Kipling, Wilson & Waugh

In an influential essay on Kipling, Edmund Wilson mentions- 

Henry James, who wrote a preface to a collection of Kipling’s early stories, said afterwards that he had thought at the time that it might perhaps be true that Kipling ‘contained the seeds of an English Balzac.’

The English Balzac was Dickens. Subsequent 'State of the Nation' novels were rather grim. Still, if that is the sort of thing you liked, Sir Hugh Walpole supplied it by the ream. 

What became of this English Balzac?

He couldn't compete with H.G Wells and was wise not to try  

Why did the author of the brilliant short stories never develop into an important novelist?

Money. Stories paid better. Anyway, there was 'Kim' which will be read as long as R.L Stevenson is read. 

Let us return to ‘Baa, Baa, Black Sheep’ and the experience with which it deals.

Abandonment. Exile. There are gods in Kipling. There is no God. There are various freemasonries. There is no Religion.  

One may object that 'Evangelical Christianity' characterises the 'House of Desolation' in Portsmouth where Kipling spent 11 months of the year as a child. But Kipling mentions a story told him by William Morris which he later connects to the 'Njal saga' which shows why a Civic Religion of impersonal law must displace Thymotic 'trial by combat' or a code of vendetta- more particularly because it is women who are at the root of the mischief. Men aren't greatly concerned with honour till a woman commiserates with them for its loss and suddenly they can't get it up anymore. Equally, kids get along well enough with God, till 'the Woman' muscles in on the business.

Kipling says that his Burne Jones aunt was never able to understand why he had never told anyone in the family about how badly he and his sister were being treated, and he tries to explain this on the principle that ‘children tell little more than animals, for what comes to them they accept as eternally established,’ and says that ‘ badly treated children have a clear notion of what they are likely to get if they betray the secrets of a prison-house before they are clear of it.’

Mistreated animals are handicapped in serving their purpose. Unhappiness is frustrated funktionslust.  

But is this necessarily true?

No. Kipling was a Fascist. That's also why he didn't become Balzac, Lenin or Chairman Mao. At any rate, that's Wilson's reading of Kipling. He doesn't get that stories are interesting because they feature strategic behaviour and 'theory of mind'. Determinism- whether Evangelical or Marxist- is stupid and boring. 

Even young children do sometimes run away. And, in any case, Kipling’s reaction to this experience seems an abnormally docile one. After all, Dickens made David Copperfield bite Mr. Murdstone’s hand and escape;

David Copperfield was a fictional character. Sadly, he was a Fascist. That is why he didn't become Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg or La Passionaria.  

and he continued to dislike and attack Mr. Murdstone. But though the anguish of these years had given Kipling a certain sympathy with the neglected and persecuted, and caused him to write this one moving short story, it left him — whether as the result of the experience it self or because he was already so conditioned

many Fascists are conditioned to become so in the womb 

— with a fundamental submissiveness to authority.

Why did Kipling turn down a Knighthood? The fact is, a submissive writer- one with a Nobel Prize under his belt- who adheres to the Party line gets a seat in the House of Lords and, if he runs short of money, a comfy sinecure as a Colonial Governor. 

Let us examine the two books in which Kipling deals, respectively, with his school days and  ith his youth in India — Stalky & Co. and Kim . These works -— published, the first in 1899, the second in 1901 — are the products of the author’s thirties,

they are the product of his peak earning years. Did they make money? Yes. Did kids buy them and read them. Yes, again. What more can you ask for?  

and Kim , at any rate, represents Kipling’s most serious attempt to allow himself to grow to the stature of a first-rate creative artist.

Writing for boys. Nothing wrong in that at all.  

Each of these books begins with an antagonism which in the work of a greater writer

like Wilson? No! Karl Marx! 

would have developed into a fundamental conflict; but in neither Stalky

why did three schoolboys not assassinate the Masters and turn their School into a Soviet Republic? The answer is- because Kipling was a fucking Fascist.  

nor Kim is the conflict ever allowed to amount to a real crisis.

