The Theban Mysteries

by Amanda Cross

  At its founding, the Theban had been unique in yet another way: it had accepted Jews. Only the right Jews, of course, the ones who were one day to be dubbed “our crowd”; nonetheless, in this as in other actions, Matthias Theban was far ahead of his day. The school’s graduating classes were sprinkled with Warburgs, Schiffs, Loebs, and Guggenheims; later, after the Second World War, when even Spence, Chapin, and Miss Hewitt’s felt the need to welcome a few Jews, the Theban found itself to have been revolutionary without ever losing its reputation for conservatism: a neat trick.

  But not so neat as combining educational wisdom with the finer points of real-estate speculation. The Theban’s first building, by the time it had been outgrown and the neighborhood had become too commercial, was sold for many times what it had cost: the profits built the new building and swelled the endowment fund. After Matthias Theban’s death, the school once again called his name blessed: their second building, standing on the spot now occupied by the Biltmore, easily paid for the third and current home of the school in the East Seventies.

  Kate had been in the lower school of the Theban at the end of the Depression, the middle school during World War II, the upper school during the Cold War and the frenzied return to normal. Through all these cataclysms the Theban stood firm and steady. It made its concessions, of course: even for the Fanslers, the Guggenheims, and the Rockefellers there were concessions to be made. But nothing essential changed. Kate left the Theban before the fifties, when all over the country students, called “the silent generation,” conformed; a demagogue reduced the nation to a gaggle of witch hunters; and upper-class young ladies moved to the suburbs, had several children, and talked about their feminine role.

  It was Miss Tyringham who kept the Theban alive in the fifties. She took no political stands—such was not the policy of Theban heads. But she confirmed, in her downright, cheerful way, that change was possible. She knew that schools do not die; they pass from being vigorous to being fossils without ever noticing the transition. This passage Miss Tyringham prevented before anyone else had considered it. She subtly altered the school’s acceptances away from the predominance of old money toward those who were nouveaux riches enough still to be vigorous. Naturally she made some mistakes, and the Theban graduated the occasional girl more vulgar than one might have wished; without risks, as she knew, there were no gains. Her faculty began to shift its average age from fifty-five to thirty-five; she encouraged the hiring of young married women, encouraged them to teach through their pregnancies, found substitutes for them during their deliveries, and cheered them upon their early return. She added contemporary literature and history to the curriculum long before that became fashionable, introduced Spanish as an alternative language to French in a city now heavily Puerto Rican, recruited for the school numbers of black girls, and bullied the trustees into providing scholarships for them—all before Martin Luther King had begun boycotting the buses in Montgomery. Honoring ideas from her faculty, she nurtured an extraordinary esprit de corps while most private schools, allowing a patina of chilly courtesy to form, unsuccessfully disguised from students the hostilities which divided the faculty into contending factions. Miss Tyringham was, in short, a genius at her job.

  Yet not even an administrative genius could have been prepared for the last half of the sixties. Everyone was unprepared, but—some were less unprepared than others. As a whole, the private schools weathered the storm through the use of cautious blackmail: their waiting lists were long, the idea of public school unthinkable. A suggestion that if Johnny or Susy did not behave their parents had perhaps better look for a school more suitable to their child’s needs usually sufficed to achieve some change in demeanor.

  For a while. But, by 1968, some students were ready to fling out of school in spite of any threats, parental or scholastic. At the Theban, the esprit de corps held, for the most part. Miss Tyringham, firm and cheerful as ever, coped with pants in school (she ignored them), drugs (she gave the students and their parents the facts in the clearest, least moralistic way), the black revolution (she had foreseen that), and the demands for coeducation (in regular meetings with the headmaster of the boys’ school Kate’s nephews attended she explored the situation, emerging from time to time with enigmatic reports; whether she was considering coeducation or stalling, no one quite knew).

