Brief Tales From The Bench

by Henry Cecil

  The boy appeared to enjoy himself at school, and certainly during the holidays he was a happy, healthy boy. It was only after two years that the Major-General discovered to his horror that David had become an accomplished little criminal. David’s father acted at once, withdrew him from the school, and refused to pay the claim which was subsequently made upon him.

  When the case came on before me, both sides were represented by counsel, the plaintiff by Mr Benton, and the Major-General by Mr Boyd. In opening the case Mr Benton informed me that the school was not quite like other schools. He said that the greatest freedom was given to the pupils.

  ‘It is, of course, possible,’ he said, ‘that the boy in question was under considerable restraint at home, and that, when he went back for the holidays after learning to enjoy his freedom, this development was not appreciated by his parents.’

  ‘If that is so,’ went on Mr Benton, ‘all I can say is that Major-General Brooke knew perfectly well the sort of school it was. In fact he visited it during the winter before his son went there, and he was severely snowballed on the way out. When he complained to my client, he said that, if the Major-General didn’t like it, he knew what he could do about it.’

  ‘D’you mean to say,’ I asked, ‘that he still sent his boy to the school after that?’

  ‘I do, your honour,’ said Mr Benton, ‘and I rely very strongly on the fact that not only did he send him to the school after that, but he kept him there for two whole years.’

  Mr Benton then called Mr Chilton to give evidence. Mr Chilton was a tall man with a domed head, and he looked and talked rather like Mr Robert Morley. After he had been sworn and given formal evidence about himself and his school, Mr Benton asked him: ‘When the Major-General came to see the school before he sent David to it, did he see the boys?’

  ‘He did indeed,’ said Mr Chilton.

  ‘Did he see them at work, or play, or both?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘What form did the play take?’ asked Mr Benton.

  ‘We don’t differentiate between work and play,’ was the reply.

  ‘Well, what form did the work take?’

  ‘The same as the play.’

  ‘What did the Major-General see the boys doing?’

  ‘Playing.’

  ‘What form did the play take?’

  ‘Work.’

  ‘What form did the work take?’

  ‘Playing.’

  I could not resist intervening. ‘But what did they do?’ I asked.

  ‘You may well ask,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘What didn’t they do! They did everything. Helter skelter all over the place.’

  ‘But did they learn nothing?’ I asked.

  ‘They learned to play.’

  ‘But what about work?’

  ‘The same thing.’

  Mr Benton then joined in.

  ‘What about examinations, Mr Chilton?’

  ‘I don’t hold with examinations.’

  ‘Did none of your boys ever pass an examination?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Mr Chilton, ‘he’d have been expelled if he had.’

  ‘I should like to know,’ I said, ‘what advantage of any kind your pupils got from coming to your school.’

  ‘They got an advantage,’ said Mr Chilton, ‘which is denied probably to all other boys in all other schools. For the only time in their lives they had complete freedom.’

  ‘Could they do anything they liked?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Chilton.

  ‘Suppose they hit you?’ I asked.

  ‘I hit them back harder,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘We’re free as well, you see. It’s a wonderful sight, your honour, to see masters and boys all perfectly free to do whatever they want. Perhaps you’d like to come and see for yourself one day?’

  ‘Not, I think, when there is snow on the ground, thank you,’ I said.

  Mr Benton brought the witness to the incident of the snowball.

  ‘There’s nothing to it,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘One of the boys had put a stone in a snowball so that it hurt the Major-General when it hit him. But he was free to go, as I explained.’

  ‘Are you telling me, Mr Chilton,’ I asked, ‘that the Major-General realised that, if their boy came to your school, he would learn nothing at all?’

  ‘Certainly not, your honour,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘He would learn a great deal. He did learn a great deal. I think I can say he was the most accomplished blackmailer we’ve ever turned out.’

  ‘That is exactly what the defendant complains about,’ I said.