Kim should have invaded Russia, killed the Tzar and collectivized the land.  

Nor can it even be said to be resolved: it simply ceases to figure as a conflict. In Stalky, we are at first made to sympathize with the baiting of the masters by the schoolboys

No. We are meant to understand that these are boys- not seasoned Revolutionaries who hold senior positions in the Politburo. 

as a rebellion against a system which is an offense against human dignity;

it was no such thing. It was a place you went to because you hoped to pass the exams to become an Army officer. That way you'd get a sword and a gun and a smart uniform. What more could any boy want?  

but then we are immediately shown that all the ragging and flogging are justified by their usefulness as a training for the military caste which is to govern the British Empire.

The military caste didn't govern. It fought wars. That's why boys wanted to get into the Army, not the Indian Civil.  

The boys are finally made to recognize that their Headmaster not only knows how to dish it out but is also able to take it, and the book culminates in the ridiculous scene — as we gather from Mr. Beresford, wholly a product of Kipling’s imagination — in which the Head, in his inflexible justice, undertakes personally to cane the whole school while the boys stand by cheering him wildly.

 Kipling went to a School specializing in preparing kids for the Army exam. If they went to an established 'Public School', they would have had to spend some time at a crammer. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. The crammers were actually better than the Universities in getting young men to think for themselves. Still, I suppose, the truth is the cream of English boyhood went into the Senior Service at the age of ten. 

There is a real subject in Stalky & Co.,

there are real boys in it. That's why it sold well.  But F. Antsey's Vice Versa was better. It's the basis of 'Freaky Friday'. 

but Kipling has not had the intelligence to deal with it.

Because he was Fascist. Most children are. That's why they give hugs and kisses to Mummy instead of killing her and collectivizing her corpse. 

He cannot see around his characters and criticize them, he is not even able properly to dramatize; he simply allows the emotions of the weaker side, the side that is getting the worst of it, to go over to the side of the stronger.

Kids start off weak and then get stronger. That's totes Fascist. What they should do is go over to the side of the babies and shit themselves and bawl their lungs out till a Bolshevik Revolution occurs.  

You can see the process all too plainly in the episode in which Stalky and his companions turn the tables on the cads from the crammer’s school.

They are boys who had failed at a crammer and been sent to this school for a year or two in the hope they might pass the Army exam.  

These cads have been maltreating a fag, and a clergyman who is represented by Kipling as one of the more sensible and decent of the masters suggests to Stalky & Co. that they teach the bullies a lesson.

The 'cads' have a grievance because, despite their age, they haven't been made prefects and so they are taking it out on their fag. The clergymen sees that Stalky & Co have the College's best interests at heart and gets them, rather than the prefects, to put the 'cads' in their place. This is done through a ruse. The cads agree to be tied-up for a 'cock-fight'. Then the tables are turned on them. The question was would actual school boys buy into this scenario? They did because they were 12 years old. You don't read Stalky after that unless you are retarded and also read Billy Bunter. 

Kipling's skill is to get young boys to identify and understand the motivations of those who have power over them. The next step is to identify what is in the collective interest. In 'Stalky', the boys show they understand that their School is new and poor. It has to get some of the 'crammer rejects' into Sandhurst if it is to rise in reputation. The boys know it is in their interest that their school gains in this manner. The same consideration will apply to the regiment, or civil service cadre they get into. 

No doubt, if this was a book for girls, no violence would be involved. But boys are different from girls.  

Interestingly, a little after Wilson's essay was published, Eng. Lit. produced its own critique of 'Stalky'. Oddly, it was in the shape of Waugh's 'Charles Ryder's School Days'. True, the School in question is Ecclesiastical, rather than military, in temperament, but the same question is addressed. How can Paideia inculcate autopoietic 'Civil Religion' or a cooperative ethos without suppressing thymotic drives or relying wholly on 'bourgeois strategies' based on uncorrelated asymmetries in public signals? In other words, how do you turn boys into Christian gentlemen in a manner not fatal to that bellicose fraternity that is boyhood itself? 

