Extract: canes of varying thickness and colour

 In front of his desk, as a kind of altar, stood a long chest, open during school hours to reveal a set of canes of varying thickness and colour, from light switches to heavy cudgels; some straw blonde, others dour as mahogany as though impregnated with congealed blood.

In an autobiography, Over the Bridge, poet and writer Richard Church recalls his Headmaster at Surrey Lane, a school he attended between the ages of eight and twelve in the early part of the twentieth century.

The headmaster John Burgess was ten feet high. He carried his head flung back, with a grim mouth and chin set against the world. He wore large brown shoes, highly polished and hooked by spats, summer and winter. He flung out these feet at an aggressive angle as he advanced (rather than walked). He was terrifying.

His throne was set at the end of the big hall, surrounded by windows, so that he sat in a blaze of light that hovered round his severely brushed hair. His prince-nez flashed fire. In front of his desk, as a kind of altar, stood a long chest, open during school hours to reveal a set of canes of varying thickness and colour, from light switches to heavy cudgels; some straw blonde, others dour as mahogany as though impregnated with congealed blood. Lying on the array of canes was the Punishment Book, the register of shame. A record of every chastisement was entered therein, after the event with a broad pen, and in deliberate calligraphy that possessed an Hebraic quality, as though an angry god of the Old Testament himself had made an entry.

Boys sent by their class-masters for punishment by Mr. Burgess had to stand in the hall, toeing a white line in front of The Desk. To wait there, facing the grim figure, or even the empty throne, the open chest of canes within sight, was ample torture, especially if the ordeal was prolonged from a quarter to half an hour.

It broke the nerve of a classmate of mine, when both of us were sent up for persistent talking in school. We had been standing side by side for same time, through a whole session and a playtime, when school was resumed for the last session of the morning and the Head decided to give his attention to us. I saw him rise from his chair, remove his prince-nez, thrust them on their black cord into the breast pocket of his dove-grey waistcoat and replace them with a second pair from the opposite pocket. My legs began to tremble and I felt faintly sick, for the mere act of standing for long always set up the pain and dragging sensation in my back.

The Head moved slowly to the chest and began to inspect the canes, a ritual that he performed with theatrical technique. Finally choosing one, and flinging open the Punishment Book, he turned to the row of urchins.

At that moment the small, inoffensive little boy beside me revolted. He uttered a loud, hysterical cry, dashed to the desk, seized the inkpot and flung it at the awful figure of Majesty. It burst on the dove-grey waistcoat.

For a moment the laws that govern the sun and the stars were suspended. The universe froze into stillness. Then the frantic child flung himself, after the inkpot, against that universe. With another shriek he snatched at the cane in the hand of authority. The Headmaster, towering above him, looked down at this commotion round his feet, while he took out a handkerchief and, with as grave a deliberation as he had changed his prince-nez, dabbed at the ink-stain on his ruined waistcoat. Throwing the handkerchief into the wate-paper basket, he picked up the struggling and impassioned child by the middle of his back and carried him face downwards along the hall, the small limbs making violent motions of swimming in air.

The disturbance had brought two masters from class-rooms adjoining the hall. The Headmaster gravely passed his burden to them and disappeared through the double doors followed by the masters with the boy.

I looked along the line. One urchin, whose muscles had succumbed to shock stood in a pool, crying. None of us dared to speak, and we were still there, foot to the white line, incapable of digesting so vast a drama, when the Headmaster returned. He had changed his waistcoat for one of dark red, and this made him look like the Avenging Angel. Even the spot of ink on his trousers and another on one of the fawn spats, did not compromise his dignity. His eyes behind the price-nez gleamed, and his large mouth was set firmly.

Picking up the cane from the desk where he had dropped it, he replaced it in the chest and closed the lid! Turning, still in slow motion, he faced us, looking at each boy individually. Then the oracle spoke, “Let that be a lesson to all of you,” he said. “Dismiss!”

 

Extracted from Over the Bridge, by Richard Church, published by William Heinemann (1955).

Picture credit: Generated by Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)

 

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