Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill

by Hugh Walpole

Many books have been written about the horror of boys’ public schools. Comparatively few, however, venture beyond the staff-room door to examine the suffering of masters as well as pupils. Of those that do, there is probably none that captures the wretchedness of their cloistered life more vividly than Mr Perrin and Mr Traill. Based in part on his own experiences as a boarder at King’s School, Canterbury, Walpole reflected that this was "probably the truest" of all his novels.

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1911

About the author

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. A best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, his works have been neglected since his death.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had my eye on Hugh Walpole - one of those traditional storytellers who plied their trade in the early part of the last century, and who fell out of fashion when modernism came to the fore - for quite some time now. But I've dithered over which of his many books I should read. Finally though I realised that 'Mr Perrin and Mr Trail' had a lot to recommend it:

- Walpole's first success (and only his third novel)
- A Cornish setting
- A school setting
- A story drawn from experience, of which the author was said to be particularly proud.

And the Cornish library service had a copy!

It proved to be a little gem.

The story is set at Moffatt's, a small public school, on the Cornish coast. It is a second-rate school, staffed by men who are only there because they have nowhere else to go, the atmosphere made poisonous by a manipulative, controlling headmaster.

Mr Perrin - known to the boys as 'Pompous' - is one of those men. He has been there for twenty years; he is middle-aged and shabby; and his dreams of rising to the top of his profession have nearly all gone. Just one dream remains: Mr Perrin dreams of winning the heart of the lovely Miss Desart, who often came to stay with a married colleague and his wife. He is an unhappy dream, but that one dream keeps him going.

But Mr Traill will shatter that dream.

Mr Traill is a new master, in his first teaching post. He knows that it is first step on the ladder. He is young, handsome, athletic, charming, and the boys love him. But he is oblivious to the tension in the air, and he is incredulous when one of his colleagues warns him to get out as soon as he can.

He meets, and falls in love with, Miss Desart. And Mr Perrin's heart is broken.

Tension grows between the two masters; two men who have such different outlooks on life.

It all comes to a head when Mr Traill, on his way out on a rainy day, grabs the first umbrella that comes to hand from the pot by the door. And loses it. It was Mr Perrin's umbrella. Mr Traill cannot understand why Mr Perrin is so upset about such a small thing. Mr Perrin cannot understand how Mr Traill can be so careless of another man's possessions, another man's feelings.

There is a physical fight.

The repercussions are felt throughout the school, as the staff and their families join different camps.

And then Mr Traill - still oblivious - announces his engagement to Miss Desart.

Something in Mr Perrin's head snaps. he vows that he will have his vengeance.

Mr Perrin knows that the voice in his head, the voice that suggests wicked plans and schemes, is wrong. He is frightened, he tries not to listen, but he fails.

There is a dramatic finale, on a cliff top, on the last day of the summer term.

The story held me from start to finish.

It was a wonderful piece of storytelling, simply but clearly told. The characters - the masters, the domestic staff, the wives - were very well drawn and very well delineated. They were different people with different characters and different attitudes, but they were all stuck in the same situation.

The settings, the details, are all well done.

And though the story was set in a school, in Cornwall, in Edwardian England, you could transport is to so many different times and laces.

Consider Mr Perrin, Mr Traill and the umbrella; and then consider a booklover, a precious book, and a borrower who is careless with it and doesn't understand why the booklover is so upset ....

The different characters, the different attitudes of the two, very different men is so very well drawn, so very well defined, and that is what makes the story sing.

There is right and wrong, but it's impossible to say that one man is right and the other is wrong. One is young and foolish; one is old and set in his ways.

I should mention that there is another book by Hugh Walpole with a very similar title - 'The Gods and Mr Perrin.' It's actually the same story with a different ending; rewritten for the American market. I'd say go for the original ending - it couldn't be bettered.

I'm sorry that High Walpole had an unhappy year as a teacher - at Epsom College - but that experience gave him a very fine novel to send out into the world.

