The Fall of Doctor Onslow Read online

  MICHAEL MARTEN: Onslow was based on a true story about a headmaster at Harrow, who was effectively blackmailed or bludgeoned by the father of a pupil into leaving the school and wasn’t allowed to accept any preferment in the Church, such that when he tried to a few years later he got set back. It was a very powerfulstory and Frances managed to convey it very well. It seemed to me her first novels were very good but of a certain type, novels of manners and mores, but they didn’t really go further than that. Whereas I felt that Onslow had more depth.

  SHEILA VERNON: Frances’s sense of humour wasn’t commented on. But it’s there in Onslow, especially in Doctor Onslow’s wife Louisa, who is a great character, I think. Nothing’s explained to her but she knows quite a lot. When she speaks of Onslow’s devotion to his pupils and then realises what she’s said . . . And when Onslow says he’s ‘upset over a boy’, she does know there’s something hidden. Or when they go together to a hotel and she comments on their lack of luggage, to which he replies, ‘A clergyman is always respectable . . .’ Even he has a joke at himself. Frances was very succinct in her writing, including her humour.

  MICHAEL MARTEN: Gollancz, who published Westmarch, turned down the first version of Onslow. It was a huge blow to Frances, and she was reluctant to rewrite it, but she did, quite considerably. She must have finished it not long before she died. And it was almost as though she had decided it was the work she had to finish, she had no ideas beyond that – and by finishing it, I think she felt released.

  Frances died by her own hand on 11 July 1991 after what The Times obituarist would describe as her ‘long struggle with depressive illness’. Having promised her psychiatrist not to end her life using pills he’d prescribed for her depression, Frances created a ‘herbal’ concoction, which she took, and then lay down to die, apparently calmly and peacefully.

  MICHAEL MARTEN: It wasn’t sudden, it was a continual worsening. It was a cloud over her and it grew blacker. She seemed less able to escape from the blackness. When it happened I was certainly shocked. But it was not in the least unexpected. And I felt thereafter that nothing would have saved her.

  SHEILA VERNON: I go over and over thinking how we might have done things differently, and probably we should have, you can’t help wondering. But . . . you just have to live with it as best you can. In a way it was rather like someone with a terrible illness that couldn’t be cured, and you don’t want them to go on and on suffering.

  MICHAEL MARTEN: A few months after Frances’s death I sent ‘A School Story’ back to Gollancz in its rewritten form but they turned it down. I got in touch with her agency Blake Friedmann and asked them to suggest other publishers who might be interested. They sent me a list of about twenty, to whom I sent copies, most of whom turned it down until André Deutsch accepted it. And I think it’s the best of Frances’s novels.

  The Fall of Doctor Onslow was published finally in July 1994. Ben Preston for The Times called it ‘a searing indictment of the process of education . . . tersely written in a style that successfully captures Victorian restraint and its stifling sensibilities’. In the Tablet, Jill Delay reflected that ‘it is difficult to believe when reading it that the author was a child of our times and did not actually live in the middle of the last century: she recreates that world so vividly, with such understanding of its characters, such an ear for its speech, such feeling for its attitudes and taboos’. Lucasta Miller for the Independent observed that the novel’s ‘posthumous appearance is both a tragic reminder of what she might have gone on to do, and a testimony to what she did achieve’.

  Author’s Note

  Some readers may think that the story told in this novel is wildly improbable. I want to assure them that the central plot of The Fall of Doctor Onslow is historical: I lifted it from the story of the dramatic resignation of Dr C. J. Vaughan, Headmaster of Harrow 1844–59, as recounted in the Memoirs of John Addington Symonds. The characters, on the other hand, are fictional, and I am not presenting them as portraits under different names of the people involved in the real affair. Some bear more resemblance than others to their originals, but most are either total invention, or else are made up of a lot of imaginary flesh on an incomplete, historically-suggested skeleton.

