GL in his own words

'Some of them have been "deemed maladjusted". Some... well, they just come. They're small, or they've been made to feel small, and they've wanted to feel big. They're really little boys, and here that's what they become.' 'Do you do a psychoanalysis of each boy?' 'No. But if by analysis you mean loosening, then I suppose we do analyse.' 'What am I to do with a father who comes to me with a boy in such a disturbed state, that he can scarcely even leave his room, and after he's been here only six months expects him to be fit for ordinary life?' 'Why not let them have back their childhood?' he asked. 'Let them do all those things. If they don't do them now, they'll do much worse things later.' 'Ponder over the word "RESPITE". I say it as one who loved teaching subjects, but has not officially taught them for twenty-one years; not since I decided that some young people needed complete respite from lessons as such, in schools as such, so that they could be shepherded back from the ways by which they have escaped for a while their real challenge...' Well-meaning precepts had the defect of being transmitted without any real reference to the receiver, like packages shoved through a letter box, whether or not anyone was in the house to open them. 'I would like to feel,' Mr Lyward once wrote, 'that no boy comes to school with any great ambition. I am appalled at the monotonous regularity with which they are urged to work for this or that reason or end. Over and over again I have seen a big boy near to tears at the thought that "father doesn't care for me apart from wanting me to succeed"'. 'I like you,' Mr Lyward said to a new candidate. 'I like you, too,' squeaked the boy, described as unresponsive, and compelled to wear a deaf aid which he never used again. 'Please sir, may I go to London on Tuesday?' 'To London?' Mr Lyward turned to the others. 'What does anyone think about Paul going to London?' 'No,' in a chorus. One boy said: 'Yes, and stay there.' 'I want to see a show,' said Paul. 'A show? I thought you saw a show a fortnight ago. What sort of show? The Lord Mayor's Show? That's not till November.' 'A musical.' 'The Messiah? Henry Evans is going to hear the Messiah next week. You can go to that.' 'No. An American musical.' 'Ah,' said Mr Lyward, as if he had not known, and as if the boy had not known that he had known. 'It's very good. And I've got a friend who knows one of the actors.' 'Well, all the world's a stage. We're as good as a play here. Why do you want to see plays in London, before you've seen here?' - and Mr Lyward put emphasis on 'seen'. You have to pay for a play. It's free here.' 'Any careful observer will know that a fifteen, sixteen or seventeen year old may suddenly jib in the most unexpected manner. When this happens - whether the jibbing takes the form of silence, moodiness, sudden hilarity, or stupidity or evasion - the red light is out and the person is telling you: "When I was young, I was moved to fear, or a sense of guilt, or humiliation, or undue excitement, or tightening up, about this or something closely related to it. I'm helpless at this point. I become a child and no longer aspire to adulthood. You can say or do what you will. Nothing will come of your battering. I have slipped away into another world".' 'There is a child's world, and an adult world, but there is not an adolescent's world. He belongs everywhere and nowhere. Nearly all, in vain, attempt, by thinking, to avoid the pain of growing through adolescence into adulthood. The boy is once again a baby in the adult world', and knows that he is insecure. His mind is at work, trying to help him to forget his individual challenge... and he identifies himself (actually or by rebellion) with group or tradition or 'school of thought' to avoid the pain of difference. A boy may refuse to recognise the opposite sex and remain emotionally attracted towards his own sex, or a girl toward her own. If a boy goes to extremes of swearing or smoking or talking big, that is because he is more backward drawn than the others.' EXAMINER: You are chiefly concerned with young men in need of psychological treatment and re-education? G. L.: Yes. In other words, people who were once 'junior' and never lived as such. EXAMINER: What do you mean? G. L.: I mean that they were treated too often the wrong way when they were young and had to live unnaturally in consequence. EXAMINER: But how did that help them? G. L.: It enabled them to carry on after they were sick and tired. Suppose a mother nags her little boy and makes him feel more and more 'I'm bad, I'm insignificant, I'm frightened', then he may get the kind of illness that causes mother to send for the doctor, or he may start stealing or becoming very good or noisy or bullying. That sly cunning creature, or that unfeeling bully, who seems so unrooted, is not the original boy at all, but a part he is playing. It saves him from being quite so consciously sick and tired and starved at his roots. 'I have no hesitation in describing the delinquent for the most part as over-moral... one who does not so much feel guilty because he has committed an offence as commit 'crimes' because he feels guilty - about what he doesn't quite know ...' EXAMINER: What about the words 'Train a child in the way he should go? G.L.: The proper translation of the original is not that at all, but 'Train a child in his way', and then he will not depart from it. How true we find that to be - those of us who set out to help people to be themselves once again, to abandon their poses and their dependence upon externals (their snobberies in other words), their straining after meaningless perfection, their mean clinging to ideals to which they have to hold, only in order to count. EXAMINER: One moment. Do you discount ideals? G.L.: Not at all. But we have to realise that (as someone has said) they should be 'like stars to mariners', and not something we hold on to possessively, while missing the real contacts in life. Security from outside interference was the first condition he insisted on; 'unfairnesses', within that security, the second. 'Fixed reactions to their behaviour must fail, because that would render it automatic and compulsive.' Three boys came to Mr Lyward with the same request at the same time; one was given a 'yes', the other two a 'no', one of which was later changed to 'yes' after he had taken the 'no'. The response was never allowed to harden into a rule or habit or tradition; never into the 'premature crystallization'. 'A boy disobeys. Nothing may happen. Would our prestige suffer? No. We are felt already to be both reliable and unreliable. They have met with many pleasant shocks, such as having unexpected meals brought them when they return from the cinema.... In this and similar ways, and by release from the idea of fairness (when, for example, the same boy received two or three times in succession more pocket money than another)... and by the knowledge that we can hardly send them away lightly, they have been startled into asking: "I can't trust the staff's reactions to be meticulously fair, but can I trust them?"' 'The real secret of living with children lies in knowing how to be creative in taking away and in being "unfair" and haphazard, so that the gift shall never deny the children increasing awareness of the giver.... A gift by itself means nothing. It was one of my great joys when I discovered how quickly they each sensed the dignity "unfairness" gave them.' Boy: May I go and lie on my bed after lunch? G.L.: Why? Boy: The doctor at home says I ought to. G. L.: Go and lie outside on some rugs. Boy: But my mother says I ought to lie on my bed. G. L.: You think you ought to? Boy: My mother... G.L.: Well, you can't. Boy: Oh, but I want to. G. L.: You want to? Boy: Yes, I do so like lying on my bed. G. L.: And that's why you want to go? Boy: Yes. G. L.: Go and do what you want, this time anyhow. 'I wish to suggest that in thus pressing him back from "he thinks I ought" to "I want" I am preparing the way for a deeper appreciation of the truth in science, art and religion; that he is not ready for any teaching of "subjects", and that when he is, it will be necessary to use them with a constant eye to that boy's further release from his early indebtedness to an over-anxious moralizing mother.' 'There must be thousands of people in this country, who know that if a boy fails to achieve a spontaneous relationship with his father, then he is likely, short of a proper subsequent release from his childish values, to remain maimed for life.... But people are not moved, They pass by on the other side...' When a child says "Mine" of its parents, or a parent "Mine" of a child, in the particular tone of voice which indicates security, we know that the emphasis placed upon "mine" is not a sign of possessiveness, but of something ineffable. ... I have recently been trying to help two young men who as children were not able to say that with any proper abandon. As far as they know, all they want now is "things", especially money. They dare not yet be called upon to discover their real need because, being unable to accept what is now available, they would suffer unbearably.' 'The key to all deeper insight, as the analyst knows, is not technical proficiency, but love that knows something of the interpretation of one personality by another.' At Finchden time seemed infinite. Each boy sooner or later stole, though it might not be money, but pity or power. 'Now we shall have you worrying about not worrying," he said. 'Go on, to bed, to bed! Who said that?' 'Macbeth. Or Lady Macbeth.' 'They didn't sleep, though. You will. To bed, Arthur Ney! To sleep! Perchance to dream! Are you a relation of the Marshal?' 