[QuinnMoone]

Mr Perrin and Mr Traill by Hugh Walpole is one of the most unassuming books I have ever seen. I picked up a copy of the book on sale at Half Price Books and it turned into one of the most entertaining and surprising stories I have read in a while. A fantastic read; a miserable little tale of a miserable little man seeking nothing but justification that his life was not totally alone and meaningless. More somber than other reads, but definitely a lovely little book!

This book is not grand by any measure, every character is second rate in life as is the school at which they work and they are all passed the point of ever really doing anything impactful with themselves and yet it is in this that the story is the most beautiful. It reflects true people that are believable and tangible to the reader.

The characters are very well written and although they are not as developed as others they are not 2-dimensional either. Some of the characters develop and change in the story while some don’t. The act of some characters never changing in the story is more a statement that the story is trying to make; Moffatt’s is sucking their life away and it isn’t a fault of the writer that the characters don’t change, it’s just the toxicity of the place they are at. Even those who disagree the characters were well written would agree that at least Mr. Perrin was able to excite some sort of emotion from the reader. Mr. Perrin excited pity and rage almost simultaneously. I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride with him; every page I turned I felt something different it seemed for this character.

Mr. Perrin also had some serious mental and emotional disorders that seem to have been brought on by the misery felt at Moffatt’s and were fueled by the years of solitude and inability to face the fact that he was a failure by his own standards. The book deals with his struggle to find that last chance to be something more than a second rate human and it is a very real struggle. Most humans are unable to face that they are failures and like him find a person to embody that failure and blame it on said person. This is what Mr. Traill was to Mr. Perrin; the he that he could have been had that chance arisen.

All the characters were written in such a way that the reader could sympathize with or pity them and are a great reflection of the time the story is taking place. Such a tragic lot of lives are depicted to us, even the students. Garden Minimus to me is a younger version of what Mr. Perrin might have been and at the end of the story I see him becoming like Mr. Perrin and I think that really is just another tragic story yet to be told.

The setting of the story is bleak at best. Moffatt’s is where the story takes place predominantly and the surrounding town. Mr. Walpole paints a horrid picture of the place – cramped and unbearable. The stinks and the abuse that is felt by the students as well as the teachers is almost palpable. The only time beauty is present, in my opinion, is when they reference the sea – ever on the horizon. It seems ironic that the most beautiful aspect of the setting is also so dangerous and deadly. Almost as if saying that to have the beautiful and escape Moffatt’s you have to face the sea which can carry you away just as easily as it can smash you against the cliffs.

The classrooms and bedrooms of the teachers looked dingy and the common area of the teachers seems so horribly unbearable I’d think I’d rather be in a broom closet than in a cramped smelly room like that with people I don’t like. The setting is toxic and is poisoning our characters very slowly; like a cloud of scentless gas slowly doing them in.

The plot of the story at times gets muddled because of the older style of narrative. It took me a little getting used to but a few pages in and I was able to follow rather well what the story was about. Mr. Walpole really takes care that the reader sees that the outcome of all these seemingly independent dramas all contribute to the ending of the tale. It is in this way that the reader really gets to know the characters; at the dinner parties that add to the stress, at the football game that breaks Mr. Perrin’s heart, in the chapel. Everything that is noted really is there to help paint a better picture of the two main characters. Although it’s appreciate by this reader, I do not know that others would. It was a bit distracting at times and I would forget that this side argument at the dinner party had a grander purpose but the author – as was the style then – was always in a discourse with the reader, explaining why even seemingly meaningless occurrences were in fact of great importance.

Although the conflict is alluded to throughout the story and is building up in momentum it does not feel that it was drawn out. From the beginning the conflict is about Mr. Perrin not quite liking Mr. Traill and the story is pretty consistent in developing the tale to really detail why this was a conflict at all. As stated earlier, although at times it was a bit distracting with the subplots going on around it, the main conflict was always kept in mind. Although at the end of it the conflict of the tale is everything but grand it is something that affected the whole of that community and it is well written and depicted.

The resolution of the story was more tragic that I had thought possible in both act and emotional effect on me. Although I could predict the outcome and was not far from it, it still somehow managed to sneak up on me so that when it was over with I felt as if I had not been told from the beginning of the story it was going to be tragic. I felt a loss when I finished the story and sad at the simple yet horribly tragic ending. I finished the book feeling satisfied and full. It was a beautifully painful tale, meticulously and carefully spun to ensure the greatest impact on its audience and it succeeded. The book’s conclusion is one of beauty and sadness.

