After reading The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's (1881), by Talbot Baines Reed, I decided to go back 24 years, to 1857, and read Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes. There were a few books in a school setting before that, but this is the one that would create a storytelling tradition and prove that it could be commercially successful, the one that set the conventions of the genre that would be developed by later writers.

Hughes would not write another school novel. He had said what he wanted to say on the subject. The book was written for his son Maurice, to prepare him for his life at Rugby School and to encourage him to grow up to be a good man. Tragically, Maurice died in a drowning accident shortly afterwards and did not have the opportunity to go to Rugby. The story his father wrote for him, however, entertained and inspired countless children.

So let's see how kind the passage of time has been to this story.

First, I have to say that it's rather different from The Fifth Form at St. Dominic's. The target audience is the same, boys, but while Reed's book is light entertainment, Hughes' intention is more unapologetically moralizing. He wants to tell a story that will entertain boys and catch their imaginations, but also guide them on their mental and spiritual development, and pay tribute to his beloved school and his old master, Dr. Thomas Arnold, whom he clearly worshiped. Arnold was the headmaster of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841, where he introduced a number of reforms that were very influential in British public schools.

So, while Reed simply told a story, and let readers draw their own conclusions about the characters and their actions, Hughes frequently addresses the reader in second person, to comment on the story and give advice. It's quite preachy by modern standards. On the other hand, if you are going to be preachy, you might as well do it in this pleasant, colloquial manner. When he addresses the reader, Hughes' style is informal and gentle, like an uncle addressing a beloved nephew. The book is well-written, and the style makes the preachiness more palatable than it might otherwise be. Moralizers are often priggish, but there's nothing like that here.

In the words of the American writer W. D. Howells:

It is not often that in later years one finds any book as good as one remembers it from one's youth; but it has been my interesting experience to find the story of Tom Brown's School Days even better than I once thought it, say, fifty years ago; not only better, but more charming, more kindly, manlier, truer, realler. So far as I have been able to note there is not a moment of snobbishness in it, or meanness of whatever sort. Of course it is of its period, the period which people call Middle Victorian (...)

The author openly preaches and praises himself for preaching; he does not hesitate to slip into the drama and deliver a sermon; he talks the story out with many self-interruptions and excursions; he knows nothing of the modern method of letting it walk along on its own legs, but is always putting his hands under its arms and helping it, or his arm across its shoulder and caressing it. In all this, which I think wrong, he is probably doing quite right for the boys who formed and will always form the greatest number of his readers; boys like to have things fully explained and commentated, whether they are grown up or not. In much else, in what I will not say are not the great matters, he is altogether right. By precept and by example he teaches boys to be good, that is, to be true, honest, clean-minded and clean-mouthed, kind and thoughtful. He forgives them the follies of their youth, but makes them see that they are follies.

Unlike earlier moralizers, Hughes tells a story that boys would want to read, a story about red-blooded boys who get into fights, get bullied and rebel against their bullies, who misbehave and shirk their schoolwork, but who are fundamentally good-hearted. Looking back at the kind of books that were available for boys to read in 1857 I can imagine how delighted they must have been with this story, where the heroes are boys like them.

In short, the reader will find already here the ingredients of a good public school novel. We have the plucky young protagonist, good at sports and not so good a scholar, loyal, generous, but willing to break the rules in his boyish escapades. We have the school, which becomes his second home and family. We have sports. We have the coming of age story that resonates with the reader, because being sent to a boarding school, away from your family, at such a young age is scary and forces you to grow up and integrate in a different kind of society, with its own rules and rituals, and it makes for an appealing tale.

Bizarrely, the book starts with a slow chapter dedicated to describing the little town where the Browns live, and eulogizing the British countryside. You could safely skip this first chapter if you don't feel up to it. However, the narration, preachy as it is, has a certain earnest charm. Perhaps it helped that I was listening to the excellent LibriVox audiobook that is distributed for free. It's read by a volunteer, but the quality is exceptional and I loved it. Listening to the audiobook, your attention can drift slightly away during these bucolic descriptions, and only get the tone of it, which is what truly matters.