Charles Ryder's Schooldays


There was a scent of dust in the air; a thin vestige surviving in the twilight from the golden clouds with which before chapel the House Room fags had filled the evening sunshine. Light was failing. Beyond the trefoils and branched mullions of the windows the towering autumnal leaf was now flat and colourless. All the eastward slope of Spierpoint Down, where the College buildings stood, lay lost in shadow; above and behind, on the high lines of Chanctonbury and Spierpoint Ring, the first day of term was gently dying.

Fuck knows what the 'towering autumnal leaf' signifies. I suppose it is a reference to some architectural aspect of Lancing College's impressive Gothic Revival Chapel.  

In the House Room thirty heads were bent over their books. Few form-masters had set any preparation that day. The Classical Upper Fifth, Charles Ryder’s new form, were “revising last term’s work” and Charles was writing his diary under cover of Hassall’s History.

i.e. a textbook for lower forms. Ryder hides his light under a bushel.  

He looked up from the page to the darkling texts which ran in Gothic script around the frieze. “Qui diligit Deum diligit et fratrem suum.”

He who loves God loves his brother.  The problem is that Civic arrangements are independent of love or God. If those arrangements are shitty, Godliness is an escape from insupportable Fraternity. 

“Get on with your work, Ryder,” said Apthorpe.

In 'Sword of Honour', Apthorpe is the sort of chap who went to a third rate school and ended up in some branch of the Colonial service. Kipling himself, but for his genius, would have been stuck in India never drawing more than Rs. 400 per mensem. On the other hand, he probably would have a splendid 'thunder-box' which even a Brigadier might covet. 

Apthorpe has greased into being a house-captain this term, Charles wrote. This is his first Evening School. He is being thoroughly officious and on his dignity.
“Can we have the light on, please?”
“All right. Wykham-Blake, put it on.” A small boy rose from the under-school table. “Wykham-Blake, I said. There’s no need for everyone to move.”
A rattle of the chain, a hiss of gas, a brilliant white light over half the room. The other light hung over the new boys’ table.
“Put the light on, one of you, whatever your names are.”
Six startled little boys looked at Apthorpe and at one another, all began to rise together, all sat down, all looked at Apthorpe in consternation.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”
Apthorpe leaned over their heads and pulled the chain; there was a hiss of gas but no light. “The bye-pass is out. Light it, you.” He threw a box of matches to one of the new boys who dropped it, picked it up, climbed on the table and looked miserably at the white glass shade, the three hissing mantles and at Apthorpe. He had never seen a lamp of this kind before; at home and at his private school there was electricity. He lit a match and poked at the lamp, at first without effect; then there was a loud explosion; he stepped back, stumbled and nearly lost his footing among the books and ink-pots, blushed hotly and regained the bench. The matches remained in his hand and he stared at them, lost in an agony of indecision. How should he dispose of them? No head was raised but everyone in the House Room exulted in the drama. From the other side of the room Apthorpe held out his hand invitingly.
“When you have quite finished with my matches perhaps you’ll be so kind as to give them back.”
In despair the new boy threw them towards the house-captain; in despair he threw slightly wide. Apthorpe made no attempt to catch them, but watched them curiously as they fell to the floor. “How very extraordinary,” he said. The new boy looked at the matchbox; Apthorpe looked at the new boy. “Would it be troubling you too much if I asked you to give me my matches?” he said.
The new boy rose to his feet, walked the few steps, picked up the matchbox and gave it to the house-captain, with the ghastly semblance of a smile.
“Extraordinary crew of new men we have this term,” said Apthorpe. “They seem to be entirely half-witted. Has anyone been turned on to look after this man?”
“Please, I have,” said Wykham-Blake.
“A grave responsibility for one so young. Try and convey to his limited intelligence that it may prove a painful practice here to throw matchboxes about in Evening School, and laugh at house officials. By the way, is that a workbook you’re reading?”
“Oh, yes, Apthorpe.” Wykham-Blake raised a face of cherubic innocence and presented the back of the Golden Treasury.
“Who’s it for?”
“Mr. Graves. We’re to learn any poem we like.”
“And what have you chosen?”
“Milton-on-his-blindness.”
“How, may one ask, did that take your fancy?”
“I learned it once before,” said Wykham-Blake and Apthorpe laughed indulgently.
“Young blighter,” he said.