  Frances Vernon, London,

  1991

  1

  When the young Doctor of Divinity George Robert Onslow was made Headmaster of Charton in 1844, he was put in possession of one of the fattest appointments available to a clergyman. Charton School had such generous endowments that, his residential perquisites aside, the Headmaster could draw from the foundation almost five thousand pounds a year. Boarding-house profits and capitation fees for each pupil ought to have raised the sum still further, but when Dr Onslow arrived, profits and capitation fees amounted to very little, for there were only sixty boys in the school where once there had been three hundred.

  Dr Onslow was determined to raise the number of pupils to over four hundred as soon as possible. His motive was not a desire to increase his stipend, but a sense of duty, and an eager desire to reform: Charton’s numbers had sunk because the place was notorious for drunkenness, lawlessness, and failures at Oxford and Cambridge. It was one of the very worst public schools in England, and Dr Onslow had been appointed to make it the best.

  He did not mean to rescue Charton from its decayed state by entirely overturning the developments of the past two hundred years, ceasing to educate the sons of the rich, and remembering the wishes of the school’s founder – who, in Queen Mary’s reign, had established a free school for the benefit of local people. Instead, he meant to reform it on the lines laid down by the celebrated Dr Arnold of Rugby, one of whose favourite pupils he had been: he meant to turn out Christian gentlemen, the best of whom would also be scholars.

  Dr Onslow was successful in his aims, and by 1858, when he had been Headmaster for fourteen years, his success had taken material shape. All but two of the school buildings were the product of his reign, and these new buildings were the symbol of his moral and academic victory.

  *

  The school was situated near London, in the village of Charton Underhill. On the crest of the little hill which gave the village its name there was a railway station, and looking down from the station it was possible to see the brick results of Dr Onslow’s work. They fell gently away down a winding road, and the Headmaster was pleased to see that the most noticeable of all was the chapel he had built.

  Closest to the station was the steepled parish church, but it was largely hidden from view by a group of elm-trees. Below and to the left, there could be seen the massive house known as Great School, while across the way there was the more convenient Little School, erected by Dr Onslow to house the overflow of boys from the old classrooms. Further down was the red and grey, pure Gothic chapel, while beyond were various boarding-houses and the Headmaster’s own residence, a plain and heavy structure with rectangular windows, where he lived with his wife in one half, while forty boys lived in the other.

  The surrounding countryside was pleasant but dull, being flat on the whole, and dominated by isolated trees and hawthorn hedges. It was being gradually encroached upon by the new villas that came inching along the London and North-Western Railway, but in 1858 there were still nearly three miles of open country between Charton Underhill and the furthermost outskirts of London. Dr Onslow therefore did not consider the wisdom of persuading the trustees to buy up land, and so prevent his school’s being swallowed up in the end.

  Of all the school buildings, only Great School itself went back to the time of Charton’s founder. It was of dark brick, and had been given a fortress-like appearance by its high windows, the lowest row of which was some fifteen feet above the ground. A long flight of steep steps ran up to the main entrance, and the house was surrounded by a yard fenced in with iron railings where, on half-holidays, the boys stood and answered to their names.

  Inside Great School there were three classrooms, and the largest and most important of these
was known as the Lower Room. Originally, the whole school had been taught here, for there was room for eighty pupils, and it had not at first been intended that Charton should cater for more. It was long and narrow, and beneath the windows that showed nothing but sky there was wooden panelling, black with age, on which the names of countless schoolboys had been deeply carved.

  Round the walls there were grouped rows of benches, each arranged in front of a high seat for a master. There were no desks. Such a seating-plan made it impossible for anything but Latin and Greek to be taught, and taught according to the ancient method of getting by heart, reciting aloud, and construing phrase by phrase. Dr Onslow did not think of changing this method; he found it perfectly satisfactory for younger boys at least, and under him the three most junior forms continued to be taught together in the Lower Room.

  *

  On a cold February morning in 1858, Dr Onslow came into the Lower Room, took a slippery raised seat usually occupied by one of his colleagues, and began to overawe his younger pupils. He did this twice in each term, six times a year. It used to be only four, but recently he had replaced the two school half-years of tradition with the three terms more appropriate to a railway age; the boys had been glad of this change, but they wished he had decided he need now examine them only once a term.

