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Chapter 1
Chapter
2
Chapter
3
Chapter
4
Chapter
5
Chapter
6
Chapter
7
Chapter
8
Chapter
9
Chapter
10
Chapter
11
Chapter
12
Finchden
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"Mr Lyward's Answer"
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FINCHDEN had grown. It had begun
without rules, charter, tradition and had matured like a work of art.
After Mr Lyward had left Glenalmond and started his independent work,
it had unfolded out of him and around him, taking possession of his
life and becoming bigger than himself. Once he wrote: '...there will
always be some limit past which it is impossible successfully to push
any theory.' Artists must know how to wait. He did not pump and dredge
the boys; sooner or later they usually told him of their own accord
what troubled them. A boy once brought Mr Lyward two lines of a verse
he had found, and remarked: 'This is what you are like:
'Learning to wait consumes my life;
Consumes, and feeds as well.'
'Love that can wait', he wrote in one of his articles. The words might
have been written above the porch. He waited quietly while others stood
around nervously, while the telephone rang, while letters arrived from
parents and County Councillors. He did nothing, when action would have
been a welcome release from tension and exasperation. He wrote to a
boy's mother: 'Action at all times is effective and fruitful, just in
so far as it follows a period of passivity, during which the true observation
and acceptance of the real facts, internal as well as external, have
been made.'
But when a decision was taken, all the artillery moved up during the
time of waiting would then be fired off - in attack rather than defence
- and it was difficult to get a word in. He did not lose his temper,
but sometimes exploded on purpose. 'My God!' said one boy, after one
of these calculated outbursts, 'I heard the Chief's voice half a minute
before he came in through the door.' If he told a boy to go to bed or
to get out of the room, the boy disappeared at once. Waiting is long-term
and strategic. Its tactical expression is timing. Some actors and actresses
succeed with little apart from timing. Hold back the gesture a second
longer, make the pause a second shorter, and the laugh, the tear, are
lost. Mr Lyward excelled in timing, which is not a matter of flair,
but needs endless patience, practice, observation. Hold back the challenge
to a boy for a day, or a week longer, advance it by a month, and the
chance never recurs. Over and over again action came upon the chime.
He wrote a letter, and it arrived the day the boy most needed it, or
suddenly forbade a liberty he had hitherto allowed, and the boy complied.
Once, expected to lecture in a room where everyone was shouting, he
stood on the dais, opening and shutting his mouth but saying nothing.
People near the front looked at him in amazement; soon he began. He
employed his tones of voice, his silences, with a true sense of theatre
and could bring down his curtain like a sunset or a guillotine. As a
teacher his job was to be listened to. Hence the sudden breaks in what
he said and the startling images. 'I seldom lecture to people about
sex without mentioning a sword.'
Whatever his gifts, his work could not have thriven if he had been
offhand in his dealings with parents or official bodies, or not known
exactly where he stood in regard to public opinion and the law. Mr Lyward
accepted formidable risks. It was a risk to let Richard go for walks
alone; a risk to let Riff stay out late at night; a risk to challenge
one boy and leave another. All pioneer work with adolescents is always
in peril. If the pioneer happens to be slipshod, arrogant, or only weary
at a crucial moment, then God help him. Mr Lyward had no Department
or Board of Governors to refer to in difficult situations. He could
not share his responsibility. He was answerable in person for everything
he himself did and for all that his staff did for him, and administration
had to be as thorough as the original creative side of his work.
His reports might fill five lines one month or five pages the next.
He used the telephone lavishly, but did not care for it. He confirmed
his conversations in writing, and when misunderstanding was to be expected,
made sure that what he said was witnessed. Long reports about boys he
could no longer help went from him to magistrates, mental homes and
Borstals, although he was not obliged to write them, and he spent hours
preparing lectures. 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.'
- Mr Lyward thought this last phrase a commonplace. He enjoyed playing
with words, which led him into some rather donnish puns, but also
into some helpful rejuvenations.
- 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?'
Words have become encrusted with associations. To restore words
to their proper use was 'One of the poet's pleasures. In doing this
he may, sometimes unwittingly, perform an act of healing. If a man
tells a delinquent boy of sixteen, who has been fatherless for years,
that he has not the same excuse for stealing as a hungry person,
a psychologist might want to blurt out: "Man does not live by bread
alone". That is poetry, and there is a virtue - the word implies
strength - in such a psychological approach ...'
Mr Lyward drew little on the overworked vocabulary of Oedipus complexes,
mother-fixations, repressions, inhibitions... and preferred a simpler
Anglo-Saxon word if he could find one. He talked of a hunch more
readily than of an intuition, preferred 'crutches' to 'compensation',
and wrote in a boy's report that he was 'beginning to enter a new
life', not that he was 'making a successful adjustment'. Sometimes
his phrases came from the boys. 'Some special skill or "subject",
found to be like a stick, which is strong when used, but breaks
when leaned upon...'