The kids don't dislike Apthorpe. They get that he is trying to imitate the sort of Prep School Master they are already familiar with. What was cool was letting a kid light the gas. Charles isn't a kid. It chafes him that he is subject to a discipline inappropriate to his age. But, this will kindle in him the desire to rise and be granted authority.  

Charles wrote: Now he is snooping round seeing what books men are reading.

He is doing what he is supposed to. The boys are supposed to be studying. Apthorpe is using his delegated authority in a sensible enough manner.  

It would be typical if he got someone beaten his first Evening School. The day before yesterday this time I was in my dinner-jacket just setting out for dinner at the d’Italie with Aunt Philippa before going to The Choice at Wyndhams. Quantum mutatus ab illo Hectore.

Oh dear. The boy is a prig. Mention of a generous Aunty is perfectly all right. But why drag Virgil into it? 

We live in water-tight compartments. Now I am absorbed in the trivial round of House politics.

Administration. That's what politics should be about. We understand that Ryder is a prig. Some boys are at that age. Will he grow out of it? Probably. Minor English Public Schools had to provide value for money. What was surprising was that the egalitarian American High School, from about 1911 onward, provided a better outcomes at a lower price. Economies of scope & scale arise even in education. Wilson did not understand how his own country was changing because he had left his Prep School in 1912 when there was still quite a big gap between ordinary High Schools and those attended by the elite. 

Graves has played hell with the house. Apthorpe a house-captain and O’Malley on the Settle.

Why did he do so? Perhaps, it was to get supercilious idlers like Ryder to up their game.  

The only consolation was seeing the woe on Wheatley’s fat face when the locker list went up. He thought he was a cert for the Settle this term.

It is good for young people to receive shocks of this kind. Wheatley is nouveau riche. He needs to see this is vulgar. 

Bad luck on Tamplin though. I never expected to get on but I ought by all rights to have been above O’Malley.

Will Ryder take it on the chin? No. He is 'aesthetic'. Waugh identifies with Ryder and, such is the magic of his prose, perhaps he gets us to sympathise with him. But, let's face it, Ryder begins and remains an insufferable prig. Waugh himself was taken to be a snob. Perhaps, he tried hard to make himself a snob. But he knew that would make it impossible for him to love God. That's why his Catholicism, unlike Wilson's Communism, is genuine. 

What a tick Graves is. It all comes of this rotten system of switching round house-tutors.

It is salutary. The School is preparing boys for the world. It wasn't in the business of coddling rich kids for a price.  

We ought to have the best of Heads instead of which they try out ticks like Graves on us before giving them a house.
If only we still had Frank.

The War was over. The Empire had come through a great trial by fire. Now was the time to mourn many  a Dick, or Frank, or Harry.  

Charles’s handwriting had lately begun to develop certain ornamental features—Greek E’s and flourished crossings.

Would he be content to be 'High Church' or go over to Rome?  

He wrote with conscious style.

Rome. Waugh liked Ruskin but the fellow went mad and died a virgin. Waugh probably didn't like Cardinal Newman but ultimately decided he was the 'supreme stylist'.  

Whenever Apthorpe came past he would turn a page in the history book, hesitate and then write as though making a note from the text. The hands of the clock crept on to half past seven when the porter’s handbell began to sound in the cloisters on the far side of Lower Quad. This was the signal of release. Throughout the House Room heads were raised, pages blotted, books closed, fountain pens screwed up. “Get on with your work,” said Apthorpe; “I haven’t said anything about moving.”

Apthorpe has established that his authority is above that of the bell. Good for him.  