Overall a great book that stayed with me for a while after finishing it. It’s a treasure that moves your soul in a way that you least expect and if anything is to keep someone from liking it, it would probably be the style of writing. Because it is an older style the writing lacks a sort of passion to it and seems very cool and calculative to be able to relate all the tragic details of these people. Within this style of writing though there is a muted urgency that if you really get into the story you can feel at the core of your soul.

-TheReadingTortie

[Sparrow .]

One of the best Cornish boarding school novels. Hugh has a fiercely responsive ear for dialogue, and a brooding, traditionalist eye for landscape. This is a study of the logic of hatred, a logic we have all intimately known. Certain pages have been written in journalistic haste – an English vice.

Mr. Perrin and Mr. Traill is a satirical critique of miseducation, and a defense of platonic pedophilia. Not long ago I read Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otronto. (Hugh is descended from Horace’s Uncle Horatio.) This is just as Gothic, though not sustained by manic proto-surrealism. Let’s open it at random:

“And at this moment, as Clinton afterwards described it, ’the scrap began.’ Perrin suddenly flung himself upon Traill and beat his face with his fist. Traill clutched Perrin’s arm and flung him back upon the breakfast-table. Perrin’s head struck the coffee pot, and as he rose he brought with him the tablecloth and all the things that Robert had left upon the table. With a fearful crash of crockery, and the odours of streaming coffee, with the cry of the terrified Robert, down everything came.”

(Sorry, I inadvertently chose the central event of the book!)

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I began teaching in the cloistered world of an English boarding school back in 1974 and some of what I discovered in Moffatt’s still pertained some sixty years after the publication of this engaging story. Senior staff calling one another by surname only and reserving their special places in the Common Room, the Dining Hall and in Chapel. Jealousies and rivalries had developed over years and allowed to fester and had never been resolved. So I felt quite at home reading this excellent story as all the principle characters - academics, ancillary staff, and the long suffering wives - are well drawn in a claustrophobic and stultifying setting that so clearly evokes the worst aspects of our traditional boarding schools with their petty rules and traditions.

Hugh Walpole had an unhappy year as a teacher at Epsom College and from this experience, and his time as boarder at King’s School, Canterbury, he draws plenty of fine well observed detail.

Moffatt’s is a second rate, under-resourced boarding school set on a bleak windy hilltop in Cornwall, and as I read the description I wondered whether Hugh Walpole had taken the Victorian prison of Dartmoor as his inspiration such is the toxic atmosphere he evokes. The school with dull grey stone buildings certainly looks and feels like a prison: its dingy classrooms are cramped, ancient and dusty; its corridors smelly and putrid with years of shoe leather, body odour and chalk ingrained in the walls; and the nauseating cooking smells of fatty mutton emanating from the school kitchens suggest decay.

The teachers are underpaid, miserable specimens whose lessons are tedious and dull, with a degree of regimentation not allowing room for innovation, invention and inspiration. Their main challenge is how to get through the year and satisfy the Headmaster, who fails to give the school any leadership and who is appalling in his duplicitous and conniving ways, undermining the staff at every opportunity by a deliberate ‘divide and rule’ style of management. The Common Room is a far from a happy retreat as the teachers are distrustful of one another and insecure individuals involved in point scoring and harbouring petty grudges, so the reader finds plenty in their predicament with which to sympathise and rather than hate them for their dull predictability one pities them for teaching in a moribund institution hidebound by convention and tradition, and totally lacking any esprit de corps, despite the Headmaster trumpeting the school’s wonderful camaraderie and ethos.

Mr ‘Pompous’ Perrin is part of the establishment although he feels like a caged mouse on a treadmill, and as the new school year begins he is trying his utmost to find a mind set that will allow him to get through the term unscathed. He is old and grumpy and disconnected from the pupils as his classes are so boring and predictable. Tall, gaunt and haggard he is not at all pre-possessing and his features are matched by his unpleasant personality. He is small minded and mean and holds back pupils who underperform in their end of term examinations with punishment on their first day of holidays.