'I don't know, sir.' 'Anyhow, to bed.' 'The outdoor neurotics are often the most difficult,' Mr Lyward once said. 'You can't communicate with them, because they're simply not there.' G. L.: And what can we do for you, my boy? Boy: Please ... I want to come to Finchden. G. L.: And what is the matter with you, my boy? Boy: I've got schizophrenia. (Bursts into tears.) G. L.: There, there, my boy. (Pats Boy vaguely on head.) You shall come to us. Boy: Oh, thank you, sir! What shall I bring? G. L.: Bring? Bring nothing. Boy: Nothing, sir? G. L.: Well - ah - my boy - bring a toothbrush. And - ah - if you have one, bring a dream. 'A balance was struck between each boy's interests as an individual and as a member of the group'. back to Mr Lyward's Web Page Mr Lyward had a pale slender face. His hair lay flat across the top of his head, above a high forehead. There is a photograph of him at a Christmas party, with a lighted candle in front of him. Face and candle bear a resemblance to one another; were the candle to blow out, the table would still be lit. As well as his remark that the boys were 'seven-year-olds with an L sign' other phrases stay in the mind. * 'Because politeness is the very signature of sanity, we must not keep on demanding "Please" and "Thank you" indiscriminately, thereby making our members draw cheques on what is not yet theirs.' * 'This boy will not bring his gifts to the altar.' Of a new President of the Ministry of Education: * 'His name is Butler. May he remember that education means to nourish.' * 'His parents are kind people, and will "do anything for the boy". And so they have done for him.' * 'Adults are wise to admit their helplessness quite often. The young are more willing then to acknowledge theirs.' * 'We are always in danger of becoming like the people we say we hate.' *Analysis: 'When I was a boy, analysis meant grammar. In later years it came to mean cure', but now after years of experience he spoke of it in its original sense of 'a loosening'. 'Always, since I pondered it all, the need for looseness for children and loosening among adolescents has seemed to me very urgent and very much neglected.' *Prep: 'Why does it so often mean anything but preparation, and only too often an ill-timed assault upon the child, challenging him too early concerning what he has not had time to digest or enjoy or relate. If it has not prepared him - rather as a sniff at the kitchen door might prepare him for a meal - has not a great opportunity been missed?' *Revise: '...has been scribbled on the blackboard at the end of term so often as to be almost meaningless. It brings to mind memories of fingers, often wetted, turning pages rapidly to the accompaniment of an almost audible murmur: "Know this, know that, know that..." But to revise is to re-see ...' *A 'spoilt' child, he said, was clearly somebody needing help. 'The child has been spoilt by somebody. And why should spoiling simply imply petting?' 'They've been made to look small, and have been trying to look big. ... Adolescence is like January, the month of Janus. ... I knew a boy who would sell a little shilling for six big pennies. It took him a year of "being done" before he was sensitive in regard to the quantity and quality of coins. His life was a queer mixture of feeble surrender and rebellion. He would rebel vigorously enough against washing and work. Yet, physically strong though he was, he would cry out after a very brief spell of manual labour "I can't go on, I'm done!" ' At times Mr Lyward might address himself to such a boy's mood of rebellion, at other times to the mood of feeble surrender, or might move lightly or challengingly between one and the other, while always retaining that touch at a deeper level which kept the boy disarmed and trusting. 'There is no difference in the emotional condition of any of them. They are all cases of arrested feeling development' He had great skill in changing the subject and made a deliberate use of interruptions. 'An account of what I had been doing from minute to minute and from point to point would not exclude digressions, whether they were literary, or such as I made when I said, "Oh, look at that damage to the wall!" to a thirteen stone seventeen year-old who had recently knocked over his form master. This brought us both to our knees examining the wall, "interrupting" a conversation in which I had deliberately taken him beyond his depth but which proved a considerable "loosener".' Ronald Hall had been worrying Mr Lyward on and off throughout an evening about a fortnight's leave at Christmas. RH: There are two possibilities. I could go home or stay here. I would like to go home this year. GL: Right. RH: Yes, but if I go home I shan't be given any money. GL: Well, stay here then. RH: Oh, but I want to go home. (His mother had said how much better he was last time he went home, 'but I wish he would stay indoors more'). RH: (again): I want to go ... (This went on until GL. said): GL: There seems to be a third possibility - for you to go home and for us to give you money. RH: Oh no! GL: You mean you won't ask? (Gradually it became clearer that RH. had told certain people that he intended to try to get a larger amount than most boys would have got, and Mr Lyward said): GL: Well, you can't have that. (RH. still could not face the facts and said tetchily): RH: What I've been trying to ask you all the evening is whether it is better for me to go home or stay here. GL: (firmly): To go home and accept the situation about money will be the best. RH: Can I have three pounds? GL: No. The boy started to shout in the bitterest tones, 'That's just what I've always had to put up with.' He slammed the door. Later he ran out of the house, but was found in bed by Neville at 11 p.m., and since it was a rainy night was asked if he would like something hot to drink. He said, 'No, thanks, Nev, I'm all right.' The dispute with Mr Lyward had taken place on the stairs. Three other boys who had been present asked Mr Lyward ten minutes later if they could be allowed to embark on an enterprise. In the middle of the talk Mr Lyward said to the most resistant of them, 'How far did I go to meet Ronald?' 'Ninety-nine per cent,' said the boy. 'Dared I go one hundred?' 'No.' 'Don't tell me why not. I can see that you know.' Sent for next day, Ronald grinned and said, 'I lost control last night for the first time. I feel better.' He added, 'Were you baiting me on purpose last night ?' Mr Lyward answered, 'No. I never bait you. But when you people persist in shutting your eyes to a third possibility and in going round in circles, I sometimes decide to call a halt. You were granted the power of reasoning, you know, and there you were, wanting something so badly you couldn't reason at all. All the others could see that. They always can - until it's their turn to go blind and discuss only two alternatives.' This account does not show the length of time Mr Lyward spent trying to get the boy to come to the third possibility, before the boy hit his head against the facts and called it being baited. back to Mr Lyward's Web Page Sam Hutton was heard grumbling. G. L. was with two or three boys in the scullery by the corridor. It emerged that Sam was hungry. It was then 10am and he had only just arrived from sleep. G. L.: But you were late for breakfast and goodness knows that's not a quick proceeding. (A group quickly gathered.) S. H.: I wasn't waked. G. L.: This waking of boys is new, isn't it? (Three boys all bore witness that it went back as far as 'living memory'. It is queer, by the way, how some boys remember nothing about their first year at Finchden - as if it had been a dream.) G. L.: Well, perhaps it's not such a good thing. I'll talk it over with the staff - oh, not with you! Perhaps you'd all start waking up of your own accord if you weren't called. Anyhow, who is it wakes you up? Voice: The cook. G. L.: Fetch the cook. (Cook is fetched.) Did you wake up everybody this morning? Cook: No, sir. Only the ones in the guest house. G. L.: Then who woke the house? Cook: Harry did, sir. (Harry is fetched. This is the kind of hustling they like.) G. L.: Morning, Harry. Did you wake up the house? Harry: Yes, sir. But I forgot Sam. (Sam was so obviously the centre of the picture. For about ten to fifteen minutes talk ranged round the importance of facts, with humorous illustrations of arguments from false premises and of false arguments. You would have thought the original matter was slipping away. Everybody was happy and even Sam involved. G. L. (suddenly): So Sam didn't get called? Why should he be called? And missed his breakfast and hasn't said 'Please may I have some?' (Sam grins.) S. H.: Can I have some breakfast, sir ... please? G. L.: (looking round vaguely): Good about the 'please', isn't it? (Enter Maurice Newall, having just got up, to judge by the greeting on the faces of the rest.) G. L.: Have you not had any breakfast, Maurice? M. N. (laughing): No, sir. G. L.: (studiously avoiding any further talk with Maurice): What should Sam have? Deep Voice from the corridor (Richard, from Chapters Three and Four): Give him bacon and eggs. (General laughter.) G. L.: Right. Give Sam bacon and eggs, cook. It's a comic situation, anyhow. (Somebody murmurs, 'May I also ...') G. L.: That would be merely silly. (The sudden changes of tone play no small part in the disarming, provoking play, fluidity.) G. L.: (after some more chat): Have any of you noticed that as we got nearer to the facts everybody got quieter - this often happens - facts of any kind, I mean. Boy: And it gets funnier. (He meant 'lighter'.) G. L.: I'd love to make a study of noise. Voice: What, here! G. L.: Not only here. (This is discussion again, starting. Meanwhile Sam is having his bacon and eggs cooked. Presently Davidson is spoken to in a quiet friendly voice) G. L.: When we get down to facts, you've run away twenty-one times, haven't you, Edward? That can't be said not to have its funny side. ED.: It has its funny side anyway. (This is the kind of blind reply to be expected from him, Mr Lyward becomes completely serious and says) GL.: Does it, when you think of the trouble it puts the staff to, and that it's your symptom, and how sad it is for you? (The boys enjoy the fluidity and feel released within it. Not long afterwards Stallard followed Mr Lyward to his front door to enquire about something. Mr Lyward chatted for a short while, and as he turned to go in, said to this hysterical boy, at last showing signs of steadying): G. L.: You often ask questions about religion when you're not playing jazz. I don't expect when we were getting more factual and quieter just now, you found yourself thinking how silent God is to most people? 