Bill, I am not being defensive. I don’t want you to think that for a minute. I’ll plan, I’ll plan.
If I may be serious after all that nonsense, I am awfully concerned about the Stone-Wilcox suit. I am even more concerned about Seymour’s handling of the matter. According to him, I may have made Wells vulnerable to an unfavorable ruling in a number of ways, but first and foremost by announcing what had happened and who was involved before the faculty and student disciplinary recommendations were made. I cannot believe there is much in this. For one thing, the boys had already admitted to everything I told the school, and they had also told their friends. Moreover, I did not pass a character judgment on any of the boys involved, nor did I indicate what their “sentence” should be. In no way did I depart from the stated or traditional due process of the school or from the disciplinary contract all parents sign, including Mrs. Stone. That contract states, in effect, that expulsions are made at the discretion of the headmaster, who may seek student and faculty counsel as he sees fit. Bill, if Seymour can’t win this case hands down, there will be no effective disciplinary process in the future. This is perhaps the neatest and most routine expulsion I can remember.
I wish to make no cash settlements or other substantive compromises out of court. Seymour has led me to believe that Mrs. Stone’s principal aim is to correct what she feels has been personal mistreatment of Charles and her: my addressing the whole school about Charles’s drug deal and perceived slights in my letter to her. I regret now that I wrote her the same letter I wrote the Wilcoxes, but it pertained adequately, and I was pressed. Seymour says that if I alter the status of the dismissal to a voluntary withdrawal and draft an encouraging letter of recommendation to the colleges of Charles’s choice, she might, for lawyers’ fees to date, drop the suit. I sense that Seymour likes this, as it will keep Wells and its association with drugs out of the New York and Boston papers. No mean consideration, I agree. But wrong. We did right by Charles and right by Wells in this case, and it’s important that we don’t forfeit that gain. Why should Mrs. Stone—for those motives—get satisfaction? Please support me on this, Bill. I don’t want to see Wells smeared, and I don’t want to see Mrs. S. have the satisfaction of hauling me to court to defend myself, but the principle is worth it. In fact, I dread the prospect of court. It couldn’t be a worse time for me, although I understand we are getting delays until January. After we win the case, or she drops it, I will be glad to write to Mrs. Stone apologizing for the inadequacies of my letter. I’ll also recommend Charles to somebody some day, if he ever pulls himself together.
Why does so much about school feel like a fight? And why doesn’t it feel like school unless it’s a fight?
Thanks for your kind words about Meg. There is too much for me to say about that right now to say anything. She is very bad, Bill, and unlikely to make it through the holidays. My brother and his wife are coming up here for Christmas, and we are going to hold each other together. You and Marguerite have been a terrific help. I think you know how Meg feels about you both.
Have a joyful holiday,
John
14 December
Mrs. Herman Triester
2006 Apple Mountain Road
Williamstown, Massachusetts
Dear Mrs. Triester,
Thank you for your frank and thoughtful comments on my “Headmaster’s Notes” in the Quarterly.
I think I may be less guilty of espousing the bad ideas you attribute to the article than I am of being insufficiently clear about what I did say. By no means did I want to suggest that “grade-grubbing” was a welcome development—for itself—at Wells. I did mean to say that on balance boys seem willing to work hard again, and there might be some good in this.
I am no foe of “learning for its own sake,” although I happen to think that term is tossed about a good deal as an intrinsic educational good, but rarely examined for meaning. Considered seriously, the notion poses problems. Learning seems to me to be perfectly instrumental, to be invariably for the sake of something else: reward, promotion, amusement, mastery. Different souls learn things for different ends, and some ends are undoubtedly nobler than others, but learning itself is never the end. An eight-year-old learns the multiplication tables so as to feel competent at an age-appropriate level, not really out of a desire to perform the practical tasks that multiplication allows him to do (which is still instrumental), and certainly not out of love of arithmetic elegance. We learn those basic things because we are supposed to, and because we’d be ashamed not to. And so it goes with the other enabling skills. Without them, learning, however it was acquired, would only be what accidentally accrued as one pursued impulsive desires. Of course there is an educational theory in that, revived from Rousseau and plunked down in the nineteen sixties, when there was a new population willing to believe that if you don’t block the youthful learning engine with stultifying conventions, it will run, run, run to the benefit of the learner and his society. This has always sounded marvelous, but it’s false and the desired result never happens.