Then we witness Tom's first years and what kind of boy he is. It takes a while to actually get to Rugby, but these first chapters gives us a picture of our main character, and as such are not unimportant.

Tom finally gets to Rugby School and in his very first day is shown the school, makes a friend (Harry East) and is made to take part in a game of Rugby football: the School-house where he belongs against the School (all the other, smaller houses combined). The description of game is bewildering and quite interesting for sport historians. All the boys play at the same time, more than two hundred, including little ones and strapping young men, in two very large teams that do not even have the same number of players each (the School-house boys are outnumbered). The whole thing is like a lightly-regulated riot.

Obviously, in both teams the big young men of the sixth form dominate, but little Tom has his modest moment of glory, when he helps prevent a goal that would have defeated the School-house and is praised by Brooke, the captain of his house (the "bull-dogs" mentioned here are not dogs, but a group of boys whose job is to harass the other side's attackers and take the ball from them):

And now the last minutes are come, and the School gather for their last rush, every boy of the hundred and twenty who has a run left in him. Reckless of the defence of their own goal, on they come across the level big-side ground, the ball well down amongst them, straight for our goal, like the column of the Old Guard up the slope at Waterloo. All former charges have been child's play to this. Warner and Hedge have met them, but still on they come. The bull-dogs rush in for the last time; they are hurled over or carried back, striving hand, foot, and eyelids. Old Brooke comes sweeping round the skirts of the play, and turning short round, picks out the very heart of the scrummage, and plunges in. It wavers for a moment; he has the ball. No, it has passed him, and his voice rings out clear over the advancing tide, “Look out in goal!” Crab Jones catches it for a moment; but before he can kick, the rush is upon him and passes over him; and he picks himself up behind them with his straw in his mouth, a little dirtier, but as cool as ever.

The ball rolls slowly in behind the School-house goal, not three yards in front of a dozen of the biggest School players-up.

There stands the School-house praepostor, safest of goal-keepers, and Tom Brown by his side, who has learned his trade by this time. Now is your time, Tom. The blood of all the Browns is up, and the two rush in together, and throw themselves on the ball, under the very feet of the advancing column—the praepostor on his hands and knees, arching his back, and Tom all along on his face. Over them topple the leaders of the rush, shooting over the back of the praepostor, but falling flat on Tom, and knocking all the wind out of his small carcass. “Our ball,” says the praepostor, rising with his prize; “but get up there; there's a little fellow under you.” They are hauled and roll off him, and Tom is discovered, a motionless body.

Old Brooke picks him up. “Stand back, give him air,” he says; and then feeling his limbs, adds, “No bones broken.—How do you feel, young un?”

“Hah-hah!” gasps Tom, as his wind comes back; “pretty well, thank you—all right.”

“Who is he?” says Brooke.

“Oh, it's Brown; he's a new boy; I know him,” says East, coming up.

“Well, he is a plucky youngster, and will make a player,” says Brooke.

And five o'clock strikes. “No side” is called, and the first day of the School-house match is over.

It's a wonder the younger boys survive this game.

Anyway, during the victory celebration in the School-house, Brooke, who is about to leave the school, gives a speech and warns them against bullying. He says that they were only able to win this game because, although inferior in numbers, they were better united than their opponents. He says that if bullying is allowed to come back, that unity will be lost and the School-house teams will no longer dominate.

In the following chapters, after Brooke and other sixth-form boys that had been the backbone of the house leave, we see that his prophecies come true. With no one able to curb them, the bullies led by a senior boy named Flashman make the life of the younger boys miserable. Flashman is a nasty piece of work, and when Tom Brown and Harry East lead a rebellion of fags that turns popular opinion in the house against Flashman, the bully decides to target them personally.

Since this is the original public school novel, Flashman remains in popular culture as the trope maker of the irredeemable bully. He features prominently in all the movies and series based on this novel (more prominently than in the novel itself, actually) and more than a century later an adult Flashman became the not-so-heroic protagonist of a very successful series of historical novels by George MacDonald Fraser.