  Dr Onslow adjusted the folds of his gown, brushed his cuff, and smiled faintly at the anxious faces below him. Some of the boys were not looking at him, they were hiding their eyes. He glanced swiftly round the room to see that all in this familiar scene was as it should be. Across from him the boys of the other two forms were conning their books in the grey light from the windows, waiting for their turn: he was satisfied, and turned his eyes once more to those in front of him.

  The boys were not all of an age. They were placed in school solely according to their academic competence, and so the Shell form contained a large number of fourteen year olds, some bright and diligent children of twelve and thirteen, a few boys in their middle teens, and one young man nearly old enough to shave. They all wore blue coats, but their trousers and waistcoats were not uniform. In spite of this Dr Onslow found it difficult to tell them apart. He paid the minimum of attention to boys below the Sixth, whom he taught in person. Only the intelligent ever reached the Sixth, and except insofar as he was responsible for their morals, he was not interested in those who were not intelligent.

  Brains bought power and privilege at Charton. It was not to boys of strong character that Dr Onslow deputed a part of his authority over the juniors, but to those who had succeeded in their lessons, some of whom were no more than fifteen. Dr Arnold had operated the same system, and Dr Onslow, who had been three years under him in the Sixth at Rugby, believed in its surpassing excellence.

  ‘Shall we begin?’ he said. Catching the eye of one of the older boys, he went on: ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Young, sir.’

  ‘Well Young, you are supposed to have mastered the first few paragraphs of the seventh book of the Aeneid. Repeat them, if you please.’

  His choosing an older boy first of all showed that he was not in his best mood. When feeling genial, he liked to give the younger ones a chance to demonstrate their cleverness; when feeling less amiable, he chose the fools well on into adolescence, and abused them with a coolly scornful tongue for their mistakes.

  ‘Tu quoque litoribus nostris,’ said Young slowly and carefully as he got to his feet, ‘Aeneia nutrix, aeternam moriens famam, Caieta, dedisti; et nunc servat honos – sedem tuus, ossaque nomen Hesperia in magna, si qua est ea gloria – um – um – signat.

  ‘At pius exsequiis Aeneas – rite solutis, aggere compasito, composito …’

  Onslow sat still as an owl, listening to the hesitations. He did not even drum his fingers on the wooden arm of his chair; that was not his way. Presently he interrupted the boy, and said:

  ‘Very well, now construe.’

  Young, who had wound himself up like a musical box, uttered three more words before the sense of Onslow’s order penetrated his mind. He paused for a while, breathing deeply, then began again:

  ‘Tu quoque, you – thou also, litoribus nostris, to our coasts, Aeneia nutrix, Aeneas’s nurse, aeternam moriens famam, eternal fame by death have given …’ He struggled on for one more sentence, then was stopped. Onslow said softly:

  ‘Your crib must have been a very bad one if it could not do a little more for your construction of an English sentence. At your age you ought to be able not merely to make a literal translation, but to render the Latin in tolerable prose. I need scarcely add that your literal translation ought to be accurate. Shores, not coasts, in the first line! Or perhaps you disagree, and think that is rather a matter of style? I am sure you know best.’ Onslow’s quiet sarcasms were dreaded by his pupils.

  The boy muttered: ‘Sir, I didn’t use a crib.’ He was lying when he said this.

  ‘Naturally I take your word for that,’ said Onslow. Dr Arnold had made a point of never doubting a boy’s given word, and he did the same. ‘I am glad of it, but try in future to think a little harder. Think a few phrases ahead – and now sit down.’

  He passed on to another boy, making a mental note to repent later of having in effect accused a boy of cribbing without sound evidence. Yet cribbing was so rife in all schools that it was reasonable to assume any randomly chosen boy was guilty – like bullying, it was something far more difficult to stamp out than drunkenness, poaching, and such violent amusements as stoning the townspeople’s horses. Onslow had dealt with all those long ago.