There is an occasional practical genius like Edison who was genuinely uneducated but who nevertheless synthesized experiences in such a way as to contribute to the culture, but he is one in a million, perhaps one in ten million. My own feeling, based on a fairly interested reading of Edison’s life, is that ordinary schooling would have imposed little on his mechanical aptitude and might by way of compensation have added some order, perspective, and appreciation to his badly muddled adult life. Rousseau, by his own Confessions, was worse: the genius of progressive child-rearing gave his own away; he had no time for them. You also mention Da Vinci, who, while incontestably a genius, was hardly unschooled. He had a marvelous humanist education from Florence, just as Socrates had from Athens.
One can’t know these things for certain, but let me offer you two basic propositions. (1) Boys who work hard or are made to work hard at acquiring verbal and logical facility at school will be more productive in any endeavor than similar boys who do not. (2) Boys left to their own devices, especially adolescent boys and adolescent devices, seek only gratification of their impulses in the most sensational, yet most effortless, ways possible. Consider any example, historical or contemporary, of adolescents left to their own devices. Adolescents, at least half of them, grow out of adolescence, but if they are unschooled they are crippled in taking up their adult purpose.
Of course I am laboring, and probably blurring my point. In large measure I agree with you. Nobody is more heartened to observe a student “see the point” than a schoolmaster. My experience, however, has taught me that the odds of seeing it are greatly increased when the vision is trained. I don’t worry about the self-esteem or the sensitivity or the “creative potential” of any boy working doggedly at school. Hard work brings achievement, which is the only sure source of self-esteem—I say this in spite of the odd psychological theoretics afoot that talk about self-esteem as if it were a wonderful visceral potion, somehow stopped up by pressures to perform and to produce. As for sensitivity and creativity, my experience again is at odds with popularly expressed sentiments. My own view is that sensitivity and creativity from the young are rarely welcomed by anybody. If you are talking about creativity in the sense of feeling and acting like an Alienated Artist—Byron, Shelley, Joyce—then the best bet would be to enroll the prospective artist in a perfect prison of a school, a place with no outlet whatsoever for their finer sensibilities. Seemed to work for Byron, Shelley, and Joyce and for many lesser lights. I would also be intrigued to see a school designed for Byron, Shelley, etc. I think it’s possible. I can see, in fact have seen, the curricula that would make every provision for creativity, set aside appropriate modules of time for spontaneity. Ah, give me Tom Brown’s Rugby, and I’ll give you not only Thomas Hughes, but also Matthew Arnold.
Please forgive this garrulous reply. You have struck my one chord (maybe only a note).
Again, I appreciate your letter, criticism and all. Would yo
u mind if we printed it in the March Quarterly?
Best Wishes for a joyful holiday,
John O. Greeve
15 December
Mr. Brooks Forbes
145 East 79th Street
New York, New York
Dear Brooks,
I am going to begin by attempting what has proved futile in the past, but which is still absolutely necessary if civilized conduct is to prevail at Wells. Will you please, for God’s sake, accept this modest honorarium for your travel and for your time? I happen to know that you get less than a full day off per week from the Strictly Waugh production, so let us compensate you a little.
Your reading here undid all of us, got under the hide of every dullard, tough, and sophisticate. I love it! I love that it worked, and I love that for almost two hours, the Wells hall could have been the schoolroom at Charterhouse or Harrow a hundred fifty years ago, with perhaps Dickens himself doing the honors. I’ve gotten so used to the Alistair Sim movie, that I forgot how much meat there is in the Christmas Carol. Can you imagine having written that, and only that? I was reminded during the various charges up my spinal column which accompanied your reading of what the novelist John Irving said about the Christmas Carol: something to the effect that you can’t dismiss it as sentimentality when the intensity and resonance of those feelings is the best you’ve got. Who tried to put us off sentimentality anyway, Freud?