The porter and his bell passed up the cloisters, grew faint under the arch by the library steps, were barely audible in the Upper Quad, grew louder on the steps of Old’s House and very loud in the cloister outside Head’s. At last Apthorpe tossed the Bystander on the table and said “All right.”

 

The House Room rose noisily. Charles underlined the date at the head of his page—Wednesday Sept. 24th, 1919—blotted it and put the notebook in his locker. Then with his hands in his pockets he followed the crowd into the dusk.
To keep his hands in his pockets thus—with his coat back and the middle button alone fastened—was now his privilege, for he was in his third year. He could also wear coloured socks and was indeed at the moment wearing a pair of heliotrope silk with white clocks, purchased the day before in Jermyn Street. There were several things, formerly forbidden, which were now his right. He could link his arm in a friend’s and he did so now, strolling across to Hall arm-in-arm with Tamplin.

Those who have not been promoted must perforce be comrades. That might be a good thing for them. Chums of the right sort can be a good influence in school without being Prefects.  Sadly, this wasn't the case. The English Public School system was failing. Daylight had been let in on magic. The boys were aware of how much their parents were paying. Paideia can go hang. Noblesse oblige is all very well but it is difficult to be noble when taxes are high and the cost of living keeps rising.

They paused at the top of the steps and stared out in the gloaming. To their left the great bulk of the chapel loomed immensely; below them the land fell away in terraces to the playing fields with their dark fringe of elm; headlights moved continuously up and down the coast road; the estuary was just traceable, a lighter streak across the grey lowland, before it merged into the calm and invisible sea.
“Same old view,” said Tamplin.
“Give me the lights of London,” said Charles.

The view was superb. But London- or parts of it- were where Mammon had built itself a Temple. 

“I say, it’s rotten luck for you about the Settle.”
“Oh, I never had a chance. It’s rotten luck on you.”
“Oh, I never had a chance. But O’Malley.”
“It all comes of having that tick Graves instead of Frank.”
“The buxom Wheatley looked jolly bored. Anyway, I don’t envy O’Malley’s job as head of the dormitory.”
“That’s how he got on the Settle. Tell you later.”
From the moment they reached the Hall steps they had to unlink their arms, take their hands out of their pockets and stop talking. When Grace had been said Tamplin took up the story.
“Graves had him in at the end of last term and said he was making him head of the dormitory. The head of Upper Dormitory never has been on the Settle before last term when they moved Easton up from Lower Anteroom after we ragged Fletcher. O’Malley told Graves he couldn’t take it unless he had an official position.”
“How d’you know?”
“O’Malley told me. He thought he’d been rather fly.”

O'Malley had a point. In proprio persona, he hadn't what it took to keep discipline in the Upper Dormitory. His authority had to be reinforced by an unmistakable, outward & visible, sign of election.  

“Typical of Graves to fall for a tick like that.”
“It’s all very well,” said Wheatley, plaintively, from across the table; “I don’t think they’ve any right to put Graves in like this. I only came to Spierpoint because my father knew Frank’s brother in the Guards. I was jolly bored, I can tell you, when they moved Frank. I think he wrote to the Head about it. We pay more in Head’s and get the worst of everything.”

Waugh puts these words into the mouth of the fat boy. But what does the complaint amount to? The absence of 'Simony'. In the Head's house, the first shall be last. 

