Reading. Tom Brown’s Schooldays

UNIT 6

READING

Thomas Hughes (1822-1896), a famous British novelist, is remembered mainly for his novel “Tom Brown’s Schooldays” (1857). The novel is set at Rugby School where Hughes himself was educated. Conditions were tough. Corporal punishment was acceptable and bullying became an everyday part of life with less capable boys being made fun of and clever ones treated unfairly.

In this extract, Tom is slowly transformed from a quiet, innocent young boy, to a noisy and rather badly-behaved one…

TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS

The fourth form, in which Tom found himself at the beginning of the next half-year, was the largest form in the lower school and numbered upwards of forty boys. Young gentlemen of all ages from nine to fifteen were to be found there, expending their energy on the Latin and Greek texts that werehanded out daily.

Having to teach this form must have been difficult work for the unfortunate master as it was the most unhappily constituted class in the school.

Here were the weaker boys, who, for the life of them, could never learn the necessary grammar for them to move to a higher form.

They were the objects of amusement and terror to the youngsters, who were daily pointing out their mistakes and laughing at them in the lesson, and getting kicked by them for doing so in play-hours. There were no less than three unhappy fellows whom the Doctor and the master of the form were always endeavoring to promote into the upper school, but whose efforts resisted the most well-meant pushes. Then came the mass of the form, boys of eleven and twelve, the most mischievous and restless age of the British youth, of whom East and Tom Brown were fair specimens. As full of tricks as monkeys, they were always making fun of their master, one another, and their lessons and trying to get them to be steady or serious for half an hour together was simply hopeless. The remainder of the form consisted of clever young boys of nine or ten, who were going up the school at the rate of a form a half year, all boys’ hands and wits against them in their progress. It would have been one man’s work to see that the talented youngsters had fair play and as the master had other things to do, these boys were forever being shoved, their books stolen or written on, their jackets whitened and in general, their lives made difficult for them.

Tom had come up from the third with a good character, but the temptations of the fourth soon proved too strong for him, and he rapidly fell away, and became as unmanageable as the rest. For some weeks he succeeded in maintaining the appearance of steadiness and was looked upon favourably by his new form master, whose eyes were soon opened to Tom’s true character.

The only occasions which the pupils really cared about were the monthly examinations when the Doctor came round to examine their form, for one long, awful hour in the work which they had done in the preceding month. Tom’s second monthly examination came round and the boys waited anxiously for it to begin. Tom never lifted his eyes from his book but could feel the Doctor’s mood as he whispered to the master. At last the whispering ceased, and the name called out was not Brown.

The boy who was called up to be examined first was a clever, merry boy and a great favourite of the Doctor, who asked him to translate a Latin passage. On common occasions the boy could have translated the passage well enough, but now his head was gone and he made some terrible mistakes. A shudder ran through the whole form and the Doctor’s wrath fairly boiled over. He made three steps up to the boy, and gave him a good box on the ear. The blow was not a hard one, but the boy was so taken by surprise that he fell back over the bench onto the floor behind. There was a dead silence over the whole school. Never before and never again while Tom was at school did the Doctor strike a boy in a lesson. The provocation must have been great.