AUTOBIOGRAPHY-Chesterton

the Chinese. I recall these things, so contrary to the previous course of my
school life, because I am not sorry to be an exception to the modern tendency
to reproach the old Victorian schoolmaster with stupidity and neglect and to
represent the rising generation as a shining band of Shelleys inspired by light
and liberty to rise. The truth is that in this case it was I who exhibited the
stupidity; though I really think it was largely an affected stupidity. And
certainly it was I who rejoiced in the neglect, and who asked for nothing better
than to be neglected. It was, if anything, the authorities who dragged me, in
my own despite, out of the comfortable and protected atmosphere of obscurity
and failure. Personally, I was perfectly happy at the bottom of the class.
For the rest, I think the chief impression I produced, on most of the masters
and many of the boys, was a pretty well-founded conviction that I was asleep.
Perhaps what nobody knew, not even myself, was that I was asleep and
dreaming. The dreams were not much more sensible or valuable than they
commonly are in persons in such profound slumber; but they already had this
obscure effect on my existence; that my mind was already occupied, though I
myself was idle. Before forming the few special friendships of which I speak,
I was somewhat solitary; not sharply unpopular or in any sense persecuted, but
solitary. But though I was solitary, I was not sorry; and I think I can claim that
I was not sulky. One effect of this was that my first acquaintances, as distinct
from my ultimate friends, were odd and scrappy sort of people like myself.
These individuals were accidents; one or two of them I fear were disasters. I
remember one youth who made one appearance in my daily life, that puzzled
me like a detective story. I cannot imagine how I came to cultivate his society;
still less how he came to cultivate mine. For he was a brilliant mathematician,
and must presumably have worked hard at mathematics; whereas I worked
less at mathematics, if possible, than at anything else. Moreover, I was very
untidy and he was very tidy, with a large clean collar and an Eton jacket, also a
large head very neatly brushed but something odd and perhaps too mature
about his froglike face. One day he asked me whether I could lend him a Hall
& Knight’s Algebra. So far as enthusiasm for that study was concerned I could
answer, “Thy need is greater than mine,” with all the gesture of Sir Philip
Sidney; but I had to observe some minimum of attention to the mathematical
class; so in lending him the book, I told him I should want it back some time
next week. As the time approached, I was much mystified by the fact that I
found it quite difficult to get it back. He gave evasive replies; he interposed
postponements and hazy promises; till at last I quarrelled with him, using the
words of action which are really commoner among schoolboys as words than
as actions; but anyhow indicating that I should make an earnest effort to punch
his head. To this threat, he ultimately capitulated; and eventually led me to his
locker, which he reluctantly opened. And his locker was stuffed from top to
bottom with about twenty-five identical copies of Hall & Knight’s Algebra,