'I never thought of that,' said Stallard quietly, as Mr Lyward went into the house. At times Mr Lyward would turn the 'passive' attitude of one who would not budge beyond a certain point into an active shock, provocation, or challenge, suddenly - for example - sending a boy home because he knew it was time for him to go. Another boy, who has since become a good artist, arrived at Finchden with Meccano models, to which he clung. 'I love my father and mother most in all the world,' said this boy, but later, 'I love my models most in all the world.' 'I thought it was your father and mother,' said Mr Lyward. 'Anyhow, I think it's time we took your models away.' He took them away. The boy cried himself to sleep, awoke refreshed, and scarcely troubled about his models again. More than twenty years later, he remembered their removal as something that had to be done for him. Now and then challenges of this kind had to be made because Mr Lyward knew that he had little time. He knew a boy called Frank Cotton had to leave soon, and came across him in Mr Knox's laboratory. With deliberate intent to provoke, he assumed the same tone of voice he guessed the boy's father would use whenever the two met. He had not reckoned with someone else coming in at that moment, turned his eyes away, and Frank Cotton hit him. Mr Lyward fell back, struck his head on the concrete surround of the stove, and was concussed. Having recovered consciousness, he went off to write an editorial for Home & School and said later to a group of boys, 'Well, it's done something for Frank, but please don't all try to get clear that way.' As a matter of fact, no others did; it was the only time Mr Lyward was ever hit. back to Mr Lyward's Web Page 'I rule myself out as having any experience at all and became as one of them'. He also said that, when sitting back in a chair and looking up at a boy, 'I might be the same age. I feel as if, consciously and by virtue of experience, I do know what he is like, and yet am seeking.' His enquiring in that 'innocent' fashion invited the boy to respond 'as if we were both on the same side of the fence'. He approached the boys himself with so little weight of preconception: he remained entirely open to receive the impressions of them as they were, entire. He that felt many people, on finding themselves with children, were hindered by being too conscious of age. They could not themselves become as children. This, he felt, did happen to him - and yet he never completely lost awareness of his own maturity. 'We must lie more open than we often do,' he once said, in an address to teachers and parents. 'We must risk being hurt.' 'Peter Harrington,' wrote the famous Mr Knox, 'must be a reincarnation of Little Lord Fauntleroy. He has collected a series of bottles of toilet requisites, which he has marshalled like soldiers on a shelf. His arithmetic sums show a devastating neatness of arrangement and accuracy. I deplore it, but at present dare not interfere. The picture is completed by the fact that when he meets an academic problem he cannot see through, he just goes dumb.' And of another boy, he said that he came from a nice home 'and has the untidiest room. He has now lived through this and developed a rational neatness based on his personal desires.' 'I hate you!' cried one boy, reluctantly returning from Finchden to his real father, although Mr Lyward knew that he was ready to go, and the next moment flung himself into his father's arms. One evening Sid was in the yard and heard shouting from the kitchen. There he found Seton and Henry Carpenter pounding one another wildly. He walked between, pushing them apart, and then circled round until they stopped. Later they started again. Peter was then in the room. He managed to get the other boys out, but - for once - could not manage to separate the two fighters, who seemed 'possessed'. They were fairly equally matched and both strong; both, in that mood, were capable of using anything they could lay their hands on. Peter, after sending a message to Mr Lyward, followed them carefully, removing possible weapons; he trailed them into the big hall, where they went on wildly hammering one another. Mr Lyward had just come back from speaking at a conference. He did not feel well and was sitting half-asleep in front of the fire when Peter came in. He went down into the hall, and saw in an instant that both boys were in a mood to go on fighting till they dropped, and worse. 'I knew,' Mr Lyward wrote afterwards, with emphatic underlinings, 'that I had got something that belonged outside here. The two boys had, as it were, already removed themselves from the community, but there were their bodies still in Finchden Manor. I knew at once that I had got to bring them back to Finchden Manor if I could.' Seton turned on Mr Lyward for a moment, threatening him. Mr Lyward clapped his hands, then said in effect, in a very quiet voice, to both of them, while they were momentarily separated, 'You are outsiders brawling in my house. This isn't a fight between two boys. This is something that belongs outside Finchden. You must come back here, or your bodies must be removed. If you decide that you belong outside, then I shall send for the police.' Then he walked away. The boys stopped fighting; nor did they continue after Mr Lyward had gone. 'The word "police",' he wrote afterwards, 'might easily lead a stranger to believe that I make threats. I never do. I state facts. I stated it as a fact that they were outsiders brawling in my house, and did not just say that they were "behaving like" outsiders. It was the only time I have ever used the word "police" to the boys in that way, and its use then had NOTHING in common with a threat.' Either boy could have floored Mr Lyward. He had said little, and that little quietly; but the effort he had made and the after vibrations left him exhausted for two or three days. Mr Lyward wore his brown Trilby and a thick coat and muffler, and was looking in an abstracted way at the faces of the hunt followers. He seemed to have taken to a Jorrocks-like character, with leggings, stock, and a windbitten face. 'I like people who are real,' he said as they moved off 'I can get on with that kind of parent, even though they disagree with everything I do.' back to Mr Lyward's Web Page Masturbation was 'perhaps the most honest form of self-abuse'. 'The adolescent,' he wrote, 'has his eternal child within, sometimes more happily related to his surface self than all the adults round him. This is especially noticeable in relation to sex and religion, themselves so subtly connected. Reserve about sex may be the distinguishing mark of these particular adolescents, and is not to be confused with inhibition; and they are also likely to be aware of the unseen to an extent which may bring them into conflict with those matter-of-fact adults, who would not be so proud of their matter-of-fact attitude, if they could remember how it started.' 'For too many readers, guilt may mean sex. Fathers are more prudish than mothers. Those who can talk easily with their sons about 'the facts of life' (may Heaven forgive us for that phrase!) are still in the minority. This must be due to the fact that mothers do not always play their part and answer adequately the questions asked by children from about four years of age onwards. ... After puberty, any information given by the father on a subject touching the emotional life will be collected intellectually, that is to say, hoarded in the attic. But I can imagine something worse, and that is delayed instruction given by a mother who has scientific leanings. Not long ago I was actually asked: "Shall I do it? Or his prep. school master? I should love to, and I am qualified. I am a Doctor of Science. His father won't. Shall I?" My reply was: "Not you, Madam".' Mr Lyward wrote elsewhere of 'an undue emphasis on the biological aspect' as, at its worst, 'the attitude of those who are dangerously unaware of their own repressions'. Certain aspects of adolescent sexual behaviour are still treated in some homes and schools as an 'offence'; and some boys arrived at Finchden feeling guilty, 'though they were not quite sure about what'. The first step was to oust this guilt from its obsessive place in their consciousness, and afterwards to arrive at the boy's true feelings. This would lead from the actual 'offence' to deeper wants and deprivations. 