The Headmasters Papers (15 page)

I know damned well I'm right about drugs. Historians millennia hence will perhaps cite me in their treaties on the Pax Americana in decline. But I still lose. Passive-aggression and its chemical props beat me easily. Brian has rendered me sad, frustrated, angry, and helpless, has done worse—or is it better?—to his mother. He has shown us and our WASPish liberality to be ineffective, and the only cost was forfeiting a comprehending, connecting life. Twenty years ago, passive-aggressive or not, Brian would have seen this, seen through it and past it.

Don't let these ravings frighten you, either of you. It's good for me to get them out, and it beats lying awake. Thanks so much for all your support. Am living for your arrival at Christmas. It will be gruesome for you, but I love you for it. Best to Hugh.

John

9 December

Mr. Francis Laughlin
Poetry Editor
Commonweal
232 Madison Avenue
New York, New York

Dear Mr. Laughlin,

I am enclosing another poem for your consideration. It is not terribly seasonal, but perhaps it may work into your scheme of things for the new year.

Faithfully,

John O. Greeve

THE NEW SONS

When all the boys were at last bored
With their fathers' gleaming automobiles,
After they, specters in all their hair,
Smells, grit, and gypsy gear
Had spoiled their mothers' brilliant kitchens,
Knew too much or too little for learning,
Had fallen to drugs or drifting,
When these, shameful in their own soil,
Had ceased sullenly to matter,
There were new sons.

Such boys. Modest but alive
With questions, interested in no machine
Nor manning any, they spoke like sages,
Venerated the good and left the famous
Open-mouthed before the public;
Disease and its massive medicine gave way,
And there was simple health; houses
Came to fit the features of their families;
Between each city a distance restored
And with it wonder.

11 December

Mr. and Mrs. Asa Lewandowski
1446 Trelawney Avenue
Rumson, New Jersey

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Lewandowski,

Although so much was said this past week, I want to say once again how completely and thoroughly the thoughts and love of everybody here are with you. While you were here, the services and the talk made David seem very much among us. Now will be the tough time. I am glad your daughters and their families are there for your support.

I have enclosed the copy you requested of my hastily composed remarks for the memorial chapel. They should have been fuller and stronger, but they do suggest something of the affection in which David was held here.

I also enclose David's journal for Mr. Hodge's composition class. David may have told you that the class was required to write at least a page per day on any subject. I think you'll agree that something of David's energy and enthusiasm shine forth from this log—it's David, all right.

I have not forgotten your kind offer of a commencement prize in David's name nor your intention to contribute money set aside for his tuition here to a scholarship candidate. You honor us very much with both gestures. There is plenty of time to work out the particulars, so please don't bother about them for the time being.

I will convey your regards to Mrs. Greeve.

With my love and good wishes,

John O. Greeve

12 December

Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Ryder
175 Old Church Road
Dedham, Massachusetts

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Ryder,

By now Carl has told you about his latest trouble here in the biology lab. Frankly, we find ourselves baffled by it. We don't know whether it is an instance of childish cruelty, or submerged anger, or of something else. Carl himself doesn't seem to be sure. The startling fact of the matter is that during Morning Break yesterday, Carl made his way into the lab and proceeded to cut off the tails of our six gerbils. Fortunately, I think, he was spotted by Mr. Fiore leaving the lab some time during mid-break, so we have been spared the unease of wondering who among us mutilated the animals.

The incident raises a number of concerns.

(1)  Is Carl a danger to other boys and to property here? We are fully aware that many boys pass through a phase of murderous cruelty to animals. Some boys half-sublimate this into “experiments.” Some turn it inward into temporary phobias of mice, spiders, etc. Many let it run its course through hunting, exterminating pond frogs or some other easy prey until the impulse is either dissipated or brought under control. John Steinbeck's 
The Red Pony
 is very instructive in this regard. Something of this destructive impulse is still obviously at work in Carl. What concerns us most is that he is too old for it. I hope the mortification of being caught doing such a thing becomes a first step in his being able to assess his urge objectively and thus bring it under control.

(2)  What will it do to Carl's rather fragile sense of esteem to be known, as I am afraid is already becoming the case, as the boy who cuts tails off gerbils? Such acts, again because they are so unconsciously appealing to emerging adolescents, are not readily forgotten. Cruel/funny labels are often applied, and sometimes they stick long after the event that inspired them is forgotten. Mind you, we do not encourage this, but there is little we can do to prevent it.

(3)  Has Carl posed us a disciplinary or a psychological problem? Both, I think, but we are trying to treat it more as the latter. I am convinced by his remorse (copious tears) that he is not proud or pleased about what he did; getting nabbed just may put the lid on that impulse for good.

But we intend to help him seal that lid. Our terms for keeping him on here must be as follows. He should have a psychological evaluation by someone acceptable to you sometime over the Christmas recess. I would like to see a written summary of that evaluation when he returns in January. Beyond that, we would impose no further discipline nor require any kind of therapy, unless that is recommended by his evaluator and you choose to carry on with it. However, should Carl be involved in another incident of cruel behavior to animals or to others here or to himself, we are going to insist that he go through at least one term of schooling away from Wells, during which a regular course of counseling would be required for his readmission. I really do not think that will happen or that such measures will be necessary, but, as I said, their clear statement may help keep that ‘lid' on until the developmental pressure is eased.

