Goodbye to all That by Robert Graves — Read

LET me begin my account of Charterhouse School by recalling the day that I left, a week before the outbreak of war. I discussed my feelings with Nevill Barbour, then Head of the School. First, we agreed that there were perhaps even more typical public schools than Charterhouse in existence, but that we preferred not to believe it. Next, that no possible remedy could be found, because tradition was so strong that to break it one would have to dismiss the whole school and staff, and start all over again. However, even this would not be enough, the school buildings being so impregnated with what passed as the public school spirit, but what we felt as fundamental evil, that they would have to be demolished and the school rebuilt elsewhere under a different name. Finally, that our only regret at leaving the place was that for the last year we had been in a position, as members of the Sixth Form, to do more or less what we pleased.

Now we were both going on to St John's College, Oxford, which promised to be merely a more boisterous repetition of Charterhouse. We should be freshmen there, but would naturally refuse to be hearty and public schoolish, and therefore be faced with the stupidity of having our rooms raided, and being forced to lose our temper and hurt somebody and get hurt ourselves. There would be no peace probably until we reached our third year, when we should be back again in the same sort of position as now, and in the same sort of position as in our last year at our preparatory school. 'In 1917,' said Nevill, 'the official seal will be put on all this dreariness. We'll get our degrees, and then have to start as new boys again in some dreadful profession.'