'I saw this boy on November 30. Any summary of a long interview is likely to be inadequate. But I feel that an attempt may be worth making. Although the immediate need was to arrest what ever tendency there is towards repetition of the "offence", which was the occasion of his getting into trouble at school, the boy's own need is something bigger, with that as merely one aspect. It is good to know that the school have recognised this and have shown understanding. Clearly, it would have been wrong to plunge straight into any discussion of the actual offence. Such an approach would be most unlikely to do anything but increase inner confusion, and might well pervade the whole mystery of sex with a deep sense of guilt. In that way it might actually increase the risk of further irresistible attraction towards such shared uncreative "enjoyment" as he has already sought. Furthermore, it is not easy to be sure how intelligent he is and how far capable of dealing with any sort of abstraction. I therefore set out to play at length around the word satisfaction. It was not long before I realised that his troubles are largely intellectual, in so far as words, such as satisfaction, are only the vaguest of symbols with no sort of intellectual content. On the other hand, he is well able to put his personal experiences together. He is keen on swimming and could easily be helped to distinguish in detail the difference between a good morning by the sea and a bad morning, which (shall we say) started by his stubbing his toe. One gave satisfaction; the other did not. This distinction established, I passed on to the word "achievement". He knew the word, but (again) it conjured up only the vaguest feeling. It was, however, he who suggested looking it up in the dictionary ("I like using the dictionary") and he was not slow to appreciate the significance of the statements: "To carry on to a final close", and "To get by effort". From that I made (from his point of view) a diversion and contrasted "satisfaction through achievement" with "satisfaction through sensation". I took pains to make it clear that the latter was quite legitimate and indeed vital to the baby and the small child. He took about an hour to reach the point where we were able to illuminate, with examples, the difference between the two "kinds" of satisfaction, and it was he who volunteered that "one would be deeper than the other". This is worth noting. Not until then did I refer to the episode which had recently got him into trouble. He showed very little sign of being ashamed - and in view of what had gone before I did not expect him to do so. Nevertheless he did say that he "knew he was letting down the moral of the school" - (his words). MYSELF: That is what your masters feel ? BOY: Yes. MYSELF: Do you feel it ? BOY: Oh yes ! (Warmly.) MYSELF: But why ? Why should you feel that by getting a particular kind of satisfaction you are letting the school down ? Of course, he had no answer. But lie was now beginning to be moved, not so much by guilt as by healthy curiosity. Presently I substituted for "the moral of the school" the expression "tone of the school". He knew the word "tone" used in this connection, but it meant nothing to him - there was no significance. I talked to him about muscles and, of course, he was quick to decide in favour of good muscles rather than flabby ones - "good tone". He could be seen arriving gradually at a personal (and not echoed) realisation that a number of boys seeking "sensation satisfaction" would tend to give the school an infantile flabbiness. They would only be performing repetitive rather than constructive actions, going round in circles instead of building; and so on. It did not need anybody else to tell him that he ought to prefer good muscles to flabby (that is, to "sensation"). He just did prefer them. The words which were previously part of his general wooliness were already becoming "words with power". From such a position it was possible for him to "confess" that he was slow, and so got behind and disheartened, then gave things up; in other words, that he was not getting enough "satisfaction through achievement". That, he could agree, was perhaps why he had been drawn (backwards) to seeking alternative satisfaction through sensation - at a shallower level. He talked about French, History and English (in that order) as giving satisfaction; and about this term at school as his "best so far", because of his new satisfaction in rugger. He says that he "loves dancing" and this, with his delight in swimming and rugger, points to a possible need for further integration through "body achievements". He also talked about the pleasure he derived from some of his scout activities; but added: "there are things I don't like, such as having to change in the evenings". This latter qualification led to a talk about achievement as dependent upon acceptance of challenges, situations etc. "as a whole". He appreciated the pictures presented to him by this "as a whole" notion and thought that sufficient satisfaction might come "to make you quite keen next time to do the less pleasant parts as part of the whole", i.e. to will the means with the end. Finally, it emerged that if he could aim at more exact and thorough work, regardless of the amount and with less thoughts about marks or "position" in relation to other boys, he might often go to bed with a sense of "achievement satisfaction". "You mean quality not quantity" was his unprompted remark in this connection. I made no attempt to deal with his recent shortcoming in terms of right and wrong. He is not equipped for that approach - how many boys of his age are? What he needs is enlightenment - not so much (say) biological information about sex as that more exact and detailed hold upon certain commonly used abstract words. His chief problem, as I see it all, is his failure to discern adequate significances. He is certainly not incapable of being helped to discover significance. I cannot yet say whether or not I consider him intelligent enough to go forward in his present environment. But I know that in his own way he is happy at school and that he still has a strong (vague) regard for his housemaster. He is keen to have a "test" during the coming holiday. (I didn't call it an intelligence test.) I should be happy to learn that his school had been able to meet him in the matter of "quality" and "quantity", so that he passes well and truly into the world of adequate "achievement satisfaction". I should then be pretty certain that he was unlikely to be one of those whose regressive behaviour lowers "the tone" of a school.' back to Mr Lyward's Web Page The other interview took place with a boy called William Hallett, who said that he wanted to see Mr Lyward 'about homosexuality'. Interviews of this kind were rare, and Mr Lyward deliberately avoided making too much of sex. He said that the 'isolation' of William Hallett should not be related to the isolation of a homosexual 'which he is not', but rather to certain boys who had strong sexual pressures, and were ashamed of them; they strove to hide their inward conflict behind a facade of cleverness, which their brains or practical sense helped them fairly successfully to construct. He made a gesture with his right hand of brain sailing into the air, and with his left of the emotions connected with sex remaining behind, with a huge gulf between. William came in and sat down. Mr Lyward greeted him like a guest, and said: 'David's been telling me about you.' He sat at his table by the alcove window. 'You should know some quotations,' he went on. 'What's the one about "We something for what we have not"?' He turned to me. 'Come on. If William doesn't know, surely you do?' I had forgotten, and Mr Lyward told David to get the Dictionary of Quotations and look it up. 'Do you know London?' he asked William. 'Yes, sir.' 'You know you sometimes see a big house with a front and back entrance, and the back entrance is called the mews? They were once stables, though they aren't used much as stables now.' He made a bad pun on 'mews' and 'used', and David produced the quotation. 'Shelley. I thought it was Shelley,' said Mr Lyward, innocently. 'We look before and after And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught.' 'Do you remember it?' 'Yes sir. I think I do.' The boy was listening quietly, neither stiff nor hostile. 'Who goes in at the back entrance?' Mr Lyward asked. 'The servants, sir. 'Yes. And who go in at the front?' William did not answer. 'The sons,' said Mr Lyward. 'If someone has usurped your life, if your rightful self has been taken from you, you go in at the back, don't you? You're afraid somehow to go boldly up to the front. I'm not saying you wouldn't go in at the front door of some dilapidated old house.' At this point I registered a mental exclamation mark, since Mr Lyward had told me of a sentimental association William had formed with an elderly spinster, to whom he was clinging. 'Aren't you always getting round things, going to the back door?' Mr Lyward continued. 'Yes.' 'Or were?' 'And now I'm in front of the front door?' said the boy, almost eagerly. 