“Tea, please.”
“Same old College tea.”
“Same old College eggs.”
“It always takes a week before one gets used to College food.”
“I never get used to it.”
“Did you go to many London restaurants in the holidays?”
“I was only in London a week. My brother took me to lunch at the Berkeley. Wish I was there now. I had two glasses of port.”
“The Berkeley’s all right in the evening,” said Charles, “if you want to dance.”
“It’s jolly well all right for luncheon. You should see their hors d’oeuvres. I reckon there were twenty or thirty things to choose from. After that we had grouse and meringues with ices in them.”
“I went to dinner at the d’Italie.”
“Oh, where’s that?”
“It’s a little place in Soho not many people know about. My aunt speaks Italian like a native so she knows all those places. Of course, there’s no marble or music. It just exists for the cooking. Literary people and artists go there. My aunt knows lots of them.”
“My brother says all the men from Sandhurst go to the Berkeley. Of course, they fairly rook you.”
“I always think the Berkeley’s rather rowdy,” said Wheatley. “We stayed at Claridges after we came back from Scotland because our flat was still being done up.”
“My brother says Claridges is a deadly hole.”
“Of course, it isn’t everyone’s taste. It’s rather exclusive.”
“Then how did our buxom Wheatley come to be staying there, I wonder?”
“There’s no need to be cheap, Tamplin.”
“I always say,” suddenly said a boy named Jorkins, “that you get the best meal in London at the Holborn Grill.”
Charles, Tamplin and Wheatley turned with cold curiosity on the interrupter, united at last in their disdain. “Do you, Jorkins? How very original of you.”
“Do you always say that, Jorkins? Don’t you sometimes get tired of always saying the same thing?”
“There’s a four-and-sixpenny table d’hôte.”
“Please, Jorkins, spare us the hideous details of your gormandizing.”
“Oh, all right. I thought you were interested, that’s all.”

Jorkins is repeating something his father says. I assume Pater wasn't as rich as fuck- or, if he was, this was not known to the other boys. Otherwise, they'd have held their peace.  

“Do you think,” said Tamplin, confining himself ostentatiously to Charles and Wheatley, “that Apthorpe is keen on Wykham-Blake?”

Sadly, not all double-barrelled names signify the union of feudal houses. But, Apthorpe may have consulted Debrett's. He's a sly sort. 

“No, is he?”
“Well, he couldn’t keep away from him in Evening School.”
“I suppose the boy had to find consolation now his case Sugdon’s left. He hasn’t a friend among the under-schools.”

Very Ancient Greek.  For such as Apthorpe had Socrates composed the 'Lysis'. 

“What d’you make of the man Peacock?” (Charles, Tamplin and Wheatley were all in the Classical Upper Fifth under Mr. Peacock.)
“He’s started decently. No work tonight.”
“Raggable?”
“I doubt it. But slack.”
“I’d sooner a master were slack than raggable. I got quite exhausted last term ragging the Tea-cake.”
“It was witty, though.”
“I hope he’s not so slack that we shan’t get our Certificates next summer.”
“One can always sweat the last term. At the University no one ever does any work until just before the exams. Then they sit up all night with black coffee and strychnine.”
“It would be jolly witty if no one passed his Certificate.”
“I wonder what they’d do.”
“Give Peacock the push, I should think.”

This is how losers talk. They know very well that more slack the teacher, the more they themselves will have to swot to get through their exams. It is a fantasy that a master will be sacked at a time when those who might have replaced him had been slaughtered in the trenches.  

Presently Grace was said and the school streamed out into the cloisters. It was now dark. The cloisters were lit at intervals by gaslamps. As one walked, one’s shadow lengthened and grew fainter before one until, approaching the next source of light, it disappeared, fell behind, followed one’s heels, shortened, deepened, disappeared and started again at one’s toes. The quarter of an hour between Hall and Second Evening was mainly spent in walking the cloisters in pairs or in threes; to walk four abreast was the privilege of school prefects. On the steps of Hall, Charles was approached by O’Malley. He was an ungainly boy, an upstart who had come to Spierpoint late, in a bye-term. He was in Army Class B and his sole distinction was staying-power in cross-country running.

It makes sense to put a boy in the Army Class in charge of the dormitory.  

“Coming to the Graves?”
“No.”
“D’you mind if I hitch on to you for a minute?”
“Not particularly.”
They joined the conventional, perambulating couples, their shadows, lengthened before them, apart. Charles did not take O’Malley’s arm. O’Malley might not take Charles’s. The Settle was purely a House Dignity.

which is why O'Malley could be accorded it without affecting the rest of the school.  

