Such, Such Were the Joys

"Such, Such Were the Joys" is a posthumously-published essay by English writer George Orwell, written in the 1940s. It tells a story based on Orwell's experiences at preparatory school between the ages of eight and thirteen in the years before and during World War I and presents various reflections by Orwell on the misunderstandings of childhood.

Background

Secondary education for the dominant classes in England since the early 19th century has been provided mainly by the fee-paying public schools. These have selective entrance by examination and offer scholarships by competitive examination, which offset all or part of the fees. The curriculum in Orwell's time, and for long after, centred on the classics. Prep schools were established from the 19th century to prepare students for these examinations and to provide a broader-based education than the traditional crammer, offering sports and additional subjects. Prep school children were often boarders, starting as early as five or as late as twelve. Boarding was, and still is, for terms of three months. Eastbourne was a popular town for preparatory schools at the turn of the 20h century because its bracing sea air was believed to be healthy, and by 1896, Gowland’s Eastbourne Directory listed 76 private schools for boys and girls. An Eton scholarship was most highly prized, not just for its financial value but because it provided access to the elite intellectual cadre of King's Scholars. One of the leading prep schools of the time, Summer Fields School, set in the university town of Oxford and with which St Cyprian's eventually was to merge,^[1] won every year at least five of the available Eton scholarships.^[2]

Orwell's mother sent him (as Eric Blair) to board at St Cyprian's School at the age of eight in 1911.^[3] The school had been founded by Mr and Mrs Vaughan Wilkes twelve years earlier and it had moved into newly-built facilities in extended grounds in 1906. Although able to charge high fees for better-off parents, the Wilkes supported traditional families on lower incomes, particularly in the colonial service, by taking their children at considerably reduced fees, and Orwell was one of several beneficiaries, who also included Alaric Jacob and Walter Christie.^[4] Mrs Wilkes spotted Orwell looking sad on his arrival and tried to comfort him, but noted "there was no warmth in him". Nor did he respond positively to being taken on a picnic the following day.^[5] Senior boys in Orwell's first year included Ian Fraser^[6][7] and Bolo Whistler.^[8] His early letters home report a normal catalogue of class placings, results of games, and school expeditions.^[9]

In September 1914 Cyril Connolly arrived at the school^[10] and formed a close friendship with Orwell. The First World War had just broken out, and Orwell's patriotic poem written at school was published in the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard. The war made life difficult for the school - most of the teaching staff left to fight,^[4] although one staff member Charles Edgar Loseby, later a Labour MP, returned for a period while recovering from being gassed in the trenches.^[11] The First World War had a significant effect in other ways - there was the increasing roll call of old boys killed in the trenches, Mr Wilkes spent his summer holidays driving ambulances in France,^[12] the boys knitted and put on entertainments for the injured troops camped nearby, and food shortages made feeding a challenge.^[11] Classics was taught by Mr Wilkes, while the formidable Mrs Wilkes taught English, history and scripture. The long-serving deputy, Robert Sillar, taught geography, drawing, shooting and nature studies and was highly regarded in old boys' accounts.^[13][14] Outings on the South Downs were a regular part of school life, and Sillar led the boys on nature study expeditions. The school had instituted a Cadet Corps, in which Orwell was an active member.^[11] Orwell recalls stealing books off Connolly^[15] and Connolly describes how they reviewed each other's poetry.^[16] Cecil Beaton vaguely recalled working on the school's war-time allotments with Orwell.^[17] During his time at school, Orwell surreptitiously collected the saucy seaside postcards^[18] that were later to figure in his essay "The Art of Donald McGill".