'Yes. And it will open and you'll go in. I'm not saying anything about what is good or bad, but merely that the front door is better. Now, when you see a woman, for example, she may be rather frightening, but you want to get over the trembling. To go in by the front door is' (and he emphasised the word) 'happiness'. A child happened to be staying with the Lywards, and some tiddley-winks were on Mr Lyward's desk. He noticed them and suggested we should play. William took it without surprise - but sat stock-still. Mr Lyward said: 'What I wanted you to do was fetch the table, get us three into the game, decide what colour you wanted - you, not we - and tell us to begin.' So the boy fetched the table and counters and we began to play. To begin with, his attitude towards the game - as to life - was apologetic and awkward. After a few minutes, and with a little provocation, he became aggressive. At one moment David's counter was under mine, and I looked like winning. William devised a quick strategy to release David's counter, so that I should not win. Mr Lyward, who had been gay and ordinary, became serious for a moment, and said: 'Now that's where thinking is useful. That's what thought is for. Go on, William. Win.' Suddenly William said something relating the symbol of the front door to the positive attitude, and Mr Lyward - as if it was William who had thought about it - equally suddenly added: 'Yes, and don't you get the idea into that clever head of yours that you're what they call homosexual. You aren't. Something has been done to you which has deprived you of your guts. It's the wrong sort of word, but I can't think of another, and sometimes we have to use the wrong sort of word. You haven't been able to live your own life, have you? Well, soon you will. Gradually the door will open. You may open it yourself. Who knows - the good God may open it for you. But I want you to start things. "Let me be in a play. Let's have a ping-pong tournament. I'll be this! I'll be that!" But it's you, not someone else.' That was all, except that later, and with the same kind of casualness, the boy thanked Mr Lyward. Months afterwards - when I told some friends about this interview - one of them came to me and said: 'I wish someone had talked to me like that when I was young. Instead I took fifteen years to find out.' ------------------------------------------------------------ Here is an extract from a longish letter Mr Lyward once wrote to a father who had withdrawn another boy too soon. 'Fear of life includes fear of the opposite sex, and that prevents their having any attraction, and so throws the boy back, as your son has been, upon perversion. General inversion is a better way of putting it. He has never realized that contact is the true way of safety, but has tried to remain intact against being found out. I hope that he now knows a better way of responding to the general challenge of life. He would have been sure of getting through if you had let him stay here. I have done what I can in a short while, and this letter is to give you some indication of the root trouble (as distinguished from the symptom).' ------------------------------------------------------------ '...Since the boy turned his back on academic achievement, which is what happened, he presented a picture of someone groping in new territory, but not, I would say, completely lost or frightened. Certainly he had to be watched for depression or apathy or both, which he might as it were build into his play-acting. This last was a marked feature of his life when he came. After disappearing to some extent, it reappeared in a very marked manner indeed last summer... I decided not to interfere, apart from reintroducing him to an earlier part of his life by...' (some details follow).'... These touches the other boys took up, and by about the end of August his posturing was coming to an end, and since then he has returned to the circulation within the community which characterized his early days here, but at a deeper level. He is more relaxed and his humour is not tinged with bitterness. ... But he is still resistant, rather like a cat, who will do many things until it is asked to do them, when it asserts its independence by merely moving off. As long as this need exists, any attempt to involve him in the future seems to be premature, and therefore his general education here is still oblique rather than direct... I could never see anything coming of an attempt to patch up. I think risks had to be taken in helping him. But I also think that if he had been going to deteriorate he would be showing signs of doing so now, whereas I felt the other day that I had never seen him so quietly alive. ... It is not possible to write a report on him which doesn't relate to love and faith rather than plans ...' back to Mr Lyward's Web Page 'I do think that he is convinced at last that he counts. But he still will not be denied his own way in certain respects. Is he a weak character, who should not be expected to surrender to the total situation here? We find this difficult to answer. We are still inclined to hope that our life here will help the softened Fred Sutton, once so bitter and tight-lipped, to reach a realization of values clear enough to keep him out of all serious trouble, and away from the rehardening effects of possible punishment.' ------------------------------------------------------------ 'I hope you will welcome a letter from me even if it is only a small one. At the time I went away you were beginning to see things clearer. This is to say that I hope you are able to use that time as a kind of base from which to move on. There is no need for me to tell you that you have gifts. But it is important for you to discover that your real need at the moment is to measure yourself; as it were, with your contemporaries of all kinds (not primarily the clever ones by any means). This is the way to develop what I suppose must be called "guts". You see, you use up what guts you've got in rebelling or grumbling or "digging your toes in". Once you've started using them to mix and accept other people, (independent of their brains or attainments), just because they're there, all kinds of things would happen. I had the feeling that you were on the verge of seeing this, and that is why I have written. I've tried not to put it scientifically. But I know you will be on better terms with yourself, as soon as you do what I have tried to hint at above. Whoever or whatever (again to put it that way) robbed you of your guts, only you can start acting in those ways which will reassure yourself that you've got them. 'This might perhaps be put "robbed of living your own life, so that you could live theirs"; but you must remember that it's no good sitting down and saying "now I'll live mine". That is best achieved by accepting the fact of other people around you and that we are all linked up; and not being "selective". Gradually, if you do that, you will find that you are living a life of your own (you can't do that in a vacuum). You need not confuse the above with "Being unselfish", etc. I'm merely suggesting that you accept a fact - the existence of others round you - and by "accept" I mean "in practice". (The other thing would be mere acquiescence).' Acceptance 'in practice' meant contact and co-mingling, rubbing of shoulders instead of turning a cold shoulder, friction not in the sense of dispute, but ordinary friction among other people. Amber, by friction, becomes electric; human beings become individuals by friction, not by remaining apart. 'You can't live a life of your own in a vacuum'. ------------------------------------------------------------ 'He has in the past sought the unusual. Now he is beginning to become aware that the variety which lies in the usual is even more fascinating.' Elsewhere Mr Lyward wrote of boys '...coming to accept the common humanity each shares with his fellows and individuating out of that rather than by denial of it.' An artificial self might have found expression: '...in a boy's picture of himself... or in one of those almost fanatic attachments ... or some connection in the town.' '...many good mixers are really aloof in the deepest sense, being under compulsion to mix all their waking hours. They need sympathetic understanding, too, for they miss all that is missed by those, whose manifest aloofness matters only in so far as it tells us of the same deep-seated confusion.' There is also a particular kind of helpful person, who, while appearing to have accepted the community has really not accepted it at all, but is ' ... unhealthily generous towards its other members, trying to buy what cannot be bought, feeling that they are wanted only for what they have or can do', and not for what they are. ------------------------------------------------------------ One boy, feeling inwardly humiliated by all his family, had consequently acquired a thirst for power. He brought this thirst with him to Finchden, which he tried to dominate by being helpful. He was unwittingly encouraged by a probation officer who counselled him '...always to think what Mr Lyward would like you to do and be one move ahead' G. L.: Surely that was bad advice on the probation officer's part ? But if (asked the imaginary questioner) the boy developed the habit of doing what society preferred, it would be good? G. L.: Good for whom? This particular boy was quite capable of that particular trick, among others. ... He could dominate others quite easily by being helpful, couldn't he? He did, in fact, try this method and often anticipated me by at least one move - causing a great deal of consternation by so doing. Clearly we didn't do what he would have called the obvious thing. We didn't say 'Thank you'. Q.: You let fly at him, I imagine? G. L.: No - we took no notice, quite often. Q.: But wouldn't it have given him selfconfidence and assurance to feel that his help was acceptable and accepted? G. L.: Have you ever watched a person like this giving his help? Is he clearly straightforward and honest? I'm not too sure that the effort to get a move or more ahead of me is straightforward. It's certainly calculating and... Q.: One moment. I think I see one thing you are concerned to stop - calculating, planning, and the like. G. L.: Agreed. But that must not be taken to imply that I am completely against all planning and calculating; certainly adults have to plan and calculate. But not concerning their near relations with others, nor in the daily ways of straightforwardness, honesty and helpfulness. This boy was calculating how to maintain power or (more accurately) how to maintain a precarious hold on life which he doesn't realize to be so precarious. Q.: You want to loosen that hold? G. L.: Yes. Slowly; no faster than he is unconsciously discovering a better way. This 'helpfulness' trick - a confidence trick if ever there was one - always breaks down here and leads to such a boy trying others, frequently stealing, or even bed-wetting. back to Mr Lyward's Web Page 'I run a community, of which no one is expected to be a loyal understanding member. I have had the joy, in consequence, of continually watching a larger proportion of people co-operating, without stimulants, than in any community I have known, where "community spirit" is preached in and out of season as an ideal, to be achieved by all and sundry from the moment of entry, regardless of their capacity or their prior needs.' 