The Cock-House at Fellsgarth

by Talbot Baines Reed

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242 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1891

About the author

Talbot Baines Reed (3 April 1852 – 28 November 1893) was an English writer of boys' fiction who established a genre of school stories that endured into the second half of the 20th century. Among his best-known work is The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's. He was a regular and prolific contributor to The Boy's Own Paper (B.O.P.), in which most of his fiction first appeared. Through his family's business, Reed became a prominent typefounder, and wrote a classic History of the Old English Letter Foundries.

Reviews

[Sherwood Smith]

Reed has to have had an enormous influence on P.G. Wodehouse. It's not just the rollicking humor, it's the headlong tangle of plotting, though P.G. Wodehouse, at his best, attained a lapidary precision in constructing his comedies.

This school story, almost completely forgotten, is a fun read in spite of some creaking devices. The best part is the scrambling, rough-housing, basically good-natured pack of nine juniors, whose exploits remind me of the shenanigans middle school boys get up to if left to themselves. Sometimes I laughed out loud.

It's a piece very much of its time, with the casual violence, the unthinking judgments, yet sharply observed personalities emerge, and most remarkable, Reed managed to keep a firm grip on a moral center without descending into smarmy preachiness, which apparently he hated.

[Farseer · Rating 5 out of 5]

At this point in my reading of Talbot Baines Reed's novels it's clear that he wrote most of them according to the same formula. Many elements of this story were familiar after reading books like "The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's", "Tom, Dick And Harry" or "Follow My Leader (The Boys of Templeton)". However, it is a very enjoyable formula, at least in Reed's hands.

The story begins with the first day at a boarding school called Fellsgarth. We accompany a couple of new boys, Ashby and Fisher minor. They suffer the usual practical jokes reserved for new boys. For example, Ashby, to his great alarm, is told that, as school doesn't properly start until the following day, he will be expected to pay for the dinner he is currently eating in large quantities. Later, once in their House, it's a tradition that each new junior boys is made to sing in front of the whole House, as a sort of initiation called the "bleating of the lambs". In all this, Ashby, even though he is green as they come, makes a better impression than Fisher minor, who tries to give himself airs and pretend he is not green.

Talbot Reed is really good at showing us through the eyes of new boys how intimidating the school can appear when you are new: A whole strange society where everybody has their place and their friends, and knows the unwritten rules, except for the new boys. It's a big trope of the genre and Reed is not the writer who invented that genre, but he is the one who best developed it.

Another common theme in Reed's novels is the contrast between the humorous antics of the junior boys and the more serious pursuits of the senior boys. In this case, we soon learn that the school is deeply divided between the "Modern" and "Classic" Houses. The Classic boys have chosen (or, rather, their parents have chosen for them) a classical education, heavy on Latin and Greek, while the Modern boys receive an education with more focus on modern languages, science and accounting. In this case, the rivalry that divides the school does not only involve junior boys (like the Tadpoles and Guinea-pigs of St. Dominic's) but is also very strong smong senior boys. The school captain, Yorke, even though he is a Classic boy himself, tries to remain neutral and get the school to come together, but he has a most difficult task, due to the excessive pride and rivalries on both sides.

Things come to a head during an assembly where the officers of the school athletic clubs will be elected, and the Classic and Modern sides have competing candidates for each post. Ashby and Fisher minor, both Classic boys, get involved in a prank with other junior boys to get some Modern juniors to miss the assembly and thus help their side by suppressing some of the Modern voters. Knowledge of the prank escalates beyond the realm of junior boys and causes serious tension among the senior boys who lead both sides (after all, the junior boys involved were fags of some of the senior Classic boys, so it looked as if the Classic boys' leaders may have conspired to cheat at the election).

The rivalry between the two sides continues to grow until it interferes with the school team (the horror!). Yorke has to expel two Modern boys from the school rugby team and from then on the Modern boys refuse to play for the school, as long as they receive no apology.

While all this drama is going on, we have several other plot threads. One involves a master who successfully tries to repair some of the fractures between Moderns and Classics by convincing some of the most boisterous juniors from both sides to take over the school tuck shop together, and use it to raise funds for the school teams. Another involves suspected theft (a very common trope, too). Rollitt, a senior Classic boy who is a scholarship student and keeps himself mostly out of the school social life is suspected of stealing money belonging to the school clubs from Fisher major's study. Add to that several fights, confusion between two twin brothers, one of whom is a junior Classic boy and the other a junior Modern boy, school matches, a senior Modern boy who refuses to join the boycott of the school team and is sent to Coventry by his Modern peers, an unauthorized expedition to a nearby mountain where some junior boys get lost in bad weather and you have all the drama you can wish for.

It's a really entertaining novel, with humorous and dramatic moments and a happy ending. There's always something going on. This eventfulness is why the last few paragraphs of the novel are funny, after everything that has happened. The nine junior boys from both sides that we have been following, now friends despite half of them being Classics and the rest Moderns, are leaving school at the end of the term:

It took some little time to arrange matters on the omnibus, as one or two innocent middle-boys had had the audacity to occupy the box-seat and the row behind, and had to be cajoled or pulled down. How could any one dare, when those two seats just held nine, to imagine that they were not sacred property?

“That’s better,” said Wally, when at last the party were safely up, with two rugs over their eighteen knees, and a gross of brandy-balls circulating for the common comfort. “Touch ’em up, driver. Give ’em their heads! I tell you what, you chaps, this has been rather a slow half. I vote we have some larks next term.”

“Rather!” chimed in the chorus.