In 1916 Orwell came second in the Harrow History Prize, had another poem published in the Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard, and with Connolly had his work praised by the external examiner Sir Charles Grant Robertson.^[11] In 1916 Orwell won a scholarship to Wellington College, a school with a military background appropriate for colonial service. Mr Wilkes also believed Orwell could win an Eton scholarship and would benefit from Eton College life and so he sat the Eton exam as well. Orwell headed the school prize list in 1916 with Classics, while Cyril Connolly won the English prize, Cecil Beaton won the drawing prize, Walter Christie won the history prize and Rupert Lonsdale won the scripture prize. Henry Longhurst, Lord Pollington and Lord Malden were among the winners of other class prizes.^[19][20] Other activities in which Orwell was involved included narrowly missing winning the diving competition, playing the part of Mr Jingles in the school play, and being commended as a useful member of the 1st XI cricket team.^[11] Although he had won an Eton scholarship, this was subject to a place becoming available. Instead of going to Wellington he stayed at St Cyprian's for an additional term in the hope that a place at Eton would materialise. As this had not happened by the end of term, he went on to Wellington in January. However, after he had been there for nine weeks, an Eton place became available.

Publication

On sending the typescript to Warburg, Orwell stated that he had written the "long autobiographical sketch"^[21] partly as a "sort of pendent"^[21] to the publication in 1938 of Enemies of Promise, an autobiographical work by Cyril Connolly, and at Connolly's request.^[21] Connolly, who had been Orwell's companion at St Cyprian's and later at Eton,^[21] had written an account of St Cyprian's which, though cynical, was fairly appreciative compared to Orwell's.^[22] In his letter to Warburg, Orwell wrote that he thought his essay "really too libellous to print", adding that it should be printed "when the people most concerned are dead".^[21] The libel report for Secker & Warburg, compiled after Orwell’s death, judged that well over thirty paragraphs were defamatory.^[23]

Sonia Orwell and Warburg both wanted to publish Such, Such Were the Joys immediately after Orwell's death, but Sir Richard Rees, who was Orwell's literary executor violently disagreed. He considered the work "grossly exaggerated, badly written, and likely to harm Orwell’s reputation" and when Sonia insisted, he told her, "You’re completely nutty about St Cyprian's". Thereafter, Rees had no further involvement in publishing decisions.^[24] In 1952, within two years of Orwell's death a version was published in the USA in the Partisan Review.^[25] In this version the school was referred to as "Crossgates" and the names of the headmaster and his wife altered to Mr and Mrs Simpson ("Sim" and his wife "Bingo"). Following Mrs Wilkes' death in 1967, "Such, Such Were the Joys" was published in the UK, but with only the name of the school and the proprietors in original form - the real names of his fellow pupils were still disguised.^[26] In the Completed Works edition (2000), the original text including all names has been restored.

Most biographers have to a greater or lesser extent concluded that "Such, Such Were the Joys" significantly misrepresents the school and exaggerates Orwell's suffering there. David Farrer, partner of Orwell's publishers, considered it a "gross distortion of what took place".^[27]

Summary and analysis

The title of the essay is borrowed from "The Echoing Green" by William Blake. Orwell describes his early schooling in a highly satirical and bitter account. St Cyprian's was, according to him, a "world of force and fraud and secrecy," in which the young Orwell, a shy, sickly and unattractive boy surrounded by pupils from families much richer than his own, was "like a goldfish" thrown "into a tank full of pike." Bernard Crick notes the allusion to echoes in Blake's poem and suggests a significance in that echoes distort and fade over time.^[28]

Orwell makes a series of allegations. The first is that he was recruited purely as scholarship fodder, and stuffed with knowledge for five years with the sole aim of winning an Eton scholarship that would look good on the school's publicity. Secondly, the education he received was "a preparation for a sort of confidence trick," geared entirely towards maximizing his future performance in the admissions exams. Thirdly, this education relied on the use of beatings. Fourthly, being poor, he was discriminated against, with rich boys receiving preferential treatment, including exemption from the beatings. Fifthly, he was constantly reminded of his poverty and dependency in an effort to spur him to further effort. The charge of snobbery is levelled at the owners, other pupils and their parents, and "At almost every point some filthy detail obtrudes itself", although this amounts to the smell of the lavatories, changing rooms and plunge bath and the poor standard of washing up. A chapter is devoted to the consequences of sexual misdemeanours and attitudes to sex at the time.