  What she could not cope with was the Vietnam War. Whether the history of the United States would have been fundamentally different without that war is a question scarcely worth asking now. What Miss Tyringham knew was that it had driven apart the generations and political parties of the Theban as no other crisis had ever done. Students began shouting one another down in assembly, greatly offending the older faculty, who had always assumed the practice of Jeffersonian democracy, the right of everyone to be heard. On Moratorium Days, the students refused to come to school. Miss Tyringham kept the school open as a center for discussion and petition writing, for or against the war (but very few were for it). She had already begun a radical curriculum reform, with Julia Stratemayer in charge; the school carried on. But, like everyone else in the country during the early months of 1970, Miss Tyringham was feeling the strain. This was the situation into which Kate walked on a suspiciously mild February day, the sort that promises spring as beguilingly as an incurable philanderer promises fidelity.

  “Well, we are glad to see you,” Miss Tyringham said, welcoming Kate into the head’s office. The holy of holies, Kate thought. She could remember having been there only three times during her student days. Once when, as a member of the student government, she had been called to an important conference to discuss, not whether the students should be allowed to run the school and hire the faculty, which was the sort of thing that came up now, but whether the students could be sufficiently interested in their own affairs to justify any student government at all. Then, she had been in the office with her parents to discuss her college application; Miss Tyringham’s predecessor had managed, with infinite grace, to talk Kate’s parents out of Vassar (where her mother had gone) as she had three years earlier helped Kate talk them out of Milton Academy. Kate mentioned the three visits to Miss Tyringham. “And here I am now,” she added, “to discuss Antigone. Did you know that the President of Princeton wrote a book on the imagery in the Antigone? In quieter, bygone days, of course.”

  “Did he indeed? I hope he is not the last college president this country has who is capable of doing that. Do you know, we shall actually be sending some graduates to Princeton this year? What exciting times we live in, as I keep trying to persuade the older parents, who wonder, in all the rapid change, if they may not outlive the earth itself. Our oldest living graduate mentioned to me recently that in her youth there were no automobiles to speak of, and now we have gone to the moon. I could not help rejoining that in her youth the Long Island Railroad was somewhat speedier than it is today, and the letters were delivered in half the time. None of that’s important, of course. What matters is that we are today a society that must, whether we want it or not, be willing to learn from the young. That’s a bitter pill for most people my age to swallow.”

  “If we haven’t anything to teach, why are we teaching?” Kate asked.

  Miss Tyringham leaned back in her chair, looked upward, and smiled—a smile as beautiful as any Kate had ever seen. Miss Tyringham was, indeed, a beautiful woman, not the less so because her face, which had been ever free of makeup, her hair, which had always been casually brushed back, seemed trying to detract from her beauty, to deny it: the onlooker perceived the beauty more acutely because he imagined he had shown unusual perception in noticing it at all. There were, to be sure, those among the parents who objected to Miss Tyringham’s way of “getting herself up,” and they used occasionally to express to one another their wish that someone would tell her not to wear such mannish suits. The parents of girls who had not been accepted at the Theban made more pointed remarks about Miss Tyringham. Kate admired the courage or natural insouciance or simple sho
rtage of time which permitted one to be so emphatically oneself.

  “I wonder,” Miss Tyringham said, “if our whole definition of the word ‘teach’ does not need to be reconsidered. Have we perhaps for too long supposed teaching to be a ritual in which I, the elder and supposedly wiser, hand on to you, the younger and more innocent, the fruits of my learning and experience? Perhaps teaching is really a mutual experience between the younger and older, perhaps all there is to be learned is what they can discover between them. I don’t of course mean, as so many of the girls here clearly do, endless bull sessions where everyone talks and no one listens, let alone learns. I mean a disciplined sort of seminar in which one person, you for example, moderates, schedules, and referees, always in the expectation that you, like the students, will emerge with new insights into the Antigone none of you might ever have achieved alone.”