  ‘There’s no justification whatever for the complaint,’ said Mr Chilton.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I thought you said that the boy became an accomplished blackmailer.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘But that’s what the Major-General complains about.’

  ‘I repeat,’ said Mr Chilton, ‘that there is no justification for his complaint. If he left my school as a blackmailer, he came as one. The great advantage of coming to my school is this. My methods bring out the best and worst in a boy. By free association together the boys learn all sorts of things which they have no chance of learning anywhere else. The things they learn may be good or bad. That is human nature. There is much good and bad in all of us. But my theory is that, if a boy’s got a lot of bad in him and is likely to become, say, a blackmailer in later life, it’s very much better for it to be brought out straightaway. Then it can be corrected. On the other hand, if you keep it under and the boy, on the face of it, behaves himself, the repressed desire to blackmail may come out at a much later stage, and the boy may become an ugly criminal when it is too late to do anything about it except to send him to prison for many years.’

  ‘So you don’t actually teach blackmail?’ I inquired.

  ‘There are no lectures on the subject,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘There are no lectures on any subject.’

  ‘But the boys are free to blackmail, or burgle, or however the fancy takes them?’

  ‘Of course, within the grounds of the school. I don’t let them pillage the local houses or shops or I might get into trouble myself.’

  ‘So a lot of stealing goes on?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly. Other schools may turn out university scholars and international rugger players, but what’s the good of all that if they subsequently get three years for false pretences? I can tell your honour that some of my worst boys are now pillars of the Church.’

  ‘But what about the good ones?’ I asked. ‘What do they learn?’

  ‘They learn life, your honour,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘This is a subject of which most educational authorities, most lawyers, and most other professional men seem strikingly ignorant. What is the good of a knowledge of classics and mathematics if you don’t know how to live with your fellow men? An ounce of freedom is worth a pound of Liddell and Scott and Lewis and Short put together.’

  ‘How long have you been carrying on this school, Mr Chilton?’ I asked.

  ‘For fifteen years.’

  ‘Successfully?’

  ‘Very successfully. With one qualification.’

  ‘And what,’ I asked, ‘is the qualification?’

  ‘The Inland Revenue, your honour.’

  In due course Mr Chilton was cross-examined by counsel for the Major-General.

  ‘Mr Chilton,’ he asked as his first question, ‘during your fifteen years you must have had at least one or two boys who were by nature very bad indeed.’

  ‘More than that, sir,’ said Mr Chilton.

  ‘Some of them,’ went on counsel, ‘so bad that they would be prepared to commit murder?’

  ‘And worse, sir,’ said Mr Chilton.

  ‘How many murders,’ asked counsel, ‘have you totted up during your regime?’

  ‘Actual murders?’ replied Mr Chilton. ‘None, sir. But we’ve had some very fine attempts.’

  ‘So,’ said counsel, ‘you have a boy sent to your school, and you send
him back home to his parents as a murderer.’

  ‘If we send him home as a murderer,’ said Mr Chilton, ‘he came as one.’

  ‘Then,’ said counsel, ‘he may murder his parents.’

  ‘That is quite possible,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘But if so, he’d have probably murdered them anyway. Such a boy’s parents stand a much better chance of keeping their lives by having their son’s murderous instincts brought out early. I expect we’ve saved a good many lives this way. And the same applies to David. Blackmail is moral murder. If we’d bottled up the blackmail in him, it might have come out as actual murder. I can assure you that David Brooke was a very nasty little boy when he came to us, and an even nastier one when he left us.’

  ‘What good does that do to his parents?’ asked counsel.

  ‘A great deal of good, sir,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘We send a complete report on each boy at the end of each term. We told your client exactly all we knew about David, so that for the first time the parents learned what a horrible little reptile they’d been nurturing. Knowing that, they can take remedial measures.’

  ‘Why don’t you take remedial measures?’ I asked.

  ‘That’s normally quite impossible,’ said Mr Chilton.

