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10.5: Identity: the final school reports

I am anxious not to leave the conclusion of this volume on quite such a negative note. With a view to furnishing my reader with something more positive to digest upon the nature of my personal identity at that time, I can perhaps do no better than to submit some excerpts from the final school reports, which were sent to my father - starting with Wykeham's History report.

Lord! how he loves a purple patch. He is very fluent and very colourful on paper, and the romance of the Elizabethan epoch which he was studying, with his own ancestral memories gave him the fullest opportunities. I felt it my duty to discourage his wilder verbal flights at times, and I may be forgiven for justifying my attitude by a quotation:-

"Adultery and murder served to stain the whitest sheet crimson. And where the gates of disloyalty crumbled down, there thundered through a herd of religious fanatics....."

Such writing however is rarely dull, and it certainly cheers the task of the schoolmaster..... He is a boy of considerable promise, and I should like to wish him very well.

And now Gowan's French report.

No one could suspect that his heart was in his French work, but he was always ready to do a decent modicum. I could never quite decide whether his habit of dropping his head and closing his eyes was to try to get a rise from me by making me think him more somnolent than he was, or was merely the expression of a fine technique of day-dreaming while managing to know just enough of what went on around him. I always expected him to drop right off one day, and I occasionally found myself whispering so as not to disturb him - yet he always seemed to know the place! Anyway, he earned a fair place in a very fair division; and I enjoyed his pictures so much that I could forgive him thinking of them in French hours.

Graham-Campbell's general report.

Weymouth has been something of a meteor here, swift in rise, glowing in colour. One could not find a better example of the truth that a boy has only got to find a means of self-expression - something he is good at - to grow in strength of character and stability. He has of course been particularly fortunate. The gods have been lavish - boxing, rowing, writing - but I suppose first and foremost, his painting..... Weymouth is the gayest, friendliest of companions, and I have come to be very fond of him.

Jaques's general report.

I hate partings, and Alexander deserves, in the way of a parting letter, something more than I shall be able to manage. What a colourful personality! What a talented and promising young man! What a very nice boy! What fun it has been to have him these five years! And then most trite of all, how we shall miss him! All this I feel to the fullest and freshest meaning of the words. It is his own rare spirit that has informed his growth and education here. This is as it should be, though that does not rid one of the feeling that I might have done so very much more to help him. Not that he has been in need of help in the things that really matter. Volatile sometimes he may have been - indeed his waistcoats have been more brilliant than his linen - but in everything he has always been absolutely straight, and I can but say that I am very sorry that the time has come for him to go.....

The thought which constantly lingered in the back of my mind was that, if my teachers had always managed to discern aspects of my personality which they found so easy to admire, then how was it that I did not kindle those same perceptions within my father's eyes? It pained me that he was more inclined to view me with critical regard, and it made me feel uncertain of the value that I should place upon the acclaim that I received from other sources. But I remained optimistic, as ever, that admiration for me would ultimately flower within his heart. And I felt every confidence that my excellence as a soldier, doing my National Service in the Life Guards - in the manner that had been chosen as the next phase in my career - would finally merit that paternal eulogy which had eluded me for so long.

There is today no possible doubt in my heart that I must have been an exceptionally likeable young man - full of vitality and zest for life, well-intentioned towards everyone that I met, but over-anxious perhaps to be well-esteemed. Success had come my way in both phases of my school career, and this had led me to believe that I already merited public acclaim. I found it natural to assume that my praises would be sung wherever in life that I set my foot to rest. I was naïve no doubt, ignoring how there were vast multitudes of young men clamouring for those same prizes which I supposed, mistakenly, that I deserved. And from their point of view, I had been given an unmerited head start in life which, by rights, should be negated. It had all been too easy for me, they might suppose. But in any case, now was the time that I must match myself against them in far more open competition.