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Lord Dismiss Us by Michael Campbell, published 1967 Between the mid-nineteenth century and the late 1970s, the sons of the British wealthy classes spent most of their childhood and adolescence in single-sex boarding schools, often in the charge of unmarried men who displayed more than a keen interest in their mental and physical development. What happened in school after school when hundreds of adolescent boys with raging hormones were forced to spend day after day, week after week, eating, living and sleeping together? While in some schools neither the boys nor the staff tolerated any same-sex affection, in others pairings between boys, were unofficially recognised and even expected. How events unfolded depended on both the couple and their environment. Many sought little or no physical contact, only the pleasure of spending time together, but for others the mutual desire had to be expressed through physical contact.
The moral compass is equally erratic. Mostly it is on the side of the boys and the teachers who recognise that these infatuations will inevitably die and it is better to accept than crush them. But Carleton, with whom we are expected to have most sympathy, is never clear as to whether these infatuations must never be expressed physically, or only when love is present, and by the way, apart from endless repetitions of "I love you", what does love signify? The novel steers mostly clear of teachers obsessed with one or more of their pupils. A topic that today would be surrounded by cries of paedophilia and witch-hunts conducted by parents and police, meets only disapproval and slight disgust. But if Lord Dismiss Us is weak on plot, it is nonetheless strong on atmosphere, on the details of boarding-school life, such as the banter between boys and the odd place of the few women - a maid, the headmaster's daughter, the school matron - in such an establishment. The final chapters are also good on the poignancy of Carleton's last days and nights as he stands on the cliff-edge of adolescence about to make the leap into adulthood. Meanwhile, modern readers, accustomed to the current fashion of relating sex explicit in every detail may find the style obscure. In one scene, two characters are fully clothed when one kisses the other on the cheek and eyebrow. "And the most appalling, unbelievable, terrible thing began to happen; and he could not stop it. He tried, but he could not stop it. And the worst part was that it was wonderful too, and yet it was awful. Thus the shame was doubled. The disgrace and horror were absolute. It was profane. It was ruin. It was done now. It could not be undone." That's as detailed as it gets. Campbell's novel may be a muddle, but that muddle is at least partly due to uncertainty in the 1960s towards both homosexuality and male adolescent sexuality. His heart tells him to approve but he does not have the language or the social structure to make that approval explicit. Gay men - and the boys who would become gay men - still lived in a twilight world where they had to create their own morality and values and where the boundaries of those values were uncertain. In Lord Dismiss Us the dawn is approaching but has not yet arrived. The last forty years have seen the development of a social, political and legistlative framework in which many, perhaps most, British gay men and lesbians can express themselves freely. At the same time, however, society has in some ways become much more restrictive towards young male sexuality. Gay is the preferred term of insult among teenagers and, while gay and lesbian organisations work admirably for the reduction of stigma among gay teenagers, but the shadow of paedophilia now hangs over the passion that some gay teenage boys have for those older than themselves. Which makes this novel a valuable record, worth reading not so much for its literary value than for its view of a time and a generation that no longer exists. August 2009 For another view of British public school life, fifty years earlier and with less sexual obsession, see Alec Waugh's The Loom of Youth, reviewed here.
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