Finchden had sprung from the creative impulse of a man who was
less a maker than an awakener, offering the boys understanding and
respite to discover their true life for themselves. He was dealing
besides with boys who, by his own definitions, had at least two
faces. '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.
One of the most vivid disproportions, at Finchden as almost anywhere
else, whether among adolescents or adults, was between head and
heart; some people have even referred to it as the schizophrenia
of Western civilisation. 'There is no difference in the emotional
condition of any of them. They are all cases of arrested feeling
development', Mr Lyward had written. Not all had brain enough successfully
to 'plaster over the wound'. With any who had, Mr Lyward might choose
to play about for a time on an intellectual level, waiting for him,
running him beyond his depth, then changing the subject entirely.
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".'
At times obviously Mr Lyward appeared to certain boys like a father,
one who was 'guiding their natural but arrested growth 'away from
the mother and the natural dominance on certain levels of the woman,
towards the father or protector or breadwinner desire within themselves'.
At another time he would need gently to hold up a boy whose possessiveness
for a girl had become like the possessiveness of a child for its
mother, and who was crying and clutching at him. He had to give,
yet not give, and often, when he did not give, a boy would take
it as a deliberate but temporary attitude. Yet it was an essential
part of his approach.
My accounts of Mr Lyward's talks are in general mine, not his.
But this condensed account of two conversations of his own shows
how facts about the boys were brought out, the shifting of approach,
and the way in which something said to one boy might be used to
clarify things to others:
- 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. Boys
at times used this phrase, because they could not feel that they
had run themselves against someone who would not budge. One per
cent not given was essential, but ninety-nine per cent given was
not far from breast-feeding. The second incident is also given in
Mr Lyward's words:
- 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 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.
Stories of this kind, told out of their long context of the whole
treatment of a boy, are intended only to illustrate the almost infinite
variety of Mr Lyward's approach, which makes it difficult to find
suitable adjectives for him. Sometimes he would be using two approaches
at the same time, playful yet not so playful, artless yet full of
art. When trying to explain himself to an adult, he would sometimes
move both his hands up and down as if he were juggling. He was a
master of prepared improvisation and studied offhandedness and,
to use another theatrical saying, 'threw his lines away' among the
boys in such a manner that they were quite certain to be picked
up.
He qualified almost anything that sounded like a crystallised definition,
thus uncrystallising it. His determination that nobody should harden,
no response or explanation become automatic, sometimes made things
difficult for his staff. For these reasons it was clear that he
could never be satisfied with my book. The result was sure to be
too hard-and-fast. 'I shall ask to review it, I think,' he reflected,
'and I shall start: "This account of work among adolescents, which
bears one or two striking resemblances to my own..."'
To what extent did Mr Lyward's success derive from some 'gift'
personal to himself, and to what extent from a method which could
be continued by others ? The disarming of the boys seemed due to
a gift he possessed of bridging the gulf between himself and the
boy. In this way youth and maturity met - not on the level of the
boy's mask and Mr Lyward's logic - but heart to heart. He himself
said of this gift: '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. Somehow the
majority of the boys sensed both qualities. They felt him to be
wise and at the same time one of them. Mr Lyward could see a boy
immediately, as a whole; yet a special quality beyond experience
enabled him to respond to what he saw in such a way that the boy,
whatever his camouflage had been, became a boy, and harmless. Without
this special quality, the process of weaning became impossible.
The process itself was a method, and could be learnt.
Mr Lyward's marriage was a happy one, his relationship with his
son easy and friendly. At one time Mrs Lyward had taught the boys.
She was a good dancer and taught them dancing too. She bound up
cut hands and sprained ankles, but since the boys were seldom ill
with anything more serious than a cold it was only at shows and
parties that she went into their part of the house. If Mr Lyward,
humorously or seriously, sent a boy along to her, she surmised the
spirit in which it was done. She had a calm character, able to take
the worst, if it happened, as it came.
Mr Lyward seemed a man who had come to a simplicity beyond complexity.
Having arrived at that point where difficult things do suddenly
become simple (and all the previous struggles are momentarily forgotten)
he caused one almost to believe that nothing lay behind his work
but common sense. He demanded everything of himself and gave everything,
whether through participation or withdrawal. 'We must lie more open
than we often do,' he once said, in an address to teachers and parents.
'We must risk being hurt.' He shared the happy stages of re-birth,
as he also shared the suffering. If he too had not felt some deep
sense of security, he could no more have supported the suffering
than the boys themselves. Without this inward strength, constantly
renewed, he would have faltered, or lost hope.
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