In the cloisters Charles was senior by right of his two years at Spierpoint.
“I’m awfully sorry about the Settle,” said O’Malley.
“I should have thought you’d be pleased.”
“I’m not, honestly. It’s the last thing I wanted. Graves sent me a postcard a week ago. It spoiled the end of the holidays. I’ll tell you what happened. Graves had me in on the last day last term. You know the way he has. He said, ‘I’ve some unpleasant news for you, O’Malley. I’m putting you head of the Upper Dormitory.’ I said, ‘It ought to be someone on the Settle. No one else could keep order.’ I thought he’d keep Easton up there. He said, ‘These things are a matter of personality, not of official position.’ I said, ‘It’s been proved you have an official. You know how bolshie we were with Fletcher.’ He said, ‘Fletcher wasn’t the man for the job. He wasn’t my appointment.’”
“Typical of his lip. Fletcher was Frank’s appointment.”
“I wish we had Frank still.”
“So does everyone. Anyway, why are you telling me all this?”
“I didn’t want you to think I’d been greasing. I heard Tamplin say I had.”
“Well, you are on the Settle and you are head of the dormitory, so what’s the trouble?”
“Will you back me up, Ryder?”
“Have you ever known me back anyone up, as you call it?”
“No,” said O’Malley miserably, “that’s just it.”
“Well, why d’you suppose I should start with you?”
“I just thought you might.”
“Well, think again.”

The School has done its job well. O'Malley has learned a valuable lesson. If you get a promotion, don't try to explain that you didn't want it. Discharge the duty attached to it without fear and favour.  

They had walked three sides of the square and were now at the door of Head’s House. Mr. Graves was standing outside his own room talking to Mr. Peacock.
“Charles,” he said, “come here a minute. Have you met this young man yet, Peacock? He’s one of yours.”
“Yes, I think so,” said Mr. Peacock doubtfully.
“He’s one of my problem children. Come in here, Charles. I want to have a chat to you.”
Mr. Graves took him by the elbow and led him into his room.
There were no fires yet and the two armchairs stood before an empty grate; everything was unnaturally bare and neat after the holiday cleaning.
“Sit you down.”
Mr. Graves filled his pipe and gave Charles a long, soft and quizzical stare. He was a man still under thirty, dressed in Lovat tweed with an Old Rugbeian tie. He had been at Spierpoint during Charles’s first term and they had met once on the miniature range; in that bleak, untouchable epoch Charles had been warmed by his affability. Then Mr. Graves was called up for the army and now had returned, the term before, as House Tutor of Head’s.

Graves had been spared the grave. What he had learnt in the Army was now being used to promote the interests of the School- i.e. the interests of its pupils. Waugh is being more than fair to Lancing. His brother hadn't been so kind to Sherborne.  

Charles had grown confident in the meantime and felt no need of affable masters; only for Frank whom Mr. Graves had supplanted. The ghost of Frank filled the room.

More could be made of this. Graves is young. He will get his House and then go on to become Head. Perhaps, Frank had been tried and found wanting. We imagine him to be an over-age or medically dis-qualified which is why he had a sort of brevet rank during the War. Now, peace had come, Frank- like the 'temporary gentlemen' who gained a Commission during the War- would have to settle for a more plebian milieu. There is an element of pathos in this suggestion. Waugh quashes it. Frank is the son of a bishop. A football injury kept him out of the war. Denied death in battle, he has little ambition in life. Let others supersede him and marry and bring forth children. Graves is bound to do so. Good for him. 

