The Son of a Servant. August Strindberg
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throbs. As he enters the churchyard gate he sees that the class-rooms are empty; it is too late!
In the boy's case the duty of punctuality took the form of a given promise, a force majeure, a stringent necessity from which nothing could release him. A ship-captain's bill of lading contains a clause to the effect that he binds himself to deliver the goods uninjured by such and such a date "if God wills." If God sends snow or storm, he is released from his bond. But for the boy there are no such conditions of exemption. He has neglected his duty, and will be punished: that is all.
With a slow step he enters the hall. Only the school porter is there, who laughs at him, and writes his name on the blackboard under the heading "Late." A painful hour follows, and then loud cries are heard in the lower school, and the blows of a cane fall thickly. It is the headmaster, who has made an onslaught on the late-comers or takes his exercise on them. John bursts into tears and trembles all over—not from fear of pain but from a feeling of shame to think that he should be fallen upon like an animal doomed to slaughter, or a criminal. Then the door opens. He starts up, but it is only the chamber-maid who comes in to trim the lamp.
"Good-day, John," she says. "You are too late; you are generally so punctual. How is Hanna?"
John tells her that Hanna is well, and that the snow was very deep in the Norrtullsgata.
"Good heavens! You have not come by Norrtullsgata?"
Then the headmaster opens the door and enters.
"Well, you!"
"You must not be angry with John, sir! He lives in Norrtullsgata."
"Silence, Karin!" says the headmaster, "and go.—Well," he continues: "you live in the Norrtullsgata. That is certainly a good way. But still you ought to look out for the time."
Then he turns and goes. John owed it to Karin that he escaped a flogging, and to fate that Hanna had chanced to be Karin's fellow-servant at the headmaster's. Personal influence had saved him from an injustice.
And then the school and the teaching! Has not enough been written about Latin and the cane? Perhaps! In later years he skipped all passages in books which dealt with reminiscences of school life, and avoided all books on that subject. When he grew up his worst nightmare, when he had eaten something indigestible at night or had a specially troublesome day, was to dream that he was back at school.
The relation between pupil and teacher is such, that the former gets as one-sided a view of the latter as a child of its parent. The first teacher John had looked like the ogre in the story of Tom Thumb. He flogged continually, and said he would make the boys crawl on the floor and "beat them to pulp" if they did their exercises badly.
He was not, however, really a bad fellow, and John and his school-fellows presented him with an album when he left Stockholm. Many thought well of him, and considered him a fine character. He ended as a gentleman farmer and the hero of an Ostgothland idyll.
Another was regarded as a monster of malignity. He really seemed to beat the boys because he liked it. He would commence his lesson by saying, "Bring the cane," and then try to find as many as he could who had an ill-prepared lesson. He finally committed suicide in consequence of a scathing newspaper article. Half a year before that, John, then a student, had met him in Uggelvikswald, and felt moved by his old teacher's complaints over the ingratitude of the world. A year previous he had received at Christmas time a box of stones, sent from an old pupil in Australia. But the colleagues of the stern teacher used to speak of him as a good-natured fool at whom they made jests. So many points of view, so many differing judgments! But to this day old boys of the Clara School cannot meet each other without expressing their horror and indignation at his unmercifulness, although they all acknowledge that he was an excellent teacher.
These men of the old school knew perhaps no better. They had themselves been brought up on those lines, and we, who learn to understand everything, are bound also to pardon everything.
This, however, did not prevent the first period of school life from appearing to be a preparation for hell and not for life. The teachers seemed to be there only to torment, not to punish; our school life weighed upon us like an oppressive nightmare day and night; even having learned our lessons well before we left home did not save us. Life seemed a penal institution for crimes committed before we were born, and therefore the boy always went about with a bad conscience.
But he learned some social lessons. The Clara School was a school for the children of the better classes, for the people of the district were well off. The boy wore leather breeches and greased leather boots which smelt of train-oil and blacking. Therefore, those who had velvet jackets did not like sitting near him. He also noticed that the poorly dressed boys got more floggings than the well-dressed ones, and that pretty boys were let off altogether. If he had at that time studied psychology and æsthetics, he would have understood this, but he did not then.
The examination day left a pleasant, unforgettable memory. The old dingy rooms were freshly scoured, the boys wore their best clothes, and the teachers frock-coats with white ties; the cane was put away, all punishments were suspended. It was a day of festival and jubilee, on which one could tread the floor of the torture-chambers without trembling. The change of places in each class, however, which had taken place in the morning, brought with it certain surprises, and those who had been put lower made certain comparisons and observations which did not always redound to the credit of the teacher. The school testimonials were also rather hastily drawn up, as was natural. But the holidays were at hand, and everything else was soon forgotten. At the conclusion, in the lower schoolroom, the teachers received the thanks of the Archbishop, and the pupils were reproved and warned. The presence of the parents, especially the mothers, made the chilly rooms seem warm, and a sigh involuntarily rose in the boys' hearts, "Why cannot it be always like to-day?" To some extent the sigh has been heard, and our present-day youth no longer look upon school as a penal institute, even if they do not recognise much use in the various branches of superfluous learning.
John was certainly not a shining light in the school, but neither was he a mere good-for-nothing. On account of his precocity in learning he had been allowed to enter the school before the regulation age, and therefore he was always the youngest. Although his report justified his promotion into a higher class, he was still kept a year in his present one. This was a severe pull-back in his development; his impatient spirit suffered from having to repeat old lessons for a whole year. He certainly gained much spare time, but his appetite for learning was dulled, and he felt himself neglected. At home and school alike he was the youngest, but only in years; in intelligence he was older than his school-fellows. His father seemed to have noticed his love for learning, and to have thought of letting him become a student. He heard him his lessons, for he himself had had an elementary education. But when the eight-year-old boy once came to him with a Latin exercise, and asked for help, his father was obliged to confess that he did not know Latin. The boy felt his superiority in this point, and it is not improbable that his father was conscious of it also. He removed John's elder brother, who had entered the school at the same time, abruptly from it, because the teacher one day had made the younger, as monitor, hear the elder his lessons. This was stupid on the part of the teacher, and it was wise of his father to prevent it.
His mother was proud of his learning, and boasted of it to her friends. In the family the word "student" was often heard. At the students' congress in the fifties, Stockholm was swarming with white caps.
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