  “Well,” Kate said, admiring the way her instructions had been so painlessly imparted, “there’s certainly no danger of my posing as an authority on the life and habits of the Greeks—but you know, even were I an authority, most of the fruits of my learning would be readily available in paperback. I’ve become convinced that our old ideas of teaching date back to the days when there were so few books that only some priest had read them; he then passed on the information to the others, thirsting for knowledge but bookless. Which, no doubt, is why they are called lectures—now as applicable to our life as those hot academic gowns, designed for wear in drafty monasteries, in which we parade beneath a hot June sun. All the same, I hope you don’t regret having asked me. I’m afraid of performing like a wallflower who, when asked to dance, can’t think of a word to say to the man.”

  “You are hardly a wallflower in the academic world.”

  “In this academic world I am; they are so young, so certain, so self-absorbed. No doubt they must be, to survive adolescence. But I’m not sure that I understand their language, any more than I understand their dances.”

  “Not to put too fine a point on it,” Miss Tyringham said, “you still have the weapons of marks and reports which go on their school records; anyway, all the old habits of diffidence have not wholly gone. But I do think there are new forms of dialogue, even within education. Hopeful speech for today.”

  “I’m glad you can still make hopeful speeches. Reed and I have been afflicted with a nephew—in fact, he and you entered our lives, so to speak, if not hand in hand, ring by ring. I had the delightful task of talking to Harvard, an institution whose reasons for continuing existence he seems to find remarkably scarce, apart, of course, from serving the military-industrial complex. Well, it turned out, as you no doubt can guess, that Harvard like every other college has had so many flights from the nest that they now have a code for unofficial leaves in their computers. Jack is to be allowed back with lots of concessions on both sides. Colleges may be hell to get into now, but apparently once they take you in they are admirably reluctant about pushing you out, or even letting you leave slamming the door behind you. Whether that’s nobility or guilty conscience I’m quite unable to decide.”

  “You seem to have decided the main things, you, rather than the boy’s parents. Usual, I’m afraid. Will he stay at Harvard?”

  “Temporarily. What is troubling, Miss Tyringham, is that he is rude, unwashed, inconsiderate, filled to the brim with slogans, and outrageously simplistic. Alas, he is also right.”

  “About everything?”

  “Hardly that. But he is right about my brother, right about this terrible war, and wonderfully courageous in a maddening way. I mean, we are all for principles in the abstract, but most of us will not turn down a perfectly good cop-out if it is ready to hand.”

  “That’s called compromise.”

  “What the young will never do. Brave them. Well, brave me too. Do you mind if I look around? I may even sneak up to one of the gyms and swing from a rope.”

  “Mrs. Copland is waiting to show you around. I’m sure you would have liked Julia as tour guide, but she’s at a meeting with some woman who comes once a week and lectures us all on computers—then I do long for the simpler days. You’ll like Mrs. Copland, I think. She teaches literature to the elevens and is home-room teacher to the sixes. We’re grooming her for the head of the English Department when she gets through having babies, but don’t tell her because we don’t want to scare her off. I’ve so much enjoyed talking with you,” Miss Tyringham concluded, rising in her chair and vigorously shaking Kate’s hand. “Remember, we don’t have to wait for an emergency to have another chat.”

  Which God knows was true, they didn’t have to wait for an emergency. Before too long they were overtaken by an emergency no one would have dreamed of waiting for.

  Three

  KATE, having declined the help of Miss Tyringham’s secretary in finding Mrs. Copland, went in search of the room which held the sixes. The school, largely unchanged since Kate’s day, was spacious enough, but dated. Nothing ages more quickly than the absolutely up-to-date. All new school buildings, boasting the latest in everything, age like a woman who has had her face lifted: there is not even character to set off the ravages of time. Still, one could scarcely set out to build oneself Winchester in New York City, could one?

  Not liking to knock on a classroom door—as unsuitable as the knock of a trained British servant in the days of the Empire—Kate opened the door slowly.

  “Ah,” Mrs. Copland called from the front of the room. “Come in. We have just finished.” Kate pushed the door all the way open and was greeted by the raucous sound of thirty chairs being pushed back and thirty twelve-year-olds rising to their feet. Kate looked horrified. “Sit down, ladies,” Mrs. Copland said. “Let us see if you can stay in the study hall three minutes alone without tearing down the walls. The bell is about to ring.” She followed Kate from the room, firmly closing the door behind her.