Mr. Graves had hung some Medici prints in the place of Frank’s football groups. The set of Georgian Poetry in the bookcase was his, not Frank’s. His college arms embellished the tobacco jar on the chimneypiece.
“Well, Charles Ryder,” said Mr. Graves at length, “are you feeling sore with me?”
“Sir?”
Mr. Graves became suddenly snappish. “If you choose to sit there like a stone image, I can’t help you.”
Still Charles said nothing.
“I have a friend,” said Mr. Graves, “who goes in for illumination. I thought you might like me to show him the work you sent in to the Art Competition last term.”
“I’m afraid I left it at home, sir.”
“Did you do any during the holidays?”
“One or two things, sir.”
“You never try painting from nature?”
“Never, sir.”
“It seems rather a crabbed, shut-in sort of pursuit for a boy of your age. Still, that’s your own business.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Difficult chap to talk to, aren’t you, Charles?”
“Not with everyone. Not with Frank,” Charles wished to say; “I could talk to Frank by the hour.” Instead he said, “I suppose I am, sir.”
“Well, I want to talk to you. I dare say you feel you have been a little ill-used this term. Of course, all your year are in rather a difficult position. Normally there would have been seven or eight people leaving at the end of last term but with the war coming to an end they are staying on an extra year, trying for University scholarships and so on. Only Sugdon left, so instead of a general move there was only one vacancy at the top. That meant only one vacancy on the Settle. I dare say you think you ought to have had it.”
“No, sir. There were two people ahead of me.”
“But not O’Malley. I wonder if I can make you understand why I put him over you. You were the obvious man in many ways. The thing is, some people need authority, others don’t. You’ve got plenty of personality. O’Malley isn’t at all sure of himself. He might easily develop into rather a second-rater. You’re in no danger of that. What’s more, there’s the dormitory to consider. I think I can trust you to work loyally under O’Malley. I’m not so sure I could trust him to work under you. See? It’s always been a difficult dormitory. I don’t want a repetition of what happened with Fletcher. Do you understand?”
“I understand what you mean, sir.”
“Grim young devil, aren’t you?”
“Sir?”
“Oh, all right, go away. I shan’t waste any more time with you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Charles rose to go.
“I’m getting a small hand printing-press this term,” said Mr. Graves. “I thought it might interest you.”
It did interest Charles intensely. It was one of the large features of his daydreams; in chapel, in school, in bed, in all the rare periods of abstraction, when others thought of racing motor-cars and hunters and speed-boats, Charles thought long and often of a private press. But he would not betray to Mr. Graves the intense surge of images that rose in his mind.
“I think the invention of movable type was a disaster, sir. It destroyed calligraphy.”
“You’re a prig, Charles,” said Mr. Graves. “I’m sick of you. Go away. Tell Wheatley I want him. And try not to dislike me so much. It wastes both our time.”

Waugh is saying Graves is an excellent master.  He will make a good Housemaster.  As for Frank, Waugh explains Ryder's attachment to him thus-

“Charles, I have just had a telegram from your father which you must read. I’ll leave you alone with it.”
He shed no tear, then or later; he did not remember what was said when two minutes later Frank returned; there was a numb, anaesthetized patch at the heart of his sorrow; he remembered, rather, the order of the day. Instead of running he had gone down in his overcoat with Frank to watch the finish of the race; word had gone round the house and no questions were asked; he had tea with the matron, spent the evening in her room and slept that night in a room in the Headmaster’s private house; next morning his Aunt Philippa came and took him home. He remembered all that went on outside himself, the sight and sound and smell of the place, so that, on his return to them, they all spoke of his loss, of the sharp severance of all the bonds of childhood, and it seemed to him that it was not in the uplands of Bosnia but here at Spierpoint, on the turret stairs, in the unlighted box-room passage, in the windy cloisters, that his mother had fallen, killed not by a German shell but by the shrill voice sounding across the changing room, “Ryder here? Ryder? Frank wants him at the double.”

This then is the Paraclete. There is Grief but then someone, something, wants us at the double. Whatever it is, it must take the place of Love. Can it build Fraternity? Not if we are nasty little boys. Waugh and Wilson were nasty. But what called to Waugh wasn't. What called to Wilson was. As for Kipling, he abides our question. Whatever called to him, his son died for it. It is sad to think that he wasn't killed because of his colour or his class or the yet more problematic fact that he had a penis. There is no Justice in this world. We must content ourselves with Just So stories.