The Old School: Essays by Divers Hands

by Graham Greene (Editor)

The Old School Essays by Divers Hands

236 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Henry Graham Greene was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century.
Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a reputation early in his lifetime as a major writer, both of serious Catholic novels, and of thrillers (or "entertainments" as he termed them). He was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times. Through 67 years of writing, which included over 25 novels, he explored the conflicting moral and political issues of the modern world. The Power and the Glory won the 1941 Hawthornden Prize and The Heart of the Matter won the 1948 James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Best of the James Tait Black. Greene was awarded the 1968 Shakespeare Prize and the 1981 Jerusalem Prize. Several of his stories have been filmed, some more than once, and he collaborated with filmmaker Carol Reed on The Fallen Idol (1948) and The Third Man (1949).
He converted to Catholicism in 1926 after meeting his future wife, Vivienne Dayrell-Browning. Later in life he took to calling himself a "Catholic agnostic". He died in 1991, aged 86, of leukemia, and was buried in Corseaux cemetery in Switzerland. William Golding called Greene "the ultimate chronicler of twentieth-century man's consciousness and anxiety".

Reviews

[James Mcgowen · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing look at the public school system at the beginning of the 20th Century by some great authors, including Greene himself, H.E. Bates and W.H. Auden. Some essays are political, such as those by Harold Nicholson and Derek Vershoyle, while in most of them are interesting in terms of the various counties in England and the backdrop of the First World War. Others, including a look at an Irish school run by monks and a Catholic school for girls, are interesting contrasts. All-in-all, it is an interesting collection, some critical and yet nostalgic.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book sat on my shelves for years - just because it was edited by the novelist, Graham Greene, in 1934, when he was very young and not yet famous. I only read it because I have decided to read everything written by Graham Greene in one year - in chronological order (You have to do SOMETHING in this pandemic!). SURPRISE. I REALLY liked it. Greene wrote the introduction to the book and a final chapter. I intended to read only the Greene parts, but I couldn't stop. The rest of the book is essays by various young writers of the day about their "Old School" days (the school before entering University). WOW, what writing. There are some stunners: W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Elixabeth Bowen, Anthony Powell, Harold Nicolson and many who are unknown to me but equally splendid. It makes one greatly appreciate NOT growing up in Great Britain in the early days of the 1900s in the "public school" system. (I've never really quite figured out why they are called public schools when they are clearly private - but I digress.) Most of the writers are mildly annoyed themselves and some are completely furious. Greene himself is obviously NOT happy about the system - and dwells at length on the sexual undertones of the system. I love his last last paragraph: "Why, in any case, he should feel more loyal to a school which is paid to tech him than to a butcher who is paid to feed him I cannot understand. I am afraid my want of understanding is responsible for this book."

[Margaret Conmey · Rating 2 out of 5]

As with other collections,some of the essays were better than others
Unfortunately as all the writers except one were born , and therefore were at school, at approximately the same time the views on the school/ education were limited
It would have been more interesting to compare experience from different eras

[Dr G · Rating 2 out of 5]

I became aware of this collection of personal anecdotes and ruminations about schools when I was searching for any of Graham Greene’s books of which I was not aware. The Old School is a collection of seventeen essays by seventeen authors, gathered by Greene and published in 1934, with three reprints in the 1980s. Thanks to the wonders, and the omnipresence, of the internet, I tracked down a copy.
I rather doubt it was worth all that effort. It was certainly of its time. However, it contained some interesting matter. It seems that these pieces were not commissioned by Greene since permission is cited for the reproduction of a dozen of them. Thus, we see that the writers were not responding to a common directive, but seem to have taken off from different starting points.
Greene states in his preface: “Like the family album, this book will, I hope, be superficially more funny than tragic, for so odd a system of education does not demand a pompous memorial.
“For there can be small doubt that the system which this book mainly represents is doomed. “ And,
“Whatever the political changes in this country during the next few years one thing surely is almost certain: class distinctions will not remain unaltered and the public school, as it exists today, will disappear.”
I suppose it is possible to come to different judgments about the accuracy of these predictions since “unaltered” and “as it exists today” are cautious qualifiers. However, I suspect Greene would be very surprised if he were able to examine the 2024 landscape. The English aristocracy lingers on, if in diminished form, and with, arguably, new branches carved out of the sporting, popular music, union and entertainment areas (or does “entertainment” cover the other three?) And many of the most renowned schools are still with us, and still hold a staggering prestige which belies any expectation of egalitarianism.
The widespread use of corporal punishment has disappeared with most western countries banning it. And the issue of sexual abuse has at least been focused on with legislation leading to highly publicised arraignments.
There are other elements mentioned amongst these pieces which are arguably still present in the fee-paying school sector. These would include the emphasis on sport and the way it is valued ahead of academic or ethical qualities; the mediocre intellects of many teachers, and the inability of the system to recognize and encourage divergent cerebral skills.
Several of the writers consider the pre-eminence of sport but the most entertaining comment is probably from Greene himself: “Games and school I should like to see kept rigidly apart, for games are used more than anything else to teach him narrow loyalties (that they do not teach him sportsmanship is obvious in any football match between rival public schools). It is at least better that he should learn loyalty to a town which includes all classes and both sexes than to an institution consisting only of his own sex and his own class./Why, in any case, he should feel more loyal to a school which is paid to teach him than to a butcher who is paid to feed him I cannot understand. I am afraid my want of understanding is responsible for this book.”
WH Auden comments with customary asperity that to be a teacher “one must be a remarkable person. Some schoolmasters are, but far, far too many are silted-up old maids, earnest young scoutmasters, or just generally dim…they are only too often those who are afraid of the mature world, either the athletic whose schooldays were the peak of their triumph from which they dread to recede, or else the timid academic whose qualifications or personal charm are insufficient to secure them a fellowship; in either case the would-be children.”
LP Hartley writes that “The phlegmatic Englishman is often phlegmatic because he has lost the power of expressing his emotion. He has repressed his feelings so often that there are none left to repress.” William Plomer claims that in looking “at English public school boys and men I am often struck by their puerility, their dreary philistinism, their ignorance of things which seem to me important or interesting, and their strong herd-instinct.” Plomer also contributes the best anecdote of the book: “One of my form-masters commended my essays but found fault with a tendency I had to use rather long, Johnsonian words of Latin derivation. ‘Good English,’ he said, ‘is written with Anglo-Saxon monosyllables.’ The use of the word ‘monosyllables’ rather weakened a pronouncement which may have had some value as a corrective, but was obviously absurd as an opinion.”
Harold Nicholson amusingly suggests “The athlete chews the cud of his old memories: the intellectual compensates for past humiliations by sneering at his old school.”
In a book which contains many more negative assessments than positive, it is a relief to read Theodora Benson who writes: “At sixteen I was happy, from seventeen to twenty I was fairly unhappy, from twenty on I grew steadily happier, and now – let me put it on record while it lasts – I am very happy. I should be the same me whether I had been to Cheltenham or not, and if I ever try to blame anything concerning me off on to the old school I shall be a liar.”