(4) What to do about the gerbils? This is almost too trivial to mention, but the problem is perplexing. The gerbils, now tail-less, appear to be fine and healthy. They serve, however, as a visual reminder of what Carl did to them, and this isn't good. On the other hand, they have become special pets of some of the third formers who would be hurt and incensed if they were removed—and would hold Carl accountable for any such action. Be that as it may, my own feeling is to buy six new gerbils, at Carl's expense, I think, and find the others homes in Wells village. This should go best for Carl in the long run. I am afraid there is no way to ease Carl's embarrassment in the coming two weeks, but after Christmas, given boy time-sense, the event will seem remote history.

Please write or call me if I can be of any further assistance or if I can clarify further the conditions I have set down. I think you will agree that they are not harsh; they are, however, firm.

My good wishes for the holidays,

John O. Greeve

13 December

R
EMARKS
T
O
T
HE
S
CHOOL

I could not bid you on your way this morning without remarking on the exceptional experience I had last night as a member of the opening night audience of 
Murder in the Cathedral.
It was not only the finest production of that work I have ever seen—and I have seen three: one at Harvard University, one in England 
in
Canterbury Cathedral, and one in New York—it is also the finest schoolboy production of 
anything
 I believe I have seen. Mr. Burgermeister and players have more than done it again.

I don't know why I so easily forget, but I do, that a well-made play is like a potentially living thing, and when life is breathed into it by convincing acting and by intelligent interpretation, the experience is always richer and more powerful than one can ever imagine outside the theatre. I have also not yet kicked the bad habit of thinking, before the action begins, that I am about to watch a 
school
play, rather than just a play. I think last night's performance may have cured me permanently of that. As Plato liked to point out, a perfectly tuned string is tuned regardless of who in particular tunes it; similarly, a play brought to life by bright adolescents is as
done
 as a play can be. The Royal Shakespeare Company itself could not have come closer to Mr. Eliot's heart, and through that, to the truth, than our Dramatis Personae did last night.

It has not really been a happy time with us here lately, has it? And I must say that I myself, for a variety of personal reasons, have probably been gloomier than anybody else, but that experience last night of getting vividly in touch with ideas and with meaning—well, that was a tonic.

I will be there again tonight, I've decided, and hope that all of you who have not seen it yet will join me.

Good morning.

13 December

Mr. William G. Truax
P.O. Box 121
New Haven, Connecticut

Dear Bill,

Thanks for your letter and for the copy of the Durham School plan.

I wish, though, that you had at least commented on the substance of the plan, which I presume you have read and of which, I further presume, you approve. I am afraid receiving it makes me feel a little like a dull student who has been given a brighter lad's composition to look over for instruction and inspiration.

The Durham plan is certainly streamlined, and the “hard data” awesome, but it projects some awfully worrying things. If this plan comes true, Durham is going to be a way station for clusters of all kinds of boys and girls who will go there to “tool up” in Durham “skills mods” and “research mods” for six weeks and then return, tooled, to their own less streamlined schools. Although the plan doesn't say so in so many words, Durham, if they actually do this, proposes to cease being a school and to become instead a “resource center” for the nation's public- and private-school complex. Let me tell you what I think of that. (1) It's rather condescending to other schools which are also, most of the time, engaged in skill-building and research activities themselves. (2) Durham, big and rich as it is, isn't big enough to process through more than a negligible fraction of the /files/20/59/90/f205990/public/private-school population they are aiming at. (3) The proposed “mods” are too expensive to attract many students beyond the ones who are already clients of private schools or the poshest public-school districts. (4) Durham will no longer be interesting once it recomposes itself; there will not be a community of scholars, nor a community of teachers. At the base of it all, I think, is that Andy Ames has been embarrassed about heading a powerhouse prep school like Durham ever since he took over. He is a man who did not make his reputation in schools but in something much more grand called Educational Theory. He said so many brave new, anti-elitist things from his throne at Columbia in the sixties that he has got to reconcile his contradictions. I'm all for that, but I don't see why a great (if too big) American school should have to go down the drain for it.

But I am undoubtedly mouthing off for nothing. Perhaps you sent me Durham's plan just to show me what a proper job looks like. It's a hell of a plan, I agree. Ames is a giant among planners. If I had the money, I'd lay him on to ghost a plan for Wells, but I'm afraid a kind of hotel-hospital for burnt-out teachers might result. Better yet, we could become a traditional-school lab, in which everything would be more or less as it is, except various administrators-in-training would come through and practice making innovations. I would prefer this because there would still be a role for me. They could bring me in between innovators to restore torpor and aimlessness.

Bill, I am not being defensive. I don't want you to think that for a minute. I'll plan, I'll plan.

If I may be serious after all that nonsense, I am awfully concerned about the Stone-Wilcox suit. I am even more concerned about Seymour's handling of the matter. According to him, I may have made Wells vulnerable to an unfavorable ruling in a number of ways, but first and foremost by announcing what had happened and who was involved before the faculty and student disciplinary recommendations were made. I cannot believe there is much in this. For one thing, the boys had already admitted to everything I told the school, and they had also told their friends. Moreover, I did not pass a character judgment on any of the boys involved, nor did I indicate what their “sentence” should be. In no way did I depart from the stated or traditional due process of the school or from the disciplinary contract all parents sign, including Mrs. Stone. That contract states, in effect, that expulsions are made at the discretion of the headmaster, who may seek student and faculty counsel as he sees fit. Bill, if Seymour can't win this case hands down, there will be no effective disciplinary process in the future. This is perhaps the neatest and most routine expulsion I can remember.