graces, because
he was almost the only boy who could say in what novel of Dickens or
Scott some famous character occurred. Mr. Neech had a conception of
education quite apart from the mere instilling of declensions and
genders and 'num' and 'nonne' and 'quin' and [Greek: ei] and [Greek:
ean]. He taught Geography and English History and English Literature, so
far as the school curriculum allowed him. Divinity and English meant
more to Mr. Neech than a mere hour of Greek Testament and a pedant's
fiddling with the text of Lycidas. Michael had a dim appreciation of his
excellence, even in the Shell: he identified him in some way with Tom
Brown's Schooldays, with prints of Eton and Westminster, with Miss
Carthew's tales of her brother on the Britannia. Michael recognized him
as a character in those old calf-bound books he loved to read at home.
Once Mr. Neech called a boy a dog-eared Rosinante, and Michael laughed
aloud and when fiercely Mr. Neech challenged him, denying he had ever
heard of Rosinante, Michael soon showed that he had read Don Quixote
with some absorption. After that Mr. Neech put Michael in one of the
favoured desks by the window and would talk to him, while he warmed his
parchment-covered hands upon the hot-water pipes. Mr. Neech was probably
the first person to impress Michael with the beauty of the past or
rather to give him an impetus to arrange his own opinions. Mr. Neech,
lamenting the old days long gone, thundering against modernity and
denouncing the whole system of education that St. James' fostered, was
almost the only schoolmaster with a positive personality whom Michael
ever encountered. Michael had scarcely realized, until he reached the
Shell, in what shadowy dates of history St. James' was already a famous
school. Now in the vulgarity of its crimson brick, in the servility with
which it truckled to bourgeois ideals, in the unimaginative utility it
worshipped, Michael vaguely apprehended the loss of a soul. He would
linger in the corridors, reading the lists of distinguished Jacobeans,
and during Prayers he would with new interest speculate upon the lancet
windows and their stained-glass heraldry, until vaguely in his heart
grew a patriotism more profound than the mere joy of a football victory,
a patriotism that submerged Hammersmith and Kensington and made him
proud that he himself was veritably a Jacobean. He was still just as
eager to see St. James' defeat Dulford at cricket, just as proud to