Headmaster and Parent (Fragment)

‘We do not merely impart knowledge’, the Headmaster tells the solicitous Parent in this dialogue which, given its attitude towards the ‘Public School Spirit’, was likely composed during or around the time when Strachey was writing his portrait of Thomas Arnold for Eminent Victorians. The headmaster continues, ingenuously: ‘We turn out here … truthful, self-respecting, disciplined Englishmen. We give them a love of truth … we encourage their self-respect … and we make them disciplined’ (below, p. 175). This parody of a headmaster includes echoes of ‘Dr. Arnold’. His anti-intellectualism recalls Strachey’s mocking quotation of the Arnoldian dictum, ‘What we must look for here is, first religious and moral principle; secondly, gentlemanly conduct; thirdly, intellectual ability’. ‘What Arnold set out to accomplish’, Strachey writes, was to ‘turn out brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishmen and Christians’. ¹ If Strachey’s Arnold was – to a greater degree than his other eminent Victorians – a parody, then the evasive Headmaster of this dialogue is a parody of a parody; he certainly possesses none of Arnold’s genuine intellectual accomplishments or the moral earnestness that Strachey deplored in Arnold.