After they finally are rid of Flashman, Tom and Harry start going down the wrong path themselves, repeatedly breaking the school rules and neglecting their studies in favor of having a good time.

In the second part of the novel, the story changes when Tom is asked to help a weak, sensitive new boy, who would surely have a bad time in such a school without some guidance and protection. Tom is reluctant, but the matron knowingly appeals to his better nature and he accepts. For once, Tom takes his responsibility seriously. However, the new boy ends up helping Tom even more than Tom has helped him, becoming his conscience and his guide in spiritual matters. Tom even falls in love with him (a Platonical, manly love, what did you think).

Yes, there are still a good number of classical schoolboy scrapes, like the epic fistfight between Tom and "Slogger" Williams, that ends without a clear winner and with both boys having gained respect for each other. In fact, the novel doesn't gloss over some of the worst features of school life at Rugby. Now, however, the novel's preachiness turns religious. But perhaps that adjective doesn't do it justice, because it's more than religion. Let's say, the boys experience some spiritual growth. Again, completely different than what we would get in a modern novel. It's done gracefully, in a sentimental fashion, which some readers will dislike but I appreciated (I became emotional in a couple of places... yes, I'm hopeless).

Finally, boys grow up and become men. Tom, now a student at Oxford, learns about Dr. Arnold's untimely death, and comes back for the funeral, to pay tribute and reflect on his schooldays.

And that's the novel. It's certainly not everyone's cup of tea. Many readers will find it overly preachy and boring at certain moments. It's a bit more difficult to enjoy than Talbot Baines Reed's uncomplicated novels, but if you do enjoy it, like I did, you'll enjoy it on a deeper level. ( )

This is a seminal novel of English public (i.e. private!) school life in the 1830s, arguably the first influential novel in a school setting, that has formed a template for many subsequent school-based novels, including much more recently, the Harry Potter series.

I found the novel amusing in many places, and pointed in its detailed description of the customs of school (Rugby) life, though it also dragged for me in places and it took me a longer to read than a novel of its length (slightly under 300 pages in my version) normally would. There is a real historical personage here - Dr Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of the real Rugby School at the time. The author, expressing his views and experiences through the title character, clearly has a lot of respect for Dr Arnold, and the changes he brought about to the "public" school system; as one (adult) character says "perhaps ours is the only corner of the British Empire which is thoroughly, wisely and strongly ruled just now".

The real central "character" of the novel, though, is probably the custom-bound way of life of the school itself, with its arcane traditions that the students value and revere more than the masters if anything. There are detailed descriptions of the original version of the sport of rugby as well as, of course, cricket, described by one character as "the birthright of British boys old and young, as habeas corpus and trial by jury are of British men", as it is an "unselfish game" that "merges the individual in the eleven; he doesn't play that he may win, but that his side may", as opposed to individual sports where the object is to win for oneself.

An interesting examination of the life and mores of a particular section of society at a particular time, but which has been massively influential on the literary genre well beyond that place and time. ( )

3.5*

This book struck me as being the boys' version of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women - the same mixture of stories of childhood events and moralizing. Not being a boy nor from England, this one didn't make the same connection with me that Alcott's classic did.

I was spurred to read this by the references to it in Flashman, which I read (and hugely enjoyed) last year. It was interesting to see how Hughes portrayed Flashman, who was much more prominent in this book than I had expected. Fraser did a great job taking such a cowardly bully & sneak and, without making him a different person, making him the 'hero'. That interest & the lovely illustrations by Rhead made me give this an extra ½ star. ( )

Written in 1857, the language can be quite antiquated and hence not that easy to read. It can be quite pious and preachy for some people but I like the courage and honesty shown by Tom and George Arthur. ( )

'Cover design adapted by Gerry Downes from original illustration by Arthur Hughes' showing cricket bat at centre of illustration and perhaps meaning of life