'It is surely safe to assume that no adolescent is determined never to participate, but that all aloofness is an attempt to gain time. The more neurotically aloof adolescents are those, whose life to date has been one long cry of "give me time" ... their fear of the moment of contact dominates their whole lonely existence ... they have never had their external form of living properly informed by their spirit of spontaneity. They need to be helped not to worry about the group ... while they recapture the joy "of their own time".' Hence, respite - and the patient willingness of the staff to be clung to. 'Release can only come for these boys if somebody will acknowledge their tendency to become identified with and possess everything and everybody they touch - somebody who thus will help them to move, little by little, towards the joy of free relationship with that one person. Relationship to a group may then follow.' I have a thick sheaf of notes which Mr Lyward used while preparing a boy for the G.C.E. - chiefly for the advanced and scholarship papers in history and English literature. The notes cover several hundred pages, and had been supplemented by large but simple charts showing, as if on a family tree, the social and political development of the Western world, the flowering of language, the literary genealogy of our poets. The chart of European history is divided horizontally into four parts, 'Renaissance and Reformation', 'Bourbons and Hapsburgs', 'Enlightened Despotism', 'Liberal Movements and Nationalism'. The salient dates and personages of French history are written vertically down the left-hand side, and the dates and personages of other European countries parallel, the most important being circled and shaded in red. Names of influential writers are interwoven, so that the thought and events of the whole period and continent appear as part of an interrelated but not intricate pattern. Mr Lyward's notes on the set books in English literature, written in that quick scholar's hand which so easily came to resemble music, defy summary. One sheaf is occupied with a comparison between Dryden's All For Love and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, another with Chaucer, another with Milton, and so on. One page recommends a modern critical work, with a note: 'If you understand this book and use it with your text, you can't want more on your Milton. When you've done that, turn over'; and, over, there follows a fresh sheaf outlining Milton's relationship to his predecessors. Another page presents a summary of a poem by John Donne, with a note to the boy: 'This is a prose analysis. Does prose analysis suggest the nature of the poem? It does not suggest the tenderness and real feeling. Actually the flimsiness of the argument accentuates the feeling' ... and then, written boldly right across the page and underlined three times, 'But can you see (feel) that?', with an instruction crowded into the bottom corner, 'You will find the feeling only in the inflection and cadence, so read the poem aloud'. During the same period, Mr Lyward was taking a class of about twenty boys in the big kitchen - being the warmest room in the house. Although these classes were chiefly concerned with French grammar, they verged and were so arranged as to verge upon at least a dozen other subjects - particularly algebra, phonetics, English literature, and the controversies of the Middle Ages. Sometimes they took an hour, sometimes two. They had no rigid continuity. Years of experiments had shown that something boys had been told on Monday they might have forgotten on Tuesday, but absorbed by Thursday. Consequently he might not revert to it until Thursday, and then in a different light and from an unexpected approach. He seldom taught straight ahead, but with a carefully designed deviousness. He varied the frontal attack upon a point of information with outflankings and detours, so that it came to be seen in the round, from several angles, and not only, like a pylon, as a bare link along a formal chain. Usually his 'digressions' had been minutely planned, although he sometimes did so impromptu. None of the boys who had been at Finchden any length of time was surprised at his apparent irrelevancies, any more than they were surprised at his deliberate 'unfairnesses'. They came to accept and trust his treatment of a subject, in the same way as his treatment of themselves - having learnt from experience that in the end he led them somewhere. The journey held a fascination of its own. It is not unusual to find among Mr Lyward's notes an elementary translation into French, sandwiched between an algebraic equation and a few words on Tyndale's and Coverdale's translations of the Bible. When the classes in the kitchen were coming to an end, Mr Lyward gave the boys a craftily selected list of a hundred words and expressions they had discussed in order to discover what different individuals remembered. The first nine are: - connotation; - mensae, of the table; - relations; - Comus; - visual image; - first person, singular number, future simple tense, active indicative mood of the verb 'to have'; - Dr Johnson; - Ben Jonson; - T. S. Eliot. back to Mr Lyward's Web Page He put written questions such as these: - 'What is meant by "solving" an equation? Try to connect the word "solve" with another word you know'; - 'Compose four lines in the style of "No more Latin, no more Greek", using the sound and the rhythm to express a mood or feeling', (30 minutes); - 'Fill in the gaps in the following... "To use the word motor car in a speech by an Elizabethan would be to perpetrate an ... But... (who?) didn't worry about that.' 'You will either know how to fill in these gaps at once, or not know, in which event no amount of extra time will avail you.' He gave them three quarters of an hour to write 15-20 lines about the effect on themselves of a preliminary study of phonetics, particularly interesting among boys with several dialects '(... you can let it all take the form of a letter, if you like.)' His private notes on the boys in this class describe them severally as 'punctured' 'concerned and faint' 'wide open' 'earnest and frail' 'solid and held' 'slight and penetrating' 'rich and spendthrift' 'clever and precarious' 'thoroughbred' 'penny plain' 'canine and romantic'. ------------------------------------------------------------ '"There are a great many Tudor houses in Norfolk". That is perhaps a better way of starting a talk on Ket's Rebellion than to say, "Wealth and land had accumulated in a few hands." It startles by its apparent irrelevance. It belongs to the present. It refers to something that can be seen today by the two eyes in your head. It starts the less intellectual or more emotionally disturbed child trotting along with the others. It gives significance to the conclusion that the rebellion was social rather than political. It gives a good many wandering notions a local habitation. And if you refer to the memorial recently erected to the rebels on the four hundredth anniversary, you help your pupils to link their lives with today's people in Norfolk and with the other lovers of fair play of a bygone age. Both time and space are spanned.' ------------------------------------------------------------ 'I've never seen you in a temper before,' observed a tiny boy who had just arrived. 'You all shirk the hard work of chores,' Mr Lyward told them. 'It's instinctive. But here you are actually enjoying them.' 'I've noticed it's always enjoyable when you're doing a job and we're helping,' said one boy. 'Well, I'm going to start the history of French literature with you,' Mr Lyward told him, and quoted Ronsard's 'Dieu est en nous et par nous fait miracle'. At that moment a boy who had been out on a 'holiday', and far from certain to return, slipped into the room. No one paid particular attention. Mr Lyward noticed him, went on talking about John Farmer, and added quietly: 'After all, miracles do happen.' One boy muttered: 'Especially here.' back to Mr Lyward's Web Page One evening he called all the boys into the hall. They sat waiting for him in a semicircle, on the stage, round the walls, on the floor, on window-ledges. He came in, wearing his Trilby and a woollen scarf; and took a chair in the middle. 'Who knows algebra, I wonder?' he asked vaguely. He had just been doing algebra with one boy; it had suggested the kind of game he was now playing, aimed at discovering whether they could think in symbols. 'Henry, do you know algebra?' 'No, sir. 'Oh, I'm sure you do. What would you say is one more than Z?' 'One more than Z?' Long silence. 'If you know that, Henry, you know the whole of algebra.' This was said with that kind of double entendre to which I have already referred; as if he knew and they knew he was talking rubbish, and yet there was something serious behind. 