  I asked why.

  ‘Usually, the boy isn’t with us long enough. You see, your honour, it’s no small thing to bring out the worst in a boy. And it may take a very long time. Sometimes when we think we’ve got to the dregs, we find there is something even worse below. Life is short, your honour. The part of it that you spend at school is even shorter. There is positively no time to carry out both processes. What we do is to discover the best and worst in our boys, and we leave it to the parents to make the most of the results. And it’s just as well to know their virtues too, your honour. For example, a few boys have a passion for the truth. Well, it would be no good sending them into politics or law.’

  ‘What should I do with a blackmailer or thief?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Chilton, ‘I don’t know what you’d do with him, your honour. Some parents are blackmailers or thieves themselves, in which case the boy can carry on the family business. But, if it were a boy of mine, I should take remedial measures. What those measures would be would depend entirely upon the individuality of the boy himself. That’s another reason why it’s quite impossible to carry out such treatment at school. Each boy needs individual treatment, and the best people to provide that treatment are the boy’s parents. When they know exactly what is wrong. Major-General Brooke ought to be very grateful to me. David is a very capable young man. If he’d gone to an ordinary school, he’d have very likely gone on to a university and ended in gaol or worse.’

  ‘Worse?’ queried counsel.

  ‘Well, for some people, for me for example, just managing to keep out of gaol would be worse than actually going to gaol. I mean never knowing if and when the blow will fail. A boy of David’s character would almost certainly have taken to crime at some stage in his career. He might have done very well indeed, up to a point, and then suddenly been completely ruined. Now you can’t change his nature, but you can provide against the ill effects of that nature.’

  ‘What do you suggest that David’s parents should do?’ asked counsel.

  ‘Well,’ said Mr Chilton, ‘if they were sensible people, what they would do would be this. First of all they’d pay my bill and put an end to these ridiculous proceedings. Then they would talk to David about his future career. With luck, they’d be able to point out one method by which he could give full play, or almost full play, to his great ability in certain respects without offending against the law. He obviously likes extracting money from people by threats. Well, the legal profession is an obvious possibility for him. I’m not quite sure if he likes hurting people, but if he does, he might either become a dentist, or go into the Inland Revenue. The object of life is, in my view, to get as much happiness for oneself while giving as little unhappiness as possible to other people. Schools and universities don’t bother about teaching that sort of thing. As I indicated before, nuclear physics and classics and mathematics will not help you to get on with your neighbour.’

  ‘Mr Chilton,’ I said, ‘one thing has occurred to me. How do you manage to satisfy the local inspector of schools?’

  ‘He daren’t come near the place,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘His predecessor came in a Mini Minor and left in an ambulance. We do it all now by correspondence.’

  ‘As to that,’ said counsel, ‘my client, Major-General Brooke, might himself have left in an ambulance.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘We had one standing by.’

  ‘Do all your parents have to undergo this ordeal?’ asked counsel.

  ‘Not if they don’t want to. They can do it all by correspondence too. But I admit they don’t learn as much that way. If you really want to know what happens, you’ve got to come and see for yourself.’

  ‘And,’ I put in, ‘feel for yourself too, I gather.’

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mr Chilton, ‘that can happen.’

  ‘Was Major-General Brooke particularly unlucky?’ asked counsel.

  ‘Not at all, your honour,’ said Mr Chilton. ‘On the contrary, I’d say he was one of the lucky ones. He left under his own steam.’

  ‘Have you never been sued for assault or something of that kind?’ I asked.

  ‘Certainly not, your honour. All our prospective parents sign a form of indemnity before they come on the premises.’

  ‘Have you any records of the subsequent careers of many of your boys?’ asked counsel.

  ‘Yes, sir, we have.’

  ‘And generally speaking, what is their record?’

  ‘Much the same as that for any other good school, with one exception.’

  ‘And what might that be?’ asked counsel.