The story is punctuated with anecdotes - being spotted by a "school spy" outside a newsagent's shop; a "human turd" floating in the Devonshire Baths; the new boy whose teeth turn green through neglect and a squabble with the school rugger hero. The key story is the opening one where, by a series of misunderstandings, the new boy believes he is going to be beaten by an intimidating masculine-looking woman in a riding habit, going by the name of "Mrs Form" - ostensibly for wetting his bed.

In his concluding analysis, Orwell's argument is "how incredibly distorted is the child's vision of the world". He is concerned at the confusions in a child's mind that give rise to appalling misunderstandings, and he states that this is not realised because a child always hides his or her true feelings. He bases his generalisations on what he can recall of his own childhood outlook.

Reaction from contemporaries

Of his contemporaries, Cecil Beaton wrote of the piece "It is hilariously funny, but it is exaggerated".^[29] Connolly, on reviewing Stansky & Abraham's interpretation, wrote "I was at first enchanted as by anything which recalls one's youth but when I went to verify some references from my old reports and letters I was nearly sick... In the case of St Cyprian's and the Wilkes whom I had so blithely mocked I feel an emotional disturbance... The Wilkeses were true friends and I had caricatured their mannerisms (developed as a kind of ritual square-bashing for dealing with generations of boys) and read mercenary motives into much that was just enthusiasm"^[30] Walter Christie and Henry Longhurst went further and wrote their own sympathetic accounts of the school in response to Orwell's and voiced their appreciation for the formidable Mrs Wilkes.^[31][32] Robert Pearce, researching the papers of another former pupil,^[33] made a comprehensive study from the perspective of the school, investigating school records and other pupils accounts. While some features were universal features of Prep school life, he concluded that Orwell's depiction bore little relation to reality and that Orwell's defamatory allegations were unsupportable.^[34] Davison writes 'If one is looking for a factual account for life at St Cyprian's, this is not the place to seek it."^[35]

On Orwell's claimed state of misery, Jacintha Buddicom, who knew him well at the time, also raised a strong challenge. She wrote "I can guarantee that the 'I' of Such, Such were the Joys is quite unrecognisable as Eric as we knew him then" and "He was a philosophical boy, with varied interests and a sense of humour- which he was inclined to indulge when referring to St Cyprian's in the holidays.^[36]

Quotes

• The real question is whether it is still normal for a schoolchild to live for years amid irrational terrors and lunatic misunderstandings. And here one is up against the very real difficulty of knowing what a child really feels and thinks. A child which appears reasonably happy may actually be suffering horrors which it cannot or will not reveal. It lives in a sort of alien under-world which we can only penetrate by memory or divination. Our chief clue is the fact that we were once children ourselves, and many people seem to forget the atmosphere of their own childhood entirely. Think for instance of the unnecessary torments that people will inflict by sending a child back to school with clothes of the wrong pattern, and refusing to see that this matters! Over things of this kind a child will sometimes utter a protest, but a great deal of the time its attitude is one of simple concealment. Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight upwards. Even the affection that one feels for a child, the desire to protect and cherish it, is a cause of misunderstanding. One can love a child, perhaps more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return. Looking back on my own childhood, after the infant years were over, I do not believe that I ever felt love for any mature person, except my mother, and even her I did not trust, in the sense that shyness made me conceal most of my real feelings from her. Love, the spontaneous, unqualified emotion of love was something I could only feel for people who were young.

• Always at the centre of my heart the inner self seemed to be awake, pointing out the difference between the moral obligation and the psychological fact. It was the same in all matters, worldly or other-worldly. Take religion for instance. You were supposed to love God, and I did not question this. Till the age of about fourteen I believed in God, and believed that the accounts given of him were true. But I was well aware that I did not love him. On the contrary I hated him, just as I hated Jesus and the Hebrew patriarchs. If I had any sympathetic feelings towards any character in the Old Testament, it was towards such people as Cain, Jezebel, Haman, Agag, Sisera: in the New Testament my friends, if any, were Ananias, Caiaphas, Judas and Pontius Pilate.

