst station, and between his father and mother walked up the
broad, white road that led past the Eversham Hotel to the great grey
Abbey, that watches as a sentinel over the dreamy Wessex town. There are
few schools in England more surrounded with the glamour of mediaeval days
than Fernhurst. Founded in the eighth century by a Saxon saint, it was
the abode of monks till the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Then after a
short interregnum Edward VI endowed it and restored the old curriculum.
The buildings are unchanged. It is true that there have sprung up new
class-rooms round the court, and that opposite the cloisters a huge
yellow block of buildings has been erected which provides workshops and
laboratories, but the Abbey and the School House studies stand as they
stood seven hundred years ago. To a boy of any imagination, such a place
could not but waken a wonderful sense of the beautiful. And Gordon
gazing from the school gateway across to the grey ivy-clad studies was
taken for a few moments clean outside himself. The next few hours only
served to deepen this wonder and admiration. For Fernhurst is prodigal
of associations. The School House dining-hall is