  ‘The crime rate is much lower.’

  Eventually Mr Chilton completed his evidence, and the Major-General went into the witness box. In one of counsel’s early questions, he was asked whether he was warned what might happen to him when he went down to inspect the school.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Major-General, ‘Mr Chilton did say that the boys were very boisterous, and that I might be ragged a bit. Well, your honour, I like high spirits and I think I can say I can hold my own in most company. As a matter of fact in my younger days I boxed for the Army, and I thought it would be an interesting experience.’

  ‘Were you hit on the head by a snowball?’ asked counsel.

  ‘I was hit on the head by a stone in the guise of a snowball’, was the reply.

  ‘Did you complain?’ I asked.

  ‘No, your honour. I didn’t like the boys to think that I minded, so l treated it as a good joke. I had to put up with a good deal more in the war.’

  ‘But then,’ I said, ‘you were fighting the Germans.’

  ‘It didn’t seem all that different, your honour,’ replied the Major-General.

  ‘Why have you refused to pay Mr Chilton’s bill, and withdrawn your boy from the school without notice?’ he was asked by counsel.

  ‘Because of the way they sent him home. He was physically, morally and mentally degenerate.’

  The Major-General was then cross-examined.

  ‘What exactly do you say was wrong with your son when he came home to you?’

  ‘His hair was over his shoulders,’ said the Major-General, ‘he didn’t wash, and he couldn’t speak a civil word to us, he stole some of my money and he pawned a silver cup.’

  ‘Which, no doubt,’ said counsel, ‘you won for boxing?’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the Major-General. ‘I minded that more than I did the money.’

  ‘Is that the sum total of your complaint?’

  ‘Certainly not. He threatened both his mother and me. He said that he’d leave home if we didn’t make him a bigger allowance.’

  ‘General,’ said counsel, ‘when you sent your boy to the school, you knew it was a pretty odd school?’

 
; ‘I knew it was different.’

  ‘If the boys were allowed with impunity to throw stones at the parents of prospective pupils, did it not occur to you that there might be other things that they would do which might be even worse?’

  ‘I admit I thought it was roughing it up a bit to put a stone in a snowball, and not altogether sporting. But there was nothing dishonest about it.’

  ‘Wasn’t there?’ I asked. ‘You said yourself that it was a stone in the guise of a snowball. You mightn’t particularly mind being hit by a snowball, but if you knew there was a stone in it, you would certainly duck.’

  ‘I did,’ said the Major-General.

  ‘But it hit you just the same?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But wouldn’t you describe it as dirty play?’ asked counsel.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Major-General, ‘that’s exactly how I would describe it. Where games are played, there is always a certain amount of dirty play, and one’s got to accept it. But that’s very different from plain theft.’

  ‘General,’ went on counsel, ‘you’ve heard Mr Chilton say what the theory is behind his method of carrying on the school.’

  ‘Method of carrying on the school!’ repeated the Major-General, with scorn. ‘It’s all a lot of bunkum, sir. If you ask me, the whole thing’s a fraud. They get a lot of money from a lot of unsuspecting parents. They do no work at all, and allow the boys to become little hooligans and then that unctuous peacock goes into the witness box and lays down the law as though he were the second Messiah.’

  ‘But, Major-General,’ went on counsel, ‘you heard Mr Chilton explain that, if the parents of a boy know his criminal tendencies early enough, they may be able to set him on the right road. Whereas if they don’t know of them, he may become a criminal when it’s too late to do anything for him.’

  ‘I heard your client talk a lot of poppycock,’ said the Major-General. ‘I didn’t ask Mr Chilton to teach my boy Latin or Greek or nuclear physics or mathematics or any of the rest of them. I liked the idea of this lack of restraint. I thought it might be good for a boy in the first instance. I thought it might be character-building. But I expected the end product to be a decent boy who could live in a decent family where you didn’t have to lock up the spoons before going to bed.’