'Why Z? Why not another letter?' asked a boy. 'Don't spoil it. Come on, Henry.' Henry was coaxed into agreeing that one more than Z was Z + 1. 'Now why did I say Z?' Mr Lyward asked. A boy answered: 'Because if you'd said A, someone might have said that one more than A was B.' 'And ?' 'Well - B's different.' This was good for that particular boy. 'All right. If you know that, you know all algebra.' Most of the boys received this calmly. Some looked puzzled. Two or three shrugged their shoulders, as if to say 'mad'. 'I'm afraid this session is going to be about money,' said Mr Lyward curtly. 'We don't often have sessions about money, do we?' Silence. 'I thought coming back in the car this evening that we'd have to. I'm going to talk about hop pickers first. Some time ago two or three of you went hop picking. They earned quite a lot of money, and put it in the office as arranged. But the last two apple pickers - your money isn't in the office. How much of it do you have left - Alan?' 'I don't know.' 'You don't know?' Mr Lyward looked amazed. 'You must know. You've got it, haven't you?' 'Some of it.' ' How much?' 'I don't know exactly.' ' You must have quite a lot.' It turned out that Alan had about £6 left. 'And you, Paul?' Paul was a boy all for 'divide and rule'. 'I haven't got any.' 'You haven't got any?' Mr Lyward looked astounded. 'No.' 'Where is it, then?' 'In the bank.' 'In the bank! The office is the bank. What do you mean by the bank?' 'It's in my father's bank.' 'In your father's bank! Who told you to put it there?' 'No one told me. I sent it home. It's my money. 'Is it your money?' 'I earned it - ' 'It was agreed that when any of you went hop picking or apple picking, you should put the money into the office.' 'I don't agree. I made the money and it's mine.' 'The whole question of money is becoming rather urgent,' said Mr Lyward. 'I'll tell you why. People (actually the police) have been inquiring about some unfortunate accidents to Mr Cope's chickens. Mr Cope is our neighbour. It seems that one of our dogs is under suspicion. If convicted he - or rather she - will have to pay. Has she any money to pay, Riff?' to the boy who owned the dog. 'I tied her up. She can't have done it.' 'Is she tied up now?' 'Yes.' 'Are all our animals tied up? Eric, is your tortoise tied up?' 'No. She's asleep.' 'How do you know she can't get out when she wakes up?' 'Because she's in my suitcase.' 'It seems the tortoise is acquitted. Still, it looks as if Riff's dog is going to be arrested for destroying Mr Cope's chickens. She'll have to appear in Court. She'll have to get up on her hind legs and say: 'I can't help it, I've been led a dog's life." Is that an excuse? And who'll defend her?' 'I'll defend her,' said Riff. 'Suppose she's guilty?' (She was). 'She can't pay. We'll have to pay. We - who is we?' Long pause. 'Do you really think you had a right to put that money in your father's bank, Paul?' 'Yes.' 'And Archie Combe - you've just had ten shillings from the office for your fare home.' 'Yes.' 'On top of the ten shillings your mother sent you?' 'Yes,' laughing slightly awkwardly. 'It was bad luck your mother wrote and mentioned it,' said Mr Lyward gaily. 'Yes.' 'And you still ask for ten shillings from the office?' 'The other was my own money. 'There!' exclaimed Mr Lyward, slapping his knee. 'That's one we know well, isn't it? Isn't it amazing? "Oh, but I can't spend that on it ! That's my birthday money." But the money from the office isn't different. There's always this special thing that's my own - something that's got nothing to do with us here at Finchden Manor. Why is it your own money?' 'Because my mother gave it to me.' 'And so it's all right for Paul to put his ... ten pounds? ... fifteen pounds?... twenty pounds?...' 'Eleven pounds,' said Paul. 'His eleven pounds in his father's bank?' 'I don't know,' said Archie. 'Paul does. You don't think he's hoping for parental support ? Parents. I'll have to sit up for this.' Mr Lyward sat up. 'Do you want your parents to be involved ?' He surveyed the boys over his spectacles. 'Perhaps I ought to involve them and you in the chickens. When the barn was burnt I was asked to pay for that. I don't know why the boy who burnt the barn didn't wait till the chickens were in it. We could have had it all together.' Mr Lyward opened a book. 'I'll read you something about money. It's from Spenser's Faerie Queen': God of the world and worldlings I me call, Great Mammon, greatest god below the sky, That of my plenty poure out unto all, And unto none my graces do envye, Riches, renowne, and principality, Honour, estate, and all this worldes good ... 'Do you like this metre - the way it goes?' 'Couldn't care less,' Paul answered, but only Paul. The others were enjoying. Mr Lyward continued, 'Mammon had a daughter', and went on quoting, 'There as in glistring glory she did sitt, She held a great gold chaine ylincked well, Whose upper end to highest heven was knit, And lower part did reach to lowest Hell; And all that press did round about her swell To catchen hold of that long chaine, whereby To climbe aloft, and others to excell: That was ... ...What was Mammon's daughter's name, do you suppose?' 'Ambition,' said Riff. 'That was Ambition,' Mr Lyward finished the quotation. 'It seems to me you, Paul, and you, Alan, have married her already. Do you really want to have large sums of money floating about this place? Do you, Jimmy?' 'Yes, sir.' 'You'd get into the position of the boy who was here once who used to lend it out at interest.' Mr Lyward closed the book. 'Who thinks money can really supply you with all you want?' 'Nine-tenths,' said one boy. 'Four-tenths.' 'Two-tenths,' said a boy particularly keen on money. 'All I know,' said a boy called David Bradley, 'is that I find it difficult to live on four bob a week.' 'Do boys never do anything for nothing? When I was a boy ...' Mr Lyward slipped this in deliberately. It was an old joke and he expected interruption. Sure enough it came. 'Ah!' said a boy. 'Geoff Miller would have walked out.' Geoff Miller had once sent Mr Lyward a note "forbidding" him to use certain expressions including "When I was a boy". 'Would you go hop-picking for nothing?' asked David Bradley. 'I'd say that anyone who did that was out of his mind.' Mr Lyward looked round them all. 'People sometimes say "Why not get them all to do some gardening and pay them for it?" I've always refused. It always seemed to me that something would be lost. Do you agree?' Almost everyone said 'Yes', and obviously sincerely. 'Of course,' Mr Lyward murmured, 'there was the incident of Francis's tent. Remember it caught fire - by an act of internal combustion? Who paid then?' 'We did.' 'You all most gracefully agreed to a suggestion I made at that time (boos). How many of you think I'm going to ask you to pay the thirty-two pounds for the chickens? That's what I think we owe.' Half the boys held up their hands. 'Hands up those who think I'm not.' Almost all the rest held up theirs. Mr Lyward paused and said, 'Well, I'm not. When is the dance to be, Owen?' 'It's up to you, sir.' 'Of course, you do realize we might have to have the dance without food and without music, if there isn't any money to pay for it?' Long silence. 'The hop-pickers are having their money kept for them. But'' (as it were, underlined in red) 'the apple-pickers' money might even have been used to increase your four shillings a week. That was another possibility I had in mind. I had been thinking of something of that sort.' Again this was said half-teasingly, since the apple-pickers knew their money was not going to be made community money; and yet there was a serious point. Another long silence. 'I'll contribute one pound towards the dance,' said Paul. 'Who thinks that a good idea?' asked Mr Lyward. 'I don't,' said a boy. 'We'd never hear the last of it.' 'Of course, there's Archie Combe's ten shillings. How many of you think I'm going to ask him for it back?' Half the hands went up. 'I don't know,' said one boy. 'Nor do I yet,' said Mr Lyward. He got up. 'Well, anyhow, the situation's exactly the same as when I came in. We haven't decided anything. You all know perfectly well that I wouldn't let you have a dance here without food or some new records. But you do see that all we've been talking about is related?' General assent. 'Henry, what is one more than Z?' 'Z + 1.' 'Good.' Mr Lyward walked away. A group surrounded him at once, Owen wanting to know about the dance, Riff protesting the innocence of his dog, and Paul offering to surrender all the money in his father's bank to Mr D., an offer which was passed by. back to Mr Lyward's Web Page This time the 'session', which Mr Lyward called without any particular reference to Flynn, took place in the staff room. Mr Lyward sat deep in an armchair, with the boys crowded round the walls and on the floor. He began in his usual leisurely fashion, elaborating an allegory about people who preferred the condiments of a meal to the meal itself, which Flynn, who was standing just behind me, accompanied with impatient comments under his breath. When Mr Lyward mentioned pickles and sauces Flynn, who was feeling far from allegorical or poetic, grunted, "We never get them". Mr Lyward spoke next about the boys' growing habit of asking permission to go into Tenterden on Mondays (that day was a Monday). Why? he asked. Was it so necessary for them to get away from Finchden immediately the new week began? Why were they so impatient? "Do you consider Sunday as a different day from all the rest of the week?" Mr Lyward asked. "Yes," said some; others, "No". Some thought Monday a special day, because it was then the new film began. "Is it so necessary for you to see the new film at once?" Mr Lyward asked. This discussion about days of the week went on for some time. Flynn continued his angry mutterings. I thought I could see the point round which Mr Lyward was taking his preliminary ramble. On Sunday the neighbourhood seemed dead; no distractions, above all, no cinema. If therefore the boys all demanded permission to go out the moment Monday dawned, did it not appear that they could not manage without those distractions? Did they use Finchden merely as a hotel, for its accessories, and were they indifferent to its sustenance and spirit? Hence the allegory of the condiments. The telephone rang. Mr Lyward went into his room to answer. When he returned a boy had lit a cigarette. "Who told you you could smoke?" Mr Lyward demanded angrily, by now aware of hidden possibilities in this session (and saying, "Here goes!" to himself) 'Put it out!' The boy put it out. Mr Lyward went on talking about cinemas. 