I am like a little boy, Brooks, in that I marvel at the transformation of you in performance. I know you, I taught you, I once slapped you, I introduced you to our boys, and then I took my seat in the Hall and then watched as you evaporated into sheer characters. I am getting the spinal response again just recalling it. Can anything be better than mastering an art as you have and then being able to put it into the service of something sublimely fine as Christmas Carol?
Good heavens, this is a fan letter, isn’t it? Thanks very much for the guest seats to Strictly Waugh. Normally I am in and out of NYC during the Christmas break, but with Meg as unstable as she is, I can’t plan on it. How she would love it, by the way.
And, by the way, it was wonderful seeing you—and for the boys to see a living proof that a Wells education does not always lead directly to Philistia.
Do not return the honorarium, or I will write the NY papers and tell them about your balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet, spring, 1962.
Merry Christmas and warm wishes,
John
16 December
Mr. Charles Pawling
Independent School Services, Incorporated
6 Liberty Square
Boston, Massachusetts
Dear Chet,
I am writing not only to convey season’s greetings (season’s greetings, Chet) but to make a most unseasonable inquiry about the availability of first-class mathematics teachers who happen to be, for some reason not deleterious of their character, doing absolutely nothing at the moment.
We may be stuck here shortly. We had an annoyingly sudden resignation here late in August and have filled in with somebody who is not working out—decent enough person, though. Anything promising on hand? No hard cases, please.
Best,
John
16 December
Mr. Kurt Kohler
28 Cicada Court
Naples, Florida
Dear Kurt,
Greetings from the north.
I am writing with a proposition so preposterous it may actually appeal to you. How would you like to revive your pedagogical act for a special half-year run at Wells? As the sickly head said to Mr. Chips when the war broke out, “We need you, old man.”
The situation is this: a young math appointment (hired since you left) pulled out suddenly in August, and we were left short. I signed on a woman who wanted to get back into the classroom after childrearing, and she is not working out. The school will not collapse if we keep her on for the duration of the year, but a very destructive consensus has been reached by her classes that she is not to be taken seriously. In consequence nearly seventy boys are learning little math, and she is taking a psychological beating.
Of course I have no business intruding into your richly deserved solemnity, but if I can’t send an ill-considered appeal to the school’s most distinguished, most sagacious, most beloved emeritus master, to whom can I send one?
Seriously, Kurt, if the idea for some reason appeals, let me know. Needless to say, we will pay you bushels and arrange commodious housing wherever you would like. Even if you have no interest in the proposal, why not pretend you do, so that we may fly you up here at our expense and “interview” you? Needless to say, that would positively make this academic year.
My good wishes,
John
16 December
Mr. and Mrs. Frank Greeve
14 Bingham Drive
Tarrytown, New York
Dear Val and Frank,
Just a note to let you know I am counting the days till you arrive. Some order at last! Some company I can relax in, at last! I am hiring two women from the dorm staff to do our house before you arrive. So if not exactly commodious, it will be damned clean.
I’ve tried to keep you informed about Meg, but be prepared. She looks much more ravaged than when you saw her before Thanksgiving. If it works out, you should see her, but it will hurt. It will also hurt her, for the same reason. All we can do now is love her. That gets through, I think, although the pain now is constant. If she goes before you leave, I’ll call you at once, as that might entail a change of plans on all our parts. It’s hard to say much more about that now. Also, no matter how terrible you think I look, don’t tell me. I’m getting a complex.
This will be an unusual holiday for us, and I am ashamed at how selfishly I want you here, knowing you will not have the serene break from routine that you enjoy so much and that you deserve. Please tell Hugh that he is not obligated to stay an hour longer than he likes. There is a girl in Boston, isn’t there?
Love to you all. Drive carefully.