  “Will there be an explosion?” Kate nervously asked.

  “Not in three minutes. Welcome to the Theban. It’s welcome back, isn’t it?”

  “I too rose to my feet in just that same way. Has anyone ever considered the effect it has on the unprepared adult who enters?”

  “Only these days, because it’s so unexpected. Twenty years ago, I understand,” Mrs. Copland said, leading the way down the hall, “any adult not greeted by the sound of humble youth rising to its feet would have expired on the spot and had to be revived with sal volatile or whatever it was in the nurse’s office. Shall we begin the tour on the top floor? I know you must remember everything, but Miss Tyringham felt that refreshment was in order. We are to discuss the problems of teaching literature on the way. Ah,” she concluded as the elevator opened, “ten please. My name’s Anne. I don’t leap to the use of first names immediately as a rule, but I discovered that if one is going to discuss senior seminars and disaffected youth, one had better skip the usual steps to familiarity. Here we are.” They stepped out into the auditorium, at the moment occupied only in the farthest corner by a group involved either in dramatics or an encounter session; which was not immediately clear.

  The tenth and top floor of the Theban was given over entirely to the huge auditorium, which was able to seat the entire school. There was a stage at one end which, while scarcely the miracle of theatrical devices that even small theaters have subsequently become, served very well for Theban performances, which tended, as in Greek and Shakespearean times, to emphasize the language and costumes rather than the scenery and lights. In front of the stage, at the moment, stood music stands, indicating to Kate that musical activities had not abated since her day, she having played the viola in a rather frantic string ensemble which was wont to present musical offerings from time to time.

  The dramatic or encounter group now in session was in one of the corners of the auditorium farthest from the stage, no doubt to emphasize the spontaneity of their undertaking. Kate looked at them inquiringly.

  “Something new,” Anne Copland said. “A combination of dramatics, playwriting, and self-expre
ssion. I believe Mrs. Banister is new since your time; she’s extremely popular with the girls, who no longer feel properly purged if they have merely acted Hedda Gabler with all the necessary passion. Those who take dramatics as an activity now write their own plays, or spontaneously allow them to erupt. Most interesting, really—sort of a combination of Samuel Beckett and group therapy. Perhaps we’ll see Mrs. Banister at lunch—she’s really most enthusiastic. With all the seats set up in here we’re rather crowded now, since the school is at least two hundred girls larger than this building was intended for. But there’s the most terrible need for schools, and Miss Tyringham and the trustees felt that we should meet our obligations.”

  Kate could see the seats piled up at the sides of the stage; supposedly, there were more in some storage area beyond. She noticed two elevator doors, several doors marked STAIRS with red EXIT signs above them, and two small doors to the side of the stage.

  “Were those always there?” Kate asked.

  “Oh yes, I think so. One notices different things as an adult. One leads backstage to the storage rooms and the places where you work the lights—all that; the other leads to the caretaker’s apartment.”

  “Surely that’s new.”

  “Like so much else these tumultuous days. Twenty years ago, and all the years before for that matter, you closed the school, locked the door, and didn’t give the place another thought till morning. That was in the dear, dead days. We had a lot of people breaking in, to steal expensive equipment and so on, but the coup de grâce came when a group of unruly boys—tautology, I know, but these were especially unruly—broke in and apparently pranced about with spiked boots on the gymnasium floors. I don’t know if you’ve ever gone with any care into the economics of gym floors—well, neither have I, but I gather they did enough damage to cost ten thousand dollars in repairs. Ergo, Mr. O’Hara. He’s got a great view, an extremely fashionable address, and a great taste for solitude, which is just as well since the problems of entertaining on the roof of an empty school building would seem to me to be insurmountable. Everyone was quite impressed when we first heard about Mr. O’Hara, but we all take him for granted now. He’s a retired army man and therefore used to doing for himself.”