  ‘… cum venti posuere omnisque repente resedit flatus et in lento lucantur marmore tonsae atque hic Aeneas ingentem …’ recited one of the younger boys, searching for approval with his eyes on Onslow’s unmoved face.

  Onslow’s was a sallow face, oval and calm and not quite handsome. His mouth was small and firm, with a slightly protruding lower lip, and his nose was long and faintly curved. He had grey, well-shaped but rather small eyes, a round chin, and a good head of thick brown hair. Though he was forty-two years old, his face was unlined, and his movements had the grace of confident youth. A flowing gown, and the black and white of his clerical dress, became him well; not because they suited his figure and his colouring, but because they gave him a starkly imposing look. Two things were wrong with his appearance: he was only five foot six, and he had narrow, sloping shoulders. The boys made much of both of his figure’s deficiencies and of his yellow complexion.

  ‘Thank you,’ Onslow said to the boy who was repeating his lesson.

  As he spoke, he noticed activity on the back bench: watching intently, he saw that the boys were using their shuffling feet to pass something along the floor. In a very gentle voice he said:

  ‘Hand that note, or whatever it may be, to me.’

  The boy who was treading on it at that moment jumped and blinked at him.

  ‘At once,’ said Onslow.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He hurried to pick it up.

  The note was handed over. Onslow unfolded it and read words scribbled in a big, clumsy, childish hand.

  ‘Darling Lucy,’ it said, ‘I have a good bed ready so meet me this afternoon after football if you can contrive it. Yours with love.’

  Onslow stared at the words for some time, then he laid the note on his lap, and a dark flush crept under his skin.

  ‘I have forbidden the use of female names,’ he said clearly. Then: ‘Who is the author of this? Who had disobeyed me?’

  After a moment’s pause the oldest boy in the class got to his feet. He looked a gangling twenty, though he was not quite seventeen.

  ‘You,’ said Onslow, as though he meant to say ‘the chiefest idiot in the school’. The boy dared to look at him, and saw in Onslow’s face not horrified rage and distress, but a mere hint of disgusted irritation. It was rare for Onslow to show any feelings at all. ‘For whom was this intended?’ said Onslow, whose flush had now drained away, leaving him pale.

  ‘For Cooper, sir.’

>   ‘Stand up Cooper.’

  A pretty thirteen year old rose from the other end of the back bench, looking terrified.

  ‘You will do five hundred lines. You,’ he said to another boy, whose nerves were making him grin shakily, ‘will stop smirking, unless you want the same.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Sit down.’ He paused. ‘You will not meet Cooper this afternoon, Brandon. You will meet me, here, for a very different purpose.’ Floggings were always carried out in the Lower Room. ‘I will not tolerate disobedience of any kind.’

  ‘Yes, sir – no, sir.’

  ‘I will forgive a great deal,’ said Onslow to the whole form, ‘but I will not forgive arrogant stupidity. Did you imagine that I would not notice what you were doing there, passing this along? The whole of the back row may do a hundred lines.’ He tore the note to Lucy Cooper into shreds, and scattered the shreds on the floor.

  Onslow did not realise that his voice, though smooth and level as always, had risen in volume and cut across the room. He failed to notice that it was not only the Shell boys who were staring at him, waiting for worse, but the boys of the Upper and Lower Fourth, whose books lay forgotten in their laps.

  2

  Onslow flogged Brandon at two o’clock, wiped the incident from his mind, and retired to his study for the rest of the afternoon. It was a Thursday, a half-holiday, and like the boys senior enough not to have to fag for their elders or be kicked by them at football, he was free to spend it as he wished.

  After reading some Sixth Form essays on the Athenian constitution, he went to his desk, and there spent a long time in composing a letter to The Times. The Times, a Radical newspaper, had recently criticised him for allowing the senior boys too much power: there had been a minor scandal a few weeks before, when a young fag was beaten so hard by a monitor that his back had required a doctor’s attention.