• I knew the bed-wetting was (a) wicked and (b) outside my control. The second fact I was personally aware of, and the first I did not question. It was possible, therefore, to commit a sin without knowing that you committed it, without wanting to commit it, and without being able to avoid it. Sin was not necessarily something that you did: it might be something that happened to you [... This] was the great, abiding lesson of my boyhood: that I was in a world where it was not possible for me to be good. And the double beating was a turning-point, for it brought home to me for the first time the harshness of the environment into which I had been flung [... As] I sat snivelling on the edge of a chair in Sambo's study, with not even the self-possession to stand up while he stormed at me, I had a conviction of sin and folly and weakness, such as I do not remember to have felt before.

• The various codes which were presented to you at St Cyprian's — religious, moral, social and intellectual — contradicted one another if you worked out their implications. The essential conflict was between the tradition of nineteenth-century asceticism and the actually existing luxury and snobbery of the pre-1914 age. On the one side were low-church Bible Christianity, sex puritanism, insistence on hard work, respect for academic distinction, disapproval of self-indulgence: on the other, contempt for 'braininess,' and worship of games, contempt for foreigners and the working class, an almost neurotic dread of poverty and, above all, the assumption not only that money and privilege are the things that matter, but that it is better to inherit them than to have to work for them. Broadly, you were bidden to be at once a Christian and a social success, which is impossible.

• Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting. The lovers of football are large boisterous, nobbly boys who are good at knocking down and trampling on slightly smaller boys. That was the pattern of school life — a continuous triumph of the strong over the weak. Virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people — in dominating them, bullying them, making them suffer pain, making them look foolish, getting the better of them in every way. Life was hierarchical and whatever happened was right. There were the strong, who deserved to win and always did win, and there were the weak, who deserved to lose and always did lose, everlastingly.

• If I had to pass through Eastbourne I would not make a detour to avoid the school: and if I happened to pass the school itself I might even stop for a moment by the low brick wall, with the steep bank running down from it, and look across the flat playing field at the ugly building with the square of asphalt in front of it. And if I went inside and smelt again the inky, dusty smell of the big schoolroom, the rosiny smell of the chapel, the stagnant smell of the swimming bath and the cold reek of the lavatories, I think I should only feel what one invariably feels in revisiting any scene of childhood: How small everything has grown, and how terrible is the deterioration in myself! But it is a fact that for many years I could hardly have borne to look at it again [...] Now, however, the place is out of my system for good. Its magic works no longer, and I have not even enough animosity left to make me hope that Flip and Sambo are dead or that the story of the school being burnt down was true.

• It will have been seen that my own main trouble was an utter lack of any sense of proportion or probability. This led me to accept outrages and believe absurdities, and to suffer torments over things that were in fact of no importance. It is not enough to say that I was silly and ought to have known better. Look back into your own childhood and think of the nonsense you used to believe and the trivialities which could make you suffer. Of course my own case had its individual variations, but essentially it was that of countless other boys.

See also

• Bibliography of George Orwell

References

External links

• Full text
• Hugh Kenner "The Politics of the Plain Style" New York Times, New York, N.Y.: Sep 15, 1985. p. BR1

v • d • e Works of George Orwell Novels Burmese Days (1934) · A Clergyman's Daughter (1935) · Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) · Coming Up for Air (1939) · Animal Farm (1945) · Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) Nonfiction Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) · The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) · Homage to Catalonia (1938) Essays The Spike (1931) · A Hanging (1931) · Shooting an Elephant (1936) · Inside the Whale (1940) · Boys' Weeklies (1940) · The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941) · Second Thoughts on James Burnham (1946) · The Moon Under Water (1946) · Politics and the English Language (1946) · Decline of the English Murder (1946) · A Nice Cup of Tea (1946) · Why I Write (1946) · Such, Such Were the Joys (1946) · Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool (1947) Related articles Searchlight Books · Secker and Warburg · Victor Gollancz Ltd · Eileen O'Shaughnessy · Sonia Brownell · Orwell's list · Eric & Us · Why Orwell Matters · Orwell Award · Orwell Prize · Orwellian Texts · Quotes · Images