Mr Traill is not only something of a celebrity, he is also new and young, charismatic and popular, and he is everything that old Perrin is not. Archie Traill engages easily with the pupils in his classes as he has recently gained an Oxbridge Blue for Rugby playing at Twickenham. His arrival at Moffatt’s shows in stark contrast to the other staff what might be achieved if all teachers adopted higher aspirations for their charges.

Mr Kirkland, another teacher who has been at Moffat’s for the long term sees the evil machinations of the malevolent Headmaster have had the desired effect as he describes the toxic atmosphere in the Common Room thus :

‘With their dark gowns, long white hands, their pale faces, their heavy eyes, they moved silently about the room and gathered at last in a cluster by the fire, and stood and sat silently without a word.

’This term has been worse than any other since I have been here ….. Well, we were not always like this. We were not always fighting and cursing like beasts. We were not always with any decency, or friendliness or kindliness. We did not always have a man over us who used us like slaves, because he knew we were afraid to give him notice and go.’

The arrival of the youthful Miss Isabel Desart precipitates dramatic events and the story held me from start to finish.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unusual study of life in an academic fishbowl, this witty psychological thriller is Walpole at his best. The British public school is known to us, but not from the perspective of instructors in second-tier institutions who are sentenced to a life of petty grudges, servitude, bullying and hopelessness. The school year is a pressure-cooker of grievances and any newcomer is a threat and fair game. The deadly dance between Perrin and Traill can only end in destruction. I don't like thrillers, and technically, this is a psychological novel that explores human nature under particular pressures. It is absolutely riveting.

[Steve Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two teachers fall out. There's perhaps a little too much time setting the scene and times when it rambles - in a book that is not particularly long; but many scenes are quite superb, such as the falling out over an umbrella! Not perfect, but definitely worth a read.

[Dave Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, be aware there are two versions. This is the original, and you can download it here. The Gods and Mr Perrin, available on Project Gutenberg, was rewritten for the American market and has a silly upbeat ending.

This is an English public school by way of Poe and Stevenson with a touch of Gormenghast. It's full-blooded gothic, so not as subtle or finally effective as Snow's The Masters but still deliciously fraught and with a pervasive sense of the fantastic. If academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low, how much more that applies in a third-rank private school.

Another reviewer has pointed out that Walpole uses a little too much telling and not enough showing to convince us of the oppressive atmosphere at the school, hence only 3 stars, but I enjoyed it all the same.

The Capuchin Classics edition is nicely designed but riddled with typos -- "down" for "clown", "for" for "far", etc -- that makes me think they took the Internet Archive PDF, ripped out the text, and never bothered to proofread it. Worse, at the very end, you read Walpole's poignant words and the very last line, running straight on from the preceding paragraph, is: "Made and printed in France." That must have been intended for the next page but, as I said, no proofreading was involved. Better to get the Internet Archive version and read that.

[Al · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd book - a good book, but an odd one. It seems so distant in setting, even to those of us who did go to a boarding school in the cold 1970s. However it is more about how any place where people live on top of each other can become a steaming pit of petty rivalries and jealousies in which people can, at least metaphorically, drown. In particular, taking a modern view, where men aren’t allowed to admit to weakness and loneliness.
Walpole can write and he can write emotional turmoil really well. A good book but not without its oddities.

[Trevor Harvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

The novel is short on action and examines the mind of a criminal schizophrenic.

We are often told that the atmosphere in the school is toxic, but this reader wasn't convinced that the author had demonstrated this to be so. Don't just tell the reader, show him. The novel would have been all the better for it.

An enjoyable novel only marred by Walpole's occasional clunky prose style.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A touching and beautifully written novel, set in a minor boys' public school (that's public UK, i.e. private) in the fifties. The arrival of a new, young master aggravates the sense of futility and loneliness experienced by an old hand, and their relationship spirals downwards into increasingly dark territory. The bland, grim atmosphere of the school and the petty preoccupations and human failings of its largely unlovely inhabitants are brilliantly evoked, while the frequent and lyrical descriptions of the natural world around them serve as a highly effective counterpoint.