Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

and above all country
clergymen: there were boys in the school whose fathers,
grandfathers, great-grandfathers, had been educated there and had
all been rectors of parishes in the diocese of Tercanbury; and they
came to it with their minds made up already to be ordained. But
there were signs notwithstanding that even there changes were
coming; for a few, repeating what they had heard at home, said that
the Church was no longer what it used to be. It wasn't so much the
money; but the class of people who went in for it weren't the same;
and two or three boys knew curates whose fathers were tradesmen:
they'd rather go out to the Colonies (in those days the Colonies
were still the last hope of those who could get nothing to do in
England) than be a curate under some chap who wasn't a gentleman.
At King's School, as at Blackstable Vicarage, a tradesman was
anyone who was not lucky enough to own land (and here a fine
distinction was made between the gentleman farmer and the
landowner), or did not follow one of the four professions to which
it was possible for a gentleman to belong. Among the day-boys, of
whom there were about a hundred and fifty, sons of the local gentry
and of the men stationed at the depot, those whose fathers were
engaged in business were made to feel the degradation of their
state.
      The masters had no patience with modern ideas of
education, which they read of sometimes in The Times or The
Guardian, and hoped fervently that King's School would remain true
to its old traditions. The dead languages were taught with such
thoroughness that an old boy seldom thought of Homer or Virgil in
after life without a qualm of boredom; and though in the common
room at dinner one or two bolder spirits suggested that mathematics
were of increasing importance, the general feeling was that they
were a less noble study than the classics. Neither German nor
chemistry was taught, and French only by the form-masters; they
could keep order better than a foreigner, and, since they knew the
grammar as well as any Frenchman, it seemed unimportant that none
of them could have got a cup of coffee in the restaurant at
Boulogne unless the waiter had known a little English. Geography
was taught chiefly by making boys draw maps, and this was a
favourite occupation, especially when the country dealt with was
mountainous: it was possible to waste a great deal of time in
drawing the Andes or the Apennines. The masters, graduates of
Oxford or Cambridge, were ordained and unmarried; if by chance they
wished to marry they could only do so by accepting one of the
smaller livings at the disposal of the Chapter; but for many years
none of them had cared to leave the refined society of Tercanbury,
which owing to the cavalry depot had a martial as well as an
ecclesiastical tone, for the monotony of life in a country rectory;
and they were now all men of middle age.
      The headmaster, on the other hand, was obliged to be
married and he conducted the school till age began to tell upon
him. When he retired he was rewarded with a much better living than
any of the under-masters could hope for, and an honorary
Canonry.
      But a year before Philip entered the school a great
change had come over it. It had been obvious for some time that Dr.
Fleming, who had been headmaster for the quarter of a century, was
become too deaf to continue his work to the greater glory of God;
and when one of the livings on the outskirts of the city fell
vacant, with a stipend of six hundred a year, the Chapter offered
it to him in such a manner as to imply that they thought it high
time for him to retire. He could nurse his ailments comfortably on
such an income. Two or three curates who had hoped for preferment
told their wives it was scandalous to give a parish that needed a
young, strong, and energetic man to an old fellow who knew nothing
of parochial work, and had feathered his nest already; but the
mutterings of the unbeneficed clergy do not reach the ears of