War Letters of a Public-School BoyJones, Henry Paul Mainwaring
History
War Letters of a Public-School Boy
Jones, Henry Paul Mainwaring
World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British
Dulwich College is both a boarding school and a day school, the
boarders numbering about 120 and the day-boys about 550. When Paul
Jones entered the college as a day-boy in 1908 the Headmaster was Mr.
A. H. Gilkes, who retired after the summer term of 1914. Our son,
therefore, had the good fortune to come under the influence for six
years of one of the greatest public-school masters of our generation.
A former colleague of mine, Mr. Henry W. Nevinson, used to speak to me
in glowing terms of Mr. Gilkes, who was a master at Shrewsbury School
when he was a boy there, and I note that the Rev. Dr. Horton in his
"Autobiography" alludes to him as "the master at Shrewsbury to whom I
owed most." Undoubtedly Mr. Gilkes's best work was done as Headmaster
of Dulwich. The College has never known a greater head. Under him the
whole place was revivified. During his reign not only did a fine moral
tone characterise the school, but there was equal enthusiasm for work
and games. Thanks to a commanding personality, in which strength,
dignity and graciousness were subtly mingled, the influence of Mr.
Gilkes pervaded the whole school from the highest to the lowest forms.
Paul quickly recognised the nobility of the "Old Man," as he was
universally known to the boys. His affection for him amounted to
veneration, and however brief the leave he had from the Army he always
found time to pay his old headmaster a visit. On his part Mr. Gilkes
had a great regard for our son, whom with sure perception he described
as "fearless, strong and capable, with a heart as soft and kind as a
heart can be."
A new boy's early days in a public school are often trying. He is in a
strange world with its own laws and customs; and at the outset he has
to endure the scrutiny of curious and often hostile eyes. Our son's
marked idiosyncrasies, sturdy independence, fastidious refinement and
passion for work, singled him out from his fellows as an original. As
boys resent any deviation from the normal, he had a rough time until
he found his feet, and the experience was repeated as he moved up to
new forms. Not a word about all this escaped his lips at home; I have
ascertained it from others. Stories reached me of personal combats
from which he usually emerged the victor, and of one prolonged fight
with an older boy that had at last to be drawn. In the end Paul won
through; his pluck and strength compelled a respect that would have
been refused to his intellectual gifts. His tormentors realised that
he was not a mere "swot," that he had fists and knew how to use them.
Animosity was also disarmed by his chivalric spirit. He began his
career at Dulwich in the Classical Lower IV. In June, 1909, he won a
Junior Scholarship, which freed him from school fees for three years,
and in 1912 a Senior Scholarship of the same nature. When he was in
the Classical Lower Fifth (1909), his form master, Mr. H. V. Doulton
reported:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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