John
17 December
Mr. Jake Levin
R.D. 3
Petersfield, New Hampshire
Dear Jake,
Season’s greetings.
I saw your poems in this month’s Poetry—seemed to be about half the magazine. Very impressive. I had the impression that they were much airier than anything else of yours I’ve seen. I remember Ruskin rhapsodizing somewhere about the experience of watching—really watching—clouds as they tuft up, leave misty veils, and by almost imperceptible stages re-arrange themselves into new forms. Is this what you’re up to? Showing what we commonly perceive as enduring and substantial to be fluid and insubstantial? I hope so, or I shall feel terribly stupid.
By the way, I was glad for your warm letter. Even though people here could not be kinder or more solicitous, they are responding, I suppose quite naturally, to a sad process going on out at the clinic; you, on the other hand, are kind enough to respond directly to me. I need that, I won’t deny it.
Meg will probably not live another two weeks, and unless she can be made more comfortable, I hope she doesn’t. This has been awful, all of it. To see her so physically diminished is painful, but the horror of this thing is to see her so constantly on edge. She gets no rest or relief from pain, except for a brief hour or so after injections. Riding the nausea and pain requires all her energy. Conversation can no longer divert her. I doubt that you have seen Meg cry and probably have a hard time imagining her doing so. She cries much of the day. It’s the inability to rest, I think, more than anything else, and a rage at the unfairness of it.
You go through these things, you know, like a zombie. There are visiting hours at the clinic, and I am there. There is the daily liturgy of school life, and I am there. School teachers, especially headmasters, have to do a lot of acting, but since Thanksgiving the curtain has rarely fallen. It’s bad in a way, since I’m supposed to be helping to shape the experience here—the board is even hounding me to do a
jazzy future plan. But all I do is preside. Not that anyone is making me. I’ve been invited to take an indefinite leave, to go south, to do whatever I please—but what would that be? That would be terrifying.
I keep telling myself, as if an external voice, that if I weather this, give Meg my all, keep my hand on the wheel at Wells, do right where I can see it, do not fall too hopelessly behind—that will show my people here, maybe even the boys, something important. When at some point all of their props are knocked out from under them and they feel themselves collapsing, they’ll recall that it’s not supposed to be that way—you’re supposed to hang in there the way old Greeve hung in there. I hope this is important, because it’s all I’m living for. The voices inside are certainly no help. They cry and give up and assign blame, usually ending up focused murderously on Brian. Interesting that the external voice, the one with no energy, prevails. Maybe it won’t prevail, maybe I’ll crumple up, but it’s still interesting that I want it to prevail—want isn’t even right: that I know it ought to prevail.
You know, in spite of all our jaded worldliness, we really don’t—at least I don’t—think enough about ending up. I’m fifty-five and until this fall I never really thought about it at all except as a kind of vague, unemotional tableau of being white-haired and more decrepit. Seeing Meg has taught me that it’s not going to be that way. It’s bound to be something very different, probably something I never imagined. With Meg gone, I will no longer be able to be anxious about being cut down prematurely.
Although, with the event at hand, I am still not ready for Meg and me to be over. That is what I never imagined. I have never gotten used to Meg, never lost interest in her for a second. My intellectual superior, my arbiter, my planner, my renewer. After the initial five years with Meg for a confidante, I can honestly say I never again felt inadequate—“one down”—in the presence of anybody. I probably should have, but such is Meg’s solidity. She is such a fact. Marriage is just as substantial as the Northern Lights or Joy or the four-minute mile. Not everybody gets the experience, but it’s real, and those who try to subvert it on intellectual grounds or to sully it by their own infidelities can only be those who never had it. Sad for them, but they do more harm than they could ever imagine. Believe me, Jake, this isn’t sentimentality setting in (or if it is, it’s a sentimentality of recognition, not a sentimentality of distortion). My present circumstances do not lead me very readily into Browning-like sweetness. What a thing, though, to have loved somebody, in no elaborately qualified sense, for thirty-two years. And been loved back.
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