The Loom of Youth | Page 4

will be justified. If it is, it will be for
reasons very different from those which made The Loom of Youth a
best seller in 1917. The modern reader will find nothing here to shock
or startle him. Several years ago a friend was reading the book in my
company. "When do I reach the scene?" he asked. I looked over his
shoulder. "You've passed it, ten pages back," I told him. At the same
time the book is not presented as a "period piece". Though England
to-day is a different country, socially and economically, from what it
was in 1911 when I went to Sherborne, I do not think that in essentials
the life of the Public School boy has greatly changed. Most schools are
larger than they were, but they have retained the same traditions and

ideals; there is the same atmosphere of rivalry and competing loyalties;
youth has the same basic problems, is fired by the same ambitions,
beset by the same doubts. And if the modern reader, after turning a
page or two finds his attention held and wants to go on reading, it will
mean that this book has become at last what in fact it was always
meant to be--a realistic but romantic story of healthy adolescence set
against the background of an average English Public School.
April, 1954.
Alec Waugh

BOOK I: WARP AND WOOF
"While I lived I sought no wings, Schemed no heaven, planned no hell;
But, content with little things, Made an earth and it was well."
RICHARD MIDDLETON.
CHAPTER I
: GROPING
There comes some time an end to all things, to the good and to the bad.
And at last Gordon Caruthers' first day at school, which had so
combined excitement and depression as to make it unforgettable, ended
also. Seldom had he felt such a supreme happiness as when he stepped
out at Fernhurst station, and between his father and mother walked up
the broad, white road that led past the Eversham Hotel to the great grey
Abbey, that watches as a sentinel over the dreamy Wessex town. There
are few schools in England more surrounded with the glamour of
mediæval days than Fernhurst. Founded in the eighth century by a
Saxon saint, it was the abode of monks till the Dissolution of the
Monasteries. Then after a short interregnum Edward VI endowed it and
restored the old curriculum. The buildings are unchanged. It is true that
there have sprung up new class-rooms round the court, and that

opposite the cloisters a huge yellow block of buildings has been erected
which provides workshops and laboratories, but the Abbey and the
School House studies stand as they stood seven hundred years ago. To
a boy of any imagination, such a place could not but waken a
wonderful sense of the beautiful. And Gordon gazing from the school
gateway across to the grey ivy-clad studies was taken for a few
moments clean outside himself. The next few hours only served to
deepen this wonder and admiration. For Fernhurst is prodigal of
associations. The School House dining-hall is a magnificent
oak-panelled room, where generations of men have cut their names;
and above the ledge on which repose the silver challenge cups the
house has won, is a large statue of King Edward VI looking down on
the row of tables. When he first entered the hall, Gordon pitied those in
other houses immensely. It seemed to him that though in "the
outhouses"--as they were called at Fernhurst--the eugenic machinery
might be more up to date, and the method of lighting and heating far
more satisfactory, yet it could not be the same there as in the School
House; and he never quite freed himself of the illusion that, if the truth
were known, every outhouse boy rather regretted that he had not
chosen otherwise. For indeed the bloods of other houses are very often
found sitting over the fire in the School House games study.
Until about six o'clock Gordon could not have been happier, his future
seemed so full of possibilities. But when his father and mother left him
to catch the afternoon train back to town, and the evening train brought
with it a swarm of boys in the most wonderful ties and socks, and all so
engrossed in their own affairs, and so indifferent to his, Gordon began
to feel very lonely. Supper was not till nine and he had three hours to
put in. Very disconsolately he wandered round the green slopes above
the town where was the town football ground and where in the summer
term those members of the Fifteen who despised cricket would enjoy
their quiet pipe and long for the rains of November. But that walk did
not take long, especially as he