'Films are a drug,' a boy said virtuously. 'I suppose you sometimes do have to have drugs for sick people,' said Mr Lyward. He started to quote some lines of poetry: 'They pass me by like shadows, crowds on crowds, Pale ghosts of men, who hover to and fro, Hugging their bodies round them like thin shrouds, In which their souls were buried long ago.' He had forgotten the next lines, said so, and continued: 'Whose ever-open maw by such is fed Gibber at living men and idly rave, "We only truly live, and ye are dead" Poor souls! the anointed eye can surely trace A dead soul's epitaph in every face.' The calm tone in which this quotation was delivered particularly angered Flynn, though he told me later that he liked the words. His mutterings became louder and more frequent. Mr Lyward and one or two boys began to discuss what was meant by 'killing time', which led Mr Lyward to talk about the kind of boy who was attracted outside, who went often to the cinema, who sat alone, went for walks alone. 'Yes, you ******', Flynn was rumbling, 'I want to go for a walk now. ... I want to go to the pictures now....' 'Has anyone anything to say?' Mr Lyward asked, as if casually. 'Yes, I've got plenty,' Flynn said under his breath. I heard him and asked in an aside, 'Why don't you say it?' and it was then that he exploded. 'What else is there to do except kill time!' he flung at Mr Lyward. 'What the ******* hell have we got to do here! What do you expect us to do except grub up fag-ends and collect enough ******* empty bottles to get enough money to buy another fag!' He was trembling all over. Geoff Miller, also in a tense excited state, was crushing his hand with a kind of dead man's grip, and without knowing it was crushing his foot too. Flynn could only keep his balance by remaining unnaturally rigid. And all the time Geoff Miller was urging him on in whispers, 'Go on! Give it him!' All Flynn's frustrations came pouring out, all his pent-up arguments. He felt completely confident for a moment, more confident than he had ever felt. 'If we have any one main thing we can do, we have it taken away from us,' he shouted. 'Wireless - horses - whatever it is! So we've got nothing left except to sit around and go to the pictures. There's no week here, no weekend! The only day that counts is Friday, because that's when we're paid! The day we come here's the beginning of the week and the day we leave's the end and that's all! Weeks are like seconds, they don't count ! Nobody remembers the seconds of an hour that's past, but I'll make bloody sure you remember this second for the rest of your life !' 'Why did you come here?' demanded Mr Lyward, rounding on him deliberately. 'Because I've been kicked here and kicked there and now I've been kicked to ******* Finchden!' 'Why did you come... ?' 'Because I was ******* well made to come.... 'You didn't have to come here...' 'I didn't want to come...' The telephone rang again and Mr Lyward spoke without leaving the room. This telephone call was Flynn's undoing. Before, he had felt in command. Everything had poured out without thought. After the call was finished he tried to collect the threads and lost them. Trying to gain points, thinking before he spoke, he became inarticulate and in a minute or two really hysterical. Amid the rage of words and tears I heard all his hates - names of headmasters, names of doctors, names of psychiatrists - and then Mr Lyward cutting in, attacking him in a hard, cold, deliberate voice. When he spoke of Flynn's 'guttersnipe existence', it seemed for a moment that Flynn might become physically violent. Perhaps he didn't hear. 'You're told you can go when you like,' he shouted, 'and then you are kept here, just by words and talk and being told you're not ready to go, until you ******* well don't know what to think about yourself' He went on for a minute or two, then, when he had no more to let go, shoved his way to the door and left. There was a long silence. Mr Lyward sent Neville to follow Flynn. Two or three boys could not throw off the tension Flynn had left behind and had identified themselves so emotionally with him that they had to say something in his support. 'Where is all this leading to, sir?' one of them exclaimed. 'Nowhere,' retorted Mr Lyward, 'unless it shows you something. Do you think that boy's ready to leave? Did he sound like it just now?' 'All the same,' said another boy, 'Some people do want to go and try things out for themselves.' Mr Lyward turned on him. 'What effort have you made?' he demanded. 'You've been given permission to look for a job for yourself What have you done about it?' In fact this boy had done nothing. Mr Lyward gently and slowly recovered the threads of allegory. He knew exactly what he had done, and that the vibrations would be felt for some time by himself and others. He needed and contrived to end the 'session' lightly on laughter and a dying fall, and most of the boys dispersed quietly. Flynn packed his rucksack and waited to see Mr Lyward in order to get money for his departure. He refused to speak to Neville, went round to the entrance to Mr Lyward's part of the house and arrived just in time for Neville, who had dodged round another way, to put his foot in the door. Flynn refused to wait and left. Neville followed him to Tenterden; not for the first time. They tossed who should pay for a cup of coffee. Neville lost. No wonder; it was a double-headed penny. But somehow Neville managed to coax Flynn back to Finchden, where he came to see me. He resumed his accusations against Mr Lyward and the whole place in a calmer tone of voice. After he had been talking for a few minutes, I interrupted him and went to tell Mr Lyward that he was with me. Mr Lyward consented to see Flynn for ten minutes in the staff room. They talked like old friends not for ten minutes, but for an hour. Flynn started by saying: 'I want to leave whether it's bad for me, or not.' Mr Lyward answered that if Flynn wanted to do that, he could always feel that he had Finchden behind him, as a place to which he could return not, of course, as a resident, but as a friend; the staff and he himself would always be ready to listen and help with advice. He made it abundantly clear that he thought Flynn in no way ready to leave; but if he did leave, it would be with everyone's best wishes 'though not' (smiling) 'with my blessing'. Flynn became quite relaxed. He apologized for his outburst, and was soon giving an account of the time when he and Geoff Miller had run away and Fitzy had had to fetch them back from Hampshire. When he described the two of them asleep in a ditch with a white flag flying, Mr Lyward laughed and said: 'I wish I'd come to fetch you,' - all this in the room in which Flynn had been swearing at Mr Lyward only two hours earlier. Finally Flynn asked how much money he could have. Mr Lyward asked how much he had been given on his last hike. 'Five pounds.' 'How long was that for?' 'Ten days.' 'How long are you going for, this time?' 'Well, I shall try to find a fellow who's starting a ranch in Suffolk. I may need a week.' 'What proportion of five pounds does that make?' 'Oh, come on, let me have the whole five pounds.' Mr Lyward laughed. 'Oh, all right, have it,' he said. ------------------------------------------------------------ Mr Lyward said: 'There's something I knew about you when you first came here. I couldn't say it to you then, and I haven't been able to say it the whole time you've been here. Now I can. He took a sheet of paper and drew a large figure, like a small child's drawing, holding out two pin-like arms. Underneath he wrote 'Giver'. Further along he drew a large square package, inscribed 'Gift'; further along still, a much smaller figure, inscribed 'You', holding out its arms to the larger figure. 'What you have always been asking for is the gift,' Mr Lyward said. 'What you have really wanted is the giver.' For a moment Flynn said nothing. He and Mr Lyward bore a strange resemblance to one another at that moment, Mr Lyward seated, his face down on his collarbone, Flynn standing, his face dug into the collar of a blue polo sweater. Then Flynn reached out a hand, folded the paper, put it into his pocket, shook hands and went out. I drove him to the station. He said he had never expected to leave Finchden in so friendly a way. He had expected to be chucked out, he said, 'as I was everywhere else', and he named boys, who - as he thought - had cordially disliked him, but had come up to wish him luck. 'Have you got that bit of paper?' I asked. He tapped his breastpocket. 'I'll keep it all my life,' he said.

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