The Old School Tie And All That

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 142, 18 June 1938, Page 18 (Supplement)

The Old School Tie And All That

By N.M.K.

WHENEVER I see an old school tie 1 count ten, mutter, "Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner," and make smartly for the nearest pub. And after the fifth whisky I don't feel so bad. All of which may seem a little mad. But I fuller from old school tie phobia, in a particularly virulent form, and being, I believe, as good-natured as the next man, I prefer to have a fiood hate in comparative privacy with one foot 011 the little brass rail, and with Harry (Mount Eden and Mount Crawford classes of 192fi and 1928) ministering to my desperate need. I hate aspidistras, the Indian love lyrics, family albums and the old school tie. But most of all the old school tie. The illustrious Mr. Freud has a simple explanation for this phobia, for I dream about old school ties, young gentlemen

colonial and the American, unfortunately, cannot understand the tendency of the English "lower classes" to pull the forelock to "Oxford men" and "Cambridge uien." Of course the whole thing is a racket. Tradition has its uses and misuses. '1 he public school man has got most of the people bluffed —with ail affected accent, an affected manner, and an affected mind. But he can't bluff the colonial or the American; not usually, anyway. 1 hat is why he hates colonials and Americans. Ask any colonial or American who has lived in Simla or Singapore or any "outpost of the Kmpah." However, if a young colonial or American is sufficiently unfortunate to go to an English public school, and sufficiently thick-headed to absorb—and believe in— the public school tradition, he may be accepted by the typical public school

man as "one of us." That is tin* accolade! And it mean* the unfortunate it dead from the neck up; that he has performed intellectual and other forms of hara-kiri on the altar of snobbishness, priggishness and ridiculous class distinction.

A young friend of mine—he is my friend* no longer, the bumptious h» S -1 rccently returned from several year* of miseducation at a public school. !!<■ promising material when he went nw«y. He came back looking like Ifalph Lynn and talking like Owen Nares (screen performances only). Enough said—but not quite. The young man invited me tn his flat one night. He had ont <>r two friends there. They were ";rood family." don't you know. Boon, it became plain I was an "outsider." He still nods t<> me in the street. That's what a public M'hool did \ f hi«i.